For all their disparity in numbers—there had been only an eighth as many Getzburkers as the southern force—Gy saw to a precise halving of the booty between the principate and the duchy. Even Count Looiz protested that his lord’s allotted share was too much, for all that he went about grinning like an opossum. But Gy was adamant, pointing out that the action had been fought on the duke’s land and that, as the camp had been situated in Getzburk, the duke could—in strict interpretation of law—claim it all, were he so minded.
“Though, if he did,” Gy chuckled and clapped Count Looiz on the shoulder, “he’d have a war on his southern border, too.”
Back in Kuhmbuhluhn, the prince formally tried his nine captives, found them all guilty of highway robbery, maiming, stock-stealing, rape, kidnapping, extortion of illegal ransoms, murder and numerous other offenses. After public torture and mutilation, all nine were hanged in slow nooses.
But as to the other matter of which his father had bespoken Giliahna, Gy simply shrugged. “My princedom is at peace, I am not yet twenty and there is no urgency to assure the succession. In good time, I’ll wed and bed and sire.”
When news of her father’s death reached the Principate of Kuhmbuhluhn and Giliahna broached her decision to journey to the duchy of her birth, possibly to not return to Kuhmbuhluhn, Gy and all the councilors tried mightily to dissuade her, but she was adamant and spoke to them in terms they could both comprehend and appreciate as the Middle Kingdoms noblemen they basically were, for all their principate’s nominal Confederation allegiance.
“My Lord Gy, gentlemen, I must go back to Sanderz-Vawn on a matter of personal honor and of the honor of my house. A great injustice was done to me and my brother in years agone, and if he be unable or unwilling to go back, then it be my bounden duty to redress that wrong in the blood of those who perpetrated it. Your generous offers of lands and wealth make me feel truly humble in the light of the obvious love for me which impelled them, and please believe that the love I feel for Kuhmbuhluhn and for you all is no less in quantity or quality. But, noble gentlemen that you all are, you must recognize that satisfaction of this, my debt of honor, must come before other considerations.”
The men grouped around the table nodded, one and all— in their minds blood debts took precedence over all else.
Old Archduke Rohluhn scratched at his skimpy white hair. “How many troops will my lady require? And can she estimate for how long the service?”
Before she could answer, Gy snapped, “Stop quibbling, uncle! Our lady is a Princess of Kuhmbuhluhn. She shall have at least one squadron of our horseguards—say, three hundred full-strength lances. And I’ll command them; this business will be settled in short order, I trow!”
Giliahna repressed any trace of her mirth at his still-boyish enthusiasm, saying rather, “Lord prince, as you know, the High Lords permit organized bands of Freefighters to enter and leave the Confederation at will; but what do you think their reaction and that of the Prince of Karaleenos, in whose domains my home duchy lies, would be to an incursion of nearly one thousand household troops of Kuhmbuhluhn led by the reigning prince, himself?”
The aged archduke and several other veteran councilors nodded, and Duke Djaikuhb of Rahbzburk said, “My lady is right, my prince. Before you’d got five leagues south of the border, you’d find yourself boxed in by Confederation dragoons. They’d politely ask your business, then they’d politely point out the decrees of the High Lords forbidding the maintenance or the movements of private armies save on the frontiers, then they’d politely escort you and your lances back to Kuhmbuhluhn and, in a month or so, a messenger would arrive from Kehnooryos Atheenahs with a politely couched reprimand.”
And so, Giliahna left Kuhmbuhluhnburk with only a dozen horseguards and her immediate retainers, conveyed in two coaches and three wagons. Upon hearing that mere was a rumor that Duke Hwahltuh of Sanderz-Vawn had died of slow poisoning, Gy would not rest his entreaties until Giliahna agreed to include in her party a Zahrtohgah physician, one Master Fahreed, and his apprentice, Raheen.
The prince and a large cavalcade accompanied the dowager princess as far as the border, and, during their last, solitary conversation, Gy took both her hands and looked down into her eyes. “My lady, you asked weeks agone if I loved any woman and I answered nay, but that is not true. I do love a woman. I love you and, did our laws not forbid such, you would be my wife, my princess—after all, I am less than five years your junior. But such can never be and I know it. Therefore, I charge you this: Send to me a sweet, loving maid like yourself, one who can come to love and comfort me as you loved and so comforted my dear father, and I vow to cherish her as I would have cherished you.”
Ahrkeethoheeks Bili of Morguhn had been as gracious and caring a host as she recalled from her childhood visits to the Hall of the Red Eagle, and such had been the attentions lavished upon her by his handsome eldest son, Djef Morguhn, that she had felt almost embarrassed, before her acutely perceptive half brother noted her discomfiture and found a convenient errand for his heir to ride forth upon. He then proved a veritable fount of information, all of which she found interesting, but it was not until they were closeted alone together within his grim little office at Morguhn Hall that he imparted the news which set her heart to pounding and raised tingling goose flesh on her body from head to toe.
“At our last meeting before his… shall we say, untimely death, I promised your late sire that, when he died, I would .dispatch word to your brother, Tim. You should know that he and I have kept in touch over these last years and that, through me—though Tim doesn’t know it—your late father’s I gold reached him.
“Please listen to what I say and believe it, Giliahna. Your father deeply regretted his hasty and ill-advised actions in sending you and Tim away, but by the time he recovered fully from whatever drugs those harpies—your stepmother and her damned tongue-sister—were dosing him with, the deed was irrevocably done. You were wedded and Tim, stubborn in his hurt and rage, refused to respond to what few letters Hwahltuh could sneak past those Ehleenee and out of his hall. For, understand you, Giliahna, your poor, ailing father was very close to a prisoner in his own duchy in his last years, spied upon when he was not actively guarded by his wife and her slut, his half-Ehleen brood and their adherents.
“Giliahna, your father was born in a Horseclans yurt and was past middle age when he led his clan from the Sea of Grass. Your Horseclansman, fresh from the west, has an inordinate love for children, any children, but especially his own. You’d have to fully comprehend that fact to be aware of just how deeply your father hurt himself ten years ago. He was a proud man and strong, with more real guts than a whole tribe of mountain barbarians, yet many’s the time he has sat in that same chair and wept like a whipped child in his regret over banishing you and Tim.
“Had he chosen to cleave to that thrice-damned perversion of a religion upon which Mehleena so dotes, he might have at least had the idiotic precepts of that faithless faith to console himself with. But Horseclansmen do not harbor this idiotic fear of interbreeding that the Ehleenee do; indeed, there is no such word as ahimomikseeah in all the Mehrikan dialects, though the High Lord Milo tells me that there was once such a word, centuries ago.
“But, be that as it may, your father is gone to Wind, along with his sorrow. You are returned, and Tim soon will be.”
Giliahna clasped her hands tightly to keep them from trembling. In a painfully tight voice, she asked, “When, brother, oh when?”
The archduke smiled at what his uncommonly powerful mind could read in hers. “Two weeks, little sister, possibly three, depending upon road conditions. He’ll be bringing the Ruby Company, his condotta, down here with him. One of my men will make contact with him ere he crosses into Kehnooryos Ehlahs, delivering to him a pass from High Lord Milo countersigned by our own Prince Zenos. Once he’s here, of course, there’ll be no question about private troops, since Vawn is still considered a frontier duchy in some senses.”
He paused to drain his cup and refill both his and hers. “But I tell you all this in strictest confidence, sister. Be damned careful which if any of your retainers you tell, and be certain that you breathe not a word of it once you are at Vawn, to anyone, mind you. Your brother, Ahl, already knows, but don’t even discuss it with him, either aloud or by mindspeak, for Tim has plans for Mehleena, her litter and her folk and’t’were better that they not be forewarned.”