A Woman of the Horseclans

by Robert Adams

  “There’ll be no need to raid for metals if we camp in one of the ruins, as we did ten years ago,” remarked Dohrah. “We must have dug up three or four wagonloads of various metals in those ruins that were called Haiz.”

  “Yes and I doubt not that we could’ve found even more had the chiefs allowed us to bide in the ruins themselves, not just camp out on the prairie and ride over every day for a few hours,” added Djohn.

  Mairee shook her head. “You should not criticize the decisions of the chiefs, nor should you doubt the rightness of their judgments, sister. Do not forget just how the ancient folk died who made the settlements that have since become those ruins their homes. Uncle Milo himself has warned over and over again that the seeds of those terrible plagues still sleep here and there in parts of every ruin, dormant, but still no less deadly to the careless or the unwary.

  “Remember what those horses in that small feral herd we had to join our Krooguh herd told us, years back? How the entire clan — men, women and children — died, all within a week, after camping among ruins? True, they were not a Kindred clan, but I doubt that those plague seeds discriminate between Kindred and non-Kindred folk. Nor do our chiefs, which is why they would never allow a camp to be established very close to a ruined place of ancient settlement.”

  With all three of his wives doing duty as matron-archers — one sleeping and two keeping watch at the palisades — Chief Milo took food with Chief Dik that night and, with wolves and wolf packs on the mind of everyone present, he began to talk of wolves, to reminisce of his various encounters with the canny predators over his many, many years of life.

  “In the world that existed before this one of ours, you know, in the most of this land, at least, the true wolf was all but extinct. Very few of them were left, and most of those were either not living truly wild and free or were not of pure wolf bloodlines.

  “In the immediate aftermath of the deadly calamities that befell that ancient world and its millions of human inhabitants, there were no wolf packs in any of the areas I was able to visit, but rather numerous and highly dangerous hordes of starving dogs — dogs of all shapes and sizes and breeds, all now ownerless, masterless, having little or no fear of mankind and having kept alive so far, since most of them utterly lacked hunting skills, by feeding off dead or dying human cadavers.

  “I had some very close brushes with a few of those dog packs, back then, but fortunately very few of those dogs lived long enough to breed more of their kind. As soon as the millions of human corpses were gone and the dogs had to compete with the equally numerous feral felines and the truly wild animals for such food as existed, they lost out and died off in droves; also, those few humans as had lived through the plagues in many cases hunted the dogs for meat and skins to replace worn-out clothing and footwear.

  “Some of them survived, of course; we now call them jackals. Others, I am certain, interbred with the coyotes and, I suspect, with the actual wolves. I just don’t see any way that an almost extinct species of predator could have sprung back so quickly in so comparatively short a time period unless a good many of the larger dog breeds — those called German shepherd, collie, chow, Malamute, Samoyed, Rotiweiler, boxer, Doberman, mastiff, great Dane and several other of the so called working and coursing breeds — had joined and interbred with the few widely scattered wolves.

  “Over the years. I’ve seen enough to strongly reinforce these beliefs of mine, moreover. I have seen wolves — both living and dead — who possessed dark-purple tongues — an unquestioned mark of the ancient breed of dog called chow. I know that Dik here, like many another hunter, has run into wolves with long, silky coats, or with the hair tightly curled, like that of a sheep.”

  The ailing chief nodded his agreement. “Yes, Uncle Milo, and then there are the short-jawed wolves, the ones that some folk call ‘round-headed wolves.’ I have for long heard it attested that they are not pure wolf.”

  “Most likely they are not,” agreed Milo. “I’d say that such creatures are throwbacks to the dog breeds that the ancients called mastiffs.”

  “Sacred Sun be thanked for the alliance of Kindred and the cats,” said Mairee feelingly. “Were it not for the Wind-sent abilities of the prairiecats, abilities which Wind did not grant to mankind, we never could hope to survive very many of these wolf winters.”

  Milo smiled. “And yet, it was because of a winter wolf pack that certain Kindred and I first chanced across prairiecats, many years ago and very far west of this place.”

  “Oh, Uncle Milo, tell us of it, please.” The request was almost a chorus from all of those assembled, young and old, and Bettylou’s own voice was added to the others.

  Milo took out his pipe and bladder of tobacco and began to stuff the one with the contents of the other. “Well, it was some four or five generations back. There were far fewer Kindred then, and we still were mostly confined to the high plains and the western mountains, not being numerous or strong enough to come down to and conquer for ourselves these prairies. As you know — most of you, at least — winters are usually harder, harsher on the high plains. with deeper snows that lie for longer . . . and, as I recall it, this winter of which I now speak was a bad one even for those elevations.

  Although five clans were camping together for the winter, there were fewer people in that camp than in this one. We had slaughtered the last of the cattle for food and were again running perilously low, so two hunting parties went out, all of us resolved not to come back without enough meat to sustain our folk for a while. I led a group of young men from Clan Esmith and Clan Linszee, while a renowned hunter whose name I now forget led a similar group from Clan Aduhmz, Clan Makfee and Clan Djohnz: they set out toward the southeast, we set out in the direction of the southwest.

  “The fourth day out, riding through deep snows in territory completely unfamiliar to us, we lucked across a deer yard in a patch of forest. There were four of the bigger, western deer in that yard, and the archers of Clan Esmith dropped them all, only to have one dragged away by some unknown, unseen predator while they were hard at work cleaning the big buck to be certain that the meat would not be tainted.

  “Now in our straits, we could not spare the loss of even one of those deer, so it was decided to pack the three carcasses we still had in our possession back to camp along with the most of our party, while I and a smaller party pursued the cat, for such a consummate tracker — one Djim Linszee. he who later in his life was Chief Linszee of Linszee — and I had both determined it must be, And this we did.

  “Because of the anticipated terrain in the direction that that feline had taken, we broke down squawwood, built a big fire and left two of our number there in the deer yard with the horses, going on afoot in pursuit of the thief and our deer. The way was long, and the canny cat did not make it an easy trail to follow. Once, in fact, she doubled back and leaped out of a trailside copse full onto my back and broke my neck. Had I been as are most Kindred, I would have died then and there.”

  Bettylou glanced around at the faces of the others, lightly flitted through the surface thoughts of the relaxed, unshielded minds with her still-new powers, but she could find no one who doubted a word that Chief Milo had said. She did not publicly question him as she had questioned Djahn Staiklee, but she resolved to find him alone somewhere and satisfy herself as to his supposedly immense age and vaunted ability to survive death-dealing injuries.

  “As it was,” Milo continued, “I was some hours recovering from that attack and the attendant injuries and it was while I was doing so that we all became aware that a huge pack of wolves was racing upon our trail. Keeping but a few minutes ahead of those relentless, shaggy pursuers, we sped on as fast as our legs would bear us, our faces all astream with sweat despite the frigid air and the tearing bite of the wind, which had increased in strength through the day. At length, we found ourselves at the foot of a low plateau and climbed up it with the pack leaders actually snapping at our heels, to behold it completely treeless but with a jum
ble of a complex of ruined buildings centered upon it a few hundred yards away from us.

  “It was a very near, a frighteningly near thing, but all of us made it to the ruins, to the top of a crumbling tower of ancient brickwork. The top of that ruined tower was too high for any of the wolves to jump, although almost all of them essayed it at one time or another, so we were safe from them as long as we did not try to climb down.

  “But we were confronted there on our perch by another and no less deadly menace, for it was clear to any creature that a blizzard was fast approaching that plateau. And with no more shelter than that offered us by foot-high walls about the edges of that tower top, we would have surely frozen to death in very short order.

  “I had not been willing to allow the party to spend their arrows and darts on the wolves as long as we were in a place where the beasts could not get at us and were not truly a life threat to us, preferring to save the weapons for a more desperate occasion. Therefore, they had spent their time in throwing loose chunks of bricks at the nearer wolves — killing a couple outright, injuring several others and at least hurting the rest at whom they aimed.

  “But they exhausted the supply of brick chunks after a while, and the wolves gradually circled closer and closer to the base of our perch again as no more hurtful missiles flew at them from its apex. There was more brick rubble atop that tower, but it was sunk in a mixture of old brick dust, bird droppings and windblown debris that over the years had become soil; moreover, there was a layer of ice over everything.

  “But none of this fazed our Kindred. As soon as one of them had proved that pieces of this brick rubble could be freed for use against the encroaching wolves, they all were at it, prying up the encrusted, frozen brick chunks with their dirks and, with them, causing anew many cases of lupine agony and consternation.

  “But here, this recountal could easily take all night, and we sorely need rest, at least, I do. So I will open my memories and you all can enter my mind and see those archaic events as did I and those others — human and cat — with whom I later conversed.

  The night spent atop the mined tower was terrible for Milo and the nomads. Rolling pebbles in their mouths to allay somewhat their raging thirst, they laced their quilted and fur-trimmed hoods tightly and drew the thick woolen blizzard masks up over lips and vulnerable noses. In the very center of the concavity, they huddled together for warmth like so many puppies or kittens, frequently changing position on the hard, uneven surface so that all might have equal time in the warmer centermost spot.

  Not that steep came easily, for in addition to the cold, the wolves were never really silent through the whole of that frigid, blustery night — they barked and howled and snarled and snuffled, they paced around and around the tower, they yelped and whined, wolf after wolf after wolf set himself at the sheer walls of that tower, jumping and falling back merely to jump and again fall back until utterly exhausted The pack seemed to be driven mad by the scent of so much manflesh and blood so very near to their slavering jaws, yet so unobtainable.

  Although it seemed for long and long that dawn would not make an appearance, at last a grudging light dispelled the worst of the darkness, but there was no visible sun and no cessation of the sharp-toothed wind. Milo knew then that were he and his men to survive the coming weather, they assuredly must get off this exposed, wind-lashed pinnacle and into some shelter of some kind. But how?

  The gaunt wolves paced the length and the breadth of the plateau. They numbered at least fourscore, probably more — gray wolves and wolves of a dirty, mouse-brown color, yellowish-brown wolves, reddish-brown wolves, several almost white and, here and there, a black wolf. Milo could almost feel pity for the lupines, for they were obviously not far from death by starvation, with rib racks and spinal bumps clearly visible beneath the dull, matted coats.

  The pack had lost or forgotten their previous fear of the hurled missiles during the night and now were ranging close about the tower. But the men soon discovered that there were few handy bits of masonry remaining anywhere near to the rim of the tower. Only in the center, where the effects of freezing had been somewhat offset by their combined body heat through the night just past, did there appear to be chunks that could be pried loose without breaking their dirk blades.

  With the supply of missiles decreased, Milo awarded such as were available to the four most accurate hurlers — Dik Esmith, the tracker, Djim Linszee, and his two younger brothers, the fiery-haired twins called Bill and Bahb. Milo and the other Horseclansmen set themselves and their dirks to supplying the four, worrying loose more of the bits and pieces of ancient bricks studding the layer of soil that covered the center of the old tower.

  Milo thrust his dirk blade under a brick that looked to be almost whole . . . and felt his steel ring on metal! He set the others to working upon the same area; slowly, a red-brown ring of pitted, flaking iron was exposed. Shortly thereafter, they had cleared away all of the soil and rubble down to the rusty trapdoor to which the ring was stapled.

  One of the Horseclansmen took a grip on the ring and heaved, vainly. Retrenching, taking his best grip with both grubby hands, half squatting so that he could put the muscles of his legs and back behind the effort, he strained until the throbbing veins bulged from his brows, but the soil-streaked trapdoor never budged an inch from its ages-old setting.

  “Wait,” counselled Milo. “There may be a bolt or catch of some kind holding it secure.”

  His dirk blade proved far too wide for the crack between door and metal jamb at the edge closest to the ring; so too was the blade of his skinning knife, and also his boot knife; but when he tried the slender-bladed dagger that he kept sheathed under his shirtsleeve, that blade slipped in easily.

  When even with the center of the iron ring, the blade encountered an obstruction. While pushing the dagger against the unseen object, Milo noted that the ring moved a bare fraction of a millimeter or so. Maintaining pressure against the still-unseen obstruction, he gripped the ring in his other hand and twisted it right, then left, then right again. At that last twist the ring creakingly moved half a turn and the obstruction was abruptly gone; he was now able to slide the blade from corner to corner of the doorframe.

  He sheathed the little dagger and scuttled backward on his knees, gesturing to the Horseclansman whose efforts had earlier failed to open the door.

  “Try it now, Lari.”

  Obligingly, the man set himself into place again, took his best two-handed grip again and heaved. There was a momentary resistance, then with an unearthly squealing screech that set the nearest wolves to yelping their displeasure, the trapdoor arose amid a shower of rust to disclose the first treads of what looked to Milo like a steel stairway, all covered with dust and cobwebs.

  After bouncing his weight experimentally on those two easily visible treads while keeping his hands braced on the shoulders of two Horseclansmen, Milo gingerly began to descend the stairs into the yawning darkness, saber slung across his back and the big dirk ready in his right hand. While the men watched, all huddled about the square opening, Milo gradually disappeared into the waiting blackness, only the ring of his bootsoles telling them that he was still descending. Then, after a short time, even those sounds ceased.

  The steel staircase wound down in a tight spiral, and for all that it trembled and crackled under his weight, Milo made it down to the bottom safely. Once there, he mindspoke the men waiting above him.

  “The stairs held me, so they’ll certainly hold you, one at a time, but don’t come down yet. This room seems rather small. See if you can get that trapdoor open wider, then get back from around it so what light there is up there can penetrate to me. It’s black as the inside of a cow down here.”

  The long-unused hinges shrilled like the screams of damned souls in protest, but the wiry nomads put their backs into the job, and presently they got the trapdoor almost flat to the floor of their eyrie, then moved to the edges of that eyrie.

  In the increased amount of light,
Milo could see that the chamber in which he now stood was indeed small, a bit smaller actually than was the roof above. Every visible surface was thickly covered with dust and hung with better than a century’s worth of cobwebs. But he could spot no droppings of any size or description, so apparently no animal or bird had ever gained access to this room.

  Staring hard, cudgeling his brain, it took him long moments to remember, to realize what the dust-shrouded object reposing on a shelf at waist level was. It was a gasoline lantern!

  “I wonder . . . ?”

  Wiping away the dust and cobwebs, he could see that there was little rust on the artifact, it being finished in chrome or stainless steel. Although very dirty, the glass was also intact, and there was even a filament still in place. Lifting it from the shelf he shook it beside his ear. It sloshed as if almost full, and if that liquid was gasoline . . . ?

  He searched for and found the handle of the air-pressure pump and tried it gingerly. The shaft moved smoothly in its tube. Now, if he only had a match.

  Milo let his fingers wander the length of the shelf, and near the far end, they encountered a small brass cylinder, all green and bumpy with a verdignis patina.

  Not daring to hope, he brought his new find up into the wan light filtering down from above. It required all the not inconsiderable strength of his hands to break the screwtop free.

  “Son of a bitch!” he breathed softly. The cylinder was packed with wooden matches, the head of each covered with clear yellow wax.

  With the trapdoor closed and bolted and seven bodies gathered in the close quarters, the nomads soon ceased to shiver, and, as soon as their teeth stopped chattering, they all began to do so, exclaiming upon the clear, intensely bright light cast by the ancient lantern.

  A lighted exploration of the small chamber disclosed another, larger, but otherwise identical lantern, two lumps of corrosion, that once had been flashlights, an assortment of rusty tools — several differing sizes and types of screwdrivers and wrenches, a couple of ball-peen hammers and a half-dozen chisels — two-gallon brass can of lantern fuel (so marked and almost full!) and, in a rotted leather hoister, a rusted and corroded thing that had once been a heavy-caliber revolver.