Tim frowned. Tones’ name was not one of those given him by Archduke Bili, and it could bode ill to have so powerful a servant leagued against one.
Geros continued, graying brows knitted in concentration. “Our only reliable people in the kitchens are Hahros, the meat cook, and his eldest apprentice, Tchahrlee. Hahros is a retired Confederation Army cook and far better qualified to be head cook than that mincing effeminate, Gaios, but naturally Gaios has simpered his way into Lady Mehleena’s good graces. Anyway, I’ve taken the liberty of promising Gaios’ position upon my 1—” At a warning frown from Tim, he hurriedly corrected to, “
your
assumption of your patrimony.”
Tim nodded. “You know these folk better than I; speak in my name when it seems wise or needful. I’ll back you up.”
Geros smiled thanks and went on. “The keeper of the cellars, Hyk, is an Ahrmehnee and another of the ones I cant figure.”
“In that case,” said Tim, grimly, “I think we should start bringing arms up out of the armory a few at the time and secreting them somewhere where we can get to them easily, when and if we need them.” Then, noticing the return of Geros’ smile, he inquired, “Or have you already commenced such, old friend?”
Quickly, the castellan told of the stocks of arms hidden in various parts of the hall and outbuildings—enough to equip forty men, if somewhat sketchily. Adding, “But Tim, even if we do see troubles, they’ll be nothing like the risings here and in Morghun years ago. For one thing, there be precious few Ehleenee in Vawn, save those servants hired since your lady mother’s time. Almost all the farmers in the duchy are Ahrmehnee, so too are the mechanics and tradesmen hereabouts. The nobles all are first- and second-generation Horseclansmen… and you know well what sort of shrift
they’d
give Ehleen rebels or religious fanatics.
“No, Tim, the only danger lies in the fact that Mehleena
is
set on her spawn, Myron, sitting in your father’s place. There were some very peculiar aspects to the death of your brother, Behrl, last year.”
“Yes,” Tim answered. “So Bili informed me. Something to do with a mock fight, wasn’t it?”
Geros grimaced. “Closer to an out-and-out duel, my… Tim. It was during that last, long illness of Lord Hwahltuh. Young Behrl was at the sword posts, one morn. Myron and the boy who then was his lover sauntered out and began to make crude and disparaging remarks. Finally, Behrl—who never could stomach Myron for any length of time, anyhow—suggested that his tormentor get a sword and see if he could do better.
“Now, Tim, Myron is no mean swordsman. He is long in the arm and strong. But, in all my years, seldom have I seen a man handle steel as did Behrl; the lad was an artist with the sword.
“Anyway, Myron sent his bumboy running and soon was at the posts himself. I’m told that Behrl, in his turn, twitted Myron’s showing—at least, this was overheard by Gaib, the farrier, who happened to be passing by. I was in my house when I heard the first ringing of the blades and the fighting shouts. I headed for the practice yard as fast as these legs would carry me, but halfway there I heard a terrible cry and, when finally I panted up, Behrl lay dead in his blood, his chest hacked half through, just below the shoulderblade.
“Tim, Myron is a good swordsman, as I said, but Behrl was his master—and mine own. Without outside help, interference, there be no way that Myron could have even nicked Behrl, much less slain him!”
Tim pursed lips and squinted. “There were no witnesses?”
Geros shook his head. “Only the bumboy. What I got out of him on the spot was little—he was verging on hysteria— and seemed to back up Myron’s lies. And when I wanted to question him the next morning, he was nowhere to be found. It was nearly two weeks before Moorahd, the hall hunter, hauled what was left of the corpse out of the north forest. A hot summer that was and the body was ripe, and animals had been at it till there was no way to tell just what had killed him. We only knew it was the runaway by a silver torque Myron had given him.”
“Very convenient… for somebody,” grunted Tim. “So now, the only way we can get at the truth is to put dear half brother Myron to the question. And if the man he is be as stubborn as the child he was it would have to be rather severe questioning. Hmmm.”
A grin split Geros’ face almost from ear to ear. “Ah, Tim, it will do these ears good to hear that strutting, buggering popinjay howl! Of course, your father’s Room of Truth has not been used in some years, but I doubt not it can be put to rights quickly enough, and…”
Tim grimaced. “And we’d have the archduke, possibly even the prince as well, down around our ears before the echoes had died. We must never forget that this isn’t a northern burk but a duchy of the Confederation, wherein, what we have here contemplated is illegal; not even the High Lords, up in Kehnooryos Atheenahs, can put a Confederation nobleman to the torture without ironbound proof of wrongdoing.”
The young captain smashed scarred knuckles into horny palm. “
Why
? Why could there not have been
one
living witness? The deed must’ve been planned long and carefully to have been carried off so cleanly.”
Then he fell silent. A dim, almost imperceptible farspeak was nibbling within his mind: “But there was another witness. Brother Tim, and Sir Geros is right, it
was
murder—pure and simple. No, brother, do not try to range me, please—there are other secret mindspeakers in your hall. And do not expect me to make myself known or to reveal what I saw until you have made it safe for me to do so.”
And the fleeting contact was gone, like a wisp of morning mist.
“Who are the mindspeakers, here, Geros?” asked Tim. “How many of them are ours?”
Geros frowned. “Beyond any doubt, the best is your brother, Lord Ahl. You must recall that he always was far above average in that faculty, and it has been improved by a couple of years of training at the Institute in Kehnooryos Atheenahs and the year he lived at the duke’s court. But my daughter, Mairee, is almost his peer in mindspeak… and the two are seldom parted; he even took her to the capital with him, and the duke seems to think highly of her.”
“And,” grinned Tim, shamelessly picking thoughts from the older man’s mind, “you know how she feels toward my brother and are thinking that Ahl would not prove a bad son-in-law, eh?”
Though red with embarrassment, Geros nodded vigorously. “Lord Ahl could do worse, Tim. Blind as he is the Kindred will never accept him
tahneestos
. But he has the wisdom to make a fine townlord, and my baronetcy in Morguhn boasts a fine little town, and, since my stepson and both my natural sons died, Mairee is my only heir.”
Tim nodded emphatically. “No need to convince me, old friend. I think it a marvelous idea, not to mention a stroke of pure luck for Ahl. I agree he’d be a better townlord than perhaps anything else; neither custom nor law requires a townlord to be sound of body himself, just to maintain a few Freefighters and a ready levy under a loyal and efficient captain.
“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.”
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.