The short man who followed him went garbed in the simple, five-piece ensemble of the Horseclansman-loose, pullover shirt; wide, big-buckled dirkbelt; and baggy trousers tucked into short, soft boots. His only armament was a broadbladed rancher’s knife. Though he could not recall ever having seen him, Bill had no trouble in identifying him as Lord Drehkos, Komees Hari’s brother, for the two men were like as peas in a pod.
The third man, however, was an utter stranger. He was about Bill’s height, and like him his shoulders were wide and thick; his long arms ended in a big, wide hands. But there the similarity ended, for the man was obviously a Kath’ahrohs or fullblood Ehleen. His long pomaded hair was blueblack and his skintone, like Vaskos’s, was a dark olive, though his finer features made him a far more handsome man.
This stranger was garbed in black, from foot to pate. His delicately grained, glovesoft boots rose to midthigh. Both they and his belt had been buffed until they threw back the lamplight like expanses of onyx. His sleeveless tunic encased him from shoulders to boottops and was wrought of that thick, lustrous velvet for which the Duchy of Klahksburk was justly famous. The sleeves of his silken shirt billowed from shoulder to wrist, where they were drawn tight, and atop his head drooped a soft cap of the Klahksburk, its center and edges adorned with arabesques stitched out in silver wire. The case and hilt of his dress dirk were of black leather, the former edged and studded with silver and the latter wound with silver wire; its pommel consisted of a bright silver ball almost two inches in diameter. Also silver was the massy, flatlink chain which was draped over his shoulders, but the pendant it supported was gold.
While his rich clothing and accessories would not have been considered remarkable in the Middle Kingdoms or even at the court of the Undying High Lord, within an austerely oldfashioned province such as the Duchy of Morguhn, impractical fripperies were the mark of the fop. Bili had impulsively catalogued the newcomer as such until his eyes lit on what depended from the silver chain.
No man’s rank or lineage or lands or fortune ever brought him into the Order of the Cat. Only well witnessed acts of extreme valor in fierce combat earned even a Ninth Class Red Cat. So this stranger was anything but a fop, for his pendant brilliant against the black velvet bore the stalking shape of the Golden Cat, bright emeralds serving as its eyes. It was a Fourth Class Cat and gave notice to all who saw it to honor this man for the mighty champion he was.
Deep in the cellars of Horse Hall, another meeting was in progress. There, a score or so of figures crouched in the musty darkness amid the winetuns and brandy kegs and vats of pickled vegetables. The only light came from a smoky lamp, which rendered faces and forms vague and wraithlike. Although the door to then’ meetingchamber was well guarded, they kept then: voices lowpitched and spoke only in Old Ehleeneekos, the language spoken before the Coming of the Horseclans more than a century before, now almost dead and seldom heard outside Ehleen Church rites.
From the darkness a slightly nasal voice declared, “I say we should kill them all. Here and now, tonight!”
“And I agree.” A coldly arrogant voice half snarled from the other side. “When our time is ripe, the Butter haired Devils still will be struggling to recover from so great a loss. Think, up there sit the heir apparent to the Thoheeks, two Komeesee, a Vahrohneeskos, a City Lord, plus that bard and the Bastard.”
“You are both fools!” A dry, authoritarian woman’s voice flatly averred. “Oh, I doubt me not that the strangling cord or the unexpected knifethrust are disciplines with which you have much familiarity, but how much do any of you know of the art of the sword? Eh? Ere you had slain the Bastard’s man, who sits guard before their door, and battered that thick portal down, your would be victims would be assuredly warned . . . and the Hall armory is in that room, you know.”