Robert Adams - Horses of the North

The colonel grunted and shrugged. “Emmett, the shire horses are yours and the cattle, and if you want to reverse the order of things—eat the horses and train the cattle to draft—that is purely your prerogative, but the shire horses will be the only horseflesh eaten, my friend. I draw the line at my horses.”

He raised a hand, palm outward, when he saw the heat in the other man’s eyes. “Wait—don’t explode at me yet. There are very good reasons why you can’t slaughter my horses. Drink your whiskey and cool down enough to think rationally, Emmett.

“Those troops of mounted archers and lancers constitute the only really mobile forces under my command anymore, and without them there will be no farming or herding at all. The damned prairie rovers will butcher every man and boy, carry off every woman and girl and drive off every head of stock that leaves the immediate protection of our inner perimeter, if they have no fear of my mounted patrols. Take away my horses and you doom every man, woman and child in station or fort to death or slavery.”

“But… but your pikemen …” began the director.

“Emmett, no one of those brave men—weighed down with his pike, sword, dirk, armor and helmet—can move as fast as a horseman. And my pikemen are only really effective in numbers of sufficient size to form a defensive square and thus have a good chance of repelling the charges of horsemen.

“No, Emmett, my horses cannot join yours in the stewpots, that’s all there is to the matter.”

The director drained the dregs of the mug and set it down hard, his mouth drawn in grim lines. “Then, Ian, there will be half as many of us … if that many, this time next year!”

“We had ranged far and far to the north, that summer,” Milo Morai began. “In those days, the entire tribe numbered about as many as do four or five clans, today, and so all traveled and camped close together for the safety and the strength provided by many warriors. We had followed the caribou herds north in the spring and were heading back southward in the hazy heat of midsummer, lest an early onset of winter trap us in those inhospitable latitudes.”

Dung chips and all the wood scraps available had been heaped upon the coals of the nearest firepit, and in the flickering light thus cast, it could be seen that every man and boy and girl in the camp had formed a circle around that fire and Uncle Milo. Only the herd guards, camp guards and those few prairiecats still out hunting were missing from the conclave of quiet listeners.

“The council and I had decided that the tribe would winter upon the high plains that year, so we had swung much farther to the west than usual. We then had no cat brothers, and so the warriors took turns scouting our line of march, flanks and rear, least we be surprised by dangerous beasts or two-leg enemies.

“Then, on a day, just as Sacred Sun had reached midday peak, three of our scouts came riding in. One of them had been arrowed, and their report was most disturbing.”

Wincing as he shifted, trying in vain to find a comfortable position for his bandage-bulky hip from which the fiendishly barbed arrow had been extracted, Sami Baikuh said, “Uncle Milo, a small river lies ahead, but between us and it are several warbands of nomad herdsmen, and at the very verge of the river there sits the biggest farm that I ever have seen anywhere, in all my life. Some of the houses have wails raised about them—not stockades of logs like many farms, but real walls of stones—and I thought to espy men on those walls. But the fields are all overgrown; they have not been sown or even plowed, this year, I think.

“A roving patrol of the nomad warriors spotted us, and for all that we tried to bespeak them in friendship, they loosed a volley of shafts at us. I was wounded, and since they were a score or so to our three, we felt it wiser to withdraw.”

Milo laid a hand on the arm of the wounded man. “A most wise and sensible decision, Sami. The tribe will exact your suffering price from these men, never you fear.”

At this, the other two scouts exchanged broad grins and one of them said, “Part of that price already is exacted, Uncle Milo. Even as his flesh was skewered, our modest Sami loosed a shaft that took the foremost of those unfriendly bastards through the left eye. I put an arrow into another’s belly—and I warrant he’ll be long in digesting that bit of sharp brass. Even Ilyuh, here, who is not the tribe’s best bowman, gave one of them a souvenir of sorts to take home with him.”

In in-saddle council, it was decided to attempt one time more a peaceful parley with the strange nomads and, if that should fail, to arm to the teeth, ride down upon them and hack a clear, broad path through them, for it was not the wont of the tribe to try to bypass hostile men who were just as mobile as were they themselves; sad, very painful experience had shown that such attempts always bred attacks to flanks or to rear of the vulnerable columns of wagons and herds.

Milo and the chief who had been chosen to head the tribal council for the traditional five-year term of office, Gaib Hwyt, rode out, flanked by half a dozen other chiefs, one of them bearing a lance shaft to which had been affixed the ancient sign of peaceful intentions—a yard-square piece of almost white woolen cloth. Some twoscore yards behind this peace delegation came a mixed troop of warriors and female archers, all fully armed and armored, their lance points twinkling in the sunlight.

As Milo, Chief Gaib and their immediate escort crested a gentle slope and walked their horses down its opposite face in the direction of the mile-distant river, a contingent of warriors sighted them, and while some of them reined hard about and set off toward the east at a punishing gallop, the bulk of the party rode to meet the newcomers, but slowly, in order that they might string bows and unsling targets and otherwise prepare for imminent bloodletting.

When some fifty yards separated the two groups, Milo raised his right hand, empty palm outward, then he and Chief Gaib and the flagbearer moved at a slow walk out into what they hoped was neutral ground, silent but for the stamp of hooves, the creaking of saddles and the jingle-jangle of equipment.

After a few moments of seeming confusion among themselves, punctuated by shoutings and obscenities, three of the stranger horsemen separated themselves from the main body and rode out to meet Milo and the two chiefs.

At easy speaking distance, both mounted trios halted, then one of the strangers kneed his big, raw-boned dun slightly ahead of his two companions and eyed the three tribesmen with open, unveiled hostility. In dress or in overall physical appearance, he differed but little from Gaib and the other chief, his build being slender and flat-muscled, his visible skin surfaces—like theirs—darkened by sun and wind and furrowed by old scars. His hair was invisible under his helmet, but his full beard was a ruddy blond. The baggy trousers were of soft, if rather filthy, doeskin, his boots of felt and leather and his shirt, with its flaring sleeves, of faded cloth. He sat his mount easily and held his weapons with the ease of long familiarity, and his demeanor was that of the born leader of men.

He answered Milo’s smile with a fierce scowl. “I’m Gus Scott. Are you the head dawg of this here murdering bunch of bushwhackers, mister?”

The very air about them seemed to crackle with deadly tension. Milo sheathed his smile, but was careful to make no move toward his weapons, despite the insulting words and manner. “My scouts were fired on first, Scott. They only returned fire in order to cover their withdrawal.”

Scott shook his head. “That ain’t the way I heared it, mister.”