“No, save the shafts. Let our Cat Sister take this one.”
In a flash of gray-brown fur, Lover-of-Water’s big, sleek body hurdled the ditch and coursed through the flax, bringing down her quarry before he had run two hundred yards. The man screamed just once, when the razor-edged steel fang-spurs-originally designed for hamstringing horses or large game-sliced the tendons behind a knee. Before he could get out another utterance, he was dead. His killer effortlessly loped back through the flax, feeling that she had certainly demonstrated her age and expertise at the art of- slaying two-legs to this nice young chief.
In a high-walled cut, they found grisly evidence of the recklessly rapid passage of several wheeled vehicles, or, rather, of those unfortunate pikemen too slow to get out of the way. Broad, iron-tired wheels had severed limbs and mangled bodies and crushed skulls, grinding shreds of flesh and bits of shattered bone into the blood-muddy dust. In a buzzing black-and-blue-green cloud, the flies rose up from their feasting before the advance of the Morguhn column, while a mouse-gray opossum scurried up a bank and into the low brush, dragging his scaly tail and a chunk of mangled forearm.
A few hundred yards farther on, a heavy coach lay canted drunkenly, partially blocking the road. An exposed boulder had bent the iron tire and splintered the hardwood felly beneath. Some few of the cargo of wounded men had attempted to drag themselves in the wake of the driver and the three wounded officers he bad mounted on the horses before he cut them loose. But the arrival of Bill’s column ended their sufferings-permanently.
They had been on the road for most of an hour before they at last closed with the rearmost gaggle of infantry, completely leader!ess and most of them lacking armor or weapons of any description. And it was then, just as Lieutenant Hohguhn had foretold, a butchery, the horsemen riding down and spearing or sabering or axing their fleeing, screaming prey, until horses were foam-flecked and blowing, until men’s arms ached with deadly effort
And then they rode on.
The broad blades of Bill’s huge axe were no longer shiny, being dimmed with clotted blood and dust, like every other bared weapon in the column. But the steel was soon rinsed- with fresher blood, as they overhauled another few hundred rebels. This time, however, perhaps half of their victims made good an escape, for men and cats and horses, all were tired, and Bili still insisted that the arrows and darts be husbanded against more pressing need.
The notes of the recall still were sounding when the High Lord led his weary mount through the trampled cornfield toward the limply fluttering Morguhn banner. He carried his bare saber, not wishing to befoul its case with the gory steel. While walking, tugging at the plodding horse, he was in telepathic contact with Aldora, whose troops had finally reached Morguhn Hall.
“Sorry, dear, to have had you put your men to a needless forced march, but none of us-I, least of all-had any idea that things would work out so well or so quickly.”
“Damn you, Milo!” she raged. “You just tell that to the horses I’ve foundered this blasted night and morning. And you and the young duke had better not bite off too much out there, either, because FlI not bring any more men than I can find remounts for. And I doubt there’re a hundred horses here.”
Aloud, Milo sighed. “All right, Aldora, I’ll suggest a halt to rest and clean our weapons. As I recall, the road crosses a sizable rill just ahead. But send the troops, don’t come yourself-there’re two witchmen in the cellars of Morguhn Hall and you’re the only person I’m willing to entrust them to. They’re drugged now and I want them kept that way until we can get them up to Kehnooryos Atheenahs.”
‘Tired and filthy as I am, I’ll not protest that order, Milo. Besides,” she added, “it will give me a chance to see sweet Ahndee again. You did say that he’s recuperating here, did you not?”
Milo grinned broadly at the bloody ground and broken cornstalks before him. “Lord Ahndros is being tended by the woman he loves, Aldora, and I don’t think the lady would appreciate your overtender solicitude for the welfare of the man she will wed. Why don’t you save yourself for that woman’s son, eh? Thoheeks Bili Morguhn is your kind of man-strong, brave, outspoken, ruthless toward his foes, virile and handsome. And he’s every bit as bloodthirsty as you are, my dear. He only spares the lives of those men he means to see tortured to death.”