Memories of Milo Morai by Robert Adams

Memories of Milo Morai by Robert Adams

Author:Robert Adams [Adams, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780451145482
Amazon: 0451145488
Publisher: New American Library
Published: 1986-08-05T04:00:00+00:00


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Captain Wahrn Mehrdok chose a splendid spot for the ambush of the looters. He armed every man with a crossbow and plenty of quarrels, a six-foot spear and a big, stout knife of the sort that was used in the harvesting of corn. He put two men in each chosen position, that one might be loosing while the other was recocking his crossbow and inserting a fresh bolt. He made certain that all of the quarrels mounted metal heads (common hunting quarrels had for long been just fire-hardened wooden dowels whittled and stone-rubbed to a point,then fletched, as a means of conserving metals). Then they all had hunkered down to await the return of the looters.

They had waited all through a long, long day, fighting a constant defensive action against hordes of insects, constantly on edge, awaiting word from their pickets that the trespassers were coming. On the ride back to the armory in the glow of the twilight, Wahrn had had to break up two serious fights between sweaty, weary, bored and disgusted men.

Sitting his restive, dancing horse and savagely shaking one of the last two would-be fighters in each of his powerful hands, he had grated, “Save your god-damn fighting for these strangers we're waiting to kill or you're both going to be a-fighting me. Is that what you want?”

That was not what those two men or any of the others wanted; that was about the last thing any of them wanted, in fact. All were fully aware that their captain could easily break any more average man in his big, hairy-backed hands. Why, hadn't he, and when barely more than a big boy, been seen to break the neck of a stud bull with those same hands?

While they were vainly awaiting the return of the looters, a great, huge cat of a type unknown previously in this region and of which thereexisted no picture or description in the ancient books in the priests' library slew a calf in the nearer pasture of Djim Dreevuh. Moreover the outsized feline predator had brazenly crouched over the still-jerking calf, tearing at it with long white teeth until one of Djim's sons had holed it with a quarrel from his crossbow.

Those who had seen the creature averred that it was solid-colored, sort of a dun shade above and with a pure-white belly and chest, and to Wahrn's mind that meant yet another threat to their livestock, for he knew from strictly forbidden forays into the ruined town that the other cat therein was a spotted one. It was purest idiocy to allow proven stock killers such as the she-bear and now this new cat to den up nearby and yet notbe allowed to go into the ruins and slay them; he knew it and the first sergeant and a few others knew it too. Now, if he and they could only win over enough of the other farmers to their way of think-ing, he would have a chance, at least, of facing and backing down that hidebound old bastard Mosix.



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