Adams, Robert - Horseclans 09 - The Witch Godess

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The Witch Goddess by

Robert Adams

PROLOGUE

Sir Bili of Morguhn lay dying in his palace. Fifty years before,

after lengthy and strenuous persuasion, he had assumed the title

and duties of Prince of Karaleenos, and he had served that office

well and faithfully, it and the farming Confederation of which the

principality was a sizable part. Early in his long life he had

become a legend, but now he was an old man, a very old man,

dying as all old men must, soon or late.

But the legend would not die with his ancient, suppurating

flesh; he knew this as well as did all those powerful notables who

had hurriedly gathered to attend his passing. The deeds that the

younger Sir Bili had wreaked with his huge and famous axe, with

his prowess and courage, with his matchless mental attributes,

would continue to be recounted as long as there were Eastern

Kindred, mountain Ahrmehnee, Ehleenee, or a Confederation.

"Aye," the dying old man thought, chuckling to himself

despite the slowly increasing agony of his infected wounds, "and

those damned Witchmen will have cause to remember Bili the

Axe, too! Between us, Lord Milo and I scotched more than one of

their hellish schemes, over the years.

"They never seem to give up, those unnatural monsters. At

least once in every generation of normal men, they're out to

foment trouble somewhere in or around our Confederation.

Twelve… no, fourteen or fifteen years back, it was that vicious

bastard Gardmann. Before him, it was that phony Freefighter.

What did he call himself, anyway? I forget, now, after so long…

Close onto forty years; but I remember the name—his real

name—that he gave under our tortures, Morton Flachs. It's too

bad he managed to chew through his wrist veins, that night after

he finally broke; we might've gotten more out of the bastard the

next session.

"Then there was that man who tried to kill Lord Milo and

Aldora and me that time in Kehnooryos Atheenahs. We never

knew for sure if he was really a Witchman, but Lord Milo

assumed that he was because of his weapon—that booming,

fire-spitting thing Lord Milo called a pisztuhl. He struck all three

of us and killed two guards, outright, but the missiles did no

permanent harm to the two Undying, of course. The one that

sped toward me failed to strike me solidly, thank Sun and Wind,

it just tore through my shirt and furrowed my arm before killing

the guard behind me. Before Lord Milo could make himself

heard, the living guardsmen had made a blood pudding out of

the man… but they couldn't be blamed for it, they knew their

duty and they did it despite the terror they all must have felt of

that witchy weapon.

"Of course, I'd seen and heard one like it before that—a

bigger, much longer one. She called that one a ryfuhl, that

damned Witchwoman who'd set herself up as 'goddess' of those

outlaw Ganiks, the ones we fought for Prince Byruhn.

"Hmmm, what was her name, now? In nigh eighty years, a

man can forget so much."

As old Bili's mind, cloudy now with drugs and age and

suffering, sought recall of the name of that Witchwoman who

had so many years before, led the savage, cannibal Ganiks in the

then-unknown mountains to the west and south of the

Ahrmehnee lands, he began once again to relive those exciting

times. It had been those times which had given birth to the

legend of Bili the Axe.

Born to one of the two wives—sisters, they had been, and

daughters of a Middle Kingdoms duke—of Hwahruhn, the

hereditary chief of Clan Morguhn, Bili and all of his younger

brothers had been sent in childhood to foster at various royal or

archducal courts of Middle Kingdoms maternal relatives. Then,

in Bili's eighteenth year, the chief, his father, lay ill unto death

and he had been summoned back from the north by his mothers.

Although barely eighteen, the Bili who had ridden back south

had been a full man and a proven warrior, already knighted into

the Order of the Blue Bear of Harzburk by the king who had

fostered him. Nor had that knighthood been a meaningless

gesture; Bili, the king's distant kinsman, had earned the honor

with his strength, arms skills, and stark ferocity, axing down a

full-grown nobleman in a single combat, and then the two

men-at-arms who treacherously attacked him in defense of their

foresworn lord.

And young Bili's prowess, coupled with his qualities of natural

leadership, quick and accurate judgment of men and situations,

and some highly unusual mental attributes, had served him, the

duchy and the Confederation well in the very hard and fearsome

times that immediately followed his return, his father's death

and his accession to the chieftaincy and title. For rebellion had

long been brewing among certain elements of the

Ehleenee—whose distant ancestors had ruled over most of the

lands of the Confederation prior to the coming of the Kindred

Horseclans. Incited, aided and abetted by a murderous gaggle of

priests of the Old Ehleenee Church and by two spurious bishops

of that church, both of whom proved to be actually agents of the

Witch Kingdom—that realm located among the swamps of the

far south—the situation had exploded bare days after he had

come back to the lands of his birth.

The young warrior's initial encounter with the rebels had very

narrowly missed being his last. While riding back to Morguhn

Hall after a visit to the hall of a kinsman-vassal, Komees Hari

Daiviz of Morguhn, he and his small party had been viciously

attacked on a forest road by more than a score of sketchily

armed but coldly murderous rabble.

"What a night that was," ruminated the dying Bill. "And what

a glorious fight!"

Then, suddenly, in his mind he was there again.

The young Bili would have taken the lead into the place of

lurking danger had not his companions—Vahrohneeskos

Ahndee, Bard Klairuhnz and the two Freefighters on loan from

Komees Djeen Morguhn—argued him down. So when the

mounted column trotted in a single file toward the bridge, Bili

was third in the line, with Ahndee ahead of him and one of the

Freefighters, Dzhool, at point. Behind Bili rode the bard,

Klairuhnz, with Ahndee's servingman, Geros, between him and

the other Freefighter, Shahrl.

The closer the little party came to the forest, looming darkly

just beyond the bridge, the stronger grew Bili's apprehension.

Now he knew for certain that they were riding into a battle, and

he so mindspoke Ahndee and Klairuhnz.

Awed, Ahndee silently asked, "You can far-gather, then, Bili?

That's a rare and a precious ability. We were told of it at the

Confederation Mindspeak Academy, of course; but not one of the

instructors had ever met a man or woman or cat that actually

possessed it. Can you sense how many foes? Or how far ahead

they be?"

"No," Bili readily admitted, "never have I been able to judge

numbers, but we are near to danger and drawing ever nearer."

The thick, old planks of the bridge boomed hollowly under the

impact of the ironshod hooves, then they were into the forest.

Bili found the forest proper far less dark a place than it had

appeared from without. Except for the oak-grown fringes, the

growth appeared to be principally tall old pines, unbranching for

many feet above road level, and the wan moonlight filtered

through the needled branches high above, making for dim

visibility.

The road ran straight for a few dozen yards, then began a

gradual ascent and a slight curvature to the right, following the

lower reaches of a brush-grown hillock. They splashed through a

tiny rill which fed down into a small swamp before joining the

larger stream. Beyond the rill, the road commenced another slow

curve, this one downward and to the left. As they descended this

reverse slope, the moon dove for cover and Bili's hackles rose.

The still-unseen danger was now looming terribly near!

"Soon!" he urgently mindspoke Ahndee and Klairuhnz, while

bringing his axe up so that its fearsome double-bitted head

rested against the steel plates covering his right shoulder. He

dropped his reins over the pommel-knob, for, in battle, he

guided Mahvros solely by mindspeak and knee pressure, not that

the battlewise and faithful stallion required a great deal of

guidance. Then he lowered and carefully locked into place the

slitted half-visor which served to protect eyes and nose. By that

time, the peril lay so very near, pressed so heavily upon his

senses, that he could hardly bear it.

"Now!" he beamed with mind-blasting intensity. "It is all

around us!"

Ahndee and the bard drew their blades, and the sibilant

zweeep of steel leaving scabbards alerted the two troopers, who

bared their own weapons. The servant, Geros, awkwardly

gripped and regripped the haft of his boar spear in a sweaty

hand.

Up the slope, to their left, the trees abruptly thinned out… and

the fickle moon chose that moment to again start a slow

emergence from the clouds.

There was a scuffling noise at the head of the column, a

strangled grunt, followed almost immediately by a horse's shrill

scream of agony and terror, then came the unmistakable

clash-clanking of an armored body falling to the ground… and

the moon came fully out.

Bili could see the trooper, Dzhool, twitching on the roadway.

A stocky, black-bearded man had a foot on the dying

Freefighter's chest and was frantically striving to jerk the point

of his spear from the body.

The rebel bushwhacker never got the weapon free, however,

for Bard Klairuhnz kneed his mount past Bili and Ahndee, and

his heavy, cursive saber swept up and then blurred down. The

bearded head, still wearing its old-fashioned helmet and a look of

utter surprise, clattered across the road and into the weeds. The

headless body stood erect for a brief moment more, geysering

great, ropy spouts of dark-red blood, then collapsed atop the still

body of its victim.

From around the far side of the screaming, hamstrung lead

horse charged another of the rebel ambushers, lacking either

helm or body armor, but swinging up a short, broad-bladed

infantry sword. This man was as short and stocky as the first,

but beardless, with thinning gray hair. His lips were pulled back

in a grimace, revealing his rotten and discolored teeth. There

was fresh blood showing blackly on his swordblade, and he ran

directly at Bili, shouting something in Old Ehleeneekos.

Ahndee watched Bili—seemingly effortlessly handling his long,

massive weapon with but one hand-catch the sword-slash on the

steel shaft of his axe and allow the blade's own momentum to

propel it into the deep notch between shaft and head. Then a

single twist of Bili's thick wrist tore the hilt from the old rebel's

grip and sent his sole weapon spinning off to clatter into the

roadside weeds near his companion's severed head. But the spike

surmounting the twin axebits was jammed deeply into the

oldster's chest well before the sword came to ground.

Dead Dzhool's crippled mount was still screaming. Then the

servant, Geros, began* to scream, too; no warrior, he, he was

frightened beyond words and could only scream and point his

spear up the brushy slope. There, a line of riders— at least a

dozen of them, the moonlight reflecting from their arms and

armor—was issuing out from amongst the trees which had

concealed them.

"Back!" roared Klairuhnz. "There're too many of them to fight

here; back to the bridge!" Suiting action to words, he reined his

mount about and set off in the wake of Geros, Sharl and Ahndee.

Bili lingered long enough to split the skull of the suffering

horse, then he set off toward the narrow bridge just as the line of

mounted ambushers came tilting down the rise. This granted

Bili a closer look, and his battlewise eyes informed him that

though numerous—nearer a score than a dozen—the charging

horsemen were not nearly so well armed as they had at first

seemed to be.

All of them had swords of one kind or another and a few even

bore the weapons as if they understood them and their proper

use, but the uniformity ended there. The big man in the lead had

a full panoply of longsword, shield and suit of three-quarter

armor that looked to be decent-quality plate.

But all of the men he led might have been outfitted from a

hundred years' worth of battlefield pickings. Their helms were of

every description, from true antique to almost new. One man's

body armor was naught save a dented breastplate, another had

squeezed into a shirt of rusty scalemail, two or three went in

ancient jazerans, one in a cuirass of boiled and lacquered leather

and another in an old, threadbare brigandine. Bili thought that

the ruffianly crew certainly looked the part of the brigands they

probably were.

Mahvros' powerful body responded to Bili's urgings, and the

big, steel-shod hooves struck firelight from the pebbly roadbed.

The black stallion splashed through the little rill, and then they

were descending back along the road's first curve.

Suddenly, twenty yards ahead, riders emerged from among

the treetrunks to block the way back to the bridge. A shaft of

moonlight silvered their bared blades.

Bili mindspoke Mahvros, "Faster, brother mine; be ready to

fight."

The huge ebon horse increased his speed and beamed his

approval and impatient anticipation of the coming conflict, one

of his principal joys in life being the stamping unto death of

anything or anyone he was set against. Raising his head, he

pealed a shrill, equine challenge, then bore down upon his

promised victims.

"Good old Mahvros," thought the ancient Bili. "I've forked

many a strong, faithful, pugnacious horse in the years since he

went to Wind, but never has there been another that was his

equal in any way. Sacred Sun shine ever upon his brave spirit."

One horse and rider went down in a squealing, screaming,

hoof-flailing tangle, while Bili took a ringing swordswipe against

the side of his helmet in passing. Still shrilling his challenge,

Mahvros came to a rearing halt, pivoted and returned to savage

the downed horse and man, while Bili axed the second rider out

of the saddle with a single businesslike stroke. The stallion knew

the brief elation of feeling man-ribs splinter under his hooves

before Bili urged him back along the road to the bridge.

Scores of hooves were pounding close behind them as

Mahvros cleared the last of the trees to see Ahndee and

Klairuhnz, their blades gleaming, sitting their mounts knee to

knee a few paces out onto the span. Three yards behind them,

the trooper had uncased and strung his short hornbow and

nocked an arrow and was calmly awaiting the appearance of a

target for that arrow.

"Bili!" Ahndee shouted exuberantly. "Sun and Wind be

thanked. We'd thought you slain back there." He began to back

his big gelding that Bili might have his place.

But Bili signed him to stay, positioning Mahvros a little ahead

of the two warriors. "This will be better," he stated shortly,

adding, "An axeman needs room." He did not see the smile that

Ahndee and Klairuhnz exchanged at his automatic assumption

of command over them.

The trooper proved himself an expert archer, putting his shaft

cleanly into the eye of the first pursuer to gallop out of the dark

forest. His second arrow pinned an unarmored thigh to the

saddletree beneath it. He nocked a third, quickly drew… and the

bowstring snapped. Cursing sulphurously and most feelingly in

four languages, he cast away the now useless bow, drew his saber

and ranged up close behind Klairuhnz and Ahndee.

The next four attackers took a brief moment to form

themselves up, then launched a charge, apparently expecting

their prey to remain in place and await their pleasure. They none

of them lived long enough to repent their error or to recover

from the counter-charge.

The leading man held up his shield to fend off Bili's axe, while

he aimed a hacking cut at Mahvros' thick neck. But the stout

target crumpled like wet paper and the axeblade bit completely

through, deep into the arm which had held it, the force of the

buffet hurling the man down to a singularly messy death beneath

the stamping hooves.

Mahvros roughly shouldered the riderless horse aside, while

Bili glanced around, seeking another opponent. At that very

moment, Ahndee was thrusting the watered-steel blade of his

longsword deep into the vitals of his adversary and Bard

Klairuhnz looked to be more than a match for his shaggy foe. But

the hapless Freefighter trooper had troubles aplenty. First his

bowstring had broken, and now his saber blade, leaving him but

a bare foot of pointless steel jutting up from the hilt. With this

stub, he was fighting a desperate defensive action.

In a single, mighty leap, Mahvros was alongside the mount of

the ruffian. Shortening his grip on his axehaft, Bili jammed the

terminal spike deeply into a side made vulnerable by a wide gap

between the back and breast plates of an ill-fitting cuirass.

Shrieking curses in both Old and Modern Ehleeneekos, the

wounded man turned in his saddle to rain a swift succession of

swordblows on Bili's head and shoulders. Although the stout

Pitzburk plate turned every blow, Bili was unable to retaliate, for

at such close quarters, his long-hafted axe was all but useless.

Unexpectedly, the swordsman hunched his body and began to

gag and then retch, spewing up quantities of frothy blood. At

this juncture, the Freefighter reined in closer, used his piece of

saber to sever the man's swordknot, then virtually decapitated

his late opponent with the man's own antique blade.

They had almost regained the bridge when the main body of

attackers caught up to them. First to fall was the rearmed

Freefighter, his scaleshirt unable to protect his spine from the

crushing blow of a nail-studded club.

Bili's better armor turned a determined spearthrust before he

axed the arm from the spearman. Then he turned Mahvros full

about and, straightening his arms, swung his bloody axe in

several wide arcs before him; he struck nothing and no one, but

did achieve his desired effect of momentarily halting the van of

the oncoming force and granting Ahndee and Klairuhnz a few

precious moments to regain the bridge.

Bili's vision, somewhat restricted by the bars of his visor,

failed to record the man who galloped in from his left… but

Mahvros saw him. With the speed of a striking serpent, the

mighty horse spun about and sank big yellow teeth into the flesh

of the smaller equine.

The mare thus assaulted was not a warhorse, not even a

hunter, and she harbored no slightest intention of remaining in

proximity to this huge, maddened stallion. Taking the bit firmly

between her own teeth, she raced back into the forest, bearing

her shouting, cursing, rein-sawing rider only as far as the

low-hanging branch which swept him from her back and

stretched him senseless among the dead leaves and mosses.

Mahvros' forehooves were already booming the bridge

timbers when a hard-flung throwing axe caromed off Bili's helm,

nearly deafening him and filling his head with a tight-spiraling

red-blackness, shot with dazzling-white stars. Only instinct kept

him in the saddle while Mahvros, well-trained, battlewise and

intelligent animal that he was, continued on to the proper place,

then wheeled about just ahead of Ahndee and Klairuhnz.

Reaching forward, Ahndee grabbed Bili's arm—limp under its

sheathing of steel and leather—and shook him. "Are you all right,

Bili? Are you injured?" he shouted anxiously.

Then he let go the arm and turned to Bard Klairuhnz, saying,

"Your help, please, my lord. He's barely conscious, if that. We

must get him behind us ere those bastards cut him down."

Bili could hear all and could sense movements on either side

of him, but neither his lips nor his limbs would obey his dictates.

Fuzzily, he pondered why Vahrohneeskos Ahndee, a nobleman of

this duchy, would have addressed a mere roving bard as his

"lord."

In his great bed in the dimly lit room already smelling of

death, old Bili smiled to himself. "That was the first fight I

fought beside the Undying High Lord, though I knew not that

that same Bard Klairuhnz was my sovran until much later in the

rebellion."

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