XIV

When he had had the full story from the open memories of Leenah and Behtiloo (for little Peet, utterly drained, both physically and emotionally, was sunk deep in an exhausted sleep). Chief Sami look only long enough to exchange his boiled-leather hunting armor for his inherited steel scale shirt and his game-wise hunting horse for his big roan stallion, Bonebreaker, king of the Clan Krooguh herd.

Then, summoning all the warriors, maidens and matrons, he gave them a brief rendition of the events—the completely unprovoked sneak attack upon a party of peacefully hunting Krooguh boys by adult Dirtmen. He related the murders from ambush of the first three children to die, told of the two who had suffered grievous wounds and lived barely long enough to get back to camp and of one of his own young sons and a brave cat brother who now lay in the chief yurt, sorely hurt.

Lastly, he spoke with grim pride of the glorious death of little Tim Krooguh, who had Slain at least five adult men, then willingly given his own young life that his brothers and his wounded comrades might escape. Speaking, as he was to Kindred Horseclansfolk, he did not need to stress the inherent baseness of Dirtmen or the depthless evil of men who would coldly slay innocent little children.

Leaving the clan camp guarded by the maidens, the matrons and a few superannuated warriors under the command of his uncle, subchief Buhd Hansuhn of Krooguh, Sami, at the head of seventy-two fully armed warriors and twenty mature prairiecats, shortly rode out, on the trail—the very real blood trail—by which the battered party of boys had returned.

They rode out fully prepared for a raid in force or whatever else might befall them: four spare horses for every rider, more horses fitted with the special saddles needed by the prairiecats, packhorses and mules laden with case on case of arrows, bundles of war darts, spare weapons, coils of braided-rawhide rope, pitch and oil for fire arrows, dried herbs and prepared ointments and soft cloths for dressing wounds, many pounds or hard cheese, jerked meat and pemmican, waxed-leather bags of water.

Behtiloo Hansuhn of Krooguh rode behind Chief Sami and beside her eldest son, Hwahlis Hansuhn of Krooguh. Rant and rave and shout as they might, not one of her sons or her grandsons had been able to dissuade her of her intention to ride with the war party. Finally, and as gracefully as the circumstances made possible, Chief Sami had caved in, able to console himself and his pride somewhat by thinking aloud that his grandmother, for all her advanced years still could pull a heavier bow than could some of his warriors.

Blackback, the prairiecat, had gleaned some useful facts regarding the topography of the route the boys had taken toward the east from the minds of Peet and Kills-elk, and that, combined with her keen senses and those of the other cats, plus the plain splashes of blood here and there, allowed the war party to travel fast and confidently; therefore, it was more than an hour before sunset when they spotted from afar the numerous black specks wheeling in the sky.

That the dead horses had been skinned, their hooves and the larger of their sinews removed, was not upsetting to the Horseclansmen, who were themselves of a thrifty nature. But the savage, depraved, singularly hideous mutilations which had been perpetrated upon the dead flesh of the three little boys was sufficient to drive even the soberest the most phlegmatic clansman into a true killing rage.

Far back from the scene of the major atrocity, within the tall grasses that had screened the cowardly attack, the cats found the corpse of Whitepaws Like the horses, he had been skinned; also, his head had been hacked off and all eighteen of his claws had been wrenched out of his paws.

But of brave little Tim, there was no sign, anywhere.


“Come out of there, you accursed heathen spawn!” growled eighteen-year-old Micah Claxton, very brave in the knowledge that the captured pagan boy had been disarmed.

Tall, fair and handsome, in a sullen way, Micah was the very apple of his grandfather’s eye. Possessed of a splendid physique and far stronger than average, he misused that strength to bully younger or weaker men of the Abode of the Righteous, while against those whom he sensed might best him physically, he always invoked the dread power of his doting grandsire, the Elder of the Lord, Elijah Claxton. Micah was universally and most cordially despised by his peers.

“Come out, child of Satan!” he repeated from just outside the doorway of the tiny cell. “The Elder, the blessed Elijah, would see you, would have converse with you and begin to teach you of the glories of God.”

Tim had awakened alone in utter darkness. His head had ached abominably, the whole side of it and his face had been caked with dried blood and dirt and there had been a metallic taste in his dry mouth. His first attempt to stand on his feet had been disastrous, so he had explored in the darkness on his hands and knees.

He had discovered that floor and walls were constructed of broad wooden planks, smooth and slightly greasy to the touch of his fingers. Tim had instantly realized that they would take fire quickly and burn nicely, had he only flint and steel, but of course his belt with its pooch and knives was gone from around his waist. The door he finally found was wooden, too, and it seemed to be both solid and heavy, at any rate immovable to his boy’s strength.

The furnishings were spartan—a wooden frame strung with strips of hide which supported a canvas bag stuffed full of dried, crackly cornshucks, an empty but foul-smelling wooden bucket and another bucket, this one half full of tepid water. Tim cautiously sniffed the water, gingerly tasted it, then drank down half of it avidly. His raging thirst slaked for the nonce, he wetted the baggy sleeve of his shirt, laved most of the clotted blood from off his face and, working more carefully, from off his head. His fingers told the tale of a long split in his scalp just above his right ear, of that and of a hard, very painful and quite large bump.

After taking stock of his clothing and possessions still remaining, Tim decided that whoever had disarmed him had either been hurried or inexperienced at such a task or both together. Not only had he been left a bone-headed iron pin in his right braid, the small dagger—flat-hilted and guardless but with three inches of razor-sharp steel blade—was still sheathed in place between the layers of felt that made up the leg of his boot.

Squatting against the back wall of his prison, Tim was thinking of how best to make use of his available weapons to the detriment of his captors when the door was opened to admit a blinding burst of sunlight. Then a big man with a loud voice began to yell at him.

Stepping aside, so that his bulk did not block out the daylight, Micah Claxton peered into the tiny windowless cell. The captive child was not on the cot, but was rather squatting or crouching back next to the rear wall, head sunk on his chest, arms hung at his sides. He looked to be smaller than Micah had remembered and utterly helpless, and so, emboldened, he strode in and roughly shook the boy’s shoulder.

“Don’t you hear me. you piece of filth? Get up and come with me.”

And Tim uncoiled like a steel spring! The bone-headed pin was driven its full two inches of length into Micah’s belly even as the edge of the boot dagger laid open from temple to chin the handsome face in which Micah had taken such inordinate pride. Screaming like a woman in labor, Micah Claxton stumbled backward out of the cell to slump against the guardrail of the porch, staring stupidly at the blood running from his chin onto the palms of his big hands.

Tim made to follow his victim out the door, but his way was obstructed by two more Dirtmen, who crowded into the cell. One made a grab for the boy’s knife hand, but his hand closed around the knife instead, and Tim’s reflexive jerk sliced through palm and fingers to grate upon living bone. With a breathless gasp, the farmer backed away cradling his hurt, bloody hand with the other.

His comrade stamped forward, arms wide, meaning to enfold the little captive in their crushing grasp. But Tim ducked under the sweep of those arms and jammed the blood-tacky dagger up between the man’s meaty thighs with all his might.

The second man’s deep roars abruptly metamorphosed into a piercing shriek, and he rose onto his very toetips in his vain attempt to raise his suffering body up off the punishing steel. Tim indulged himself, giving the imbedded blade a vicious twist and withdrawing it in a savage drawcut. As the grunting, groaning man slid down the wall, Tim Krooguh once more made for the door and freedom.


Captain-of-dragoons Roger Gorman was a good nine hundred crowflight miles from the country that had given him birth, which—all things duly weighed and considered—could have been deemed a definite plus factor in his continued life and health. He had left his homeland most precipitately and had never returned, for all that his half brother (Roger was the illegitimate outcome of a nobleman’s drunken night of dalliance with a taverner’s daughter), the Count of Rehdzburk, had offered repeatedly to pay quite handsomely for a sight of Rogers head … with or without the body.

Roger Gorman was not a basically evil man, despite the fact that he was rightfully charged with brigandage, highway robbery, maintenance of an illegal armed band, horse theft, cattle rustling, sheep stealing, poaching, arson, extortion, kidnapping, maiming, rape and a goodly number of murders. These were only the major charges. The lesser ones filled two large pages and spilled over onto a third. They included the unlawful display of the arms and devices of the Most Noble House of the Counts of Rehdzburk (Roger always and hotly contended that he had as much inherent right to display those arms as did his half brother, the present Count of Rehdzburk), aiding and abetting a jailbreak, and flight to avoid prosecution. To these latter charges Roger answered that it was a poor sort of a man who would simply ride away and leave good comrades to a harsh and merciless fate, adding that any man who would willingly linger to make the short, sharp acquaintance of a headsman’s axe had not the brains of a privy-worm.

Immediately he left the environs of Rehdzburk, he had taken a nom de guerre which resembled his real name not even faintly. Under this nom, he had served as a Freefughter for a few years, first in the army of the Duke of Eeree when he revolted against the king. When the duke made peace with his sovereign at Harzburk and agreed to honor the warrants of other principalities, Roger thought that a change of scenery might be beneficial to his health and fled to the Duchy of Pitzburk, where another rebellion was arming against Harzburk and the king.

But following a trivial dispute wherein he was forced to slay a minor nobleman in a fair fight. Roger found the general atmosphere of the ancient City of Steel oppressive and somewhat less than salubrious, and so he rode out into the western mountains to first join, then soon command a jolly group of kindred souls and continue with them in the greenwood the life he had learned to love so in Rehdzburk.

As the long-drawn-out war between Pitzburk and the king wound slowly down, more and more former Freefighters found their way into the ranks of Rogers band, until he was leading a force of over half a thousand seasoned, veteran soldiers. A century earlier, he might have hacked himself out a holding and a patent of nobility with so many good swords to do his bidding, but instead he lost seventy percent of them when his stronghold was surprised and overrun by the strong force sent to crush him by the king and his dukes. Roger and the couple hundred of his men who managed to fight their way out rode west as fast as honest horseflesh could bear them.

They served the Archduke of Kluhmbuhzburk for a while, then his overlord, the King of Ohyoh. But the king proved to be slow in paying due monies and he fought too few wars to deliver any meaningful amounts of loot into his Freefighters’ slim purses, so the condotta rode on west again.

In slow, erratic stages, halting here to fight for hire and there to fight for plunder until driven on by armed might, the hundred or so survivors eventually found themselves on the very uttermost fringe of civilization, with the hue and cry raised for them a stretch of a good hundred leagues behind and only the Sea of Grass before them.

Roger and his hard-pressed lieutenants had been on the verge of trying to trade a few of their precious warhorses for the condotta’s passage down the Great River to one of the score of little independent kingdoms that lined its eastern bank when they were approached by Dick Gruenberger, a plains trader. In better times or another location, Roger would have spit upon the paltry sum offered per armed and mounted man to ride along with and guard the wagon caravans on the Sea of Grass, but after a brief conference with his starving officers and men, he had accepted.

And so, for five long years, sometime Captain-of-dragoons Roger Gorman and his aging, shrinking force had ridden out from Tradertown each spring beside the huge, high-wheeled wagons, each drawn by as many as a dozen and a half big mules or twelve span of oxen and creaking with their loads. They carried vastly diverse cargoes—bar iron, sheet steel and brass and copper, ingots of copper and alloys of silver, semiprecious gemstones, bolts of various cloths, spools of threads and fine wires, hanks of dyed yams, steel and brass needles, nails and tacks and other small items of hardware, whiskeys and wines and female slaves, anything and everything that might tickle the fancies of the scattered bands of nomads or the few, isolated communities of farmers.

And each autumn, the wagons roiled back to Tradertown. By then they were packed with bales of hides, bundles of rich, dense furs, intricately worked and profusely decorated leather goods, fine examples of the felter’s art, thick blankets and deep carpets, small treasures that the nomads or even the traders themselves had dug out of the various ruined and overgrown cities which the prairie was fast reclaiming for its own, all these plus enamelwork and weapons of Horseclan manufacture. (Horseclan hornbows were unsurpassed, and there was an insatiable market for them in the east, while the blades wrought by Horseclans smiths were unexcelled by any save the very highest grades of Pitzburk steel.)

Long ago, on their very first meeting, Roger had disliked and thoroughly distrusted Dick Gruenberger, and five years as that trader’s employee had borne out to him the perspicacity of his initial judgment. Gruenberger and his son shared certain traits in common; both were mean, grasping, unrelievedly avaricious and cruel.

Little as they had originally agreed to pay the men who put their lives on the line to guard the wagons and their contents, father and son still came to the autumn accounting with long faces and even longer lists of their “justifications” for paying far less than that paltry sum.

Consequently, even living communally, the condotta seldom had enough to see it through the winter and so was obliged to draw advances against next season’s wages and work for Trader Gruenberger yet another year. Roger had long consoled his dwindling pride with a promise to himself to someday see every last drop of the thin, watery stuff that the Traders Gruenberger—père et fils—called life’s blood.

Then, this past spring, after some inexplicably delayed but most important shipments had necessitated a very late start of the plains caravan, members of the condotta had discovered that the nineteen slaves chained in the slave wagons were all war captives from the Pitzburk-Ohyoh marches, and despite strict supervision maintained by the four big brutal women Gruenberger was maintaining to make certain that only he, his son, David, and his nephew, Aaron, could get at the women until the train split up farther out on the prairies. Roger could smell an incipient mutiny on the first occasion the traders should try to sell one of the slave women.

For a month of travel, the deadly mash worked and fermented. Then, a day’s travel away from the communal farm of a group of strange, stern folk whose fortified dwelling place had always been the last stop before entering into nomad territory, Roger and his fifty-five men had slit the throats of the sleeping teamsters, oxmen and wagoners, cut down the personal bodyguards of the Gruenbergers to a man and freed the slaves. Then, while the men amused themselves with their former employers, in a spirit at fairness, they turned over the disarmed former wardresses to the nineteen women for final disposition. When all of the bodies had been deeply buried, the wagons were driven back and forth over the gravesite a few times, then they proceeded on westward. The three tall, multistory buildings of stone and timber and homemade brick, interconnected at several levels, would have been laughable as defensive structures anywhere east of the Great River and, no matter their cranklights, few ancient rifles and encircling stockade of half-peeled logs, would quickly have fallen to any determined assault of well-led troops. But here on the Sea of Grass, where the only enemies to be expected were hit—and-run horse-nomads, the structure had proved quite sufficient as a fortress-home to the six generations of farmers it had sheltered, having come through more than one attack by raiders from out on the prairies.

Neither Roger nor his swordsmen had ever felt really comfortable around the grim-faced, hidehound. self-righteous inhabitants of the fortified farm, hut Gruenberger had stopped every year to turn a profit in trade. The farmers sometimes paid in hard money—mostly, ancient silver coins—but more usually traded grain and dried beans for such esoteric items as yellow brimstone and pigs of lead, in addition to the more mundane needles, threads, pigs of iron and the occasional bolt of white or black or brown broadcloth, or a new nailheader.

On the other hand, their five seasons on the prairies and plains had bred in Roger and all of his force a liking and a deep admiration and respect for the Horseclansfolk—the sworn and bitter enemies of those who dwelt in the so-called Abode of the Righteous. The customs and the way of life of these nomads made good sense to Roger and appealed to him and the pitiful remnant of his condotta.

It had been their original intention, this decided out of the general parlay held over the gory corpses of Gruenberger and his crew, to continue on westward until they chanced onto a Horseclans clan or two, trade off their late and unlamented employer’s goods for livestock and tents, marry into the clans and become themselves Horseclansmen.

“But there,” raged Roger to himself, “is another good plan buried in the shit by chancing to be in the wrong fucking place at the wrong fucking time! Damn the wormy, misbegotten guts of that sanctimonious old child-butchering lurker of an Elder Claxton, anyway!”

Roger took a long, thougtful draft of the late Dick Gruenberger’s best-quality honey wine from the dead trader’s own heavy chased-silver cup, reflecting, “Well, at least I could swear a fucking Sword Oath that me and mine had naught to do with the foul murders of those poor little lads. We’ve all been brought low, true enough, but we won’t never he that fucking lowdown! That treacherous volley was loosed long before me and my boys was anywhere near within bow range.

“There was no fucking need to kill them anyhow, not as outnumbered as they were, and a passel of grown men against less than a dozen children, at that. But that pious fucking fool Claxton is so terrified of Horseclansfolk of any size or sex or age that his very ball-less fucking terror and this senseless fucking reaction to it has dropped us all—every man jack—into the shit, nose-deep, by Steel!”

The old soldier grimaced at a particularly unpleasant memory. “And whatall them fucking farmers done to them dead boys’ pitiful little corpses … the shit-eating bastards! Hell, we didn’t do things like that to them Gruenbergers, and everybody knows they plumb deserved such if anybody does.

“When the Horseclansfolks see those bodies, they’re sure to go plumb crazy-mad, and I, for one, can’t say I blame them one damn bit. Except, where we all are, they’re likely to take that mad out on us too, along of the ones what earned it.”

Suddenly. Roger was jolted from his dismal imagery of falling under the dripping sabers of blood-mad Horseclansmen by one of the troopers he had sent to share the guard of the captured nomad boy.

“Cap’n Roger, you better for to come quick, Them fuckin’ psalm-shouters is jest set to murder thet pore li’l younker. Guy and his sword is all that’s stoppin’ the cocksuckers, right now …”

During the course of their shared run up the length of the second-level porch, the trooper shouted out the gist of the tale above the hollow booming thuds of their heavy jackboots on the boards.

Roger suffered only an inconsequential stab in his left forearm during, his eyeblink-quick disarming of Tim Krooguh. Then, bouncing the blood-tacky little dagger on one horny palm, he openly mocked the enraged farmers.

“You poor, fucking. God-ridden, ball-less substitutes for men, you! I told you all this morning that this boy is my prisoner—mine, Captain-of-dragoons Roger Gorman’s! Had you heeded me at that time, you’d still have your balls, a good deal more of your blood and”—he grinned derisively at the sobbing, gasping, moaning Micah Claxton, whose blood-slimy jawteeth were clearly visible between the lips of the cheek slash—“your girlish beauty.

“Did you suppose yourselves to be dealing with one of your own browbeaten, dispirited spawn, eh? That boy in there is bred of a hundred generations of fighters, and with nary a hair on his chin yet, he’s more a man than any one of you here, who proclaim yourselves as such. I’ll wager my horse and sword that he has more fucking sand in his craw than the whole hagridden nest of you fucking religious maniacs!”

“But … but how could he have gotten that knife, unless a … a demon sent by his father, Satan. brought it to him? He was searched and disarmed, and the door is the only way to enter, and it was solidly locked and barred and guarded by your two men and two of us.” This speech came from the lips of Jeremiah Herbert through teeth clenched against the pain of his slashed-to—the-bone hand.

The trooper, Guy, laughed and slapped his thigh in mirth. while Roger snorted disdainfully. “Half-wit fucking amateurs! You had off his belt, and when you found no knives hung down his back or under his sleeves or strapped to his legs or sticking out of his boottops, you figured you’d stripped him of all his weapons, right? Then the more fools, you!”

Roger look the needle tip of the little dagger between callused fingertips and held it up before their eyes, saying, “Did no one of you hopeless fucking shitheads even think of having off that boy’s boots and seeing if perchance a flat. slender blade or two might be sewn between the layers of felt? Of course not! Your sole talents lie in the directions of psalm-shouting, plow-pushing, and shit-shoveling, and you’d all be fucking wise to remember that the next time you feel the itch to play at soldiering.

“Now, I’m placing a half-squad to guard this boy, and my orders to them will be to spill out the fucking guts of anybody as tries to get at him without me being with that anybody. Now you sorry fucking pack of arseholes just go tell your fucking Elder that, hear?”

But immediately the bleeding, limping, sobbing, much-chastened farmers were out of earshot. Roger turned to Guy and the other troopers, saying, “We’ll post a half-squad up here, right enough. But as soon as it’s dark, you two take that boy down and chain him in one of the slave wagons. Make sure he has plenty of water, a slop bucket and some hay bails, and a bedroll. Get him some cooked meal and some cheese and milk, too, if you can I doubt that he’d know what the bread and greens these people seem to subsist on is for.

“Guy, you’re now a sergeant and your sole duty is to care for and guard the nomad boy. lake as many men as you need to guard him round the clock, no less than a half-squad at any time, strung bows and bared steel.

“If this mess gets worse—and I am of the considered opinion that it will, and damned soon, at that—the lad may well be the condotta’s safe passage out of it all. And I don’t trust this Elder Claxton and his pack of murderous bible-thumpers any further than I could heave a fucking full-grown draft ox.”


“But where do you think to ride, Mother?” Hwahlis Hansuhn of Krooguh demanded exasperatedly.

“To the high plains, if necessary. To the lands of frozen earth. To the deserts. Wherever I must ride to find real men. Men who can still recall the old ways, the ancient Horseclans customs passed down to the Kindred from the Sacred Ancestors. Men who still think more of the sacred honor of their clans than they do of their own fleabitten hides,” Behtiloo snapped, while she tied the last knots holding the load on her single packhorse,

Activities throughout the clan camp had ground to a virtual standstill. Those of the warriors who had returned with Chief Sami were among the throng of clansfolk watching and listening, all red-faced or staring at the dust, as shamed by her scornful words as by their chief’s decision in the matter,

“But, Mother,” Hwahlis remonstrated, shaking his graying head, “you were there. You saw that fence of tall logs. Horses could not pass between them, so we would have to go in on foot, in the face of more than twoscore steel-scale bowmen and Wind alone knows how many Dirtmen. Every single warrior of Clan Krooguh might die without accomplishing—”

“Tell that to the spilled blood of your murdered kin,” said Behtiloo coldly. “Your dead father and I once took great pride in you and your brother and in Sami, our grandson. My dear, honorable Tim would have known what had to be done in this instance, and he would have spit upon you and Buhd and Sami for your cravenness.”

“Mother,” Hwahlis remonstrated with as much patience as he still could exercise, “you know that more than half the warriors and most of the mature cats are still camped about and scouting the environs of Three-House. Two-thirds of the cattle of those Dirtmen now are with or soon will be with our own herds, and some of their sheep and horses. Too.

“We’ve slain or taken every man who ventured out from the place and will continue to do so, since they’ve refused to trade us Tim for any of their own folk or beasts. So would you have us fire the place and roast your great-grandson alive along with his captors, then?”

Behtiloo paused with one foot in the stirrup, her corded old hands set upon pommel and cantle. “No, creature—I-once-called-my-son, I’d have you all stand up on your hind legs like the men you’re supposed to be … but you obviously have quite forgotten how to do so.”

The old woman spoke not another word, though her blue eyes flashed the cold fire of contempt. Once in the saddle, she mindspoke her mare, the packhorse and the prairiecat, Blackback, and the little group moved slowly the length of the camp, the throng parting before her. She rode west.

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