Horses of the North

by Robert Adams

  But carts were not the only uses of the lumber. Thinner, lighter laths were being turned into lattices to make up the sides of yurts, the joints each joined with treenails. Shorter but wider and thicker pieces became doorframes and center wheels, slotted to take the roof supports, the lower ends of which dovetailed into the side-bracing timbers.

  Inside a building that had once been a stable, its box stalls now gone for lumber, nomad women of Milo's tribe worked at and instructed the women and girls of the Scott tribe and of the fort and station in the proper making, fullering and hardening of Horseclans felt to cover the yurt frames that the men were constructing. Of course, there would not be nearly enough of the new felt for a long while yet to come, but the generous nomads would share of their own with the newcomers, and the available canvas from tents would be used, layered under and over the felt, along with green hides, worn-down carpets and whatever else turned up to temporarily plug the gaps.

  Other women and girls thronged the nomad camps, avidly absorbing the teachings of their new role models in the arcane arts of properly managing a nomad household. An old, wrinkled woman of Clan Krooguh was teaching identification of roots and tubers and leaves and flowers of wild plants relished by the folk of the clans. Another, much younger, woman was instructing a group of younger, stronger young women in use of the stock whip and ox goad; as she spoke, she likened various of her actions to saber strokes and promised to teach the use of that weapon to any interested females, later on, on the march.

  Within the fort itself, Colonel Lindsay and some of his officers, helped by Milo, who sympathized and agreed with the commander in many ways, had just finished stowing the last of the books and records of the battalion and its fort in stout copper- and brass-hooped casks, waterproofing them with tar and safely stowing them in a secret space behind a false wall of the strongroom. The colonel had agonized for days in drafting a letter to accompany those records, and he now felt that he had offered the best reasons of which he could think for ordering the desertion of the station, the post to which the last legal government of Canada had assigned the original battalion, then commanded by his ancestor, the first Colonel Lindsay of the 228th Battalion (Reinforced) to guard MacEvedy Experimental Agricultural Station and its government-sponsored research.

  The metal sheathing of the strongroom's outer door had long ago gone for body armor, and that double-thick oaken door itself had more recently gone, with its massive frame, to provide the boards for strong fellies for the carts. But the records still were as secure as possible under the circumstances, for with the pivoted section of wall eased back into place and securely latched, the chamber looked to the uninitiated like simply another empty stonewalled room, stripped now like all of the others of furnishings, carpets and all of its wood paneling.

  When he rounded the chapel to see only the barest trace of smoke—no more than what could be expected to emanate from a banked fire—arising from the parsonage chimney, Gerald Falconer's righteous wrath, never far beneath the surface anyway, began to arise. A man could not be expected to attempt or accomplish God's work on an empty stomach, and he had issued unmistakably clear orders to Jane that she have a hot meal ready for him in an hour's time, something that would have required the addition of more wood to the stove fire at the very least.

  The front door gaped open, and this, too, annoyed him. "Wife!" he roared, in the growling tone that denoted his vilest rage. But there came no answer of any sort, not even the expected whimpering of one of the younger children, who could recognize the tone of his wrath and had felt his kicks and cuffs often enough to fear him when he chanced to be in such a degree of anger and ill-controlled violence toward anything that moved or made a noise.

  He searched the parsonage from low attic to root cellar, then opened and entered the semiattached privy, storage shed and stable, but there was no trace of Jane or of the little children. He then searched again, and it was in the course of this second vain search that he noticed the facts of missing clothing items and certain familiar objects from kitchen and cupboard; moveover, the big, capacious wheelbarrow was gone from its designated place against the back wall of the shed. Then the light of knowledge dawned in his narrow mind like the sudden blaze of sunlight emerging from behind dark clouds: his wife, his own wife, given into his service by God Almighty, had taken his children—the blessed fruit of his loins—and with them left his bed and board, deserted him and the Lord for the camp of his nemesis, following in the wake of the backsliding, heretical daughter who had earlier had the effrontery to desert him and the Church and God.

  "Well, we will just see about that matter!" he snarled to himself, from between gritted teeth. His stomach agrowl, the Reverend Gerald Falconer stalked off toward the nomad camps, whitefaced in his anger, a two-foot billet of firewood clamped in his hand, resolved to have his wife and domestic slave back even if he had to beat her into insensibility to accomplish his holy purpose. When she came to her senses and fully realized the perdition from which he had saved her immortal soul, she would most abjectly thank him, of that he was more than certain.

  At the edge of the nomad camp, an elderly, silvery-jowled and near-toothless hound approached him, its motheaten old tail waggling a greeting. Without breaking his firm stride, Gerald Falconer raised his cudgel and brought it down with such force as to crush the friendly animal's skull and simultaneously snap its neck like a dry twig. He felt much the better for the act as he proceeded on into the camp, threading a way between the haphazard arrangement of openwork wooden-walled and felt-roofed tentlike things in which the heathen lived out their lives of utter damnation.

  Deep into the camp, a semicircle of women and girls from fort and station modestly sat or immodestly squatted watching while a trio of nomad women—recognizable by hair first braided, then lapped across their pates, as well as by their terribly unchaste men's clothing—fitted a yoke to a huge but gentle pair of oxen, then expertly attached the stout lines that hitched the device and the animals to a high-wheeled cart.

  Falconer's keen brown eyes picked out his errant wife's mahogany-hued hair from a distance, and he stepped around and over the two rearmost ranks of women and girls until he stood just behind the rapt Jane Falconer. Stooping, the parson grasped a handful of that thick hair, hauled her over onto her back and wordlessly commenced to belabor the shrieking woman with the wooden billet still tacky with dog blood, even as he slowly backed from out the aggregation of females, dragging her with him.

  At least, that had been his plan, but he had not backed up more than two or three short steps when he himself shrieked in pain and surprise and let go his wife's hair to clap the freed hand to a smarting and now bleeding buttock. Still grasping his cudgel, he spun about to confront a lithe nomad woman who held a cursive saber in a businesslike way, the blade of the weapon an inch back from the fine point now cloudy-pinkish with his blood.

  "How dare you, you godless, pagan hussy!" he yelped. "You have no right to interfere with the high and holy work of the Lord. Get you gone ere I smite you." He raised the cudgel in a threatening manner, but she just smiled mockingly at him.

  "You try laying that club on my body, dirt-scrabbler, and I'll take off your damned hand at the wrist, for all that your scrawny neck does offer me a most tempting target, and I doubt me not that you could do most comically a rendition of the dance of the headless chicken, to the amusement of all of us."

  "Woman of Satan," said Falconer, in a heated anger that completely overrode his fear of this obviously demented nomad strumpet, "you know not to whom you speak. I am the—"

  "You are the shitpants coward who needs must have a heavy club to attack a woman half your size from the rear, with no warning," the swordswoman sneered. "That's what you are! And if you don't get out of this camp quickly you're going to be a very dead shitpants coward."

  "The . . . she . . . this woman is my wife, and you have no right to interfere in domestic affairs," stated Falconer, conveniently forgetting how often he had done just
that to his parishioners, and generally to no real or lasting good effect. "She is my God-given helpmeet, and her proper place is in my home caring for me and our children. It is her duty, ordained by God's Holy Will."

  He had hardly finished speaking the last word when there came a whhuushing noise from behind him and the long tail of a stock whip suddenly wrapped around his billet and then jerked it from out his grasp. An identical noise immediately preceded what felt to him to be the laying of a red-hot bar of iron upon his shoulder and diagonally across his back. He screamed then and bent to retrieve his cudgel, whereupon the same or another hot length of iron bar was pressed across his already sore and wounded buttocks. Forgetting the billet of wood, forgetting his mutinous wife, forgetting his empty stomach, indeed, forgetting everything save only his unaccustomed pain, the Reverend Gerald Falconer leaped forward in a dead run, heedlessly knocking the lightly built swordswoman asprawl from out his path. His long legs took him with some speed, nor did he stop until he once more had attained the safety of his empty house, with a barred door between him and his tormentors, whose mocking, shrill laughter and obscene, shouted jibes still echoed in his ears, where he leaned against the mantel, panting.

  Emmett MacEvedy had been at the door of the chapel for a good half hour, having arrived a bit before the appointed time, when the parson made his appearance, walking slowly and a bit stiffly, wincing every now and again, as if some injury might lie under his black vestments. The large silver pectoral cross hung from his neck on its silver chain, the polished surfaces glinting in the sunlight. Arrived before the chapel, the parson seemed about to climb the four steps up to the stoop, then he apparently changed his mind.

  "Are you ill or injured, Reverend Falconer?" inquired the director solicitously. "If you are, perhaps we should postpone our plans until another day, when you possibly will be feeling better." Emmett MacEvedy would just as soon have postponed their act of desperation indefinitely, having experienced some very foreboding presentiments as regarded it.

  "No, no, I am well and uninjured, Emmett," Falconer assured him, possibly sensing that did he expect the MacEvedys to act in accordance with his directive in this matter it were best done now, at once. "I ... I nearly fell and think I have only strained a muscle in my . . . uhh, leg. Yes, that's it, I slightly pulled a muscle in my leg, but it will no doubt improve with careful use.

  "Where is your son, Grant? He too should be here by now."

  "Oh, he'll be along, Reverend," said MacEvedy. "He's often tardy for things he doesn't care for. You should remember that about him from his school days."

  "Yes, yes," Falconer said impatiently, "but it speaks ill of him to be late for this, the Lord's work.

  "How of you? Did you do as I told you? Did you spy out the present whereabouts of the Beast?"

  MacEvedy nodded. "I could not find him for a while, but then he and Ian and some of the other officers came out of the main building of the fort. Moray and Ian are now in the space before the main gate, overseeing the construction of carts in company with that other prairie rover chief, Scott. Most of the men and bigger boys of both station and fort seem to be thereabouts, too."

  "Very well, then," said Falconer, "immediately your son, your laggard son, comes, we will go to the fort and do God's work, perform the task He has set us. Come, come, Emmett MacEvedy, smile. You should feel pride in having been chosen to be an instrument of the Lord."

  Although Emmett was able to coax his lips, at least, into a grimace that parodied a smile, the load of encroaching doom was weighing heavier and ever heavier upon him; he knew, knew without knowing, that no good would come to him this day, knew that all three of them—him, his son and Falconer-moved in the bright sunlight under an invisible but horrifyingly palpable black cloud of deadly and irrevocable doom.

  "Oh ho," muttered Ian Lindsay to Milo. "Yonder comes trouble."

  Milo turned to look in the direction indicated by his companion. The Reverend Gerald Falconer was pacing in their direction as fast as his awkward limp would permit, his black vestments swaying about his ankles and the big silver cross bouncing up and down on the front of his torso. Some pace or so behind the parson came Director Emmett MacEvedy, trudging slump-shouldered, his demeanor that of a convicted felon bound for his execution. A few steps behind the director came his son, his shirttails flapping out and his arms supporting an angular bundle that looked very much like a crossbow wrapped hurriedly and most inexpertly in an old rain cape; MacEvedy fits did not look any too happy either, and his pale, beardless cheeks both bore the red imprints of recent slapping hands, while tears glittered unshed in his eyes and his Sips could be seen to be trembling.

  Milo disliked the look of it all. He had already been apprised as to Falconer assaulting his wife and being whipped out of camp by Manda and Sally Kahrtuh, Chief Bahb's two youngest wives. Yes, it had been extreme, to say the least, but he agreed that Falconer had fully deserved every last stripe he had been awarded, for not only had he clubbed to death an old hound for no apparent reason, his vicious attack upon his wife had broken at least three of her ribs, several fingers and her right lower arm, both bones of it.

  So now, deserted by all of their subordinates and personal dependents, these three approaching men were become desperate, and desperate men are often wont to do or attempt to do mad, desperate things.

  "Chief Gus," said Milo swiftly and softly to the Scott chief at his other side, "arm as many bowmen as you can quickly and unobtrusively. At least one of those three is armed with what seems to be a crossbow, but he doesn't apparently want anyone to know of that fact."

  "Why not let them get a little closer and drop them before they have a chance to do whatever they've come for?" asked Scott. "They hate you and Chief Ian and care little, they've made it clear, for me or Jules or any other rover. You throw a knife every bit as accurately as do I, and Chief Ian has his belt gun, so what need have we three of archers?"

  "There may possibly be more than just those obvious three, Chief Gus," said Milo. "They could have infiltrated a few more armed men into this gathering, and we'd never have noticed the fact, probably. So let's play it safe—get those men armed and watch carefully for any treachery from any quarter."

  The Reverend Gerald Falconer limped up until he stood only an arm's length from Ian Lindsay and his Satan's-spawn companion. Clearing his throat, he unhooked the silver pectoral cross from its heavy flat-link chain and held it bare inches from Milo's face, intoning in his best pulpit voice, "Begone, imp of Lucifer!"

  Milo just threw back his head and laughed, then said, "You superstitious fool. If you really, truly believe me to be some kind of Satanic monster or demon, then you and your two toadies there are the only ones hereabouts so stupid and childish. We're all busy here, as you can clearly see, at men's work. If you try to hinder us, I'll send for two women I think you'll remember; I'll have them whip you back to your kennel, this time around."

  Emmett had no idea, of course, just what Moray was talking about. Still heavy with dread and certain doom, he nonetheless was awaiting the words and actions that would be his cue to draw from under his shirt the old .380 caliber revolver with the silver-bullet cartridge carefully set as next to fire in the cylinder. The parson would press the cross even closer to the face of Moray and demand that he kiss it to demonstrate to all here assembled his submission to God Almighty and his abnegation of Satan and all his unholy works. When the Beast recoiled from the sacred silver, Emmett knew that—for good or, more likely, for ill—he must produce the revolver and fire the silver slug into the heart of the thing that called himself Milo Moray.

  "If you are not a lover of Satan," said Falconer, "then kiss this cross, take it and press it to your breast, then bend a knee to me and swear that you abjure the Fallen Angel and do truly love and reverence the Lord God Jehovah and that you expect the salvation for which His only begotten Son died upon a cross like this. Do it, and I will believe you."

  Grinning, Milo extended a hand and jerked the cro
ss from Falconer's grasp. Bouncing it on his palm for a moment, his grin broadening, he nodded, then thrust it under his waist belt, saying, "Solid, isn't it? Heavy, too—obviously solid silver or at worst, sterling; no hollow casting, this one. I thank you for the gift—it will melt down into some very impressive and valuable decorations for my saddle."

  The Reverend Gerald Falconer just stood rooted, gaping and gasping like a sunfish out of water. The damned creature clearly was not harmed in the least by contact with the holy silver. It was on his mind to speak a word that would stop Emmett when the sound of the pistol shot boomed in his ear.

  Now sterling—an alloy compounded of about nine parts of pure silver to one part of pure copper—is somewhat harder than is pure silver; and pure silver, alone, is considerably harder than is lead; so this blessed bullet, propelled as it was by a load nearly triple that customarily used behind leaden pistol rounds by the fort armorers, sped undeformed through Milo's hide vest and shirt and flesh, went completely through the head of a man standing thirty feet behind him, then blew off toward an unknown lighting place out on the limitless prairie beyond.

  His grin became a grimace of pain, Milo drew his big, heavy-bladed dirk in a twinkling and, taking a long step forward, drove its sharp blade deep into Emmett MacEvedy's solar plexus, holding the man's pistol arm tightly and twisting the blade about in his vitals with vengeful relish.

  Frantically, Grant MacEvedy unwrapped the crossbow, drew back the cocking lever, then fumbled a quarrel bolt from the pouch under his shirt, managing in the process to spill out all the rest onto the ground at his feet and tear the shirttail jaggedly. Glancing up for a moment, he saw the big knife of the bleeding but patently still living rover leader flash briefly in the sun, then he saw his father start violently, heard him make sickening noises.