Danos well recalled how that husky chapman’s face had paled under his tan and dirt, how be 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 IT! have done enough for the women of this world if I make certain that 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, Danes’ 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 unforgiveable 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 wall walk 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.