Robert Adams - A Woman of the Horseclans

Hwahlis Hansuhn of Krooguh was born a little later that day, and, of course, the wolves made their attack against the camp that following night. Asleep with her newborn boychild. Bettylou did not really notice Tim, Mairee and the two other women arm themselves and leave the yurt.

Chief Dik, so stiff and swollen and painful were his joints this night, could not even arise from his sleeping-rug, much less arm and fight. But still the old man insisted that a spear be left within easy reach of both him and the sleeping young mother, for with wolves all about the camp, anything might chance.

Starving one and all, the gaunt wolves made frantic efforts to thrust their bony bodies through the frozen, thorny brush that blocked the apertures of the horse stockade, and each one of the few that succeeded not only encouraged their packmates to renewed efforts but heightened the panic of the milling equines within that stockade. Nor did lupine successes make any whit easier the efforts of their human opponents.

As long as the furry shapes were outside the stockades or even worming through them, the combination of bright moonlight and vaunted Horseclans archery was certain to cost the attackers most heavily. But once inside the stockades, flitting hither and yon among the legs of the milling horse herd, it were a dangerous waste of precious arrows to try for the intruders, and the only options were either to leave them to the horses themselves with the probability that they would kill or cripple one or more before being themselves killed, or to send a brave man in after the marauder with spear and dirk; neither choice was one pleasant of contemplation to the Horseclansfolk.

But the hard choice was made, twenty times or more was it made during that hellish night by desperate men against equally desperate beasts. Some of the horses were savaged by wolves, some were wounded or killed by arrows. But, too, some spearmen were trampled by terror-stricken horses or were injured or slain by wolves as they tried to avoid those heedless hooves.

The deadly carnage went on and on, the survivors of the pack not making a withdrawal until the first rays of Sacred Sun were streaking the sky away to the east. Only then did the weary men and women sheathe their steel, case their bows and wend their way back to the yurts.

Fresh horrors there awaited them.

Tim could only stand and stare at the huge dog-wolf that lay stiffening beside the firepit, the bared fangs coated in the blood it had coughed up after the spear blade had pierced its chest. The second wolf—this one the smallest—had the look of having been clubbed to death. The third had taken the spear at the confluence of throat and chest and lay in a wide-spread pool of coagulated blood.

The three women who had crowded in behind him were no less dumbstruck by the grim tableau presented by the bloody, well-dead carcasses littering the floor of the home.

Mairee was the first to recover from the shock, saying to Chief Dik. “Well, old one, is this what must be expected every time we leave you alone with sharp toys?”

He regarded her without speaking for a long moment, then he spoke, gravely. “Had it been me alone, Mairee, I would have been in that dog-wolf’s belly long since, as I cannot so much as close my right hand around the haft of my spear.”

“Then who …?” the chorus began, then all eyes sought out the only other adult human in the yurt, where she now lay in slumber with her day-old infant. “Behtiloo?”

The old chief showed his worn yellow teeth in a smile. “None other! She had but just arisen and hung the babe high—which was fortunate—while she fetched me a sup of water, when that monster forced open the door and entered. She did not even hesitate, but took up the spear that lay by me and, waiting until he rose for her throat, skewered him as neatly as any wolf I’ve ever seen speared.

She had dropped the spear and was retching when the bitch wolf came in and made directly for me. I was able to do no morn than flip a blanket over the beast, but before it could wriggle free of that binding hindrance, our Behtiloo had lit into it with the iron spit; I could clearly hear those wolf bones crack and crunch under those blows, too.

“The third wolf snarled once before he came in and gave her enough warning to be waiting for him with a spear. She missed the heart thrust, but still she managed to hold him on the blade until he’d lost so much blood as to be weak and helpless.”

“And then, Uncle?” demanded Tim.

Chief Dik chuckled. “And then she retched a bit more, but only after she’d secured the door against more uninvited dinner guests. Then she took down her babe and repaired to her sleeping-rug.

“That woman is a rare prize, nephew. See that you always treat her as such.”

As the weather became warmer by degrees and the ice of the stream began to thin to nonexistent except along the shallower verges of the waterway, the stockades were breached and the carts and wagons brought in for overhauls or repairs. Harnesses needs must be fabricated anew or at the least altered, for not many oxen had survived the winter just past, and so many more horses and mules would have to be used for draft purposes until replacement oxen could be bought or lifted from the Dirtmen.

At the first hint of rising water, the entire camp was struck, packed and moved out onto the prairie, then unpacked and reestablished while the work on harness and conveyances continued. Within a bare week after the move to higher ground, the site of the winter camp was under a yard of roiling brown water and those stockade logs not already washed away downstream were all leaning at drunken angles as the soil packed around their bases eroded swiftly before the force of the water.

All of the clansfolk knew and more or less accepted the fact that the two clans would most likely go in separate directions this spring. Chief Skaht wished to go northwest, where the game would be most abundant through spring and summer and early autumn. Dik Krooguh, on the other hand, intended to head either due south or southeast; there might be less game, but better raiding was there to be had, as well as milder, warmer winters, which last was important to an old man plagued by all of his infirmities. Uncle Milo had not yet seen fit to announce just which clan—if either—he would accompany on this migration.

The prairie near to the stream became soggier and soggier. finally resembling just a single endless morass, cut through at countless points with trickling water, and the clouds of flies and midges made life hellish and all but unbearable for two-legs and four-legs alike. With no announced consensus, the camp was once more struck, packed and moved some two miles further east and it was at that location that they were found by the scouts of clans already on the move.

Bettylou clearly overheard the report that the scout, Ben Krooguh—who. like a fairly large minority of Horseclansfolk, did not mindspeak easily or well with humans or horses, although the powerful minds of the prairiecats seemed to be able to range even marginal mindspeakers—rendered to Chief Dik and Tim.

“The two clans coming up from the south, they’re both our Kindred—Clan Makaiuh and Clan Fahrmuh—and they allow as how there’s two more Kindred clans traveling a few days back of them, too—Clan Fraizuh and Clan Lehvin. But this bunch coming in from the northeast. they’re another bowl of stew entirely, Chief Dik, They’re dog-people. Little coyote-sized and -shaped shaggy black dogs herd their cattle, while their scouts ride with war-dogs—beasts bigger than any wolf I hope to ever see, curly-coated and prick-eared, with overlarge feet and long legs. And these dogs of war are fitted out in an armor of boiled leather to protect their throats and chests and necks. The men seem to all be very arrogant and pugnacious, but that might well be simply their fear of us Kindred, their betters.”