The Coming of the Horseclans

13

Later, Milo and Mara and Hari and the two cats were once more closeted in the small meeting chamber. On the table were three drinking cups, an ewer of Ehleenoee wine, a slab of cheese, and a bowl of wild apples.

As he accepted a hunk of cheese from the point of Hari’s knife, Old-Cat mindspoke Milo. “Though she cannot be slain or injured, it is true, do you think it was wise to allow the God-child to return to the people who so ill-used her, God Milo?”

Milo halved an apple, passed one piece to Mara, and bit into the other. “I can think of no better nor safer place for her, Old-Cat. My race is not completely immune to death, you know, there do exist ways to kill us and the Ehleenoee have learned them all. I cannot imagine how she managed to live among them undetected, as long as she did. What the Horseclans call God-kinship, the Ehleenoee and many other peoples call ‘curse’—the Curse of the Undying. They all hate and fear my kind. To them, we are incredibly evil devils, to be sought out and slain slowly and horribly, for we feel pain quite as keenly as do other living creatures.

“No, Old-Cat, of all the many races of man, only among the men of the Horseclans can little Aldora expect life. Since her future lies with them, it were well that she came to know them. It is unfortunate that she had to learn first of the bad of Horsepeople; but let her, now, learn of the good.”

After Hari had fulfilled Horsekiller’s request for a bit of the sheep-cheese, his hand moved unerringly to his wine cup. While sipping, he mindspoke, “Still, Milo, you might have kept her here. Her mind needs training, if she is too advance to her full powers. Good and well-meaning as they are, what can Hwahlis and his clan provide that we could not?”

Milo concentrated his gaze on the surface of the resinous wine in his cup. “Did you ever sire and rear children, Hari?”

There was a twinge of ancient pain the bard’s mind. “No. When I was a young man, I took as wife a lovely maiden of the Clan Koopuh, one Kairi. In the two years before she conceived of me, she became all things, all that ever I could want or need. When she died a-borning—she and the child together—I never again felt desire for, and never took, another woman—wife nor slave.”

While Old-Cat nuzzled Hari’s thigh sympathetically, Milo went on. “You have never reared a child, Hari, nor has Mara. I have, but it was centuries ago and in another world. Aldora is of, and must learn to live in, this world. For all that she is, she is still a child and she needs the love and guidance and companionship of parents and a family—and she needs them now. As for training her mind, that can come later, one thing that my clan never lacks of is time!”

One morning about two weeks after the event-filled day of her adoption, Aldora Linsee awakened to the realization that she had never in her life felt happier or more secure. All her icy fears of these people, acquired by dint of the sufferings experienced at their hands, she found to have completely dissipated in the warm glow of the very real and oft demonstrated love which her new family and clan—all members of them—lavished on her; and, thanks to ” her daily-increasing mental abilities, she was keenly aware of the verity and depth of their feelings.

She had not yet been a year old when one of the contagions, which swept the cities of the Ehleenoee every summer (being especially virulent in dry summers), had carried off her mother. So, having been reared almost entirely by slave-women, she had never known what it was to have a mother. Now she had two—Tsheri, Hwahlis’ eldest wife, and Beti—on a full-time basis, in addition to every matron in the clan, part-tune. Also, there was the eldest of Hwahlis’ concubines, Neekohl.

Aldora’s natural father had never really liked females, considering them a necessary evil. He married and begat only because it was expected of him. After his wife’s un-mourned death, he devoted very nearly all his waking hours to his minions, his peers, his commercial enterprises, and his sons—in descending order. In the few scraps of time he grudgingly allotted to his daughter, he was coldly correct and stiffly formal—even for his tightly controlled and undemonstrative race. He did not like to have to touch females anyway, and if any had ever suggested that he hold or kiss his little girl, he would very probably have vomited.

Hwahlis, on the other hand, was a typical nomad warrior—volatile, uninhibited, emotional, intense. He was open-handedly generous, not only with his personal effects and possessions, but with his love, of which he seemed to have an endless supply. For the first few days, he had been scrupulously careful to neither touch nor kiss this concubine-become-daughter, lest his motives be misunderstood—a thing that his sensitive soul could not have borne, so filled with repentance was it already. And, to a man to whom visible demonstration of love was an integral and necessary part of life, this torture was unbelievably severe. It could not last and it didn’t.

By the third morning after the day-and-night-long chief-feast, most of the tribe had more-or-less recovered and camp-life had resumed near-normality. Aldora did not know how to ride and for one who was to be a horseclanswoman, this was a calamitous condition which could not be allowed to continue. So, mounted behind and clinging tightly to Beti, she arrived at the tribal horse-herd to choose and be accepted by two or three horses. As they drew near to the herd, they were mindspoken by a late-adolescent female cat, preening herself on a hummock, from which she was afforded a clear view of the portion of the herd to which she had been assigned.

“Greet-the-Sun, Cat-sisters. Have the two-legs at last recuperated from the sickness of cloudy minds and shaky legs and bad bellies?”

“Yes, we have all recuperated, sister-mine, and it only took two days. But if you make yourself anymore beautiful, it will take you the best part of three moons to ‘recuperate’ from your ‘bad belly’!” replied Beti, laughingly.

The cat gave vent to a shuddering purr. “Wind and Sun grant that that kind of sickness come quickly. Already poor Mole-Fur is nearly twenty-four moons, and she has no desire to die a maiden.”

Beti’s delighted laughter trilled again. “Small chance of that, Cat-sister.” Then she cantered on around the outskirts of the wide-spreading herd.

At what appeared a likely spot, Beti slid from her mare’s back and helped Aldora dismount. Then, after removing saddle-pad and halter, she mindspoke her mount and the mare trotted into the herd.

Bewildered, Aldora regarded the thousands of horses—whites, grays, bays, chestnuts, sorrels, roans, claybanks, and blacks with occasional pintos, piebalds, and that flax-en-maned and tailed variety of golden-chestnut known as palomino.

At last, she burst out, “But Beti, how can I tell which ones are Linsee, which ones belong to us?”

Beti smiled and patted the child who stood nearly as tall as she. “It is simple, Aldora. None of them are ours. No man owns a horse, not in this tribe. The horses are with us because they choose to be. Other races enslave horses. They have to because they’re incapable of communicating with them. It has never been thus with us. Since first the Undying-God came to the Sacred Ancestors, the horse has been our partner and equal. It is a partnership older even than that of the Cat.

“Though not as intelligent as our Cat-brothers and sisters, the horses have their own tribes and clans and, over all, a king-stallion. It was him that I sent Morning-Mist to . seek. King Ax-Hoof will mindspeak you—he is far more intelligent than the bulk of his kind—and then conduct you through the herd, introducing you to you to those he feels would best suit your mutual needs and temperaments. I think … wait, here they come now.”

Aldora looked to see Beti’s long-barreled, short-legged little mare trotting back. Beside her was a huge, scarred, red-bay stallion.

Beti was first to mindspeak. “Greet-the-Sun, Horse-King. I am Beti, wife to Chief Hwahlis of Linsee. This other two-leg female is the adopted daughter of the Linsee and she has come to exchange the horse-oath. None of your hellions, mind you, Ax-Hoof, this female is not born of the tribe and knows nothing of horses or riding.”

The big, rangy, horse stepped closer. “Do you mind-speak, Chief’s daughter?”

“Yes,” Aldora answered him. “I … I am called Aldora, Horse-King.”

“And you fear me, little two leg,” stated the red-bay.

“Why?”

“You’re … you’re so tall,” Aldora replied. “So big and … fierce and dangerous-looking.”

Morning-Mist snorted and stamped one hoof. Though she did not mindspeak, her amusement was discernible.

“Little black-haired female,” said the Horse-King gravely, “I was foaled on the Plains. For twenty years have I carried clansmen into battle. My forehooves are as sharp as a steel ax-head. They gained me my name and have sheared full many a helmet and the skull beneath. My teeth, too, know well the feel of man-flesh. But man-flesh, little one, only ma«-flesh. I am neither as bull nor bear nor wolf. I do not war on females and foals. You need fear neither horse nor man, not when Ax-Hoof the Horse-King is near.”

With that, the speaker sank onto his haunches that Aldora might more easily mount him, bidding her not fear falling as, if fall she must, the grass was soft and thick and she would come to no harm.

When Ax-Hoof bore her, who was now his oath-sister, back to where he had met her, it was settled. She had oath with a presently-barren brood mare named Soft-Whicker—a patient, easy gaited, motherly one Ax-Hoof felt would be a perfect learning-mount for the gentle, likable little two-leg. He had had her oath an as-yet-unnamed filly of his own line as well, promising that if the filly had not finished her war-training by the time Aldora had finished hers, he personally would serve as her war horse until the white-stockinged sorrel proved ready.

For Aldora, it had been a long and highly informative ride. She had met, exchanged greetings and compliments and idle chitchat with all of Ax-Hoof’s wives and with a number of the King-Horse’s progeny as well.

Ax-Hoof and Aldora were within sight of the place they had left Beti when an elderly male cat and two younger ones raced up to them.

Without greeting or preamble, the elder cat addressed the stallion. “Horse-King, keep your kind away from the hidden portions of the east-flowing creek. It is possible that danger lurks there.”

“What kind of danger, One-Fang?” queried the horse. “Lop-Ear, here,” the cat indicated one of the younger males—about twelve moons and all paws and head, but beginning to fill out—“became suspicious of a strange thought-pattern and went to investigate. He found no creature, but he did find a strong bad odor and some odd tracks. He called me and I don’t like the looks of it. Both the scent and the tracks are too much like those of a very large Blackfoot to suit me! I am sending Lop-Ear to Green-Walls to fetch the Cat Chief and some two-leg Cat-brothers with bows and spears. So, warn your kind away from anyplace a Blackfoot might hide.”

The cat then mindspoke Aldora. “Have you bow or spear or even sword, Cat-sister?”

“No,” replied Aldora, “only a small dirk.” “Then,” the cat went on officiously, “you, too, would be well advised to keep away from streams or low, hidden places; the Blackfoot tribe aren’t choosy; meat is meat to them.”

As the three cats bounded off, the older and one of the younger in the direction of the cut of the creek; the one called Lop-Ear flat-racing for Green-Walls, Aldora asked Ax-Hoof, “What does he mean, Horse-King? What is a Blackfoot?”

Ax-Hoof, who was now moving as fast as he felt he safely could considering the state of Aldora’s horsemanship, did not answer in words, but the picture which reached her mind was of a furry—albeit, snaky-looking—body, about the color of dry dead grass, with four black feet and a black mask-like across its eyes. Its face looked like a cross between that of a cat and a fox. When it opened its mouth, she shuddered, for it was supplied with a plenitude of long sharp teeth. It was built low, so its height was unimpressive, but from nose-tip to base of tail, it was a good fifteen feet in length and the tail was close

to five!

Then Ax-Hoof spoke. “That, Aldora, is a Blackfoot. Added to the fact that they are ever-hungry, they are as fast as a cat for short distances and strong enough to drag off a full-grown horse. And, they are very hard to kill. Years ago on the Plains, I saw one so filled with arrows that he looked like a porcupine, and still not dead! None have been heard of since we crossed the Great River. Everyone had hoped that their kind did not inhabit this land.”

By that time, they were up to Beti, who had seen them coming and was sitting Morning-Mist, waiting. “Well, Horse-King, what took so long? Did you have her horse-oath half your tribe?”

“No, Chiefs-wife, she oathed only me and an old mare and a filly of my get,” he answered her curtly. Aldora had discovered that he took all things seriously and had little sense of humor.

Bed’s eyebrows rose. “You exchanged horse-oath with our Aldora? I thought that you retired after Chief Djahn of Kahnuhr was killed?”

“Djan was my brother, Chiefs-wife. So close were we that we might have been dropped by the same dam on the same-day. Until today, I had never thought that there would be another two-leg for Ax-Hoof; but this one is different from most of you. Her mind is different. I have spoken but one other like it, so she is now my oath-sister, care for her well… or fear you my hooves and teeth!”

“Threats are unnecessary, Horse-King,” Beti reassured the serious stallion. “She is as dear to her clan as to you.” When Aldora had slipped down behind Beti, the big horse advised both woman and mare. “Go not near the flowing water. One-Fang fears that a Blackfoot is about. He and one of the cubs smelled where it had been, below the lip of the cut.”

Smiling, Beti slapped her bow case. “Never fear, Horse-King, though no longer a maiden, still I can draw a bow.”

Though he was galloping toward a knot of young stallions, he beamed back, “Be not oversure of yourself or the value of your bow, Chiefs-wife. You have never hunted the Blackfoot as I have!”