It was a hoary joke amongst the clans, but still a few hesitant laughs came from here and there, and the boy preened himself, half-sneering at Tchuk the while.
Tchuk was on the verge of making his way around the firepit and giving the impertinent whelp physical cause to respect his betters when a hard little hand grasped the boy’s arm and spun him about to face the combined wrath of two of his clanswomen.
Karee and Myrah Skaht, both of them about as damp as was the boy, Buhd, having but just laved themselves and their garments in the riverlet, were clearly hopping mad.
“How dare you speak so to Hunt Chief Tchuk, you puling snotnose!” snarled Karee, striking him with some force in the chest with the flat of one calloused little hand.
With the boy’s attention thus distracted from her, Myrah took the opportunity to kick his shin, hard, with the toe of her fine leather riding boot, snapping, “Look at your clan chiefs daughter, you insubordinate puppy! It was my father gave the rule to Tchuk Skaht for this hunt, therefore, it’s my father’s—your chiefs—orders you would disobey. I should let the hunt chief kill you as you deserve, but I, myself, came close enough to my death today to relish life … even so worthless a life as yours.”
She kicked him again, on the other shin, then raised her voice. “Know you all, on the hunt today, I arrowed a shoat and, failing to kill it outright, foolishly pursued it into heavy brush. The shoat’s squeals brought out a monstrous old long-tushed boar. He charged my mare, savaged her, and she reared suddenly, casting me from the saddle. Then that hellish boar made for me, and you would all be building me a pyre and sending me home to Wind, this night, save for the heroism and strength of Gy Linsee. He rode up, arrowed the boar twice, then came in afoot to take a beast that outweighed him by hundreds of pounds on his spear and hold him there until more hunters came up to kill the creature.
“That is why he is to be our guest at food, on this evening. And any who offer him less than he deserves, than he has earned in full this day, will assuredly find the blade of my knife in his flesh.”
After a single, slow-moving, grim-faced sweep of her glance completely around the circle, she suddenly smiled and added, “Who knows, Kindred? Perhaps Uncle Milo will honor our fire and food, as well, with his presence. Then, maybe, he’ll tell us all more of his tales of the olden days as he did last night.”
If there was any one thing in particular that Horse-clansfolk instinctively honored, it was proven bravery, even in an enemy , . . especially in an enemy. With the tale of Gy Linsee’s courageous feat in succoring their chiefs daughter become common knowledge, the big young man was received and feted in time-hoary Horse-clans tradition, for all his un-Horseclanslike size and height, his un-Kindredlike dark hair and eyes and his Linsee lineage. And, as all had hoped, Uncle Milo readily accepted the invitation of Hunt Chief Tchuk Skaht and dined around their firepit on the thick stew, the baked tubers, the roasted meats and the oddments of nuts and late fruits.
The meal concluded, those who had done the day’s cooking repaired to the riverbank to scour the precious metal pots with sand and cold water, then filled them with fresh water and brought them back to fireside for the preparation of the morning draft of herb and root tea, which, with a few bites of hard cheese, was the breakfast of most Horseclansfolk.
The rest of the diners sat ringed about the firepit. They picked their teeth with splinters of firewood, cleaned their knives, wiped at greasy hands and faces. They chatted, both aloud and telepathically, or brought out uncompleted handicraft projects to work at by the firelight. One group of boys and girls set a small pot of cold, congealed fish glue to heat in a nestlet of coals, laying a bundle of presmoothed, prerounded dowels by, along with sharp knives, collected feathers and preshaped hunting points of bone and threads of soaked, supple sinew, all for arrow-making.
One of the older boys began to carefully remove the bark from a six-foot length of tough hornbeam—the best part of a sapling killed through some natural cause a year or so before and then cured where it stood by the winds and sun. The boy had recognized it for the rare prize that it was—such made for fine spear shafts or the hafts of war axes—and he meant to finish it as much as possible before they rode back to the clan camp, where he would make of it a gift to his father.
Slowly, carefully, using a belt knife for the drawknife he lacked, helped by a cousin who steadied the sapling, the boy took off the bark in long, even strips, which he flicked into the firepit and out of his way. With the last of the horny outer bark gone, he sheathed his knife, took the two-inch-thick length of wood upon his lap and began to sand it with a coarse-grained, fist-sized river rock, keeping a finer-grained pebble of equal size close to hand for semifinal finishing.
Two different youngsters—a boy and a girl—squatted and braided thin strips of rawhide and sinew into strong riatas. Others honed the edges of various types of knives, spearheads and axes, or the points of fishhooks, gaffhooks and hunting darts. Yet another young Skaht was industriously knapping a lucky find of ancient glass— shards of a bottle broken long centuries before and rendered a deep purple by hundreds of years of unremitting sun—into projectile points, such points being much favored for hunting, since they needed no fire-hardening as did bone and their points and edges were sharper and more penetrating than even honed steel; he already had knapped and fitted to a hardwood hilt a larger, triangular piece of the glass to be used for the splitting of sinews.
With a speed born of manual dexterity and much practice, Myrah Skaht was converting a length of antler into a barbed head for a fish spear, her knifeblade flashing in the firelight. All the while, she engaged in silent converse with Gy Linsee, where he sat between Hunt Chief Tchuk Skaht and Uncle Milo, both she and Gy being gifted with better than average telepathic abilities (that trait called “mindspeak” by the folk of the Horse-clans).
The boy and girl conversed on a tight, personal beaming, and such was the very way that Milo “bespoke” Tchuk Skaht. “They are fine young people, Tchuk, all of them I’ve seen, this night; those who have the good fortune to live to maturity will bring great honor to Skaht, of that you may be sure.”
The hunt chief beamed his sincere thanks for the compliment to his clan and young clansfolk, but then sighed audibly and shook his head, setting his still-damp braids asway. “But so few will be still alive in ten years, fewer still in twenty, and it seems that always the very best are they who first go to Wind. They die in war, in the hunt, in herding, they succumb to wounds, to fevers and other illnesses. The girls, many of them, will die during or just after childbirth, and both boys and girls will be swept off and drowned in river crossings, will fail to outrun prairie fires or will be done to death in stupid, pointless, singular accidents. We two sit amongst a bare twoscore or so only half of whom will ever live to even my age, yet I know of Kindred clans that number more than twice as many younkers, warriors and maiden archers.”
He sighed even more deeply and again shook his head. “It would just seem that Clan Skaht is intended by Sacred Sun and by Wind to remain small and weak upon the land. And ever fewer Kindred of other clans seem of a mind to wed into Clan Skaht, to accept our boys and girls as spouses for their own clansfolk or even to host our wandering hunters as befits true Kindred. And this great mystery is not of my mind alone, Uncle Milo. Right often have my chief and the subchiefs and bard in council discussed these very topics … vainly.”
Milo frowned. “Oh, come now, Tchuk, you are an intelligent man, and so too are they, else they would not be leaders of their clan, but you and they have chosen first and foremost to think only within narrow limits. Open your mind, man, loose your thoughts, and you quickly will see the basic reason for all … well, for most of the afflictions of not only your clan but of Clan Linsee, as well.