Chapter Four

After a tramp through the noisome streets of the city, Count Martuhn and Wolf grudgingly parted with a copper that a man at the fountain near the north gate would lave the filth from boots and greaves. Then the former nobleman overawed the junior officer commanding that gate and commandeered for Wolf and himself a brace of poorly gaited hacks for the remainder of their journey.

In the outer ward of Pirates' Folly, the hostler on duty looked with contempt at the sad specimens of horseflesh from which the two mercenaries dismounted… but not until he was leading them away, for the reputations of Captain Martuhn and his taciturn bodyguard were well known in all of Duke Tcharlz's lands, and few sane men would risk running afoul of such cold, merciless professional killers.

The duo stamped into the spacious anteroom—which constituted the only public entrance to the ducal audience chamber and the private apartment behind—and came to an impatient halt before the long, polished table which served as a desk for the noblemen who took turns screening visitors and almost always exacting all that the market would bear in fees from said visitors before granting them audiences with Duke Tcharlz). And suddenly guardsmen in all stages of dress and undress crowded out of the wide doorways of the two adjoining guardrooms, some openly grinning in anticipation, all anxious to be actual spectators to one of the rare confrontations between their duke's most valued and trusted captain—a man either respected or feared" by every soul in the duchy—and one of Duchess Ann's precious and unfailingly supercilious young noblemen.

The duke made a practice of conferring knighthood only for military achievements, but the duchess awarded such honors for less grim and sanguineous reasons—once, for a handsome performer who composed and sang to her a song praising her beauty, grace and wit; to another, for his skill at dancing; such things as handsomeness of face and dress, inventiveness in the matters of new games or dance steps or refinements of tortures to be used upon the prisoners chosen at random from the crowded dungeons at Twocityport—whereat Duchess Ann made her court and which her husband visited only grudgingly and solely for reasons of ducal duty.

Duke Tcharlz utterly detested his fat, ugly, arrogant and frigid wife, and he fully intended—indeed, spent long hours in pleasurable contemplation of—having her murdered, painfully, the moment that he felt his power such that he could hold all his lands in his own name against either external aggression or internal dissension. His deliberate delay in disposing of Duchess Ann was but another manifestation of the mature sagacity that had seen him succeed his ducal predecessor and onetime bitter enemy, Ann's late father.

Unable, for some mysterious reason, to sire any save useless daughters upon any one of his several wives and host of slave mistresses, the last hereditary Duke of Twocityport, Myk the Wise, had been most favorably impressed with the cunning and stark bravery and tenacity displayed by young Baron Tcharlz of Newtownport in the defense—with vastly fewer forces and inferior armaments and warships—of his minuscule principality against the old king of Mehmfizport, who was then attempting to enlarge by conquest his already sizable holdings.

Not much thought on the matter was required to show Duke Myk that when Newtownport fell—as it assuredly must for all the astute strategy and stunning tactics of its young lord—Twocityport would, soon or late, be next. Therefore, the old man had mobilized his existing forces and hired on every free bravo within reach, even granting amnesties for past wrongs to certain bands of pirates operating just beyond the fringes of his borders in return for their manpower and ships.

Through a stroke of purest luck, a fierce and wholly unexpected storm capsized, swamped, dismasted or drove ashore more than half of King Djahn's huge fleet even as it proceeded northward on the river to meet this new challenge, and the pitiful remnant were fallen upon and utterly extirpated by the duke's fleet, while Baron Tcharlz and his sketchily armed partisans hunted down and slew or enslaved almost every one of the now unsupported and unsupplied troops remaining ashore.

Hard upon the heels of this great mutual victory over what had been staggering odds, Duke Myk had suggested an alliance between his duchy and Tcharlz's barony. This alliance was to be permanently cemented by marriage between his eldest legitimate daughter, Ann, and Tcharlz.

Baron Tcharlz knew just why this magnanimous offer was tendered him. If, with no sons of any description, the aging duke should attempt to pass his titles and lands to one of his daughters, a protracted and bloody civil war was certain to ensue between his cousins, nephews and more distant relatives; if the internecine strife did not shatter the duchy into a number of tiny, all but defenseless statelets, the borders at least were sure to fall to aggressive neighbors. But with a strong, war-wise son-in-law, still of an age and temperament to raise or hire troops and take the field against internal or external foes…

Tcharlz and Ann conceived a mutual loathing upon their very first meeting, but the duke's eldest daughter, with no choice or options in the matter, had intelligence enough to accept the inevitable with as much grace as she could muster, while Tcharlz would gladly have wed himself to a fat sow from out the ducal swineherds, if that was what it would have taken to see him inherit upon the death of Duke Myk.

There still were rumors lurking about that the demise of the old duke—less than six months after he had formally declared his new son-in-law ducal heir—was speeded along by either said heir or his agents. But there had never been any real evidence to support the rumors, and the spreading of such gossip had proved risky, and sometimes fatal, business. Only the old nobility and retainers of Duke Myk might have been sufficiently moved by tales of his murder to retaliate against his heir, and there were but a bare handful of them left alive in the duchy in this twenty-second year since the ascendancy of Duke Tcharlz. The most fortunate of them had died of age's infirmities. Some had fallen upon the battlefields of Duke Tcharlz's early and widely supported wars of expansion. The wisest had left for other and safer desmesnes within hours of the death of the old duke, bearing with them all their fluid wealth. Those neither wise nor warlike nor aged had died in duels or at the hands of unknown robbers or had simply disappeared mysteriously.

But still the duke was leery of disposing of the wife he had loathed from the start and now hated with every fiber of his body. The reason that he allowed that hated Ann to live lay not east of the river but west, in the person of Alex, the Duke of Traderstownport. Not only had his great-grandmother been a legitimate sister of the late Duke Myk, but he was wedded to one of Ann's younger sisters and so felt that he had far better claim to Twocityport than did Tcharlz, whom he openly named "the Greedy."

Tcharlz, on the other hand, publicly bad named Duke Alex "the Grunting Shoat," and the two duchies had, during the last decade, come within an ace of outright war on several occasions. All that bound them together now were the thick, dual cables that stretched from bank to bank of the broad, treacherous river, providing an easier and safer crossing for in- or outbound traders and serving as the lure which drew the tremendous amounts of trade that had rendered both duchies rich and powerful.

In the lifetime of old Duke Myk, when relations between the two river-separated duchies had been most cordial, the operations and maintenance of the precious cables, their docks, barges, related equipment and row-slaves had been the sole province of the Bi-Ducal River Cable Company—a privately owned stock company, headquartered in Twocityport, paying equal tax levies to each duchy and with about forty percent of the stock owned between the two rulers. It had been a highly profitable arrangement for all concerned for almost forty years… until the feud between the dukes erupted.

Duke Alex it had been who first began to use the cable company against the man he considered a murderous usurper of his—Alex's—rightful claims to the Duchy of Twocityport. As usual, fees were collected from freight and passenger traffic upon boarding the barges—so much per ton, hundredweight or gallon of cargo, so much per head of livestock or per passenger. Now, however, each day's receipts went directly into Duke Alex's coffers, rather than to the company countinghouse at Twocityport, and he himself undertook payment of the salaries of the employees stationed on the west side of the river.

Duke Tchariz had, of course, volubly protested both by letter and by messenger, but each reply had been more ugly, and insulting and libelous than the last. Complaints from the cable company headquarters had been answered by an invitation to transfer said headquarters to the western side of the river and set about forming a new company, assured of the full support of Duke Alex's every resource, with the eventual intent of stretching a new and larger pair of cables from a point just north of his ducal Seat to a point within the County of Kairoh, across the Ohyoh River from Twocityport.

This message was supposedly secret, but thanks to his extensive espionage web, Duke Tchariz soon was fuming over the dastardly machinations of his peer. But the new-made duke was a man of action rather than of words. Within less than a month, he had invaded and conquered the smallish county to his north without bothering to declare a state of war and butchered all its ruling family, save the one, sickly and feebleminded scion he deliberately spared to serve as his puppet count. But he forbade plundering or any of the usual rapine and spoilage which has been the ages-old lot of the conquered, and he saw to it that his newest province was ruled even more generously and fairly than his older possessions, so that before many years had passed, the natives of Kairoh, prospering under his rule, would not have returned to a semblance of the old regime.

Since he had seen his plans so thwarted, Duke Alex had been reduced to insults, libel, scurrilous gossip, the dispatch of an occasional assassin or agitator eastward… and truly meaningless saber-rattling. For he knew as well as did Duke Tchariz that a real war between their two realms would be at best folly and at worst suicidal, for powerful enemies—north, south, east and west—required but the slightest hint of weakness or inattentiveness to ally, descend and try to capture for their own the rich lands, richer cities and strategic locations on the principal east-west trade route.

If it did nothing else, however, Duke Alex's growls of war caused Duke Tchariz to maintain a larger and better-equipped army of mercenaries than he otherwise would have done. Also, he kept hundreds of slaves and free artisans employed on various fortification and harbor projects. But he could well afford such expenditures, for all that his income had been halved by the knavish thievery of Alex.

His commission to his best and most favored captain to journey eastward and hire on recruits had been in anticipation of the early completion and garrisoning of his newest, largest and most important fortress—a huge and impregnable structure of stone, so situated that its cunningly designed engines of destruction could effectively cover almost all the waterfront of Twocityport and the mighty river itself to nearly midstream. Also, he had had the western terminals of the cables extended from the cable dock to new moorings within the fortress, so that in the event of an invasion by cable barge, his garrison might wait until the bulk of the enemy force were embarked, then sever the cables and send them all downriver on the strong, merciless current.

There had been loud, agonized screams and even a few muted threats when Duke Tcharlz first seized several square blocks of Lower Twocityport and commenced to set his slave gangs to leveling existing structures and even digging out the foundations; but all the merchants and other property owners had been reimbursed—a few, almost fairly. And now, even the most flagrantly robbed grudgingly admitted to the grim beauty of the new fortress, with its smooth and eye-pleasing lines—from the wide, deep, stone-lined and river-fed moat girdling the whole, through the high, thick walls of dressed granite and the cunningly situated and shielded engine emplacements, to the soaring watchtower, higher than anything else in Upper Town or Lower.

What Duke Tcharlz told none of the admirers of his fine new fortification was that although it could give easy lodging to a score of hundreds of warriors, a mere two hundred could hold it indefinitely. He knew this because one of the few men he had ever trusted had assured him of the fact, often relating to him how—long years ago and many miles eastward from Twocityport—he had himself held the archetype of this fortress for nearly two years with that few fighters and had, with his food almost gone, even managed to demand and receive favorable terms for himself and his folk from besiegers who could ill afford a further protracted campaign.

Duke Tcharlz well knew the military expertise of this man and truly respected him as he did precious few others still living. The stark new fortress was but one of his more recent accomplishments in the duke's service, which, bloody and varied, stretched back more than fifteen years.

When Tcharlz's most efficient espionage service informed him of the imminent landfall of the sailing vessel bearing Captain Martuhn and the new mercenaries from the east, he deliberately invented an errand for Sir Andee, then stationed in his antechamber, and replaced him with the current "guardian," Sir Djaimz. It would do the strutting young blowhard good, thought Tcharlz gleefully, to have the very dung scared out of him this day. Perhaps then he would waddle back to Duchess Ann—who had knighted him for something or other having nothing to do with fighting or military affairs, and whose spy the duke had known him to be even before he had arrived here—and thus leave the affairs of menfolk to those possessed of balls and beards.

It would have been most impolitic for the duke to openly watch the encounter he had arranged—as much as he would have loved to do so—but he had ensconced himself in the room immediately adjoining, where he could make use of the cleverly concealed peepholes and earholes.

Far, far to the west of the river, out upon that limitless prairieland which men now called a sea—the Sea of Grass— there was unaccustomed movement in the face of the fast-encroaching winter. There, where mosses, grasses and black earth all but covered the broken fragments of the cities and towns, the hamlets and farms, deserted by man and dead for more than half a millennium, were now more men, women, children and their animals than had lodged upon the land in one body for long centuries.

The traders from the caravans had remarked among themselves over the past spring and summer on the remarkable number of "new" clans—clans that had come up from the southern and down from the higher, western plains. But few had thought deeply upon such movement, for it was the way of the nomad clans to wander wherever graze and inclination took them. The traders had simply thanked their luck or stars or gods and accepted the enhanced trading possibilities presented by these new customers.

But the newly arrived clans were not, as the traders surmised, simply following their herds; no, they had been summoned. In an expanse of prairie where in recent centuries a season might have seen three or possibly four clans gathered now were camped more than six-and-thirty of the principal clans of the Kindred. Nor had their chiefs chosen the sites of this coming winter's encampment, toward which they now were slowly moving. The sites had been chosen and clearly marked out by a man whom few had met but of whom almost all had heard—a war chief of all the Kindred clans, elected by the Grand Council of Chiefs empaneled at a special summer tribe camp three summers ago, a chief named Milo of Morai.

Chapter Five

A true scion of the Tidewater or "Old" Ehleen nobility, Lord Urbahnos went to great lengths to avoid forking a horse, bred to his firm belief that carriage or war cart was the only acceptable transport for a refined gentleman. Only in direst necessity would he chafe and bruise his flesh, painfully strain muscles of thighs and buttocks and chance injury to his privates upon the back of some sweating, smelly beast, and never whilst wheeled transport was available.

But Duke Tcharlz's roads, especially the stretches between Twocityport and Pahdookahport, were deliberately a very bane of light-wheeled vehicles—although trader wagons and army vehicles, with their heavy construction, high road clearance and large, powerful teams regularly navigated the miles of ruts and mud and sinkholes. Since Lady Ann too detested riding horseback, this road was another barrier against her undesired presence in the duke's sumptuous new residence.

Therefore, the Ehleen had left Pahdookahport in the next best thing, to his mind: a spacious, well-padded, covered horse litter slung—at fore and aft—between a pair of rented Northorses. The monstrous iron-gray geldings were rare and hellishly expensive to buy, coming as they did from some land far north of the great inland sea; but the breed were all gentle, smooth-gaited, stronger than draft oxen and, standing an average of twenty-two hands at the withers, perfect for easily bearing a weighty horse litter above the virtual river of mire which autumnal rains and heavy traffic had made of the road to the east.

In the wallet attached to Urbahnos' swordbelt reposed three drafts upon his account at the Ducal Bank of Pahdookahport, all requiring only his signature and seal to render them negotiable, and he hoped to use one or more of these to buy the two valuable slave boys. However, knowing full well the preference of the plains traders for hard, ringing specie, he wore under his clothing a weighty leathern money belt, abrim with ducal gold and Ehleen silver coins. And this was why Nahseer and six other well-armed bodyguards trotted on surefooted riding mules before, behind and on either flank of his litter, hunched and miserable in the chill, drizzling rain despite their oilskins.

Protected from the wet by the canvas roof and sidecurtains, from the chill by paddings, pillows and a thick, winter bearskin, the onetime Lord of Kostanispolis sipped delicately from a commodious flask of strong honey wine and mused silently.

"Even if I have to part with every ounce of metal in my belt… and one of the drafts besides… my profit on just one of the little darlings will more than reimburse me… or should. Hmmm… let's see… perhaps… perhaps, if I sell the less pretty one… say, to a buyer in Kehnooryos Ehlas, and then present the prettier as an outright gift to Lord Thoheeks Nikos, King Zenos' principal adviser. Or should I gift the little bastard to the king himself? No, that's right"—he sighed gustily and shook his head of oiled ringlets—"like his father before him—God grant that that old scumsucker is burning in the deepest pit of Hell!—the young king is said to care only for women. Must be the barbarian blood, for he seems a cultured, civilized man in all other respects, from what I've heard. But not to take a pretty little boy now and again? Remarkably uncouth, to say the least!

"So! Then the boy must go to Nikos of Sahpahntispolis, who is at least gentleman enough to appreciate—to properly appreciate—the rarity and value of the gift. Why, this pah are the first Horseclans boys through these parts in years.

"As I recall him, Thoheeks Nikos is—for all his other failings—a true Ehleen gentleman of the old school, and if he gives value due to value received… and he must! I… I'm dying in this barbarian pesthole!"

Feeling tears starting to well up from his eyes, Urbahnos rumbled for a soft cloth and dabbed lightly at his eye corners, taking great care not to smudge the cosmetics on upper and lower lids or to disarrange his long, curling false eyelashes. Restowing the cloth, he took a long, burning pull at his flask before settling back again to his musings.

"So, then, the prettier… probably the younger will be prettier… the prettier will go to Nikos, and he must be untried, too, for the tastes of so refined a gentleman, so I had best send him east with Nahseer. Yes, that's perfect." He smiled. "That Zahrtohgahn bastard will butcher anyone who even touches the little sweetling, and, lacking himself any man parts, there'll be no chance of the guardian's being tempted."

Urbahnos had never had cause to regret his purchase of the hulking Nahseer, years before, when the Zahrtohgahn was placed upon the riverside slave block in Pahdookahport. It had been upon the first occasion that the huge man had saved his life and purse from a band of footpads—taking wounds in the process, since, prior to that time, his master had been loath to arm him—that the Ehleen had considered manumitting him… but he had yet to do so, for all that he frequently used the brown-skinned man to convey and guard especially valuable merchandise to the eastern coastal areas—furs, jewels, young and beautiful virgins and the like.

Now in his mid- to late-thirties, Nahseer claimed to have been of a high-caste family of the Kaliphate of Zahrtohgah, a mighty warrior of high rank in the armies of that land and possessed of wealth and power. His downfall, he went on to claim, was his intemperate lust for a girl who chanced to catch the eye of the kahleefah and be taken into his hahreenu Such had been Nahseer's bemusement that he had plotted to take the girl from hahreem, palace and city by a combination of stealth, force and bribery and bear her off to his own faraway city—aware that once her flower was taken, the kahleefah would have no interest in her and would, eventually, forgive him, since, in his almost constant state of war, he had far more need of competent captains than of just one among his hundreds of women.

However, as the Fates would have it, someone had betrayed the bold scheme and Nahseer Had been set upon by a host of the kahleefah's guardsmen the moment he dropped from the top of the inner wall to the springy turf of the hahreem garden. Knowing full well his fate if taken alive, the mighty man had drawn both yahtahgahn and long dagger and fought with awesome effect With strictest orders to take the intruder alive, the guardsmen had suffered terribly, taking crippling wounds and death thrusts and deliberately foregoing many opportunities to slay Nahseer in combat.

Finally overcome by force of numbers and sheer exhaustion, Nahseer had been dragged before his ruler. In a foaming rage at the numbers of warriors the prisoner had cost him, as well as at the attempted violation of his hahreem, Kahleefah Yusuf had had Nahseer severely flogged, gelded and sold for a slave to a party of traders from Ohyoh.

Despite the loss of his manhood, Nahseer had proved most intractable. Few of his early masters had owned him long, and all had been glad to see him go, often selling at a hefty loss to speed his departure. Finally, having become infamous and unsellable in all the Kingdom of Ohyoh, a river trader had bought the mass of brown-skinned muscle and bone for a pitiful sum on the speculation that he might bring a decent price in Pahdookahport or Twocityport, where strong male slaves were usually in demand for the oar barges.

Urbahnos surmised that the big man's loyalty to him was the result of his boundless thanks at being spared the long, hideous, drawn-out death sentence that was the lot of slaves and felons doomed to the oar barges. Had anyone told him that in the heart buried within that massive chest the Zahrtohgahn slave to whom he regularly entrusted both life and property hated and despised him, Lord Urbahnos of Kostanispolis would have openly scoffed and forever after have considered that person an idiot and utter fool.

"The lord thoheeks knows what I want, of course," Urbahnos mused on within the swaying litter. "He knows what an injustice was done me by old Zenos, that barbarian-loving, moon-blood-lapping dog turd. After all, I only pinked the ahrkeethoheeks' son. It wasn't my fault he died of black rot, was it? Of course not! And to accuse me of using a poisoned blade…"

Urbahnos almost always conveniently forgot how, on his way to that eleven-years-done duel, he had several times run the full length of his blade into the stinking, well-rotted carcass of a dead pig.

"So, the sooner I get the boy slave to Karaleenos, the sooner I may expect a pardon and a royal recall to my lands and city. Let's see… perhaps Pehtros will buy my house slaves; God knows he needs them. Why he's not long since died of some loathsome disease living in that pigsty is more than I can fathom. I suppose that I really should free Nahseer, but I'll surely need money to reestablish myself in the proper style, and if I can find a buyer willing to pay a really good price for him… but I won't sell him to the barge owners… no, not unless the other slaves and the house bring less than they should.

"As for Lylah, I might as well not go back home if I drag along a barbarian wife; no true Ehleen would even spit at me were I to do so monstrous a thing. Besides, we're not really married; barbarian rites aren't legal in any civilized, Ehleen principality that I know of. I'd Sell her for a slave, her and the brats, too, if I thought I could get away with it. But she's freeborn and her parents were citizens of one of those little southern counties, and if the duke found out…"

He shuddered, seeing himself overtaken on the trip upriver by one of Duke Tcharlz's fleet of sail-and-oar warships, dragged off the passenger barge and brought in chains back to Pahdookahport, where—his diplomatic immunity be damned—the old pirate would likely rob him of every thrahkmeh he owned in fines, then send him to his death on the benches of a row-barge. No, it would be far better to forgo possible profit and simply throw Lylah—his once-pretty wife of seven years—and their six children out of the house once it and the furnishings and slaves were all sold and he was ready to start his journey back east to the land of culture and light.

Often Urbahnos wondered just why he had wedded the chit, for what with her producing a child a year and her bouts of moon sickness between brats, his manly needs drove him to spend about as much time and money at the bordellos as he had before he wed. Nor were his forays into the higher-class brothels in any way cheap. The girls were expensive enough, but such few as would even deign to cater to men of cultured tastes and provide boys were astronomical, especially when one took into account the fact that the proffered boys were invariably passive, spiritless and a bit older than he preferred… not to mention often ugly and whip-wealed.

Urbahnos still gagged when he thought of that morning, some years back, when he had awakened after an hours-long bout with an almost-new slave boy to find that the little bitch had used a knotted sheet to hang himself from an iron wall sconce. Recalling the contorted face, protruding eyes and bulging, blackened tongue had brought up everything Urbahnos ate or drank for days on end.

After having been for so very long denied a really prime, young, untried love boy, it was perhaps natural for Lord Urbahnos to drift into fantasies of breaking in the other Horse-clans boy, the elder one, of course, not the younger, prettier one—that one must go, untouched, to Karaleenos. So, lost in this pleasurable fantasy, warmed by the honey wine and the bearskin, lulled alike by the swaying of the litter and the patter of the rain, he fell asleep.

For all that the road was in abominable condition and not quite straight in places, mounted men with decent horseflesh between their legs could traverse the full distance between the two cities in under a day, but as the ox-drawn trader wagons never moved fast enough over dry, level ground, it was closer to a two-day journey for them. In the days of the old duke, traders had camped overnight a bit off the road in a sheltered area that had an unfailing spring.

Duke Tcharlz, however, early in his reign, had recognized the possibilities, located a proved entrepreneur and entered into a silent partnership with him, advancing monies from the ducal purse to build, stock and man a sizable, well-built and reasonably comfortable serai in the area around that spring.

The duke had been astute in his choice of a partner. Portuh Frank had proved himself unprincipled and larcenous enough to reap handsome profits from the operation, yet sufficiently intelligent to realize that he was surely being closely watched by one or more of his Employees and that to attempt to cheat the duke would be suicidal.

The main structure of the serai was the counterpart of countless others the length and breadth of the land—a large, rectangular building of stone and timber, rising two and a half stories over a full cellar and capped with a roof of hand-cut shingles; floored with planks of pine, the serai's main room was fifty feet long and thirty wide, with a huge fieldstone fireplace at either end for heating, all cooking being done in a nearby outbuilding, while the small private rooms on the second floor were heated by individual braziers.

In addition to the cookhouse, there were a score of other structures, all necessary for the proper hosting of guests, their animals and running stock—huge, commodious stables for horses and mules; a sizable corral for oxen, partially roofed over to protect the beasts from the weather; a big smokehouse for cured meats and a springhouse of equal size for keeping butter, fresh cheeses, milk and suchlike. The smithy adjoined the shop of a wagonwright, with the fabulous six-holer privy being situated hard by the spacious pigpens. For easier egg collection, the hens were kept confined to the environs of their roosting house by a tall fence of woven reeds. Nonetheless, the roosters and some of the more adventurous hens were always roaming the innyard to be chased and occasionally caught by the hounds whose presence was thought to discourage the inroads of fox, skunk, weasel and other vermin.

Another covered pen usually held a few fatting sheep, for mutton was a favored fare among the inn's clientele, while a small herd of milk goats were rapidly converting a growth of young trees a few hundred yards behind the inn into a stubbly field. Portuh Frank and his current woman dwelt in a small, snug cottage near the inn, and the remainder of the staff bunked in one of the three structures designed for the purpose.

The commodious cellars beneath the main structure held the bulk of the serai's provender—barrels of flour and meal, dried beans, peas and lentils, cured and aged cheeses, casks of lard and honey and oil, dried fruits and vegetables— apples, peaches, pears, plums, raisins, garlic, onions, pumpkin, herbs, mushrooms—kegs of beer, pipes of various wines, barrels of hwiskees and stone jugs of cordials and brandies. In the darker, cooler reaches, wooden bins held root vegetables and fresh cabbages with casks and barrels of pickled foodstuffs stacked between. The cellars also gave lodging to a trio of brown ferrets—a hob and two fitches—the very presence of which guaranteed an utter dearth of resident rats and mice. The only entrance to these magazines lay without the main building, and the only two keys to its massive iron lock were never out of the sight of Portuh and his master cook, one Dik Tchertch.

Being by their very nature parsimonious, few traders of any class would pay the slightly exorbitant prices Portuh demanded for lodgings within the private, lockable rooms on the second floor, usually either sleeping with their men—rolled in skins and blankets and quilts—on or under the tables and benches which furnished the first floor—or in the familiar discomfort of their huge wagons. Therefore, few of the upper-floor rooms were any longer furnished, those that were being but crudely so, since their most frequent use was to lock up for the night either slaves or especially valuable merchandise.

So, when the slightly drunk and overbearing Urbahnos and his party of bravos descended upon the serai in the deepening dusk of the wet, gloomy day, demanding a suite of well-heated rooms, a hot bath, food, wines, brandy and cordials, Portuh found both himself and his staff hard pressed to accommodate this unusual and scathing-tongued guest in less than the best part of an hour. Never before had he, either in this place or in his former locale—far to the northeast, whence he had fled by night only a skip and a jump ahead of the grim and hard-eyed retainers of a certain earl—had had as a guest one of these eastern Ehleenee, and if all were as impossible to please as this one, he thought that he could just as easily live out the remainder of his life without the custom of another of the insultingly supercilious bastards.

But Portuh was nothing if not capable and unstintingly patient wherever money was involved, and in time the suite of rooms was cleaned, furnished and brightly lit to the Ehleen's grudging approval. The drafts of cold, wet air which would certainly have entered through the small, high window holes had been forestalled by stuffing the openings with rags and covering these plugs with small, bright hangings. Then the fine charcoal in the braziers' was started with red embers brought from the blazing hearths below.

Portuh himself sprinkled the aromatic herbs and gums atop the started charcoal and supervised the setting up of a long copper bathing trough and its filling with many steaming bucketsful of fresh-boiled spring water. The arrangements of what would be the Ehleen's sleeping and bathing chamber once completed, Portuh set himself and his staff to the larger, outer chamber.

With the final meal of the day still cooking, the only hot foods available were mutton broth and hwiskee punch, but Portuh had a large pot of each placed in the center of the table, with a heaping platter of cold smoked ham, several full loaves of crusty bread, crocks of relishes, pickles and fruits preserved in honey, a cold joint of veal, a brace of cold boiled hens and decanters of various wines, cider and brandy. Then, with bows" far lower than his girth would seem to permit, he ushered the ill-tempered Urbahnos up the stairs to inspect.

The first few days after the flamboyant escape of their older sister, Bahb and Djoh had been kicked and cuffed by their angered, frustrated captors. But the boys had borne this abuse as stoically as the long captivity, snarling curses at the men who struck them, saving any tears for times when they were alone and unobserved. And this behavior had won them the grudging respect of most members of the trader caravan.

Although the traders assumed them brothers and although they addressed each other frequently by that term, the two boys were not that closely related. Bahb Steevuhnz was a full brother of Stehfahnah—both having had the same mother and father—but little Djoh's mother had been a concubine, not of Horseclans stock but rather taken in a raid somewhere up on the far northern plains. However, this alien woman had died in his bearing and he had simply been added to the other baby then being nursed by another of his sire's women—this one a third wife of Horseclans blood—and at his current age of ten winters he considered himself to be a Horseclansman, for all that he almost totally lacked mind-speak and had darker skin tone and bigger bones than most Horseclans folk, with brown eyes and hair that was coarse and, when not bleached by sun, a light ruddy brown.

On the other hand, Bahb looked his heritage, was a true scion of the Sacred Ancestors in all ways. His telepathic abilities were great and well honed; he could mindspeak horse and prairiecat and the more intelligent of wild beasts as well as he could carry on everyday silent communication with others of his clan and tribe. And from his crosslegged Seat on the thin pallet in a corner of the chilly room in which he and Djoh were immured, he was using this talent to "chat" with the horses on which he and Djoh and Stehfahnah and their now dead older sibling had ridden into the trader camp. Although too small for the majority of the big traders to ride, the wiry horses had proved fine for load-packing and so had been retained. But, according to the plans of the traders, they too would go on the block at Pahdookahport.

But Bahb Steevuhnz had other plans, and it was the implementation of these that he was discussing with the most intelligent of the four mares, Windswift.

"Sister, Djoh and I have been working at the two bars of iron that block the wall opening in the place where we are. The opening is far too small for a man's shoulders to go through anyway, so whoever set the bars did not set them deep and now only a hard tug is needed to clear them away. Little Djoh can slip through easily, and I can make it, too, and one of the trader wagons is against the wall but a spear length below. But do you understand what you must do? Everything depends on you, horse sister."

The middle-aged mare beamed assent, adding, "But such a ruse could work only with stupid twolegs such as these who have enslaved us—twolegs lacking mindspeak. who have no real understanding of my kind. My brother will bespeak me when to begin?"

"Yes, horse sister, and it will be well after Sacred Sun has gone to His rest. No moon or stars this night, and just as well, too—the darker the better, for our purposes."

"But, brother twolegs, if this plan fails," added the mare grimly, "my sisters and I, we will not be taken alive by these ignorant, brutal twolegs. At your behest and at your twolegs sister's we have been meek and spiritless as so many silly sheep. But no more—after this night we fight!"

Bahb agreed just as grimly. "Belike, this night, we all will fight, sister; we shall regain our freedom or go to Wind."

After the serving of the evening meal—plain food, but plentiful—there was a brief period when the traders and their employees simply lolled on the benches and stools about the fires, chatting desultorily, picking at teeth, belching and otherwise going about the early stages of digestion. A bit apart from hoi polloi, Hwahruhn—who had been chosen as his successor by the wounded and crippled Shifty Stuart, whom they had had to leave in the home of a physician back in Tworivertown—and Custuh held their own, low-voiced discourse.

"It's boun' t' be them boys," averred Custuh firmly. I done had lotsa truck with them damn Ehleenee. City borned an' bred, all of the shaved an' oiled an' sweet-smellin' bastids, an" it takes suthin' more'n jest extry fine furs 'r the like fer to mek 'em leave ther dang houses an' towns, even in good weather. So, fer thet there fancy-dan Ehleen asshole up there to shuffle his stumps long a muddy road this far from Pahdookahport, he's jes natcherly got him a dang good reason, Hwahruhn, ol" buddy; an' it ain't but one lot we got would set a dang Ehleen to itching. Everbody knows "bout how they dotes on pretty lil boys."

Setting mug to lips, Custuh drained off the last mouthful of beer from it, then nodded and stated, "You jest watch what I says, buddy boy—afore long, thet there Ehleen'll be down here or, likelies', he'll've sent one of his bodyguards down to fetch us up there to his rooms. An' you bet it'll be them boys he's after, an' we play him right, we'll mek us as much off'n them as ever'thin' elst put t'gether."

Trader Hwahruhn said nothing at once, sipping at a beaker of fine wine and sinking his gaze into the darksome depths of the vintage. He still felt strongly, had indeed felt so from the very beginning out on the prairie, that only calamity would be the result of the cruelty and treachery with which Shifty Stuart had enslaved the three nomad children and slain their elder brother. He had seen the maiming and crippling of the senior trader as but the beginning of this doom.

He had been pondering upon the subject much of late. The poor abused girl was dead, as likely as not, and the boys could definitely not be released to return to their clan. If such were done, no trader would be safe out there until that clan's thirst for blood was slaked. But neither was it really needful to sell the lads into slavery—especially not for the hideous, unnatural bondage for which Ehleenee were infamous.

Hwahruhn had begun to wonder if the fearsome doom he could feel pressing upon them could be averted if he took the boys home with him and reared them as sons. He had meant to look in on the boys this night to explain realities, broach his plan and give them the ways and means to appear so weak and sickly that the auctioneer in Pahdookahport would most likely not even accept them in his holding pen, much less put them on the block. But now, with that damned, odious, effeminate easterner in the very serai, both time and opportunity had flown. And he felt ill, queasy in the face of a dire and certain danger—apparently sensed by none other, but nonetheless now hovering so near that he could feel prickling hairs or gooseflesh over every inch of his body.

Custuh had arisen and stepped over to a beer barrel to refill his flagon, and so rapt was Hwahruhn that be nearly jumped out of his skin and did slop out half his wine when a throat was loudly cleared just behind him. He turned to behold the dark-skinned chief bodyguard of the Ehleen.

Although he had shed both his armor and sword, Nahseer looked—and was, in truth—no less dangerous with the long, wide-bladed dirk depending from his belt. But his manner and his tone were formally polite and deferential.

"How is the master trader called… ?"

Hwahruhn shook his head. "I'm not a master trader, nor Is Custuh, over there; the master of this train was badly hurt a few days back, and we two sub-traders are simply acting as agents in his interest until he recovers enough to catch up with us."

Nahseer probed, "But you do have authority to sell goods?"

Hwahruhn nodded again. "Of course. In what might you be interested? We have some very fine hornbows for sale, real Horseclan-made. Three or four of them are of much better quality than you normally see offered."

The Zahrtohgahn shook his own scarred, shaven head. "I am a slave, sir. I have no money to buy weapons or anything else. And my master is interested only in two boy slaves he has learned you hold. He would speak with you and your associate… at once, please; I will escort you."

Upon being ushered into the suite that was to be his, as long as he could bear to remain, Urbahnos bad not hesitated to voice his extreme displeasure loudly and insultingly. The rooms were, by his lights, small, smelly, dirty, drafty and musty. The bed was lumpy and sour-smelling and the blankets were thin and stained. The filled bath was too hot, scalding; but yet the addition of but a single full pail of spring water rendered it "too cold."

The Ehleen dumped the tureen of mutton broth in the middle of the fresh-scrubbed floor and topped the mess with the hot hwiskee punch, then heaved the punchbowl at—and but narrowly missed—Portuh's head. Had one of his usual guests done even a quarter as much, Portuh's well-honed knife would have brought forth some blood to add to the other liquids on that floor. But he now restrained his temper, intimidated as much by Lord Urbahnos' known connections in high places as by the seven big, well-armed, tough-looking bravos.

But finally, with the arrogant Ehleen ensconced in a bath of the right temperature, Portuh brought in men and girls to rescrub the floor, scoop up the mess and replace the fouled carpets.

Once bathed, oiled and freshly scented, clad in clean garments from one of his chests and relieved of the chafing weight of the leathern money belt, Urbahnos had Nahseer bear the ham, the veal, a loaf of bread, some of the wine and a couple of the cordials to his bedchamber, and only after his stomach was filled did he allow the hired guards to go down to partake of the serai's evening meal. They were sent two at a time, so that there were never less than four of them and the hulking Nahseer to guard him and his gold. The Zahrtohgahn was granted no access to the hot meal below, receiving only the leavings of his master.

When the last pair of hired men had returned and when the belowstairs tumult had quieted somewhat, the Ehleen sent Nahseer to summon the master trader to the suite. With luck, only a single night would be spent in this filthy sty of a barbarian pesthole. No matter what he had to pay for the two boys, if the bribe one of them would constitute accomplished its purpose and allowed him to return and live out his remaining days in a clean, decent, civilized land, the expense would be trifling.

As for the other, the less comely boy… well, he would provide sport and release for Urbahnos himself this night and many a night thereafter until the Ehleen tired of and sold him.

An experienced trader, Urbahnos knew men and could quickly and accurately type most of them upon first meeting. The plains trader Custuh, he immediately realized, was, for all his stinking, barbarian antecedents, a man much like himself—avaricious, cold, cruel, cunning and completely amoral. Were enough gold and silver stacked on the table between them, Urbahnos knew that he would speedily have this Custuh's mark on the bills of sale that he had had drawn up before he left Pahdookahport.

But the other man, Hwahruhn, the Ehleen just as quickly surmised, could easily present problems, make the transaction overly long and force him to spin fanciful lies as to the eventual fates of the little slaves. He silently prayed that Custuh was in charge.

Ahzee, the elder of the two wagoners who had been assigned to supervise the captive boys and care for their needs until they were sold, had moved immediately the food was brought into the main room of the serai. He had chosen foods which he had known from his years of service with Shifty Stooahrt on the prairie and plains would have the appeal of familiarity to his charges—boiled mutton in its broth, hard cheese and soft, chewy chunks of dried fruits, a two-quart beer pitcher of frothy, fresh milk. Before sending a servant to fetch the milk, Portuh had loudly questioned why these slaves could not be content with his good beer or cider. But wise Ahzee knew that even the best grade of beers and wines had a decidedly unsettling effect upon the innards of Horseclansfolk, and he also knew that Mistuh Custuh would be a man to be avoided for some time if the two boys were suffering a bad case of the shits when put up for sale.

Before Ahzee and the other wagoner, klahrk, could reach the foot of the stairs with the trays and pitcher, Mistuh Hwahruhn had added choice joints from a roast chicken and chunks of honeycomb to their burdens. The stocky, black-bearded Klahrk groused under his breath about the short delay, but Ahzee gave him a single, hard stare; he liked and deeply respected Mistuh Hwahruhn and thought it a gol-darned shame that Custuh had been appointed head man.

In the room, Ahzee set the trays and pitcher atop a locked goods chest and drew a couple of smaller bales from the stack in a corner to seat the boys at the improvised dining table. While the older man so labored, the younger stood idly by the door, scraping his feet and whining that if they delayed longer all the choicer portions would be gone at the long tables belowstairs.

Ahzee just snorted, "All you evuh thinks 'bout is yore dang belly, Klahrk, an' it a'ready stickin' out like you's three moons gone, mebbe five! Don't be so dang useless, heanh?

These here younguns is ever bit as much yore 'spons'bility as they is mine. You jest tek their gut bucket an' empty it an' mek sure it's a good number of hay balls in t' box. Then you broach one them bales o' b'arskins, or with no fire, Bahb 'n' lil Djoh here'll plumb freeze t' death or at leas' come down with th' dang bloody croup t'night with them thin pallets an' motheaten blankets."

The wooden latrine bucket in hand, the tall but paunchy Klahrk paused at the door, his brows knitted, picking with cracked and filthy nails at a pustulating sore on his chin under the matted beard.

"Sleepin' col' ass one night ain't gonna hurt them lil bastids none, an' I don' think Mistuh Custuh'd be too happy if I broke no bale opuned, an'…"

Ahzee straightened up and whirled to stand, arms akimbo, his seamed face revealing more disgust than real anger.

" 'An… ? Dang yore lazy ass, Klahrk, you musta been gone to tek you a piss whin they's handin' out brains! Bestest thang fer you's t' let a body's got sumthin more'n rotten ches'nuts in they haids t' do th' thinkin. Heah me?

"You's a wagoner helper, boy. I's a full senior wagoner, with dang near twenny years awn t' plains, an' I knows, boy! Mistuh Custuh, he won' say pee-turkey bout one dang bale, oncet he comes to fin' out why it 'uz broached, cause these here younguns is money, big money. An' evun was he t', he cain't do a dang thang t' me, he wouldn' dast."

Ahzee grinned broadly. "See, boy, this here train is still the Stooahrt Comp'ny's, fer all poor ole Shifty's a-layin' back in Twocityport with jes' one arm an' a leg'll be gimp fer the resta his life an' his balls a-tore near off him. Mistuh Custuh's only got charge till we gits back upriver to Looeezfilburkport Then, if Shifty cain't tek the train out nex' spring, mos' likely his brother, Zeek Stooahrt, 'll do it. Don't matter to me none, boy, 'cause both Shifty and Zeek, they's my son-in-laws, see.

"Now you jes' shake yore stumps an' git 'long bout whut-all I tol' you f do. Heah?"

Later, when he had allowed the helper to go back down the stairs to crowd his way onto a bench and begin stuffing his face, old Ahzee sat while the boys ate, chatting with them.

In a casual tone and manner, Bahb shrewdly elicited all that the wagoner knew of the towns, inhabitants and terrain of the duchy, but kept his face blank to hide his deep disappointment from both his little brother and their captor. Short of trying to swim the vast and deadly width of the river, Bahb Steevuhnz could comprehend no possible way to win back to the west bank and even a thin chance to regain freedom. Nonetheless, his resolve was firm to continue on with the plan—better to die in honor, fighting to the end, than to become a possession again.

When the boys seemed replete, Ahzee placed the leftover food in the covered dish. Leaving it, the two cups and the milk in the pitcher, he gathered up the rest of the crockery and the lamp and departed, carefully locking the stout door behind him.

The moment they heard the iron lock snap into place and the descending footsteps of the old wagoner, Bahb and Djoh drew forth the three pieces of scrap metal they had managed to pick up near the wagon shop and forge during their brief time in the yard. All during the afternoon, while Bahb had held himself suspended by one arm from the sill of the window and picked at the shallow seating of the two bars, Djoh had been absorbed in honing the other, larger pieces to keenness on a flattish stone he had found and secreted.

While Djoh, mostly by feel in the dimming light from the small, high window, began to slice an edge of one of the heavy bearskins into thongs, Bahb took the longer, slenderer bit of steel he had used on the bars and commenced to patiently work it into the big iron lock securing the chest. Neither of the boys knew what was in this or any of the other wooden goods chests, but with luck they might find better weapons than three clumsy handleless slivers of metal.

Bahb worked the pick deeper, then twisted and turned at it, recalling the movements of the men he had seen thrust similar bits of metal into this and other locks; one bit of metal was as another to him, and he had never heard the words "key" or "lock" prior to his captivity.

Just as he felt the mechanism of the padlock begin to give under his efforts, there were footsteps beyond the door and a key grated in its lock. Then the door swung wide to admit three men—the two trader sub-chiefs and a tall, plumpish stranger.