The Death Of A Legend Read online

  The High Lord clasped his hands on his pommel. “You insubordinate old reprobate. How old are you, anyway?”

  Bohluh shifted uncomfortably, lost his grin and looked down at the round. “Oh . . . ahhh, I be unsure, Lord Milo, bein’ such a iggernant man and all. I . . . I thinks I be about forty-four . . . give ’r take a year ’r so.”

  Milo snorted derisively. “Take none and give a dozen or more you white-haired scoundrel! Djim, you were a man grown when I gave you that cat, after the big battle at Wild Rose River; and that was more than thirty years ago.

  “Strahteegos Ahrtos” Turning in his saddle, he bespoke the infantry commander. “Why hasn’t this man, Bohluh, been retired?”

  That officer squirmed in his saddle. “Well . . . ahh, well, my lord, it . . .”

  But Bohluh interrupted. “Lord Milo, don’t go a-blamin’ young Ahrtos, there ’cause it ain’t none of it his fault. He be a damned good of’cer, allus has been. But alla my records they got burned up in that big fire at Goohm, fourteen year agone. An’ when we set out a-doin’ them over, it might be some names and dates got put down wrong, is all.”

  Milo sighed “Djim, you must be pushing sixty . . . hard; and that’s half again the avenge lifespan, even for a civilian. Old friend, war is an activity for young men. I think I should retire you here and now.

  “Report back to the duty officer in your camp and start packing your personal effects. When I’m done in this field, I’ll have orders drafted to get you back to Kehnooryos Ehlas; or you can retire in Morguhn, if you wish. There’re right many new-made widows there, and Thoheeks Bili is going to need some loyal husbands for them.”

  Bohluh’s spear fell, clattering, and the boss of his shield clanged on the hard, pebbly ground. His lined, seamed face working, he stumbled forward from his place in the ranks, one big, callused hand raised beseechingly, the other grasping the chestnut’s reins.

  “Please, Lord Milo, please don’ send me away, please let me stay. This be my home, my lord, the onlies’ home I’ve knowed for near forty-seven year. If . . . if I didn’ hear the drum of a mornin’, I’d . . . I couldn’, wouldn’ want to . . . I means . . .” Then the old man’s voice broke and he could only sob chokedly, over and over, “Please, Lord Milo, please don’t send me away . . .”

  And something in those swimming green eyes touched a deep nerve in Bili of Morguhn. He urged his horse up beside the High Lord’s and touched his arm.

  “My lord, if you please . . .”

  Milo mindspoke impatiently, “This is none of your affair, Bili. It’s army business, a matter of broken regulations. We can’t afford the precedent of a sixty-odd-year-old soldier swinging a sword in the ranks. Damned few officers, even, are allowed to serve past the age of fifty.”

  “I . . . I understand your position, my lord. So, too . . . I think . . . does he. He knows that this is the end of his long, long road. But . . . but I do not think my lord understands him.”

  “And you,” beamed the High Lord with a tinge of sarcasm, “from the preeminent wisdom of your less than twenty summers, do?”

  “Your pardon, my lord. I had no wish to offend.”

  “No, your pardon, Bili.” The biting edge was departed from Milo’s mindspeak. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever get over being jumpy before a battle; and I sometimes forget your constantly expanding mental abilities. So, what do old Djim’s words say to you?”

  “He craves one last boon, my lord. A soldier’s death, and this one, last battle in which to find that death.”

  “And you know this, Bili?” demanded Milo. “How?”

  The answer came quickly and unhesitatingly. “My lord, I can just sense that this Bohluh and I are much alike, and were I in his position, this is what I would beg of a man I had served so long and so well.”

  “Bili,” Milo beamed, “discipline in my army is much stricter than what passes for such in your Middle Kingdoms hosts. Every ear within the hearing has noted my ordering him back to camp, and it would damage morale if his pleas seemed to bring about a reversal of that order. Besides, it’s highly probable that his company won’t even fight today. These regiments are drawn up for effect; we’ll not use a third of them, if that many.”

  “Djim Bohluh has served you well, my lord?” asked Bili.

  “He’d not have that cat otherwise,” Milo retorted. “He’s been up and down the noncommissioned ladder so many times that he’s worn a path in the rungs of it. But that’s because, when in garrison, he’s a boozing, brawling, womanizing, insubordinate rakehell. But on campaign, in many a battle, he’s been worth his weight in emeralds. Had I had as few as one regiment just like him, the western border of the Confederation would be somewhere on the Sea of Grass today.

  “Yes, Bili, Djim Bohluh has, indeed, served me well.”

  “Then, my lord,” suggested Bili, “second him to me, to my guard, and let him find that which be now seeks with us. I know damned well we’ll wet our blades this day.”

  As Bili remembered, he and Captain Raikuh had been atop the ridge above the little hollow where their Freefighters were clumped, wetting brick-dry mouths out of their water bottles and listening to some long and endlessly obscene tale spun by old Djim Bohluh. He and the captain had been observing and commenting upon the actions of the assault companies and the archers who were not very successfully attempting to cover their efforts.

  Then young Geros Lahvoheetos had climbed up, and they three had been discussing various aspects of the Freefighter’s trade and what did and did not constitute bravery when the High Lord mindspoke him.

  “Bili, move your company down to Strahteegos Ahrtos’ position. I’ll be leading the attack on the left salient and Ahrtos will be in command of the attack on the right one; but I want you with him, because you own a quality that he all-but lacks — imagination.

  “Take care of yourself, son. If anything happens to you this day, Aldora will no doubt make my life miserable for the next century or two.”

  The attack had been absolutely hellish. Only narrow gaps had been cleared through the interlaced abattis, and the Confederation infantry sustained heavy losses while threading through the openings. Slingstones and arrows and darts hailed down thickly from the summit of the fortified hillock, despite the shafts rained on the defenders by the Confederation archers.

  Then, when the survivors were at last through the deadly hedge and were forming up for the uphill charge against the bristling breastworks and the masonry walls beyond, no less than three catapult stones — from Confederation engines, too! — fell short and bounced a sanguineous path through the forming ranks; the hundredweight missiles sent steel scales flying and mashed leather and flesh and bone into one indistinguishable sickening jelly.

  The ranks closed up again and the charge was launched, but less than halfway up the slope, Strahteegos Ahrtos — his visor open for better vision — had his jaw torn almost off by a slingstone and fell, clashing and gurgling bloodily, at Bili’s feet.

  The sub-strahteegos who immediately assumed the lead got but a few yards farther up when a pitchball took him full on the breastplate, and Bili’s last view of the unfortunate officer was of a writhing, shrieking, flame-shrouded figure rolling on the ground.

  The keeleeohstos who then took over made it almost to the outer works — a chest-high, earth-and-timber rampart — when a thick-shafted, four-foot engine dart spitted him through the belly, going through his high-grade steel plate as cleanly as a warm knife through soft cheese.

  Then Bili had no more time to watch or count the succession of commanders. He leaped aside barely in time to avoid a trayful of red-hot sand, though a hideous scream from just behind him attested that the sand had landed on some poor bastard. But Bili surged forward, and the powerful sweep of his heavy axe cleanly severed a leg of the man holding the tray.

  And somehow Bili found himself atop the breastwork, wreaking bloody carnage on the swift succession of foes who appeared for but bare eyeblinks before him, dimly recording the sho
ck of countless blows on his own plate and helm. Oblivious to the familiar cacophony of battle, he concentrated only on remaining alive and seeing to it that his opponents did not.

  Then only the backs of rebels running up toward the stone-walled summit met his eyes, and someone’s — was that Raikuh’s voice? — shout was ringing through his closed helm.

  “. . . Bili, Duke Bili, if we tail those bastards now, we’ll take fewer casualties. The frigging archers and darters won’t be able to range us without ranging their own, as well.”

  Bili attempted to speak, but he had to work his tongue about in the aridity of his mouth before he could wet his throat enough to get the words out. “Whoever the new army commander is, he’ll take time to dress his troops, however many of them are left. You’ve seen how these hidebound regular arseholes operate, man!”

  Raikuh shook his head briskly, his lobstertail napeguard rattling. “There’re damn-all officers left, Duke Bili. The highest-ranking bugger I can see is a lieutenant, and he’s missing a hand.”

  “Then who the hell led the regulars up here?” demanded Bili. “Somebody must’ve led them onto this rampart.”

  “If anybody did, it was you, my lord,” snapped Raikuh bluntly. “They followed you once, they’ll do it again. If we wait around for those spit-and-polish types to forward another senior officer, damned few of them or us will make it up to those bloody walls!”

  Bili whirled to face the regular infantry men and lifted his gory axe on high, roaring, “After them! After the bastards!”

  For a breathless moment, the Confederation troops wavered, partially reassured at the voice and tone of command, but on edge, uneasy at the lack of formation. And that was when old Djim Bohluh repaid Bili’s kindness.

  “Sacred Sun fry your shitty arses!” bellowed the loud and far-reaching voice of the sometime senior noncom, its flavor unquestionably that of parade grounds and make-work details, “What’re you pig-fuckers a-waitin’ on? You heerd the friggin’ order! Or has them there money-fighters got them more guts than you? Move, damn you, move!”

  And it was just as Raikuh had said it would be. The defenders of the walls had the bitter choice of loosing full at their own comrades now retreating from the captured ramparts or having the bulk of the attackers run up the slope unscathed. So they tried what they took to be a middle course, loosing at a high angle and hoping that their shafts fell upon the proper heads; most of the rebel archers lived just long enough to rue their error in judgment.

  Not, thought the still-wakeful Bili — lying rolled in his woolen cloak in a lean-to shelter somewhere far to the west of any civilized land or people — that there still weren’t some close moments yet to come that day. Not to mention what Geros did . . . and Bili still had trouble believing he did it, though he saw it with his own eyes and knighted him for it.

  The shouting, screaming, cheering, howling broil of men had swept over those gateless walls, their jabbing spears and dripping swords leaving red ruin in their wake, while shrieking panic fled before them.

  Bili’s pitiless axe scythed ruthlessly through the press of rebels atop the wall. At its inner edge, he kicked over a ladder down which the less nimble defenders were fleeing, then jumped lightly to the stone paving of the inner court, briefly wondering where the defenders had lived in the absence of huts or tents within the fortification.

  But the thought was necessarily short, for he was almost immediately confronted by a determined opponent armed with a broadsword and a huge body shield — a rebel officer, if the garish richness of the elaborately chased and inlaid full suit of plate was any indication.

  An experienced warrior, this one, for he handled his long sword and weighty shield with a practiced ease, deflecting Bili’s hard-swung axe on a sloped shieldface and quickly rushing inside, too close for the axe to be effective. His flickering blade feinted briefly at Bili’s visor slits before its point sank through leather and cloth and into the flesh and muscle high on the young thoheeks’ thigh.

  Roaring his pain and rage. Bili closed the distance even more, and his left hand let go the iron axe shaft to pinion the wrist of the rebel’s sword arm in an armor-crushing grip. Heedless of the searing agony of the steel buried in his leg, he pivoted half around, slid his right hand halfway up the axeshaft and ferociously rammed the central spike betwixt the gilded bars of his adversary’s visor.

  With a gurgling, gasping scream, the swordsman stumbled back, his big shield dragging, his sword hanging by its knot. Bili disengaged his axe, whirled it up in both hands and swung a crashing blow against the side of that black-plumed helm. The swordsman was hurled to the pavement and lay motionless and soundless while immense quantifies of blood gushed from between the visor bars of his sundered helm.

  And Bili strode on to his next encounter.

  Lying with his cheek pressed against the scratchy saddle blanket, Bili thought, “And that was when I very nearly died. Would have, if not for Geros; he deserved his knighting for that alone. That big rebel could’ve crushed me like a bug with that monstrous club of his. He was the biggest man I’d ever seen, before I saw a Muhkohee, that is.”

  Instinctively, he winced and flinched at the memory. “One minute I was hacking my way through that mob of rebels, the next minute it felt as if lightning had struck me in the small of the back. Then that pavement came up and slammed against my visor and it was all I could do to turn my head enough to see that gigantic rebel raising his club to finish me. Thank Sun and Wind that Geros had been hard on my heels through the whole, bloody broil. How did the tale I squeezed out of him go, now?”

  Freefighter Color Sergeant Geros Lahvoheetos, well protected by his two Freefighter color guards and the old infantryman, Djim Bohluh — a fearsome and formidable fighter for all his age — had trailed the thoheeks and Captain Raikuh as closely as possible amid the chaos of shove, thrust, slash and hack. Leaden slingshot and various other missiles had holed and rent the Red Eagle Banner during that protracted and ghastly ascent of the hill, but Djim’s big infantry shield had sheltered Geros himself from any harm.

  One of his assigned guards — Hahfah he thought it was — had fallen off the stone wall with a stove-in helmet, so close that his plunging body almost took Geros with it. The other one rolled off the walltop into the paved court, locked in a deadly grapple with a rebel.

  Then, down in the swirling battle raging all over that court both Pawl Raikuh and old Djim were swept out of the narrow view afforded Geros by his closed visor. Nonetheless, he kept doggedly on his lord’s heels, using his fine sword where necessary and taking blows on his armor and helm until his entire being was a single, throbbing ache.

  Just ahead of the colors, Bili’s gore-slimy axe downed rebel after rebel — shattering shields, crumpling plate and helms, severing limbs, smashing heads and chests. Behind Geros, wielding sabers and broadswords and a miscellany of pole arms, came two score Freefighters of the Morgubn Company and, after them, the battered remnants of the Confederation infantry, mostly spearless now but proving no less deadly with shortsword and shield.

  The rebels fought hard, as vicious as so many cornered rats, holding every bare inch of ground with a suicidal tenacity; but slowly they were driven back and back, their thinning line constricting around a central brick-and-stone platform mounting two large engines. Twice they tried to form a ring of overlapped shields, but each time Bili’s terrible axe lopped off spearheads and beat down shields and the Freefighters poured ravening through the gaps, their blood-dimmed blades sending more and more dozens of rebels down to gasp out their lives on the red-running ground.

  Then the main battle was boiling about the platform, under the very arms of the big catapults, and old Djim — bleeding in a dozen places, but grinning broadly — was once more at Geros’ side, only to be swept away and disappear again a moment later. A sustained roar of deep-voiced cheering arose from the rear, loud enough that the color sergeant could hear it even over the incredible din engulfing him. He took a brief glance ove
r his shoulder to see fresh companies of Confederation infantry, wave after wave of them, appear atop the wall and jump down into the court.

  He turned back just in time to see Thoheeks Bili beaten to earth by a giant of a man swinging a massive timber like a whole treetrunk and still in the bark. Oblivious of the blades beating upon his cuirass, Geros hurled himself forward, ducked under the swing of the giant’s log and jammed the mostly ornamental brass point of the standard staff deep into the monstrous man’s belly, just below the horn-buckled belt.

  With a high, falsetto scream, the stricken rebel dropped his log, grabbed the shaft and pulled it free of his body with an ugly sucking sound. Then, whining, his pasty, beardless face contorted, he lumbered toward the man who had hurt him, his ham-sized hands extended before him.

  Instinctively, Geros realized that it would be his very life to chance within reach of those hands. Wedging the ferrule of the standard in a wide crack between the paves, he brought up his sword and danced back out of reach as lightly as his tired, trembling legs would move. Assuming a point fighter’s crouch, he awaited his huge foe’s slow advance, then aimed a powerful thrust at the impossibly broad expanse of unarmored chest . . . and almost fell into those deadly clutches!

  Too late, he noticed that the giant’s arms not only were packed with rolling muscles but were almost as long as the combined lengths of his sword and sword arm. Even though he hurriedly pulled the thrust, the right hand locked about the swordblade and sought to jerk Geros closer, to his death.

  Frantically, the sergeant pulled back with all his might. After a heart-stopping moment of resistance, the boned edges sliced through callus and skin and flesh and sinew to grate on massy bone and slide free, the sword’s passage lubricated with hot red blood.

  Raising his ruined, useless, spurting hand to eye level, the hulking creature rent the air with another of those shrill, womanish screams, then placed the gory palm and fingers tight against his punctured belly, from which a purplish-pink loop of gut was working. But he did not halt his shuffling advance.