Robert Adams - A Woman of the Horseclans

Behtiloo watched the party of little boys ride off, quickly passing from view to be lost among the density of the high grasses. She had so watched them many times before, but this time, somewhere deep within her, there was a vague presentiment of danger, deadly danger, and she barely repressed an urge to mindcall them back. All through a day that seemed endless and throughout the long, long night that finally came, that same presentiment gnawed and clawed at her and was, if anything, stronger and more ominous with the next rising of Sacred Sun.

Chief Sami, most of the warriors and many of the maiden-archers were out of camp, along with all the adult and near-adult cats not on herd guard or nursing new litters. As was always done just after choosing and occupying a new campsite, they were routinely sweeping out beyond the herds in hopes of flushing out and dispatching or, at least, driving off any resident predators of sufficient size to harm the stock. And so the camp stood almost empty when what was left of the triplets’ hunting party rode their stumbling, heaving, foamstreaked mounts through it to halt before the chief yurt.

Little Peet rode in the lead, with the limp body of Kills-elk draped across the withers before him. A few paces behind his brother, Djim reeled in the saddle to which someone had wisely tied him, his roughly bandaged left arm supported by a rude sling and the cut-off stub of an arrow shaft projecting through the dirty, blood-tacky cloths. Nine little boys had ridden out, only five returned, and two of those died soon after they were lifted from their exhausted, near-foundered mounts.

Immediately, riders and cats were sent racing off in search of Chief Sami and the camp became a beehive of activity as old men, maidens and matrons looked to weapons, donned war gear and mindcalled favored war horses from the herd. Behtiloo listened with half an car to Peet’s halting recountal, even while her sinewy old hands and her mind were absorbed in seeing to the grievous hurts of Djim and Kills-elk.

Angling a few degrees south of due east from the Clan Krooguh campsite, the mounted party of young hunters had ridden on throughout the early part of the day of their departure. garnering a rabbit or two here, a gamebird there, but nothing larger. While their mounts grazed and rested briefly, the boys had lunched on cheese and jerked venison and the raw fillets of a largish rattlesnake they had chanced across during the morning’s ride.

They had ridden on, but with no better luck, through most of the rest of the day. Then, an hour or so before sunset, Whitepaws had flushed out four of the ungulates called by the nomads “lancehorns”—about four feet at the withers, with hair that was white on the back and the flanks, black or a dark brownish on the legs and the belly, bearing tapering horns that stood almost straight up from the head and on large bucks were sometimes almost four feet in length. These lancehorns were fairly common in the better-watered parts of the southern prairies, but were quite rare this far north, and the nine little boys set out in hot pursuit, with the two cats riding on pack horses.

But darkness fell before they came within bow range of the speedy, elusive antelopes, so they made a cold camp near a trickling rill. While the boys ate the last of their cheese and jerky and the horses grazed the lush, bluish-green grasses, the two cats ranged far out in search of something more substantial than a few rabbits the boys had skinned and given them, since they lacked a way to preserve the small carcasses from decay.

Timing themselves by movements of stars and, later, of the risen moon, each boy stood a watch of about an hour over his sleeping comrades, with Peet and Djim taking the first two stints and Tim the last—those being the proven times of most danger, since most attacks took place either shortly after nightfall or at the hour just before the dawning. But that night passed peacefully enough, with Kills-elk padding in just as false dawn was glowing grayly, soberly mindspeaking his presence and intent to the alert Tim Krooguh before exposing his big furry body to the ready bow with its nocked arrow.

While the boys were all yawning, scratching their crotches, rubbing the sleep from their eyes, rolling their sleeping-cloaks, drinking from the rill or relieving themselves, Whitepaws’ broadbeam farspeak crashed into all their minds at once.

“Beware, brothers! Dirtmen come from the east, many of these Dirtmen, with bows and spears and long clubs made of wood and metal. They are even now creeping through the tall grasses and soon will they be on three sides of you, brothers.”

Horseclans born and bred, the boys wasted no time, moving every bit as quickly and purposefully as would their fathers or older brothers. Mindcalled horses came at the gallop to have saddles slapped upon their backs and speedily cinched, nimble fingers buckled and tied on gear with never a wasted motion. Then riders mounted, strung bows in hands, keen eyes searching the edges of the tall grasses, fifty yards east, for sight of the stalking Dirtmen.

The long arrows fell among the knot of little hunters unseen, coming as they did from the same direction as the blinding rays of the rising sun. They killed three boys outright and wounded three others, one of them Djim Krooguh. Tim’s mare reared, screaming in her final agony, then crashed onto her side. The boy pulled leather barely in time and rolled away from the flailing hooves of the dying beast. Another boy fought with mindspeak and reins to control a mount gone mad with pain. Then Kills-elk suddenly went tumbling across the sward, and a second later, there was a crack of thunderlike noise from somewhere within the tall, concealing grasses, while a cloud of dirty-black smoke rose above it.

“ Flee , brothers, run !” Again came Whitepaws frantic mindspeak. “Run! Run back to the clan camp and fetch back the cats and the warriors, for more Dirtmen now come on horses. They are too many to fight, they …”

The cat’s mindspeak broke off suddenly, and none of the triplets could again find Whitepaws’ mind, range as they might. Between them. Tim and Peet managed somehow to lift the bleeding, dead-weight carcass of Kills-elk onto the withers of Peet’s dancing, nervous horse, binding it to the saddle pommel with a length of tough braided hide hurriedly cut from a bola. More bola cords went to bind the three wounded boys into their saddles.

That done, Tim unsnapped his arrow case from the saddle of his dead mare and slung it over his shoulder, then pulled his spear from beneath her. Grasping a handful of mane, he swung astride one of the pack horses that they had not taken the time to saddle, and the six boys rode west at a flat-out run, Tim in the lead, his thick red braids whipping behind him.

They had ridden on for almost a mile when from out a stand of taller grasses on their left ran at least a score of big, tall Dirtmen, with spears, a few long bows and straight-bladed swords, and one with a long, shiny contraption of metal and wood.

“Around them, to the right!” Tim broadbeamed to all the boys. “Fast, brothers, before they can extend enough to block us off!”

Obedient to Tim’s command, the knot of riders swerved. Then they were in the clear … or so they thought. But another of those horrendous. thunderlike. roaring cracks bellowed behind them and Tim’s packhorse mount went down by the nose, sending the boy tumbling over the head of the stricken animal. The arrow case was torn from off his back, but he stoically bore the inevitable bruises and abrasions, refusing to release his grips on either spear or bow or the three arrows between the fingers of his bow hand.

Leaving the wounded in the care of the other unhurt boy, Gil Daiviz of Krooguh. Peet wheeled his clumsy, overburdened horse about to ride back to where his brother was just arising from the ground.