Robert Adams - Horses of the North

“I have scanned your mind while you slept, and I know that you yearn to succeed your father as Linsee clan bard, as you should, for you have inherited and developed vast talents in this area. But, also, I think that you will become too talented as you grow older and mature in your art to be truly happy as a simple hereditary clan bard.

“As I earlier said, when we return to the clan camps, I mean to have converse with your chief and Bard Djimi, your sire. With your agreement, I mean to ask the loan of you for a few years, that you might travel the land with me and the tribal bard, Herbuht Bain of Muhnroh. Would it please you to accompany us on our rounds from clan to clan, Gy Linsee?”

He raised a hand and added, “Wait—don’t answer until you have heard it all, son. We travel light, with few comforts, on the sometimes long rides between clan encampments. There are only me, Herbuht and his wives and their children, my two women, three cats and some score or so of horses. We live simply, we sometimes are confronted with savage beasts and, less often, even more savage men, and we fight when we must with no friendly swords to guard our backs. So think you well and long upon your decision, Gy Linsee, and do not give me your answer until we are riding back to the clan camps, the camps of Skaht and Linsee.”

“Uncle Milo,” Said Gy, a bit hesitantly, “if … should I make up my mind to … you say that you have two women and that Bard Herbuht has two. Weil, if I decide to go and if my chief and my father say that I may, then could … do you think I could wed a certain girl and take her with me … with us?”

Milo smiled. “Gy, if Karee Skaht will have you—and I think she most assuredly will whenever you screw up the courage to ask her, and maybe even if you don’t, for she seems a strong-willed little baggage—then Herbuht and I and our ladies would be most happy to welcome a brace of young newlyweds to our jolly little entourage.”

“If I do go with you, Uncle Milo,” said Gy, “will… would you perhaps tell me of your life before the Great Dyings and the terrible War of Fires? Will you tell me of how you and those long-dead other people lived in that distant time? Will you tell more of the earliest years of the Sacred Ancestors and more, too, of the time when my clan first became of the Kindred? Oh, Uncle Milo, there is so very, very much that I feel I must know.”

“I know, son-Gy.” Milo nodded. “You are indeed, just as I said, a very rare young man, and your driving curiosity, your biting hunger for knowledge, is a true indication of the rarity. Yes, young Gy Linsee, I shall tell you all of it, from as far back in my life as I have accurate memory, never you doubt it.

“Some of those things you and others have asked to hear, I will recount tomorrow night, around the fire, as I did earlier this night. Story-spinning around a fire after a strenuous day and a good meal breeds a comradeship, a togetherness among the listeners, I have found, and such is just what is needed to end this stupid, sanguineous spate of dueling and raiding and open warfare between two groups who should be living in brotherly harmony, one with the other.

“And you can be of no little help, you and the cats, broadbeaming a wordless, featureless soothingness, just as you have demonstrated yourself capable of doing.”

Gy blushed. “I learned to do it in gentling captured warhorses, Uncle Milo.”

“It works in just that same way on people, too, as you clearly have learned, Gy,” said Milo. “And if ever two-legged creatures needed gentling, it is this fine flock of hot-blooded fighting cocks that strut and crow about this camp … though I think that all the pride plumes have been singed off one of the loudest of them, this night. Let us hope his painful example will prove efficacious for the rest of the pack, Skahts and Linsees alike.

“Now, son-Gy,” he said as he stood up swiftly, “Sacred Sun does not delay rising for any man, so it were best that we and all of the others seek our blankets. There is much to do upon the morrow, are we to bring back a meaningful supply of jerked meat, smoked fish and dried tubers to the clans.”

But before he himself sought sleep, Milo squatted by the feverish, moaning body of young Rahjuh Skaht. With the ease of long experience, he entered the burned boy’s mind, the subconscious below the chaotic jumble that the conscious mind was become. He there effected the release of the natural narcotics to end the pain. It was all that he could do; the body just must heal of itself. He then trudged off, leaving the boy to the ministrations of the pairs of Skaht youngsters who would watch over the patient and refresh the wet compresses covering his burns throughout the night hours, watching and sleeping in relays. It was only the way of the Horseclans to care for ill or injured kinfolk; it was how the Kindred had so long survived in a hostile environment. But there would have been no survival of the Sacred Ancestors to breed other generations of survivors, had it not been for a man called Milo Moray.