This Bili and his hard-bitten little band had done with the aid of Count Sandee and a few of his men and some score of the huge Kleesahks. They were wintering in Sandee’s Cot, awaiting the spring thaw to make their way back east, when, once again, Prince Byruhn had come to call and, being this time hard pressed by the Skohshuns in the northwest, had once again set about the same devious mode of “persuading” the lowlanders to ride back to New Kuhmbuhluhn and throw their weight and warlike skill against this new foe of the kingdom.
And so they all had ridden north with the spring, and Bili had pledged his and their services to King Mahrtuhn and the House of New Kuhmbuhluhn until the Skohshuns were defeated. Now, King Mahrtuhn and his designated heir, his grandson, Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht, lay dead in the rock-carven crypt of the dynasty, deep within King’s Rest Mountain. Poor Prince Byruhn—now King Byruhn, much against his desires and keenly aware of a hoary prophecy that Byruhn would be the name of the very last king of his dynasty—now lay comatose in his old suite in the palace, struck down through accident on the walls during the first attempted storming of them by the Skohshuns.
The prince was not and had never been a mindspeaker, but in order to protect his thoughts from those who did happen to own that gift, the Kleesahks had long ago taught him how to erect and maintain a powerful mindshield. Apparently this shield had been raised into place at the time the catapult missile, a large, heavy, round boulder, had rolled off the rear of an engine platform and fallen to strike the prince and crush his thick helmet. Now, with that impenetrable mindshield firmly locked into its accustomed position, Pah-Elmuh could not reach the stricken monarch’s mind in order to instruct it how to begin repairing the brain’s internal damages.
And so Prince Byruhn lay upon the great bed in his suite, administered thin broths and other liquids through a flexible tube that Pah-Elmuh had somehow contrived to get down his throat into his stomach. Byruhn could not swallow and would soon have died without that tube, but as it was, the flesh seemed to be wasting away from his big-boned frame day by day.
Three days after the tragic accident, those members of the royal council who had survived the costly battle had come to Bili, who, based upon one of King Byruhn’s orders, was already commanding the garrison of the city, and implored him to serve as royal regent during the new king’s recovery and convalescence. Promising them an answer in two days, Bili had discussed the weighty matter with Rahksahnah, the lieutenants of his condotta, those New Kuhmbuhluhners he had come to respect, Pah-Elmuh the Kleesahk, even, finally, with the prairiecat Whitetip; then he had summoned the councilors and informed them that only if both they and the commoners’ council agreed to his tenure and his terms would he accept the regency. They had, all of them, of all stations.
Bili of Morguhn had had a part in sieges before, both in the defensive and the offensive roles, and he often thought that if defend a city he had to do, this city and citadel of New Kuhmbuhluhnburk were ideally suited and situated to make its commander’s task relatively safe, easy and comfortable, while at the same time causing a maximum of discomfort, peril and frustration to the besieging forces.
Despite the vast hoards of foodstuffs for man and for beasts which he had been made aware were stored in the side of the mountain against and into which the city and the citadel were built, Bili had assembled and addressed the native Kuhmbuhluhn landholders—those still alive and active after the battle against the Skohshun pike lines—and told them all to return quickly to their lands. They were, one and all, to strip those lands of all provisions that could be easily carted or herded to the city, butchering or burning or otherwise rendering unusable everything that must perforce be left behind to the tender mercies of the encroaching Skohshuns.
He did not tell them to bury their valuables; he knew that they would do that anyway. Nor did he tell them not to bring their noncombatant dependents behind the walls of New Kuhmbuhluhnburk. He simply pointed out that no matter how well supplied, close-crowded cities under siege were most prone to breed terrible plagues against which there existed little if any protection. Most of the landholders ended by sending their families, servants, some of their retainers and large portions of their herds and flocks up into the surrounding mountains—safe and familiar to them, foreign and potentially dangerous to the Skohshuns.
When the defeated army, bearing their dead royalty and their many wounded, had passed through the gates of the burk, not a one but was certain that the Skohshuns would be under the walls within bare days; but their unanimous assessment had been off by the better part of a month, and by the time the enemy column finally appeared on the plain below the city, it had only been necessary to bring in the herds and flocks then at graze on the nearer reaches of that plain, man the barbican and slam shut the ponderous gates. All else was in complete readiness for a protracted siege.
Two months, or the best part of that amount of time, had now gone by since the arrival of the Skohshuns on the plain, and in the four major assaults essayed against the burk, not a single one of the alien soldiers had gotten farther than the stout, stone-built barbican or the verge of the gorge behind it. The attackers had managed to get all of their wounded back down the mountain each time, but they had left a plentitude of dead bodies to constantly inspire the garrison and the inhabitants of New Kuhmbuhluhnburk. Morale within the beleaguered city could not have been higher, and Duke Bili and his retinue were roundly cheered by populace and soldiers alike each time they appeared on the walls.
But, although none then knew, it was not to last.
The first good look that Brigadier Sir Ahrthur Maklarin got at the fortress-city of New Kuhmbuhluhnburk had sent his spirit nosediving into the lowest reaches of his boots. He had occasionally heard rumors and fables of impregnable cities; now, to his horror, he beheld one that surely deserved that appellation.
It was abundantly clear even from a distance that there would be no undermining of those walls of massy stone, not unless one had the fantastic ability to undermine the very mountain itself, for that city was not just built on but built into the very fabric of the mountain.
He also realized that to think of surrounding and interdicting New Kuhmbuhluhnburk was pointless in the extreme, for ten times his available force could not have adequately manned the works and trenches it would have taken to completely circumscribe the sprawling base of the mountain, and that was precisely what it would take to seal off the approaches to that city with any certainty of success in the undertaking. Therefore, he chose what appeared to be a good, level site and set his regiments to the hard work of digging a deep, broad ditch and packing up the residual earth firmly so that palisade stakes could be there implanted when enough trees from the surrounding mountain slopes had been felled and trimmed and snaked back to erect that wooden wall which would defend his encampment.
Stones—and there were all too many in the soil of the plain—were graded by size and laid aside as ammunition for the engines, whenever the engineers got around to assembling the things. Within the perimeter of the huge camp, the first things to be set up were the kitchens. Latrine and refuse pits quickly followed, then horse lines, wagon parks and supply depot. Only then were the disciplined, well-organized troops allowed to begin pitching the camp proper.
The herald sent to demand the surrender of the burk came back with the news that both King Mahrtuhn and his heir, Prince Mahrtuhn Gilbuht, had fallen in the battle, and that the present king of New Kuhmbuhluhnburk was one King Byruhn. The herald reported that he had been well received and most lavishly entertained by one Duke Bili of Morguhn, who seemed to be the overall commander of the burk garrison, as well as by a number of nobles and officers.