“But back to this question of mindspeakers, Geros…”
“Master Tahmahs and most of his grooms are good to fair, of course, Tim.”
Tim nodded. “Yes, good horse handlers have to be.”
Geros went on, “There are many with middling mindspeak, like mine own, among the servants and the soldiers, though definite eye contact is necessary to range most of them.”
“How of Mehleena and her litter?”
Geros looked the disgust he so strongly felt. “If she herself has any at all, she’ll not ever own to it, since her damned priest says that any who can use that ability are witches and damned of his crucified god.”
Tim snorted a short, harsh laugh. “That any of that accursed, traitorous pack should accuse normal Kindred of ‘witchcraft’ surely surpasses sane understanding. But, pray continue.”
“Well, Tim, as to the piglets: Whenever the bitch has the chance to talk to Vawn or Morguhn Kindred, she’s always prating about the mindspeak ability of Myron, but he’s got no more than have I. Treena, the eldest girl, has none, and neither does Speeros, her year-younger brother. As for the two youngest, Maia and little Behti, it’s possible they’re more of Vawn than the rest—at least they look like they are, and, when the bitch or the others aren’t about, they act more like they are, too.
“Sun and Wind alone know just what talents that damned Neeka owns, and…”
Suddenly there was a quick, measured series of knocks against the outer door and Geros opened it a crack, then closed it and turned back. “There’s no more time for talk, Tim. The majordomo is hotfooting it out here, and- Lord Ahl has come down to break his fast. I’d best let him know you’ve arrived.”
Chapter III
The edifice known as Vawn Hall was new, as structures went in this ancient land; its construction had been started at the close of the great Ehleen rebellion and finished only a few years before the death of Hwahltuh Sanderz, first thoheeks of the new line, all the original Vawns having fallen under the dripping blades of the rebels.
Like all the older halls, it faced east—toward the rising point of Sacred Sun—the main building rising three stories aboveground and descending four levels of cellars below. A wide, spacious, flag-paved courtyard fronted the broad stone stairway leading up to the entry. The courtyard was bounded on either side by lines of small, low-ceilinged cubicles built against the twelve-foot granite walls. Opposite the hall stood the squat, two-story-stable-cum-barrack-cum-gatehouse. To the west of the main structure was a smaller court, likewise walled, with the castellan’s neat home snugged into one corner and the kitchen—with its huge hearths and cavernous ovens and soaring chimneys—in the other.
Just beyond the postern gate lay a well-appointed yard for the exercise of arms skills, with the summer smithy on one side of it and the hall privies facing. Around and about the hall stretched the rolling, grassy leas, across which ambled the hall horses and a herd of milch cows with sheep and goats in the near distance. In the fringes of the oak woods, a half mile distant—for Thoheeks Hwahltuh, ever mindful of the fate that befell his predecessor, had cleared all woods and brush within four arrow flights of his hall—rooted and foraged half-wild swine.
Having interbred countless times with the huge, indigenous boar tribe, these “domestic” hogs ran to lean strength and such fearsome ferocity that only starvling wolves or a ravenous bear or the occasional mountain cat would brave their porcine rage. But they had learned to fear two-legs on horses, for this was how they were taken in the fall, by two-legs on horses, armed with lances and bows and ropes.
Farther into the forest ranged deer and elk, and, more rarely seen, wild cattle—called “shaggy-bulls” in the Middle Kingdoms, huge and fierce and dangerous if provoked; they were roan or dusty black, dark brown or sometimes whitish, but both sexes equipped with wide-flaring, needle-tipped horns and the strength and speed to use them to awesome effect. Rabbits scuttled through the underbrush, sometimes pursued by weasel or bobcat, wolf or fox, while squirrels chattered from the trees above.
Beyond the miles of forest lay the westernmost domain of the duchy, the lands of Komees Tahm, youngest uncle of the late thoheeks’ children, known as Tahm of Lion Mountain because most of the mountain cats which plagued the duchy of hard winters seemed to come down through his desmesne.
Even farther west, the tracks became narrow, winding amongst weathered rock and trees clinging precariously to the steeps which were the eastern wall of the Marches, the ahrkeethoheekatohn of the Ahrmenee Stahn, staunch allies of the Confederation. Once the fiercest enemies of the Kindred and Ehleenee, these hawk-nosed, dark-visaged men had become in the generation since the first ahrkeethoheeks, Kohk Taishyuhn, had perceived the folly of continuing hostilities, the veritable cream of the Confederation Army, whilst producing within their own stahn works of artistry in metals eagerly sought throughout the Confederation and well beyond.
The Stahn buffered the middlewestern thoheekatohnee from inroads of the savage tribes of mountain barbarians, few of whom dared incur the wrath of the well-armed, determined, head-collecting Ahrmehnee. Nor were warfare and metal-working the only accomplishments of these people or their only value to the Confederation. Straddling shaggy mountain ponies from near-infancy and hunting cunning mountain beasts from pre-puberty, Ahrmehnee boys and men made excellent hunters and the increasing number of them gifted with mindspeak ability were the best and most highly paid of horsehandlers, farriers and equine leeches.
In the twelve generations since first their Undying God had led the Horseclans Kindred across the violent, blood-soaked two thousand miles from their former home on the limitless plains of the interior to the decadent coastal principality of Kehnooryos Ehlahs, the vital, virile Kindred had brought all the Ehleenee south of the Middle Kingdoms into their Confederation—sometimes by conquest, sometimes by alliance— as well as the Ahrmehnee Stahn and several non-Ehleen northern states.
From the northernmost point—Nohtohpolisburk in the Principate of Kuhmbuhluhn—twenty days of hard riding would lead to the southern border, unmarked amidst the treacherous salt fens beyond which lay the legendary evil Witch Kingdom and, even with the matchless roads built and maintained by the army, the remainder of a full month needs must be ridden out before the southwesternmost principate, on the eastern and northern shores of the brackish River-Sea, was reached.
From their capital of Kehnoorvos Atheenahs, the four Undying ruled over six principates, over a hundred ahrkeethoheekatohnee and nearly six hundred thoheekatohee Five major races—Kindred, Ehleen, Middle Kingdoms Mehruhkuhn, Mountain Mehruhkuhn and Ahrmehnee—and numerous smaller ones made up the heterogeneous population. Three principal languages—the various dialects of Mehrikan, Ehleeneekos and Ahrmehnee—were spoken and written, though it was traditional for official records to be kept in Ehleeneekos.
The population was larger than ever it had been under the old Ehleen sway and, moreover, was growing larger with each passing year. Cities were replacing towns, becoming larger and more congested, and even the land was becoming crowded. The oceans encroached farther upon the verdant coastal croplands with each succeeding year and Middle Kingdoms states were no whit less populous, so the only viable direction for expansion lay to the west.
Compared to the east—from which their ancestors had been driven by the Ehleenee nearly a thousand years before—the peaks and glens, plateaus and vales, were thinly settled, but every tribe or clan or family group felt a fierce pride of ownership in its stony acreage and expressed that pride in bitter, unremitting warfare against the lowland invaders.
And so the huge Army of the Confederation had been engaged in almost constant warfare for over a century, fighting scores of battles and skirmishes for each mile of near-wilderness brought under Confederation control, every inch of arable land bought with the lifeblood of Confederation regulars and Middle Kingdoms Freefighters. Precious few liked the enduring situation of endless war to the west, but most recognized the necessity and inevitability of the advance of civilization against barbarism.
The Undying would have preferred to gain the use of western lands through treaties of alliance, as they had done a generation back with the Ahrmehnee; but, unlike the tightknit Ahrmehnee Stahn, the mountaineers were for the most part crude, brutish and highly fractious among themselves, though they displayed a modicum of twisted honor in their internecine feudings—and some of the clans and tribes seemed to hate other clans and tribes nearly as much as they all hated the lowlanders—they seemed to feel that treaties with non-mountaineers were made to be broken as quickly as suited them. Further, their chiefs thought nothing of claiming and selling lands not their own, so the Undying had long ago reconciled themselves to the fact that needful expansion of territory could only advance behind the point of a spear.
Within the Confederation itself, however, there had been no warfare since the crushing of the Ehleen revolts nearly thirty years before. Within cities and towns, crime was petty and small-scale, and in the countryside, brigandage was almost unheard of. The descendants of the Ehleenee pirates who once had been the scourge of the mainland coasts now were the officers and crews of the swift oarships and far-ranging sailing ships that made the coastal waters too dangerous for any but honest merchantmen and the most suicidally foolhardy raiders.