A Woman of the Horseclans

III

While the two younger women bustled out, scooped up the two saddles and the other gear and bore them inside the single round room of the dwelling, the older woman, smiling, mindspoke Milo.

“Stole a Dirtwoman, did you. Uncle Milo? Well, she’s not bad-looking, big-boned, of course, most of that ilk are, many of them run to fat, too, as they get longer in the tooth. But they run to strength, as well, which is a valuable asset in a slave … or is she to be a wife, eh, when once she’s dropped her foal?”

The woman’s grin broadened. “I doubt me not that she’ll be a pleasant ride. But wait, are you certain you’re not bringing disease into your household and the camp? What happened to her hair? Why is her scalp so red?”

Milo returned the grin, beaming, “Ehstrah, my dear, between you and Gahbee and Ilsah. I have all the female household that I can properly service of nights, and well you know that fact, so don’t think to get me into another marriage at any time soon. Besides, Bettylou Hanson here is not my captive, but rather that of young Tim Krooguh. He means to wed her properly, and it’s up to you and me and the others to take her in hand and see her suitably arrayed and the like to impress old Dik Krooguh and see him approve her as a first wife for his nephew.”

The older woman wrinkled up her brow and beamed, “But is it wise, Uncle, to allow obvious disease to be bred into one of the Kindred clans?”

Milo snorted and beamed, “Ehstrah. this poor girl is not diseased. According to their peculiar customs, they shaved off all her hair and stained her scalp red.

“Now, are we going to just stand here mindspeaking for the rest of the day? I, for one, could do with some food and milk and a bath and some sleep, and I don’t think Bettiloo would be averse to the same.”

Stiff and sore from the long hours in the saddle, Bettylou Hanson tripped on the foot-high wooden doorsill of the shelter and would surely have fallen had the older woman not grasped her arm in a strong, hard-palmed hand. Retaining her hold, the woman guided the girl to a piece of gaudy carpet partially covered by a tanned wolfpelt and sat her down upon it.

One of the younger women removed the lid from a hanging bucket of stiff waxed leather and dipped up a bowl of warm, frothy milk then handed it to Bettylou, with a broad smile. As soon as the milk had been avidly drained, the same young woman took back the bowl and refilled it from the bucket.

The meal that she and Milo were shortly served was, to her, filling, but distinctly different from most of the foods of the Abode of the Righteous. There were several varieties of cheeses, a stew of at least two kinds of meats and a profusion of unfamiliar greens and root vegetables. The bread was flat, oval loaves about as large as her palm, it was coarse, heavy, and she was certain that neither wheat nor rye nor corn had been any one of the constituents of its dough. Some of the fruits in the bowl bore a resemblance to and tasted somewhat like the fruits of the Abode—apples, cherries, plums—but no one of them looked to be as large or well formed as those carefully nurtured fruits. She assumed, correctly, that they were wild-grown.

But the copious quantities of food proved to be a powerful soporific for Bettylou. and when she began to nod, Milo simply pushed her into a supine position and the older woman bad one of the younger throw an old cloak over the pregnant girl.

“If ever before ye hast doubted my preachments, my people, never, ever will ye again so doubt me. Ye have seen—verily hast ye seen—that the servants of the Evil One still do walk this world and visit death and destruction upon us Righteous, upon this people Beloved of the Lord of Hosts. Upon us and our works did they wreak the full measure of punishments for the many and most foul transgressions against God’s Law, the heinous Sins of the spirit as well as of the flesh of which each of you errant sinners knows yourself to be guilty.

“Only by true repentance and firm cleavage to God and His Holy Law by each and every one of you and in all ways will God allow us to rebuild the Abode of the Righteous and prosper….”

Solomon Claxton, his hands and arms from wrists to shoulders still swathed in greasy bandages, eased his battered body into a position that was at least marginally less uncomfortable in his armchair of carven oak. Once again he silently thanked God that this House of the Holy Spirit had been spared, for with it had been spared this meeting hall with all of its appurtenances.

Elder Claxton, Solomon’s father, had been at it for about two hours now, and was just getting warmed up to his subject his eyes blazing from beneath his bushy brows, blazing as brightly as had the fires which had been conquered only bare days agone.

Worn out with days and nights of unremitting toil, sapped by the pain of his bums and injuries, Solomon allowed the chairback to keep him upright, while he tried to ignore the stifling heat, the sweat bathing his body, the flies and the stink of the rancid fat with which his burns had been dressed.

But if he suffered, he knew that the sufferings of those not so privileged as to occupy the chairs in the Row of the Patriarchs must be near to the limits of physical endurance. Many of those men and women were afflicted as badly as or worse than was he, and their hard, narrow benches had no backs, no arms. In just these last two hours, seven men and women had slumped from off their benches, unconscious, and had had to be borne out of the meeting hall; Solomon was of the opinion that many more would do likewise of this hot, muggy Wednesday night. Had he been in their places, he would have “fainted” long since, but, alas, the Patriarchs had to, were expected to, set an example, and Solomon Claxton took his status in the Abode of the Righteous very seriously, as befitted the Elders chosen successor.

“Not that Pa is right all of the time,” Solomon thought to himself, trying hard to get his mind off the aches and pains and itches just now tormenting him. “Pa’s dead wrong right often. More wrong about things in recent yeast than when I was a boy and a young man. If he comes to keep getting worse at making important decisions, I suppose me and the Patriarchs will just have to send him home to God, one night, like he and them as was The Patriarchs back then did to Grandpa, his pa.”

“… Minions of Satan came and bore her off, bore off the Scarlet Woman, who had been known to us as Bettylou Hanson ere my Holy Seed rooted out and exposed to all the world her true, hellish Evil. Many men still living, men who sit now amongst you, saw with their own two eyes how she was borne off, sitting before a mounted demon, his arm most lovingly enfolding her, and her smiling up at him! Can ye then doubt that Satan walketh still across this once-cleansed world? Canst doubt that full many a girl who dwelleth amongst us, the Holy, Chosen flock of the Lord. harboreth the pure essence of ancient Evil, that …”

“Pa can call them demons if he wants to,” mused Solomon Claxton, “but they were nothing but another batch of those savage, murdering, thieving horse-nomads come in from the plains out there to do whatall they have allus done best—kill, steal, burn, lift stock—that’s all it was.

“Can’t imagine why they stole the Hanson girl, though. Far gone as she was, a good raping would likely of kilt her. But, knowing how them bastards are, they probably kilt her anyway and dumped her body out there somewhere in the wilderness, God pity her. Funny, she was allus a sweet, biddable chit. Sometimes I wonder about all of this Holy Seed and Scarlet Woman business. I wonder just how and when and why it all got started. I’ve read my Bible end to end and never found nothing relating directly to any of this Holy Seed stuff.”

Uttering a weak groan, one of the older Patriarchs slid out of his armchair onto the floor, but Elder Claxton ranted on, as if unaware that yet another of his battered flock had succumbed to the effects of oppressive heat and fresh wounds.

“If Pa don’t wind down soon,” thought Solomon Claxton, “I’ll just have to do somethin about thishere mess. Tomorrow’s coming, and until we get us some more horses and mules, us men who are sound enough to work is going to be hard put to it doing all that has to be done in the fields and all. Pa just don’t realize, it being so long since he done any farming, or work of any kind for that matter, but what with all the men and boys was kilt or hurt so bad they can’t work and with nothing but a few span of oxen for draft, we’re all going to play pure hell getting all the crops in on time, this year; so Lord’s Day or no Lord’s Day, Gospel Night or no Gospel Night, we should all be working or resting, not sitting here just listening to Pa rehash the raid and the fires and all and trying to lay them all at the door of that pore Hanson girl, just because she had the bad luck for to get grabbed and carried off and kilt by them black-hearted bastards.”

The big man sighed and cautiously shook his head at that thought. “God rest her pore little soul. And if we done her the wrongs I reckon we might’ve, I hope she asks God to forgive us.”

Bettylou Hanson slept for almost thirty hours, there on her pallet of hide and carpets.

“Let the child sleep. Ehstrah,” said Milo, upon himself awakening. “She had a long, hard ride for one so ill accustomed to a nightlong of rump-pounding in a saddle. Nor do I think that she’d been used well by her own folk before young Tim stole her.”

Ehstrah sniffed. “Not fed adequately, either, Uncle dear, by the look of her. She’s lean as a winter wolf. You’re dead certain she’s not diseased … ? You do recall what happened to Clan Guhntuh, years back, when they took in that girl they found wandering on the southern plains?”

Milo sighed a little exasperatedly. “Yes and no, Ehstrah. Yes, I well remember how Clan Guhntuh was extirpated by some form of viral plague. No, I tell you this girl is suffering from no more than exhaustion, plus the effects of the abuse and deprivation to which her own folk subjected her this last few moons.”

“They must be a singular folk, those from whom Tim Krooguh stole this Bettiloo Hahnsuhn, Milo,” Ehstrah remarked with a single shake of her graying head. “Don’t they know the danger to the child she carries that starving her portends?”

“ ‘Singular’ is a very mild term for those religious fanatics, Ehstrah,” Milo stated baldly. “I don’t think you’ve ever been this far east before, have you?”

She again shook her head, and he went on, “But I have, long before we married, you and I. I think it was Clan Grai I was then riding with, and we found a girl a bit older than this one. Stark naked, she was, her back covered from neck to knees with a single mass of festering sores from a brutal flogging, all her scalp shaven and painted red as sumac.”

“She, that girl, was pregnant, too, like this one?” asked Ehstrah.

“No,” he replied, “but her breasts still were heavy with milk, so we looked about for a babe backtracked her, but we found nothing, and when she had been nursed back to health, I found out why. Fetch some tea and dry curds and I’ll tell you that grim tale.”

Ehstrah smiled and bowed as low as any slave woman. “And what kind of tea does my master desire?”

With the new-risen Sacred Sun warming his right side and Ehstrah’s left, Milo squatted comfortably across from her with an ancient metal drinking cup in his left hand, making forays upon the bowl of cow’s-milk curds with the right. Close beside the bowl, the copper pot of tea steamed gently upon its brazier, lacing the cool morning air with the pungent odor of fresh spearmint.

“The ancestors of the Sacred Ancestors, Ehstrah, although they owned a high degree of civilization and labor-saving devices beyond the counting which gave many of them creature comforts such as folk today could not even imagine, never achieved a really homogeneous culture. Up to the very moment when that legendary folk died as a nation, still were there tiny groups that—for reasons of religion or philosophy, mostly—chose to band together and live lives that were generally harder and much more primitive, usually deriving sustenance from farming.”

“What has this history lesson to do with that Hansuhn girl, in the yurt there, Milo?” Ehstrah asked impatiently. “Gahbee and Ilsah and I can always make good use of an extra pair of hands, and if she is to become a woman of the Horseclans shortly, it is none too early for her to start learning just what will be expected of her.”

Milo shrugged and poured himself another cup of the spearmint tea. “You’re right, of course, Ehstrah … but only partially. Yes, it is important that Bettylou Hanson learn of us and our ways, but it is equally important that you, who will be her mentor, learn of her people, their customs and her background.

“As for you poor, poor overworked and underappreciated women—the three of you—you have only yourselves, one man and his gear and an average-sized yurt to care for. Do you seriously expect me to feel sorry for you three racks of lazybones? Just look around you and consider how many clanswomen make out alone or with only a slave woman in doing the work necessary for a husband and a gaggle of children. Be happy, woman, with the good things you have!”

Setting down his cup, Milo drew from out his belt pouch an ancient and battered meerschaum pipe and a bladder of dark shreds of tobacco. Careful to not drop a crumb of the infinitely precious stuff (it was available only from those rare, intrepid traders who occasionally ventured out onto the prairie from the east or by being traded from clan to clan up from the southeast), he packed the pipe, then lit a splinter in the coals beneath the brazier and puffed the filled pipe into life.

Ehstrah had never developed a taste for tobacco. She filled her own carven wooden pipe with dried basil leaves, lit it and dutifully listened as Milo went on with his recountal.

“I stated that the folk who came before never had a really homogeneous society, Ehstrah. One of the reasons that they did not have such was the matter of religions.”

“They did not reverence Sun and Wind, then, Milo?” She wrinkled her forehead in puzzlement.

“No, they were none of them so wise, my dear. They were saddled from birth to death with a great greedy horde of priests or those who claimed to serve and speak for a god—the best of these were deluded fools, the worst were liars hypocrites or charlatans of the basest sort, serving nothing and no one save their own acquisitive natures and endlessly clawing toward wealth and power over the lives and purses of those who foolishly put faith in them and the fables they spun.

“The majority of those precursors called themselves by the name of “Christians.” Their religion was called “Christianity.” but even it was not a single entity, rather was it divided and redivided into a good dozen major and many scores of minor sects, most of them claiming to be the only true sect, Moreover, most of these sects were constantly denigrating all other sects, nor were they at all averse to beating, maiming, torturing, burning, raping or killing in the vain attempt to prove the absurd claims that they mouthed. And these were the older, larger, better-organized and better-led sects, mind you.

“There were a host of other, smaller, even more fanatic sects. Certain of these were groups of out—and-out lunatics—in the cases of their leaders if not in the cases of the followers. Most of these smaller sects, though eccentric in speech and deed, hurt no one save their own members, but a few were blatantly sociopathic, practicing exceedingly perverted versions of the religion they claimed to honor.

“In self-defense, the folk among whom these smaller sects dwelt sometimes found it necessary to drive these antisocial groups out of their land entirely, or at the least away from the larger centers of population. It is from such a group that the folk of the Hanson girl are descended.

“Due to this fact, Ehstrah, because of the maniacal mores her people practice and pass on, you and the others must be very patient with Bettylou. She has been taught to believe that she is nothing less than the very wellspring of evil.”

“Evil? That girl?” snapped Ehstrah. “Tell me that you’re joking. Milo. Lunatics they must indeed be, and malicious to boot, to teach such arrant nonsense to a pretty girl.”

Milo shrugged. “They only pass on what they themselves were taught. The legends of the very beginning of their religion are very misogynistic, placing the blame for all the miseries of mankind on the supposed first woman and her sexuality.”

Ehstrah rocked back on her heels, laughing gustily. “And what of the sexuality of the first man, eh? A woman can’t do it alone, you know! Had it not been for that first randy bastard, there’d have been no second man or woman or generation. I never heard of adult men and women believing, living by, such utter rubbish. They sound so stupid as to need to have someone lead them in out of the rain. Can’t any of them think for themselves, reason for themselves? Men are men and women are women, male is male and female is female, there are good and bad of both sexes, but no babe is born bad, not of either sex, and no legend no matter how hoary or hallowed is going to make such a supposition so!”

“Nonetheless, Ehstrah, this is just what Bettylou firmly believes, it is all she ever has known. She further believes that were she not basically evil, she would not have conceived of the old goat of a priest—‘Elder’ is his title—who has been swiving her periodically since her puberty.”

Ehstrah nodded, her mouth now a firm line of resolution.

“Well, it’s high time that this Hansuhn girl began to learn some hard truths, began to learn to think for herself.”

Milo smiled. “You’re definitely the one for that job, my dear. Just pass on enough of all I’ve told you to Gahbee and Ilsah that they’ll not deem Bettylou a half-wit, eh.”

Bettylou Hanson awakened to find a rythmically breathing little bundle of russet fur pressed tightly against her breasts and upper belly. For a brief moment, she was frightened, then, when she had risen sufficiently to prop up on an elbow, she could discern that the bundle was but a soundly sleeping cat of some sort.

Her movement awakened the cat, and it first sat up and yawned cavernously, curling a long, wide, red-pink tongue from out a mouth well equipped with a full set of sparkling-white teeth and needle-pointed fangs. Although the creature was every bit as large as a smallish adult bobcat, the fact that its paws and head were oversized for its sturdy (verging on chubby) body led Bettylou to assume that it was possibly a cub of one of the huge felines such as had accompanied the clansmen on their raid.

After stretching thoroughly, forward and backward, the cat plumped down and began to wash its face, now and then taking a lick at its thick chest fur.

Bettylou had always been intensely fond of small animals—puppies, the kittens of barn cats, baby rabbits, kids, lambs and the like—so it was a natural, unconscious act to reach out a hand and stroke the soft, dense fur along the cat’s spine.

The deep, audible purr was expected, the strong mindspeak beam was not, and Bettylou started until her memory of the last few days reassured her that she was not hallucinating.

“Killer-of-all likes you, two-leg female, so he will not kill you. Besides, you are nice to sleep with; you do not roll and thrash about as do so many of your kind. Give this cat some of those wet curds from the bucket, up there, now.”

There were no other humans about and the feline beamed a gnawing hunger equal to Bettylous own, so she arose, picked up a brace of bowls and, using one for a scoop, filled the other with the fresh curds and set it down before the cat, who set to with purpose. She filled the second for herself, found a wooden spoon and began to eat.

Then she almost dropped both bowl and spoon when one of the two younger of Milo’s wives stepped over the high sill of the door and entered … stark naked, save only for her low, felt boots.

“So, you finally woke up, did you?” said the nude woman, with a warm, infectious smile. “Gahbee and I were wondering whether or not we should start to build a pyre for your body.” Then she caught sight of the cat crouched growling softly before the bowl of curds.

“Oh, no, not him again. Bettiloo. Furball there is the most unashamed glutton in the camp. As a nursing kitten, he almost sucked his poor mother dry, going after her dugs whenever the poor cat made to sleep or rest, and as a cub he is half again the size of the rest of his littermates. He will eat anything that he can get his teeth into, and he ranges far out in search of prey, which is good; but what is bad is that he never is sated, and here in camp he will steal food from those too wise for him to cozen out of it.”

She had been mindspeaking, and, still eating, still growling, the young cat replied threateningly, “Beware, two-leg female, do not so slander Killer-of-all-things, lest he tear out your ugly, furless throat! This cat never steals, he only takes that which he needs, as is the right of any clansman.”

Ilsah trilled a laugh. “Call it what you wish, Furball, but you were wise to get out of here before Ehstrah gets back from the sweatbath, else she’ll lay her strap on your fat carcass again, drive you squalling out of the yurt as she did the day she found you hanging by the teeth from that dried brisket.”

“Ugly and vicious as is that abominable two-leg female, she does not frighten this cat!” was the cub’s quick response. but then, of a sudden, he grabbed one more mouthful of the curds, crossed the width of the yurt in two leaps and was out the door.

A few moments after Furball’s abrupt departure, the older woman, Ehstrah, crossed the threshold, every bit as bare as was Ilsah, her unbraided hair dripping water down her back and her buttocks.

“Make certain everything edible is hung high or shut away,” she instructed Ilsah. I’m certain I spotted that roguish cat, Furball, skulking about our yurt as I approached it. I’m going to have to have Milo converse with the cat chief about Furball again. I fear me.

“Well, so you’re among the living again, Bettiloo Hansuhn. Had no trouble finding food, did you? Good, but don’t limit yourself to a bowl of curds, child. You’re welcome to anything in the yurt—milk, meat, tea, berries, honey, whatever we have. No one goes hungry in the Horseclans camp unless all go hungry.”

Despite her protestations thai the curds were sufficient to her hunger, the older and the younger there and then sat the girl down and fed her to repletion and beyond—a handful of tiny hard-boiled birds’ eggs, several joints of a cold roasted wild rabbit, chunks of some sort of a cold gruel, fried to crispness and topped with honey, all washed down with fresh, warm milk.

The two women had not only cooked for Bettylou, but had avidly joined her in eating the meal. With all the bones well gnawed, skillfully cracked and sucked free of marrow, with the last crumbs of the fried gruel and the remaining smears of honey devoured, the older woman addressed Bettylou, saying. “All right, child, you can start stripping off those clothes. After riding for days in them and then sleeping in them for a day and a half, I’d guess they could stand a good soaking and a day of wind and sunlight. Gahbee will be back soon, then you can go with her to the sweat yurt, and when you’ve bathed, you and Gahbee can wash your clothes and Milo’s. It just never ceases to amaze me how incredibly filthy he can get them riding a raid.

“Well, what are you waiting for, child? Undress.”

Then, belatedly recalling Milo’s admonitions and that this new Horseclanswoman-to-be was a scioness of an entirely different, an alien, Dirtman culture, she sent her mind probing into that of Bettylou, who had not yet learned how to shield her innermost thoughts from a telepath.

Ehstrah squatted and, taking the girl’s hand, drew her down beside her on the floor. “Bettiloo, please recall that you are no longer amongst the folk who spawned you and would have cast you out soon. We Horseclansfolk find nothing evil or shameful in the flesh and skin that houses our spirits, no more than do the cats and horses. We wear clothing simply for protection against the elements, for warmth or to prevent chafing by armor or weapons belts. So purge your mind and your heart of these old and most peculiar Dirtman ways. You now are—or, rather, soon will be—one of the freest, most favored of all women under the domain of Sacred Sun, a woman of the Horseclans. You must set yourself to the task of thinking and behaving like one, child.”

With such trepidation, Bettylou first kicked off the felt boots, then lifted the faded, much-stained and now-filthy scarlet dress over her head. Turning to face the wall, red with shame despite the older woman’s words, the girl untied the waist thong and allowed the dirty, sweat-tacky trousers to fall about her ankles.

Ehstrah hissed softly between her teeth at the sight of the new scars furrowing Bettylous back from neck to knees. At that moment she came to feel real hatred for the particular brand of Dirtmen who would do such to a pretty young girl for the “crime” of being quickened. So it was that, not waiting for Gahbee, she gathered up the clothes herself and, after having Bettylou step back into her boots, led her by the hand out of the yurt and toward the sweat yurt. She felt very protective of this young woman who had suffered so much and must now be feeling so alone here. Besides, a second bath this morning could do no harm.