Carefully wiping the tip of his ornate, bejeweled smallsword on a corner of his voluminous cloak, the second man said, “Answer the questions, you whoreson, or you’ll suffer for it! Are you of Ehleen stock or barbarian? Do you reverence God or something else? If we could free you from prison, would you go where you were told, do as you were told, kill whomever you were ordered to kill, so long as you were well paid?”
And so, within a few weeks, Mahrkos had found himself among some eightscore other hard cases, gathered from all over the principate and beyond, living in tents pitched in the forest of some duchy south of the capital. For two hellish months, they had undergone intensive military training at the callused hands of grizzled veteran soldiers and a few nobles, these always masked or helmed.
Mahrkos had always thought of himself as tough, dangerous and cruel… but that had been before he learned the true meanings of those three words in that woodland camp. Not all of the men who started finished. In the beginning, some ran away from the harsh discipline and unaccustomed labor under pitiless taskmasters. Those who were run down and killed were the lucky ones; the others were—in the full and horrified sight of their erstwhile fellows—slowly whipped to death, impaled or crucified on a beam lashed to a tree near the camp latrine. Tormented by hunger and thirst and pain, pecked at by crows, they sometimes took three days to die; but still they hung there and it was only when the stench became too bad that the cadremen hacked through the ropes and, after sinking hooks into the rotting cadaver, had the corpse’s former comrades drag the carcass off and dump it in a pit. No one ever got away clean, and, after a few examples, no one tried.
At the end of two months, the survivors of the original number were divided into three groups of between forty and fifty men each, then Mahrkos and two other bully types were placed in charge of the contingents. Slowly, a few men at the time, traveling in various ways and under various guises, the hundred and fifty bravos were funneled westward, laying over for long or short periods in many out-of-the-way places, often in woodland tent camps, sometimes in tiny villages, sometimes in towns or just outside them.
It had taken them the best part of three months to circuitously cover the distance to the far western Duchy of Vawn in the foothills of the Misty Mountains. There, the hundred and fifty had been reunited one last time, for two nights and a day in another wood, but this time without tents. Then two of the helmed nobles had come riding in, trailed by three men who rode barefaced. None of the bravos had seen any of the three before, but they did not need to know them to know immediately just what they were, not after two months of hell.
The voice booming from within the metallic confines of the helm sounded almost inhuman. “Allright, you gutterswept scum, gather closely about. These men,” he languidly waved at the three, hard-faced men sitting their mounts beside him, “are Deemos, Plehkos, and Ahreestos. They will henceforth be your commanders and will own the powers of life and death over you. They will march you to the villages in which you will be quartered until the weapons skills you have been more or less taught are needed.
“Arms will be provided you eventually. Until they are, you will drill and practice with wooden substitutes. You will drill and practice, you swine, practice and drill, for you may think you are warriors now but you are not A bare tenth your numbers of first-class soldiers would go through you like a dose of salts, would make blood pudding of the lot of you. It takes years to make soldiers out of first-grade material, which you poor shits certainly are not. But we have invested money and effort on you, nonetheless, and we will see to it that you give us at least a bare minimum return on our investment.
“Insubordination of any sort will be considered mutiny and will be dealt with harshly and fatally. These three captains will choose four sergeants and one senior sergeant to assist them. Orders from these sergeants will, in the absence of the captain, be considered as binding as if they came from the officer.
“Understand, please, if dimwits like you can understand, you are here without legal leave in a basically hostile duchy. It will be as good as your life to go wandering about the countryside, not to mention the danger your capture by the local barbarians would cast all the rest into.
“Do as you’re told, stay where you’re told, hone your arms skills and you’ll have food, lodging and your pay… with the probability of a bit of loot in time. Disobey in any manner and you’ll be killed. Filth of your like are easily replaced; the gutters and jails are full of such.”
Thanks to his abilities with cudgel and staff, as well as to his bullying assertiveness, Mahrkos was chosen by Captain Deemos to be his senior sergeant. After the village headman and a few other natural leaders had been killed or terrorized, Deemos, Mahrkos and their forty-one men had experienced no trouble in taking over the village.
After another gaping yawn, Sergeant Mahrkos threw off the blanket and looked about for his shirt and breeches. Arising, he hopefully shook the wine jug, then raised it to his fleshy lips and thirstily guzzled the last few ounces before starting to dress. He had just buckled the swordbelt about his waist when he chanced to notice the red-brown blotch on the mattress and the trail of crusty splotches leading from the bed to the door.
Chuckling to himself, he thought of the red-haired boy, the freckled youth he had dragged—bawling and sniveling and begging to be let go—from his lean-to hovel last night. He thought, deliciously, of that smooth, hairless body writhing and struggling futilely, of the way the little darling had screamed when Mahrkos entered him, took him. He was still musing and rubbing himself when Deemos, in three-quarter plate, sword and dirk at his sides, an axe in his hand and his helm under one arm, stamped in.
“You wallowing swine, aren’t you dressed yet? Get into your cuirass and rouse the men. The summons just reached me. We’re to march on the hall immediately. Damn your lights, you lowborn cur, move!”
Vahrohneeskos Tahm Adaimyuhn rode in high spirits at the head of his party of young Ahrmehnee and Kindred retainers. They had left the little town nestled at the foot of Lion Mountain well before dawn and set a slow pace, easy on horses and men alike. Shortly after dawn had first reddened the sky, they had been met and joined by Tahm’s cousins, Kahrl and Bahb Sanderz, and their party. Bahb, a couple of years older than Kahrl, his brother, had been designated to stand for his father, Vahrohnos Tchahrlz Sanderz, too old and infirm to make the journey to Sanderz Hall. Nor were the three gentry the only relatives among the two entourages, so the two columns were soon one intermingled cavalcade.
Though both the Sanderz men were somewhat older than the swarthy, black-haired Tahm, the nineteen-year-old had their full respect and occasional deference. Right often, their glances strayed to the Ahrmehnee necklace of silver links and semiprecious stones, each stone representing a warrior’s head taken by Tahm in personal combat Since his fourteenth year, the big-boned, brown-eyed young man had taken part in many of the frequent raids made by his sire’s tribe upon the mountain folk always encroaching upon the Ahrmehnee holds.
Three hours after sunrise, the combined parties stopped to rest the horses and munch journey food on the banks of an icy brook. Almost all the men were young and they chatted, gambled, wrestled and footraced; they threw knives and light axes and darts at marks on trees or devised difficult moving targets at which bowmen could try their skill. Finally, they saddled the horses and rode on to the beat of a small brass hand drum, the damned-soul wail of an Ahrmehnee flute and bursts of song.
Less than five miles from their objective, a faster-moving column caught up to them. Komees Dik Sanderz was fully armed, as were they all, but his old, lined face was grim and his men rode in tight column, with targets unslung and weapons ready.
“Greet the Sun, uncle,” grinned Tahm. “Why so grave? Whose funeral are you riding to?”
“Yours, mine and all the rest of our kin and Kindred, belike,” growled the aged fighter—who had been a grown man when the Clan Sanderz had fought its way east from the Sea of Grass and helped to hack out a duchy in Vawn. “Form your men up on ranks, young kinsmen, for we may well have to fight our way to the hall… and fight again when we get there.