Robert Adams - A Woman of the Horseclans

“How many warriors do you think. Ben?” asked Tim.

“Between two- and threescore … that I could see, Tim. Few of these dog-tribes teach their women to fight or even to draw a bow, of course, so they’re not to be counted.”

“Which is not to say that their womenfolk can’t fight when push comes to shove, Ben,” put in Chief Dik. “Recall, if you will, that Tim’s wife, with no weapons training at all and but a few hours after having birthed a babe, speared two grown wolves and beat another to death with an iron spit. You give those dog-tribe women a good reason to fight and they will, ferociously, if not too skillfully.”

No one was aware that Chief Milo had entered the yurt until he spoke, saying. “Which last is a very good reason not to give men or women of this alien tribe any pretext for fighting. There are few enough nomads roaming these lands, and the accursed Dirtmen encroach ever farther out onto the prairie each year; be we to save the grasslands for those who use them in the way Sun and Wind intended they be used, and not see them plowed up and ruined again, nomads must cease to fight each other, but rather must unite to drive the Dirtmen back off the grasslands.

“The dog-people are dog-people only because they have not yet become Kindred, have not yet entered into the bond between two-leg and prairiecat. Otherwise, most non-Kindred nomads are not very dissimilar from Kindred nomads; the two are, at the very least, far more similar to each other than is either to the Dirtmen.

“Let us do as has been done many times before, over the years. Let us meet with the chiefs of these non-Kindred in true peace, determine which way they mean to wander, then wander in company with them, as if they truly were a Kindred clan. By the end of the summer, chances are, they will already be related by a marriage or three.”

Joel and Jonathon Dunlap had been secretly pleased—more than pleased, if truth were known—to leave the Abode of their birth and, in company with some score of other young men, ride the several weeks’ journey to the Abode watched over by the Elder Claxton. The party escorted wagons filled with grain and other foodstuffs, weapons (including a few swivel-rifles), two of the infinitely precious, irreplaceable cranklights, and oddments of hardware and harness, as well as the personal effects of the score—and-two of volunteers.

It was not often that young men from the older Abodes-of—the Righteous emigrated from one established Abode to another, most often, they and an equal number of young women along with a soupçon of carefully chosen older folk, would set out for virgin territory to establish a new Abode.

But it also was not often that a single Abode would be so hideously afflicted by the heathen raiders of the prairie. The Elder Claxton and his unhappy flock had not even had a bare chance to recover from the devastating effects of a raid that, but for God’s Will, would have burned them out when the Hell-spawn raiders returned just before the first snows. They had ambushed an unmounted party of herders and murdered many of those godly men, then driven off the cattle.

Then, an ill-advised, worse-led and too hastily mounted pursuit of the raiders and the lifted herd had resulted in a second ambush, more deaths and woundings and the loss of most of the horses and mules on which the pursuers had been mounted.

Following this debacle. Elder Claxton had sent out men bearing messages both to the original Abode, far to the east, and to some of the second-generation Abodes. The messages told of the raids and of the losses they had engendered in human life, stock and supplies.

“I ask not for charity,” his messages ended, for such is not either needed or desired. This land is good: if it be Gods Holy Will, our losses will be replaced of our own efforts. What I do ask of you, my brothers, is young men, for them are many new widows here, as well as girls of marriageable age, while most of the surviving, sound men are either of middle years or not yet mature. Seed grains would, of course, be appreciated if they can be spared, weapons, tools, scrap metals and a wagon or two, if you see fit. Our only remaining cattle are three cows and two heifers; not one single span of draft oxen remains, nor have we a bull. So, send me what God impels you to send along with the young men, but please send the young men—as many as twoscore, total. Are they godly men, untainted by Sin, they will have good lives here on this land.”

So now twenty-two men, ranging in age between sixteen and twenty-seven, were forking horses and mules roundabout the two big wagons and the four spans of oxen that drew each. A young bull, just come into breeding age, plodded on a strong chain tether behind one wagon, occasionally exchanging bawls and lows with the eight cows and heifers being herded along at the rear with the aid of three cow dogs.

For all that the men gave the outward appearance of obeying the man the Elders had designated the leader—dour, ever-serious Enos Penwalt. a twenty-seven-year-old widower whose four children had died the year before from having apparently included the leaves of Dead Men’s Bells in a salad they had prepared and eaten—the real leaders of the score of volunteers were Joel and Jonathan Dunlap, and everyone save Enos Penwalt knew that fact.

Enos was a godly man in every nuance of the word. Prayer was on his lips at waking, on beginning or doing or ending his every act during the workday, at the start and finish of each meal, and before composing himself for sleep of nights. Everyone knew that he would someday become a Patriarch. At the same time, no man liked him, for his brand of holiness was of a sort to put the teeth of the more ordinary man edge to edge.

Joel and Jonathan, on the other hand, would never be considered as candidates for Patriarchs, nor would either of them have craved that office. The whipping post was an old acquaintance of both, as were the stocks; they had been preached at and prayed over in public so often that they had lost count, long since. They had been in trouble from their first toddling steps, and, no matter their distinguished lineage (they were nephews of the Elder of their natal Abode), the Patriarchs were delighted to be shut of the terrible twins and, indeed, would probably have conspired to send them away by force had they not conveniently volunteered.

Coming as he did from the original Abode of the Righteous, Enos did not of course know the unsavory, distinctly ungodly reputation of the tall, strapping, red-haired and bright-eyed young men, and so brusque was his manner that no one bothered to enlighten him on the subject.

Jo and Jon—their names for themselves—had always been as alike as two peas in a pod and had always taken full advantage of the fact that usually their own parents and siblings could not tell the one from the other. Moreover, both born leaders, they had quickly become the focal point of the anti-establishment young men of their Abode … most of whom had also volunteered, and were every bit as rebellious toward their present appointed leader as they had been toward those who had appointed him to rule over them.

This rebellious faction constituted more than half of the party—twelve, out of twenty-two—and the remainder were not in any way organized to deal with them, coming as they did from no less than three Abodes and therefore not knowing much about each other.

Enos’ authority drew its strength from the authority of the Elder and the Patriarchs who had appointed him, but these were authority figures who now were far behind and getting farther in the distance and the past with every turn of the wagon wheels, every plod of the oxes’ hooves. What now was there to fear from the ranting old graybeards? No whip they owned could reach this far.