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 fosterings 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. “Man-lover, 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 big-headed 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.
At sight of the prince, the oldster drew himself up into military posture and marched to within an accurately gauged five paces of the nobleman, then rendered a military salute, snapping, “Poorahbos, Djaimos, my lord. Retired
epeelokeeas
of heavy infantry of the Army of the Confederation. Would it please my lord that Poorahbos and his sons accompany the hunt?”
Prince Djylz smiled. “Aye, sergeant, get your spear and your lads, you look to have the strength to push a pike clear through a shaggy-bull, lengthwise. But first, tell me, have you seen them?”
The former senior sergeant had not, but reported that he had heard much bellowing and what had sounded like screams from the direction of a neighboring farmstead. So, as soon as he and his sons were laced into homemade cuirasses of boiled leather and he had donned his old helmet and buckled on his shortsword and dirk, he and his twin sons took the lead. There were no mounts for them but they proved to need none, moving easily and as fast as the duke cared to extend the horses in the mile-eating jog-trot of Con-federation infantrymen, spears properly sloped over right shoulders.
“That old bastard’s trained his lads well,” remarked Djylz to Giliahna. “They’ll be first-class recruits, given another year of growth.”
Up one grassy hillock and down another, then through a low saddle between two more hills the party wound along a trail through a small bit of forest, then debouched into another stretch of cornfields, with another cabin in sight ahead.
But this farmyard was not deserted as had been Djaimos Poorahbos’, it was alive with movement and sound—the flopping and flapping and pecking and raucous noises of crow and raven and buzzard. That on which they gorged had not been pretty when they arrived and their razor beaks and tearing talons had done nought to improve appearances, but once the carrion birds had been driven off, a tale could still be read in the hoof-trampled, blood-soaked dust of the yard and the gory, horn-mangled and stamped lifeless bodies—six of them, five human and one big hound.
What was left of a man still clenched a hand around the shaft of a wolfspear, the weapon sticky brown to the crossbar with blood; near the body of a youth was a horseman’s saber, gory for half its length. Another lad, younger, looked to have fought his last battle with a hewing axe. There was a burned-out torch near one hand of the dead woman. The corpse of what looked to have once been a slender, pretty girl was sprawled atop the roof of the cabin, dark-tressed head at an impossible angle and guts trailing from the belly torn open by the hooking horn which probably had thrown her there.
The shaggy-bulls had not been content to merely kill, however, they had obviously continued to savage their victims long after life had fled, and the results were hideous. Giliahna could only lean weakly against the high cantle of her saddle when she had retched up her stomach’s contents—nor was she the only one. The prince himself, though he was no stranger to the sight of death and mutilation, was pale of face and grim.
“Sergeant Poorahbos,” the prince called to the old spearman, who stood staring down at what the beasts had left of the man, “should these folk be buried or burned? What would they have preferred?”
Djaimos Poorahbos whirled and trotted over to snap to before the mounted noble, his stance proper and his spearbutt grounded. Tears streamed down his clean-shaven cheeks, but his voice was firm. “My lord, these folk were pawns to no priests. They should go to Wind.”
Prince Djylz’s voice softened. “Stand easy, Djaimos. You knew this man well, didn’t you? He was a friend, and an old soldier, like you?”
Poorahbos’ left foot moved forward and sidewise a precise eight inches and his two big callused hands clamped about the spearshaft, which he had allowed to cant at a thirty-degree angle from his body. “My lord prince, Imit Dyuh were senior sergeant-major of the Fourteenth Confederation Lancers, and the finest man as ever forked a horse for all the twenty-four years he served, till he took a poison arrer in his lef arm and the flesh-tailors had to lop half the arm oft. And’t’won’t be another like to him for a High Lord’s lifetime, I trow!”
After having the bodies placed within the empty cabin to protect them from further ravages of the birds and other scavengers, the prince ordered the party on, following the clear trail of the murderous monsters, but more slowly and as silently as possible. The hunters and farmers were fanned out well in advance of the mounted men. Nor did they have far to go.
Less than a mile from the scene of slaughter, one of the younger hunters came sprinting back. “We have found them, my lord.”
From a laurel thicket on the crest of a hillock, the men could look down into a grassy vale, through which tinkled the clear waters of a spring-fed brook. In addition to the shaggy-bulls, the herd had been increased by two orange-and-white milch cows—looking diminutive beside the dark, hairy, wild behemoths.
The old sergeant wormed closer to the prince. “My lord, those be poor Imit’s cows. Most likely that’s why he tried to drive off them damned critters.”
Prince Djylz just nodded, eyeing not the harmless domestic animals but their savage and deadly kidnappers. The big bull was an awesome sight—more than six feet high at the withers, his flaring horns black as crow’s wings and at least two yards from tip to bloodstained tip. An attempt had been made sometime recently to hamstring him, but the blow had been delivered too far back on the ham and without sufficient force to cleave to the tendon. Nonetheless, the massive bovine had sustained a gaping wound; his tail whisked continually at the flies buzzing about it. The pain of the injury certainly had done nothing to improve the bull’s temper, but the consequent loss of blood just might serve to slow him a bit.
The younger bull lay halfway down the slope and appeared to be either dead or very near to death. The face and head looked badly burned, and blood was still seeping from at least two places on the deep chest. Even as they watched, the stricken beast raised its head and tried to rise, then a great gush of blood spouted from gaping mouth and distended nostrils, the head fell with a thump onto the bloody grass, the legs jerked and twitched a few times, and dung and urine gushed from the relaxed sphincters.