by Robert Adams
* * *
On a day when the river lay not to their north but far to the south, Skinkkiller’s excited mindspeak ranged Don Maylo. “A cat lies just ahead, brother, a male cat, bigger even than Mousesqueak, he is! And a young two-leg male with a spear sits a small horse just beyond. And the vale beyond them is full of the blatting food-beasts with white, curly fur.”
“Mindcall the male cat, sister. Tell him that a man of the Horseclans approaches.” The man on the golden horse said, “Tell him that the man is Milo, of the Clan Morai.”
* * *
Blind Hari then struck upon the strings of his telling-harp those notes which signaled the conclusion of a tale. “And, in the following season, did I first meet Milo of Morai. With the spring thaw, we two quitted the winter camp of Clan Morguhn and rode north, together with the young cat whom he had found in the desert of the south, Skinkkiller. By then, she had been war-trained and blooded and bore the name Elkkiller. And she was the mother of the mighty and much lamentad Horsekiller, who led the Clan of the Cats to these new lands.
“This tale is ended, my children,”
Prologue II
Out from the caves, onto arid earth, the Kindred trod. There, were they found by the one Undying God. He did teach the Kindred all of life and the Law, how the Horse to ride, how the bow to draw, work of iron, work of leather, work of bone, work of wood, work of fire with steel and stone. Did teach of how to mindspeak Horse and Cat. Three hundreds years and more he did remain, and leaving, promised One would come again, to lead the clans whose honor bore no stain back to the sea, their City to regain.
—Chorus of “The Prophecy of the Return”
After two hundred years of roaming over most of a strange, altered world, I came back to the area from which I had begun my fruitless quest, the high plains of what had once been the United States of America. Search as I might, I had been unable to find that fabled isle, said to be peopled exclusively by men and women like myself.
Near the headwaters of the Red River, I rode into the camp of Clan Morguhn. They had summered in the mountains and were moving toward the Llano Estacado to meet with other clans and establish a winter camp. I represented myself as a clanless man, dropping vague references to a mysterious plague which had wiped out my clan-of-birth, and I was granted the hospitality of Chief Djimi’s tent.
We wintered at a bend of the Brazos River, along with four other kindred clans. As the river was beginning to swell with spring snow-melt, our camp became host to Blind Hari Krooguh, the tribal bard. He remained with us until New-grass-time. When the clans dispersed, both he and I rode north with Clan Ohlszuhn. From that day to this, he has ever remained near to me and we have become the closest of friends.
It was the exercise of his not inconsiderable powers which prevented the tribe from separating three years after my return, following the Tenth Year Council and feasts. Bidding the chiefs into yet another sitting, he introduced me. As sole survivor of my clan, I was automatically Morai of Morai, their peer. He recounted the manner of my arrival, sang the entire “The Prophecy of the Return,” then pointed out the host of similarities between my coming and the verses of that ancient song. The upshot was that I was acclaimed War Chief of the tribe. The clans began to prepare for the long awaited return to the Sacred Sea, to rebuild their Holy City, Ehlai.
From my travels, I knew better than to attempt a trek to the true place of origin of their ancestors, what had been southern California. The worldwide seismic disturbances of some three hundred years before had tumbled most of that nuclear-scarred area into the Pacific Ocean. Therefore, I led them east . . .
—From the Journal of Milo Morai
1
Ax and saber, spear and bow.
See the craven Dirtmen go.
Ride them down, lay them low.
Each and every maiden catch,
Put fiery torch to bone-dry thatch.
From Dirtmen shoulders, heads detach.
—Horseclan Riding Song
The farmers were big men. They outnumbered the small contingent of nomad raiders by more than two-to-one and they fought with desperation, but it was the desperation of hopelessness and this counted against them. Also against them were the facts that their opponents had been born in the saddle and had cut their teeth on their sabers and axes. Their cuirasses of boiled leather turned aside the agriculturists’ hastily snatched weapons. Besides, most of the farmers were drunk.
The arrow-volley which preceded the first charge had dropped more than a dozen of the olive-skinned dancers. Most of the remainder fell, as had the ripe grain whose harvest they had been celebrating, beneath the keen edges of the riders’ steel or the churning hoofs and ravening teeth of their mounts.
Cut off and alone, a flashily dressed, beefy man swung a poleax with such force that it severed the foreleg of a passing horse. But he dropped his well-used weapon and staggered back, clutching at the coils of his intestines which spilled through the abdominal slash dealt him by the crippled horse’s wiry, towheaded rider. Another second found the nomad kneeling by his victim, choking on his own blood, an arrow transfixing his throat.
As Milo Morai jerked his saber free from the body of his latest opponent, a hunting arrow caromed off the side of his spiked helmet. Glancing in the direction whence the shaft had come, he saw the archer shoot the towheaded man. He urged his palomino stallion, Steeltooth, toward the gangling teenager, who loosed one more shaft at Milo, dropped his longbow, and turned to run. Milo leaned from his saddlelike kak and, with a single slash of his heavy saber, sent the boy’s wide-eyed head spinning from his body. The headless trunk, spouting twin cataracts of blood, ran several more yards before it fell, twitching and jerking, to the firelit dust of the village square.
After the riders’ third sweep across the village, nearly all the Dirtmen lay dead or dying in the bloody, hoof-churned mud of the dancing ground. Only one point of resistance remained: A knot of six or eight farmers, plus two men whose garb, armor, and fighting skill attested them professional soldiers, had formed a semi-circle, their backs to the front wall of the headman’s house. They were holding their own; in the space before them lay the bodies of four nomads and one horse.
The riders were drawing up to charge yet again, but Milo pulled a shinbone whistle from within his cuirass and blew the signal to halt, then nudged Steeltooth over to the bunched raiders.
“Arrows,” he said shortly. “No honor to be gained by allowing scum like this to send more of you to Wind’s Home. Drop all but the money-fighters.”
Grinning, three of the horsemen uncased their short horn-bows. When the last of the farmers had been felled, Milo toed Steeltooth to a point midway between his riders and the two armored soldiers, each armed with a three-foot broadsword and a long, wide-bladed dirk.
“Meelahteh Ehleeneekos?” Milo inquired. “Or can you speak Mehrikan?”
The bigger of the two, a man a couple of inches taller than Milo, couched his answer in a drawled, very slurred dialect of the second tongue. “I talk ’em both, you murderin’ son of a bitch, you!”
Milo’s white teeth flashed startlingly against the background of his weathered face as he smiled his approval of the defiant words.
“You’re a brave man, soldier. Are you free-fighters? If so, I’ve always employment for men with guts.”
Raising his head, snorting his scorn, the big man stated, “Yes, I’m a free-fighter, but I’d fight for the Witch King first. Besides, we are sworn bodyguards to the Lady Mara of Pohtohmas.”
“So be it,” Milo declared, turning the stallion and riding back to his nomads. As he approached, two of the archers raised their bows, but he waved them down. He mindspoke Steeltooth and the big horse sank onto his muscular haunches. Milo stepped from his mount and unslung his iron-rimmed shield, then he stalked toward the soldiers.
When he was closer, he waved his blood-smeared saber at the arrow-quilled bodies of the farmers, saying, “They were treacherous Dirtmen and deserved no bett
er than they received. You two, I’ll grant a soldier’s death. Singly or both together against me, you choose.”
Side by side, the two swordsmen attacked. While fending off the larger with his shield, Milo first feinted at the smaller’s exposed face, then brought the back edge of his saber up into the unarmored crotch, recovering with a vicious drawcut. The smaller man let go both sword and dirk and dropped, screaming and clutching at his mutilated masculinity.
The larger man was an excellent swordsman, but Milo had had superiority when the soldier’s grandfather’s grandfather’s great-grandfather had been but a whining babe. After a brief flurry of stroke and counterstroke, he found an opening and rammed the center spike of his shield through the mercenary’s eye into his brain. Then a quick signal brought a mercy-arrow to end the sufferings of the smaller man.
After they had fired the emptied stables, Milo galloped ahead of the procession of captured animals-horses, mules and a huge, twenty-five-hand Northorse gelding. House by house, the larger element of the raiding party had rooted out the surviving villagers and herded them into the body-littered, blood-splotched square. As he approached, Milo could hear the women keening over their dead.
The woman caught Milo’s eye the moment he reined in beside the men who were guarding the huddle of prisoners. Although obviously of the same race as the people around her, she constituted a distillation of their good physical qualities, unpolluted by any of the bad. Her features were fine-boned and her light-olive skin, flawless. Her eyes were black and slightly almond-shaped; black, too, was her long, thick hair, so black that the flaring torches gave it bluish tints. Her hands were narrow and long-fingered, her body slim-hipped and graceful. She was quite small for an adult woman of her race, standing but a bare finger over fifteen hands, but the proud upthrusting of her well-formed breasts made it clear that she was no child.
Holding Steeltooth’s head high (the war horse would bite any human he could get his teeth to unless that human looked and smelled like a nomad), Milo rode over to the small, dark woman. Lounging in his kak, he studied her for a long moment. She met his gaze, no fear in her eyes or her bearing, only hate and ill-suppressed anger.
Suddenly Milo grinned, commenting in Old Mehrikan, “Mad as hops, aren’t you, you little vixen? You’d be highly dangerous to bed, probably claw my eyes out, if you couldn’t lay hand to a knife. But for all of it, I think you’ll be worth the effort.”
He mindspoke the horse and, once more, the golden animal sank onto his haunches. Standing astride the glossy steed, Milo curtly beckoned her. “Ehlahteh thoh!” he commanded, then repeated himself in Old Mehrikan, “Come here, woman!”
By way of answer, she quickly stooped, her right hand going to the top of one of her felt traveling boots. When she straightened, the torchlight glinted on the steel blade of a small dagger. Still unspeaking, she launched herself directly at Milo. But she had reckoned without Steeltooth. As she came within range, the killer’s big, yellow teeth clacked, missing her by but half a fingerbreadth. Shocked, she swerved, planted her foot in a slimy puddle of congealing blood. The foot shot from under her, and she fell heavily . . . directly under the head of the palomino stallion!
Steeltooth felt well served. His head darted down with the speed of a swooping falcon and it required all of Milo’s strength to halt that deadly lunge.
In falling, the little woman had lost her knife. She lay, supported on hip and elbow, immediately in front of Steeltooth’s huge, chisellike incisors. Her wide eyes had become even wider. She, who had shown no fear of Milo or the other nomads, was quite obviously terrified of the blood-hungry horse.
Milo spoke in a low, calm voice. “Do not attempt to rise, woman, that would put you in range of him, despite the reins. It’s only my strength against his, for he has no bit. Do exactly as I say and you have a chance. If you understand me, blink three times, rapidly.”
Her long, sooty lashes flicked once, twice, thrice, and he went on. “Now roll onto your belly, very slowly . . . Good. Keep your head and your rump down, use your arms to drag yourself to me. If you try to go the other way, he’ll think you’re fleeing from him, and I’ll not be able to hold him; so come here, but do it slowly, very slowly.”
She followed his instructions and, at length, lay at his right, her fine clothing filthy with dust and grime and well smeared with the blood through which she had had to crawl. Wordlessly, she obeyed his gesture and, when she was mounted before him, he eased up on the reins and signaled the horse to rise. Once erect, the palomino looked about for the small two-leg he had almost had, but it was nowhere to be seen, although its scent was still present He shook his head and stamped, snorting his disgust.
Milo had one of his raiders bind the captive and place her in the cargo-pannier of the Northorse, while he saw to the systematic looting of the village. Custom required that a slave be returned for each man killed or seriously wounded, so he selected seven of the strongest-looking girls, then two more for Clan Kahrtuh. When these had been bound and lashed to kak or packsaddle, when the Northorse and mules had been loaded with loot and the weapons and armor of the dead, when the corpses of the slain Kindred had been placed beside Djimi Kahrtuh’s mutilated body, Milo allowed shifts of raiders to “test” the remaining Dirtwomen and thus decide which of them they wished to take with them.
While the shrill pleas and sobbing screams of outrage and pain attested to the strenuous activity of the first shift, Milo and the others herded the laden animals to the outskirts of the village. When the third shift had chosen and its well-raped choices were tied across packsaddle or crupper, the remaining villagers — old men, children, and old or ugly or crippled women — were chased far into the stubbled fields. Then, beginning with the headman’s house where lay their late comrades and the two dead soldiers, they fired every structure in the village — sparing not even the privies.
The cross was the only thing of wood left standing, that same cross on which they had found the body of their scout. Onto the bloodstreaked timbers, they bound the cadaver of the village headman. Standing on his kak, Milo gripped a handful of the stripped body’s hair and held its head erect. One of the archers then drove an arrow through eye and brain and skull, pinning the head to the upright.
Milo hung a weatherproof case on the jutting arrow. It contained a roll of parchment on which he had printed a message in three languages — Ehleeneekos, Horseclan Mehrikan, and the trade language, Old Mehrikan:
This Dirtman and his pack took a man of the Kahrtuh Clan by guile and murdered him by torture. Dirtman, behold and be warned! The cost of the life of one Horseclansman is a village and every man in it! By the hand of Milo Moral, War Chief of the Tribe that will return to the Sacred Sea.
2
Man and Cat and Horse are Kindred, one, ’Neath high domain of Wind and Sword and Sun.
—From “The Couplets of the Law”
The party had not been riding more than an hour when a savage storm struck. The windy gusts came horizontally, the rain accompanied by peasize hailstones which rang on helmets like sling missiles. But Milo led his men on despite the dark and storm, glad of them, in fact. For they were but a small group and uncomfortably near to the High Lord’s capital, with its well-armed soldiery, and the sheets of water would surely wash away the traces of their passage, making things more difficult for the patrols that were certain to be after them by daybreak, if not already. Burdened as they were, they could look forward to at least twenty hours of travel.
From their present position, it was some fifty miles to the tribe’s sprawling encampment around the hilltop town which the Ehleenee called Theesispolis, and nearly every one of those miles lay through little-known, hostile country.
Throughout the rest of the night, Milo drove them on westward. When it became too light to travel safely and the rain slackened, they found a dense copse and made a cold camp. After the animals were all fed and picketed, the captive women were untied and, under close guard, allowed to eat and attend their
bodies’ needs. Then the strongest of the men cold-fitted an iron cuff to each woman’s right ankle, the cuffs bearing the mark of the clan to whom the slave-woman now belonged. Threading an iron chain through the cuffs, the raiders picketed their captives on the other side of the clearing from the horseline, and the first shift of sleepers flopped down and were soon snoring despite soggy earth and wet clothing. A group of equal size watched over them, the slaves and the horses, while the other third guarded the perimeter of the copse and watched for signs of pursuit. All were seasoned warriors, old hands at raiding.
Milo’s cuff was of hardened silver rather than iron, and he fitted it to his captive himself. Then, taking a leathern flask and a brace of small horncups from among his gear, he poured out measures of a clear liquid and offered one to the dark woman, who stared at it for a moment before accepting. She watched him toss down his own and attempted to follow suit; gasping, spluttering, choking, her eyes streaming, she dropped the cup. Milo laughed until he was forced to hold his sides.
When she had regained her powers of speech, she angrily demanded, “What in hell is that stuff?”
“Distilled grain mash,” Milo answered smilingly. “When you’re accustomed to it, you’ll find it quite pleasing. We call it ‘Water of life’.”
At his instruction, she sipped her refilled cup, deciding after a moment that she could truly learn to enjoy the fluid.
While packing flask and cups away, Milo regarded her closely. “Two sleep warmer than one, woman. Give me your word you’ll not try to escape and I’ll not chain you with the others.”
She shrugged. “Where could I go? I’ve no idea where we are and only the vaguest idea in which direction Kehnooryos Atheenahs lies. You or one of your barbarians will probably rape me shortly, but at least you’ve not tried to kill me. My next captor might not be so merciful.” Reaching down, she tapped a fingernail against the silver ring. “I suppose this means I’m now your clan’s slave. Am I allowed to ask your name and the name of your clan, Master?”