A Cat Of Silvery Hue (11 page)

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.

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.

Mairee wanted to bid Ehrik desist, wanted to close her eyes to what she could see coming, but she sat mute, staring in horrified fascination. At the first
swish
and solid
whack
of the swordbelt, the lady emitted a piercing shriek, and the left eye—the only one Mairee could see—seemed about to spring from its socket. Ehrik exacted his suffering price thoroughly, methodically. When he had done and stood panting, the thick belt trailing on the floor tiles, the lady’s back was one red-purple weal, from nape to knees, and the blood from innumerable cuts and splits in her soft skin trickled down to drop from her toes.

Ehrik rebuckled his blood-smeared belt, snapped on the weapons, wrapped a rich coverlet about his wife, then gathered her up and stalked out of Horse Hall.

As Ehrik descended the broad steps and paced resolutely toward the gate, no one who saw what lay within his eyes even asked him his destination, much less moved to block his way—not even the old
komees
.

Geros Lahvoheetos, since he was one of the few who had ever been in Horse County, had been sent by young
Thoheeks
Bili as one of Lieutenant Hohguhn’s score of Freefighters. He had but just ridden into the familiar courtyard and stiffly dismounted from his mare when he observed the press of men parting, making way for that big, black-bearded farmer who had led first that frightening ambush back in the forest, then the raiding party which had cleared the way and opened the gate to the rest He saw in the smoky red glare of the torches that the farmer bore in his arms a willow slip of a pretty girl. She was wrapped about with a splendid dark-red coverlet of woven silk and her slender arms were clasped about the big man’s bull neck, while her head lay pillowed on his chest.

The circumstances which had, almost overnight, transformed Geros into a respected warrior had failed to rob him of his gentle, polite demeanor or helpful nature. He had, of course, heard the shocking tale of what had befallen this man and his lovely young wife, and he surmised that, having freed her of that odious bondage, Ehrik was now bearing her home to the village, which was a long walk to Geros’ mind.

Still leading his mare, he stepped out into the farmer’s path. The blackbeard halted abruptly an arm’s length away, stood glowering for a long moment, then snarled, “Out of my way, damn you! I be done in this place!”

He might have added more, but was disconcerted by Geros’ obviously sincere smile. The dirty, dog-tired sometime valet-musician said softly, “Sir, your wounds are still almost fresh, nor are you as young as the men you led here this night; it is a long walk to your village and you must be near to exhaustion now at its beginning. My mare,” he proffered the reins, “is strong enough to carry two for that distance and more. Will not you and your lady wife accept the loan of my sweet Ahnah?”

Ehrik glowered a minute longer into Geros’ open, honest eyes, then, with a smile that was almost shy, he closed the gap between them, saying, “Freefighter, would you then hold my wife and hand her up to me, an’ I be mounted on your pretty mare? Ah…be you careful of her feet, man! She be…hurt.”

When Ehrik had swung up and was settled betwixt the high cantle and flaring pommel of the battle kak, Geros gingerly passed the feather-light girl back to him. The headman reined about, heading the mare toward the entry passage, then thrust his big, calloused hand down to grip Geros’ own crushingly. Geros was shocked to see tears glistening in the deep-blue eyes of this man who had suffered so much so stoically.

“What be your name, Freefighter?” asked Ehrik huskily.

“Geros Lahvoheetos, sir.”

The thick black brows rose perceptibly. “A Ehleenee Freefighter?”

Geros shook his helmeted head. “I’m not really a Freefighter, sir, though I’ve ridden with them much of late.”

“Well, Geros Lahvoheetos, be you whatever you be, you done been a good friend to me and my Mairee. When
you
need a friend, you yell for Ehrik Goontehros, an’ sure as Sacred Sun’s a-comin’ at dawn, I’ll be with you. Heah?”

He trotted the mare to the mouth of the entry passage, one big arm steadying his wife on the mare’s withers. Then he reined about one last time and roared the length of the courtyard. “Cousin Hari, your lady warn’t dead, whin I left her. But I took sufferin’ price out’n her fat carcass, give her a good hidin’, I did! I’ll git this here lil’ mare back here t’marra mornin’. An’ you tek good care of Master Geros Lahvoheetos—he be a friend o’ mine.”

And thus was that friendship which was to affect the lives of so many—noble and common, Kindred and Ehleenoee—born in the crowded, torchlit courtyard where the legend of Geros first began, with a mule and a spear.

The city of Morguhnpolis had never before seen such activity. While about its walls camped near twenty thousand soldiers of the Confederation, the city itself housed the persons and retinues of High Lord Milo, High Lady Aldora, an
arhkeethoheeks
, no less than six
thoheeksee
, and scores of
komeesee, vahrohnoee, vahrohneeskoee
and untitled Kindred noblemen. Chief Hwahltuh of Sanderz and his clansmen lodged, too, in the city not because they liked city life—they one and all hated it!—but because the lovesmitten Hwahltuh had taken to heart the beauteous Mother Behrnees Morguhn’s parting admonition to “look out for our Bili.” Though, to the thinking of Clanbard Gil Sanderz, if any one of these mostly softer eastern Kindred definitely did
not
need the services of a bodyguard—much less a clan of them—it was that grim, stark warrior,
Thoheeks
Bili, Chief of Morguhn.

Awaiting the arrivals of the remaining three
thoheeksee
and certain other tardy nobles, Bili began to wonder if his duchy would be stripped bare in sustenance of the swelling hordes. One night in the soft bed he now shared with the Undying High Lady Aldora, he mindspoke of his apprehensions, and within a week, Confederation commissary wagons were stocking his larders to the very rafters. He remarked, lightly he thought, in her presence that it was a shame there were no more unemployed Freefighters about, as late arrivals would find themselves unable to field more than what swords they brought with them from their demesnes. Shortly, the north and east traderoads seemed to swarm with bands of Freefighters, ranging in size from two or three bravos to a score. Yet Bili knew that not even the legendary Confederation Gallopers could have so rapidly spread the word.

On the large bed in the sumptuous suite which had been
Vahrohnos
Myros’ own while he had governed Morguhnpolis, Bili and Aldora lay entwined. The dim light thrown by the low lamps glinted on their sweat-shiny bodies. His long arms enfolded her, his thin, pale lips were locked to her full, dark ones, while the palms of her small, hard hands moved in lazy, sensuous circles on the fair, freckled skin of his thick-muscled back and wide, massive shoulders.

When first Aldora had actually seen the young
thoheeks
, she had felt almost repelled, for though handsome enough, his waist was thicker than she preferred and his hips were far wider than were those of the average man. It was not until she actually fought beside him against a desperate force of cornered Vawnee horsemen, saw the ease with which he managed that ten-pound axe, making of it both shield and fearsome weapon, that she came to appreciate his atypical build. The classic masculine form—wide shoulders tapering to a narrow waist and slim hips—would never have been able to develop or give purchase to the almost abnormal musculature of back, buttocks and belly which were requisite in a skilled and accomplished axe wielder.

But in the weeks since that first meeting, his hard, scarred body—so very fair where sun and wind had not browned it, the skin so soft and smooth where the puckered cicatrices of old wounds did not roughen it—and the fine young man that body housed had become very dear to her. Few men she could recall in nearly a hundred and fifty years had become so dear so soon.

As his deadly efficiency as a warrior impressed all who witnessed it, as his almost immediate grasp of problems of strategy, tactics, logistics and the proper marshaling of a large, heterogeneous force impressed his peers and the High Lord, so did his understanding of the theory and application of the skills of the bedly arts amaze and enrapture the High Lady Aldora. His beautiful blending of tenderness and fire, of fierce passion and gentle regard, never failed to leave her trembling and gasping, sometimes weeping her pure joy and gratitude. Then he would kiss the tears from her cheeks and eyelids, while their warm breaths mingled and the caressing hands did delightful things to the ultrasensitive parts of her blissfully tired body…and would continue doing those things until her tiredness was once more drowned in a surging flood of fresh desire.