"Adams, Robert - Horseclans 10 - Bili the Axe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Robert)

As the rearguard platoon departed the marshaling area, General Jay Corbett set his big mule to a ground-eating canter toward the head of the column, with Old Johnny in his wake. As they went, Corbett gave quick but careful visual inspection to each man, each animal, each packload they passed, silently acknowledging the formal greetings of officers and the less formal ones of civilian packers with an abbreviated cavalry hand salute.

When at last he and Kilgore joined the head of the column, the squat, powerful, thick-limbed Major Gumpner smilingly saluted. "Is it the general's opinion that the column is in proper order, sir?"

Frowning, Corbett grunted, "As proper as it's ever going to be, Gump. I just pray God we've foreseen and provided against every possible contingency, this time out. I don't want the blood of any more Broomtown men on my hands."

The major shrugged. "The general ought to know better. He's been soldiering for what, a thousand years? Even if through some freak or miracle we don't have to fight going up or coming back, we'll still lose menЧaccidents, disease, snakebite, maybe drownings, things that are or will be nobody's fault. The general taught me that himself, more than twenty years ago, when I was just a younker."

"I know, I know." Corbett sighed. "I'm being irrational, unrealistic, but that tragedy up north, when the train was mashed to death under that landslide, still haunts me. I think that after this mission is completed, I'm going to turn all field operations over to you and your staff and hie me back to the Center."

Gumpner smiled once more and shook his head chidingly. "The general knows he will never do anything of the sort. He is just not the type to willingly trade his saddle for a chair."

Jay Corbett chuckled, his good humor restored. "You know me well, don't you, Gump? Know me better, probably, than I know myself. Your father knew me that well, too, though, and you're almost him all over again."

Gumpner's tone became one of deep humility. "Thank you, sir, thank you sincerely. That was the highest compliment I could have been paid.''

"If'n yawl two lovebirds be done a-billin' and a-cooin'," remarked Old Johnny, who had kneed his mount up on Corbett's right side, "yawl might remark thet one them Purvis boys is a-comin' back hell fer leather."

Rahksahnah's warm, moist, even breath bathed Bili's shoulder as she slept, snuggled against him in the deep, warm feather bed, walled in by the thick woolen curtains from the damp, chilly drafts of the night. With the arm that held her, he could feel the hard muscles underlying her warm, soft skin; no tender, fluttery maid was this woman of Bili the Axe, Chief and Thoheeks of Clan Morguhn, but as stark and proven a warrior as one might find, capable of taking hard blows and returning buffets no less hard. And Bili could have asked no better mate.

But although his body was utterly spent with lovemaking, he did not sleep this night. For all his solemn words to the contrary, Prince Byruhn had no slightest intention of allowing a single one of Bili's squadron to depart eastward, of this Bili was certain. The young war leader was certain, too, that the crafty royal personage was even now weaving some arcane plot to ensnare them all in his service until these Skohshuns were either driven back whence they had come or extirpated.

Bili felt the need to counsel with some other officer, but Rahksahnah would, he knew, have to arise all too soon in order to give suck to their son, so he sent his questing mind out in search of Lieutenant Kahndoot, whose keen intellect he respected every bit as much as he did her personal battle prowess and her tactical abilities.

The woman's mind was sleeping, however, and try as he might, he could not enter it or rouse her. So he cast out for the equally familiar mind of Captain Fil TyluhЕ only to meet with an identical situation. Nor, it developed, could he reach Lieutenant Frehd Brakit or any one of the mindspeaking noblemen of the Confederation. He knew the impossibility of all of his officers and nobles being in sleep so deep at one and the same moment of any night. Not natural sleep, at least.

A drunken revel in the tower, perhaps? He thought not; in Kahndoot's case, certainly not, for she had been on duty until moonrise. Some drug introduced into the food? Not likely, for united as his force seemed, still were they of several disparate elements with differing cuisines and messes when in garrison here. That left only some form of mental control, and control by an exceedingly powerful mind. But whose?

He knew of experience that there was no point in probing at the mind of the prince, for, although not himself a mindspeaker, that personage had been taught how to erect and maintain an impervious mindshield by the Kleesahk, Pah-Elmuh.

Pah-Elmuh! Of course! What other creature in all this glen or in any of the surrounding lands could boast so powerful a mind? But could even the accomplished Kleesahk cozen so many minds at once? Probably not, but Bili knew that the Kleesahks could and often did mesh their minds with others of their species in order to increase or enhance their mental abilities. And all of the Kleesahks slept tonight in the tower keep.

Bili thought hard. It seemed vital that he know what was going on this night, whether or not his suspicions of Prince Byruhn and his motives were justified. But he could not penetrate the shield of the prince, and he was totally unfamiliar with the minds of the two gentlemen who had ridden in with his temporary overlord. However, there was another Kuhmbuhluhner mind with which he had, during the recent campaigning against the Ganiks, become most familiar.

Old Count Steev Sandee had never so much as suspected himself to possess mindspeak ability until Bili had, in a battlefield emergency, attempted to mindspeak the Kuhmbuhluhn noblemanЕ and succeeded, after a fashion. At the very best, Count Steev's mindspeak was marginal, and his mindshield was correspondingly weak, but this would make the task to which Bili had set himself that much easier of accomplishment. Not that the young thoheeks did not feel a twinge of conscience in the contemplation of thus violating the sleeping mind of a fine old man he had come to consider a friendЧto the exceedingly talented mind of Bili, such a thing smacked much of a variety of mental rapeЧbut he managed to set conscience at a distance in this instance through the rationalization that this praying was, after all, for the good of those men and women who depended upon him and whose very lives would be the forfeit should he fail them or make an erroneous decision.

Therefore, he sent his mental beam out again into the night, seeking, questing after the well-known mind of Count Steev. Found, the shield of that mind was no barrier to him and he was able to slip into the old nobleman's mind without awakening his victim, as easily as a sleek otter slips into water. And, in that terribly troubled mind, he found the answers to most of his questions, a full confirmation of his long-standing suspicions of Prince Byruhn's motives and methods.

Bili of Morguhn had thought it deuced odd when, last year, all of the members of his mixed groupЧeven the Confederation nobles, who had never before been known to easily agree upon anything amongst themselvesЧhad bespoken him of their unanimous decision to serve the needs of Prince Byruhn for as long as it took to rid Southern New Kuhmbuhluhn of the foul Ganiks. Now he knew that that had been no miracle but an example of Kleesahk mind manipulation done at the behest of the prince. And this night another such mass cozening was being perpetrated against or upon all who lay in their unnaturally deep slumber in the massive tower keep.

"Allright," he silently told himself, "now I know; it's no longer mere possibly unwarranted suspicion of Byruhn. But, now that I do truly know, what is there for me to do? How can I undo this infamy, free my folk from this bondage into which a dishonorable man has had them cozened, tricked, deluded?"

He made a wry face in the darkness. More likely than not, there was nothing he could do, not really. By morning, the now sleeping Kindred, Ehleenee, Freefighters, Maidens and Ahrmehnee would all be fully cozened into the firm belief that their unanimous decision to help fight yet another of Byruhn's wars was assuredly their own decision, arrived at rationally and individually. Now was the time to put a stop to the insidious trickery being wrought by the Kleesahks at Byruhn's command, but before even so strong and adaptable a mind as Bili's could wreak or attempt to wreak such, he would have to know far more than he now did about the methods of the Kleesahks.

And such was very unlikely, only possible if Pah-Elmuh or another of the hominids should suddenly make him privy to the secret; and maybe not even then, for the minds of the Kleesahks were extremely different from the minds of men, being capable of powers, feats, abilities which no human mind could match or copy.

So, what then? Openly accuse Prince Byruhn of treachery? Bili lacked any scintilla of real proof, and he could, moreover, be certain that the slavishly loyal Count Sandee's conscious mind would never permit him to reveal aught that might compromise his overlord. Nor was it to be conceived that Pah-Elmuh or any other Kleesahk would betray the very dishonorable secret of their prince.

Bili simply had to absorb and digest the unpalatable fact that, in this instance, he was helpless. On the morrow, when his folk announced to him their group decision, his only options were to either take Rahksahnah and his new little son, Djef, and ride east into the Ahrmehnee lands and, thence, into Vawn and Morguhn, or to resume command and leadership of the squadron he had led for the past year.