by Robert Adams
“Now that was a damned chancy thing,” he mused. “If I hadn’t lucked across that sealed room of emergency supplies and that scoped rifle with enough ammo to wipe out most of the pack . . .
“No, these people have good reasons for fearing the few things’ that they do, especially the stinkers and the blackfeet. Those predators are always devilish hard to kill. It’s just a damned fortunate thing that there’re so few of them, and most of those stalk the elk on the high plains or follow the caribou herds hundreds of miles north of here.
“It’s funny, too, back in the days before everything fell apart, a lot of scientific types carried on at length about the mutations of men and animals’ and plant life that an atomic war was certain to produce in survivors. But unless the mindspeak in which each new generation of these clansfolk seems to be more proficient is such a mutation, I cannot see where any real change has taken place in men.
“I am no mutation, at least not of that bit of manmade hell, for I was just as I am today, with every one of my . . . well, oddities . . . sixty years before the Two-Day War.
“The prairiecats are not mutations, but rather the result of a deliberate, scientific, prewar attempt to breed the sabertooth cats back into existence by that group in the Idaho mountains. And that was the origin, too, of these damned beasts they call shaggy-bulls. The journals I read while we were waiting for the rest of the two clans to join us there told it all. Bison primogenus or longhorn bison is what that group was shooting for; I think they got them, too, by breeding back the regular, smaller bison and certain of the more primitive breeds of cattle like the Texas longhorn, the Highland strain and the yak, plus — as I recall — the gaur and the European wisent.
“The director of that project who wrote those journals did allude here and there to other, earlier attempts with other species of beasts, and so conceivably those humonguous mustelids could be an outcome of his breeding pens. But I tend to doubt it, for be was trying to recreate extinct species, and I never heard or read anywhere of twelve-or-fifteen-foot mink or ferrets, past or present.
“They . . .”
Blind Hari’s voice abruptly broke into his musings. “What says the war chief then? Does the tribe bear to the north and cross the Great River where it is not so wide and swift, or do we rather follow the Traders’ Trail and cross over as do they?”
Milo shrugged. “Unless we backtrack far west and then north, we still would be faced with a wide, swift and deadly river before we could reach the headwaters of the Great River. Why should we do that and risk the chance of a much harder winter in a northern land? Let us continue on to Traderstown and see what transpires there. If the dirtmen of that town will not afford us use of their barges for a reasonable fee, then we shall take the barges, the town and all in it by force of arms. It is the sacred destiny of this tribe to return to the Holy City of our Sacred Ancestors’ birth, and neither man nor Nature shall impede us.”
* * *
Stehfahnah lay on her side with her naked body bunched as closely together as she could to conserve its heat, but still her little white teeth chattered. She had been captive in the trapper’s cramped, filthy hut for a week, bound hand and foot each time he left for any reason, and as his traplines ran for many miles up and down the riverbanks and deep into the forests, he and his small but sturdy ass were usually absent from a bit after sunrise until nearly dark.
The girl once more ran her dry tongue over even drier lips, wishing for her captor’s return almost as much as she dreaded it. It was purest torture to lie watching the bulging waterskin hanging but a few feet distant and not be able to reach it: and torture, too, was the need to forcibly restrain the needs of her body to empty itself during the long hours alone, but the man’s hard-swung belt had drawn blood from her bare back on the two occasions she had lost control and wetted or fouled the mattress of grass-stuffed hides whereon she lay.
For a pitifully short time each night and morning he had made a practice of freeing both wrists and ankles that she might eat, drink and void. He did leave her ankles unbound all night . . . but only so that he might easily use her body whenever the mood struck him through the night hours.
Once more Stehfahnah had reverted to the behavior pattern which had sustained her through the long weeks of her previous captivity, separating her mind from her body during the abuse she could not resist, trying not to show pain or any sign of emotion.
She might have experienced loneliness, had she not been a telepath. But the second room of the hut was stall for not only the little ass but for the trapper’s other animal, a mare he had captured from the wild years before, and brutally broken to the saddle. During the third morning of her captivity, whilst she had been silently conversing with the two female otters, the previously uncommunicative equine had suddenly joined the “conversation.”
Mother-of-Many-Many had just apprised the girl that Killer-of-Much-Meat-in-Water had swum upriver seeking the creature that might be able to help her, the one that they called The-Bear-Killer. Stehfahnah had no idea what sort of beast the otters had in mind. The only impressions she could glean from them were of a huge (to them, at least), dark, furry creature with longish legs, a mouthful of sharp, white teeth and broad feet studded with long, curved claws.
Stehfahnah had known that the mare was a mind-speaker — else she would have possessed no mindshield — but the girl’s earlier attempts to converse had been fruitless. Now the small dun mare said silently, “You are truly, then, a twolegs of the Clans. Long has this one been slave to this brutal dirtman twolegs. Sad day it was when you became such, sister.”
According to the mare, she had been separated from her herd — a sept of the Horse Tribe attached to Clan Mehrfee — while fleeing a terrible grass fire on the prairie seven years past. Stumbling with exhaustion, she had entered the riverside forest belt, having scented water. She had been taken at a small spring, too tired to really offer much resistance to the big, strong man and his hateful rawhide noose.
Knowing or suspecting that his catch was a Horseclans mare, he never took her onto the prairies when he worked for the traders each spring and summer, boarding her and the ass in Traderstown, where the stable owner also rented out their services now and again.
The girl had had but little “conversation” with the ass. The small creature was intelligent enough, but his mindspeak seemed minimal and had never before been employed with humans.
As Stehfahnah lay there on the smelly hide mattress, a new but familiar thought transmission nibbled at her mind, and abruptly her thirst, the cold, even the aching of her full and distended bladder were forgotten.
“Good-Twolegs,” announced Killer-of-Much-Meat-in-Water, “The Bear-Killer swam back down the river with me. He stopped where we came out to eat a muskrat caught in one of Bad-Twolegs’s hurt-leg-things. But we must wait until next sun to free you, for Bad-Twolegs and his long-ears are not far.”
* * *
Eely Maidjuhz led his pack ass — the smallish beast staggering under its load — into the small clearing before the log hut, hung the dwarf antelope he had bagged by chance, then began to affix the day’s catch of skins to the drying racks. Once the last skin was up and the antelope’s small carcass butchered, he cleaned his knives, took up the ass’s halter and led him into the hut and through the front room to join the mare in the lean-to addition.
It was only after he had removed the packsaddle and halter, fed and watered both beasts, brought in the antelope carcass, started a fire on the hearth and spitted the minuscule kill in preparation for broiling when the coals became of the right temperature and consistency that he turned to Stehfahnah.
“Wai, sweetchips, what-all yew bin doin’ t’day? Heheheh! Yew glad fer t’ see ol’ Eely? Yew wawnt me t’ untie yew so’s yew kin gitchew a drank an’ piss?”
Stehfahnah gritted her teeth. “Yes.”
The man’s grin remained, but his eyes cooled. “Yore mem’ry ain’t too sharp, is it, gal?”
Her teeth
still gritted, Stehfahnah ground out, “Yes, master.”
The man nodded his shaggy head once. “But it don’ tek much proddin’, does it? Come spring thaw time I tek yew in an’ sell yew to Miz Soozee fo’ her who’ house in Traders-town, yew awta be broke in jest raht.”
His grin widening, he chuckled. “Then Eely’ll jest git word t’ pore ol’ Shifty Stooahrt wher’all yew is. Way yew hurted up thet gennamun, he oughta be purt’ glad t’ git aholt of yew agin. An’ he won’ fergit me neethuh, I figger.”
The man kept a slip-knotted thong around the girl’s neck while she squatted in the brush, observing her constantly, his steel-shod spear ready in his other hand. Back in the hut, he allowed her to drink her fill from the waterskin before once again retying her, not releasing her again until the antelope carcass was cooked to his satisfaction. Throughout it all and through all the hours that followed, Stehfahnah was aware that Killer-of-Much-Meat-in-Water was crouched nearby, somewhere beyond the log walls.
When the man had gorged himself, he untied Stehfahnah to allow her to consume the remains’ of the carcass and to drink again from the skin, then tied her for the night, performed his necessary chores, banked the fire and flopped down beside his captive on the hide mattress.
Stehfahnah gritted her teeth, knowing what was surely to happen but as he rolled onto his side and his dirty, greasy fingers began their explorations of her body, there came a deep-chested huffing snuffling at the barred door. Then something began to attack the portal furiously, constantly growling and roaring, striking the door with such force as to slam it back against the bar several times, jar oddments from off the wall shelf near it and even set the items hanging from the wall hooks and rafters dancing and swaying.
Spewing curses, Eely threw off the blankets, rolled out of the bed and, with his spear clasped in one hand, began to stir up the fire with the other, his wide-eyed gaze locked upon the quivering door.
Stehfahnah ranged her thoughts out to the male otter. “Oh, Killer-of-Much-Meat-in-Water, what is happening?”
The reply came quickly. “The-Bear-Killer had thought he could get into the log den, but he cannot. Good-Twolegs must get Bad-Twolegs outside. If The-Bear-Killer does not kill Bad-Twolegs tonight, he will lose interest and go away.”
For many long minutes after the attack on the door had ceased, the man stood rooted by the fire, breathing hard, his eyes dilated and the unmistakable stink of terror oozing from his every pore. When there had been no sounds from the outer darkness for about a quarter hour, he took down a torch from above the hearth and kindled it in the fire, padded over to the door and stood with his ear to it for some time.
Standing back at last, he essayed to lift the bar with the point of his spear, but the shaft proved too long to give him proper leverage. Then he tried to find a way to wedge the torch upright in order to free his left hand . . . and almost fired the thatch. Cursing sulphurously, he set aside the spear for but a mere eyeblink of time, then firmly grasped it again.
After a longish moment of just standing and thinking the matter through, he finally padded over to the bed, laid down the long spear and said, “Looky here, gal, Eely’s gonna untie yew fum th’ bed frame an’ yew gonna git up an’ lif th’ bar offen th’ do’. Heah me? Yew try suthin’ an’ Eelyll jest run his spear clear th’ough yew an’ then th’ow yer carcass out t’ whatever critter’s awn th’ loose.”
To the waiting otter, Stehfahnah beamed, “I think that Bad-Twoleg is coming outside, but beware, he has a spear and a torch.”
But another mind answered her, a mind unaccustomed to telepathy with humans. “The-Bear-Killer not fear pointed stick. Kill, eat many twolegs, pointed stick not hurt, twolegs all slow, The-Bear-Killer fast, strong. Get Bad Twoleg outside den, The-Bear-Killer kill, eat.”
The girl’s bound, numb hands were not equal to the task, however, for the bar was not light and the attacks of the creature upon the door had almost torn one of the bar’s supports from the wall, causing it to jam tightly into the other.
Finally, she gave up and announced, “I cannot raise it with my hands bound together. I’ll need to grasp it at or near each end to get it out.”
By the dim and flaring, flickering light of the torch, the man could see that his captive spoke no less than the truth, so, leaning the spear against his shoulder momentarily, he drew his razor-edged skinning knife from the belt that hung on a nearby hook and slashed through the tough thongs. As he did, he reiterated his promise to spear her should she either attack him or try to get away into the darkness.
Stehfahnah took a few moments to flex her stiff fingers and rub gently at her raw wrists, then again attacked the contrary bar. But she was at length reduced to hammering it from beneath with a faggot of firewood until it had been sufficiently loosened to respond to her wiry strength. That done, she stepped back, still holding the bar, and her captor took her place.
Holding the torch before him and inching back the leather-hinged door with the point of his spear, the man crouched on his hairy, thick-muscled legs, ready to stab with spear or smite with torch at whatever beast he might confront; brute and lecher he assuredly was, but not coward or weakling.
Slowly he advanced, moving on the balls of his feet, ever ready to leap forward, to either side or backward, to stab upward or downward or to slash with the knife-sharp edges of the blade of the hunting spear.
When the torchlight had assured him that the immediate area near the door was empty of threat, he raised the torch so that he might closely examine that battered portal and thus perhaps guess just what animal lurked in the darkness outside.
The door hung drunkenly, both central and lower hinges of thick, heavy leather almost sundered from the hardwood. And that dense, well-cured wood was deeply scored and furrowed from lower edge to midway up its height by the down-slashing claws of some powerful beast. In the earth before the hut — earth dampened by the night mist — was a veritable hodgepodge of tracks, mostly one atop the other. However, even those that were a bit clearer than the rest meant precious little to the trapper, for he had never before seen their like.
Stehfahnah mindspoke the otter. “Where is The-Bear-Killer? Bad Twolegs is about to come out.”
“The-Bear-Killer sees, female twolegs; he waits in the bad twolegs’ path, on side of paw that holds fire. If female twolegs can make Bad-Twolegs look another way for only a moment, The-Bear-Killer can quickly kill Bad-Twolegs.”
“I shall try,” Stehfahnah beamed silently. Ever so cautiously, Eely advanced a few feet. Terrible as had been the damage to the door, that and the strange tracks had at least reassured him that it was neither bear nor treecat he faced in the shrouding darkness. Both sets of signs had borne a familial resemblance to a badger, though he could not imagine what on earth a badger — even a vastly oversized badger — would be doing this far from the prairie. Nonetheless, he feared no badger of any size, not with his good spear in his hand.
Briefly, his mind dredged up the memory of a beast he had heard described by other trappers at Traderstown in years past. Some called it “devil-wolf” or “badger-bear,” but even if it existed — and he had never met any man who could claim to have actually seen one — its usual haunts were well north of this area, close to the headwaters of the Great River. Rubbish, he thought, dismissing the half-mythical “badger-bear” as but another way of alibing the ill-luck of a bad season for a trapper.
Stehfahnah stood in readiness, her own desperate plan worked out in her mind, and when her ravisher was a few paces beyond the doorway, the girl slammed the door and clapped the heavy bar back into place.
“Why . . . yew lil bitch, yew! Eely tol’ yew he’d kill yew!”
Momentarily forgetful in his rage at his slave girl of the menace lurking somewhere out of sight, the man spun about and jammed his spear through the door at its midpoint, his powerful thrust easily penetrating the deeply scored wood.
Through sheerest good fortune, the sharp blade missed Stehfahnah, but in dancing ba
ck from it, her foot struck upon the round faggot she had earlier used to hammer up the bar, and she fell heavily, her head striking the raised hearth and her consciousness suddenly reduced to a red-black, flame-shot, whirling tightness . . . and far, far away, she thought that she could hear screaming . . . and roaring. Then there was nothing.
Chapter VII
The morning parade and inspection of his new company done, Captain of Foot Count Martuhn of Geerzburk scraped and stamped sticky mud from his patched boots and climbed the narrow, winding stairs up to the towertop chambers he had chosen as his own in the spanking new fortress the duke had erected in the center of Twocityport, much to the loudly voiced disgust and rage of his wife and her coterie of sycophants.
When Martuhn had set sail up the Ohyoh to recruit this new company, the land on which the fortress presently squatted had been an expanse of stone-built warehouses. Now the stones and massy timbers had been “rearranged” into a fine, small, eminently defensible fortification, its foundations going all the way down to bedrock. The rapacious duke had impressed every able-bodied man — slave, soldier or free — on whom he could lay heavy hand. He had commuted jail time to labor and even taken to shanghaing drunken rivermen.
The wealthier or more powerful men of the duchy had been allowed to buy out of the construction crews with gold or foodstuffs, stone or timber, or the loan of boats and wagons and teams. And the seemingly impossible had been accomplished, the fortress completed and ready to serve as garrison for the new company upon their arrival.
For all its newness, this citadel of Twocityport felt homey to Martuhn, as it should, for his own big, scarred hands had rendered the plans for the complex, faithfully drawing an exact duplicate of the citadel of faraway Geerzburk.
For all his and Wolfs earlier misgivings, the garrison was shaping up nicely, blending in well with the survivors of his earlier companies with a minimum of friction. Few floggings had been needed to establish and maintain the strict discipline he demanded of subordinates.
