Robert Adams - Horses of the North

“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.