Horses of the North

Epilogue

For all that fresh wood and dung chips had been added to the central firepit, it now contained only a mere scattering of isolated, dim-glowing coals mixed among the gray ashes. The halfmoon rode high overhead in the star-studded sky of full night, and Chief Milo Morai was tiring, having spoken and simultaneously mindspoken for hours to the assembled boys, girls, cats and clansmen.

The tale that he had spun had been a complex one, dealing as it had dealt with times long past, times before those and snatches of time of even a greater age.

He had told the stories of the War and the Great Dyings of the most of mankind, he had recounted for his rapt listeners—young and old, human and feline and equine—almost the earliest years of the Sacred Ancestors, the progenitors of the Kindred folk known as the Horseclans. And the stories bore the stamp of hard fact, not of mere bard song, possibly embroidered and added to over the long years by who knew whom. For the teller of the tales spun this night had been there, and all who had listened to him had known that truth.

But his long, intricate tale had only whetted the appetites of his audience for more, and as he fell silent, a flood of questions broke upon him and washed about him. Some of them were spoken aloud, but a larger number were beamed silently, by cats and horses who could communicate in no other way, as well as by telepathically gifted humans.

“Uncle Milo,” Snowbelly, the cat chief, mindspoke, “this cat had never been told that the Kindred had kept dogs. Why did the Sacred Ancestors keep such loud, clumsy, dirty, smelly creatures? When did finally they come to their senses and cease to harbor the yapping things?”

“Uncle Milo,” said one of the Linsee boys, “please tell us what the world was like before the Great Dying. Were there then as many people on the land as the bard songs attest, or do they exaggerate?”

Another, a Skaht youngster, asked, “Please, Uncle Milo, is it true that men knew how to fly in those times? That they could even fly up to the moon and … and truly walk upon it?”

Then Karee Skahts’s strong mindspeak beamed, “Uncle Milo, whatever became of the girl Arabella and the stallion Capull? Did she marry into her own clan or into another?”

“I find it difficult to credit, Uncle Milo,” said Rahjuh Skaht dubiously, “that this pack of mere Dirtmen could ever have become Horseclansmen. That Chief Gus Skaht and his tribe became of the Kindred sounds at least reasonable. But Uncle Milo, everyone knows just how slow and dense of mind, how clumsy and slow of action, how ill coordinated of body are Dirtmen, such as were those long-ago Linsees. So how did they manage to survive living as free folk on the plains and prairies long enough to breed any more of their ill-favored kind? Were all of them, then, as oversized and dark and stupid as the Linsees of today … as Gy Linsee over there, for instance?”

“Now, damn you, you young impudent pup!” snarled Hunt Chief Tchuk Skaht, coming suddenly to his feet and bulling his way around the firepit toward his insubordinate clansman, his big, powerful hands ready to grab and hold, heedless of whom or how many he stepped upon in getting to his quarry.

But before he could reach that objective, dark-haired Gy Linsee, already, despite his youth, a trained if unproven warrior and far bigger of body than most adult clansmen, laid aside his harp with a resigned sigh. He had taken days of oral and telepathic calumny in silence, tightly controlling himself in hopes that emulating his precedent, his example, his peers and his elders would give over the endless, senseless round of mutual bloodletting between Clan Skaht and Clan Linsee, as Uncle Milo wanted. But this last was the final straw; his personal honor and that of his ancient and honorable clan demanded either public apology and retraction from the sneering Rahjuh Skaht or a generous measure of the wiry young man’s blood.

“All right, Rahjuh Skaht,” he said aloud in a resigned tone of voice, “you have been relentlessly pressing the matter for long enough. I did not want to fight you—”

“A coward, eh? Like any other Dirtman,” said Rahjuh scathingly. “For all your unnatural size, you—”

“No, I do not fear you, though you are a fully trained and experienced warrior who has fought battles and slain men, while I am yet to see my first real fight. But if fight you I must in order to know peace during the rest of this hunt, then fight you I assuredly shall. Choose what mode of fighting and what weapons you will, little man; I’ll try not to hurt you too seriously.”

“Here and now, with whatever weapons we have or can grab up!” shouted the raging Skaht, at the same time that he plucked a knife from his sleeve sheath and threw it with all his force at Gy Linsee’s chest.

But moonlight is often tricky, and the hard-cast knife flew low, striking and skittering off the broad brazen buckle of Gy Linsee’s baldric, then falling point-foremost to flesh itself in the tail of the prairiecat still lying at Gy’s feet.

The prairiecat queen, Crooktail, squalled at the sudden sharp unexpected pain and sprang to her feet, her lips pulled up to bare her fangs, her ears laid back close to her skull and every muscle in her body tensed to leap and fight and kill.

And all around the firepit, there was a rapid ripple of motion as boys and girls, warriors and cats, of both clans came to their feet and felt for familiar hilts and hafts. But then Hunt Chief Tchuk Skaht came up to his young and impetuous clansman Rahjuh. Seizing the murderous youngster by the back of the neck, he lifted him from off his feet and shook him like a rat, hissing all the while, “Now damn you for the intemperate fool you are, you little turd! Uncle Milo warned me earlier that you intended to provoke a death match with Gy Linsee, but I had credited you with brains you obviously lack, lack utterly, from the look of things.

“You mean to fight a man nearly twice your size to the death when you can’t even throw a knife properly? You shithead—he’d kill you in a bare eye-blink of time, or if by luck you killed him, you would only dishonor yourself and your clan for provoking such a fight, for you are a seasoned warrior and he is not. And either outcome would undo everything for which Uncle Milo and the Council of Chiefs and Hwahltuh Linsee and Gy and I have worked so hard to attain despite your constant badgerings and insults.”

He raised his voice and mindspoke, too, “Hear me well, ail of you, Skaht and Linsee and cat and horse. This hunt is our last chance to show the Council of Chiefs that we all can live together in harmony and love and mutual respect as Kindred clans should live. If we fail here, Uncle Milo has told me and Subchief Hwahltuh that it is probable that the Council of Chiefs will, at the next Tribal Gathering, declare both Skaht and Linsee to be no longer Kindred, disperse our women and children among other clans, give our slaves and kine to new masters, strip us of everything, then cast us out upon the prairie to die in loneliness, far from all that we love.

“I do not mean to end my life so nastily, clans-people. I know not just when or just how this feud between our two clans commenced—it started long before my eyes first saw the blaze of Sacred Sun or my nose drew in the first breath of Wind—but it is going to end, here, now, on this hunt, in this place, this camp by this river. It will end if I have to shake and break and batter apart every hot-blooded fire-eater hereabouts. And if any one of you thinks I can’t do just what I’ve threatened, then come over here and try me!

“As for you, Rahjuh Skaht, if you’re so anxious to nibble at fire, then here, eat your fill of it!”

All the while he had been speaking and mindspeaking, the huntchief had relentlessly continued to shake his young clansman, and such protracted mistreatment had rendered the boy no more than half conscious, if that. But when flung into the firepit, atop and among the still-glowing coals, Rahjuh abruptly came back to full, screaming, thrashing, struggling consciousness. While all of the others only stood rooted, watching the suffering boy, listening to his mindless screams, Milo and one other man leaped forward. Between the two of them, Milo and big, strong Gy Linsee dragged Rahjuh Skaht from off his bed of pain, thence down to the nearby riverside, where they brusquely divested him of his scorched clothing and gently immersed his burned body in the icy water, holding him firmly there regardless of his hysterical struggles. Only when some of the Skahts came down to take over the care of the injured boy did Milo and Gy wade back onto the rocks at the water’s edge and flop down to rest for a few moments.

“I am very sorry for that.” Gy gestured toward the knot of men and boys and girls in the pool, as he mindspoke. “Uncle Milo, what happened to that poor boy … it was mostly my fault. I should have exercised better control, I suppose.”

“Not so, son,” Milo reassured him. “You are blessed with a maturity far beyond your actual years, and you controlled yourself far better than do and have right many of your elders in like situations. I mean to keep track of you, for I am certain that you will be a very important and a long-remembered man. I also mean to have words concerning your future with your chief and your sire, for your talents are much too rare to be wasted as a simple warrior and hunter.

“I have scanned your mind while you slept, and I know that you yearn to succeed your father as Linsee clan bard, as you should, for you have inherited and developed vast talents in this area. But, also, I think that you will become too talented as you grow older and mature in your art to be truly happy as a simple hereditary clan bard.

“As I earlier said, when we return to the clan camps, I mean to have converse with your chief and Bard Djimi, your sire. With your agreement, I mean to ask the loan of you for a few years, that you might travel the land with me and the tribal bard, Herbuht Bain of Muhnroh. Would it please you to accompany us on our rounds from clan to clan, Gy Linsee?”

He raised a hand and added, “Wait—don’t answer until you have heard it all, son. We travel light, with few comforts, on the sometimes long rides between clan encampments. There are only me, Herbuht and his wives and their children, my two women, three cats and some score or so of horses. We live simply, we sometimes are confronted with savage beasts and, less often, even more savage men, and we fight when we must with no friendly swords to guard our backs. So think you well and long upon your decision, Gy Linsee, and do not give me your answer until we are riding back to the clan camps, the camps of Skaht and Linsee.”

“Uncle Milo,” Said Gy, a bit hesitantly, “if … should I make up my mind to … you say that you have two women and that Bard Herbuht has two. Weil, if I decide to go and if my chief and my father say that I may, then could … do you think I could wed a certain girl and take her with me … with us?”

Milo smiled. “Gy, if Karee Skaht will have you—and I think she most assuredly will whenever you screw up the courage to ask her, and maybe even if you don’t, for she seems a strong-willed little baggage—then Herbuht and I and our ladies would be most happy to welcome a brace of young newlyweds to our jolly little entourage.”

“If I do go with you, Uncle Milo,” said Gy, “will… would you perhaps tell me of your life before the Great Dyings and the terrible War of Fires? Will you tell me of how you and those long-dead other people lived in that distant time? Will you tell more of the earliest years of the Sacred Ancestors and more, too, of the time when my clan first became of the Kindred? Oh, Uncle Milo, there is so very, very much that I feel I must know.”

“I know, son-Gy.” Milo nodded. “You are indeed, just as I said, a very rare young man, and your driving curiosity, your biting hunger for knowledge, is a true indication of the rarity. Yes, young Gy Linsee, I shall tell you all of it, from as far back in my life as I have accurate memory, never you doubt it.

“Some of those things you and others have asked to hear, I will recount tomorrow night, around the fire, as I did earlier this night. Story-spinning around a fire after a strenuous day and a good meal breeds a comradeship, a togetherness among the listeners, I have found, and such is just what is needed to end this stupid, sanguineous spate of dueling and raiding and open warfare between two groups who should be living in brotherly harmony, one with the other.

“And you can be of no little help, you and the cats, broadbeaming a wordless, featureless soothingness, just as you have demonstrated yourself capable of doing.”

Gy blushed. “I learned to do it in gentling captured warhorses, Uncle Milo.”

“It works in just that same way on people, too, as you clearly have learned, Gy,” said Milo. “And if ever two-legged creatures needed gentling, it is this fine flock of hot-blooded fighting cocks that strut and crow about this camp … though I think that all the pride plumes have been singed off one of the loudest of them, this night. Let us hope his painful example will prove efficacious for the rest of the pack, Skahts and Linsees alike.

“Now, son-Gy,” he said as he stood up swiftly, “Sacred Sun does not delay rising for any man, so it were best that we and all of the others seek our blankets. There is much to do upon the morrow, are we to bring back a meaningful supply of jerked meat, smoked fish and dried tubers to the clans.”

But before he himself sought sleep, Milo squatted by the feverish, moaning body of young Rahjuh Skaht. With the ease of long experience, he entered the burned boy’s mind, the subconscious below the chaotic jumble that the conscious mind was become. He there effected the release of the natural narcotics to end the pain. It was all that he could do; the body just must heal of itself. He then trudged off, leaving the boy to the ministrations of the pairs of Skaht youngsters who would watch over the patient and refresh the wet compresses covering his burns throughout the night hours, watching and sleeping in relays. It was only the way of the Horseclans to care for ill or injured kinfolk; it was how the Kindred had so long survived in a hostile environment. But there would have been no survival of the Sacred Ancestors to breed other generations of survivors, had it not been for a man called Milo Moray.