The Horse Barbarians tds-3

by Harry Harrison

  Although it was early afternoon, the temperature must have been just above the freezing point. With his insulated clothing stripped away, the shock of the cold air on his body brought him instantly to full, shivering consciousness.

  What the next step would be was obvious. The strap that secured his wrists was a good three meters long and the other end was fastened to the top of the pole. He was alone in the center of’a cleared area, and there was a bustle on all sides as the hump-backed riding beasts were saddled and mounted. The first man ready uttered a piercing, warbling cry and charged at Jason with his lance leveled. The beast ran with frightful speed, claws digging into the soil, hurtling forward like an unleashed thunderbolt.

  Jason did the only thing possible, jumping to the other side of the pole and keeping it between himself and the attacking rider. The man jabbed with his lance but had to pull it back swiftly as he went by the pole.

  Only fighting intuition saved Jason then, for the sound of the second beast’s charge was lost in the thunder of the first. He grabbed the pole and spun around it. The lance clanged against the metal as the second attacker went by.

  The first man was already turning his mount and Jason saw that a third had saddled up and was ready to attack. There could be only one possible outcome to this game of deadly target practice: he could dodge just so often.

  “Time to change the odds,” he said, bending and groping in the top of his right boot. His combat knife was still there.

  As the third man started his charge, Jason flipped the knife into the

  air and caught the hilt between his teeth, then sawed his leather bindings against its razor edge. They fell away and he crouched behind the slim pole to avoid the stabbing lance. The charge went by and Jason attacked.

  He sprang, the knife in his left hand, reaching out with his right to grab the rider’s leg in an attempt to unseat him. But the creature was moving too fast and he slammed into its flank behind the saddle, his fingers clutching at the beast’s matted fur.

  After that everything happened very fast. As the rider twisted about, trying to stab down and back at his attacker, Jason sank his dagger right up to its hilt in the animal’s rump.

  The needlelike spikes of the prickspurs that the warriors used in place of rowels on their spurs indicated that the creatures they rode must not have very sensitive nervous systems. This was true of the thick hide and pelt over the ribs, but the spot that Jason’s dagger hit, not too far below the animal’s tail, appeared to be of a different nature altogether. A rippling shudder passed through the creature’s flesh and it exploded forward as though a giant spring had been released in its guts.

  Already off balance, the rider was tipped from his saddle and disappeared. Jason, clutching at the fur and worrying the knife deeper with his other hand, managed to hold on through one bound, then a second. There was the blurred vision of men and animals streaming by while Jason fought to keep his grip. This proved impossible and, on the third ground-shaking leap, he was tossed free.

  Sailing headlong through the air, Jason saw he was aiming toward the space between two of the dome-shaped structures. This was certainly better than hitting one of them, so he relaxed and tucked his chin under as he struck the ground and did a shoulder roll, then another. Landing on his feet, he ran, his speed scarcely diminished.

  The domed structures, dwellings of some kind, were scattered about with lanes between them. He was in a wide, straight lane and thoughts of spearheads between the shoulder blades sent him darting off at right angles at the next opening. Outraged cries from behind him indicated that his pursuers did not think highly of his escape. So far, he was ahead of the pack and he wondered how long he could keep it that way.

  A leather flap was thrown back on one of the domes ahead and a gray-haired man looked out, the same one who had been trying to question Jason earlier. He appeared to take in the situation in a glance and, opening the flap wider, he motioned Jason toward it.

  It was a time for quick decisions. Still running headlong, Jason glanced around and saw that, for the moment, no one else was in sight. Any port in a storm. He dived through the opening dragging the old

  man after him. For the first time he was aware that the combat knife was still in his hand, so he pressed it up through the other’s beard until the point touched his throat.

  “Give me away and you’re dead,” he hissed.

  “Why should I betray you?” the man cackled. “I brought you here. I risk all for knowledge. Now back, while I close the opening.” Ignoring the knife, he began to lace the flap shut.

  Looking quickly about the dark interior, Jason saw that the sleepyeyed youth was dozing by a small lire, over which hung an iron pot. A withered crone was stirring something in the pot, completely ignoring the commotion at the entrance.

  “In back, down,” the man said, pushing at Jason. ‘They’ll be here soon. They mustn’t find you, oh no.”

  The shouting was coming closer outside and Jason could see no season to find fault with the plan. “But the knife is still ready,” he warned, as he sat against the back wall and allowed a collection of musty skins to be draped over his shoulders.

  Heavy feet thundered by, shaking the earth, and voices could be heard from all sides now. Graybeard hung a leather shawl over Jason’s head so that it obscured his face, then scrabbled in a pouch at his belt for a reeking clay pipe that he poked into Jason’s mouth. Neither the old woman nor the youth paid any attention to all of this.

  They still did not look up when a helmeted warrior tore open the entrance and poked his head inside.

  Jason sat, motionless, looking out from under the leather hood, the hidden knife in his hand, ready to dive across the floor and sink it into the intruder’s throat.

  Looking quickly about the dark interior, the intruder shouted what could only have been a question. Graybeard answered with a negative grunt, and that was all there was to it. The man vanished as quickly as he had come and the old woman tottered over to lace the entrance tightly shut again.

  In his years of wandering around the galaxy, Jason had encountered very little unselfish charity and was justifiably suspicious. The knife was still ready. “Why did you take the risk of helping me?” he asked.

  “A jongleur will risk anything to learn new things,” the man answered, settling himself cross-legged by the fire. “I am above the petty squabbles of the tribes. My name is Oraiel, and you will begin by telling me your name.”

  “Riverboat Sam,” Jason said, putting the knife down long enough to pull up the top of his metalcioth suit and push his arms into it. He lied by reflex, like playing his cards close to his chest. There were no threatening moves. The old woman mumbled over the fire while the youth squatted behind Oraiel, sinking into the same position.

  “What world are you from?”

  “Heaven.”

  “Are there many worlds where men live?”

  “At least 30,000, though no one can be completely sure of the exact number.”

  “What is your world like?”

  Jason looked around, and, for the first time since he had opened his eyes in the cage, he had a moment to stop and think. Luck had been with him so far, but he was still a long way from getting out of this mess alive.

  “What is your world like?” Oraiel repeated.

  “What’s your world like, old man? I’ll trade you fact for fact.”

  Oraiel was silent for a moment and a spark of malice glinted in his half-closed eyes. Then he nodded. “It is agreed. I will answer your questions if you will answer mine.”

  “Fine. You’ll answer mine first as I have more to lose if we’re interrupted. But before we do this twenty-questions business, I have to take an inventory. Things have been too busy for this up until now.”

  Though his gun was gone, the power holster was still strapped into place. It was worthless now, but the batteries might come in useful. His equipment belt was gone and his pockets had been rifled. Only the fact that the medikit was slung
to the rear had saved it from detection. He must have been lying on it when they searched him. His extra ammunition was gone as well as the case of grenades.

  The radio was still there! In the darkness they must not have noticed it in the flat pocket almost under his arm. It only had line-of-sight operation, but that might be enough to get a fix on the ship or even call for help.

  He pulled it out and looked gloomily at the crushed case and the fractured components that were leaking from a crack in the side. Some time during the busy events of the last day, it had been struck by something heavy. He switched it on and got exactly the result he expected. Nothing.

  The fact that the chronometer concealed behind his belt buckle was still keeping perfect time did little to cheer him. It was jo in the morning. Wonderful. The watch had been adjusted for the 20-hour day when they had landed on Felicity, with noon set for the sun at the zenith at the spot where they had landed.

  “That’s enough of that,” he said, making himself as comfortable as was possible on the hard ground and pulling the furs around him. “Let’s talk, Oraiel. Who is the boss here, the one who ordered my execution?”

  “He is Temuchin the Warrior, The Fearless One, He of the Arm of Steel, The Destroyer—”

  “Fine. He’s on top. I can tell that without the footnotes. What has he got against strangers, and buildings?”

  “‘The Song of the Freemen,” Oraiel said, digging his elbow into the ribs of his assistant. The youth grunted and rooted about in the tangled furs until he produced a lutelike instrument with a long neck and two strings. Plucking the strings for accompaniment he began to sing in a high-pitched voice.

  Free as the wind,

  Free as the plain on which we wander,

  Knowing no home,

  Other than our tents.

  Our friends

  The Moropes,

  Who take us to battle,

  Destroying the buildings,

  Of those who would trap us…

  There was more like this and it went on for an unconscionably long time, until Jason found himself beginning to nod. He interrupted, broke off the song, and asked some pertinent questions.

  A picture of the realities of life on the plains of Felicity began to emerge.

  From the oceans on the east and west, and from the Great Cliff in the south, to the mountains in the north there stood not one permanent building or settlement of man. Free and wild, the tribes roved over the grass sea, warring on themselves and each other in endless feuds and conflicts.

  There had been cities here, some of them were even mentioned by name in the Songs, but now, only their memory remained, and an uncompromising hatred. There must have been a long and bitter war between two different ways of life, if the memory, generations later, could still arouse such strong emotions. With the limited natural resources of these arid plains, the agrarians and the nomads could not possibly have lived side by side in peace. The farmers would have built settlements around the scant water sources and fenced out the nomads and their flocks. In self-defense, the nomads would have had to band together in an attempt to destroy the settlements. They had succeeded so well in this genocidal warfare that the only trace of their former enemies that remained was a hated memory.

  Crude, unlettered, violent, the barbarian conquerors roamed the high steppe in tribes and clans, constantly on the move as their stunted cattle and goats consumed the scant grass that covered the plains. Writing was unknown; the jongleurs, the only men who could pass freely from tribe to tribe, were the historians, entertainers and bearers of news. No trees grew in this hostile climate so wooden utensils and artifacts were unknown. Iron ore and coal were apparently plentiful in the northern mountains, so iron and mild steel were the most common materials used. These, along with animal hides, horns and bones, were almost the only raw materials available. An outstanding exception were the helms and breastplates. While some were made of iron, the best ones came from a tribe in the distant hills who worked a mine of asbestos-like rock. They shredded this to fibers and mixed it with the gum of a broad-leaved plant to produce what amounted to an epoxy-fiber-glass material. It was light as aluminum, strong as steel, and even more elastic than the best spring steel. This technique, undoubtedly inherited from the first, pmBreakdown settlers on the planet, was the only thing that physically distinguished the nomads from any other race of iron-age barbarians. Animal droppings were used for cooking fuel; animal fat, for lamps. Life tended to be nasty, brutish and short.

  Every clan or tribe had its traditional pasture ground over which it roamed, though the delimitations were vague and controversial, so that wars and feuds were a constant menace. The domed tents, camacks, were made of joined hides over iron poles. They were erected and struck in a few minutes, and when the tribe moved on, they were carried, with the household goods, on wheeled frames called escungs, like a travois with wheels, which were pulled by the moropes.

  Unlike the cattle and goats, which were descendants of terrestrial animals, the inoropes were natives of the high steppes of Felicity. These claw-toed herbivores had been domesticated and bred for centuries, while most of their wild herds had been exterminated. Their thick pelts protected them from the eternal cold, and they could go as long as 20 days without water. As beasts of burden, and chargers of war, they made existence possible in this barren land.

  There was little more to tell. The tribes roved and fought, each speaking its own language or dialect and using the neutral in, between tongue when they had to talk to outsiders. They formed alliances and treacherously broke them. Their occupation and love was war and they practiced it most efficiently.

  Jason digested this information while he attempted, less successfully, to digest the unchewable lumps from the stew that he had forced himself to swallow. For drink there had been fermented morope milk, which tasted almost as bad as it smelled. The only course he had missed was the one reserved for warriors, a mixture of milk and still-warm blood, and for this he was grateful.

  Once Jason’s curiosity had been satisfied, Oraiel’s turn had come and he had asked questions endlessly. Even while Jason ate, he had had to mumble answers, which the jongleur and his apprentice filed away in their capacious memories. They had not been disturbed, so he considered himself safe, for the time being. It was already late in the afternoon and he had to think of a way to escape and return to the ship. He waited until Oraiel ran out of breath then asked some pointed questions of his own.

  “How many men are there in this camp?”

  The jongleur had been sipping steadily at the achadk, the fermented milk, and was beginning to rock back and forth. He mumbled and spread his arms wide. “They are the sons of the vulture,” he intoned. “Their numbers blacken the plain and the fearful sight of them strikes terror—”

  “I didn’t ask for a tribal history, just a nice round figure.”

  “Only the gods know. There may be a hundred; there may be a million.”

  “How much is 20 and 20?” Jason interrupted.

  “I do not bother my thoughts with such stupid figurations.”

  “I didn’t think you could do higher mathematics, like counting to one hundred and other exotic computations.”

  Jason went over and peered out of the opening between the laces. A blast of frigid air made his eyes water. High, icy clouds drifted across the pale blueness of the sky, while the shadows were growing long.

  “Drink,” Oraiel said, waving the leathem bottle of achadh. “You are my guest and you must drink.”

  The silence was broken only by the rasp of sand as the old woman scrubbed out the cooking pot. The apprentice’s chin was on his chest and he appçared to be asleep.

  “I never refuse a drink,” Jason said, and walked over and took the bottle.

  As he raised it to his lips, he saw the old woman glance up quickly, then bend low again over her work. There was a slight stirring behind him.

  Jason hurled himself sideways, the drinking skin went flying and the club skinned his
ear and crashed into his shoulder.

  Still rolling, without looking, Jason kicked backward and his foot caught the apprentice in the pit of the stomach. He folded nicely and the spiked iron bar rolled free of his limp hands.

  Oraiel, no longer drunk, pulled a long, two-handed sword from under the furs beside him and swung on Jason. Though the spikes had missed, the bar itself had numbed Jason’s right shoulder and his arm, which hung limply at his side. There was nothing wrong with his left arm, however, so he flung himself inside the arc of the sword before it could descend and locked his hand around the jongleur’s throat, thumb and index finger on the major blood vessels. The man kicked spasmodically, then slumped unconscious.

  Always aware of his flanks, Jason had been trying to keep one eye on the old woman, who now produced a gleaming, saw-edged knife, the camack was an armory of concealed weapons, and hopped to the attack. Jason dropped the jongleur and chopped her wrist so the knife fell at his feet.

  The entire action had taken about ten seconds. Oraiel and his apprentice were draped over each other in an unconscious huddle, while the crone sobbed by the fire, cradling her wrist.

  “Thanks for the hospitality,” Jason said, trying to rub some life back into his numbed arm. When he could move his fingers again, he tied and gagged the woman, then the others, arranging them in a neat row on the floor. Oraiel’s eyes were open, radiating bloodshot waves of hatred.

  “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” Jason said, picking over the furs. “That’s another one you can memorize. I suppose you can’t be blamed for trying to get your information, and the reward money as well. But you were being a little too greedy. I know that you’re sorry now and want me to have enough of these moth-eaten furs to disguise myself with, as well as that greasy fur hat which has seen better days, and perhaps a weapon or two.”

  Oraiel growled and frothed a little around his gag.

  “Such language,” Jason said. He pulled the hat low over his eyes and picked up the spiked club, which he had wrapped in a length of leather. “Neither you nor the old girl have enough teeth for the job, but your assistant has a fine set of choppers. He can chew through the leather gag, then chew the thongs on your wrists. By which time I shall be far from here. Be thankful I’m not one of your own kind, or you would be dead right now.” He picked up the skin of achadh and slung it from his shoulder. “I’ll take this for the road.”