by Robert Adams
Hers were not the only tears in that place. Horseclans men never sought to restrain their emotions — not among the Kindred, at least — and there were few dry eyes as Hwahlis lifted her easily, cradled her in his thick arms, and strode to the center of the hall.
His own eyes streamed as he declared loudly, “Clan-brothers, Chief-brothers, Cat-brothers, hear me! The slave-child is free! The free-child is my daughter and your kin! She is as a Linszee-born. She is of the tent of a chief and all shall soon recognize her as such! Next year, she will commence her war-training and, when she is a maiden, she will wear my crest and draw my mother’s bow. Let any man who would take her for wife come to me, and let him know that Aldora, daughter of Hwahlis Linszee of Linszee, will be well-dowered by her father and her clan!
“Gairee.” He called to the youngest of his two living sons — who, though but eighteen, had already killed three men in single combat — and, after disengaging her arms, handed Aldora to the younger man. “This child is now your sister. Bear your sister to your mother and so inform her and all my tent-dwellers.
“Kahl, Fil, Sami.” He addressed those who happened to be sons of Rik, the deposed chief. “You are now my sons and will hold the chief-tent and all it contains for my return to the clan-camp.
“Erl, as my eldest son, I declare you sub-chief. See that your clan-brothers, on their return, bid their women to begin preparation of the chief-feast.”
Addressing the remainder of the clansmen, he said, “Brothers, you may return to our clan-camp. When the council is ended, your chief will join you.” Then he strode over to his place in the circle and seated himself.
When the last of the Linszee men had filed out, Milo commanded, “Let the man of unknown lineage be brought before me.”
The two nearest chiefs rose and ungently hustled the all-but-naked former-chief forward, to stand before the dais, clenching and unclenching his fists in his frustrated rage, his face starting to puff as a result of the blows dealt him by his former clansmen.
Shoulders hunched, as if about to spring at Milo, he snarled. “This . . . this thing that you are trying to do is . . . is . . . is. . . . All here know who I am, who my father was, know that I . . .”
He got no farther. The hard-swung buffet from the chief on his right split his lips yet again and finished knocking out an already loosened front tooth.
“Silence, bastard! No man gave you leave to speak,” said the chief on his left.
Milo treated the disgraced man to a look which bespoke icy contempt. Then he stated, “Though you yap like a cur, and conduct yourself like a swine, yet you are a man. All my Kindred know that there are two kinds of men: true men and Dirtmen. Since you are not the one, you must be the other. So, Dirtman, you shall be served in the same fashion as were the Dirtmen the tribe took at the Ehleenee camp.
“You are wearing all the clothing a Dirtman needs. In addition, you shall receive a silver trade-coin, a knife, a water bottle and a wallet of food. Take them and journey far and fast, for — as you are a Dirtman — you are the enemy of all true men.”
Unconsciously, Rik wiped the back of his hand across his bloody chin and looked down at his red-smeared knuckles. With a bellow, he went berserk! All in the blinking of an eye, his right foot lashed-heel foremost-between the legs of the chief who had struck him and, as that man clutched his crotch and doubled in agony, Rik’s left forearm smashed the bridge of the other’s nose while his right tore saber from its sheath. Before Milo’s blade was half-drawn, more than a foot of Rik’s weapon was protruding from the war chiefs back, just below the shoulder blade! Then, Mara’s dirk found the berserker’s throat and he released his sword hilt to clutch at his gushing wound and stumble backward, off the dais. Within fractions of seconds, all that lay beneath the dripping sabers of the vengeful chiefs was a bundle of bloody rags and raw bone and hacked flesh.
Panting, the chiefs of the council looked to the dais.
Several dropped their swords! Their war chief, whose last words they had expected to soon hear, was not only still on his feet, but was presently engaged in carefully pulling the sharp saber out of his chest!
The forty-two chiefs were typical specimens of their rugged race. Born to frequent privation and casual violence, they were weaned to weapons-skills and they were a-horse more often than afoot; armed with bow or spear or ax or saber, they knew fear of neither man nor beast. But this . . . this watching of a man, who should be dead, still standing and withdrawing the steel from his heart, was more than unnerving. The sensation evoked by such an unnatural occurrence was terror, icy-cold, crawling, nameless terror!
As many appeared on the very verge of precipitate withdrawal — not to say, flight — Blind Hari stood, raised his arms to draw attention to himself, and began to broad-beam a soothing reassurance. Sensing it, Milo and Mara, Horsekiller and Old-Cat added their own efforts.
Then Hari spoke, softly but aloud. “Kindred, my children, draw near and put up your steel. There are great and good tidings for you and your people. For many reasons, the telling of them has long been delayed, but now the time is come that you should know.”
13
Horse shall choose and man shall choose.
Be neither, slave nor master. . . .
—From “The Couplets of the Law”
Later, Milo and Mara and Hari and the two cats were once more closeted in the small meeting chamber. On the table were three drinking cups, an ewer of Ehleenee wine, a slab of cheese and a bowl of wild apples.
As he accepted a hunk of cheese from the point of Hari’s knife, Old-Cat mindspoke Milo. “Though she cannot be slain or injured, it is true, do you think it was wise to allow the God-child to return to the people who so ill-used her, God Milo?”
Milo halved an apple, passed one piece to Mara and bit into the other. “I can think of no better nor safer place for her, Old-Cat. My race is not completely immune to death, you know; there do exist ways to kill us and the Ehleenee have learned them all. I cannot imagine how she managed to live among them undetected, as long as she did. What the Horseclans call God-kinship, the Ehleenee and many other peoples call ‘curse’ — the Curse of the Undying. They all hate and fear my kind. To them, we are incredibly evil devils, to be sought out and slain slowly and horribly, for we feel pain quite as keenly as do other living creatures.
“No, Old-Cat, of all the many races of man, only among the men of the Horseclans can little Aldora expect life. Since her future lies with them, it were well that she came to know them. It is unfortunate that she had to learn first of the bad of Horsepeople; but let her, now, learn of the good.”
After Hari had fulfilled Horsekiller’s request for a bit of the sheep-cheese, his hand moved unerringly to his wine cup. While sipping, he mindspoke. “Still, Milo, you might have kept her here. Her mind needs training, if she is to advance to her full powers. Good and well-meaning as they are, what can Hwahlis and his clan provide that we could not?”
Milo concentrated his gaze on the surface of the resinous wine in his cup. “Did you ever sire and rear children, Hari?”
There was a twinge of ancient pain in the bard’s mind. “No. When I was a young man, I took as wife a lovely maiden of the Clan Koopuh, one Kairi. In the two years before she conceived of me, she became all things, all that ever I could want or need. When she died a-borning — she and the child together — I never again felt desire for, and never took, another woman — wife nor slave.”
While Old-Cat nuzzled Hari’s thigh sympathetically, Milo went on. “You have never reared a child, Hari, nor has Mara. I have, but it was centuries ago and in another world. Aldora is of, and must learn to live in this world. For all that she is, she is still a child and she needs the love and guidance and companionship of parents and a family-and she needs them now. As for training her mind, that can come later, one thing that my clan never lacks of is time!”
One morning about two weeks after the event-filled day of her adoption, Aldora Linszee awakened to the realizatio
n that she had never in her life felt happier or more secure. All her icy fears of these people, acquired by dint of the sufferings experienced at their hands, she found to have completely dissipated in the warm glow of the very real and oft demonstrated love which her new family and clan — all members of them — lavished on her; and, thanks to her daily-increasing mental abilities, she was keenly aware of the verity and depth of their feelings.
She had not yet been a year old when one of the contagions, which swept the cities of the Ehleenee every summer (being especially virulent in dry summers), had carried off her mother. So, having been reared almost entirely by slave-women, she had never known what it was to have a mother. Now she had two — Tsheri, Hwahlis’ eldest wife, and Beti — on a full-time basis, in addition to every matron in the clan, part-time. Also, there was the eldest of Hwahlis’ concubines, Neekohl.
Aldora’s natural father had never really liked females, considering them a necessary evil. He married and begat only because it was expected of him. After his wife’s unmourned death, he devoted very nearly all his waking hours to his minions, his peers, his commercial enterprises and his sons — in descending order. In the few scraps of time he grudgingly allotted to his daughter, he was coldly correct and stiffly formal — even for his tightly controlled and undemonstrative race. He did not like to have to touch females anyway, and if any had ever suggested that he hold or kiss his little girl, he would very probably have vomited.
Hwahlis, on the other hand, was a typical nomad warrior — volatile, uninhibited, emotional, intense. He was open-handedly generous, not only with his personal effects and possessions, but with his love, of which he seemed to have an endless supply. For the first few days, he had been scrupulously careful to neither touch nor kiss this concubine-become-daughter, lest his motives be misunderstood — a thing that his sensitive soul could not have borne, so filled with repentance was it already. And, to a man to whom visible demonstration of love was an integral and necessary part of life, this torture was unbelievably severe. It could not last and it didn’t. By the third morning after the day-and-night-long chief feast, most of the tribe had more or less recovered and camp-life had resumed near-normality. Aldora did not know how to ride and for one who was to be a horseclanswoman, this was a calamitous condition which could not be allowed to continue. So, mounted behind and clinging tightly to Beti, she arrived at the tribal horse-herd to choose and be accepted by two or three horses. As they drew near to the herd, they were mindspoken by a late-adolescent female cat, preening herself on a hummock, from which she was afforded a clear view of the portion of the herd to which she had been assigned.
“Greet-the-Sun, Cat-sisters. Have the two-legs at last recuperated from the sickness of cloudy minds and shaky legs and bad bellies?”
“Yes, we have all recuperated, sister-mine, and it only took two days. But if you make yourself any more beautiful, it will take you the best part of three moons to ‘recuperate’ from your ‘bad belly’!” replied Beti, laughingly.
The cat gave vent to a shuddering purr. “Wind and Sun grant that that kind of sickness come quickly. Already poor Mole-Fur is nearly twenty-four moons, and she has no desire to die a maiden.”
Beti’s delighted laughter trilled again. “Small chance of that, Cat-sister.” Then she cantered on around the outskirts of the wide-spreading herd.
At what appeared a likely spot, Beti slid from her mare’s back and helped Aldora dismount. Then, after removing saddle-pad and halter, she mindspoke her mount and the mare trotted into the herd.
Bewildered, Aldora regarded the thousands of horses — whites, grays, bays, chestnuts, sorrels, roans, claybanks and blacks with occasional pintos, piebalds and that flaxen-maned and tailed variety of golden-chestnut known as palomino.
At last, she burst out, “But Beti, how can I tell which ones are Linszee, which ones belong to us?”
Beti smiled and patted the child who stood nearly as tall as she. “It is simple, Aldora. None of them are ours. No man owns a horse, not in this tribe. The horses are with us because they choose to be. Other races enslave horses. They have to because they’re incapable of communicating with them. It has never been thus with us. Since first the Undying God came to the Sacred Ancestors, the horse has been our partner and equal. It is a partnership older even than that of the cat.
“Though not as intelligent as our cat-brothers and sisters, the horses have their own tribes and clans and, over all, a king-stallion. It was him that I sent Morning-Mist to seek. King Ax-Hoof will mindspeak you — he is far more intelligent than the bulk of his kind — and then conduct you through the herd, introducing you to those he feels would best suit your mutual needs and temperaments. I think . . . wait, here they come now.”
Aldora looked to see Beti’s long-barreled, short-legged little mare trotting back. Beside her was a huge, scarred, red-bay stallion.
Beti was first to mindspeak. “Greet-the-Sun, Horse-King. I am Beti, wife to Chief Hwahlis of Linszee. This other two-leg female is the adopted daughter of the Linszee and she has come to exchange the Horse Oath. None of your hellions, mind you, Ax-Hoof, this female is not born of the tribe and knows nothing of horses or riding.”
The big, rangy horse stepped closer. “Do you mind-speak, Chief’s daughter?”
“Yes,” Aldora answered him. “I . . . I am called Aldora, Horse-King.”
“And you fear me, little two-leg,” stated the red-bay. “Why?”
“You’re . . . you’re so tall,” Aldora replied. “So big and . . . fierce and dangerous-looking.”
Morning-Mist snorted and stamped one hoof. Though she did not mindspeak, her amusement was discernible.
“Little black-haired female,” said the Horse-King gravely, “I was foaled on the plains. For twenty years have I carried clansmen into battle. My forehooves are as sharp as a steel ax-head. They gained me my name and have sheared full many a helmet and the skull beneath. My teeth, too, know well the feel of man-flesh. But man-flesh, little one, only man-flesh. I am neither as bull nor bear nor wolf. I do not war on females and foals. You need fear neither horse nor man, not when Ax-Hoof the Horse-King is near.”
With that, the speaker sank onto his haunches that Aldora might more easily mount him, bidding her not fear falling as, if fall she must, the grass was soft and thick and she would come to no harm.
When Ax-Hoof bore her, who was now his oath-sister, back to where he had met her, it was settled. She had oath with a presently-barren brood mare named Soft-Whicker — a patient, easy gaited, motherly one Ax-Hoof felt would be a perfect learning-mount for the gentle, likable little two-leg. He had had her oath an as-yet-unnamed filly of his own line as well, promising that if the filly had not finished her war-training by the time Aldora had finished hers, he personally would serve as her war horse until the white-stockinged sorrel proved ready.
For Aldora, it had been a long and highly informative ride. She had met, exchanged greetings and compliments and idle chitchat with all of Ax-Hoofs wives and with a number of the King-Horse’s progeny as well.
Ax-Hoof and Aldora were within sight of the place they had left Beti when an elderly male cat and two younger ones raced up to them.
Without greeting or preamble, the elder cat addressed the stallion. “Horse-King, keep your kind away from the hidden portions of the east-flowing creek. It is possible that danger lurks there.”
“What kind of danger, One-Fang?” queried the horse.
“Lop-Ear, here,” the cat indicated one of the younger males — about twelve moons and all paws and head, but beginning to fill out — “became suspicious of a strange thought-pattern and went to investigate. He found no creature, but he did find a strong bad odor and some odd tracks. He called me and I don’t like the looks of it. Both the scent and the tracks are too much like those of a very large Blackfoot to suit me! I am sending Lop-Ear to Green-Walls to fetch the cat chief and some two-leg cat-brothers with bows and spears. So, warn your kind away from any place a Blackfoot migh
t hide.”
The cat then mindspoke Aldora, “Have you bow or spear or even sword, Cat-sister?”
“No,” replied Aldora, “only a small dirk.”
“Then,” the cat went on officiously, “you, too, would be well advised to keep away from streams or low, hidden places; the Blackfoot tribe aren’t choosy; meat is meat to them.”
As the three cats bounded off, the older and one of the younger in the direction of the cut of the creek, the one called Lop-Ear flat-racing for Green-Walls, Aldora asked Ax-Hoof, “What does he mean, Horse-King? What is a Blackfoot?”
Ax-Hoof, who was now moving as fast as he felt he safely could considering the state of Aldora’s horsemanship, did not answer in words, but the picture which reached her mind was of a furry — albeit, snaky-looking — body, about the color of dry dead grass, with four black feet and a black mask-like across its eyes. Its face looked like a cross between that of a cat and a fox. When it opened its mouth, she shuddered, for it was supplied with a plenitude of long sharp teeth. It was built low, so its height was unimpressive, but from nose-tip to base of tail, it was a good fifteen feet in length and the tail was close to five!
Then Ax-Hoof spoke. “That, Aldora, is a Blackfoot. Added to the fact that they are ever-hungry, they are as fast as a cat for short distances and strong enough to drag off a full-grown horse. And, they are very hard to kill. Years ago on the plains, I saw one so filled with arrows that he looked like a porcupine, and still not dead! None have been heard of since we crossed the Great River. Everyone had hoped that their kind did not inhabit this land.”
By that time, they were up to Beti, who had seen them coming and was sitting Morning-Mist, waiting. “Well, Horse-King, what took so long? Did you have her horse-oath half your tribe?”
“No, Chief’s-wife, she oathed only me and an old mare and a filly of my get,” he answered her curtly. Aldora had discovered that he took all things seriously and had little sense of humor.
