by Robert Adams
Squatting between the chief of Skaht and the senior sub-chief of Baikuh, all three of them watching the establishment of the night's camp, while chewing at stalks of grass, was a man who save for his Horseclans garb and weaponry could easily have been taken for a pure Ehleen—tall, larger of build than his companions, with black hair a bit grey at the temples, guardsman-style moustache as black as the hair and eyes that could have been black or a very dark brown, his skin a light olive under the tan and weathering.
But any who took him for Ehleen would have been very wrong, for he was no such thing, for all that he spoke that language as fluently and unaccentedly as he did some score of other languages and twice that number of dialects. His name was Milo Morai and he was a chief of the Horseclans, one of the triumvirate that presently ruled the Confederation of Eastern Peoples, and far, far more, besides.
The carefully selected Ehleen horse guards who made up some third of his personal contingent on this trip called him and referred to him as High Lord Milo. So, too, did some of the Horseclansmen . . . sometimes, but more usually to them, as to uncounted generations of their forebears, he was "Chief Milo," "Uncle Milo," or on occasion "God Milo."
Although he gave appearance of an age somewhere between thirty and forty years, that appearance was vastly deceiving, and, in truth, not even Milo himself knew his exact age, only that thus far it exceeded seven centuries and that he had appeared just as he now did for all of that vast expanse of years of life.
All of the Horseclansfolk—men, women, children, past and present—venerated this man, for he had always been among them, moved among them, lived among them, fought beside them against savage beasts and savage weather and calamity. He it was who had first succored the Sacred Ancestors—those who became the first Horseclansfolk—guided generation after generation of their descendants in establishing hegemony over all of the Sea of Grasses, far to the west, before he finally had led forty-two Horseclans clans on an epic, twenty-year-long trek to the east and the lands they currently held. In the nearly three-quarters of a century since then, he and they had slowly increased their holdings—for the Horseclansfolk, this was not just necessary but vital, for their natural increase and that of their herds called always for more land, and most good land in the east was already held by one people or another, few of them willing to give it up without a fight.
Therefore, for all that their people were no longer free-roaming nomad-herders and had not been for almost three full generations, still were all in this force proven, blooded warriors, just as had been the force led by Chief Pawl Vawn of Vawn.
The three men squatting in silence were all telepaths and were, despite appearances, deep in conversation. Above eighty percent of Horseclansfolk were, to one degree or another, telepathic, telepathy having been a survival trait on the prairies and high plains which had for so very long been the home and breeding grounds of their race. They called the talent "mindspeak" and used it not only amongst themselves but in communicating with their horses and with the prairiecats—these being jaguar-size, long-cuspided, highly intelligent felines that had been with the Horseclans for almost as long as there had existed folk called Horseclans.
"Uncle Milo," Chief Skaht silently beamed, "I still don't know why you are bringing along all of those Ehleenee; yes, the ones from up in Kehnooryos Ehlahs are part of your guards, but it just seems silly to drag along more of the damned boy-buggerers from Karaleenos. When you need them to fight, they'll probably be off in the bushes somewhere futtering each other, and if you can get them into a real battle, the chances are good they'll run in a pinch, lest they chance ruining their girlish good looks with a warrior's scar or three."
"Oh come now, Hwahlt," was Milo's silent reply, "you know better than that. You've fought in the mountains and during the Zastros business, six years ago, you've fought alongside Ehleenohee, even commanded units of them, on occasion, and you surely know that their warriors—heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual—can be every bit as effective as the warriors of any other people, if properly led, armed, supplied and disciplined.
"As to why I brought along young men of Kahnooryos Ehlahs and Karaleenos, I brought them for precisely the same reason you brought along all those footloose young warriors from half a score of clans; man, these are countless acres of prime land in this former kingdom with no lords to hold and rule them, so many were the noblemen killed in the civil wars and then in Zastros' Folly. Ehleen customs of inheritance are strictly patrilineal, as you know, all land going to the eldest son of the house. All of the young men I brought down here are younger sons who will all be more than happy to give military service and then willingly swear oaths of loyalty to the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee and our Confederation of Eastern Peoples in order to receive land on which to raise up a family."
"But what about our Horseclans boys, Uncle Milo?" demanded Sub-chief Djeri Baikuh. "If these damned young Ehleenees get all the land and all?"
There was a broad measure of humor in Milo's beamed answer. "Oh ho, now we get to the bottom of things. Never you fear, Kindred, you have never seen these lands into which we ride on the morrow. They are truly vast, when compared to those lands you have seen; there will be more than enough for all, believe me."
"Are these lands as long and as wide as the Sea of Grasses, Uncle Milo?" queried Chief Hwahlt Skaht.
"Not that large, Hwahlt," Milo replied. "Before the great earthquake and subsidences of so much of the coasts and tidewater lands, the lands that later became the kingdom of Southern Ehleenohee took up some one hundred and seventy or one hundred and eighty thousand square miles, and even today, the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee stretches and spreads over an expanse of one hundred and thirty-odd thousand square miles."
"And just how large is, say, Kehnooryos Ehlahs, Uncle Milo?" the chief asked.
"Between the landward edges of the salt fens and the latest-won portions of the mountains," was Milo's reply, "between the Karaleenos border and the Kuhmbuhluhn border, Kehnooryos Ehlahs covers about two-fifths as much land, Hwahlt."
The chief spit out his grass stem arid hissed softly between his teeth, looking very thoughtful, but carefully shielding his thoughts from the scrutiny of his two companions.
But not shielded from the powerful mental probing abilities of him who abruptly joined them.
The agouti-colored cat slipped noiselessly from out the tiny copse between the three men and came to sit between Chief Hwahlt and Milo, his chin resting on the latter's knee and his thick tail overlapping his forepaws.
Even as he yawned gapingly, the westering sun glinting on his long, white cuspids, he was beaming, "Why would my cat-brother, the honored and valiant Chief of the Skahts, think of taking all of his clan away from Ehlai, whence first came the Sacred Ancestors, the progenitors of his folk?"
"To begin with, cat-brother," was Hwahlt's answer, "there is some doubt that this Ehlai is the original Ehlai, amongst the bards of the clans, for some versions of the Prophecy of the Return and How Strange Our Old Lands say that the direction of The Ehlai of our Sacred Ancestors lies in the home of the setting, not of the rising, of Sun. So there may well be nothing in any way holy about that crowded, overgrazed, mosquito-ridden place up in Kehnooryos Ehlahs at all.
"I mean to take my clan out of it, too, whether we come down here to the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee or take over the lands and titles that King Zenos has offered me and mine, and Chief Ben of Baikuh means to go, too. Nor are we two the only chiefs considering the offers of Karaleen lands; no, there's Vawn, Morguhn, Danyuhlz, Rahsz and more."
Milo was not surprised to hear the chief's thoughts. He of all men knew just how crowded the high island in the midst of the great salt fen was become as the Horseclansfolk and their herds bred year after year. Nor was the ancient man at all displeased at the news, for the clans squatting on Ehlai were becoming more and more inbred, and this fact could be the beginning of racial disaster, yet few of them living cheek by jowl wit
h close Kindred could be persuaded to take Ehleen women or men in marriage. However, were the clans to settle far away from other clans, in Ehleen-populated lands, then perhaps they might begin to scatter their racial seed farther afield and reduce somewhat their present consanguinity.
In fact, did this chief and the others he had mentioned know the full truth of the matter, King Zenos had requested and been gladly given Milo's permission to offer his handsome propositions to the chiefs after the defeat of Zastros' great army, six years back. It had taken longer than he or the young king had expected, but it now would seem that that particular barme had begun to ferment.
To the newly arrived prairiecat, Milo beamed, "Did my cat-brother see or smell aught of danger nearby our campsite?"
The cat had begun to lick at his chest fur with steady strokes of a long, wide, red-pink tongue, nor did he cease his grooming while he beamed his silent reply to Milo. "No two-legs den up anywhere I went in the lands ahead, God Milo. There was one place where once they denned, but no faintest scent of them now lies anywhere within it, only the smells of the beasts which for long have used its shelter. Around the road, yonder toward the rising of Sun is the only place in which there is recent scent of two-legs, and even that is not too recent. This cat ... wait, God Milo, Shadowspots beams to this cat."
After a moment, still licking, the prairiecat resumed his beaming: "God Milo, Shadowspots has found a sandy place down the river. Two-legs without toot coverings have walked there this day, and small, very narrow boats were pulled up out of the river there. The bones and scales of several fish are scattered there, also the bones of a large water viper."
"Any trace of fire?" asked Milo.
"No, God Milo," the cat beamed back, "only that which this cat has repeated from the beaming of Shadowspots."
Milo came up to a stand, ordering, "Hwahlt, before anyone goes too far in settling up hereabouts, tell them we won't be camping here after all. Shadowspots has found a place where barefoot men pulled canoes or pirogues ashore on a little riverine beach and had themselves a meal of raw fish and a raw moccasin, leaving behind bones from the snake but not the head. What does that sound like to you?"
The chief's lips became a grim line. "Fen-men! No damned wonder this stretch is unsettled, on either side of the river; those devils must have killed or driven off everyone who tried to live around here ... if they were anywhere near to the river, that is. Fen-men will never willingly get far from water and their boats, ever, for any reason."
Hurriedly, the carts were reloaded and the march resumed in a southwesterly direction, away from the river and the swamps into which it eventually flowed. The fen-folk were the avowed enemies of every man or woman or child not of their scanty numbers and had always been such for as long as anyone could recall. They were a primitive and a singularly savage people, living deep in the fens and swamps in small extended-family groups, joining forces with others of their unsavory ilk but rarely.
Their most-feared arm was a blowgun which expelled darts smeared with deadly poisons; other than these, most carried a large, multipurpose knife and maybe a second, smaller one; they were said to use spears in hunting boars, alligators and certain other large, dangerous beasts, but they never used such in warfare. Fen-men wore no armor, no footwear of any description and few clothes, for that matter. They went about almost naked and smeared from head to foot with some sort of grease that smelled reptilian and was said to repel insects. Adult fen-men shaved or pulled out all of the hair from both scalp and body, but otherwise were of distinctively unclean habits. All folk so unfortunate as to live near them hated and feared the night-stalking killers with their deadly blowpipes; they were killed on sight, like the deadly species of vermin they were considered to be. But wiser folk tried to avoid fen-men and their haunts altogether, which was just what Milo and the others were doing.
"Better to be safe than sorry," he thought, "but someday I'm just going to have to find a way to eradicate those damned man-shaped things from one end of the fens to the other. I hate to think of countenancing, leading, genocide, but the fen-folk have been at war with all the rest of humanity since at least the time of the great earthquakes and I don't think they will ever be otherwise then cold-blooded, creeping, sneaking murderers, coming by night or killing from ambush any man or woman or child they see who is not one of them. Even the Ehleen pirates, who have had shaky agreement with them for a couple of centuries now, admit that the fen-men are sly, treacherous and completely devoted to murder as a pleasant pastime. And people like that cannot be dealt with—I know, I've tried for years with the subrace of them who inhabit the fens of Kehnooryos Ehlahs—save with a bow at ranges that their devilish poisoned darts won't reach."
Chapter I
Even while she emitted an almost-constant contrabasso rumble of contentment, Sunshine was conversing silently with her "brother," Gil Djohnz, who was engaged in washing her in the shallows of the small river that flowed through the verdant croplands of the Duchy of Mehsees. Whenever Gil looked up and to the east, he could see the dirty smoke of the countless cooking-fires rising up from the city of Mehseepolis and the sprawl of the army camp that surrounded it.
A few yards away, three other elephants were being scrubbed by their own "brothers." The nearest of these called herself Tulip. She was a bit taller and a few years older than Sunshine; her "brother" was a half brother of Gil—though Gil, being the son of his father's premier wife, received Bili Djohnz's deference, for Bill's mother had been but a concubine when he was born. Just beyond Tulip lay a much smaller elephant, a young bull, only a little over four years old; this one called himself Dragonfly for some reason no man or beast had ever yet fathomed, and his "brother" was a nineteen-year-old cousin of Gil. On the bank, drying off from her own bath in the fitful wind and the hot sun, stood the largest of all four elephants, a tusked cow who had named herself Newgrass.
Although in traditional Ehleen armies only bulls were used as war-elephants, the smaller and mostly tuskless cows being relegated to heavy draught purposes, all three of these cows had served in numerous campaigns of the army of the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee in armor and in the very thick of battle in the time before real, war-trained bulls had finally been sent from the Land of Elephants, the far-western duchies near the shores of the Upper Gulf.
Consequently, the tender grey skins of all three of the cows now bore honorable war scars—marks left them by the bite of sharp steel blades, the stabbing of spear-, dart- and arrow-points, the friction and pinching of harness and armor. Gil's sensitive soul mourned once again whenever he saw and felt these scars, recalling as he then did the suffering of his huge but basically gentle "sister."
For the umpteenth time, Sunshine beamed the question to Gil, "Brother-mine, is it really true, then? We really will leave for the land wherein Sunshine was calved, soon? We will really set out next week?"
"Yes, my sister," he beamed back patiently, smiling to himself at the cow's enthusiasm. "We will set out for the far-western duchies on next Monday . . . hopefully, but by Tuesday, at the latest, Sun and Wind willing. A way was found for us to circumvent the machinations of the Grand Strahteegos, who would have—had he been allowed his way—kept us here in virtual military slavery until I had a long beard as white as snow; kept us for no reason of which I can think, for now there are a full dozen huge, long-tusked bulls in the elephant-lines, along with men I have taught to mindspeak them, so the only uses that you and our sisters have been recently put to on campaign have been those of oversized draught-oxen—pulling siege-engines and wagons and the like—and I am of the mind that your war service earned you better than that.
"But now they tell me that that old man is finally dead, slain by one of his own officers when he went mad and attacked the leader of Council—him with a sword and a dirk and his chief unarmed. So now we are completely free to leave this dishonorable service to which he saw fit to relegate us and make our way to the land of your birth, with no longe
r any worry that armed horsemen might be sent galloping after to bring us back into odious and shameful bondage."
He ceased to beam then as he concentrated on removing an embedded tick from deep within a fold of her right ear. He still was at it when an unexpected gush of cold river water struck his head and shoulders with enough force to rock him where he squatted, his consequent imbalance causing Sunshine a jab of pain. When he looked around, he quickly spied out the culprit, who already was refilling his trunk. "Dragonfly!" he beamed sternly. "Did you know that you just caused me to hurt your Auntie Sunshine?"
The dripping young bull shook his head and, while looking about for another, unaware target for his trunkful of water, beamed in a petulant manner, "Well, two-leg, if you don't want to get wet, then hurry up, My mother and the rest won't leave here until you're done, and I want to go back to the elephant-lines, now!"
Knowing of old the futility of trying to either argue or reason with the stubborn, selfish young bull, Gil beamed to his cousin, "For the sake of Sacred Sun, Bert, come take this little beast in hand before I'm tempted to render him into army beef."
But another reached the culprit before the young man; she bore him to the ground and belabored him with her trunk until he squealed shrilly, beaming pleas for mercy. But no sooner had his mother, Tulip, allowed him to rearise than he sidled swiftly out of her reach and taunted, "You don't really hurt me. You don't ever really hurt me, I just fool you into thinking you're hurting me. But when I'm all grown up and as big as Brohntos, then I'll hurt you, I'll crush your bones and stab my tusks into you until you're very sorry you ever tried to hurt me when I was smaller than you are. You'll see, Mother! You . . ."
