Horseclans Odyssey Read online

  Bahb worked the pick deeper, then twisted and turned at it, recalling the movements of the men he had seen thrust similar bits of metal into this and other locks; one bit of metal was as another to him, and he had never heard the words “key” or “lock” prior to his captivity.

  Just as he felt the mechanism of the padlock begin to give under his efforts, there were footsteps beyond the door and a key grated in its lock. Then the door swung wide to admit three men — the two trader sub-chiefs and a tall, plumpish stranger.

  Chapter VI

  Lord Urbahnos rapidly gained a grudging respect for the grubby, smelly little barbarian, Custuh, and could easily See just why the injured Trader Stooahrt had appointed the man his senior deputy. Behind the facade of his talented theatrics, his country-bumpkin-fresh-off-the-farm demeanor, the Ehleen could sense now and again the real Custuh — the born merchant, driving straight for the jugular, thinking on his feet, out to and usually able to squeeze out the best price the traffic would bear.

  And Urbahnos just as rapidly came to hate the junior deputy, Hwahruhn, who had not made any effort to disguise, by word or by action, the fact that he despised the Ehleen merchant and detested all for which he stood. Had it been Hwahruhn’s decision alone, Urbahnos knew that he would never have been able to purchase the boys. As it was, the junior deputy’s barrage of attempts to scuttle the deal had made the eventual purchase price inordinately steeper than Urbahnos had anticipated. For, naturally, the shrewd, cool, calculating Custuh — having sensed that these little Horseclans boys were unnaturally important to the man he was stalking — feigned to seize upon each of Hwahruhn’s well-meant objections and points and take them as yet another way to jack the price several thrahkmehee higher.

  But after the two traders had abruptly retired outside to have loud and heated words on the gallery, they had returned for Urbahnos to close the deal with Custuh alone. Hwahruhn simply sat silently beside the other trader and stared at the seller with soul-deep disgust and at the purchaser with murderous hatred and bottomless loathing.

  The leathern money belt that Urbahnos lifted from the table and handed back to Nahseer was but a bare shadow of its former, well-stuffed self, but Urbahnos had two copies of each bill of sale. He had been surprised to notice that both of the barbarian traders could write their names — not in civilized Ehleeneekos, of course, but that would have been an unadulterated phenomenon in this benighted land.

  * * *

  Lord Urbahnos was, of course, wrong in his belief that he and he alone was the sole civilized and cultured man from the western slopes of the Blue Mountains to the Great River and beyond.

  On the prairie, many and many weeks’ hard ride to the west of that river, sprawled the largest camp ever seen by any of its inhabitants. No less than a score and a half of Horseclans made up that camp, and all with their warriors, their maiden archers, their wives, their children, their concubines, yurt wagons, carts, tents, oxen, cattle, sheep, a few clans with goats and dogs, and huge, eddying herds of those mindspeaking horses that were equal partners with these folk rather than their chattels. And even above the incredible tumult of the camp, every day the screams of the clan stallions pealed forth as, with teeth and hooves, they went about settling the question of which was to become the king of this tribal herd.

  Present also were more than a score of septs of the Cat Clan. Mindspeakers, like the horses and a majority of the humans, and like the horses equals, these prairiecats were ancient allies of all Horseclansfolk. Had Lord Urbahnos ever confronted a specimen face to face, he would likely have died of fright.

  Huge they were, adult males standing nine hands and more at the heavily muscled shoulders, and adults of both sexes bore fangs three to four inches long. The predominant colors of these mighty felines were a tawny brown or a mouse gray, but there were more than a few examples of other hues among them — pure white, jet black, ruddy brown, blue-gray, many shades of yellow and, among the cats of the more southerly clans, traces of the dark spots and rosettes that testified to long-ago breedings with the wild teegrais.

  In the very center of this vast assemblage stood a yurt the likes of which few had ever seen before. True, the latticework sides were only half again as high as those of the average yurt — six feet as compared to four — nor did the top tower overly high, but the circumference of the circular dwelling was stupendous to the clansfolk camped about it. Four hundred and eighty and one half hands was its outer measure; more than sixty-five paces might a man take around the yurt’s perimeter before returning to where he had begun.

  This great yurt was home to Blind Hari of Krooguh — for seventy and more years, the tribal bard — and to his slaves, to the men and women from various clans who had freely joined his household and to one other, the newly chosen war chief of all the Kindred clans, Milo of Morai.

  There was, on the surface, nothing too unusual about this man. True, he was taller than the average clansman, with the heavier bones, larger hands and feet and black hair-shot-with-silver of a dirtman (Lord Urbahnos might have taken this new war chief for a Northern Ehleen, what with his aquiline nose and olive skin tones), but a large minority of clansfolk varied — mostly through concubine mothers captured in raids on the dirtmen — from the short, slender, wiry, blond norm to make Milo of Morai’s physical appearance pedestrian.

  In other ways, there could be no doubt that he was Horseclans born and bred. His mindspeak was superlative with human, horse or prairiecat; he sat his golden-chestnut stallion as if they two were but one creature; his heavy, ancient saber was clearly an extension of his arm, and he was just as clearly a master bowman. And that he was a natural leader of men, a chieftain in every sense of that word, was clear to everyone who met him.

  Some sixteen to seventeen winters’ agone, he had ridden up from the far south on his palomino stallion, accompanied only by two female prairiecats and a packhorse or two. He had wintered over with Clan Morguhn, where Blind Hari also was wintering that year, and with the rebirth of spring he had ridden north with the aged tribal bard.

  The story he told — that he was the only survivor of a clan destroyed by a sudden and deadly pestilence — was tragic but easily believable, for a few clans had been extirpated in just such horrible a fashion over the centuries. Other clans had drifted away — to north, south, east and west — never to be heard of again. The Clan Krooguh, Blind Hari’s own clan of birth, had disappeared in such a manner ten or fifteen winters past.

  Blind Hari himself was an incredibly old man. To the best reckoning of the clansfolk he had weathered at least one hundred and thirty winters, yet still he rode hither and yon, reciting the centuries of the history of the Kindred in rhymes to the plucking of his fingers upon the strings of his harp, collecting the new vital statistics from each clan on his years-long circuit — notable births, heroic deaths, mighty deeds of war or raiding or hunting, ascensions of new chiefs’ and the like — then weaving the news into his endless rhymes.

  But these were not the sole functions of the bard. As he was clanless, he was the full equal of any clan chief, while being but very distantly related to any of them or their folk, and as he knew all of the hundreds of Couplets of Horseclans Law, he was often called upon to break off his circuit in order to serve as mediator between clans on the brink of a feud. And for so many years had he served in this role when called upon to do so that he was the one being upon whom every living member of the Kindred freely lavished true reverence.

  Too, there was a mysterious, almost magical quality about the frail-appearing, white-haired and bearded old man. Blind for as long as any could remember, yet it seemed that often he could see more clearly than any sighted man present, and none knew how this was accomplished. Eerie too was his control over the actions of men. On one notable occasion, he arrived to mediate too late. A vicious little melee between the fully armed warriors of Clans Danyuhlz and Muhkawlee had already commenced; Blind Hari had surveyed the carnage from the back of his weary horse — or so it had
seemed to those who watched — then he had dismounted, removed his leathern helmet, his saber and even his dirk and eating knife. And, unarmed, unprotected, accompanied only by his prairiecat companion, he had walked slowly and deliberately into that pitiless maelstrom of whetted steel and deadly hate.

  Full many had been the horrified cries from the noncombatants begging the irreplaceable old man to come back to safety, but he had not heeded them. He had paced on until he stood in the very center of that small, bloody battlefield. Then he had been seen to raise his hands so that his sleeves fell back from his scarred, withered old arms, and then the more sensitive of the mindspeakers there had felt, they later attested, the vague sense of a . . . a pressure.

  While horses in the two camps reared and screamed or went running off onto the prairie, while prairiecats not engaged in the fracas yowled and snarled and spat and clawed at empty air and then, finally, slunk off to hide in tents or yurts or in the man-high grasses, Blind Hari of Krooguh had simply stood, as if carved in stone, he and his cat, with blade of axe and saber and spear and heavy dirk flashing and ringing about them.

  Then those gathered about felt that arcane pressure increase, increase until it became well-nigh unbearable, until children began to cry and women to scream.

  The twoscore combats ceased — not slowly or individually, but all at once and suddenly, as if the motive power to swing steel or to lift shield had been abruptly denied every man on that field. Bleeding men simply stood in place, arms at sides, panting with exertion, hands still gripping hilt and haft and shaft and handle, staring into the eyes of recent opponents.

  Then the pressure had eased slightly and Blind Hari had begun to speak, not loudly, but loudly enough for all to hear. No one afterward seemed to recall his exact words, but only how telling they were. He had spoken of the Sacred Ancestors, of the Undying God-Man who had succored those Ancestors and who had, for more than three hundred years, remained with their own forefathers, teaching, guiding and protecting, giving them law and alliance with horse and cat. He had reiterated the close blood and heritage ties of all the Kindred, every clan, of Ehlai — the Holy City, whence had come the Sacred Ancestors, children, fleeing the War of the Old Gods, which had left them the only true men upon the face of the ravaged land.

  He had spoken long of their centuries of bitter conflict with the bestial dirtmen on the verges of the prairies and plains, and of the equally deadly warfare with non-Kindred nomads for control of graze and water. He had reminded them that neither fight was successfully concluded and that since their Undying God had departed them more than ten-score years agone, their only chance of certain survival lay in firm solidarity of the clans, of brotherly love for Kindred brother.

  And all at once, whilst the tribal bard still spoke his words of sad admonishment, steel began to ring once more . . . upon the hard, dusty ground. Prized and trusty weapons were dropped to clatter unheeded as hardbitten veteran warriors, whose bloodshot eyes were suddenly abrim with tears, clasped hands with or fondly embraced those whom they had So lately been earnestly endeavoring to kill or maim.

  At the next tribal council, this tale had gone far and wide among the Kindred clans, adding a luster to the very real awe with which Blind Hari of Krooguh was viewed.

  Therefore, at the most recent tribal council — the gathering held every five years — when Blind Hari had sung portions of the familiar “Prophecy of the Return of the Undying.”

  “The Song of Ehlai” and “How Strange our Old Lands”, and then had presented Chief Milo of Morai for the benefit of those few who had never before met him, commenting upon how exactly the circumstances of his arrival at the Clan Morguhn camp upon the Brazos had meshed with those prophecies in the old songs, a fevered excitement had been generated and was still spreading.

  Due to Blind Hari’s immense age, there had been but three in the succession of tribal bards since the departure of the Uncle of the Kindred to seek out his own clan of Undying in some far-off land. So the chiefs could be reasonably certain the three musical renditions of history and prophecy — the most crucial of which was “Prophecy of the Return” — had not been garbled by different bards over many, many scores of winters. Furthermore, upon the summoning of the clan bards to the chiefs’ council, not by more than a single word were any of their renditions different from that of Blind Hari. The tribal bard’s version stated that Ehlai —”by her shining sea” — lay eastward, and a good half of the versions of the clan bards agreed; the others contended that the Holy City lay to the west. The chiefs eventually decided that Hari’s version must be the correct one.

  Uncle of the Kindred, the Undying God of them all, had not said that he himself would return, only that “one” would return, “from the south, upon a horse of gold”; just so had this Chief Milo arrived, years back, from the south and astride a big stallion of shimmering golden chestnut. The Undying had said that this “one” would be a leader, and this Milo of Morai most assuredly was, and that he would be one of them, and precious few doubted the Kindred antecedents of the Morai. The Undying had added that, with the title of War-Chief-of-the-Tribe-That-Will-Return-to-the-Sacred-Sea, and acting as chief-of-chiefs, this “one” would lead all those clans with unstained honor on a years-long migration back to the ruins of the city of the Sacred Ancestors’ birth to reclaim and rebuild.

  The tribal council had dragged on and on, far longer than any other council before it, as the chiefs wrangled and chewed over the issue. At great length, they had all agreed to choose Chief Milo of Moral as their first war chief, to be paramount to all until Ehlai was reached, or Morai died or named a successor, who must then be approved by the council before actually succeeding. All the chiefs felt that this final measure was necessary, for the songs clearly indicated that a score or more of winters might see the tribe still on the move eastward. Therefore, few of them would likely see the Holy City, and, as the Morai seemed to be of at least early middle years, surely he too would become old and infirm before the goal had been achieved.

  Had he so chosen, War Chief Milo of Morai could have eased the minds of the chiefs, at least on the final measure. For his appearance had not altered by one jot through all the time through which his memory stretched . . . and that was almost seven hundred years!

  Where he squatted on a carpet-covered earthen dais, listening to the circle of squatting chiefs planning and discussing the order of march, this one called Milo kept his thoughts well shielded — a thing always necessary in a camp filled with born telepaths, but especially necessary in his own case. For he thought it best that none, not even old Hari, know for a while that he was in reality none other than their deified Uncle of the Kindred, returned after two centuries of tramping and riding and sailing the wide world in search of an island where, it was fabled, all folk were like himself, ageless and almost immortal.

  “But I never found it,” he thought ruefully. “Nearly everyone had heard of it in every land I touched, but it was a chimerical quest, for the information I received was always the same. It lay just over the next range of mountains, in the center of the next sea or in a great lake in a great continent beyond that sea.” Deciding at length that he was vainly pursuing a mirage, he had begun to retrace his steps, to come back to the only real home and kin he had ever known.

  “But haven’t they changed?” he thought on. “Who in hell would ever have thought that a bare hundred and fifty or so skinny, frightened, starving, sniveling little kids that I found huddled in an air-raid shelter tunneled into a mountainside could have been the progenitors of these fine men and of all the folk they lead?

  “They have adapted unbelievably well to a singularly harsh and unrelenting environment Their so-called Sacred Ancestors, during that first spring and summer on the high plains, didn’t even know how to wipe their butts properly without toilet tissue, while these, their descendants, are fully capable of supplying their every need from the land alone.

  “Well, save perhaps the steel for their weapons and a f
ew tools — but Blind Hari avers that very few of the blades came from the east or the south, most being produced by clan smiths who had dug the metal out of ancient ruins. And that’s another thing, too. Almost all the easterners and southerners with their anthropomorphic gods and their superstitions are scared spitless of the ruins, the so-called God Cities; yet wherever they come across them the clans camp in them — set up their yurts and pitch their tents in the long-dead villages and towns and cities of the late, great United States of America. Nor do they depart until the graze is depleted, or the game, or the diggings are not producing enough in the way of metals or useful artifacts to make the labor worthwhile, or until they just feel the urge to move on. Worshiping, as they do, only Sun and Wind and, to a limited extent, their swords and sabers — this last a rite that seems to have filtered in from the east in the last two hundred years, for I never founded it — these clansfolk harbor hardly any of the debilitating, gruesome superstitions to which most folk in this land and overseas seem addicted, and so they do not fear the supernatural.

  “They are truly a feisty bunch, and the few things that they do fear are all completely natural and feared with damned good reason — prairie fire, pestilence, the huge and very dangerous winter wolf packs . . .”

  Fleetingly, Milo recalled a wintry day now more than five centuries past when he and a handful of dismounted clansmen had been trapped in a crumbling ruin in the mountains of what had once been southern Idaho by a combination of a three-day blizzard and one of those packs of a hundred or more starving wolves.