A Woman of the Horseclans

by Robert Adams

  All the while he talked, in the near-darkness Staiklee’s big, capable hands were busy. First, he fitted a new string to his powerful hornbow, then rubbed every inch of that string well with a lump of beeswax. That done, he unstrung the bow and thoroughly dressed it with sheepsfoot jelly before wiping off the excess and returning it to its weatherproof case of wood, felt and oiled leather.

  Then it was the turn of the arrows. He lit a small fat lamp and dumped out the contents of both quivers, checked each shaft for straightness, tightness of head and horn nock, then subjected the feather flights to a painstaking scrutiny, before replacing them in precise order in the two quivers — one, the larger, for hunting arrows, the other for war arrows.

  Having found a couple of places on his saber edge that happened to be less keen than he thought proper, Staiklee took that weapon and a stone and began to carefully hone the blade.

  Looking directly at Bettylou. he remarked, “The bruin that once wore that skin I gifted you and Tim, well, he wasn’t the first of his breed I came up against, you know.

  “Now down Tehksuhs way, we hunt more with packs of dogs than with prairiecats. Of course, the most of our dogs are each as big as or bigger than a full-grown prairiecat, some of them as big as lions, to tell the truth: but they have to be, because the bears up here are just puny little critters compared to the bears we hunt in Tehksuhs. Why, the flayed hide off a Tehksuhs bear would cover the whole top of this yurt and hang partway down the sides.

  “And the hides on Tehksuhs bears is so thick and tough you can blunt down the edges of a whole beltful of skinning knives a-trying to skin one of the critters, even if you was able to kill him afore he killed you, that is.

  “I recollect an old boar bear that my daddy sent me out to kill when I was about fourteen, fifteen winters. Well, that was a bad-luck hunt from start to finish for me, but a damned good day for the bear.”

  He paused for a moment to rub a fresh application of sheep fat and spittle into the grain of the hone stone, then went on with his tale, “Anyhow, two days out, my horse turned up lame, and I hadn’t brought but the one, so I had to throw my saddle on Brootuhs, the biggest of my tooth-hounds.”

  “Your pardon. Honored Father,” Nansee interjected, “but what is a tooth-hound?”

  Djahn nodded, smiling, and answered, “I keep forgetting, you Horseclanners don’t hunt with dogs. Well, honey, there are three kinds of hounds that go to make up a pack of hunting dogs. The ‘nose-dogs’ are the ones that find and follow the scent trail of whatever critter it is you’re hunting. The ‘leg-dogs’ or ‘runners’ (as some folks call them) don’t have much of a nose, but they’ve got keen eyesight to spot the critter, the speed and stamina to run him to earth and enough ferocity to hold him in place until the tooth-hounds get there.

  “ ‘Tooth-hounds’ are bigger, heavier and meaner than the other two kinds of dogs. Their job is to bring the critter to bay and, if necessary. to go in and kill him, rather than let him get away before the hunter gets there.”

  “But they truly are big enough to saddle and ride?” asked Dikees widow, Ahlmah.

  “Of course they are . . . down Tehksuhs way.” replied Djahn Staiklee emphatically.

  Bettylou truly liked this man so she kept her own doubts to herself. The Abode of the Righteous had kept many canines — both hounds of several varieties and herding dogs — but she had never seen one, even the biggest of these, that stood much over knee height at its shoulders.

  “Anyhow,” Staiklee went on, “Brootuhs didn’t care too much for the saddle and he was downright upset about the bridle and bit, but I gentled him down some before we’d been many more days on that bruin’s trail. And we were many a day on that trail, too. Why, I doubt not that me and all the dogs would have plumb starved to death, if I hadn’t been able to kill a couple of middling-size rattlers every day.”

  This last was just too much for Bettylou to take in continued silence. “Father, please tell me how a couple of rattlesnakes a day could feed you and your entire pack of dogs.”

  Again, he smiled. “It’s all just a matter of size, Behtiloo. All critters seem to get bigger or stronger or smarter down Tehksuhs way; even plants do, too. You’ve seen these scrubby little smidgens of cactuses on the plains hereabouts? Well, in Tehksuhs, they gets tall as twenty lances end to end would be, that tall and as thick through the middle as Chief Dik’s wagon is long, too. And . . .”

  “Your pardon, Father,” Bettylou interrupted again, “but we were talking of two snakes big enough to provide enough meat to feed you and all your dogs for a whole day.”

  “Yes,” he agreed in a dead-serious tone of voice, “they get every bit that big down in Tehksuhs, honey. Big enough to coil all the way around the outside of this yurt and grab their tails in their mouths, was they of a mind to do such a thing. More than a foot thick in the body Tehksuhs rattlers get, some of them nearer to two feet. That’s a powerful lot of meat.”

  “It certainly is.” Bettylou agreed, then asked, “But you give the impression that these plains are very dry, near deserts, so what creatures are there of a size to sustain such huge serpents in such a wasteland?”

  Djahn Staiklee regarded her shrewdly for a long moment, then he mindspoke quickly and personally, “Child, you are far more intelligent than you seem outwardly. Tim has more of a prize than I think he realizes yet in you. But let be, here, tonight. This is a long-drawn-out mocking tale I spin; don’t question it too closely. I mean but to bring a little merriment into this yurt which has seen so many years with little or none.”

  While beginning to stroke the stone on the next portion of saber blade he felt due his ministrations, he went on with the story.

  “So, anyhow, riding Brootuhs and living on snakemeat and cactus water, we trailed that bear for more than half a moon. We trailed him through country so dry that the creeks and the rivers, even were none of them running with water but running with coarse gravel and rocks, instead — all grinding away, those stones were, as they flowed along.

  “But, then, one day, we heard the leg-hounds give tongue — that’s how they let you know they’ve spotted the critter they’re trailing — and the tooth-dogs commenced doubling their pace . . . all except Brootuhs, of course, since he was carrying about twice his own weight or almost that. For you see, I was nought but a younker then, and though I was big for my age, like most men or boys in Tehksuhs, two weeks of hard riding on nothing save snakemeat had fined my body down to just whipcord muscle and sinew over my bones.

  “Well, by the time Brootuhs and me got up to where the others had brought that old boar bear to bay, he had killed or near killed most of my pack of dogs. Well, I jumped off old Brootuhs and slipped his bridle so it wouldn’t hinder his teeth and jaws. Then I slung my lance over my back and took my bow out of the case to string it.

  “At that very second, poor, brave old Brootuhs took it in his head to bore in after that bloody-clawed bruin like a weasel after a swamp rat, and as luck would have it, the very first swipe of that bears forepaw not only broke the poor dogs back like a rotten slick, but simultaneously snapped every shaft in my arrowcase and flung Brooluhs’ body — saddle, gear and all — so hard against a big old boulder that the impact snapped the blade of the sheathed saber I had been carrying slung from the pommel.

  And so there I was, all alone, all of my dogs dead or dying or run off, with only a lance and my dirk against two tons or more of hopping-mad Tehksuhs plains grizzly bear . . . and he had finished off the last dog and was coming for me!”

  Staiklee took the last stroke of the stone on his saber blade, meticulously wiped off the cursive length of burnished steel, then sheathed it, yawned mightily and looked on the point of arising from his place in the circle.

  “But . . . but what happened, Father Djahn?” demanded Nansee, almost bouncing up and down in her excitement. “How did you kill the bear?”

  Staikiee looked surprised at the question. “Oh. I didn’t kill that bear, honey. He killed me! Ate m
e, too.”

  Chapter VIII

  Tim Krooguh, when he rode back into camp to fetch dry bowstrings for the herd guards, found his wife, along with Nansee and several other Krooguh women who happened to be pregnant or otherwise incapacitated, congregated in the yurt of his uncle, Chief Dik. They and the bigger ones of the swams of children therein were all engaged in making the murderous wolf baits.

  One woman would shave the thinnest possible slivers off one of a pile of bones; another would roll these slivers as tightly as possible without breaking or permanently bending them, always making certain that each end was sharply pointed. Another woman would deftly bind these coils of bone into place with a bit of thread-thin sinew. Then yet another woman dipped them into hot liquid fat and set them aside until they were cooled enough for the children to make each one of them the center of a hand-shaped ball of firmer fat, after which they were taken out and placed in a shaded spot to freeze.

  These would be thrown out when wolves were known to be near the herds or prowling about the stockade. The wolves, of course, in their typical canine fashion, would gulp the balls of fat unmasticated, and when body heat and stomach acids had combined to melt the fat and dissolve the restraining bit of sinew, the length of sharp-pointed bone would spring out from its spiral shape, at least lacerating if not, puncturing whatever portion of that wolf’s gut it happened to be in at the time.

  Chief Dik lay snoring under a mound of furs and thick blankets. He had been in severer pain than usual this morning and so had been dosed with a stronger than normal analgesic tea which gave him not only cessation of pain but sound sleep in spite of the uproar that filled the yurt.

  Mindspeaking on a tight, personal beaming, Tim asked, “You and Nansee, I see here, but where is Mother? Surely she must have found a way to keep from going out to cut trees down.”

  “Not this time around,” Bettylou replied, just as silently and privately. “She threw a fit and went tearing out of our yurt last night, when first your father made mention of the day’s work party and the reason for it. But when she got here, your uncle put his foot down . . . hard, boot, spur and all. I suppose that with all the other chiefs here, he felt that to excuse even his sister on such flimsy grounds would demean him and his authority. However he reasoned, he told her flatly that either she went out with the other sound Krooguh women or he would appoint a surrogate to thrash her until she was of a mind to obey the dictates of both her chief and the subchief who was her husband.

  “So Mother went out to the forest, then?” remarked Tim. “Will wonders never cease to occur? Oh, but there will be one hellish fit in our yurt when she gets back, you can bet on it. It’s glad I am that I’m doing herd duty just now, where I’ve only wolves and other such beasts to deal with. I warn you, wife, we’ll none of us hear the end of Mother’s reverses of last night and today until she is with Wind . . . and, knowing her and her stubbornness, probably not even then.”

  “Possibly not,” Bettylou replied to his dire forebodings. “Last night, while she was ranting here after the other chiefs had returned to their own yurts, your uncle limped over to one of the chests, I’m told, and dug through it until he found a device made of iron straps which had long ago been looted from some group of Dirtmen.

  “There were several similar things in the Abode of the Righteous, and they were called by the name of ‘scolds’ bridles.’ They are of soft iron and and fitted tightly around the head and jaws by a strong man, then secured with a big lock. While one is in place, the unfortunate wearing it cannot speak, eat or easily drink, since the iron straps prevent the jaws from opening more than fractions of an inch without severe pain.

  “Your uncle showed the iron bridle to your mother, explained its purpose and the fitting of it, then told her that he and others would be keeping their ears cocked, and on the very next occasion they chanced to hear her up to another of her screaming tantrums, he would be over with a couple of strong clansmen to fit the bridle to her and would see to it that she wore it until she fainted from hunger, if need be.”

  “And how did my uncle’s wives react to this threat against another clanswoman?” asked Tim.

  “I was told all that I have repeated by Dohrah, your uncle’s second wife,” Bettylou replied. “And she said that all in the yurt were most pleased, being of the concerted opinion that your mother has gotten away with far too much for far too long.”

  Tim rode back toward the herd with a bagful of the wolf baits, a packet of dry bowstrings and a few lumps of beeswax, a bellyful of warm food and the pleasant thought that things were showing the promise of change for the better in the yurt of his birth. He filed away his uncle’s decisions and methods of exacting obedience from an insubordinate relative in his mental “when I am chief” file.

  All through the daylight hours, spans of oxen and teams of straining mules dragged back to the campsite the rough-trimmed treetrunks, while the carts made trip after trip alter trip piled high with branches.

  After sight and smell of the thoroughly hoof-trampled expanse of half-frozen, fecal-laced mud that one night of sheltering a large proportion of the horse herd had made of the area of the camp inside the palisade, the chiefs had made the decision to erect another palisade adjoining the existing one for the horses and another of a different configuration for the pregnant ewes, certain chosen rams and the best of the younger ewes. Only the milk goats would be kept as before in the confines of the human settlement. It would be up to the cattle to fend off the wolves themselves, any of them that got past the roving herd guards.

  Throughout the next night, small fires were kept blazing all along the lines which had been traced by Chief Milo and then cleared of snow and ice. Thus, in the morning, when the still-warm ashes were scraped aside, those narrow stretches of ground were not frozen like all the rest of the topsoil for many miles in every direction, so the digging of the trenches to take the palisade limbers went far more quickly and easily than any of the folk had expected or had had any right to expect at this time of year.

  Parties with carts were sent back to the wooded areas to seek out and bring back as much thorny or prickly brush as they could find, and when the palisade stakes had been erected, the ground around them thoroughly soaked and given the time to freeze, the children were set to the task of weaving the brush thickly between and around the stakes as high as they could reach easily, at which point adults took over and continued for as long as the supplies of brush held out.

  “Not that the brush will stop those gray devils,” Chief Milo had remarked, and the next snow will mean that we’ll have to fetch back more brush and raise the height of it again. But at least it might serve to slow the wolves down enough to let someone put an arrow into them before they can get at the horses or the sheep.

  “As for the cattle and the rest of the sheep, it might be best to drive them all closer to camp, maybe to where we had the horse herd; the herd guards will have an easier life thus, and in the event that that super-pack strikes at the cattle, we — more of us — will be able to get to the herd to help in killing the wolves or driving them off, and do it in much less time than we could now, with the herds way out there.

  “Of course,” he confided to the other chiefs gathered in Dik Krooguh’s yurt, “if that pack is big enough we could easily, few as we number, lose every head of stock and have a hard fight to keep even our own lives and a few horses. It has happened before, in past years, to other nomads — Kindred and non-Kindred — and some of the smaller, more isolated Dirtman settlements, too, have been wiped out or at least ruined by one of these huge packs during a hard winter.

  “Our warriors and striplings and maiden-archers who are not assigned to the herds had better start steeping in shifts, so that two-thirds of the total numbers of effectives are always available, for those big packs hunt both by day and by night when their bellies are growling, and the only things that will stop them are food, a full blizzard or death.”

  The Lainuh Krooguh who returned to the Staik
iee yurt was a sullen, silent woman who never spoke unless addressed and then only in monosyllables. No one was comfortable in her presence, and she left the yurt only when forced to do so by her natural functions, for she did no work of any kind, only crouched near the firepit, scowling and brooding in utter silence, ignoring all the other occupants of the yurt.

  As a consequence, Bettylou was distinctly relieved when she was told by Tim to move their effects to the yurt of Chief Dik, that she might be instructed by the chiefs wives in how to properly run the domicile of a clan chief. Dahnah and Nansee, without even being asked, helped her to gather the clothing and gear and sleeping-rugs, and then lug them — slipping and sliding on the uneven footing frozen beneath the thin blanket of fresh snow — over to the Clan Krooguh chiefs yurt, then arrange them where and as directed by Dik Krooguhs first wife, Mairee.

  When Bettylou had thanked the helpful women and they had departed, she set about the task of unrolling her sleeping-rug and coverings. There was no point in unrolling Tim’s, for until the wolf threat abated, he would be at the herders’ camp both night and day.

  The two thicknesses of carpeting were placed on the ground, with sheepskins atop them, then the two woolen blankets and, finally, the bearskin Djahn Staiklee had gifted. As she unrolled and laid this treasure out, all three of Chief Dik’s wives — Mairee, Dohrah and Djohn — came over to stroke and admire the rarity.

  “It’s not so thick and dense as a winter pelt would’ve been,” remarked Mairee. “but even so, when once it’s been properly lined, one entire chest is going to be required to store and transport it. I’ll tell old Tchahrlz to start making you that chest; he should line it with cedarwood, which seems to help to keep vermin out, and it ought, really, to be bound and decorated in brass or silver or both together. Perhaps your Tim will luck into some of those metals on one of next year’s raids.”