“You intend to lift the siege, Ahrthur? It might not be a bad idea, considering all the losses, and it’s purely your decision to make,” said Sir Djahn.
The brigadier shook his singed head. “Oh, no, Djahn, not yet. Even with our losses of men and materiel, we still outnumber the enemy by a goodly edge. I mean to make good use of that fact, and that’s where you and your good offices enter upon the matter.
“We’ll give it a few days. I don’t want them to have any inkling of just how badly they hurt us last night—such knowledge might give them ideas which could breed further unpleasantnesses for us. Maybe, the first of next week, I want you to ride back up there and shame that king and that duke to march out of that city and meet us in open battle here on this plain.”
Sir Djahn shook his head slowly. “I cannot credit it that I heard you say what you said, Ahrthur. Those men are not fools, you know, none of them. They can count as well as can you or I, and you can be certain that they know their only edge is those unassailable walls.”
“But you did it once before—shamed the late king into leaving this abomination of an invulnerable city to meet us in open battle at a place of our choosing,” said the brigadier stubbornly. “You did it after the autumn battle, last year.”
“That was then and this is now, Ahrthur,” Sir Djahn replied, tiredly but patiently, to his old friend. “I was able to nose out the hidden weakness of an old monarch who was verging on senility and use it against him and the best interests of his people ... and I can’t say that I’m proud of what I then did, Ahrthur.
“But, be that as it may, this King Byruhn is purely a practical man. No old-fashioned ideals to trip him up with—he would most likely laugh in my face, if he even deigned to take me seriously, to commence. He strikes me as the kind of man who probably talks much of honor, but honors that honor more in the breach than in the observance ... unless, of course, he can see possible advancement of his various schemes in such an observance.”
“Well,” the brigadier went on doggedly, “perhaps this condottiere, this Duke Bili, could influence his patron?”
Sir Djahn shook his head again. “Not bloody likely, Ahrthur, not bloody likely at all. As I said after my last visit to New Kuhmbuhluhnburk, Sir Bili, Duke Morguhn, is a vastly experienced mercenary officer and, although a thoroughgoing gentleman to his fingertips, as practical and hard-boiled a professional warrior as any I’ve ever come across.”
The brigadier’s shoulders sagged. “You refuse to go, then, old friend?”
“Oh, no, Ahrthur, I’ll go.” Sir Djahn grinned. “If for no other reason, to enjoy a few decent, well-cooked meals and an enjoyable tipple, though I think weedwine would likely be a distinct improvement on Potter’s rattlesnake venom here.”
“Thank you, sincerely, Djahn,” said the brigadier humbly. “This cast of the dice I am planning will be for all or for nothing. I am sending back to Skohshun Glen for the two reserve regiments and all of the light cavalry, along with every gentleman who can still sit a horse and swing steel. It will probably take them two weeks to get here, so take your time in talking the New Kuhmbuhluhners around and make that allowance in setting a date for the battle.”
When he arrived at last back in his suite in the palace, half a dozen servants divested Bili of his arms, armor, pourpoint and outer clothing, while yet another bore away his huge axe to be cleaned, rehoned and oiled. He sent one of them down to the palace kitchens to fetch back hot water that he might lave off the soot from his face and the sweat from his body.
The man returned, white-faced, with an empty bucket and a stuttered story that set Bili to rearming far faster than he had disarmed, all the while mindcalling certain of his officers and Whitetip, the prairiecat.
The palace kitchens were at ground level and, because of the ever-present danger of fires, were not really a part of the palace structure, being connected to the serving rooms and the commodious pantry below the great hall by stone-built tunnels, all of which could be easily and completely closed off to prevent the spread of flames but were usually left wide open to facilitate the comings and goings of the various staffs of meat cooks, bread bakers, pastry cooks, confectioners and such.
There was work of some sort in progress in the kitchens from sunrise to sunrise, and Bili had often remarked, only half jokingly, to his own staff that the senior palace chef, Master Blakmuhn, could probably give them all needed lessons in proper divisions of labor and available resources, so smoothly and effortlessly did his kitchens seem to operate.
But the kitchens into which Bili and his trailing, half-armed and -clothed staff stalked that night were a very study in disorganization, rather, a howling chaos, with Master Blakmuhn howling as loud as or louder than any. It required most ungentle shakings and slappings of the howling staff to obtain some quiet and a report, and, at last, Master Blakmuhn led them to a space between an outer wall and one of the immense ovens, where lay what was left of a baker’s apprentice.
Keeping his eyes averted from the incomplete body of the once-rotund young man, the chef told the horrifying tale to Bili and the rest. “Young Nehd had done been sent in here for to sweep up from the last bakin’. He be ... he was almightily afeered of eny kinda snake, so when he screamed thet oncet, we all jest laughed, thinkin’ he’d done seen one the big black rat snakes we keeps in the kitchens. But he dint come a-runnin’ out, he jest stayed and stayed and stayed, so I sent one of my journeymen, Hwil Dukhwai, to hurry him up. Then Hwil, he yells and comes a-runnin’ back to say it’s a big critter has kilt Nehd and is eatin’ him.
“Hwil has been knowed to joke and josh around a lot, but you could look at him and tell he was scairt plumb shitless of sumthin’. So I grabbed up a steel boar spit—there it lays, right there.” The chef gestured at a six-foot shaft of sharp-pointed steel smeared with blood for a good third of its length.
“And told everbody elst to git them a knife or a hatchet or suthin, and we all went back here and ... and, m’lord duke, it wuz plumb awful! I never seed any critter big as thet one. He jest layed there a-lookin’ at us, and a-snarlin’, even while he still was a-tearin’ off chunks of pore young Nehd and a-swallerin’ them. Them eyes was terrible, jest like fiery coals, they wuz.
“Then sumbody behint of me chucked a cleaver at the critter, hit it, too; the edge went deep and stuck in its neck. But the critter jest jumped up, shook the cleaver out and come dead straight at us ... at me! Well, in my time I done dressed out a plentynuff beasts for to know where you spose to spear them, so I crouchted down and jammed my spit square betwixt the critter’s front legs and he run right up on it. Well, I could tell he’d be right at me in a blinkin’, so I let go of the spit and jumpted back and slammed the door and shot the bolt, then we all went a-runnin’ like everythin. And that be all I knows, m’lord duke.”
With Whitetip still not returned from his part of the evening exercise, Bili and his armed gentlemen took up the hunt, but the bloodtrail ended halfway through the stone corridorway leading into the palace. More men were summoned and the ground level searched thoroughly, but the seriously wounded beast had again vanished.
XII
Whitetip did not return for three full days. When at last he did, he was not alone. With him was a female of his species, this cat some half his weight and less than two thirds his height; her coloring was that of the native treecats and her cuspids were not much larger than theirs, mere shadows of the huge, cursive dentition of the male prairiecat.