Horseclans - Horseclans's Odyssey Part 1

Adams, Robert.

Horseclans.

Horseclans's Odyssey.

Author's Introduction

In the previous Horseclans volumes (Swords of the Horseclans through The Patrimony) I have moved consistently forward in time from the initial volume of the series (The Coming of the Horseclans) ; but this volume and the next few which will follow it are all set before the time of The Coming. If some of my readers are confused by this, I am sorry, but I had deliberately left the initial volume open at both ends because I was planning just what I have now done.

The books to follow this one will deal with the origin of the prairiecats, the discovery of the breed of mind-speaking horses, certain of the adventures of Milo of Morai prior to his return to the Horseclans, and much, much more. May Sacred Sun shine always upon you all.

Robert Adams Richmond, Virginia 28 July 1980

Chapter One.

The Great River, which had shone bright-blue at a distance, rolled muddy-brown as it slid under the blunt prow of the broad row-barge. Senior Trader Shifty Stuart occasionally spat from the cud of tobacco in his cheek into the river, but be did not bother to look at the water, nor did he look back to the west, at Traderstown, which the vessel had just left His eyes were for the east, for Tworivertown, where he would shortly make landfall with his cargo of furs, hides, fine horn-bows, matchless felts and blankets of nomad weave, beautifully worked leather items and a vast a.s.sortment of oddments obtained by the far-ranging horse-nomads of the transriverine plains by trade or warfare from other folk farther west, south or north.

This was not Stuart's first such return from a long summer of trading with the nomads. For sixteen summers he had roved the plains country in a caravan of trader wagons- endless days of baking heat, choking dust, swarms of biting flies and other noxious insects, the incessant lowing of the huge oxen that drew the oversized, high-sided wagons on their five- or six-foot wheels from one clan meeting place to another or, every fifth summer, up to the semipermanent Tribe Camp for the quintennial meeting of the chiefs of all or most of the sixty to seventy clans of horse-nomads that had ruled the plains for most of the five or six hundred years since the fabled Mercan civilization had gone down in death and destruction at the hands of some far-distant enemy who must have suffered equal or worse devastation and deci-mation, since no invading armies had ever followed up the bombs and plagues. Stuart had heard all the tales, and he even believed some of them, for he had seen with his own two eyes the cracked and splintered shards of the network of fine roads that had once crisscrossed the land, and the long-dead and overgrown, but still impressive by their far-flung hugeness, cities of the plains. On three occasions, he had overruled the superst.i.tious maunderings'of his wagoners and a.s.sociates to camp in the ruins of one of thelarger of these, that one that the nomads called Ohmahah, and on each visit he and his men had garnered several hundredweights of a.s.sorted metal sc.r.a.ps out of the ruins, for all that the nomads had doubtlessly combed and recombed them for generations. Others of the old tales were believed only by fools and children, opined Stuart, Such as the yarns concerning men traveling to and walking upon the moon, or living beneath the sea or crossing the sea in boats lacking either oars or sails. Silly, asinine nonsense, all of it!

The senior trader leaned his weight against the ma.s.sive timber beside him-one of four, two each at prow and stern, which were built into the flat bottom of the barge and ran through every level to more than twenty feet above the top deck, where they supported the iron rings through which was let a hempen cable over two feet in thickness and extending from the ferry dock of Traderstown to the ferry dock of Tworivertown, enabling the ponderous, topheavy barges to bear men and women, wagons, livestock and goods across the wide water in any weather and in complete safety.

He c.o.c.ked up one leg to rest a booted foot upon the low rail and began to calculate his probable profits.

Then a hand was tugging gently at his sleeve. He turned his head to see Second Oxman Bailee.

"I'm sorry to bother you, Mistuh Stuart, suh, but it's thet there nomad gal, she wawnts to git out to squat. Ever sincet I beat her good fer messin' up the wagon, she's done been real good 'bout thet.

D'you rackon..." Stuart waved a hand impatiently. Bailee was a good oxman, when he wasn't drunk at least, but he took forever to Say anything in his whining, nasal, Ohyoh-mountaineer drawl.

"Yes, yes, Bailee, let the little s.l.u.t out. It's safe to now- we're almost halfway across."

As an afterthought, he yelled at the oxman's back, "And when she's emptied herself, bring her up here to me."

The trader settled back against the immobile timber baulk with a self-satisfied smile. In his recent calculations he had clean forgot to add the probable sale price of the girl and of the two other younkers, as well, not to mention the three fine, spirited plains ponies. And even if she and the boys were to bring Stuart not a penny, still the last few weeks of use of her slender, toothsome body of nights would be almost recompense enough. The treks outward, in the springtime, were not so bad, for the trading trains most always carried along comely young female slaves for sale to the nomads. Unlike most of the eastern, civilized slave buyers, the hors.e.m.e.n of the plains cared not a sc.r.a.p of moldly hide whether or not their human purchases were virgins. Indeed, they would pay more for a pregnant girl or one nursing a new brat than for the very prettiest virgin or barren s.l.u.t. Therefore, all the traders and many a common wagoner or oxman usually had a soft-breasted bedwarmer every westward leg of the year's trek, until she quickened or was sold into some clan or other.

But the returns usually were companionless. Providing food and water for any chit that had for whatever reason not been sold by the end of trading was unbusinesslike. Nomads would not take a sickly or lunatic slave girl even as an outright gift, and many a trader drove these unprofitable leftovers out into the vast sea of gra.s.ses to fend for themselves. But Stuart was a bit more kindly. He had a guard or oxman slit the creatures' throats and leave the carca.s.ses for the wolves and buzzards.

The horse-nomads only bought, however; they never sold slaves of any description. For all that, the rarely captured nomad women brought high prices from eastern buyers, while a trader lucky enough to acquire even one little nomad boy could practically name his own price from the slave mongers who had journeyed inland from the coastal lands of the Ehleenee, no trader who valued his yearly custom and his hide would so much as mention his willingness to deal in nomads to any of those s.h.a.ggy, smelly, fleabitten, but grim and ferocious warriors and chiefs with whom he dealt. Nor could an enterprising man simply s.n.a.t.c.h a few of the immensely profitable nomad sp.a.w.n and bear them back east-ward with him, for his own guards-hired here and there, from this clan or that, for the season-would not only desert him, but would bring back the fierce warriors of the closest clan to wreak a horrible vengeance upon the kidnappers and free the captives.

"You're a dang lucky son of a b.i.t.c.h, Shifty Stuart!" the trader told himself for the umpteenth time in the last three weeks. "If them four savages had come a-riding into camp even two days earlier, wouldn't *ve been a dang thing we could have done 'cept to give 'em a feed and a mebbe do a little trading for them raw hides and horns they had. With them dang Clan Muhkawlee guards still in camp. I'd've just had to watch a small fortune ride back off from me." Through the sleeve of his tough linen shirt, Stuart gingerly kneaded the healing but still painful stab wound in his upper arm, thinking, with a p.r.i.c.kle of justifiable fear, "It were a near thing, though, fer all that If thet young feller had got away..." He shuddered, his thoughts going back to tales he had heard of what had been done by vengeful nomads to would-be kidnappers of their kin. He shook his head. "Whoever would've thought a little squirt-he couldn't've been more'n fifteen or sixteen, an' dang skinny, to boot!-so groggy he couldn't hardly stand up from the drug we'd snuck into his bowl of stew, could of kilt two growned men outright, hurt another so bad he died thet night, an' stabbed or slashed four or five others, got on his horse and been on his way, afore ol' Lyl Sunk thet dart in his back?"

Fleetingly, the trader once more regretted the loss-unavoidable as it had been-of the third nomad boy, then shrugged, ruminating, "Ain't no good to fret over spilt milk, I reckon. Mean as thet little bastid was, likely he'da had to be beat plumb to death afore a body got any use outen him, anyhow." Stuart grinned again. "Three hundred dollars apiece, mebbe more, them two younkers oughta bring me, oncet I gits 'em to Fanduhsburk, mebbe twicet thet if I decides to take 'em plumb to Looeezfilburk. h.e.l.l, mebbe I'll do 'er, been c.o.o.n's years sincet I'z in Looeezfilburk, an' I'll have me the gal to play with till we gets there, too. 'Course, she's gotta be gentled down some..." He had been the first to take the girl, and the little minx had fought him like a scalded treecat-pummeling, punching, kicking and clawing until his arm wound had started to bleed again, not to mention tooth-tearing his bristly chin and very nearly biting his right ear off; which last injuries. she had wrought on him after he had had her wrists and ankles securely tied to the wagon sides, nor was he the only man she had savagely marked. That he had successfully resisted the impulse to give her back as good or better with his big, bony fists and strictly forbidden any of the others with whom he shared the use of her to strike her face had been based upon a good, sound principle of business-broken noses and knocked-out teeth lowered the value of female slaves.

He had not, of course, expected her to be a virgin, nor had she been; no nomad girl ever was so for any length of time after attaining p.u.b.erty. "But," he mused and again grinned to himself, "they says them there slave doctors in Fanduhsburk could make a virgin outen a thirty-year-old wh.o.r.e. Mebbe I oughta git 'em to make this gal inta one? Hmm, I'll think on it. She'd sure bring more thet way, eastern buyers likin'

virgins the way they does." He returned to his mental calculations for another few moments, then Bailee was shoving the girl to a place beside him at the rail, and he lost his train of thought. A glance downward gave him a glimpse only of the top of her head of dull, matted, dirty, dark-blond hair, for like all her people she was small, barely as high as his armpit The girl's baggy trousers and full-sleeved shirt were both Somewhat the worse for having been violently removed from her body on several occasions, as well as being filthy from having been lived in and slept in for the weeks since her capture. Her short boots of red felt and brown leather had survived in better condition, since she had been carefully locked out of sight in one of the big wagons for most of the journey.

She stood at the rail for some minutes, then shyly edged closer, closer, until her slender body was in contact with Stuart's. Her grubby, broken-nailed, but slim and graceful right hand hesitantly extended to touch, then gently ma.s.sage his genitals through the stuff of his clothing. Stuart grinned. "Cain't git enoughof me, can you, baby dolir Without turning his head, he said, "Bailee, you can jest go on back, 'bout your work. Me an' this here little gal's got us some palav'rin' to do up here."

The trader closed his eyes in ecstasy as the captive girl rubbed and kneaded and caressed his flesh, and he was completely unaware of her other hand's activities, not even feeling the easing of the silver-hilted knife from out its sheath in the top of his right boot.

When he did feel the girl's body begin to crouch lower, he began to turn to face her... and a white-hot agony lanced in behind his right knee! Even as he suddenly realized that the right leg no longer would support him, the girl-still firmly clutching his s.c.r.o.t.u.m in her wiry grip-launched herself forward, over the rail. Stuart, screaming his agony and terror, was dragged over and down and into the muddy brown water of the Great River.

Chapter Two.

The shock of striking the water and its coldness stunned Stehfahnah for but a moment. She let go of the man and put the blade of the knife between her small white teeth in order to free both hands for swimming. Surfacing, she shook the water from her eyes and breathed deeply, treading water and moving her arms to keep her body erect in the water.

Gasping and coughing up water, her sometime captor was floundering about a few yards distant, just beyond the rhythmic file of splashing oars, which meant some eighteen feet from the side of the barge, the upper rail of which was now lined with men, all shouting and pointing.

Taking another deep gulp of air, Stehfahnah swam purposefully in the trader's direction. Once close behind him, she grabbed the back of his wide weapons belt, jerked loose his big dirk and its sheath, then shoved him deliberately into the path of the heavy oars.

Stuart did not even have time to scream before the hardwood blade of one of the sweeps, driven by the strength of four brawny slave rowers, smashed into him. He sank for a long moment, then bobbed up, to float, face-down, with the current. By the time Several of the bargemen and wagoners had swum out, attached a rope to their leader and managed to hoist his limp, battered, broken and bleeding hulk back onto the barge, the girl was nowhere in view. Remembering the shrewdly cast dart that had pierced and slain her elder half brother, Broh, on the dark day she and her younger brothers were drugged and made captive by the treacherous traders, Stehfahnah swam underwater until she was beneath the flat bottom of the second barge, fifty yards behind the first. As the lead barge had halted, the barges behind had had no choice but to follow suit, but the column could not remain immobile for long, else the insistent tugging of the river's current at their bulks would place undue pressure upon the transriverine cable.

Stehfahnah, too, was menaced by the current. She clawed at the rough, slimy boards, hearing just a few inches above her the clashings and ianglings of the chains that held the oar slaves to their benches. At last she found a hold that would allow her to extend her head slightly and break surface at the waterline to take air while she did what she must do.

Her lungs once more filled afresh, she sent out a telepathic beam-a type of communication that her people called "mindspeak," fairly common in those of her blood, but rather rare among these alien folk.

She did not really know if one or both of her younger brothers were aboard this barge, but she could hope... "Djoh, Bahb!"

"Stehfahnah?" "Yes," she affirmed. "I have escaped. I jumped off the water wagon. I think I slew the swine, Stooahrt, so a small part of our clan's vengeance has been taken, perhaps. I am under your water wagon, but there is no way I can free you, as well; you must find a time and a place to accomplish that for yourselves."

Twelve-year-old Bahb's acceptance of the situation was beamed clearly, but the younger boy, Djoh, asked silently, "But sister, there are so many of them and they are all so big and strong. What if we cannot get away?" "Then you must go to Wind, little brother," Stehfahnah replied. "You must get or make a weapon and force them to slay you... but, for the honor of our clan, you must try to take at least one of the pigs with you. Be not overhasty, though, in aught you do. Depend upon Bahb's judgment-he has the mind of a full-grown warrior, for all that he has seen but twelve summers.** The barge had commenced to move forward, the heavy oars rising and falling rhythmically to the resounding strokes of a mallet on a hollow board. Stehfahnah took one last, deep gulp of air, then let go her hold and began to swim with the current, angling toward the western bank of the river.

The bargemen, long familiar with cases of near-drowning, had pumped the water out of Trader Stuart's body. Then his own men had stripped him of his soaked clothing and carefully bedded him down in his personal wagon. It was not done out of love or even liking for the man, but rather out of respect-respect for him both as a man and as a fighter of some note, not to mention the fact that he paid a decent wage for hard work. Never had he been known to try to cheat an employee out of monies due him.

Senior Wagoner DonnHwyt dropped heavily to the upper deck from the tailgate of the wagon. The aging but stocky and still powerful man was the nearest thing to a true physician that the caravan had. He was paid an extra amount for doctoring horses and oxen, but he practiced on the men as well whenever there was need. Now his thin lips were drawn even thinner into a grim line. Three men awaited him-the two junior traders who had chanced to be on the lead barge, Hwahruhn and Custuh, plus Stuart's bodyservant-c.u.m-sometime-bodyguard, "Clubber* Fred Doakes.

Custuh, almost qualified to be a senior trader himself, was the first to speak. "Well, man," he lisped through the gap left when the nomad boy had smashed out his front teeth with the pommel of a saber, "will he live or not? If he will, ith he tho badly hurt he won't be able to command nekth yearth venture?"

Old Don shrugged, his broad shoulders rising and falling, his big, callused hands spread wide, palms facing outward. "Lordy, Misruh Custuh, I ain't no real doctor. And it'd tek one to tell yawl awl thet.

Misruh Stuart's left shoulder is broke, bad broke-thet oar done as much damage as a iron mace, and even if some surgeon don't tek the arm off, he won't never use 'er much agin. "And the outside tendon a-hint his right knee's done been sliced clean in two, but thet ain't awl. His bag was d.a.m.n near tore loose from his pore body by the there d.a.m.n HI b.i.t.c.h. It's a pow'ful good thang he done a'ready got him a son 'r two, 'cause I 'spect he ain't never gonna git him no more younguns of no kind awn no woman... if he does live, thet is." "The real question is," commented Hwahruhn, scratching at the scalp beneath his silver-shot black hair, "dare we-any of us-go back on the plains next year, since the gal's gotten free?

If you'll all recall, I was against the whole dirty business from the outset-the treachery, the killing, the kidnappings, not to mention the way that gal was abused during these last few weeks. If she gets back to her clan..." Custuh snorted derisively. "Bert, you maunder like an old woman, you do! 'If the gal gits back to her clan,' indeed! Did you ever hear tell of anybody swimming this here river with all their clothes on? Huh? And too, while all the rest of you were set at getting ol' Stuart out'n the water, I had a pair of darts ready and was watching to see her haid come back up... and it never did, so she probly drownded."

But Hwahruhn shook his head, unease in his voice and worry in his dark-brown eyes. "What you aver is just possible, true, but these nomads are tough, wiry, resourceful people. They're survivors, Liasee. If the child you all insisted upon wronging gets out of the river alive... G.o.d help us all!" Stehfahnah had not intended to come out of the river in close proximity to the trader town, but she certainly would havepreferred to get out of the cold, swirling water much sooner than was the case. When at last she was able to drag herself up an inclined and muddy bank on the western side of the broad waters, she could but lie for a long while on the brush-grown verge, her muscles jerking and twitching with the fatigue of her efforts.

At length, as hunger began to nibble at her belly, she sat up and commenced-as she had been taught-to think out her situation, to take stock of her possessions and gauge their potential usefulness for accomplishing her purpose. She knew that she was far, far east of the last place her clan had been encamped. She and her brothers, one of dozens of farming hunting parties, had been a good two days'

ride from camp when they had been taken, and the wagon train had lumbered on for nearly three weeks after. Therefore, she estimated that a span of not less than three days' ride west would bring her near the tents and yurts of her people... but she had no idea just how far south the river might have borne her this day. Also, she had no horse or any hope of easily acquiring one, unless she should chance across one of the increasingly rare wild herds and could mindspeak the king stallion into allowing one of his sons or daughters to accompany her on her quest. She knew better than to approach any of the scattering of dirtman settlements; such would only mean slavery or worse. She sighed, then spoke aloud to herself.

"So I must walk. Sun be praised that the wolves are well fed this time of year."

But if she must plan upon making a journey of such length solely on foot, it might well take a month or more. Winter storms had been known to come very early, and if she wasf to survive alone, dismounted and friendless upon the open plains, she must have many things she now lacked-more and heavier clothing, more effective weapons than one large and one small knife, some kind of food that could be packed without quickly spoiling, a container for water, a means of making fire.

The last necessity was fulfilled almost at once. When she got around to closely examining the weapon she had torn from the trader's belt, she found not only a knife, but a number of smaller enclosures within the leathern sheath. A hone stone occupied one pocket, another held a flint and a steel for fire-making, and two smaller ones contained a tiny steel eating skewer and food-knife plus a small silver spoon.

The belt knife itself was a heavy, handsome, formidable weapon-a full foot of thick, broad blade, honed to razor keenness along all of one edge and the first third of the other. Below the polished steel ball pommel, the wooden hilt had been well covered with black leather and wound with many yards of silver wire, and the number of deep nicks in the blade side of the shiny bra.s.s guard showed that the weapon was not simply a gaudy showpiece. Knowingly, Stehfahnah weighed and balanced the knife, finding its weight properly distributed to render it an effective missile. A design had been etched onto both sides of the blade, and Stehfahnah grunted satisfaction when she closely studied these. She had had little experience at the arts of reading and writing-not many of her people had, for few books had survived six hundred years of chaos, and neither of these two talents were necessary for survival on the prai-lies, high plains and mountains wherein Horseclansfolk dwelt-but she could write her own name and that of her clan, so she easily recognized that the letter S was the central motif of the designs and at once felt that Wind had intended this fine, deadly, lovely weapon just for her, Stehfahnah's, hands. The boot knife was typical of weapons of its type-a leaf-shaped, double-edged blade of some half-inch width and some four inches in length, guardless and with a plain hilt of deer antler. Stehfahnah found that it fitted securely into the sheath built into her own left boot top.

Her gnawing hunger partially a.s.suaged by a few handfuls of berries and the raw legs of a large frog she was fortunate enough to catch, the Horseclans girl sought and found a willow tree, and her nimble fingers had soon produced a quant.i.ty of twine from the inner bark. After locating three game trails in the riverside brush, she constructed as many simple snares of whittled twigs and twine nooses, plus a log deadfall where the mark of cervine hooves was plain; if even one of the traps proved effective during the night to come, she would have fresh meat, a skin or hide of some description, bone and possibly sinew orhorn with which to fashion other tools and weapons.

By the time she returned to her starting point, the late-afternoon wind had completely dried the shirt and trousers which she had carefully draped over bushes. Dressed, she began to cast about for a safe place to spend the night, finally settling for the s.p.a.cious crotch of a huge mimosa tree. Cold she knew it would be, but safe from any prowling predators, poisonous snakes or the like. That decided, she cut armfuls of springy pine tips and coa.r.s.e gra.s.s and filled the depressed crotch with them. She debated kindling a fire with which to warm herself before she climbed aloft to sleep, but decided to not do so, for if her former captors were searching along the river for her, smoke or flame might give away her position.

Twice during the long, dark night, she awoke with a start, gasping and trembling and imagining herself still confined within that hateful, wooden-walled wagon, defenseless prey to the l.u.s.ts of the hateful traders. Throughout all the suffering, the horrors and deep humiliations she had been forced to undergo, Stehfahnah's fierce pride had sustained her, and she had refused to allow her tormentors the satisfaction of seeing a Horseclanswoman's tears; but now, alone and high in a riverside tree, she wept, violently, uncontrollably, and at long last she slept again, so deeply that the warming beams of Sacred Sun on her face finally wakened her to the first morning of her new-won freedom. Two of the snares still gaped empty, but the third had caught her a fine, fat rabbit. With practiced ease, she broke the neck of the struggling animal and went on with the furry carca.s.s slung from a loop of the twine. "Wind be praised!"

she breathed fervently at the site of her painfully constructed deadfall, for beneath the heavy log lay a buck, so recently dead that the carca.s.s still was warm. True, he was much smaller than most varieties of plains bucks, but his dearth of meat and smallness of hide was fully compensated for in the girl's mind by the pair of slender, needle-tipped and almost straight horns standing a good two feet up from his head.

Good fortune remained with her. Two days later, now armed with a brace of horn-tipped spears and a hand-carved spear thrower, she slew a large white-tailed doe. With the sinews of her two largest kills and the knife-shaped trunk of a redbark bow-wood tree, the wood roughly cured over the heat of her carefully shielded cooking fire, she began to fashion a bow. Arrows were whittled down from lengths of birch, fletched with owl feathers and tipped with fire-hardened bone shards. Birch bark and strips of partially seasoned deerhide were fashioned into a combination bowcase and quiver. She also began the involved process of converting the doe's second stomach into a water bag for her journey. She felt pressed for time, being fully aware from a lifetime on the plains that she still was highly vulnerable to the elements and that the first freezing storm of winter could swoop down upon her with amazing suddenness.

Stehfahnah's first warning that she was not still alone in the riverside woods was the smell of smoke. She had been ranging farther and farther afield since she had finished her makeshift bow. Armed with it and her balanced pair of spears, she was seeking feral cattle or the large, curved-honied bucks for the thicker, better-quality hides they grew, knowing that her thin, flimsy riding boots would need heavy reinforcement soon.

Then she found an otter in a steel trap. The sinuous shiny-brown creature's frantic struggles to free itself had only broken the flesh of its pinioned leg, the remorseless bite of the metal jaws cutting the flesh to the bone. The beady eyes were full of pain and terror, and the whiskered lips writhed back to bare the white teeth.

The fine, large, water-resistant pelt would have been a most welcome addition to Stehfahnah's growing h.o.a.rd, but her recent ordeal bred within her a kindred feeling with the trapped and suffering animal.

Recalling that some animals, predators in particular, could often be reached by mindspeak, she made the effort.

She had mindspoken horses and a few of the prairiecats- the huge, long-fanged felines which had forhundreds of years lived among and made common cause with the Horseclans-folk-but she found the water dweller's mind significantly different from the other two animal sentiences. Silently, she offered to free the trapped creature if, in return, it would agree not to bite her. The otter mind was a roiling maelstrom of agony and terror and bloodl.u.s.t.

"Hurt...kill... kill... kill!"

Broadbeaming a message of soothing, Stehfahnah repeated her offer. "Furry brother, if you will not bite me, I will free you from the hurting thing." After a number of repet.i.tions, when she had almost despaired of reaching the pain-mad beast and was upon the point of ending its suffering with a well-placed shaft from her bow, the otter abruptly ceased to struggle against the trap, although its muscles still jerked involuntarily with the pain. "Stop hurt thing?" he queried. "Not bite if stop hurt." Laying down her spears and throwing stick, unshouldering her bowcase-quiver, Stehfahnah approached the otter, wondering if he really understood her. With some trepidation, she knelt near the trap, which was chained to a deep-driven wooden stake. The otter was big-almost four feet long-and could seriously hurt her before she could draw a knife and kill him if he had misunderstood the tenuous mental messages.

Nonetheless, she gripped the blood-slimy jaws of the trap and tried to pull them open, but the leverage was not right and her fingers kept slipping from the smooth, wet metal. Her well-intentioned efforts were only hurting the otter more, and his snarls were not rea.s.suring to her. Reaching behind her, she drew one of the spears closer. Drawing out her big knife, she worked the blade in near one hinge of the biting steel jaws, then gingerly twisted the knife. Haltingly, the trap opened a fraction of an inch, then a Smidgen more. When it was open to the extent of over two fingers' width, she mindspoke again.

"Now, furry one, pull out your leg, quickly!"

Scurrying as rapidly as three legs would carry him, the otter disappeared into the brush in the direction of the nearby river. Stehfahnah, unable to either pull up the stake or break the chain, finally squatted over the trap and urinated on the device, knowing that the strong odor of human urine would warn animals away from the h.e.l.lish instrument.

Within the next several hours, she chanced across half a dozen identical traps. Each one of them was empty, and she used a spearb.u.t.t to spring them all, also disturbing the ground about them, spitting to be certain of leaving twolegs scent. Such was her preoccupation with the traps that her day's hunt proved fruitless and she trudged back to her campsite that afternoon empty-handed. She had just lit her squaw-wood tinder and laid a virtually smokeless fire in the little hollow and had lowered a quarter of venison she had hung high on an oak branch preparatory to slicing off enough meat for her dinner when she suddenly realized that she no longer was alone within the brushy-banked hollow. She let go of the deer meat and whirled, crouching, her big knife held low, ready to stab or slash or throw. But then her blue-green eyes widened in stunned disbelief.

On the river side of the fire pit were no less than three otters. The largest she recognized as the big male she had earlier freed from the steel trap; the other two were significantly smaller, although obviously adult animals. Before the trio, in the weeds, lay a big catfish, still flopping and feebly gasping. Sheathing her knife, Stehfahnah mindspoke, "Welcome, furry ones. Will you share this meat with me?"

The larger mustelid had sunk into a crouch, taking his weight off the three legs now, perforce, doing the work of four. It was he who answered, although Stehfahnah could feel the attentiveness of the two smaller beasts. "Why female twolegs stop hurt thing and let this one go free, why not kill like kill other furry ones and take hides? Why hunt out and kill other hurt things of male twolegs?" Stehfahnah herself was not really sure just why she had pa.s.sed up the opportunity-Sun-sent-to add the otter's fine pelt to her racks of seasoning skins, or why she had then wasted all of one precious afternoon in disarming the line of traps rathef than preparing for the grueling journey which lay ahead and which must soon commence if she was to live to see its end. She replied, "This twolegs hunts for food as well as for hides. She tries' to kill quickly and not hurt. Also, you furry ones remind her of others, furry cats, with whom she grew up. This twolegs would be your friend, would share her meat with you. If you will allow her to do so, she has certain hert>9 she can apply to your leg to stop the hurting for a while and help the flesh to heal quicker."

The larger, male otter, it developed, thought of himself as Mighty-and-Invincible-Killer-of-Much-Meat-in-Water, a sobriquet he had a.s.sumed after, sometime in the past, having attacked and torn the throat out of a swimming deer, then guided the carca.s.s to the bank. After he and the two female otters had gorged on raw deer meat and Stehfahnah had avidly devoured the tender fillets of the fish, he sat motionless, snarling only sporadically while she cleaned his lacerated hind leg, plastered it thickly with a mixture of herbs and deer fat, then bound it with a strip of cloth torn from her only shirt, warning him to refrain from chewing off the cloth for at least three days.

The smaller of the two females was somewhat shy and "spoke" but little. The other, however, "chatted"

on at some length throughout the meal and while the girl tended the hurt male.

Mother-of-Many-Many had once borne and successfully reared no less than six kits in the same litter, though her present litter numbered only three. Fast-Swimmer also had a litter of three kits, and the two females were sharing the single den, as well as hunting responsibilities for and protection of the six kits.

The male, for all that he also used the same enlarged muskrat burrow, hunted only for himself, and, from the various "conversations," Stehfahnah was never sure if he had fathered both or either of the litters.

Otters, ap-parently, had never developed the close familial ties of the prairiecats or of the nomads' breed of horses.

Shortly after nightfall, the three otters took their leave and waddled swiftly into the brush toward the river, the bellies of all three bulging with a surfeit of rich red venison. The two females bore, as well, strips of the deer flesh which Stehfahnah had sliced from the quarter specifically for the waiting kits in the riverbank den.

In the following days, Stehfahnah did her hunting to west and south, studiously avoiding the north. The otters' information about the trapper had been disturbing to her. He was occupying a "den-of-dead-wood" at some indeterminate distance northward and within sight of the river. She reflected that since it was imperative that none of the local dirtmen-the nomads' epithet for farmers and all other folk who lived in one set place-suspect her presence, here, she had been very foolish to spring and upset so many traps without touching the baits. The single bloodstained trap might have left the impression in the trapper's mind that the animal had managed to pull free of the cruel jaws, and if she had taken away the baits from the sprung traps and smoothed away her footprints, he just might have attributed the deliberate spoilage of his line to a possible wolverine and maybe even moved into another territory.

Now that he, through her unconcerned carelessness, was certainly aware that someone was nearby, Stehfahnah took pains to be extremely cautious in hunting and in everyday living, going so far as to forsake her warm, wind- and weatherproof lean-to for that tree crotch wherein she had spent her first few nights in these woods; though now she slept warmer and in more comfort for the two deer hides over the mattress of pine tips, and the odor of the fragrant needles went far toward masking the reek of her blanket of half-cured rabbit skins. Fearful of being surprised at night, while sleeping, the girl kept all her weapons aloft with her and within easy reach. But the dreaded confrontation came by light of day.

On that ill-fated day, Stefahnah bad, early in the morning, come across a spoor she had long sought in vain-that of one of the cattle whose ancestors had gone feral after the death of the earlier civilization, had in many areas interbred with truly wild bovines and slowly evolved into the long-horned, s.h.a.ggy-coated and ill-tempered beasts known as "s.h.a.ggy-bulls" and still roamed the hills and backwoods in small herds or individually.

The girl had first tracked, then stalked the huge old bull for hours, at last getting sufficiently close to drive three arrows almost to the fletchings within a palm-sized s.p.a.ce just behind and below the ma.s.sive left shoulder. After a time of roaring and stamping about, the behemoth sank suddenly to his knees and began to vomit up vast quant.i.ties of frothy blood. Then, slowly, the head came to rest on the blood-soaked ground and the mighty beast's near-ton of hulk thumped onto his right side, chest rising and falling spasmodically, the thick legs driving the deadly cloven hooves in the final agony.

Recalling the words of the hunters of her clan, the slender girl patiently waited until the big animal had ceased any movement, until the urine and dung gushed through the death-relaxed sphincters. Not until then did she approach her stupendous kill and set herself to the long, arduous and singularly messy job ahead of her.

Alone, without an axe of any description, she had known ahead of time that she would be able to take only half the fine, thick hide, but that would be more than sufficient for her purposes... if she could get the heavy, unwieldy thing back to her camp.

When she had hung as much of the carca.s.s as she could manage to hack loose high in several nearby trees, she gorged on rich, raw, b.l.o.o.d.y liver and used her thongs of deer rawhide to tie the half hide into a load she could fasten to her pack frame, with the rest of the liver, the succulent tongue and a kidney stuffed into one of the bovine's stomachs added to the load. It was near sunset when she stumbled, bone-weary, out of the brush and down the incline to her camp. Weaving with utter exhaustion under the heavy packload, she was just too tired to take her usual precautions or even to notice that the camp was not as she had left it.

Just as she shrugged out of the straps of the pack frame, something crashed against her temple, and Sacred Sun Itself seemed to explode inside her head. Then there was blackness.

Chapter Three.

For a week after Stehfahnah's spectacular and sanguineous escape from the ferry barge, the men guarding the two kidnapped boys moved warily and in augmented force about their charges. Heeding their sister's wise counsel and their own native cunning, however, the Horseclans boys seemed model captives, successfully giving the impression of an increasing pa.s.sivity. Therefore, as seasonally hired men dropped off along the way to seek their homes or some winter employment, the boys' guards grew fewer and far more slack.

A fortnight of travel eastward from the Great River had brought the vastly diminished caravan of wagons, pack beasts and hors.e.m.e.n to within two days' journey of Pahdook-ahport-a true metropolis of about five thousand souls, largest river port on the western reaches of that mighty waterway called the Ohyoh River and always bustling center of the east-west trade. Within and without the towering granite walls which protected the riverside capital of the Republic of Pahdookahport a visitor might see men of almost every race, creed and color-each attended by his hired bravos. Merchants from near and farhaggled over bundles of furs, bales of hides of deer and s.h.a.ggy-bull, bison and elk. A hundred or more forge fires fouled the air around the quarter of the smiths, wherein rusty or corroded metals dug from the ruins of the long-dead Ancients were reconverted to the uses of living men. Factors of the far-eastern kings, princes and archdukes sat in their guarded carriages clad in rich clothing and sipping at richer wines in arrogant disdain whilst their hordes of well-trained agents scurried hither and yon sniffing out the best of the wares of incoming caravans and barges. In other guarded carriages lolled an Ehleen or two-swarthy, big-boned men, their black hair shiny with pomade, their full lips like as not encarmined, their golden swordhilts bejeweled, the nails of their heavily beringed fingers lacquered-sneering at the "barbarians," any not of their own race.

Urbahnos Kostanis was such a one. A native of the Kingdom of Karaleenos and scion of a n.o.ble house of that realm, he -had nonetheless-once irrevocably exiled to this a.s.signment in punishment for having killed the son of a powerful man in a duel-applied his keen mental faculties so a.s.siduously that in the bare ten years he had lived among the barbarians he had become a very wealthy merchant and was even now exchanging letters with those who would arrange to purchase his pardon from the Royal House of Karaleenos, King Zenos and his ministers being always ready to see justice done if the price was right.

Unlike the other two Ehleenee resident in Pahdook-ahport-Pehtros Ziplonos of Kehnooryos Mahkedohnya and Kenos Trindis of Kehnooryos Ehlas-Urbahnos' knowledge of the merchandise he was offered and sometimes bought was as thorough and as detailed as that of his agents. So it had been a long time since he had been deluded or cheated as his two racial peers often were. He rendered the other two as much courtesy as their blood heritage ent.i.tled them (which was d.a.m.ned little, really, for both young Pehtros and the older, corpulent and flatulent Kenos were, though much darker than most of the barbarians, clearly not kath-ahrohs or Ehleenee of pure lineage, as was Urbahnos), but that was all, for he felt that any man so stupid and stiff-neckedly arrogant as to not learn every facet of the trade or profession which earned him a livelihood was fully deserving of all misfortunes which chanced to befall him.