A Cat of Silvery Hue Page 8

  Then the mists cleared and she heard again the words of the man whose horse had carried her, the words he had spoken while his hands squeezed and groped at her: "Enjoy me while you can, you little slut, for once you're old Hehrah's glohsah-athehlfee, you'll never again be allowed near a man!"

  Glohsah-athehlfee! Tongue-sister! That whispered-about vice of Komeesa Hehrah. The thought alone was enough to sicken Mairee. But when she opened her mouth to protest, the older woman's thick, blubbery lips pasted themselves over hen while the hot, winy tongue forced between her teeth in search of her own.

  Mairee struggled to wrench free, to sit up, but Lady Hehrah's layers of fat concealed other layers of muscle, and she held the slender girl easily enough to free one bejeweled band.

  And when Mairee felt that hot, damp hand slip betwixt her slim thighs, she reacted frantically, sinking her sharp white teeth into that alien tongue thrusting between them, while punching at the head and face above her, tearing at the coiffed black hair. And when at last she had felt some of the weight shift, had made to get to her feet, the lady's buffet had set her almost to swooning. And she had thus understood only snatches of the things the lady said to the women who had come to her screams.

  "Ahtheena, Khohee, Ntohrees… skoola… ahkahrees-tosha . . . Ktoopeemaptehrnasl… eeahkoopohgnohmohfoo-nee…"

  Though the language was archaic Old Ehleenohkos, it was sufficiently similar to Confederation Ehleenohkos for Mairee to understand that she was being called an "ungrateful bitch" along with something about "stubborness"; the term Ktoopeema-ptehmas she did not know… not then.

  Mairee had never imagined the existence of such pain as that which brought her fully, screamingly conscious. She shrieked her throat raw, she pled, begged a stop to the torment, her fine-boned body arching and writhing in the grasps of the serving women who held her down and immobilized her tiny feet under the brutal bite of the bastinado. But it went on… and on. Finally she fainted again.

  The bright rays of that distant star twinkled, till her tears blurred the sight of it. She shifted her still-aching feet, trying not to rattle the long chain which secured her slender ankle to the massive bedstead. But rattle it did, sounding like the clanging thunder of a smithy to the girl's ears.

  Beside her, Lady Hehrah snorted, groaned and threw a fat arm across the quaking Mairee's small breasts. She lay so for a moment, then, muttering something incomprehensible, rolled onto her side and recommenced her resounding snores.

  And then Mairee could again draw breath. "It cannot last," she wordlessly told that friendly, unreachable star. "No woman can long live with this torture, not without going mad. And she even denies me means of honorably ending my life. Oh, what am I to do?"

  The guardsman, Ruhmos, also watched that flashing star, as he lifted his leathern kilt to piss down the outer face of the wall. He heard the chorus of snores from the barrack below with envy. He knew that there was no damned excuse for robbing him and so many others of sleep, when a single man or at most two could have kept adequate watch. For did not the rolling leas stretch away on every side, treeless for most of their extent? And who was there to keep watch against anyway? That unarmed, spineless scum of villagers? A few homicidal horses?

  Nonetheless, he had his orders from that arrogant, posturing ape his old roistering companion Danos was become since the stallions killed that bastard Gaios and Danos the archer was proclaimed Danos the captain. He let his eyes sweep carelessly over the expanses of moon-silvered pasture to the north and west, before he shook his yard, dropped his kilt and made to turn about.

  Then a hard, rough, hand clamped down over his mouth, jerking back his head and preventing him from voicing his agony at the sharp bite of steel which bit in under the angle of his jaw and traced fire across the front of his straining throat And the hand was taken away, being no longer needed, for Ruhmos' windpipe was filled now with a thick, hot liquid which he realized, as the crushing blackness engulfed him, must be his own blood.

  For many long years, Komees Hari had utilized the barrack space above the hall stables for the practical purpose of storing grain and hay. Only since be rode out to his supposed death had the Lady Hehrah restored it to its original function, feeling that with the men so far from the hall, there would be less likelihood of them attempting to seduce the female servants into the filthy sin of fornication… and, of course, her scheme worked no better than equally puritanical plans ever do.

  This night, at least a quarter of the sleeping guardsmen shared their straw-filled pallets with companions. But like the now deceased Ruhmos, the soot-smeared apparitions who invaded the long, darkened room had their orders. They obeyed those orders to the very letter. Working south from the tower through which they had entered, they made brief stops at each sleeping couch, and when they passed on to the next, no one—man or woman or painted love boy—remained alive behind them.

  Their sanguineous task silently completed, most of the dark men descended to the courtyard, and, fumbling and stumbling in the inky entrance passage, they began to unbar the main gate. Two sought the hall stable, where they quietly strangled the man found there. One retraced his steps to the tower, took an arrow from dead Ruhmos' case and wound its shaft with strips of oil-impregnated cloth.

  In deference both to his new rank and to her high regard for him, Lady Hehrah had granted Captain Danos quarters in the hall itself. Which, he often thought to himself, was a fair step upward in the world for a young man whose father had been beaten to death by old Komees Djeen Morguhn's herdsmen when caught stealing sheep.

  Thanks to several extra measures of wine, Danos had slept well and deeply earlier in the night, but a full bladder had wakened him soon after midnight. He had piddled in his chamberpot, then returned to his bed, only to find that sleep evaded him. He turned over and over on the sweat-damp bedclothes, vainly seeking a position which would once more vouchsafe him sleep. At length, he surrendered to wakefulness and, with a groan of anger, lowered his feet to the tiles and sat up on the edge of the bed.

  Without conscious volition, his hand dropped into his crotch and, before he knew he had done so, he had stroked his sex several times. Frantically, he snatched the hand away before he could do anything really sinful, breathing a short prayer for protection against temptation.

  Hasping his hands firmly behind his head, he lay back across the width of the bed, and his thoughts strayed back to triumphs of that first week of his captaincy. Nearly every time he and his troop had gone down to the village for another child, they had been able to catch women and girls in fields, ride the shrieking sows down and rope them and trip them and swive them properly. That had indeed been fun. And no need to worry about the wrath of the old heathen komees, as on Danos' necessarily rare previous forays.

  Sex, such as he knew the guardsmen were presently enjoying in their barrack, had been denied Danos for much of his life, his rare attempts always having the same tiring, Inconclusive, infinitely frustrating end. Then one early autumn day, the chief huntsman had been ill and Danos had been sent out to bag small game for the table. Deep in the forest, he had chanced upon a village girl gathering nuts, and on a never-understood impulse, he had savagely beaten her with his dog-whip, then shredded her homespun smock and brutally raped her.

  And it had been nothing less than wonderful! Her screams and pleas and agonized whimperings had spurred him on to his complete pleasure as had never the moans and gasps and contortions of the slack-lipped tarts he had tried to bed. He could not even remember rolling off her quivering, bleeding, sob-wracked body. And how long he had lain on the crackling leaves, lost in a private nirvana of delight, he knew not.

  But when at last he returned to the world, he had realized that the girl must assuredly be slain, else what had happened would get to the ears of the komees, and the certain consequences of that mischance were too horrible to bear contemplation. For, while the old lord had always been known as a lusty man, he would not countenance rape in his domain any more than he would m
urder or maiming or thievery.

  It was with a chill of apprehension that Danos thought of that roving chapman who, nighting at Horse Hall, had accosted a serving wench on her way to the privy, punched her into unconsciousness, and been caught while having his will of her senseless body. The peddler had been haled before the komees at dawn, and since unlike most of his peers Lord Hari maintained no mercenary soldiers, the senior hunter and Danos had been set to guarding the prisoner, who had claimed drunkenness to be the cause of his attack.

  But the old lord would have none of it, saying, "You be a well-built man and not unhandsome, so you might have had that woman, and many another here, for but a bit of frippery from your pack or even a few winning words; but you felt you must steal not buy, for a rapist be nothing less than a thief and a maimer.

  "Well, master chapman, you chose the wrong county in which to commit your crime! Some lords might well let you off with a striping or the payment of a suffering price, but Hari Daiviz values his people more highly than that.

  "In the Middle Kingdoms, where I soldiered years agone, they know how to deal with scum such as you. So rape be unknown, except in time of war or intakings."

  Danos well recalled how that husky chapman's face had paled under his tan and dirt, how he had fallen to his knees on the flags, groveling and wringing his raised hands in supplication, his terror having frozen his power of speech.

  And the komees had continued in the same tone. "Master chapman, you have dishonored your manhood. Were I a burk-lord, I'd have it off your body, leave you a hollow reed to piss through and seal the stump with hot pitch. But I think me I'll have done enough for the women of this world if I make certain mat you'll breed no more of your contemptible ilk."

  The nobleman then addressed the senior hunter. "Rai, you and young Danos drag this piece of filth into the courtyard, have off his breeches and lash him to the whipping frame. I'll be along presently."

  They had obeyed their orders. The komees, the raped woman and all the men of the hall and the village had assembled in the courtyard, where Lord Hari had recounted the crime, his judgment and sentence, then had called forth the horse master. And Danos' blood ran cold when he remembered the hideous cries of the hapless chapman when old Vintz stepped forward with his hooked knife and commenced the gelding.

  So Danos had buried his hunter's blade in the girl's whip-wealed breast, dragged the corpse far into the forest and secreted it near to where he recalled having seen bear tracks. And when her pitiful remains at last were found, the komees, his neighbor, Komees Djeen, and several other nobles, with their hunters and retainers, rode out on a week-long hunt that bagged three bears and a host of other animals.

  With his duties to offer excuse for frequent and prolonged absences, to explain bloodstains on his weapons and clothing, and with the wide-spreading forest to conceal his movements, Danos' rape-murders had gone almost unremarked—since he had been careful never to strike the same domain twice in a row and had ranged over most of the Duchy of Morguhn and parts of the two duchies to the south and east—and his murderous role had never been suspected. Throughout the intervening years, many a bear or treecat or boar or wolf had been slain as bloodprice for Danos' twisted sex drives.

  The thoughts of those pleasurable deeds aroused Danos to an unbearable pitch of passion, so that when once more he found his traitorous hand straying toward commission of unforgivable sin, he sat up, laced on a pair of sandals and donned a soft doeskin kilt. Leaving his door ajar, he crept past the rooms of the upper servants and ascended the narrow stairs to the roof, then headed along the wallwalk toward the barrack, thinking to borrow a woman from one of the guardsmen, take her someplace apart and hurt her enough to gain such reaction as he knew he required for his sexual release.

  But he had taken only a few steps along the wall when there was the twanging of a bowstring somewhere near the barrack and a blazing arrow arched high into the starry sky. What in hell, he pondered, are those drunken whoresons up to now? Aren't dice enough to gamble with that they must waste good arrows? And they could fire the corn or the hay, as well!

  Lips set grimly, Danos strode purposefully toward the south tower. Dawn would see those thoughtless, wasteful rogues well striped for this night's lark. But in the shadow of the tower, only a few steps from the door, his foot struck something which sent him sprawling, all but tumbling into the courtyard twelve feet below.

  On his knees, he made out the dim shape of a helmeted guardsman, stretched motionless across the walk, legs dangling over the edge. Snarling, he grasped the obviously drunken man's shoulders and shook him mercilessly… without result. Then he became conscious of warm, sticky wetness on the miscreant's tunic. He thought at first that, in his drunken stupor, the sentry had puked down his front But some atavistic sense sent his hands exploring.

  His nape bristled as his trembling fingers penetrated the still-warm gash gaping under the guardsman's chin. Leaping up, his blood-gummy hand sought the hilt of the sword he had left in his room and his mouth was opened, his lungs filling to shout an alarm.

  Then came the creaking protest of the gate's hinges, whereupon a dozen or more shadowy, wraithlike figures poured from the entry passage and trotted across the deserted courtyard toward the hall. And Danos' throat choked off that shout. Shakily, he stepped over the dead man and tiptoed through the tower, thence into the deathly still barrack.

  What he found there imbued him with such panic that he only took time to arm himself with belt and dagger, bow and case of arrows, ere he stole back through the tower, dropped from the wall and ran for the forest like a hunted beast.

  Chapter Six

  Sleep finally had claimed Mairee, but the throbbing of her feet made it a light slumber at best, and when the arms slipped under her body and the lips pressed down on hers, she instantly came to full, shuddering wakefulness. All that she could see of the face above her was as black as the hair. Then she became aware that those lips on hers were surrounded by a beard, a full beard! And she knew the feel of that beard… and those arms and those warm, tender lips. And she knew also that she was certainly dreaming. The knowledge that she could not live on and on forever in that blessed dreamworld, but must soon waken to the horror of her real existence, wrenched a groan from the depths of her being and flooded her eyes with hot, salt tears.

  Beside her the snoring suddenly broke off, the bed shook to the lady's ponderous movements. Then her strident voice shrilled, "A man! A dirty man! What are you doing in my bedchamber, you pig? Get your filthy hands off my girl!"

  Ehrik's deep bass rumble answered her, his tone hard and cold as polished steel. "Komeesa Hehrah, I done come to fetch back my wife."

  Lumbering her bulk half off the bed, Lady Hehrah turned up the lamp and stared in utter disbelief at the visitor, clad in dark-brown tunic and breeches, face and hands smeared with soot, wide dagger and shortsword hanging from his belt.

  "May God damn those blunderers!" she shouted wrathfully. "I told them to kill you! They swore you were dead! But you'll not escape me this time!

  "Klohee, Ahtheena! Call the guards at once! Do you hear me, you bitches?"

  Ehrik did not move a muscle other than to treat the lady to a gap-toothed, derisive grin. "If it's them two hussies in the antechamber you be callin', you can save y'r wind. With crushed gullets and snapped necks, they'll be havin' trouble answerin'."

  Black eyes widened in terror, the lady backed across the bedchamber, screaming, "Captain Danos! Guards, to me! Guarrds!"

  Ehrik chuckled again. "We done sent all your bullyboys to Wind, too, komeesa. Lord Hari, he give us leave to butcher ever' boar an' sow an' shoat in this here hall, 'ceptin' you an' your damn priest."

  Lady Hehrah started as if arrowpricked. "My… my husband is dead! He's dead, I tell you! Myros promised Hari would be among the first to die!"

  Ehrik's bass laughter filled the chamber. "Well, I'll not gainsay you, komeesa, but Cousin Hari do make the livelies' corpse I ever come to see. He be a-ridin' '
crost the wes' pasture right now, him an' near three hunnerd C'nfederashun kahtahfrahktoee. An' I hopes to Wind he crucifies you, you unnatcherl thing, you!"

  He stepped over to the bed, gathered his sobbing wife into his thick arms and would then have departed, but at the length of the chain she was almost jerked from his grasp and caught her breath in agony. It was as he gripped the chain to wrench it from the massive bedstead that his blue eyes lit upon Mairee's feet and saw what had been done to them, and he roared his rage.

  Setting his wife down gently, he slipped his forefingers between her lacerated ankle and the iron cuff circling it. Setting his jaw, he pulled once, and half the brass rivet sped through the air to clank against a wall and fall to the floor. Two more metal-rending efforts and he was holding a six-foot length of fine chain.

  Then he slowly advanced upon the komeesa, who backed before him, stuttering, "B—but you—you said—Hari said— not kill me!"

  "I ain't gon' kill you, you bitch," Ehrik grated, swinging his length of chain from his huge right hand. "But whatall your folks done to my Mairee's pore feet, that calls for sufferin' price."

  Lady Hehrah hastily stripped all the rings from her shaking hands, cupped them in one palm, extended them before her. "There! There's enough to buy you half of Morguhnpolis. Take them! But don't touch me… please don't … I… I cannot stand pain!"

  Ehrik never halted his slow advance. His open left hand slapped her quivering white one, sending a vahrohnos? ransom flying in all directions, the faceted gems scintillating in the lamplight.

  Whimpering, nursing her hand, Lady Hehrah dropped to her fat knees, and Ehrik, after knotting the chain about her wrists as if it had been twine, dragged her over to an iron wall sconce, effortlessly lifted her heavy body and suspended it by those pinioned wrists. Lady Hehrah began to scream even before he started to unbuckle his rawhide belt, as all her weight drew upon that chain and its links bit into her pampered flesh, bringing bright spurts of blood to trickle down her depilated arms.