“Tell the ahrkeethoheeks that matters here have progressed faster than we had thought or planned for. Tell him to send my company to me at the gallop. Tell him to alert the High Lords that far more than had been suspected is afoot here in Vawn. Tell him that real rebellion is probable unless we strike quickly and drastically. Warn him to not, under any circumstances, impart aught of this to Prince Zenos. Can you remember it all, boy?”
When the lad could repeat the various parts of the message to his satisfaction, Tim sent him off to saddle the gelding and turned back to Tahmahs.
“Do you have any weapons in the stables?”
Tahmahs nodded soberly. “Yes, my lord, Sir Geros secreted a nice little store in my keeping.”
Then arm your son with at least a dirk and a spear; bow and saber, too, if he knows how to use them. No sense in burdening him and his mount with armor or target though. His job is to get to Lord Bili, not to stand and fight.
“Immediately Divros is on the road, turn all the other horses into the pasture. Not mine, though—I don’t want him fighting with your king stallion. You might put Redhoney, the mare, in with Steelsheen. They wont harm each other, and as she has just lost her brother, she might be comforted by being nearer to a familiar horse.
“When you’re done with that, round up Sergeant Mahrtuhn and his dragoons. They, you and any of your men you feel are loyal to me are to take as many weapons as you can carry, all the food you can find and at least one skin of water per man and come to the thoheek’s suite. If anyone—anyone! —gets in your way, you have my leave to cut him down. Understood, Master Tahmahs?”
Tim and Geros found just what the young captain had suspected in the cellar armory—the racks and chests and cupboards were all nearly empty of weapons and armor.
“But, my 1… but, Tim, there be no place in this hall that such quantities of arms could have been hidden without me knowing of it from the few loyal ones, and that quickly.”
“Just so,” agreed Tim. Then he asked, “How long since you’ve been in any of the hall villages?”
“A month, at least, Tim, maybe two. It’s Tonos, the major-domo’s, part to deal with the villagers, him and the head cook, Myron’s bumboy, Gaios.”
“I caught that castrated goat of an Ehleen priest in the bath chamber and hung him up on a beam with his wrists lashed behind him while we… ahh, conversed. He told me some very interesting things. One of them is that for the last half-year, Mehleena’s agents have been hiring bandits and gutter-scrapings from all over the Principate of Karaleenos, bringing them into this duchy surreptitiously and billeting them in the hall villages, at least a hundred of them that the priest knew of.”
Geros looked stunned. “But why, Tim? She had no idea you were still alive until you rode in this morning.”
Tim chuckled. “She knows the Sanderz Kindred have precious little liking for her and even less for Myron. Had I not come back, if they had chosen one of their own number to be chief of Sanderz, she was going to turn her pack loose against all the Sanderz Kindred, noble or not, and depend upon her cousin, Prince Zenos, to save her hide with Brother Bili and the High Lords by claiming that the Kindred had been in armed revolt against their rightful lord. She might have gotten away with her infamy, but…” He shrugged meaningfully.
“So, you can bet your boots that all the arms, save only those you squirreled away and the pitiful remnants in this room, are now on the backs or in the hands of her private army of rebel ruffians, down in the hall villages. Which fact, incidentally, answers any doubts you might have entertained about where Tones’ loyalty lies. He’s Mehleena’s and no mistake!”
Sir Geros’s brow wrinkled. “But… but what if you had not come back and if the Kindred had chosen Myron to be chief?”
“Yes, I posed that question, too. The good priest required a bit more persuasion before he’d give me an answer, but after I’d dislocated one of his shoulders, he became much more talkative. If Myron had been elected and confirmed, Mehleena and her banditti would bide their time. It seems that there is a widespread conspiracy afoot in Karaleenos, Geros. The priest was certain that some very high personages—possibly even Zenos himself—are involved. When this pack had gained enough strength, they were to rise up in every duchy, county, baronetcy, city, town and village, slaughter the Kindred and declare an independent Kingdom of Karaleenos.”
“Madness!” declared Sir Geros, vehemently. “Utter insanity! In a frontier duchy, say, such a scheme might even work out… for a little while. But here, in the very heart of the Confederation, it’s doomed from the start. Kehnooryos Ehlahs abuts the whole northern border of Karaleenos and the Ahrmehnee Stahn the whole western. To the south, lie the Associated Duchies, and to the east is the sea, commanded by the Confederation Fleet. So who, what idiot, could think such a plan would last any longer than it took word to reach Kehnooryos Atheenahs?”
Tim shrugged. “Present company excepted, of course, what Ehleen ever thought with his head rather than his emotions? Well, there’s damn-all here for us. They left only junk. Get back to your house and arm yourself. I’ll be in the thoheeks” suite with the others.”
“But, Tim, would it not be better for us to make our stand down here in the magazines? We’d have no shortage of either water or food here.”
The young captain growled, “No, by Sun and Wind, I’ll not be driven into a hole in the ground! This is my hall, Geros, and by my steel, I’ll hold it. Father had the central portion built for just such a contingency as this. With the doors to the wings locked and barred, it can be held by a small force against anyone not willing to burn down the whole place… and, grasping as the bitch is, I don’t think Mehleena would see the hall in ashes, even if it meant my death.”
The horror-laden screams of a maid brought Majordomo Tonos and a hastily sent servant brought the Lady Mehleena to the bath chamber.
The soft, white, womanish body of the priest hung by to bloody, swollen wrists from the central beam. The shoulders had become disjointed and the flesh about them was hideously discolored. A wide pool of blood was beneath the dangling feet, with more dripping from the toes. The hilt of a boot dagger stood out from the lower belly, just a few inches above the stump of the castrate’s penis. The mouth continued to dribble blood down the chin and onto the chest, and to give vent to a low, continuous whining, gurgling moan. The empty eyesockets had almost ceased to bleed.
When, at last, Mehleena had stopped her screaming, raving tantrum, Tonos approached her. “Mistress? My lady… ? May I kill Father Skahbros? It were the kindest thing anyone now can do for him. He is in great pain and dying… but he could live longer without a mercy-thrust.”
Her fat face twisted with rage. “You softheaded fool! We don’t have time for him now. To hell with him! Send a galloper down to the villages and call out the Crusaders or all will be lost for us here.” With that, she slammed the door to the bath chamber and stamped off up the hallway.
When the thin blade was into Neeka’s chest a little past half its length, Master Fahreed sliced from side to side, to damage the woman’s heart fully and so speed her death. Then he wiped the blade on her shift and stepped back. He did not mean to leave until she had ceased to breathe.
Neeka had just started her last year of the indenture when Master Lokos’ merry, plump wife, Yris, died of a fever then raging through Esmithpolisport. Hardly was she decently interred than the master himself was borne home dead from a meeting of the Heritage Council, whereat he had suddenly clutched at his chest and collapsed, expiring before he could be carried to a physician.
Koominon had the corpse borne to what had been Lokos’ bedchamber, locked himself in with it and hastily performed in private those last rites that were forbidden in public, while
Neeka summoned the servants to wash and dress their master’s body. It seemed to Neeka that fully half the inhabitants of Esmithpolisport attended the public eulogy to Master Lokos Prahseenos; even the thoheeks, Dahnuhld Esmith of Es-mith — who hated the salt sea and almost never came to the port which produced so much of his revenue — sat with the other notables and speakers on the podium and said a few, halting words in praise of Lokos, whom he had never met personally. At least three-quarters of the attendees joined the procession that bore the cypresswood casket to the necropolis and saw it placed between those of his two wives in the splendid mausoleum of pale-green Theesispolis limestone, with its entrance flanked by two fluted columns of white, purple-veined marble from the Associated Duchies, far to the south and west