The King th-3 Page 22

  One of the two dismounted Heruls, in response to the leader’s injunction to break up the sledge, picked up the ax of Varix, which was in the snow.

  In a moment he was before the sledge.

  “Ota!” he said, an exclamation of surprise.

  “What is it?” called the leader of the Heruls.

  “There is something here,” he said.

  “What?” called the leader.

  “A body,” he said.

  “It is dead?” said the leader.

  “I think so,” said the Herul.

  He gingerly pushed at the shape, lying within the ribs of the headless, half-eaten horse on the sledge.

  “Yes,” said the Herul. “It does not move. It is dead.”

  “There is a pelt on the sledge,” said the leader of the Heruls, referring to the folded, mottled pelt toward the back of the sledge.

  “Doubtless it is that fellow’s bait trap,” said one of the mounted Heruls.

  “What is he?” asked the leader of the Heruls.

  “An Otung, I think,” said the Herul.

  “Here?” asked the leader.

  “It seems so,” said the Herul.

  The leader of the Heruls and he closest to him exchanged glances.

  Basungs would have been expected, in this vicinity, if they dared to cross the Lothar.

  “Proceed with your work,” said the leader of the Heruls.

  The Herul at the sledge, putting the ax into the snow beside him, head down, the handle upright in the snow, broke to the side two, then three, of the ribs of the horse.

  He then reached within the remains of the rib cage to draw the body out of the cavity.

  In a moment the leader of the Heruls looked back toward the sledge.

  “Utinn?” he asked.

  The Herul stood by the sled, upright, waist deep in the snow, as it had drifted there, not moving.

  “Hurry!” said the leader.

  There was something odd about the attitude of the figure, as it stood.

  “The head, the head is wrong!” said the Herul nearest the leader.

  “Atlar!” said the leader.

  The other dismounted Herul was reluctant to approach.

  “Atlar!” snapped the leader.

  The second Herul waded through the snow to his fellow. He put his hands on him, and lowered him, half to the snow. He moved the head, and looked back at the leader. “The neck is broken,” he said. “He is dead.”

  “How can it be?” asked one of the Heruls.

  “Utinn is a shaman,” said the Herul nearest the leader. “He has died to go to the land of spirits, and will come back, with knowledge, and secrets and medicine.”

  “Utinn was not a shaman,” said the leader of the Heruls, looking about, uneasily.

  “He will come back,” said one of the Heruls.

  “One does not come back from broken necks,” said another. “It is not like the coming back from the magic death, the sleep death, the trance.”

  “It is done by spirits, in the pay of the men of Ifeng,” said another Herul. Venitzia was known among the Heruls as Ifeng. Among several of the other tribes of the area it was known as Scharnhorst.

  “It is the magic of the brothers of the festung of Sim Giadini,” said one of the Heruls.

  The brothers had not discouraged such beliefs among the Heruls.

  To be sure, it was unlikely the Heruls posed any great threat to the festung itself. They did pose, of course, a possible threat to festung villages.

  “Utinn did it to himself,” said one of the Heruls.

  “Then he is a shaman,” said another.

  “He was not a shaman,” said the leader.

  “How did it come about?” asked one of the Heruls.

  “I do not know,” said another.

  “I am afraid,” said the Herul nearest the leader.

  The leader of the Heruls looked about. The country was desolate. The snow was white, and calm.

  He then returned his attention to Atlar, the body of Utinn, and the sledge, half buried, half lost, half obscured, in the snow.

  “Atlar,” called the leader of the Heruls, calmly, at the same time freeing the butt of his lance from the stirrup holster.

  “Yes?” rejoined the Herul addressed, releasing the head of Utinn, which, loosely, as though tied on with rope, dropped into the snow, near the body’s left shoulder.

  “Step back,” said the leader, quietly.

  The Herul moved back, wading backward in the snow.

  “Pick up the ax,” said the leader, quietly.

  Atlar, uncertainly, not taking his eyes off the sledge, put out his right hand, as we shall have it, as is our practice, for the sake of ease, and simplicity, and grasped the ax.

  “Lift the ax,” said the leader of the Heruls, patiently.

  Atlar lifted the ax, with two hands, the tentacles wrapped about the shaft, back, over his head, puzzled, and looked to the leader, astride his mount, a few yards away, in the snow.

  “Kill it! Kill it!” suddenly screamed the leader of the Heruls, gesturing toward the sledge, with its weights, with the point of the lance.

  But at that very moment with a cry of rage and power, a cry, perhaps, even of war, a mighty figure, more than half again the size of a common man, seemed to rise up from the surface of the sledge, unexpectedly, suddenly, like lightning, like a springing lion, seemed to rise up even from the body of the horse, stark, dried, cold ribs of the horse, brittle and dead in the cold, breaking, bones scattering in its emergence, like a striking snake, like a lion, springing through sticks and straw, seeming to rise up, like a hurricane, like a lion, snow flung to all sides, and Atlar, a yard of a great blade emergent from his back was lifted over the figure’s head, impaled, the ax lost in the snow.

  The figure stood there, in rage, snarling, surely more animal than man, for just a moment it stood there, the body of Atlar held high, squirming, bleeding, over its head.

  But in that moment, in that brief instant, we may surmise, as would be expected of one trained in the school of Pulendius, it had located each of the Heruls.

  Of the mounts of the Heruls about, of which there were seven, five of which Heruls were astride, and two standing nearby, without riders, in the snow, hobbled, their two front feet tied together with the reins dangling from their bridled snouts, the five shifted, startled, one bucking, throwing his rider into the snow, while of the two hobbled, one sank to its knees, squealing, a leg broken, and the other, trying to run, fell to its side, rolling, struggling, in the snow.

  The war cry tends to inspirit and energize its utterer, but, perhaps more importantly, it can, if not anticipated, momentarily freeze the responses of the enemy or prey. The roar of the lion has a similar role, it would seem, at least in the latter particular. The moment of inactivity is often all the predator needs to effect his purpose, to strike a blow, to reach a critical point, to shorten a distance.

  With another cry the mighty figure, snow thrashing about its legs, they forcing that great body through the snow, had hurled Atlar from the blade and rushed upon the nearest Herul and mount. An upward sweep of the great blade smote away the head of the horse, and it spun away, and there was a burst of blood which drenched the snow for yards about. The rider slid off the back of the horse. The mighty figure turned about, again, and again the blade flashed forth cutting through a Herul’s leg at the thigh, cutting even the girth strap holding the saddle and the horse, too, sank to its knees a lateral slash marking the blade’s passage. Another horse reared over the figure and the blade slashed out opening the belly, disemboweling the animal, the rider pitching away, scrambling up, in the snow. The horse thrashed, squealing, rolling about, its legs caught in the loops of its own intestines, its frantic movements tearing them out of its own body. The leader of the Heruls wheeled his mount away, some yards in the snow, and then turned it, his lance descendant, at the ready. He called to his men. There had been six. Utinn and Atlar were dead. Another, Utak, had crawled away
, dragging a bleeding stump, leaving a river of blood in the snow. He had collapsed ten yards from the sledge. The rider who had been thrown, his horse bolting at the sudden, unexpected appearance of the figure, had now recovered his seat. Another rider, whose horse had been decapitated in the figure’s rush forward had hurried to Atlar’s frightened, hobbled animal, slashed the hobble, beat the horse to its feet, and mounted. The rider who had lost his saddle when his rearing horse had been fended back, with the fierce stroke of the terrible blade, some five feet in length, hurried, afoot, away from the sledge, to join the leader of the Heruls. The figure with the hilt of that terrible weapon in his two-handed grasp, panting, stepped away from the horse, which, wide-eyed, rolled about amongst its own intestines, these gushed forth upon the snow, bright, steaming from body heat, glistening and tangled, enmeshed.

  Four Heruls there were then, three mounted.

  One lowered his lance and charged.

  “Wait!” cried the leader of the Heruls, but the fellow had already, with a cry of rage, kicked back with his spurs, and his mount, squealing in pain, was plunging forward through the snow.

  The horse was to the figure in the snow almost instantly. The figure, trying to evade the charge, lost its footing in the snow, staggering, stumbling. It struggled to keep its balance. The lance thrust down. The Herul cried out in frustration. The figure in the snow, lurching, had managed, but barely, to turn the thrust with the flat of the blade. The horse wheeled. The figure in the snow felt the heat of its body, fiercely, its oily pelt, the fur-clad boot of the rider. The figure, buffeted, was struck to the snow. The sword was gone. The figure rolled from beneath the descending, clawed feet, the claws tearing in the snow. The rider wheeled the horse away, and then, again, aligned it, bringing it back once more to the attack line. The figure was now, again, on its feet, wary, hands out, the snow to its thighs, the sword somewhere to the side, somewhere inches beneath a dark cleft in the snow, not within reach, not before the horse, and the lance, could reach it. The horse, sped forward by the spurs, its flanks bleeding, charged, frenziedly. The figure evaded the thrust, forcing it up with a movement of his right forearm. At the next wheeling, and thrust, the figure, again buffeted, caught the lance behind the blade. The rider, startled, thought briefly to contest the possession of the implement, to struggle for it, to cling to it, but the shaft might as well have been rooted in the ground as be in whose grasp it was, and the rider suddenly found himself, as his horse shied to the left, unbalanced to the right, and he released the weapon, and grasped for the pommel of the saddle, and, in a flurry of snow, kicked up by the mount, half slid from the horse. As the horse turned, again, confused, wheeling in the snow, a hand on the Herul’s jacket tore him from the mount and flung him on his back in the snow. The Herul, down in the snow, perhaps a foot or more deep, doubtless half blinded by snow, may not have seen the lance lifted over him. Its point splintered away, stopped only by the icy ground. The startled mount, which had now veered away, its flanks bleeding from spur wounds, was gathered in by the formerly dismounted Herul. In an instant, he was in its saddle, bending over, seizing a lance from the snow where he had thrust it a moment before. The figure from the sledge stood for an instant near the downed Herul. The formerly dismounted Herul, now again mounted, was now back with the leader of the Heruls, and the other Herul. There were, then, three Heruls, all mounted. In the chest of the downed Herul, the lance shaft stood upright. It was like a marker, distinct against the snow. The figure hurried to the depression, or slit, or cleft in the snow and felt downward for the sword, and, in a moment, lifting it, cold, had it in his two hands.

  The three would charge, in a coordinated fashion. He could see the leader, some yards away, with gestures, and quick words, organizing the attack. He had, perhaps, three or four seconds in which to act. He had no realistic expectation, afoot, armed as he was, of successfully resisting the coordinated attack of three such horsemen. These creatures were Heruls. Many learned to ride, clinging to a neck strap or harness, before they learned to walk. Peoples such as Heruls had given rise, long ago, on diverse worlds to tales of centaurs, and such creatures, creatures which were at one time man and horse, so much one with the mount they were. Imperial cavalry, if similarly armed, would not meet them in the field.

  Four horses lay in the bloodied snow, one headless; one dying, disemboweled; one hobbled, with a broken leg, it snapped, broken against the hobble, in its earlier alarm; and one wounded, that whose body had been partially shielded by the leg of its rider, he dying in the snow to one side, the leg lost at the thigh, and the girth strap.

  The figure in the snow tore his way to the wounded horse, seized its bridle near the jaws, cried out, kicked the animal, jerked its head upward, twice, and the horse, squealing, got its legs under itself and staggered up to its feet, turning, unsteady, eyes rolling, its paws, wet, crusted with ice, trampling its own blood down into the snow.

  Almost at the same time the first Herul made his passage, but the horse was now between them.

  The same-line attack is often used against an enemy afoot. Two riders, or more, are required for its prosecution. It is supposed that the first passage may fail of its mark, and particularly against an agile, ready foe. But the first rider, if he is evaded, in effect sets the target for the second rider. For example, if the target, seeking to avoid the first lance, moves to, or is moved to, a given position then that, of course, determines the line of the second rider, following closely on the heels of the first. With three riders, of course, the probabilities of a hit are considerably increased.

  The second rider, too, plunged past, he, too, following as closely as he did, unable to move to the opposite side of the horse.

  The leader of the Heruls, pulled his horse up, and it reared, squealing, scratching at the air.

  The first two riders turned their mounts, the animals struggling in the snow.

  The figure who had been in the snow was then on the back of the wounded horse.

  At a call from the leader the two Heruls, urging their horses through the snow, rejoined him.

  There was no saddle on the newly mounted fellow’s horse as it had been lost in the earlier stroke.

  The weight on its back, and the activity of movement, freshened the blood on the horse’s right side.

  Its rider, the newly mounted fellow, unfamiliar, strange to the horse, surely not a Herul, had learned something of horsemanship on a distant world, Vellmer, an imperial world, at the villa, or holding, of a citizen of Telnaria, one Julian, of the Aurelianii, a patrician, even of the senatorial class. He had even practiced riding bareback, for one might not always have time to saddle one’s horse, and had, in the saddle and bareback, familiarized himself with the lance, light and shock, and the scimitar and saber. But it is one thing to approach targets, and practice the address, the parry and thrust with the lance, the wielding of blades, of diverse weights, lengths, and curvatures, such things, from horseback, against wands and garlands, and quite another against men, and yet another, surely, against creatures such as Heruls. His lessons had not been, at that time, learned in the school of battle, the most pitiless of houses of instruction. He was not at that time a horsemen, not in the sense that worlds, and even Heruls, would know him, and fear him, later. He was at that time young, a very young man really, though with a terrible maturity for his age. He was, at that time, no more than a creature of dreadful, awesome promise. Too, the animal was unfamiliar, and wounded. Yet, even so, the Heruls drew back.