But though Prince Djylz’s gentlemen were as proud and prickly and pugnacious as any similar aggregation of Middle Kingdoms nobles, no one ever begrudged the young princess her skill at archery. Any other woman might have found herself the butt of rough humor if not biting jibes, but not Giliahna; for the gentlemen truly loved their grizzled liege lord and so—young and old, one and all—they worshiped the merry, smiling new wife who was obviously making the prince so happy.
One brilliant morning, three days after the ninth anniversary of their wedding, the royal pair rode forth, trailed by a score of noble retainers. They rode west at a slow trot, with none of the usual racings from bend to bend, for this hunt was serious business and the horses wore pounds of quilted padding, while the riders were partially armored and bore more than the ordinary quantity and variety of weapons.
Djylz had done his damnedest to dissuade Giliahna, but she was as stubborn as her husband and he had at last relented—as always he did with her. But in the manner of personal protection, he had proved adamant, and so Giliahna rode sweltering in three-quarter armor, extra-heavy tournament plate borrowed for the occasion from one of the smaller noble fosterlings of the court.
Giliahna edged her big hunter closer to the duke’s side and hissed, “Damn it all, husband, you’d best halt the column, for I swear I’ll not ride another ten yards in this infernal steel torture chamber! I can’t remember when I’ve sweated so much. My smallclothes are sodden and they’re chafing me raw in … in some very personal places. Besides, this damned cuirass doesn’t fit properly and it’s pinching me. Why couldn’t I have just worn a scale jazeran, like you and the others?”
Prince Djylz chuckled, then grinned sympathetically. “Now, wife, you know why warriors call their suits of plate ‘Pitzburk steamers,’ and you can now truly appreciate why I’m in no condition for a love bout the first few days after a tourney.”
Giliahna had leaned her spear against her shoulder and commenced to fumble at the cuirass buckles under her arm with the freed hand, but the prince leaned sidewise in his saddle and laid a hand on hers, his smile erased and his demeanor as serious as his tone.
“No, love, let be … let be, I say. You may need that plate ere this day be done. As I said this morning, killing shaggy bulls is less sport than warfare, and it’s every bit as dangerous. Steel be praised,” he touched fingertips to his lips, then to the polished ball-pommel of his broadsword, “that the hairy monsters usually stay in the west and the north and out of my domain. I’d be as happy if every shaggy bull alive were somewhere west of the Sea of Grass. But a small herd has chosen to come down out of the mountains, and, as protector of my lands and people, it’s my job to see that they’re killed before they do any more damage.”
“I still wish you’d go back, Giliahna.” She opened her mouth, but he raised his hand for silence. “You won’t, however, love, I know that. Therefore, you are going to stay in that armor … and you had better know that!”
By noon, the party had left the western fringes of the flat country and ascended into the foothills. The farms here had smaller fields, most of them on hillsides; there were few cattle, but many goats and a few small herds of blatting sheep. Far west, Giliahna could see the hazy bluish rounded humps of the range that separated Kuhmbuhluhn from the Mahrk of Tuhsee—years agone, a bitter enemy of Kuhmbuhluhn, but now a fellow member of the Confederation.
A little after the noon, keener-eyed members of the party could see a host of black dots moving in slow, lazy circles in the clear sky some distance ahead. Shortly thereafter, they rounded a bend in the road to find three hunters squatting under a roadside tree and munching on cold bacon and corn bread.
The three were clad almost identically in sweat-stained green shirts, soft leather breeches and low-topped boots. All three were bowmen—as attested by the leather sleeve each wore laced to his left arm from wrist to elbow and by the big horn ring on each man’s right thumb—and they all also bore an assortment of knives of various sizes, as well as slings and pouches of stones.
The trio of hunters were tall and slender, two of them with reddish-tinged brown hair, the third almost bald, but with a thick, dark-red mustache. There was distinct similarity in the casts of all three weather-browned faces and in the crinkle-cornered hazel eyes, big, jutting noses and high cheekbones.
The mustachioed hunter arose as the mounted party came into view, slapped a cloud of dust from his trousers, pulled off a billed leather cap, on the forepeak of which was emblazoned the princely arms, and trotted over to stand beside Prince Djylz’s sorrel stallion, his coordination, speed and ease of movement belying his thin, graying hair and host of wrinkles.
Smiling warmly, Djylz shucked a mailed gauntlet and leaned to clasp the hunter’s hand. “Roy, old friend, it’s good to clap eyes on you again; I trow, you look younger every time I see you. Are you sure you’re not an Undying?”
The hunter pumped the prince’s hand enthusiastically twice, then bore it to his lips and kissed it, before replying, “Not as I knows, Lord Djylz. Thet be a fine, tall horse y’ be a-forkin’; he has more the stamp o’ a warhorse than a hunter though. Wher be yer good old piebald hunter, Stagfleet?”
The prince sighed. “Aye, Stagfleet is good, but he is getting old, too, and I thought this day’s work might be better done with a younger, faster horse.” He absently patted the quilt-armored neck of his sorrel. “Manlover, here, I bought from the Duke of York-Getzburk, last year at the Harzburk Fair; he was bred for a destrier and has had a good bit of war training, too, but while hell savage another horse or any other animal quick enough, he shies from attacking men, so Duke Randee had him retrained for a hunter.”
“Now, to business, Roy. How many of the beasts have you seen? How far away are they?”
“The herd bull, o’ course.” The hunter ticked off his bow thumb. “An’ he be the bigges’ I ever seed, too—eighteen han’s at the withers, mebbe more. One young bull he ain’t drove off, yet, but he’s got his full horns. Three old cows, two of ‘em with calves follerin’ and a couple of heifers. One o’ them calfs is a bull calf, an’ he be pure white, my lord Djylz.”
The prince grunted in appreciation. Not only would a white shaggy bull be a rare specimen for his menagerie, but if taken young enough, shaggy bulls could often be gentled to the tractability of domestic cattle and, when bred to beef breeds, invariably sired or threw bigger, meatier animals with thicker, stronger, more long-wearing hides.
He turned in the saddle and addressed his nobles and the retainers. “Roy here, says there’re a brace of nursing calves and one of the little buggers is even a white. You, Persee,” he spoke directly to Count Parkzburk, whose wealth lay principally in his fine herds of cattle, “know what that means. I want both those calves alive and unharmed.”
At length, the party came to a narrow track, leading off to the right between fields of thigh-high cornstalks. As the van entered a small, dusty farmyard, the old hunter kneed his bigheaded pony forward and banged scarred knuckles on the thick, plank door of the small, log-walled house.
“Djaimos!” he yelled. “Djaimos Poorahbos! It be me, Roy Danyulz. C’mon out, heah. His lordship done come fer to kill them critters.”
Following scraping noises that told of the removal of at least two bars, the door of the windowless house swung open and a short, squat, thick-limbed man strode forth with a noticeable limp. His close-cropped black hair was shot through with white, but his black eyes were clear and alert; his forehead bore the permanent dent which told of years of bearing a helmet, all his front teeth were missing, his nose was mashed and canted far left, one ear was missing entirely and the other lacked a lobe, his olive-skinned face was a mass of old scars and so was every inch of visible body skin.