A Woman of the Horseclans

IV

The hunters had returned with a full bag of assorted game, and parties of young boys and girls under the leadership of certain of their elders had ridden far out into the stretches of prairie beyond the camp environs and brought back travois after heaped-high travois of roots and tubers and herbs and wild grains and berries and other fruits. Children fanned out into the nearer grasslands with slings and snake sticks, baskets to hold eggs and bags to carry snake carcasses or whatever other small game they were able to down. The planned celebratory feast was becoming a reality.

A long pit was dug straight through the dusty middle of the encampment, piled high with wood and dried dung and twisted bundles of dried grasses, then set ablaze, while a horde of the women and slaves readied the various viands to cook as soon as a suitable bed of coals was available. Precious metal racks and tripods were brought from the various yurts and laid by ready for use in preparing the food.

Bettylou Hanson was set to grinding a mixture of wild grain and seeds into a coarse meal in a stone quern. Each time she filled a waiting bowl. Ilsah took it away and replaced it with an empty one, then made dough, kneaded it and fashioned small, flat cakes, setting them beside the door. Periodically, Gahbee collected them and took them to the verge of the blazing firepit, where they and others prepared in other yurts were being baked in a reflector oven.

At one end of the camp, those adult men not engaged in tending the firepit worked at skinning and butchering the field-dressed game. Most of them were completely nude and blood-splashed and -streaked from head to boottops. Older or infirm men sat or squatted close by keeping the knives and cleavers sharp, framing the hides on wooden racks while they still were fresh and pliable, swatting at flies, smoking their pipes and chatting endlessly.

No sooner was the bulk of the large-game butchering done than the children came trooping in with their bags of headless, writhing snakes, some dozens of rabbits and hares, a silver dog-fox, a brace of fat groundhogs, a porcupine, a large spotted skunk and a rare prize which brought all the men gathering about it and the tiny girl who had downed it with a single, shrewdly cast slingstone. then manhandled it back to where bigger children could take over.

Most of the men—all of those under forty winters—had never seen an antelope so small. The little beast weighed about twenty pounds and might have been the young of a larger species, save for fully developed scrotum and the pair of short, slender, needle-pointed black horns that adorned its now-cracked skull.

“Well, I’ll be dipped in dung!” exclaimed Milo, “A dagger-horn, it is, or I’m the king stallion. I’ve seen a dozen bowmen loose a cloud of arrows at a herd of these without hitting a one, and here’s a prime buck downed by a girl of six with a damned sling! Will wonders never cease?”

Big Djahn Staiklee of Krooguh, whose clan of birth usually ranged farther south, where the minuscule dart-horns were more common than this far north on the prairie, grinned through a sticky, blood-crusty light-brown beard. “I’m no mean bowman, as any here can attest, but I’m here to say that I’ve missed more than one of those lightning-sprung little antelopes. If the girl has the kind of eye-hand coordination that such a feat required, think what a maiden-archer she’ll make in a few more winters’ time.”

One after the other, the more important of the men solemnly praised the hunting prowess of Teenah Skaht. Then the animal was hung up, and opened, and the liver and heart given to the little girl to either eat on the spot or bear back to her family’s yurt. When she trotted out of sight, she was munching happily while dribbling blood down her chin and onto the bare chest of her nut-brown body.

The other children received such praise as their accomplishments merited, then were invited to watch the cleaning and skinning and butchering of the varied assortment of small game they had killed and fetched into camp, with the older ones being urged to help and thus learn more of the necessary skills of survival on the prairie.

While her body moved rhythmically at milling the wild grains, Bettylou Hanson thought of all the things she had learned in this last seven-day. She had always heard that the horse-nomads were a filthy people who never bathed deliberately and wore their clothes until they rotted off. What she had learned here was that they were all of them more cleanly than were most of her own people; where folk at the Abode of the Righteous washed face, hands and arms several times each day, they washed the rest of their bodies once or twice a month in good weather, far less frequently in cold weather. Horseclansfolk, on the other hand, seemed to make almost daily use of their commodious sweat yurt—steaming in the damp darkness, then emerging to rinse with sun-warmed water and going about their various tasks nude until sun and the ever-constant wind had dried their hair and skin, since they did not consider sight of a naked human body offensive or sinful as had the Righteous. Bettylou was beginning to become accustomed to the sight of naked women or girls, but she still could not help blushing and turning her gaze away at the naked boys or men.

Her mindspeak abilities—both in reception and sending—were manifesting themselves by veritable leaps and bounds through dint of practice and the patient tutelage of her mentors, Chief Milo Morai, Ehstrah, Gahbee, Ilsah and most of the other men, women and prairiecats with whom she came into contact. Everyone seemed to be more than happy to take or make the time to help a newly discovered mindspeaker to develop her inborn ability.

In addition to folks, cats and horses, Milo had told her that a really adept mindspeaker could enter the minds of and converse after a fashion with such diverse creatures as wolves, bears, members of the weasel clans, treecats and other wild felines, dogs, swine and even the occasional wild ruminant—domestic cattle and sheep being basically too unintelligent to do much real thinking, being ruled by instinct, mostly.

Milo had also averred that mindspeak ability ran in families, and, thinking on that, she thought she could puzzle out now a riddle that had perplexed her all her life, since first she had heard it—the tale of her mother’s granduncle, Zebediah the Pig Man.

They had said that Zeb Alfredson had been little older than Bettylou now was when the present Elder Claxton’s father had assigned him the task of herding the score or so adult and juvenile pigs that the Abode then owned. Sometime during the first year that he headed the detail of pigboys, a sow died in farrowing, and the only piglet that survived her did so because Zeb took him up and nursed him with pig milk he somehow obtained from other sows. This piglet grew into a vastly oversized boar, and Zeb announced that his name was Nimrod.

Zeb persuaded the Elder and the Patriarchs not to butcher Nimrod but to retain him as a stud boar. He also persuaded them to allow the swine to run free in the woods and outer pastures and fallow fields, rather than keeping them cooped up in the filthy, malodorous pens so much of the time, demonstrating his ability to ride out on a small mule and bring them all in at the end of each day. Since his method of handling the swine freed a half-dozen boys for more of the endless tasks of farming and stock-raising, Zeb quickly became a very popular young man with the Elder and the Patriarchs and there was even speculation that he might someday be a Patriarch himself.

Then, of a crisp autumn day, he rode out to fetch in the swine, but he did not ride alone, for bear tracks had been seen at several spots in the hinterlands. He rode along with one of his younger brothers, each of them armed with a rifle, a bear spear and a long, heavy-bladed knife. They rode not the familiar mules, but a brace of fine, tall hunting horses, less likely to become hysterically unmanageable at the sound or smell of a bear or other predator.

What happened after the two rode out of sight of the Abode of the Righteous, that long-ago day, no man knew for certain. The reports of two rifles were heard and some thought to hear human screams and bestial roarings, all muted with distance. The son and heir of the then Elder led a party of mounted men out at the gallop, but the woods were then more extensive and by the time they came across the proper clearing, it was all over.

Zeb Alfredson’s younger brother lay dead, throat torn out and lower face bitten off. Zeb himself had been terribly savaged by the bear and survived only bare minutes past his rescuers’ arrival. Both rifles had been fired, and Zeb’s spear was covered in blood from point to crossbar.

Of the huge silvertip bear, precious little remained other than a gashed and bloody hide full of torn flesh and splintered bones. Nor was the bear’s nemesis difficult to guess, for the clearing was full of agitated pigs, pigs of all ages and sexes and sizes, a few of them with hides scored by long, sharp claws, but all with bloody snouts and two of the boars with tatters of gory bearskin hanging from their tushes.

The men had gotten nothing meaningful out of Zeb; he was just too far gone in pain and loss of blood to make any sense. But it was said that just moments before the life left his battered body. Nimrod shouldered his four hundred pounds through the gathered group of men, stood looking down on Zeb’s torn, blood-streaked face, and, as the single, remaining eye began to glaze over, raised his snout and fearsome tushes skyward and voiced what could only have been called a howl, a sound such as none of the farmers had ever heard any swine make before or since.

The two bodies were borne back to the Abode of the Righteous, and it was not until morning that anyone thought to go out and bring in the herd of swine, and by then they all were gone. The hunters tracked the herd with hounds and did catch a few, but found that the only way to bring them back was to kill them. Nimrod was sighted on two occasions, but no one ever was able to get a clear shot at him—he seemed to know just what the rifles were and the capabilities and limitations of them. On another occasion, the hounds cornered him, but by the time the hunters arrived, the monstrous boar was long departed and the ground was littered with dead and dying hounds. At that point, the hunters gave up the pursuit.

“Could he have been a mindspeaker with the pigs, Chief Milo?” Bettylou asked after recounting the old tale. “He was my mother’s father’s brother, after all.”

Milo nodded. “He almost certainly was, Bettylou, judging on the basis of your tale. Swine are very intelligent, you know, much more so than dogs, for instance, and the boar Nimrod must have truly loved your ancestor to have been willing to lead his herd against a full-grown bear to protect him. You clearly come of good stock, girl. It pleases me that you’ll bear Horseclans children.”

Bettylou had heard in the Abode that the prairie was virtually swarming with hordes of horse-nomads, that their gigantic camps covered square miles of grasslands, but such assertions could never be proved by what she had seen to date.

In addition to the sweat yurt, there were thirty-four other yurts in the camp—eighteen for Clan Krooguh. fifteen for Clan Skaht and one for Clan Morai. Among these dwelt forty-eight males of an age older than thirteen, which added up to nothing near a horde, in Bettylous mind. Of course, both men and women could and did fight if attacked, and both sexes hunted even the most dangerous game animals. Also, Chief Milo assured her that there existed Kindred clans much larger—perhaps as many as threescore adult males in a clan—and there were more than fourscore Kindred clans on the prairies, deserts and high plains, all drifting hither and yon, following the grass and the water.

Chief Milo opined that if the Abode-spawned tales were more than whole-cloth exaggerations, the square-miles-covering camp might be the recollections at third or fourth or fifth hand of someone who had seen or heard of one of the rare tribal camps—conclaves of scores of clans planned for years in advance and at which there might be as many as ten thousand, briefly, until the graze became insufficient to maintain the herds of cattle, sheep and horses.

“All of the clans assemble at such times, then, El … uhh, Chief Milo?” Bettylou inquired.

Flashing his white teeth in a brief smile, he shook his head. “No, child, at most perhaps half of the Kindred clans at any one time and place.”

“But why not get all of the clans together at once, Chief Milo?” Bettylou probed.

Patiently, he answered, “For one thing, it is a really impossible thing. Yes, there are some fourscore or more of he Kindred clans, but those clans are spread over something like four million square miles or more of territory—ranging generally farther north in spring and summer, farther south in autumn and winter, and seldom in one place for more than a moon. Nor can I think of any area that could support such a vast number of folks and herds and cats for any meaningful length of time; the camp would needs have to be moved before many of the clans could reach the predetermined location, for although a party of picked raiders can move very fast, cover fantastic numbers of miles in a few nights’ ride, you will soon learn that a clan on the march proceeds no faster than the slowest of its members or wagons or cattle … and that can be snail-slow at times.”

“Where do you usually meet, Chief Milo?” she asked. “When? I mean what time of year?”

“Usually in late spring or early summer, Bettylou. Once we met on the high plains, but mostly we meet at some spot—some marked or easily found spot—on the prairie. At the last such, five … no, six years ago! we met in and around the ruins of a town that used to be called Hutchinson in an area that once was the State of Kansas. It was decided there by the council of clan chiefs that the next one would be met at a spot farther north and west, but no firm site was selected for it, so it could take place, whenever it does, in any location, and those chiefs who for whatever reason or none don’t like the time of the conclave or the location just will not bother to make the journey, Kindred Horseclansfolk are a freedom-loving lot and refuse to be bound by anything other than the Couplets of Horseclans Law, that and the inborn obligation to defend other Kindred against non-Kindred folk.”

“But, Chief Milo,” she said puzzledly, “if the Kindred clans are truly spread so far, how do any of them ever hear of these meetings and learn where to go for them?”

He shrugged. “Tribe bards, for the most part, who travel widely and almost constantly. Also, from messages left here and there in traditional places, cryptic signs that only a Kindred clansman can interpret. Then too there are the roving smiths who glean metals from ruins either use themselves or barter to the clans they happen across in their travels. They pass the notices of meetings on to the Kindred clans, for all that some of them are not by birth Kindred.”

“If these men are not Kindred, Chief Milo, then what are they?”

He replied. “Vagabonds with a flair for metalworking or trading from the more settled areas to the east and west and north and south of the plains and prairie, Bettylou, a good many of them. Some most likely malefactors of one stripe or another who found or made the farming areas too hot for themselves to endure and still live. That or non-Kindred nomads.”

“Then all of the horse-nomads are not Kindred, Chief Milo?”

“No, child, though there are now far fewer non-Kindred folk roving about than there were a hundred years ago, the plains and the prairie are still not yet the uncontested stamping grounds of us Kindred. But that day will yet come, child. Perhaps you’ll live to see it.”

He had spoken the last sentence with so grim an intensity that she felt compelled to probe more deeply. “Are the Kindred clans not on good terms with these other nomads, then. Chief Milo?”

“Not hardly !” he snorted. “Oh, one would think that with so many hundreds of thousands of square miles of open country to roam, there would exist, could exist, damned little possibility of friction between relatively small groups of folk leading very similar nomadic existences. But it simply has not worked out so peacefully as that over the years.

“Understand me, Bettylou, we Horseclansfolk were a feisty lot from the very beginning, about two hundred and fifty winters back, but we were none of us basically savage, random killers. We fought for and still do fight for survival—the elements, beasts and men, when necessary. But we would much prefer to bring non-Kindred nomads into the tribe by marriage or adoption than to kill them for their women and their herds. Quite a few of your present ‘Kindred’ clans became such in just those ways.

“Your father-in-law-to-be, for instance. Bettylou. The Clan Staiklee were once bitter enemies of the Horseclans, back some three or four generations. Their tribe was not large, but their warriors were every one as tough, as skilled and as resourceful as any Horseclansman, and they made it most difficult for us in the northeastern reaches of that area that long ago was called Texas. They fought us unstintingly for nearly a generation, and they might have done so for much longer had they not owned a wise chief who came to realize that his tribe was much outnumbered by the warriors of Kindred clans and vastly outnumbered by the incredibly bestial and savage tribes of utter barbarians who were just then making to push up from the southwest.

“Because he would not see his tribe ground to powder between barbarians and Kindred, he negotiated an initial meeting with four Kindred clans, and, shortly, those four became five. That done, the five summoned other Kindred clans from the north and the west and, all united, were able to extirpate or turn back all of the southwestern barbarians.

“Numerous Kindred clans were originally non-Kindred, from the Texas area—Ohlsuhn, Morguhn, Maklaruhn and Hwilkee are perhaps the foremost of them, aside from Clan Staiklee.”

As the time to begin the feast neared, clansfolk of both sexes and all ages packed into the sweat yurt, but not Bettylou Hanson; the knowledgeable Ehstrah had seen to it that she, Ilsah and Gahbee had completed their ablutions well in advance of the rest. And when the three returned to the Morai yurt, Bettylou had been given back her red dress.

She could only stare and stutter, barely recognizing the garment, for what had been back at the Abode of the Righteous a badge of Sin and Shame and a portent of certain Doom had lost every last iota of that identity and become a purely and a thoroughly Horseclans garment.

The faded-red dress had been redyed a deep crimson, and the floppy, open-cuffed sleeves had been somehow made fuller and fitted with drawstrings at the wrists. Head hole and sleeves and a large expanse of the rest of the reborn garment were now rich and heavy with Ehstrah’s fine, meticulous embroidery; she also had used embroidery to conceal the stitches with which each tear and rent had been closed. Bettylou had never before been in receipt of anything so lovely, not in all her short life, for the garb of all of the Righteous was unremittingly drab—unbleached wool and linen and a mixture of the two, unadorned leather or rawhide. Unable to contain herself, she felt tears rolling down her cheeks still damp from the bath and irresistible sobs welling up from deep within her.

Ehstrah—with grown children older than Bettylou by her now-deceased first husband, and just then feeling very motherly—hunkered down beside the sobbing girl and took her into her arms. Bettylou tried, between sobs, to thank Ehstrah and the others for all their many kindnesses to her since her arrival in the camp.

“No, no, child,” soothed Ehstrah silently, “at such times as this mindspeak is far better, easier.”

She slipped into the girl’s mind, briefly … and started as if she had been stabbed suddenly. “Milo!” Her mindcall lanced out. “Uncle Milo! Come to your lodge at once! Urgent!”

“Whew!” exclaimed Milo. “I’m very glad this happened when it did, glad that we could show the poor child’s mind how to purge itself thoroughly, once and for all, of all the filth and perverted religion her kinfolk had shoveled into it. Such a load of mental and emotional sewage would have ended in driving her mad, It will be at least two hours more until everyone is gathered out their, so let her sleep until the last minute, eh? It will do her good.”

Ehstrah nodded, fingering one of her small arm-daggers and musing darkly, aloud, “If only I could have ten minutes, even five, alone with that priest, that Elder Claxton. the randy old goat, the child-raping bastard, he’d forever after lack the parts to do to another the evil he wrought upon this helpless girl. Milo … ? Do you think …”

Skimming her surface thoughts, he shook his head. “Put it out of your mind, Ehstrah. There am not enough of us—warriors, maiden-archers and matrons, included—to attack that place with a bare hope of success, They have weapons and artifacts from the time before this with which they could kill at great distances, at much farther away than even the heaviest bow can cast. To succeed against those Dirtmen would take at least a dozen clans and would result in many, many dead Horseclansfolk for little loot that would be of use to us in the type of life we lead. The best thing we can do is avoid the Abode of the Righteous and pass on the word that other Kindred clans should follow suit.”

Ehstrah sighed and grudgingly sheathed her dagger. “Of course you are right. Uncle Milo—you must be, for you have seen far more of war than have I … or any man or woman in this camp, for that matter. But … but it galls me that a despicable man like that should go on, year in, year out, causing untold sufferings, and go forever unpunished.”

“No,” replied Milo. “I agree that it doesn’t seem right or proper, Ehstrah, but most likely this priest is as much a victim as are his prey. Both he and they were probably reared into the same perverted religious beliefs. They don’t know that what they are doing, that the way they are living, is wrong. They call themselves the Righteous, and I’m sure they firmly believe that, all of them, else—being human—they’d long since have deposed these Elders and Patriarchs.”

He rose to his feet. “Now, I think I should complete my sweat and my wash.”

Ehstrah looked up at him from beneath her thick brows, grinning provocatively. “Don’t go overeating or drinking at the feast, Honored Chief. Gahbee and Ilsah and I. we have firm plans for you tonight.”