Bili the Axe by Robert Adams & Ken W. Kelly - Cover

Author:Robert Adams & Ken W. Kelly - Cover
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780451120212
Publisher: Roc
Published: 1982-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Sir Ahrthur Maklarin had had his work table arranged as close to the hot hearth fire as was possible without risking the setting alight of his clothing and the papers which now were piled high on the table. One would have thought that, as heavy as had been the winter's snows, the spring might have been decently dry, at least; but it was proving to be anything but, and his many necessary rides of inspection in the chill and wet had set every bone and joint and old wound in his body to aching as fiercely as a rotten tooth, and he knew of old that only heat would allay such pain.

Laying aside the quill pen for a moment, he first trimmed the lamps, then took from the hearth a copper loggerhead and, after he had carefully blown the fine ash from the glowing ingot, plunged it, hissing and spluttering, into his pewter tankard. After a tentative sip or two, he drained a deep draft from the now-heated mixture of beer and herbs, wiped off his drooping mustache with a characteristic swipe of his hirsute hand, then set down the tankard and returned to his figures and figurings.

The brigadier was a careful, planning officer. He worked his staff hard and himself ten times harder. He anticipated probabilities and possibilities, meticulously provided for and against each of them and calculated certain needs far in advance of the actualities. All of his immediate subordinates and his noble superiors—he had no real peers—were more or less in awe of the results he almost always achieved, for all their frequent and frustrated cursings of his slow, plodding preparations.

Under his generalship, Skohshun arms had suffered but a single real defeat, and that one—which was the reason they had found it necessary to leave their fine lands in southerly Ohyoh, won at such cost by their forefathers, and cross the river to hack out a new homeland—could reflect only additional glory on the old war dog. His strategies and tactics had enabled his vastly outnumbered battalions to several times inflict such heavy losses upon the attacking hordes that their leaders at last had agreed to allow all of the inhabitants of the Skohshun Confederation to emigrate to the south, across the great river, bearing with them all that they wished and granting them five full years in which to leave Ohyoh.

Of course, there had been that close thing last year, in battle against the present holders of these new lands, these doughty Kuhmbuhluhners. But that had not been a defeat; the pike hedge had not been completely broken at any time; it had really been something of a draw—with both sides so severely stung as to willingly allow each other the opportunity to retire in good form.

The old officer again warmed his tankard's contents, then turned his chair half about and leaned back in it, thrusting his aching legs even closer to the source of the heat while he sipped and thought and muttered to himself.

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