A Cat Of Silvery Hue by Robert Adams

to the north and west, before he shook his yard, dropped his kilt and made to turn about.
    Then a hard, rough hand clamped down over his mouth, jerking back his head and preventing him from voicing his agony at the sharp bite of steel which bit in under the angle of his jaw and traced fire across the front of his straining throat. And the hand was taken away, being no longer needed, for Ruhmos’ windpipe was filled now with a thick, hot liquid which he realized, as the crushing blackness engulfed him, must be his own blood.
    For many long years,
Komees
Hari had utilized the barrack space above the hall stables for the practical purpose of storing grain and hay. Only since be rode out to his supposed death had the Lady Hehrah restored it to its original function, feeling that with the men so far from the hall, there would be less likelihood of them attempting to seduce the female servants into the filthy sin of fornication…and, of course, her scheme worked no better than equally puritanical plans ever do.
    This night, at least a quarter of the sleeping guardsmen shared their straw-filled pallets with companions. But like the now deceased Ruhmos, the soot-smeared apparitions who invaded the long, darkened room had their orders. They obeyed those orders to the very letter. Working south from the tower through which they had entered, they made brief stops at each sleeping couch, and when they passed on to the next, no one—man or woman or painted love boy—remained alive behind them.
    Their sanguinous task silently completed, most of the dark men descended to the courtyard, and, fumbling and stumbling in the inky entrance passage, they began to unbar the main gate. Two sought the hall stable, where they quietly strangled the man found there. One retraced his steps to the tower, took an arrow from dead Ruhmos’ case and wound its shaft with strips of oil-impregnated cloth.
    In deference both to his new rank and to her high regard for him, Lady Hehrah had granted Captain Danos quarters in the hall itself. Which, he often thought to himself, was a fair step upward in the world for a young man whose father had been beaten to death by old
Komees
Djeen Morguhn’s herdsmen when caught stealing sheep.
    Thanks to several extra measures of wine, Danos had slept well and deeply earlier in the night, but a full bladder had wakened him soon after midnight. He had piddled in his chamberpot, then returned to his bed, only to find that sleep evaded him. He turned over and over on the sweat-damp bedclothes, vainly seeking a position which would once more vouchsafe him sleep. At length, he surrendered to wakefulness and, with a groan of anger, lowered his feet to the tiles and sat up on the edge of the bed.
    Without conscious volition, his hand dropped into his crotch and, before he knew he had done so, he had stroked his sex several times. Frantically, he snatched the hand away before he could do anything really sinful, breathing a short prayer for protection against temptation.
    Clasping his hands firmly behind his head, he lay back across the width of the bed, and his thoughts strayed back to his triumphs of that first week of his captaincy. Nearly every time he and his troop had gone down to the village for another child, they had been able to catch women and girls in the fields, ride the shrieking sows down and rope them and strip them and swive them properly. That had indeed been fun. And no need to worry about the wrath of the old heathen
komees
, as on Danos’ necessarily rare previous forays.
    Sex, such as he knew the guardsmen were presently enjoying in their barrack, had been denied Danos for much of his life, his rare attempts always having the same tiring, inconclusive, infinitely frustrating end. Then one early autumn day, the chief huntsman had been ill and Danos had been sent out to bag small game for the table. Deep in the forest, he had chanced upon a village girl gathering nuts, and on a never-understood impulse, he had