But Komees Djeen interrupted him, pointing with his sword at something behind the young leader. “Bili . . . look you yonder.”
Struck as much by the old nobleman’s paling face as by the tightness of his voice, Bili reined around to gaze in the direction indicated. A knot of armored horsemen had crested the next slope of the hilly city and were extending lines to completely block the street behind the mob. Nothing about their appearance was clear; they were just black figures against the blaze of the morning sun; but there seemed a goodly number of them, at least three times the number of Bill’s party.
“Well,” the young axeman remarked to no one in particular, “I suppose this is as good a place to die as any.”
CHAPTER X
When first Lord Myros had appointed him Warder of the East, Hahrteeos Kahrahmahnlees had had carpenters and stonemasons make certain alterations in the two rooms which were the second and third levels of the gate tower, where he would have to spend so much time. Then he had brought from his family mansion the furniture and appointments to allow him to, in his words, “live as an Ehleen gentleman should.” The sparsely furnished, dimly lit, stonewalled chambers above and below his rooms he deemed fit only for his gaunt, ragged barbarian mercenaries.
The moment the heathen devils had clattered in through his gate, he had dispatched his Ehleen sergeant, Toorkos, to Lord Myros, alerting the Vahrohnos of the imminent arrival of his victims-to-be at the city palace. Shortly thereafter, he had carefully locked his second-level sitting room-office-well aware that the long-unpaid mercenaries were not above theft of small valuables, as he had had the pleasure of watching two of them beheaded for that very offense on a recent occasion-then repaired to his luxurious bedroom on the third level, having in mind an hour’s diversion with Peeos, his well-trained catamite.
Despite the Undying High Lord’s abolishment of the institution of slavery nearly a hundred years before, some Ehleenoee still risked the ruinous fines and held one or two. Lord Drehkos was one such and Lord Myros owned an even dozen. Therefore, one of Hahrteeos’s first actions after the death of his father was to journey to the port city of Sahrahspolis and buy this boy from a ship captain with whom Myros had done much business over the years.
Naturally, the bootlegger did not say where or how he had come by the lad, but it was certain that the twelve- or thirteen-year-old had seen his birth in none of the Ehleen lands, for his skin was darker even than the skins of the folk of the Black Kingdoms, and his speech, to his new master, was a totally incomprehensible babble. Hahrteeos had brought his acquisition back to Morguhnpolis and had had his servants teach it at least a smattering of Ehleeneekos. It had been Hahrteeos’s personal pleasure to teach the slaveboy other things, breaking his will to resist by denial of food and application of pain.
But it seemed he had scarcely commenced his enjoyments in the tower bedchamber when several pairs of heavy feet clumped up the stairs beyond the door, then stamped thunderously about the guardroom above, their owners all the while chattering in the decidedly unlovely barbarian languages, of which Hahrteeos took pride in knowing not a word. Next, feet descended the stairs to the second level and a pounding on the door of his office ensued. Then one set of the feet reascended to the third level and knuckles rapped boomingly on his bedchamber portal.
Furious at this unwonted and unwanted invasion on his privacy, Hahrteeos pulled a tunic over his nakedness and threw open the door.
“Well?” he angrily demanded of the mercenary who had knocked. “What is it, you barbarian ape?”
It was Pawl Raikuh who stood before him, though this fact was unknown to Hahrteeos, who had not bothered to learn the names of any of “his” troops, other than Toorkos who was, after all, an Ehleen.
After saluting, the mercenary humbly requested permission to exchange some of the off-duty men for those presently on gate watch. Hahrteeos snorted his leave and, promising dire doom to the next man who saw fit to disturb him, slammed the door.