Guhntuh shook his head and, while taking out his own pipe and tobacco, said, “No, there is nothing at all usual about the tale concerning the archduke and her ladyship.
“You were not on that campaign against the Ahrmehnee stahn, Sir Djim, but you surely know of it? Whilst this duke you seek now had led his force to attack the Ahrmehnee from the south and the High Lord was driving straight up toward the village of the nahkhahrah from the east, the High Lady Aldora was leading a cavalry onslaught down from the north, and me and my boys, we was a part of her force.
“It was no real fighting for the early part of that ride, Sir Djim, because most of the Ahrmehnee warriors was all down south in and around the place that the nahkhahrah lived, all getting set to attack the Confederation. So we all rode through them tribal lands like a dose of salts. We robbed, we raped, we burned whole villages, butchered every head of stock we come onto, even them we couldn’t eat. Them folks we didn’t kill, we drove into the hills—legal bandits, we was. I could come to like that kind of warfare a whole lot.
“But, by Steel, we plumb paid for all of it, afore it was done! One morning early, right at false dawn, when we all was camped in a big clearing, the Ahrmehnees come to hit us—it was thousands of them, Sir Djim, all warriors, all screeching and screaming and howling like wolves, they was. I won’t no captain, then, you understand, I was a lieutenant of a hundred of Captain Watsuhn’s Freefighter squadron. But by sunup of that day, the old captain was dead, along with all the other officers except me and more than four hundred of our six hundred troopers.
“Of course, what was left of the High Lady’s force did manage to beat them screeching devils off, elst I wouldn’t be here, ’cause I’d took a dart through my thigh early on and I couldn’t even stand up. But we didn’t do no more marching or riding or raiding for a while, I can tell you that!
“Since it was a good, dependable water source there, the High Lady had some rough fortifications put up on that same campsite and set about reorganizing, and before she was set to move on in the campaign, the word come from the High Lord that it wasn’t to be no more campaign, that the Confederation was at peace with them Ahrmehnees.
“Well, the High Lady seemed damned anxious for to get to where the High Lord was, for some reason, her and that reformed rebel, Baronet Drehkos. She took a force a little bigger nor our present one—mebbe, sixteen hundreds, and including me and my company—and we rode hard till we reached the Taishyuhns’ main village.”
Redstone pipe packed to his critical satisfaction, the captain lit a splinter of pine in the coals and began to puff the tobacco to life, continuing to talk around the stem of yellowed bone.
“Well, us Freefighters, we went into camp on that big shelf down below the Taishyuhn village, where Fort Kogh is, you know; the High Lady, she knew that us Freefighters weren’t about to put up with none of that make-work, spit—and-polish shit like the Confederation Regulars, so she kept my company and the others separate from them.
“Anyhow, her that was to become her ladyship, Pehroosz, had come a-riding in with that Ahrmehnee Witchwoman what come to marry up with the nahkhahrah, Kogh Taishyuhn. While every Ahrmehnee around abouts was getting things ready for the big blowout wedding feast of the nahkhahrah, thishere Witchwoman, she sent her ladyship out into the hills for to dig up some special roots and an old boar bear chased her up a tree and was just set to go up after her when the archduke, who was out a-hunting deers, come by.
“I hear tell it was a near thing, that day. That damn bear chewed the haft in two right behind of the blade and the archduke had to meet bruin breast to breast and put paid to him with a damn hanger. And that was a flat, big-assed bear, too, Sir Djim—I seen the skin!
“Well, just before the bear had come at her, her ladyship had dug up a real old, corroded-up strongbox from the little hollow where she was digging roots for the Witchwoman, and she brung it back with her. I hear tell the thing was dang heavy, and for good reason, because when the old lock was forced and broke, it come about that that damn box was full up to the tiptop with little bars of solid, pure gold! Every one of them weighed a little over three ounces and they was all stamped with words in some language couldn’t nobody—Kindred, Ehleen, burker or Ahrmehnee—read. Anyhow, it was near forty pounds of gold in that box, Sir Djim!
“Well, being the kind of man he is, the archduke first tried to turn the newfound treasure over to the High Lord, but Lord Milo opined that it was found on Ahrmehnee land, therefore it was rightly the property of the nahkhahrah. But old Kogh said that according to the customs of his people, whoever found things like that was owner of them, but that as the archduke had saved her ladyship from the bear, he thought that the two of them should ought to split the gold between them. Well, that’s just what they done, but as his lordship had already took a shine to her ladyship, them two was married on the same day the nahkhahrah was.
“That might’ve been the end of it all, too, but Archduke Hahfos come to wonder if it might’ve been more than the one box of gold up there in the hills, so he went back with a bunch of men with shovels and pickaxes and all. And the very first swing of a pick hit metal, Sir Djim. Won’t nobody ever know, probably, the whens and wheres and hows of it all, but it was hundreds of them same kinda boxes, some of them not a full foot under the ground.”
“All of them full of gold?” queried Djim Bohluh.
“Aw, no,” replied Guhntuh with a shake of his head. “No, lots and lots of them had nothing inside but kinds of paper with writing and funny-looking pictures and all on them. But there was more gold—some in bars, some in gold coins and a whole lot in jewelry, jewelry like you never seen afore, too. And there was boxes full of smaller boxes and bags of cut jewels, unmounted, and pearls and opals. There was boxes of silver bars and coins, too, as well as some bigger boxes plumb full of old books from more’n a thousand years ago. At least, that’s what the High Lord said—he wrote back in a letter to the archduke, after he’d done boxed up all them books and papers and sent them all up to Kehnooryos Atheenahs. He said too a lots of them papers was a kind of money they used back then in place of gold and silver, that or pieces of paper that said the fellers that had it owned part of manufactories and trading companies and suchlike.
“The High Lord Milo, he went on to say that some them books had been real rare and hard to come by even way back then, and he thanked the archduke over and over for getting them all up to him.”
“The ahrkeethoheeks kept it awl, aside from whut he sent up to Kehnooryos Atheenahs?” asked Bohluh. “No friggin’ wonduh he can live like he does!”
“No such thing!” snorted Guhntuh. “I doubt me if Archduke Hahfos kept a tenth part of whatall he found, valuewise. That palace he had built and lives in now, that ain’t his, Sir Djim. In time that’ll be the palace of Kogh Taishyuhn and the other nahkhahrahs after him. Then the archduke, he’ll move up to a smaller place—the House of the Golden Bear—he has up in the hills, built on the spot where he met her ladyship and kilt the bear and found the treasure buried.
“A whole lots of that treasure has gone into the Ahrmehnee stahn—rebuilding villages, replacing livestock, dowering gals, enlarging and modernizing the Ahrmehnee forges what make that fine, light, strong mail, not to mention improving the few roads that was there to start and building new ones place of the tracks and trails, and all of it means work and hard-money wages for every swingin’ dick in the whole stahn who’d rather work than fight. Them few fire-eaters was left is a-ridin’ with us, you know.”