#54 - Liryen's Carbine Horse Guards

“Ahriminash!  Ahriminash!  AHRIMINAAAAAAAASH!”  The fading crash of smashing tea cup and plate fading behind him and Teel’s laggard boot heels were drowned by Ahrimaz’s shouts as he sprinted up to the dimly remembered office that he’d first tried to pretend to be him in.

He bounced off the door jamb of the partly open door and found Ahriminash already up from behind the desk and the father with him, already responding.  He nearly stumbled making the turn into the room.  “I need a squad of carbiners!  Right now!  You have a village down toward Cylak… name of  Mudredyr? I have to leave the Ambassadors are in danger and in this world I’ll be able to do something!  Save Didara!  I need a physician surgeon and Limye and a squad.  I can do it with a squad!  This time those villains won’t kill her!—“

“Whoa! Whoa! Son, please slow down.” Ahrimiar caught him by the shoulders, turned him around and sat him down at the stove.  “You need to tell us what you need and a squad takes a bit of time to get together.”

Ahriminash sat down next to him.  “I’m not saying I won’t give you a squad but you have to be a bit more coherent than that.”

Teel arrived at the door and at Ahriminash’s nod joined them.  “I just told Ahrimaz that there are elephants in this world as well as his world.”

Ahrimiar turned to look at Ahrimaz’s desperate face.  “In your world they were attacked?  And you didn’t say that one of them died in your world.”

“They were on the way to Inné… got waylaid…”

“What’s this town you’re talking about? At a place called Mudredyr if I managed to pick that out of the flood of words you just poured on us?”  Ahriminash turned to ring a bell on his desk and a page came trotting down the hall.  “Would you fetch the Stag Lord, please?”

“Mudredyr… it was in Cylak… the war kind of washed over it and it was half-rebuilt as an Innéan town… um… Innéan settlers.”

“What happened?”

“They were waylaid by bandits who were drawn from all over this area by the gems and gold they wear as normal clothing.  The Rigans in my world didn’t successfully warn them that they’d be drawing riff-raff like flies and only gave them infantry escort… their horses wouldn’t go on with elephants and we had to teach our horses that Jagunjagun wasn’t a horse-eating monster… Didara… their version of a scientist I thought… had an injury, a wound.  It was a spearhead that their medic couldn’t get out and they pushed on here to Innéthel to get physicians help but it was too late for her.”

A door slammed down the hall and Pelahir and the page set to summon him came panting in.  At least the page was out of breath though Pel wasn’t.

“A problem in Cylak?  The herds don’t even come down toward Inné till spring,” he said.  “I’ve had no letters.”

Ahriminash laid out what Ahrimaz had blurted out in such a rush and Pel got to his feet.  “I’ll have my coronshion at the military dock in less than three hours.”  He pulled his pocket watch out of his vest, chain dangling.  “Make that three and a half hours.  That village Mudred… we can reach faster by the river and then taking the White Road across.”

“There’s a road from White?”  Ahrimaz asked and Ahrimnash cleared a swath of papers off his table.  An Innéan and Cylak and Yhom map, with the Rigan cities on the edges, had been painted as a new top.  “Here,” he said, pointing.  “Dah if you would…”

“I’ll get the Liryen Carbine Horse Guard.  They should be up to this.  Ahrimaz, you’ll need to arm up with my son’s things… I’ll lend you a sword since we won’t hand you the country’s sword for this.  We can save your friend and perhaps arrange better contact with these people.”

“In this world that’s a Cylak town and yes they’ve had bandits in the hills for years."   

Ahrimaz leaned over the map, hiding his shaking hands by tracing all the strange roads the connections between three separate countries, listening to them just accept his crack-brained demand and start putting together a military force that they were apparently just going to hand him.  “Um… not your Ahrimaz?  You’re going to just let me ride away with Innéan soldiers?”

Ahrimiar raised an eyebrow at him and Ahrimaz froze, cringing inside, waiting for a wrath that never came.  “What would you do with them?  They all know you aren’t our boy but that I’m accepting you as my son.  They think I’m crazy or that you’ve gone crazy and if you give them insane orders they will not obey.  If you give them sane orders, and Pelahir and his Bucks are with you, they’ll do as they’re told.”

“Pelahir and his Bucks.”

“His coronshion , and all our horses will run with Cylak stags.  Particularly this Horse Guard.”  Ahriminash said.  “We can’t slight the Cylak Stag Lord our protection.  All are excellent shots with both carbines and bows.  We don’t have as many guns as you Empire seem to have. Inné has had to be bowmen for years.  Now we have our different shooters.”

“I… yes… how can I help get us on the road faster.  Teel, where did you have word of the Elephant Ambassadors?  The Rummmammalo?”  The familiar rumble shook its way out of his chest and all the other men in the room jumped.

“That’s their tongue?” Teel asked, then nodded sharply.  “They were at Riga-Feren, last I heard.”

“And Mudredyr is ten days away by fast horse from there,” Ahrimaz said.  “About the same as from here.  They were ambushed a half day closer… in the broken hills there." He pointed on the map.  "If we leave today, we can make it.”

“Especially if you go by river.”

“May I come with?” Teel leaned over to lay his finger on White.  “I grew up there.”

“Get your kit together raconteur,” Ahrimaz said idly, mind already racing, already thinking of how to arrange his men for river and then road.  “If you fall behind, I’m not coming back for you.”