The Coming Of The Horseclans

by Robert Adams

  —From “The Couplets of the Law”

  Most of the east-bound cavalry eventually made it to safety, but the west-bound unfortunates rode directly into Chief Bili Esmith and his blood-hungry Kindred. A viciously fought, running battle swept back to lap around the western foot of the hill. Mara emerged into it and, before she was aware that a battle was in progress, she found herself engaged in a horseback saber duel with a big mercenary.

  Her saber-skill matched her bow-mastery. Lacking the strength needed for a hacking attack, she had become a point-fighter — a skill entirely absent from the repertoires of many opponents she had faced — and, adroitly parrying, she soon saw an opening and spitted the cavalryman’s hairy throat. As the man plunged off his horse, something crashed against the backplate of her cuirass and hurled her, too, down amid the stamping hoofs. While Mara struggled to rise, a horse thundered past and a blade rang on her helmet. She dropped back, her head filled with a star-shot red-blackness. At the edge of consciousness, she screamed as a horse stepped on her right hand; then, oblivion took her.

  As the darkness cleared from her mind and she opened her eyes, she thought that she saw dead Milo’s face swimming before her. Sure that she was hallucinating, she closed her lids again, softly moaning. Then a man’s strong arm was around her shoulders, lifting and supporting them, and she felt the rim of a horncup on her lips and her nostrils registered the odor of the raw alcohol. She looked again. The hallucination was still there; then it spoke.

  “Drink this, Mara. Do you hear me, woman? Drink it!” Not waiting for compliance, Milo forced open her jaws and poured a measure of the fiery liquid into her mouth. With a gasp she became fully conscious. Milo squatted on his heels beside her, smiling at her reaction to his “restorative.”

  Her eyes wide, she just stared for a long moment “But . . . but you’re dead! I saw you slain! You . . .”

  Still smiling, Milo shook his head. “You thought you saw me killed, Mara, but the tip of the dirk only tore my shirt and scratched my side — not deeply at that — and. . . .”

  “No, no!” She shook her head violently. “It . . . it went into you, to the hilt! There were airbubbles in the blood you bled! Your . . . your shirt is still blood-wet. You must be dead!”

  Instead of replying again, Milo shifted his position and opened his soggy, reddened shirt. While streaks of blood were drying on his smooth, sun-darkened skin, the wound from which they had come was all but closed. Mara’s eyes looked upon it and a tingling, prickling chill coursed through her and she knew. Then, she knew!

  But her carefully trained features did not reveal her knowledge. It was not the time or the place for that. Flexing the fingers of her right hand, she said, “It . . . it all happened so dreadfully fast, Master, that . . . And then that stroke I took on my helmet, too. I’m sorry. I had no intention of death-wishing you.”

  The full moon had all but set before the victorious nomads started their return to the tribe-camp. Tons of armor and weapons and clothing were lashed to the backs of the hundreds of captured horses, who traveled westward, having been reassured by mindspeak that if they were unhappy with the tribe, they would be quickly freed. They were eastern-bred horses and, having always considered themselves and been treated as beasts of burden, being spoken to as an equal by a two-leg was a fascinating novelty and imbued them with a happy, heady feeling of being where they belonged.

  * * *

  Her many travels had put Mara in occasional contact with Horseclans, but she had never before been in a camp of this size. Round about the sacked town, clustered in clan-groups, were well over a thousand wagon-lodges and tents. South of the encampment, watched over by adolescent cats, grazed many thousands of horses. To the north, the cattle and sheep — neither of which species had the intelligence to realize that the Prairie Cats would not harm them — were guarded by mounted striplings of the various clans, armed with bows and wolf-spears.

  Between cattle and camp, half a hundred pubescent boys and girls took turns loosing arrows at a straw-packed manikin, under the one good eye of a white-haired but tough-looking old man. Older boys and girls, afoot and mounted, practiced with saber and ax and spear and javelin, learning or polishing their skills under the direction of old or maimed warriors.

  In the camp, itself, warriors and unmarried girls lazed in the sun, gaming and laughing and talking, caring for their gear or sharpening their weapons, ignoring both the incredible din of camp life and the swarms of flies. Naked children ran screaming among the tents while married women gossiped and slaves bustled about their chores. The arrival of the caravan excited but little notice; returning raiders were too common a sight among these people.

  Uphill from the camp, they passed through the charred ruins of the outer town and entered the smashed and sagging gates of the inner town. The cats had deserted them in the camp, loping off to have two-leg friends remove their uncomfortable armor and fang-spurs. In the courtyard of the citadel, Chief Bili entrusted the bootytrain to the care of one of his sub-chiefs, then he dismounted and needlessly stood at Steeltooth’s head while Milo slipped from his kak — it was but a way of rendering homage to the tribe’s War Chief. He started to precede his superior into the building, but halted when Milo did.

  Mara was still mounted and Milo looked up at her. “Mara, you fought for the tribe and have earned your freedom. Come, I wish the chiefs to hear of your valor, so that the honors and booty you have won will be unquestioned among the clans.” Raising his arms, he grasped her slim waist and lifted her down from her mount.

  The citadel complex, through which they threaded their way, had been begun shortly after the Great Quake had leveled what had remained of the ancient city (said to have been a temple of learning in the days when gods had walked the earth). Most of the present structure and the town walls had been fashioned of a lovely gray-green stone, cut from an ancient quarry miles away, and transported here to construct the westernmost outpost of the principality known to Ehleenoee as Kehnooryohs Ehlahs and to most other eastern peoples as Vuhdjinyah. In ancient times, the town had been called Charlottesville; to the Ehleenoee, it was Theesispolis; but to the nomads, it was simply the Place-of-Green-Walls.

  * * *

  Green-Walls had been a rich city, a city of commerce with trade routes from the mountains and beyond converging on it. Its garrison had consisted of a squadron of Kahtahphraktoee to ride the frontier and guard and police the road; there hundred spearmen to man the gates and the citadel; three hundred more to perform the function of civil police. In addition, there was the six-hundred-man town levy — every male between the ages of sixteen and sixty had to provide his own equipage and weapons; the quality of the force ran the gamut from fair to worse than useless. When word reached them that an entire tribe of nomads were just the other side of the nearest range of mountains, every man was alerted and a dispatch was posted to the High Lord at Kehnooryohs Atheenahs seventy miles southeast.

  The High Lord was young and had ascended to power only five years before, but he knew what to do and, as he was already deep in debt, was pleased at the prospect. At irregular intervals over the course of the centuries that the Ehleenee had held this land, Horseclans — one or two at the time — had drifted across the mountains and into his domain. They had always been dealt with in the same way since they were an excellent source of horses, cattle and slaves — the fair-skinned, generally blond or red-haired girls and women and young boys bringing especially high prices from private citizen and brothel-keeper, alike.

  High Lord Demetrios had been delighted, an entire tribe of them! Since all slaves were automatically the property of the High Lord, if captured by his troops, he quickly dispatched an army under command of his cousin, Manos, Lord of the West. (After all, being the nominal capital of the Western Lord’s lands, Theesispolis was Manos’ responsibility, though Demetrios privately doubted that the man had visited the primitive little place more than a dozen times in his entire life; and why should he when everything which m
ade life worth the living lay in the city of the High Lord?)

  So Lord Manos marched west at the head of some eight thousand men, and High Lord Demetrios sat back and waited for the thousands of slaves whose prices would lift all his financial burdens. “But I’ll not glut the market,” he thought. “I’ll pen them here and only dribble them out a few at the time. That way, I should be able to have a new boy every day for a long, long while, break the little dears in for the brothel-keepers.” Closing his bloodshot eyes, he sat back and began to fantasize, smacking his thick lips. Already his hairy hands seemed to be gripping the smooth-skinned body of an untried darling of a blond boy, who screamed and struggled, deliciously. . . . The High Lord shuddered in anticipation.

  Lord Manos’ army was light on cavalry, so when he marched past Theesispolis, he dragooned the entire kahtafrahktoee squadron. Thirty-two of the wealthier citizens, who could afford to maintain chariots and a full panoply, drove out to his column and requested they be allowed a place in his array and a consequent share in the sure rewards of his venture. As all were his theoretical equals — pure Ehleenee of noble lineage — he graciously consented (though he could not, for the life of him, understand why any civilized man would deliberately seek the all but unbearable discomfort of a war-camp without direct orders). So he marched on west. The Trade Gap was the only feasible route for the large wagons, so Manos camped his army at its eastern mouth and waited, appropriating the Gap-fort for his headquarters and residence and adding its small garrison to his army.

  6

  One valiant wolf will attack a guarded herd, But, even in packs, jackals fear any save a hornless calf.

  —Horseclans Proverb

  The commander of the Gap-fort was a mercenary with a barbarian name — Hwil Kuk. Manos did not feel that the man was properly subservient and would not have him around the place, insisting he camp with his men. Kuk was a widower and his 12-year-old son shared his life. When first he laid eyes on the towheaded, blue-eyed boy, Manos lusted for him. He suggested to Kuk that he take the boy back with the army as his page, rear and educate him in the city of the High Lord, make a gentleman of him. Kuk understood; he had served some years in the capital and knew only too well of the unnatural passions of many of the Ehleenee, wealthy ones in particular. Kuk refused politely, saying he had promised the boy’s dead mother that they would stay together.

  Manos ordered the noncom from his presence and sulked and brooded for three days. On the morning of the fourth, Hwil Kuk — who knew the country and spoke Old Mehrikan fluently — was ordered to take half his command through the Gap. He was to enter the nomads’ camp and attempt to estimate their numbers, telling the chiefs that their approach had alarmed the Ehleenee and that was why the army had been sent; but, if the tribe came in peace, they were more than welcome to come through the Gap, so long as they continued north or south and did not tarry in Kehnooryos Ehlas. He was to take along gifts for the chiefs and spend as much time as was required to lull them into the trap Manos’ men were preparing.

  The night of the fourth day, a detachment of Manos’ bodyguard entered the main camp, seized Kuk’s son, and bore him back to the Gap-fort.

  Kuk and his party were well received by the Council of Chiefs, were honored and gifted and assured that, once through the Gap, the tribe would be bearing south. It had been prophesied that they would return to the Great Water whence they had come, but it was unnecessary to proceed in a straight line. Raids were one thing, but none of the chiefs was especially keen to come up against an army nearly as large as the entire tribe.

  Feeling a bit like a Judas-goat — for he had truly liked his hosts and had been made to feel truly at home with them — Hwil Kuk led his men back into the Gap after two days. Halfway through, he was met by his second-in-command and the remainder of the Gap-fort garrison, who were mounted on stolen horses. When the first, wild rage of his grief over his son had spent itself, Kuk realized the sure consequences of returning into the clutches of his son’s murderer. He decided to seek again the nomad camp. Once there, he would tell the chiefs the truth and, if allowed to do so, join with them. He absolved his men of their oaths to him, bidding them follow or not, as they wished. All forty followed. Their pay was far in arrears and they owed the Ehleenee and the High Lord no service as they were all mercenaries, indigenous to the mountains of the Middle Domain, Karaleenos. While they served the Ehleenee for gold, they neither liked nor respected them (for one thing, they felt dispossessed; the rich piedmont having once belonged to their race). They all respected Hwil Kuk and they had — to a man — loved little Hwili, Kuk’s shamefully murdered son.

  * * *

  Before the Council of Chiefs, Kuk bared his breast. He freely confessed his duplicity in his earlier dealings with them, carefully detailing the strengths of the Ehleenee host — and its weaknesses, chief among which was its inexperienced, hotheaded commander, the monster Manos. He told, too, of the preparations for ambushing the tribe as soon as most of it was through the Gap and massacring its warriors.

  “Then,” Kuk concluded, “it will be with you as it has been before with other Horseclans. After all the men are dead, your women will be raped to death or sold over the sea to brothels; your maidens will be enslaved as well, to receive the tainted seed of the devilish Ehleenee; and your young boys. . . .” He broke off sharply, tears streaming down his cheeks. Then, clenching his big fists and squaring his shoulders, he forced himself to continue. “Your dear little sons will be sold to brothels, too; but brothels of a different sort, where their immature bodies will sate the dark lusts of the unclean, unnatural beasts who call themselves Ehleenee. I speak of certain knowledge, honorable chieftains — my oath to Sun and Wind and Sword, on it. My own little boy — my Hwili — lies dead on the other side of the Gap, murdered by this same Lord Manos. When I would not give my son to his keeping — knowing him for what he is — he first sent me to lie to you, then had his men to seize the child.”

  Hwil Kuk hung his head and sunk teeth into lip; blood trickled down his stubbed chin. When he raised his head again, his eyes were screwed shut. His quavering voice was low but penetrating, and his facial muscles twitched with emotion.

  “I have been told that my child’s screams could be heard through all the camp. Then they suddenly ceased. The next morning, certain of my followers found Hwili’s pitiful little corpse, flung onto the fort midden. They washed it and clothed it and . . . and buried it. Things had been done to my boy’s body, terrible things. His . . . flesh had been torn, and my followers think that Lord Manos, uncaring after his hellish lusts were satisfied, allowed my Hwili to bleed to death.”

  Then Hwil Kuk’s eyes opened and the fire of bloodlusting madness blazed from them. “Chieftains, if you would to the sea — your Great Water — you must fight long and hard. It is that or return to the plains, for, in all the Ehleenee lands, you will meet with the same. You owe me nothing, yet would I ask this of you: If it is your intent to fight, allow me and my followers to swing our swords beside you.”

  Henri, chief of Clan Kashul, was first to speak. “You claim that you lied before; perhaps you are lying now. What think you, War Chief?”

  Knowing the Ehleenee, as he did, Milo believed the man, but only a dramatic vindication would please and convince these chiefs. He arose and advanced to stand before Hwil Kuk. He looked into the ex-mercenary’s eyes; they met his unwaveringly.

  “Hwil Kuk,” said Milo. “Will you submit to the Test of the Cat?”

  Kuk cleared his throat. “I will!” he replied in a firm voice.

  Horsekiller, who, as Cat Chief, missed but few meetings of the council, padded across the tent. On Mile’s instructions, Kuk knelt and placed his head in Horsekiller’s widespread jaws.

  “You understand, Hwil Kuk, the cat has the power to read your thoughts. If this you have said is truth, you have nothing to fear. If not, his jaws will slowly crush your skull.” But even as he spoke, he knew. Through Horsekiller, he too could enter the grief-stricken man�
��s mind, endure with the cat the half-madness of Kuk’s tortured thoughts. “Enough!” He mindspoke to Horsekiller.

  The big cat gently released his grip and licked Kuk’s face in sympathy. Losing one’s kittens was never easy to bear.

  Milo took Kuk’s arm and raised him to his feet. “Kindred, this man has spoken truth. He has suffered much and it is right that he should shed the blood of those who helped to bring about that suffering. When we fight the Ehleenee, as we must, he and his men will ride with me. As I am clanless, so too are they.”

  “How can we fight?” inquired Gil, Chief of Clan Marshul. “This man has told us the Ehleenee lord leads between eighty and ninety hundreds of soldiers. We are forty-two clans, but our warriors number less than twenty-five hundreds. If we were able to surprise them, we would have a chance, but having to fight them at the place of their choosing . . .”

  “But we won’t,” replied Milo.

  * * *

  Throughout the course of the next month, Lord Manos was harassed in every quarter. Demetrios’ riders came almost every day with inquiries, commands and, as the month passed the halfway point, thinly veiled threats. The Theesispolis kahtahfrahktoee were grumbling; they wanted to get back to their garrison with its wine shops and bordellos. The army’s mercenaries were grumbling, many of the units not having been paid for four months. His officers were grumbling, anxious to return to the comforts and civilized delights of the capital. The bulk of his army was heavy infantry — levied from the areas lying east and south of the capital, and called out, equipped, and armed by the High Lord — and they were grumbling. Most were peasant farmers and harvest time was near; there was much to do. The barbarians just sat on the other side of the Gap. They grazed their herds on the thick luxuriant grass of the mountain valley, and it seemed as if they never intended to move on, into the fidgeting jaws of Manos’ trap.