Trumpets of War by Robert Adams

Author:Robert Adams [Adams, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781594262883
Google: cU7APAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0451147154
Goodreads: 1152509
Publisher: Signet
Published: 1987-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter VII

When the dying vahrohnos had imbibed of a stoup of brandy-water and had been propped up more comfortably on the old, blotched, moldy mattress, he spoke marginally clearer and in a slightly stronger voice. Ignoring both the old stains and the fresh blood, Grand Strahteego Pahvlos sat on the edge, beside this onetime subordinate, and was recounted a tale of pure horror, told of events that plumbed the very depths of human cruelty.

"As you no doubt recall, my lord Komees," said Iahnos of Ippohskeera, "my leg never healed properly from that injury I took at your great victory at Ahrbahkootchee, and so—as I was unable to sit a horse easily or securely anymore at speeds beyond a slow walk—it were an impossibility for me to go a-warring as did my overlord and right many of my peers in the hellish years of the interregnum; no, rather did I bide here, at home, and oversee the working of my lands, but rarely even visiting my small city, which task fell to my eldest son, also named Pehtros, in memory of the man I so loved, my wife's first husband, your son.

"It was hard on the boy to just sit out all the campaigning and the glory-seeking that so many of the nobility were just then doing, and so when Zastros returned from his exile and marched through here with his great host, I made no slightest demur to Pehtros taking half the garrison and quite a few boys and young men from the hold and the hold village to sally forth as spearmen for Zastros. The true king was dead, by that time, and I felt then that Zastros would make probably as good a monarch as Fahrkos. But poor Pehtros never reaped any glory; alas, he died of camp fever before Zastros ever was coronated, while still he and his swelling host were marching to and fro about the kingdom. Some few of my boy's men came back here to bring me the sad word and his ashes, the rest were pressed into another nobleman's following. His young widow—a daughter of Opokomees Deeahneesos Likeenos of Ehlahkahnooskeera—moved with his infant son and her household out here from the city, that we might the better share our grief, I suppose.

"Then Zastros made himself king and, almost immediately, his officers and their recruiting parties were marching about the lands, taking men for the army he was forming at very swordpoint, leaving behind only the old, the young and the crippled men. They stripped the villages and the city and even this hold, leaving me only some six old or infirm men.

"And so when that great host of bandits swept down on my barony, we were all as a tree ripe for plucking, with precious few to guard. They must have come in from the north or the west, for they fell upon the city, first; we could see the smoke from its burning. It was then that I brought the folk and kine of the nearer village behind these walls here, but it was all for naught, in the end.

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