The Coming of the Horseclans

20

As a gesture of good will, the Council of Chiefs agreed to free all their Ehleenoee captives before the march began. Freed men were given the choice of joining Lord Alexandras’ condottas or remaining at Theesispolis until the conclusion of the campaign; most chose the former. Freed women were given the choice of honorable marriage into a horseclan or simple freedom; very few chose to leave the camp. Children were given no option, they were simply adopted into the clans which had held them. As Lord Alexandras seemed quite pleased by this unasked favor, Milo saw no need to persuade the chiefs to make any further ‘reparations.’

Few slept in the camps around Green-Walls that night, hough all had been preparing for weeks, still were there tings which needed doing. The oxen which drew wagons and the huge, wheeled lodges of the chiefs, to be driven in and paired and yoked; war horses must be brought in and saddled and armored, then picketted in readiness; here, an axle was discovered to have developed a crack within the last week, and it had to be removed and replaced; there, slaves of the Cat Clan and a few nomad volunteers were seeking out strayed kittens and loading them into one of the several horse-drawn wagons which would convey them; between the new moon and the thousands of fires and torches, the camps were almost as bright as day and the light glinted from steel and leather and brass and silver, as the warriors armed; there was an almost steady thrruumm in the air, as men and maidens tested bowstrings, and the shrill rasp of blade on stone, as a last honing was imparted to the edges of saber or ax. An unending caravan of men and horses wended through the splintered city gates, to return with bulging water-skins, filled at the city’s fountains—though the country they were to travel through was well-watered, old habits were hard to break. The odors of cooking breakfasts mingled with those of smoke and dust and dung and sweat and wet hide and grease and tallow and resin.

Two hours prior to dawn, the drums and fifes and trumpets of Lord Alexandras’ army joined in the cacophony and, with the first rays of the sun, the seasoned Kahtahphraktoee trotted out of the castra followed by serried ranks of infantry, then the baggage. By the time the first of the nomads’ wagons lumbered onto the stones of the road, the condottas were two miles east: infantry stepping a mile-eating pace to the tireless beat of their drums; cavalry at van, rear, and flanks; and, ahead of all, a rough crescent of nomad riders fanned on either side of the highway; a little behind, Horsekiller and his clan.

Unaware that the old man had always detested such contrivances as effete and anachronistic, Milo had presented the late Lord Simos’ best chariot to Lord Alexandras. On the march, it rolled along midway the column, loaded with water-skins. Lord Alexandras, astride a fine, chestnut gelding, rode with the knot of mercenary officers, exchanging jests and rough banter and swapping yarns of shared campaigns in times past.