A Woman of the Horseclans

by Robert Adams

  Suddenly, too suddenly, the room was filled with strange bearded foreigners, all garbed in armor and clothing of unfamiliar patterns. . . .

  When Behtiloo had tiled to prod the girl for more facts after that point in the tale, she could only arouse an inchoate confusion of memories of pain and terror and shame, of a sick and churning disgust. Then the girl had begun to cry, softly, at first, then with increasing violence.

  Once the little slave had cried herself out in Behtiloo’s comforting arms, her mind got around to producing the sad end to her story.

  After a week of rapine, torture, looting and murder, the victorious besiegers had boated the few hundred survivors of the intaking of the city across the nearby river and had then marched them northward to a rendezvous with traders, who had bought most of the war captives.

  Leenah had been but one of some threescore women and girls bought by men who fed them, gave them clothing to replace their tattered rags and allowed them to rest for a few days before loading them onto wagons to begin a westward trek of many weeks’ duration.

  All of the captives were used by their new owners from time to time during the trip, but no other violence was wrought upon them. They were not beaten, they were fed as well as the new owners ate, and those who happened to become ill were treated with solicitude. Finally, the wagons came down from the mountains they had traversed and rolled into a riverside town, where the captives and captors boarded the two biggest boats Leenah had ever seen.

  The trip, in toto, had taken months. It had seemed to Leenah and her fellow slaves that the twisting, turning river was endless. Moreover, stops were frequent.

  At most stops, men would come aboard the boats. They would be shown the “merchandise.” gold or silver coin would change hands or a few bales and crates would be winched or carried aboard, and some of the women would go ashore.

  After about two months (as near as she could reckon time) on the river, Leenah had become ill, desperately ill. Rightly fearful of possible contagion, her owners had moved her to a small cubicle abovedecks and cared for her as well as they knew how, but she had nonetheless been slow to recover and had still been far from well when the boats were current-borne into an even larger river.

  Using their sails, the two boats beat into a small port on the larger river. There the traders, their goods and the score or so of remaining female slaves were transferred to a number of smaller boats — boats propelled by long, heavy oars pulled by the wretched, filthy, sore-covered men chained to them. They traveled against the current of the swift-flowing river for about a week before arriving at the docks below the walls of a bustling town.

  After disposing of about half their remaining women, the traders loaded the rest into high-wheeled plains wagons, along with a vast assortment of hard and soft goods and joined with a well-guarded column of similar wagons for the long and hazardous trek westward in search of the nomad clans and the wide-scattered farming settlements along the prairie fringes.

  Once the train had reached the territory of the Kindred, the Horseclans, wherein there was greater safety for traders (honest ones, at least) and smaller trains could proceed with fewer guards, the large caravan had split into several smaller ones and headed off in different directions, each group taking two or three of the women slaves.

  “Please, mistress,” Leenah silently beamed, “why did you buy me? Am I to be your personal maid? To care for you?”

  Behtiloo laughed throatily. “Hardly, child Leenah. We Horseclanswomen can care for ourselves in most ways and in most times. No, I bought you to be the concubine to my dear grandson, who is chief of this clan.”

  Noticing the black eyes in the olive-skinned face cloud, while the surface thoughts of the girl’s mind boiled with the old, bitter memories of rapes and sodomies and other enforced degradations, Behtiloo added hastily, “No, little one, do not fear. Our Sami is a tender man, a gentle and a loving man. He has been grieving these last years for the loved wife who was his only wife for above twenty-five years.

  “But you will completely replace her, we will see to it, just wait. At first you will replace her in his bed, then in his great heart. I vow to you, my child, as soon as your belly swells with Sami’s good seed, will see you a free woman, formally adopted into Clan Krooguh and honorably wedded to our chief.”

  And so it came to be. At the wedding feast, Behtiloo foretold that Leenah and her get by Chief Sami would bring newer and greater glory, thrice greater glory to Krooguh.

  That is why when, four months after the wedding, the new bride was delivered of not one, not two but an unbelievable three sons at a single birthing, clansfolk began to treat their chiefs grandmother with far and away greater respect than ever before, that awe-tinged respect accorded the proven seer.

  A few days after the triple birthing. Behtiloo sat on the steps leading up to the wagon-mounted chief yurt. enjoying the bright, warm rays of Sacred Sun, when a female prairiecat approached and seated herself respectfully some two yards distant.

  “Greet the Sun, two-leg female of powers.” beamed the cats strong mindspcak. “Do you guard the den of this first sensible two-leg female in memory, who bears her young in litters?”

  Behtiloo smiled and replied. “Yes, cat sister. Do you wish to enter and see her and the babes now?”

  Behtiloo and the cat — who was called Blackback and was obviously a recent mother herself, to judge by her heavy and thickened dugs — soon reached the rear area of the yurt. There Leenah reclined while nursing two of her little sons. while Chief Sami — almost bursting with his pride — held the other, The cat immediately bespoke the two women on a narrow, personal beaming.

  “It is just as I had thought it would be. You two-legs have but two dugs, so you will never be able to properly nurse all of your litter at once and so one will most assuredly die . . . or all will become weak.

  “Now, I bore my litter on the same day you bore yours, female-of-our-chief, but two of mine were born unbreathing, so I have milk and to spare, as well as dugs enough to feed yours and mine together, at the same time.

  “I already have broached this matter with the cat chief, Steelclaws. and he says that if his brother, Chief Sami, approves, I may bring my two kittens here to the Clan Krooguh chief yurt and share with you the nursing.”

  When the matter was put to Sami, he threw back his graying head and laughed uproariously. “Why not, I say, wife? Why not? Its never before been done, so far as I know, in any Kindred clan, certainly not in this one. But then neither has any clanswoman in the memory of the Kindred, right back to and including the Sacred Ancestors, borne a clansman three Sons at once. You and I, my dear little Leenah, have already set one all-time precedent. So why should we not set another, hey?”

  Then, switching to mindspeak. he beamed gravely. “Cat sister, my yurt will be most honored by the presence of you and your fine cubs. Who was their sire, may I ask?”

  “Steelclaws himself,” Blackback replied proudly. “My kittens, too, are the get of a chief.”

  Shortly, Behtiloo and Blackback came back through the camp to the chief yurt, the cat carrying one struggling beastlet in her jaws and Behtiloo cradling the other blind, down-furred kitten in her arms. In months after, it was not at all unusual for visitors to the yurt to see Chief’s-wife Leenah nursing a pink-skinned baby boy on one breast and a gray-and-black-furred prairiecat kitten on the other, while beside her lay Blackback on her side, giving suck to the other kitten as well as to two little Krooguhs. Many a cat and human came for the expressed purpose of viewing this most singular sight.

  Two years later, at one of the infrequent clan gatherings, all of the Krooguhs walked tall and proud, though none so tall and so proud as Chief Sami. The Krooguh of Krooguh strutted in his fierce pride, and other chiefs were quick to afford an almost reverential deference to this peer of such unmatchable potency of loins that he was capable of siring sons in threes.

  So many chiefs and humbler clansfolk flocked to the Krooguh enclave to briefly watch
the little triplets wrestling, playing with and making to ride upon the two big-pawed, big-headed sons of Cat Chief Steelclaws and Blackback, each visitor leaving behind a gift of some nature, that Sami had to buy two new carts to carry all the loot away when at long last Clan Krooguh was allowed to quit the gathering.

  When leave they finally did, there was not a nubile clans girl or boy of Krooguh remaining unmarried. Further, right many a prepubescent girl or boy or even a babe in arms was by then already promised in marriage to clans anxious to share out among their own folk even a few drops of this suddenly precious Krooguh heritage. As for the triplets themselves, the eldest was promised in marriage to the largest, richest and most powerful of all the Kindred clans, Clan Kambuhl. The second-eldest was pledged to the family of the chiefs of Clan Kabuht, while the third little boy would wed into Clan Esmith, another matrilineal-succession clan.

  Nor had old Behtiloo Hansuhn of Krooguh been at all left out of the general hullabaloo following Clan Krooguh’s arrival at the gathering. Not only were the live births of the three boys a new, a novel, and a noteworthy occurrence, but that a clanswoman had so accurately forecast their births was purely the stuff of which legends were woven.

  All the clan bards and the three or four traveling bards were not content until they had closeted with the grandame, heard her personal history, then retired to compose new songs and new verses to older ones. These were to be the first mentions of Behtiloo Hansuhn of Krooguh in any Kindred histories outside the Song of Krooguh. But they were to be neither the last nor the most glorious.

  * * *

  The triplets remained amazingly similar as they grew from infancy, though they were not and had never been identical. Of them all, only the eldest, Tim, had their father’s red hair and green eyes; both Peet and the youngest, Djim, had fair skins and dark-blue eyes, but these were in them coupled with hair as raven’s-wing-black as their mother’s.

  Like all Horseclans children, they were riding almost before they could walk, and they quickly acquired a deadly proficiency with their slings, bolas and light bows, capable of bringing down flying birds and scurrying small game with consistency.

  The mindspeak talents of all three were powerful and exceptionally far-ranging. Far-ranging too were their hunting and foraging expeditions, for they seemed utterly fearless; but as they were always accompanied on these expeditions by Kills-elk and Whitepaws — their former “littermates,” now grown to mature size and weight, both proven in battle and in the hunt — and sometimes by Blackback, their feline foster mother, as well, no one thought of fearing for their safety away from the clan camp.

  In the tenth summer of the triplets’ lives, Clan Krooguh chanced to roam farther east than usual and went into camp around a small grove of trees guarding a largish spring from which debouched a rill of sparkling, ice-cold water. As Sacred Sun crested the horizon on the very next morning. Tim and Peet and Djim Krooguh were ahorse, armed for the hunt, and trotting off toward the east with a half-dozen of their two-leg peers, Kills-elk and Whitepaws in search of game and adventure.

  Behtiloo watched the party of little boys ride off, quickly passing from view to be lost among the density of the high grasses. She had so watched them many times before, but this time, somewhere deep within her, there was a vague presentiment of danger, deadly danger, and she barely repressed an urge to mindcall them back. All through a day that seemed endless and throughout the long, long night that finally came, that same presentiment gnawed and clawed at her and was, if anything, stronger and more ominous with the next rising of Sacred Sun.

  Chief Sami, most of the warriors and many of the maiden-archers were out of camp, along with all the adult and near-adult cats not on herd guard or nursing new litters. As was always done just after choosing and occupying a new campsite, they were routinely sweeping out beyond the herds in hopes of flushing out and dispatching or, at least, driving off any resident predators of sufficient size to harm the stock. And so the camp stood almost empty when what was left of the triplets’ hunting party rode their stumbling, heaving, foamstreaked mounts through it to halt before the chief yurt.

  Little Peet rode in the lead, with the limp body of Kills-elk draped across the withers before him. A few paces behind his brother, Djim reeled in the saddle to which someone had wisely tied him, his roughly bandaged left arm supported by a rude sling and the cut-off stub of an arrow shaft projecting through the dirty, blood-tacky cloths. Nine little boys had ridden out, only five returned, and two of those died soon after they were lifted from their exhausted, near-foundered mounts.

  Immediately, riders and cats were sent racing off in search of Chief Sami and the camp became a beehive of activity as old men, maidens and matrons looked to weapons, donned war gear and mindcalled favored war horses from the herd. Behtiloo listened with half an car to Peet’s halting recountal, even while her sinewy old hands and her mind were absorbed in seeing to the grievous hurts of Djim and Kills-elk.

  Angling a few degrees south of due east from the Clan Krooguh campsite, the mounted party of young hunters had ridden on throughout the early part of the day of their departure. garnering a rabbit or two here, a gamebird there, but nothing larger. While their mounts grazed and rested briefly, the boys had lunched on cheese and jerked venison and the raw fillets of a largish rattlesnake they had chanced across during the morning’s ride.

  They had ridden on, but with no better luck, through most of the rest of the day. Then, an hour or so before sunset, Whitepaws had flushed out four of the ungulates called by the nomads “lancehorns” — about four feet at the withers, with hair that was white on the back and the flanks, black or a dark brownish on the legs and the belly, bearing tapering horns that stood almost straight up from the head and on large bucks were sometimes almost four feet in length. These lancehorns were fairly common in the better-watered parts of the southern prairies, but were quite rare this far north, and the nine little boys set out in hot pursuit, with the two cats riding on pack horses.

  But darkness fell before they came within bow range of the speedy, elusive antelopes, so they made a cold camp near a trickling rill. While the boys ate the last of their cheese and jerky and the horses grazed the lush, bluish-green grasses, the two cats ranged far out in search of something more substantial than a few rabbits the boys had skinned and given them, since they lacked a way to preserve the small carcasses from decay.

  Timing themselves by movements of stars and, later, of the risen moon, each boy stood a watch of about an hour over his sleeping comrades, with Peet and Djim taking the first two stints and Tim the last — those being the proven times of most danger, since most attacks took place either shortly after nightfall or at the hour just before the dawning. But that night passed peacefully enough, with Kills-elk padding in just as false dawn was glowing grayly, soberly mindspeaking his presence and intent to the alert Tim Krooguh before exposing his big furry body to the ready bow with its nocked arrow.

  While the boys were all yawning, scratching their crotches, rubbing the sleep from their eyes, rolling their sleeping-cloaks, drinking from the rill or relieving themselves, Whitepaws’ broadbeam farspeak crashed into all their minds at once.

  “Beware, brothers! Dirtmen come from the east, many of these Dirtmen, with bows and spears and long clubs made of wood and metal. They are even now creeping through the tall grasses and soon will they be on three sides of you, brothers.”

  Horseclans born and bred, the boys wasted no time, moving every bit as quickly and purposefully as would their fathers or older brothers. Mindcalled horses came at the gallop to have saddles slapped upon their backs and speedily cinched, nimble fingers buckled and tied on gear with never a wasted motion. Then riders mounted, strung bows in hands, keen eyes searching the edges of the tall grasses, fifty yards east, for sight of the stalking Dirtmen.

  The long arrows fell among the knot of little hunters unseen, coming as they did from the same direction as the blinding rays of the rising sun. They killed three bo
ys outright and wounded three others, one of them Djim Krooguh. Tim’s mare reared, screaming in her final agony, then crashed onto her side. The boy pulled leather barely in time and rolled away from the flailing hooves of the dying beast. Another boy fought with mindspeak and reins to control a mount gone mad with pain. Then Kills-elk suddenly went tumbling across the sward, and a second later, there was a crack of thunderlike noise from somewhere within the tall, concealing grasses, while a cloud of dirty-black smoke rose above it.

  “Flee, brothers, run!” Again came Whitepaws frantic mindspeak. “Run! Run back to the clan camp and fetch back the cats and the warriors, for more Dirtmen now come on horses. They are too many to fight, they . . .”

  The cat’s mindspeak broke off suddenly, and none of the triplets could again find Whitepaws’ mind, range as they might. Between them. Tim and Peet managed somehow to lift the bleeding, dead-weight carcass of Kills-elk onto the withers of Peet’s dancing, nervous horse, binding it to the saddle pommel with a length of tough braided hide hurriedly cut from a bola. More bola cords went to bind the three wounded boys into their saddles.

  That done, Tim unsnapped his arrow case from the saddle of his dead mare and slung it over his shoulder, then pulled his spear from beneath her. Grasping a handful of mane, he swung astride one of the pack horses that they had not taken the time to saddle, and the six boys rode west at a flat-out run, Tim in the lead, his thick red braids whipping behind him.

  They had ridden on for almost a mile when from out a stand of taller grasses on their left ran at least a score of big, tall Dirtmen, with spears, a few long bows and straight-bladed swords, and one with a long, shiny contraption of metal and wood.