Horses of the North Page 5

  It was in an open space between the Scott encampment and the bachelor camp that Milo, Chief Gaib Hwyt and the other six chiefs sat or squatted in initial council with the chiefs and headmen of the various warbands.

  Chef Jules LeBonne's French—which he spoke in asides to his own cronies, never for a moment dreaming that Milo could not only understand almost every spoken word but could fill in those he did not comprehend by means of telepathic mind-reading abilities—was every bit as crude and ungrammatical as was his English. He was a squat, solid and powerful-looking man and seemed to have no neck worthy of the name; his head was somewhat oversized for his body, and the face that peered from beneath the helmet's visorless rim was lumpy, scarred and filthy, nor had his basic ugliness been at all improved by an empty right eyesocket, a nearly flattened nose and the loss of most of his front teeth. He and his followers all stank abominably, and Milo doubted that any one of them had had anything approaching a bath or a wash since the last time they had been caught out in a rainstorm or had had to swim a river.

  He lisped and threw globules of spittle when he talked in any language. "You mus' unnerstan', M'sieu Moray, thees we here mean to do, un affaire d' honneur ees, also too, ees to rid thees prairie of a always dangereux. Comprez vous?"

  Gus Scott, who seemed to be of at the very least equal rank and importance to LeBonne, amended, "Mr. Moray, Jules and his folks tawks Frainch so damn much ever day that he don't alius tawk Ainglish too pert. Whut he's trying to say is that that bunch of murderers over to the ford, they done owed us all a powerful blood debt more'n thutty year, now. And we all of us means to colleck in full, this time 'round, we does!"

  "I take it that more than a few instances of long-range snipings are involved in this vendetta, then, Mr. Scott?" Milo inquired.

  "You fucking right it's more, mister!" Scott replied with vehemence. "Bit over thutty years agone, was a real bad winter—I mean to tell you a real bad winter, mister! Won't no game here 'bouts a-tall, I hear tell, and the wolfs was all sumthin' fierce and all a-runnin' in bigger packs than anybody'd ever seed afore. Spring come in real late, too, that year, and the floods was plumb awful, whut with the extra-deep snows and thick ice and all.

  "By the time folks got to where they could move around some, all of the older folks was all dead and the most of the littler kids and babies, too. Them critters what the wolfs hadn't got had done been butchered and et for lack of game, so that it wasn't no feller had more nor one hoss left and a lot what didn't even have that one. Some pore souls had been so hard put to it they'd had to eat their own dead kin-folks, just to keep alive theyselfs."

  Suddenly, for no apparent reason, Chef Jules LeBonne cackled a peal of maniacal-sounding laughter, which was echoed by his cronies. A brief scan of the chief's surface thoughts shook Milo and left him more than a little disturbed, but Scott had ignored the laughter and still was recounting the horrors of thirty-odd years before.

  "... come late spring and some dry weather, everybody was in some kinda real bad shape, you better believe, mister. Everybody, that is, except them murdering bastards over to the ford. Sassy and pert they all was; even their critters was all sleek. So, anyhow, the grandfolks, afore of us, they all went over to there and they asked just as nice and perlite as you please for them selfish, murdering bastards to help us all out some. You know, give us some eatments and enough of their stock for to start our own herds up again.

  "Well, them bastards, they th'owed our chiefs out'n their fort, they did, mister. But them old boys might've been starving, but they still had their pride left and they rode at that fort, three, four, five times over, till it won't enough mens and hosses left to do it no more."

  Scott paused and tugged at a greasy rawhide thong looped about his sinewy neck, then pulled up from beneath his shirt a bit of metal. Flattish it was, almost two inches across, two of its three edges rough and jagged-appearing, for all that all edges and surfaces were pitted with oxidation and shiny with the patina of years.

  Milo instantly recognized the thing, knew what it once had been—shrapnel, a piece of shell casing—and he could not repress a shudder, for he had hoped that that particular horror of warfare, at least, was long years gone from a suffering world.

  Scott resumed his heated narrative. "This here thing, it pierced my grandpa's pore laig, right at the same time that some suthin tore the whole front end off of his hoss. My pa and his brother, they dragged grandpa away then, and they said that was the onliest reason any of them lived to tell 'bout it all, too. 'Cause after them dirty, selfish murderers had done shot or burned or tore into pieces all them pore mens, they come out'n that there fort with rifles and great big guns and I don't know whatall. Some was on horses, but most was on or in big old steel wagons what my grandpa used to call 'tanks' a-shooting faster than you could blink your eyes and throwing out sheets of fire a hunnert feet long.

  "Them bloodthirsty bastards, they kept after them pore folks for twenny mile and more. They kilt every man they could and then just left their bodies a-laying out for the coyotes and wolfs and foxes and buzzards, they did.

  "And ever sincet then, their riders has done kilt or tried like hell for to kill every man they come on anywheres near here. For more nor thutty year, they done been killing for no damn reason, mister. We tried to put a stop to it, too, not that it got us all anything, 'cepting for dead relatives and friends and hosses.

  "Twelve years ago, when my pa still was chief, we joined up with nearly a thousand other mens from all 'round here on the prairies and we come down on that place down there."

  Milo shook his head slowly. "I'll say this, your father had guts—about a mile of them—but he, of all people, considering what he'd been through before, should have realized that you can't successfully oppose armored vehicles with horse cavalry, or use cavalry to attack well-fortified positions equipped with rifles and artillery. How many did you lose On that occasion, Chief Gus?"

  "Well," answered Scott, "he'd done heard from the traders and some others that won't none of the steel wagons would work no more, and I guess as how that was right, too, 'cause they come out of the fort—some on hosses, but most on their feet and with great long old spears. They stood up in a square-like bunch and put their hosses in the middle and we rode down on 'em, but them old spears was so damn long that they stuck out way past the lines of men, and when the hosses got pricked with 'em a few times, won't no man could get his hoss to go close again. And all the time, it was bastards standing there with crossbows and rifles and prods and some them fellers on hosses in the middle with real bows just a-shooting down man after man. Finally, one of the bugtits shot my pa and then everybody just tucked tail and ran and the damn bastards come after us with their own damn fresh hosses and killed off a lot more pore mens from ahind. That's the kind of backstabbing, selfish murderers they is, you see, mister."

  "So," said Milo, "you've spent ten or twelve years breeding and now you're ready to ride down there and have the most of a new generation of young men butchered and maimed, eh? Well, Chief Gus, this is not my tribe's fight and I'd far liefer ride a few miles out of our direct route to the high plains than to get involved in such a matter, thank you."

  Scott shrugged. "I didn't ask for your help, did I, mister? I would of been willing to let you folks ride along of us all and share in the loot and stock and womens and all, but the way I done heard it, it probly ain't going to take all what old Jules and me has got, much less of your folks, too.

  "See, Squinty Merman, the trader, come th'ough in early summer and allowed as how them bastards over there at MacEvedy Station is in some kind of a bad way. Seems as how they had bad crops for two years running, then damn near no crops a-tall, last year. They done et up all what they had stored, their seed grain, too—had to eat a lot of their critters and done had a bad spate of a sickness that's done took off a lot and left the rest damn poorly.

  "Well, Mr. Moray, I figgered right then and there it couldn't be no better time for to go 'bout paying back the
murdering bastards for everything they'd done done to us and our grandfolks and all, so I sent riders out to fetch back old Jules and the rest of the boys. I told them to bring all the fighters they could and that we'd all meet here. Then my own folks and me, we moved on down here and set up our camp and waited for them as was coming.

  "Since we all got here, it's been damn few of them bastards has come out of that fort and all, and"—he chuckled coldly—"it's damn fewer of the fuckers what done made it back ahind them walls. 'Course, we did lose us some damn good boys and some hosses, too, afore we came to find out just how godawful far them frigging rifles can shoot and kill a man at. But since we done learned how far we has to stay away from them, we ain't lost but two men, afore today, leastways, and won't neither one of them kilt by them bastards and their fucking rifles."

  Arabella Lindsay laid aside the body brush and the currycomb, dipped the dandy brush into the bucket of water and then after she had tossed the full mane of the dapple-gray stallion over to the off side of his neck, she began to brush his crest.

  More than seventeen hands of bone, sinew and rolling muscles, the great beast stood stock-still, occasionally whuffling his physical pleasure, while all the time in completely silent, telepathic communication with this small two-leg creature whom he adored.

  "But this horse needs to run, to run hard." His beaming was becoming a bit petulant. "Trotting around the inside of the quadrangle is almost worse than no exercise at all. This horse is becoming stiff. We don't need to go far, just a few miles and then back."

  "Capull, Capull," the girl silently remonstrated. "I've been through all of this nearly every day for weeks now. There are enemies, evil, thieving, murderous men, camped all about the fort and the station, who already have killed many of our folks and stolen or killed their horses and cattle. There are no longer enough men of fighting age left hale enough to go out and drive these skulkers away, as was done in years past, and so we just must abide within our walls until they choose to go away."

  She sighed and laid her cheek against the stallion's glossy neck. "Poor, poor Father—he is so frustrated by it all. He would like nothing better than to take out his pikemen and crossbowmen and riflemen and cavalry and trounce these filthy, bestial rovers as thoroughly as he did years ago, but all the deaths from illness and hunger this last year have so reduced the garrison that he no longer has enough force to even defend these walls, much less to mount a field operation against the skulkers. I think, as do Father and Director MacEvedy, that only fear of the two big guns and the mortars has kept them from attacking our very walls, Capull, but if they knew just how few loads there are remaining for not only them but for our rifles . . . Oh, Capull, I am so very frightened. I'm only fifteen, and I don't want to die, but poor Father is so very, very worried about so many, many things that I cannot but keep a brave face and demeanor in his presence. You are the only friend with whom I can talk freely. I love you so, my dear Capull."

  The huge stallion beamed renewed assurances of undying love and adoration for the girl and added solemn assurance that he would stamp the life out of anything on two legs or four or none that ever offered her harm. He meant it and she knew it.

  The two old friends, Colonel Ian Lindsay and Director Emmett MacEvedy, were indeed deeply worried, and with excellent reason. So hard had they been hit, so badly had they suffered, that even the worst of MacEvedy's predictions had been more than surpassed in actuality. Only some two hundred men, women and children still were alive in all of the fort-station complex, and not a few of those were ill or convalescent, a convalescence lengthened by the poor and scanty rations available to them all these dark days.

  The last of the seed grain was long since consumed, along with every last scrap of canned or otherwise preserved foods. Not a single chicken was left, nor any pigs; the rabbit cages gaped empty, as too did the commodious stalls of the shire horses, most of them. The director was now fearful of allowing the slaughter of any more cattle or sheep, lest there be no breeding stock left when once this string of calamities had at last come to an end; however, unless a way could be found to replace the almost expended silage, it might be a hard choice of slaughtering the last of the kine and the horses or of just watching them starve to death. He never, of course, considered surrendering his stock to the besiegers any more than he would have thought of turning over to them his wife or his children.

  These days, they all were subsisting on fish from the river, herbs and mushrooms cultivated within the walls and those wild plants gathered from the nearer fields where the riflemen on the walls could keep reasonably safe from the prairie rovers the hardy souls who had agreed to go outside.

  This past spring, they had had none of the usual crop or animal surpluses for the trader caravan. Rather had they had to trade metal for all of the jerky the traders would trade, and not enough value had been left of that transaction to obtain any of the needed brimstone, so the supply of gunpowder now was become desperately low. Nor were they overly well supplied with lead for bullets, though Ian Lindsay seemed to think that certain other metals still available—notably, pewter—might be utilized in a real emergency.

  The director laughed to himself at the memory of his old friend's words, as if there could be an emergency any more real and pressing than their present straits.

  A flurry of shouts and the sounds of fast-moving feet made him arise from his desk and stride to his office door just as a fist smote its panels in a staccato knock. He opened it to a red-faced soldier.

  After a smart salute, the sweaty man said, "Sir, Colonel Lindsay's compliments. He would have the director at his office as soon as possible. A prairie rover is riding in alone under a white flag."

  Guided by Scott warriors familiar with the territory to be covered, the Kindred scouts had not been long in returning from the two other fords, but their news had run from bad to worse.

  "The ford downstream, to the east, some twenty-two or so miles from this place," Subchief Airuhn Lehvee had informed the tribal council, "is narrow and full of potholes and fissures, and the current is very swift. We could use it—I have crossed worse, I admit—but it will be very slow and we will lose stock, maybe wagons and Kindred, too. It will likely be better, think I, to use this other, upstream ford that was mentioned, rather than to waste so much time and take so much risk as use of the one I just scouted would entail."

  But old Chief Gaib Hwyt shook his head. "Would that we had that option, Kinsman, but I fear it is either that dangerous, treacherous ford you scouted or none. The scouts who rode northwest came back to report that at sometime since this time last year the river changed course up there. There now is no ford, only deep, fast-flowing water in a new bed. So we just must move downstream, to the east, and chance yours, I suppose. There is nothing else for it."

  "There just might be, Gaib. Don't be too hasty in this very important matter."

  The old man turned his head. "You have advice for the council, Uncle Milo? Ever is your sage counsel welcome and heeded by us, your own Kindred."

  It had not been all that easy, of course. Gus Scott had had to be convinced that something might be accomplished to satisfy the vengeful ends of him and his people, and in hopes of effecting that purpose, Milo had had the Kindred throw a feast to which the non-Kindred nomads had been invited.

  Life was hard, almost unremittingly hard, for the cattle-, goat- and sheep-herding nomad peoples of the prairies and plains. Summers were hot and dry and harbored the near constant threat of horizon-to-horizon fires, which could wipe out entire tribes and their herds; autumn was usually only a continuation of the summer until suddenly, like as not catastrophically, winter swept down to envelop the lands and all upon them in its icy, relentless grip.

  Winter was always the hardest, most deadly season to man and beast, and each succeeding one took some toll of life, mostly of the aged, the very young or the sickly, but sometimes, entire encampments would be wiped out. And even the natural rebirth of spring could bring along wit
h its warmth the peril of flooding.

  Hunting, which occupation provided a large proportion of a nomad's meat, could be a deadly dangerous affair, and each year took its own toll in deaths and maimings and a full gamut of injuries. Nor were even mundane pursuits really safe, for horses, mules and cattle are none of them noted as among the more intelligent quadrupeds and their native denseness when combined with unreasoning fear and their inherent strength had cost more than one nomad his life.

  It was because their day-to-day life was so hard, regardless of the season or the weather, that these people seldom rejected a chance for some pleasure or recreation and imbibed of it in long, deep drafts. Consequently, the invitation of the Ehlai-Kindred tribe was received no less joyously for the gravity of the acceptance speeches of the various chiefs, subchiefs and warchiefs approached. Preparations immediately commenced for a gala two to three days' revel, with the finest items of clothing, weapons and equipment being unpacked, cleaned, polished and refurbished. Favorite mounts were groomed until their hides were all agleam, for personal and tribal honor and prestige demanded a good and impressive showing of chiefs and warriors, in particular.

  Most large game and much of the smaller had, of course, been killed off or frightened away within the immediate environs of the besiegers' camps, so the Kindred had to ride far, far out to secure provender for the feasting, but find it they did. The various parties brought back numerous deer of varying sizes, a couple of fat bears, wild swine, stray caribou and a brace of some deerlike ruminant with unusual, unbranched horns.

  It was the hunting party accompanied by Milo, however, that chanced across the true oddity, a highly dangerous seven days' wonder.

  It was a hunter named Bili Gawn who first found the singular tracks and led the rest of the party to the muddy streambank in which they had been pressed.