Robert Adams: The Coming of the Horseclans

Lord Alexandras Pahpahs was dead, though a trickle of blood was yet running from one corner of his mouth. Djeen Mai set his foot against his slain lord’s armored side and withdrew the imbedded javelin, then closed the glazed eyes and wiped the blood from the old Strahteegohs’ chin. Wordless, Mara looked down on this dead, old man, trying to visualize the vibrantly alive boy she had loved so long ago.

Sadly, Lord Mahrk bent over Demetrios’ body and, as gently as possible, pulled out Lord Alexandras’ dirk. All at once, he straightened and reeled back, his face ashen, the dirk dropping from suddenly nerveless fingers.

“He … my Lord is not … he is still alive! He … he moaned when I took out the dirk!” The Lord High Strahteegohs gasped, half-unbelievingly. Milo bounded over to the downed High Lord and hastily ascertained that he was, indeed, yet sentient, not even truly unconscious. Then he noticed something else.

“As nearly as I can calculate, it is mid-December of the six hundred and fifty-second year of my life, 2593 A.D. It is now six hundred thirteen years since man’s own folly plunged this world back to a cultural level of barbarism. What ancient man was it who said that World War IV would be fought with spears and clubs?

“Well, at least mankind will be spared that for a while yet. There just aren’t sufficient people on this earth to man a world-wide war. I’ve no way of determining how many were left after the last of those terrible plagues had run its course; but, on the basis of what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen during my travels and such calculations as I’ve made, I’d say that even now—more than six hundred years after World War III, there’re still far less than half a billion human beings on this old planet.

“I wonder if ever I will find the island and, if I do, what it will be like to live with none save others of my kind. What sort of government have they, I wonder—a democracy like the North Ehleenoee or a kingdom like the Karaleenoee and the South Ehleenoee and most of the barbarians; a loose confederation like my people or a representative republic, such as we helped Demetrios to set up; or is it a dictatorship like that which Backstrom described.

“And, speaking of Backstrom, that’s another project which I must see to. I’ve the feeling that those malicious bastards will never leave us in peace. God help this world if they and their kind ever gain control of any sizable portion of it. And I think that that’s what Backstrom was hinting at when he spoke of their ‘not being ready, yet’!

“We’ll have to get established here, first, of course; and I’ll have to get my hands on a ship of some sort and some experienced mariners and do some exploring. At one time, I had a fair, Sunday sailor’s knowledge of these waters, but that damned earthquake so rearranged this coast that it’s barely recognizable. Demetrios has offered every assistance and building materials to help us build a city here—hell, he’s even named it already, calls it Thahlahsahpolis—but we’re going to have to either drain that bloody swamp or build a road through it first. Maybe not, though; maybe we can barge cut stone down the river. Besides, although the ones above-ground are too weathered to be very useful, maybe, if we dig, we can find stones on the spot.

“Getting sleepy, so I guess I’d best call it a night. I’ll have my hands full at first light, what with apportioning no more than twenty square-miles of high ground among forty-three clans. It’s odd that the point of this peninsula rose, while the center sank; but that’s nature for you.

“Took me twenty years to bring these people to the culmination of their dreams. God willing, a couple more hundred years will see their descendants helping me to the culmination of mine. Nonetheless, tomorrow will mark the first day of a beginning.”

At last, after a migration which had consumed nearly twenty years, The-Tribe-That-Will-Return-To-The-Sea had done so.

Milo and Mara Moral, Blind Hari of Kruguh and the chiefs of all the clans sat their horses on the narrow thread of beach which marked the very tip of the peninsula, surf-foam lapping at the fore-hoofs of their mounts. Before them, as far as the eye could see, the blue-gray water heaved ceaselessly; the tide was at flow and each curling wave broke closer to the shore. The early-winter sky was overcast and grey as the tumbled, weathered stones of the ancient ruins, which brooded on the hill above the beach. Miles behind, the tribe was still toiling through the swamps, guided and assisted by Ehleenoee, who were familiar with the treacherous fens.

No communication, vocal or mental, was exchanged, as the nomads remained stock-still, their eyes drinking in the reality which their dreams and numberless generations of their ancestors’ dreams were become. Milo’s eyes, too, stared, but not at the sea; he strained to see beyond the horizon, hoping past hope to espy that half-mythical island, the search for which had once taken him from these people for two hundred years.

“Now,” he thought, “at the end of this phase, is the beginning of the real task: to mold these fine men’s descendants into sea-rovers, rather than plains-rovers. I must remember to encourage intermarriage between the Clans-people and the Ehleenoee, for the latter already possess some tradition and knowledge of seamanship, trading even with Europe. It’ll probably take a few hundred years to do it right, but then, the four of us—myself and Mara and Aldora and Demetrios—have that much tune and more.

“Of course, we may be delayed for a bit, here and there. Demetrios has become a real fire-eater, since he got a taste of warfare. He hasn’t said as much, but it’s obvious that he wants to conquer Karaleenos and, since Zenos seems to feel that lack of aggressiveness indicates weakness, I suppose we’ll have to either openly annex his lands or eliminate him and put a puppet on his throne. It would probably be as well to invest a few years in subjugating the peoples to our immediate north and west as well; do to them what we know they’d do to us, but do it first.”

“God Milo?” mindspoke the Cat Chief, Dirk-Tooth (brave Horsekiller’s smoke had resided in the Home of the Wind since the Battle of Notohspolis, some six months agone). “Soon, the lowest section of the way that we came will be completely covered with this bitter water. I am not as many of the cubs, I do not enjoy immersing myself in water. Can we not, now, return to the higher ground?”

Steeltooth snorted and stamped the wet sand and transmitted his agreement. “Steeltooth say go. Wind and water are cold on his legs.”

“We have seen and will see for the rest of our lives,” Milo broad-beamed the thought to the long line of chiefs. “Let us return and speed the clans, that they, too, may see.”

Then he gave the palomino stallion his head and Steeltooth’s big hooves spurned the sand as he trotted in the wake of the bounding Cat Chief.