A Woman of the Horseclans

by Robert Adams

  “So you are the woman that that pitiful child became?” he said wonderingly, at last. “Poor, old Ehstrah — Wind keep her — always said that one day you’d be the very epitome of all the Kindred. Your husband — Tahm, was it? — he became chief of Krooguh, then?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet, Uncle Milo, though he fills every function of that office, shoulders every responsibility; no, old Dik Krooguh still clings to life and his title.

  “But . . . but, please, Uncle Milo, when did Ehstrah . . . go to Wind? She always was so kind to me, like a mother, she was.”

  Milo sighed. “Yes, our Ehstrah was indeed a good, a very good woman, it was seven . . . no, eight years ago. I was off on a hunt and she was kicked in the back by a mule. No bones seemed to be broken, though she was winded, of course, and sore, but she went on about her usual tasks. Then, some week or so later, after I was returned from the hunt, she began to piss bloody urine, then pure blood. I suspect that mule’s kick damaged her kidneys, but whatever the cause, she continued to lose blood by day and by night, she weakened dramatically, then a flux took her and, weak as she was become, she died of it.

  “Gahbee drowned during a river crossing ten yeas ago. But Ilsah still bides with me. She’s my first wife now, though I have taken two others to share the burden with her. You must come and visit our yurt, Behtiloo.”

  “I will, Uncle Milo, and you must come to the Krooguh chief yurt, too. If old Chief Dik can remember you — for he recalls things and folks seldom anymore, and then only in brief snatches — I know that he’ll be mightily pleased to see you. Tim, my husband, will, too; and you must see my son, Hwahlis, and my other children.

  “But here and now. I have some strange loot I would like you to look at, I need to know the true value of these pieces, for I mean to buy steel scale shirts for my husband and my eldest son. If possible, I also would like to get enough steel and brass sheets to fashion a score of helmets.”

  Squatting, facing her in the dust, Milo Morai fingered the twelve discs of ruddy gold, each of them a good two inches in diameter. With his horny fingertips, he traced the weaving, cursive lines standing up from both obverse and reverse of the golden coins.

  At length, he asked simply, “Where did you come by these?”

  Briefly, she told him.

  He nodded once, then said. “The design is not decoration merely, though it serves that purpose too, of course. No, the lines are letters in a very old language called Ahrahbik. This language was in fairly wide use even in the time before this time, and so little has it changed since then that these could well be from that long-ago period. But I think they are newer.

  “For one thing, they are not much worn and have not been shaven or clipped at all, as most really ancient coins usual have been. The damage done to that one looks to me like sword or dirk cut, and the one there that is bent and almost holed, that damage was almost assuredly done by the point of an arrow or small dart point. Sewn into the quilting of a warrior’s gambeson, they could easily have been so abused over the years, totally unbeknownst to the erstwhile abusers.

  “No. Behtiloo, I am of an opinion that these are coinage a kingdom that they say lies far to the east of this place beyond the Great River by moons of traveling. But let us now go to a trader I know of old and see if I’m right.”

  The head and face of the trader, Flaivin did not match his beefy, muscular body, nor did his delicate hands with their long, tapering fingers. The head was small and almost completely round, the features sharp and vulpine, the eyes as black and glittery as bits of obsidian. But he seemed friendly enough greeting Milo warmly, like an old and much respected friend.

  When he had served small measures of a bittersweet wine in tiny brazen goblets, he leaned back and eyed Milo, saying. “And just what can I do for you this day, Chief Milo?”

  Milo smiled, “Put on your moneychanger’s hat, friend Flaivin. I’ve a few pretties for you to took at and value . . . and maybe, to buy.”

  Flaivin’s only movement was a deep sigh. “Oh, my friend, my friend, you’d be better off to rebury your silver and bronze pieces for a while, that or use them to decorate a saddle or the like; when I left Ohyoh country last year, the value of silver was still plummeting, dragging bronze and copper bullion prices down in its wake. So whatever quotation I’d feel safe to give you would likely do nothing but infuriate you.”

  “Not silver, Flaivin,” said Milo in a low tone, “Gold.”

  In a twinkling, or so it seemed to Behtiloo, the tabletop was cleared of bottle and goblets and crowded with various and arcane paraphernalia, all gathered around and about the broad goldpieces Milo had laid before the trader.

  “Reddish.” The trader sniffed. “Not pure, then, But the black-skinned bastards seem to like their coinage that color, pure or not.

  “These are ahlf-ryahrs of the Kahleefah of Zahnohgah, Milo. I’ve leaned, over the years, to read a little of their snaky script, so I can tell you that these are about seventy years old. They were minted just after the accession of Kahleef Moostahfah Itahlit, who only reigned four years before he was poisoned. Rulers seldom last long in that bloody land. Let’s see, now . . .”

  After weighing and testing the coins, he sat back and said, “Well, friend Milo, each of these three weighs out at an even thousand grains — you see, no metal was lost or removed in the damage to these two — but of course only about eight out of every ten of those grains is gold; there was a heavy addition of copper and a little silver to make up this alloy.

  “What were you thinking of trading these for? I could give the best part of a pipe of a nice little wine for these three . . . ?”

  Milo chuckled. “I’ll bet you’d like to strike so shrewd a deal, Flaivin. No, two of them for two top-quality scale shirts of steel, as well as enough sheet steel and brass to make up twenty helmets of Horseclans pattern. The other goldpiece for one hundred and fifty gallons of decent-grade hwiskee, plus some oddments of this woman’s choosing. Done?”

  The trader snorted, most of the friendliness departed from both voice and demeanor. “Chief Milo, to see the goods you desire for such paltry sums would be my utter ruination, as surely you must know. All three of these coins together would not cover the cost and freightage of the amount of steel you demand, especially not decent-quality steel.

  “As regards the hwiskee, now, it’s devilish costly to carry it so far. We always lose about half of what we start out with in Ohyoh country, what with broken or leaking barrels, thieving wagoners and the like, so that’s why we have to set the prices so high, are we to make any profit at all. For two of the goldpieces, or their equivalent in furs or what-have-you, I could let you have a hundred gallons of corn hwiskee, but that’s all.”

  The haggling went on for some hours, but at length Chief Milo and the trader, Flaivin, reached an amicable agreement. For a total of six of the golden discs, Behtiloo received two steel-on-leather scale shins and enough loose scales to make another for Buhd Krooguh when his time of warring came, enough sheet steel and brass for thirty helmets, five pounds of brass tacks, two chests of fast-dyed threads and yarns (each chest also containing an assortment of eighteen steel needles), seven twenty-gallon barrels of hwiskee, two twenty-gallon barrels of wine and a bolt of the smoothest, softest, most sensorially pleasing cloth that Behtiloo had ever seen or touched.

  As she walked back toward the Krooguh enclave to fetch in strong men and a cart or two to transport her booty, Milo touched the bolt under her arm, saying. “This is true, first water silk. I not only cannot imagine where a gaggle of plains traders came by it, I cannot imagine why they wagoned it hundreds of miles to try to sell it to nomads who mostly are dirt-poor. But it arrived here, and you now have it. Use it as cloth, if you wish, but silk makes superlative bowstrings also, and the threads too short for such could always be used in embroidery.

  “Now you know the value of those golden discs, so guard them well. Cut a couple of them into four pieces and never show more than one piece at t
he time would be my advice, especially when you’re dealing with traders or the southern Dirtmen, For unlike other metals, gold has the hoary repute of driving men and women mad; to acquire it, they have been known to sacrifice everything they otherwise held dear — possessions, relatives, honor, even life itself. If I did anything right and proper, I pride myself that I was able to breed that particular form of insanity out of the Kindred. To you and all the other clansfolk, gold is but another decorative metal, perhaps more favored only because it is easier to work than copper or silver or brass or the antique metals.

  “When you return from your camp, bring your clan smith and have him check every last scale and piece of sheet metal. See that Flaivin’s men broach every last barrel, and taste the contents yourself. Make him weigh out that sack of tacks again, too. Go through the sewing chests and see that nothing has been removed or changed about in them. If you find he is trying to cheat or delude you in any way, even the most piddling, remind him of the name Steev Koorhohm and ask if he recalls just how the clans dealt with that trader, years agone. Thought of that incident should drive all ideas of chicanery from his mind.”

  “Steev Koorhohm, Uncle Milo?” Behtiloo asked. “I don’t understand. Who is Steev Koorhohm?”

  Milo smiled grimly. “Steev Koorhohm was a plains trader, back before you became a clanswoman. He brought his wagons to the prairies full of diseased slaves and poisonous hwiskee. When two warriors died and more went blind after drinking his goods, a war party rode after his train, took him and brought him back.

  “With all the other traders looking on, they bound his yard tightly with wet rawhide, poured water down his throat until his bladder was nigh to bursting, then slit off his eyelids and buried him neck-deep in an anthill. He only lived about a day.”

  Chapter XIII

  Chief Tim of Krooguh died in the fifty-second year of his marriage to Behtiloo, covered with scars and glory. He left children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren behind him, four living wives, three concubines, and one of the largest, strongest, wealthiest Kindred clans resident anywhere on the prairies or plains.

  During his thirty-seven years of full tenure. Clan Krooguh had waxed in size, in wealth and in renown. When his husk had been decently sent to Wind, the sixty-three Krooguh waniors gathered and invested the eldest son of their late chief’s eldest living daughter.

  Even in her grief, Behtiloo Hansuhn of Krooguh felt her old heart swell with fierce pride as she watched her sons, Hwahlis and Buhd, lace and buckle their nephew into Tim’s aged, nicked, but brilliantly burnished scale shirt for his formal presentation to the clansfolk at the chief feast.

  Later, at that feast, listening while the young clan bard, Bili, sang the Song of Krooguh, Behtiloo’s gaze strayed often to Chief Sami.

  “So like my Tim, he is,” she thought. “With his flaming red hair and green eyes, the same snub nose, an almost identical splash of freckles across his face.”

  She noted that from time to time this new-made chief, her grandson, used gestures that had been peculiar to Tim. But, she reflected to herself, such might easily be expected, since his grandfather had been training him and grooming him for the chieftaincy of his clan for some twenty years or more. And if Sami Krooguh lived and proved as good a chief as his immediate predecessor . . . ?

  At Chief Sami’s side sat his wife of twenty-two years, Alis Krooguh of Krooguh, flanked by her eldest living son. Alis and Sami were of an age: they had played together as children, shared together their herding duties and war training, and shared the wonders and pleasures of each other’s bodies from puberty.

  Every soul in Clan Krooguh had accepted the fact that they two would someday wed long before the day Sami rode back into camp after three years of service as a hired guard for plains traders, married Alis and brought her into his mother’s yurt and household.

  When, about two years later, his elder brother died of a broken neck while chasing after antelope on horseback, Sami, Alis and their two children had been summoned to live in the household of Chief Tim, that the younger man might begin to learn the art of chieftainship.

  Upon Tim’s death, which came suddenly and unexpectedly though not in any way violently, Behtiloo began to move her effects to the yurt of her son Hwahlis. But Alis would not even hear of such a thing, for all that she had not tried to stay the departures of the late chief’s three younger wives or his concubines when they moved in with grown children and those children’s families.

  “No, Mother, please stay here with us. This is your home, it has always been your home for as long as I can remember, and . . . and I cannot imagine living here, in your home, without you in it. Father Tim spent twenty years in teaching our Sami to be a proper chief; now you must teach me and watch over me and so see that I behave as becomes the proper wife of a chief. Besides, who but you can so brew the herbs so that children drink the broths without making those terrible faces and rude noises, eh?”

  Skilled in compounding herbal tonics. nostrums and remedies Behtiloo Hansuhn of Krooguh assuredly was. She had been for many years, ever since Lainuh Krooguh, Chief Tim’s long-dead mother, had first taken her youngest son’s captive-wife under her wing and begun to impart her own considerable, in-depth knowledge of the curative properties of wild prairie plants. After Lainuh’s death, Behtiloo had learned more from Tim’s father’s concubine, Dahnah. Then, too, her years of practicing the herbal arts had taught her mightily.

  But none of her encyclopedic knowledge availed her in saving the life of Alis Krooguh, who died during the fifth winter after Sami became chief. Sami took Alis’s untimely death hard, bitterly hard. He would hear no words of any remarriage from clansmen, subchiefs or even his immediate family, and soon, on the heels of a succession of heated outbursts from the long-grieving man, all the Krooguhs gave up.

  All save Behtitoo, that is. She and Sami’s daughters-in-law and granddaughters had no trouble among so many willing hands in properly maintaining the chief yurt and household as it always had been, of course; but Behtiloo knew that the very honor of Clan Krooguh lay at stake in this matter. For the chief of so large and wealthy a clan to live without at least one wife would be considered by the other clans odd, to say the least.

  She, of all people, knew just how long and hard and how unstintingly her own dear dead Tim had worked in building up the power and image of the clan of his birth. He had devoted much of his life to making the small, insignificant Clan Krooguh large and rich and widely respected by Kindred and non-Kindred alike, and she would not sit idly by and watch her grandson’s senselessly prolonged grief undo that work.

  She set herself to the task. For two long years, she argued and debated and wheedled with Chief Sami. Then, when she fell the time to be ripe, she exchanged one of the last two of her remaining gold discs for a young, pretty, black-haired, dark-eyed slave girl who had chanced to be part of the merchandise brought west by a train of plains traders.

  On the way back to the chief yurt, Behtiloo discovered to her chagrin that the girl spoke no single, recognizable tongue, aside from a few mispronounced words of Trade Mehrikan. At last, almost in desperation, Behtiloo tried to mindspeak.

  “What is your name, child? What is your race? What tongue do you speak?”

  A rapid-fire spate of foreign words poured from the girl’s dark-red lips, but Behtiloo was able to glean their meaning from the mind behind them: “Please, old woman, mistress, how can you speak to me without opening your mouth? I don’t . . . can’t understand how . . . ?”

  Again, Behtiloo used telepathy, keeping in mind her own honest bewilderment when, so many years ago, she first had encountered Horseclans mindspeakers. “There is no need to speak aloud, little one. Think what you wish to convey to me, then merely project it. See, like this.”

  It quickly became apparent that like Behtiloo herself, the little slave girl had been born with a dormant potential for mindspeak and had needed only instruction in its use. By the time she had had the girl make use of the sweat
yurt, wash her body and hair and assume Horseclans garb, Behtiloo was easily engaging in silent conversation with her and had had all of her bitter story, though parts of it had been most difficult for the old nomad woman to credit, on the basis of the prairie life which was all she had ever known.

  Leenah Goombahlees had been born far, far to the east, in a great huge place built of stone and brick, tiles and timbers. In this place, people — more people than all of thirty or forty large clans’ number — lived out their lives, only leaving, some of them, to till the fields, tend to the flocks and herds and vineyards outside the high, stone walls that surrounded the place, which was called a “city.”

  Then, of a day, a vast host of warriors had marched down from somewhere in the north and camped on the hillsides all around the city. Leenah recalled that time in vague snatches — of her father and her brothers tramping in and out of the house at odd hours, all sheathed in shining steel, with swords and daggers at their belts and spears and axes in their hands; of her eldest brother being brought home, shrieking in agony, to die within hours of the great ragged wound torn in his belly; of a long time when no one had much of anything to eat and it had seemed that every other building was burning.

  And then the day of ultimate horrors had come. Her father had run stumbling into the main room of the home, his black eyes blazing, wild, his helmet with all the pretty feathers gone and his armor no longer shiny, but nicked and deeply dented and dull with a profusion of crusty red-brown stains.

  Leenah had seen him embrace and kiss her mother, then push her to arm’s length, draw his sword and run it deeply into her body below her breasts. Leenah’s older sister had screamed then, and turned to run; but her father, in a single, fluid movement, had drawn and thrown a dagger with such force that all of the slim blade had buried itself in her sister’s back, and she had fallen, twitching, to the blue-and-white tiles.

  Too stunned to run, Leenah had simply stood as her father turned toward her, raising his bloody sword, his lips moving but no sound issuing from between them, pure madness shining from his eyes. Then, with an awful clanging and clattering, his body had fallen face downward at her feet, with the short, thick shaft of a war dart standing up from the spot where Spine met skull.