A Woman of the Horseclans

XII

The spring became summer and that summer became autumn, then winter came once more and Wind sent blizzards howling down from the far north to slay men and women, children and babes, horses and cattle, sheep and goats.

But in the orderly, inevitable progression of the seasons, even the coldest and deadliest of winters at long last became spring again, with rushing streams of snowmelt temporarily turning portions of the prairie into one, vast sogginess before the thirsty roots of the billions of grasses sucked up the moisture and the land was once more covered from horizon to limitless horizon in an endless clothing of shades of rippling green.

And as season followed season, relentlessly so did year follow year on the prairie as on all of the earth.

The Horseclans roamed the prairies and the high plains, setting up their yurts or tents near to spring or creek or river only for the length of time it took the horses and stock to exhaust the nearby graze and their hunters—human and feline—the game and wild plants that made up much of their normal sustenance. Then the clans would pack up and move on. To north or to south, to east or to west, they moved, wherever the graze and the hunting and, sometimes, the raiding seemed best.

The life was in no way idyllic, far from it, in fact. Folk died in every season and in a multitude of ways, some of them exceedingly painful and protracted. The weak—very young or aged or injured from whatever cause—quickly succumbed to diseases, and there had been occasions when these diseases had extirpated all or most of entire clans of supposedly healthy folk, especially in winter camps, when the clanspeople were perforce packed tooth to jowl and contagions spread with terrifying rapidity.

Spring floodings and the unexpected quagmires drowned folk and stock, while summer brought flashfloods from the terrible storms and, even more fearsome, the lightning-spawned prairie fires which often swept on unchecked for countless miles, consuming all in their paths.

Raiding and warfare claimed lives and caused wounds, but not nearly so many of either as were brought about by the usual mundane occupations of herding and hunting. The stock of the nomad herds were nowhere near as docile, most of them, as were those of the Dirtmen; they had horns and hooves and the strength and will to use both to deadly advantage when angered or frightened.

Hunting injuries and deaths were second most commonplace, killing or maiming both horses and men and, more rarely, the great prairiecats, Due to the universal Horseclansfolk craving for snakemeat, cases of snakebite were fairly common, though few died of it. The majority of hunting casualties were sustained during mounted chases at high speeds over rough ground and resulted from rider or horse and rider falling.

The most dangerous game beasts were plains grizzlies, lions, shaggy-bulls, wild swine and the rare but much-feared monster predator of the far-northern plains called a “blackfoot” by the nomads.

Of this most dangerous list, only wild swine were hunted with any regularity, and then only if there were no Dirtmen nearby who could be raided for domestic swine. Like the wolves and other predators of the plains and prairies, Horseclansfolk left the bears and the lions alone if those beasts, in turn, left them and their stock alone; for these huge carnivores were possessed of formidable strength and always died hard; arrows alone seldom sufficed to deal them death, and going in to finish one at close range with a spear was not an undertaking designed or intended for the inexperienced, the weak of body or the fainthearted.

Fortunately, it was the rare grizzly or lion that forsook the bison, various antelope types and assorted deer species to go after cattle and the men who guarded them. But in the case of the sinister shaggy-bulls, the situation was reversed. The shaggy-bulls seemed to go deliberately out of their way to try to kill men and disrupt herds of cattle. The only good thing that could be said for them was that them were not very many of them even on the high plains where they were most common.

In some ways, they resembled the bison—shaggy coats, colors, thick bodies, the prominent hump over the shoulders—but they ran to far larger sizes than any bison, with adult cows standing up to sixteen hands at the withers and an average adult bull towering as much as four hands higher. Both sexes bore wide-spreading horns, and all were, considering their weights and bulks, amazingly fast and agile in a fight. They were not herd animals, but rather traveled in small groups when not alone.

The long horns of the shaggy-bulls could be fashioned into exceptionally deep-voiced bugles; their hides were the source of the strongest leather known to the nomads, and justly proud was the man who had armor or target made of it. The meat they yielded was choice, and shaggy-bull sinews were selected for the finest hornbows. But the cost of killing one was always high.

Most often, two clans camped and moved on together, and occasionally there were three, very rarely four or more. Every five or six years, as many as twenty-five or thirty clans, they having been notified of time and location by traders or the traveling bards, would gather in conclave for as long as a week but no more, for so many folk and animals in one place quickly exhausted the supportive capabilities of even the richest area.

Unless visited by natural disaster or by heavy war or hunting losses, the average clan numbered twenty to twenty-five male warriors, fifty to sixty clanswomen-archers (both maiden-archers and matron-archers) and as many as a dozen prairiecats of fighting age. Children, both male and female. over the age of thirteen summers were counted among the warriors or the archers and were considered to be of marriageable age at fourteen, for all that few males wed before eighteen or twenty.

A chief might have three or even four wives, plus a slave concubine or two, but the average clansman had no more than one wife at a time and was considered well-to-do if he could support a second wife or a concubine.

Horseclansfolk loved children and produced as many as possible, for their life was unremittingly hard and they well knew that half or fewer of their children would survive to an age to sire or bear another generation. All of the children born into a clan were born free, no matter the status of their mothers at their birthings; moreover, all grew up as equals, save only that no son of a concubine could become chief of his birth clan unless his mother first was freed and formally adopted into that clan.

Compared to other times and peoples, the lives of the Horseclansfolk were harsh in the extreme, from birth to death. Perhaps one of each ten babes born into a Kindred clan would survive long enough to see the birth of a grandchild, but it had been ever so. since the time of the Sacred Ancestors; and simply because only the very toughest—physically, mentally, emotionally—ever lived long enough to themselves breed, Horseclansfolk were born with a great tolerance for adversity and privation. To outsiders, the image of the Kindred was of a grim, stoic, humorless, savagely fearsome people; but among themselves, they were anything but products of this mold, being warm-natured, merry, frequently quite emotional.

Of course, outsiders—Dirtmen and traders—never saw the Horseclansfolk at unguarded moments. All that the most of the Dirtmen ever saw was armed warriors, screeching warcries and killing, or driving off stock, burning buildings and crops.

But in a safe camp, Kindred seldom went about armed with anything more lethal than an eating knife, or perhaps an especially prized small weapon worn principally as an ornament. Herders carried riatas of braided rawhide, bolas, bows and arrows, and double-pointed lances (a dull point at one end for prodding cattle, a sharp point at the other). Hunters also carried bows and arrows, bolas, riatas, and usually broadbladed spears rather than lances. Too, they carried longdirks or hangers, hatchets and an assortment of knives for skinning and butchering, they might also carry a sling and stones for it.

Warriors, on the other hand, were never considered properly accoutered for war or raids without their body armor of leather boiled in wax—all lacquered and decorated with insets of brass and gold and silver—their helmet of the same material or, sometimes, steel, their heavy, cursive saber, and their target of laminated woods and leather. These, along with the double-edged war dirk and an assortment of knives and daggers, plus of course the cased bow and the quivers of war arrows, constituted the basic panoply of the Kindred warrior.

Other weapons were optional and purely of personal choice—light axes, lances, spears, javelins or darts, clubs, staffslings, bolas, even the humble riata and stockwhip.

On the morning of a late-spring day, two Kindred clans were on the march, Clans Dohluhn and Krooguh were now less than a full day’s traveling time from the rendezvous area of which the bards and traders had been telling for more than three years.

Out ahead and on the flanks of the wide-spreading body moved prairiecats and a few young stallions, their keen senses spying out any possible danger or promise of game and mindspeaking their findings back to the jagged line of maiden-archers—all riding with bows stung and an arrow nocked, two more shafts held ready between the fingers of the bow hand—who trailed the foremost cats at distances of a quarter to a half mile.

The chiefs and most of the warriors came next, riding in a line as jagged as the maiden-archers, usually, in clumps of two to four men. They rode fully armed—helmets, armor, targets, bows, sabers and dirks, with lances. spears, light axes, a handful of darts or whatever. But for all their warlike, well-prepared appearance, they rode relaxed, bantering and joking, secure in their knowledge that they would be well warned of any impending danger.

Behind the warriors, formed in a rough extenuated crescent, came the king stallion and his herd. Then the high-wheeled carts and the wagons trundled along, the former drawn by teams of mules or horses, the latter by lowing spans of oxen. The matrons rode beside the draft animals directing the horses and mules by rein or mindspeak, the oxen by judicious use of ox prod or stockwhip.

Poles and hides and felt strips and the lathing frameworks of tents and yurts, the meager furnishings—carpets, brass lamps, folding tables, chests and the like—spare clothing, bedding, weapons, and personal possessions, nonperishable foodstocks, bales of hides and furs, tools, everything, were packed into or onto the wagons and the carts or onto the loads of pack beasts. Atop the laden wagons and carts rode the very aged, the few ill or infirm, and those children assigned to watch over the prairiecat kittens and cubs tethered here and there to the cargo. (Kittens and cubs not only tired quickly and overheated easily, but were cursed with a distressing and virtually inborn tendency to stray.)

To the rear were the herds—cattle, sheep, a few goats—all herded by a few superannuated warriors and a horde of mounted boys and girls still too young to commence their serious war training. A bit behind the herds, eating dust, rode a widespread rearguard of maiden-archers and a few prairiecats.

Beside one of the chief wagons of Clan Krooguh, the first and principal wife of the chief in all save name ambled along astride a smooth-gaited piebald mare. Having passed her ox prod to her husband’s second wife—Anee Makaiuh of Krooguh—and unlaced the front of her shirt, Behtiloo Hansuhn of Krooguh had lifted her winter-born boychild from the cradle rack affixed to the cantle of her saddle and given him her bright-red left nipple.

On this day, Behtiloo had been Tim’s wife and a clanswoman for almost fifteen years, and none save her adoptive kinfolk would have or could have suspected from her appearance, bearing, behavior or demeanor that she was anything save Horseclans-born and -bred. Indeed, Behtiloo herself often experienced some difficulty in recalling how things had been when she was not a Krooguh.

Her exposed skin surfaces were now every bit as weather-darkened as were her husband’s, her long, golden hair was done into thick braids and lapped over her crown to bear the weight of her helmet, and she was attired like any other man or woman of the Kindred—the loose, baggy shirt and trousers of richly embroidered homespun, calf-length boots of felt with leather soles and wood—and-leather heels, broad leathern waistbelt supporting a pouch and a couple of knives, with a frog for attachment of the dirk.

Chief Dik Krooguh was so feeble this spring that he could not sit a horse but had to ride in a specially fitted cart, and most people opined that he would never see another spring. But then they had been so opining for more that fifteen years, and he had outlived many a one of the opiners. True, his health had not been good since the first day Behtiloo had seen him, but he had managed to survive all of his wives and concubines, his sister, Lainuh, and all other close kin save Tim, his heir. He had lived longer than any of his old cronies, save only Djahn Staiklee, who upon the demise of his wife, Lainuh, had wed a young, pretty blond woman, Mairee Daioh, when Dahnah had made it clear to him that she would rather remain a concubine than become a Horseclans wife.

The aged chief still sat in clan councils, but every other function of the chieftaincy was carried out by Tim, had been for more than ten years now. Tim it had been who had led the Krooguh warriors who had joined with the warriors of several other Kindred clans in extirpating a savage, treacherous non-Kindred tribe of nomads. This had occurred four years ago, far and far to the northwest of their present location.

At fourteen summers, Hwahlis Hansuhn of Krooguh was already the second-tallest man of his clan (only Djahn Staiklee stood taller) and, with the big bones and rolling muscles of men of his mothers stock, he was an impressive figure of a Horseclans warrior as he rode beside his “father” and chief, Tim, in the warrior line.

The twins, Buhd and Behti, were almost a year younger than Hwahlis, and both were of the small-boned, flat-muscled Kindred stock in appearance, although Buhd was already a bit taller than were most of his peers.

Four of Behtiloo’s children by Tim had died at various ages of various causes. Her next-eldest living child was a girl, Ehlee, who at the mature age of six summers was seldom to be found far from her year-younger brother, Shawn. Behtiloo considered herself fortunate in the extreme that so many of her children had so far survived.

For Clan Krooguh stood in dire need of every living soul. Although the united Kindred clans had been eventually and fully victorious in their protracted fight against the northerner nomads, their foemen had fought hard and long and well and the battle losses had been truly staggering. Only a bare score of Krooguh men now flanked Tim and Hwahlis, and nearly half of these men were too young to have taken any part in the costly campaign. The long trek back south had taken three years to accomplish, and with so few veteran hunters left to forage for the clan, each of those three harsh, pitiless winters had cost dearly in terms of young and aged.

They had wintered most lately with Clan Dohluhn, but this Kindred clan, though of normal strength and numbers, had few young men of marriageable age, so Tim was hurrying toward the great Kindred gathering of the clans with the openly avowed purpose of luring young warriors from stronger but poorer clans to the marriage beds of his well-dowered Krooguh maidens.

And well-dowered those maidens would surely be, for the sack of the camps of the northern nomads had vastly enriched each and every clan that had taken part in exterminating those who had dwelt therein. Cattle they had taken, and sheep and goats. Weapons, of course, and horse gear, carts and wagons and harness, furniture of-all sorts, metal lamps, fine furs—bales of them—more bales of hides, foodstocks, jewelry and items of adornment, thick carpets and blankets, cookware hardware, hundreds of yards of cloth as well as existing clothing and cloaks and boots.

In addition to the more mundane items of loot, there had been several yurtlike structures mounted on huge wagons. One side of each wagon could be dropped so that the two halves of the dwelling might be fitted together, and each oversized wagon was drawn by four spans of huge, shaggycoated, longhorned, but quite docile oxen of a breed unfamiliar to the Kindred. It was decided during the division of loot that one of these curiosities should go to each chief, with the extra one going to Clan Krooguh in recognition of their especially hard fighting and heavy losses.

Behtiloo Hansuhn of Krooguh had been living in one of the wagon-mounted habitations for most of four years now, and she still was not certain that she would not have preferred a simple, honest, everyday yurt. Chief Dik, of course, loved the device, since it kept his bed and swollen joints raised well above the cold and dampness of the ground. But to Behtiloo, it was harder to keep uniformly warm in winter, much more of a bother to get and keep clean inside, and she was always secretly afraid that she or whoever was cooking with the still-unfamiliar metal brazier would burn down the wagon-yurt and everything in it.

It was not the second wagon-yurt in which Behtiloo kept house and lived (that one was occupied by Djahn Staiklee and his new wife, concubine and get) but the larger, more luxurious one, for since the death of the last of his wives, Chief Dik had had Tim, Behtiloo, Anee and their children take over the chief yurt.

In addition to seeking husband/warriors for the clan, Tim had often stated his intention to trade off some of the superfluous loot awarded Clan Krooguh for enough metal to enable Rohluhnd Krooguh, the clan smith, to fashion strong helmets, all of steel and designed in a distinctive pattern developed by the two of them; there was to be a helmet for each of the Krooguh warriors. Tim also yearned for one of the leathern shins sewn with steel scales, but doubted that the clan could afford so hellishly expensive a purchase, not with so many dowries to be paid.

Behtiloo could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that the paths of Clan Krooguh and the plains traders had crossed. The mere sight of the long columns of lumbering wagons snaking across the prairies, well guarded by Kindred warriors of many clans who had been hired on for the season, as well as by big steel-clad men on brawny horses from the half-mythical lands far and far to the east, had always been sufficient to give the clansfolk fresh talking-fodder for months after.

Now, Behtiloo could barely wait to tour the dozens of trader booths certain to be erected at the gathering. Tim might have his own “shopping list” of husbands and steel armor, but she had her own. First and most important, she wanted steel needles of varying lengths, sizes and shapes, and with them she was in search of the fine, brilliantly colored, fast-dyed threads and yarns with which Horseclans embroidery was done. If she could find them at a decent price, she also intended to buy a few pounds of brass-headed tacks for decorating a certain chest. So much for the professional traders, but for her other desire, she would need to seek out a man or woman of one of the far-southern clans, for only from them could one obtain the all-leather boots that came almost to the knee and were so beautifully tooled and colored and stitched.

With the boychild full of warm milk and sleeping soundly, Behtiloo tuned in her saddle and returned the infant to his carrying cradle, secured the straps and thongs, then bade her mare halt while she threw her off leg over the pommel and slid from the saddle. Completely oblivious of the folk moving in carts and wagons, on horseback and afoot all about her, she hitched up her weapons belt, unloosed the drawstring of her trousers and half-squatted long enough to void her bladder, before remounting the mare and taking the ox prod back from Anee.

In addition to more personal purchases, of course, Behtiloo would be obliged to seek out and bargain for certain items for special purposes within the clan; this came with her function of chatelaine of the chief’s yurt, there was need, for one thing, to replenish the supply of alcohol—taikeelah or, this far north, probably one of those bastard concoctions that the traders sold under the generic name of hwiskee—a half-dozen twenty-gallon barrels of it, anyway. There were other oddments, as well. Also, Behtiloo had had the joyous surprise of a personal windfall recently, and she had decided to use it to surprise someone else.

Always thrifty, made so by their harsh life, the Kindred had taken everything that had even looked as if it might possibly be of some future use from the camps of their foes, Among the items which had fallen into Behtiloo’s hands were some bundles of clothing, most of it bloodstained, having been stripped from the corpses of warriors.

One of these bundles had somehow gotten shoved into the bottom of a chest, and she had excavated it only a few months back, in the depths of the winter just past. It had been while she was picking through the old clothes that she had felt the hard and regular outlines of some dozen items sewn into the quilting of a blood-darkened canvas pourpoint.

Upon removing the stitchings, she had discovered twelve thick, heavy discs of what could only be gold, all the space on both sides covered over in a tracery resembling intertwined vines. As a very young girl, she had seen coinage of gold and silver and copper passed between the Elder and the Patriarchs of the Abode of the Righteous when dealing with traders, so she was dead certain that she now held some variety of coinage, but there was no mark that she could read on it to tell her its true value. She had no slightest trust of any of the traders—none of the nomads (or the Dirtmen, for that matter!) trusted them—and chances were very slim that any of the Kindred clansfolk would know any more about the coins than did she, so she could only hope that Uncle Milo would be there.

He was, looking no whit different than she recalled of him from fifteen years ago. But he did not recall her, not immediately, and she quickly realized that she had been silly or foolish to suppose that he might, so much had time and age and circumstances altered her appearance.

“So you are the woman that that pitiful child became?” he said wonderingly, at last. “Poor, old Ehstrah—Wind keep her—always said that one day you’d be the very epitome of all the Kindred. Your husband—Tahm, was it?—he became chief of Krooguh, then?”

She shook her head. “Not yet, Uncle Milo, though he fills every function of that office, shoulders every responsibility; no, old Dik Krooguh still clings to life and his title.

“But … but, please, Uncle Milo, when did Ehstrah … go to Wind? She always was so kind to me, like a mother, she was.”

Milo sighed. “Yes, our Ehstrah was indeed a good, a very good woman, it was seven … no, eight years ago. I was off on a hunt and she was kicked in the back by a mule. No bones seemed to be broken, though she was winded, of course, and sore, but she went on about her usual tasks. Then, some week or so later, after I was returned from the hunt, she began to piss bloody urine, then pure blood. I suspect that mule’s kick damaged her kidneys, but whatever the cause, she continued to lose blood by day and by night, she weakened dramatically, then a flux took her and, weak as she was become, she died of it.

“Gahbee drowned during a river crossing ten yeas ago. But Ilsah still bides with me. She’s my first wife now, though I have taken two others to share the burden with her. You must come and visit our yurt, Behtiloo.”

“I will, Uncle Milo, and you must come to the Krooguh chief yurt, too. If old Chief Dik can remember you—for he recalls things and folks seldom anymore, and then only in brief snatches—I know that he’ll be mightily pleased to see you. Tim, my husband, will, too; and you must see my son, Hwahlis, and my other children.

“But here and now. I have some strange loot I would like you to look at, I need to know the true value of these pieces, for I mean to buy steel scale shirts for my husband and my eldest son. If possible, I also would like to get enough steel and brass sheets to fashion a score of helmets.”

Squatting, facing her in the dust, Milo Morai fingered the twelve discs of ruddy gold, each of them a good two inches in diameter. With his horny fingertips, he traced the weaving, cursive lines standing up from both obverse and reverse of the golden coins.

At length, he asked simply, “Where did you come by these?”

Briefly, she told him.

He nodded once, then said. “The design is not decoration merely, though it serves that purpose too, of course. No, the lines are letters in a very old language called Ahrahbik. This language was in fairly wide use even in the time before this time, and so little has it changed since then that these could well be from that long-ago period. But I think they are newer.

“For one thing, they are not much worn and have not been shaven or clipped at all, as most really ancient coins usual have been. The damage done to that one looks to me like sword or dirk cut, and the one there that is bent and almost holed, that damage was almost assuredly done by the point of an arrow or small dart point. Sewn into the quilting of a warrior’s gambeson, they could easily have been so abused over the years, totally unbeknownst to the erstwhile abusers.

“No. Behtiloo, I am of an opinion that these are coinage a kingdom that they say lies far to the east of this place beyond the Great River by moons of traveling. But let us now go to a trader I know of old and see if I’m right.”

The head and face of the trader, Flaivin did not match his beefy, muscular body, nor did his delicate hands with their long, tapering fingers. The head was small and almost completely round, the features sharp and vulpine, the eyes as black and glittery as bits of obsidian. But he seemed friendly enough greeting Milo warmly, like an old and much respected friend.

When he had served small measures of a bittersweet wine in tiny brazen goblets, he leaned back and eyed Milo, saying. “And just what can I do for you this day, Chief Milo?”

Milo smiled, “Put on your moneychanger’s hat, friend Flaivin. I’ve a few pretties for you to took at and value … and maybe, to buy.”

Flaivin’s only movement was a deep sigh. “Oh, my friend, my friend, you’d be better off to rebury your silver and bronze pieces for a while, that or use them to decorate a saddle or the like; when I left Ohyoh country last year, the value of silver was still plummeting, dragging bronze and copper bullion prices down in its wake. So whatever quotation I’d feel safe to give you would likely do nothing but infuriate you.”

“Not silver, Flaivin,” said Milo in a low tone, “Gold.”

In a twinkling, or so it seemed to Behtiloo, the tabletop was cleared of bottle and goblets and crowded with various and arcane paraphernalia, all gathered around and about the broad goldpieces Milo had laid before the trader.

“Reddish.” The trader sniffed. “Not pure, then, But the black-skinned bastards seem to like their coinage that color, pure or not.

“These are ahlf-ryahrs of the Kahleefah of Zahnohgah, Milo. I’ve leaned, over the years, to read a little of their snaky script, so I can tell you that these are about seventy years old. They were minted just after the accession of Kahleef Moostahfah Itahlit, who only reigned four years before he was poisoned. Rulers seldom last long in that bloody land. Let’s see, now …”

After weighing and testing the coins, he sat back and said, “Well, friend Milo, each of these three weighs out at an even thousand grains—you see, no metal was lost or removed in the damage to these two—but of course only about eight out of every ten of those grains is gold; there was a heavy addition of copper and a little silver to make up this alloy.

“What were you thinking of trading these for? I could give the best part of a pipe of a nice little wine for these three … ?”

Milo chuckled. “I’ll bet you’d like to strike so shrewd a deal, Flaivin. No, two of them for two top-quality scale shirts of steel, as well as enough sheet steel and brass to make up twenty helmets of Horseclans pattern. The other goldpiece for one hundred and fifty gallons of decent-grade hwiskee, plus some oddments of this woman’s choosing. Done?”

The trader snorted, most of the friendliness departed from both voice and demeanor. “Chief Milo, to see the goods you desire for such paltry sums would be my utter ruination, as surely you must know. All three of these coins together would not cover the cost and freightage of the amount of steel you demand, especially not decent-quality steel.

“As regards the hwiskee, now, it’s devilish costly to carry it so far. We always lose about half of what we start out with in Ohyoh country, what with broken or leaking barrels, thieving wagoners and the like, so that’s why we have to set the prices so high, are we to make any profit at all. For two of the goldpieces, or their equivalent in furs or what-have-you, I could let you have a hundred gallons of corn hwiskee, but that’s all.”

The haggling went on for some hours, but at length Chief Milo and the trader, Flaivin, reached an amicable agreement. For a total of six of the golden discs, Behtiloo received two steel-on-leather scale shins and enough loose scales to make another for Buhd Krooguh when his time of warring came, enough sheet steel and brass for thirty helmets, five pounds of brass tacks, two chests of fast-dyed threads and yarns (each chest also containing an assortment of eighteen steel needles), seven twenty-gallon barrels of hwiskee, two twenty-gallon barrels of wine and a bolt of the smoothest, softest, most sensorially pleasing cloth that Behtiloo had ever seen or touched.

As she walked back toward the Krooguh enclave to fetch in strong men and a cart or two to transport her booty, Milo touched the bolt under her arm, saying. “This is true, first water silk. I not only cannot imagine where a gaggle of plains traders came by it, I cannot imagine why they wagoned it hundreds of miles to try to sell it to nomads who mostly are dirt-poor. But it arrived here, and you now have it. Use it as cloth, if you wish, but silk makes superlative bowstrings also, and the threads too short for such could always be used in embroidery.

“Now you know the value of those golden discs, so guard them well. Cut a couple of them into four pieces and never show more than one piece at the time would be my advice, especially when you’re dealing with traders or the southern Dirtmen, For unlike other metals, gold has the hoary repute of driving men and women mad; to acquire it, they have been known to sacrifice everything they otherwise held dear—possessions, relatives, honor, even life itself. If I did anything right and proper, I pride myself that I was able to breed that particular form of insanity out of the Kindred. To you and all the other clansfolk, gold is but another decorative metal, perhaps more favored only because it is easier to work than copper or silver or brass or the antique metals.

“When you return from your camp, bring your clan smith and have him check every last scale and piece of sheet metal. See that Flaivin’s men broach every last barrel, and taste the contents yourself. Make him weigh out that sack of tacks again, too. Go through the sewing chests and see that nothing has been removed or changed about in them. If you find he is trying to cheat or delude you in any way, even the most piddling, remind him of the name Steev Koorhohm and ask if he recalls just how the clans dealt with that trader, years agone. Thought of that incident should drive all ideas of chicanery from his mind.”

“Steev Koorhohm, Uncle Milo?” Behtiloo asked. “I don’t understand. Who is Steev Koorhohm?”

Milo smiled grimly. “Steev Koorhohm was a plains trader, back before you became a clanswoman. He brought his wagons to the prairies full of diseased slaves and poisonous hwiskee. When two warriors died and more went blind after drinking his goods, a war party rode after his train, took him and brought him back.

“With all the other traders looking on, they bound his yard tightly with wet rawhide, poured water down his throat until his bladder was nigh to bursting, then slit off his eyelids and buried him neck-deep in an anthill. He only lived about a day.”