“Oh, no, not him again. Bettiloo. Furball there is the most unashamed glutton in the camp. As a nursing kitten, he almost sucked his poor mother dry, going after her dugs whenever the poor cat made to sleep or rest, and as a cub he is half again the size of the rest of his littermates. He will eat anything that he can get his teeth into, and he ranges far out in search of prey, which is good; but what is bad is that he never is sated, and here in camp he will steal food from those too wise for him to cozen out of it.”
She had been mindspeaking, and, still eating, still growling, the young cat replied threateningly, “Beware, two-leg female, do not so slander Killer-of-all-things, lest he tear out your ugly, furless throat! This cat never steals, he only takes that which he needs, as is the right of any clansman.”
Ilsah trilled a laugh. “Call it what you wish, Furball, but you were wise to get out of here before Ehstrah gets back from the sweatbath, else she’ll lay her strap on your fat carcass again, drive you squalling out of the yurt as she did the day she found you hanging by the teeth from that dried brisket.”
“Ugly and vicious as is that abominable two-leg female, she does not frighten this cat!” was the cub’s quick response. but then, of a sudden, he grabbed one more mouthful of the curds, crossed the width of the yurt in two leaps and was out the door.
A few moments after Furball’s abrupt departure, the older woman, Ehstrah, crossed the threshold, every bit as bare as was Ilsah, her unbraided hair dripping water down her back and her buttocks.
“Make certain everything edible is hung high or shut away,” she instructed Ilsah. I’m certain I spotted that roguish cat, Furball, skulking about our yurt as I approached it. I’m going to have to have Milo converse with the cat chief about Furball again. I fear me.
“Well, so you’re among the living again, Bettiloo Hansuhn. Had no trouble finding food, did you? Good, but don’t limit yourself to a bowl of curds, child. You’re welcome to anything in the yurt—milk, meat, tea, berries, honey, whatever we have. No one goes hungry in the Horseclans camp unless all go hungry.”
Despite her protestations thai the curds were sufficient to her hunger, the older and the younger there and then sat the girl down and fed her to repletion and beyond—a handful of tiny hard-boiled birds’ eggs, several joints of a cold roasted wild rabbit, chunks of some sort of a cold gruel, fried to crispness and topped with honey, all washed down with fresh, warm milk.
The two women had not only cooked for Bettylou, but had avidly joined her in eating the meal. With all the bones well gnawed, skillfully cracked and sucked free of marrow, with the last crumbs of the fried gruel and the remaining smears of honey devoured, the older woman addressed Bettylou, saying. “All right, child, you can start stripping off those clothes. After riding for days in them and then sleeping in them for a day and a half, I’d guess they could stand a good soaking and a day of wind and sunlight. Gahbee will be back soon, then you can go with her to the sweat yurt, and when you’ve bathed, you and Gahbee can wash your clothes and Milo’s. It just never ceases to amaze me how incredibly filthy he can get them riding a raid.
“Well, what are you waiting for, child? Undress.”
Then, belatedly recalling Milo’s admonitions and that this new Horseclanswoman-to-be was a scioness of an entirely different, an alien, Dirtman culture, she sent her mind probing into that of Bettylou, who had not yet learned how to shield her innermost thoughts from a telepath.
Ehstrah squatted and, taking the girl’s hand, drew her down beside her on the floor. “Bettiloo, please recall that you are no longer amongst the folk who spawned you and would have cast you out soon. We Horseclansfolk find nothing evil or shameful in the flesh and skin that houses our spirits, no more than do the cats and horses. We wear clothing simply for protection against the elements, for warmth or to prevent chafing by armor or weapons belts. So purge your mind and your heart of these old and most peculiar Dirtman ways. You now are—or, rather, soon will be—one of the freest, most favored of all women under the domain of Sacred Sun, a woman of the Horseclans. You must set yourself to the task of thinking and behaving like one, child.”
With such trepidation, Bettylou first kicked off the felt boots, then lifted the faded, much-stained and now-filthy scarlet dress over her head. Turning to face the wall, red with shame despite the older woman’s words, the girl untied the waist thong and allowed the dirty, sweat-tacky trousers to fall about her ankles.
Ehstrah hissed softly between her teeth at the sight of the new scars furrowing Bettylous back from neck to knees. At that moment she came to feel real hatred for the particular brand of Dirtmen who would do such to a pretty young girl for the “crime” of being quickened. So it was that, not waiting for Gahbee, she gathered up the clothes herself and, after having Bettylou step back into her boots, led her by the hand out of the yurt and toward the sweat yurt. She felt very protective of this young woman who had suffered so much and must now be feeling so alone here. Besides, a second bath this morning could do no harm.
IV
The hunters had returned with a full bag of assorted game, and parties of young boys and girls under the leadership of certain of their elders had ridden far out into the stretches of prairie beyond the camp environs and brought back travois after heaped-high travois of roots and tubers and herbs and wild grains and berries and other fruits. Children fanned out into the nearer grasslands with slings and snake sticks, baskets to hold eggs and bags to carry snake carcasses or whatever other small game they were able to down. The planned celebratory feast was becoming a reality.
A long pit was dug straight through the dusty middle of the encampment, piled high with wood and dried dung and twisted bundles of dried grasses, then set ablaze, while a horde of the women and slaves readied the various viands to cook as soon as a suitable bed of coals was available. Precious metal racks and tripods were brought from the various yurts and laid by ready for use in preparing the food.
Bettylou Hanson was set to grinding a mixture of wild grain and seeds into a coarse meal in a stone quern. Each time she filled a waiting bowl. Ilsah took it away and replaced it with an empty one, then made dough, kneaded it and fashioned small, flat cakes, setting them beside the door. Periodically, Gahbee collected them and took them to the verge of the blazing firepit, where they and others prepared in other yurts were being baked in a reflector oven.
At one end of the camp, those adult men not engaged in tending the firepit worked at skinning and butchering the field-dressed game. Most of them were completely nude and blood-splashed and -streaked from head to boottops. Older or infirm men sat or squatted close by keeping the knives and cleavers sharp, framing the hides on wooden racks while they still were fresh and pliable, swatting at flies, smoking their pipes and chatting endlessly.
No sooner was the bulk of the large-game butchering done than the children came trooping in with their bags of headless, writhing snakes, some dozens of rabbits and hares, a silver dog-fox, a brace of fat groundhogs, a porcupine, a large spotted skunk and a rare prize which brought all the men gathering about it and the tiny girl who had downed it with a single, shrewdly cast slingstone. then manhandled it back to where bigger children could take over.
Most of the men—all of those under forty winters—had never seen an antelope so small. The little beast weighed about twenty pounds and might have been the young of a larger species, save for fully developed scrotum and the pair of short, slender, needle-pointed black horns that adorned its now-cracked skull.
“Well, I’ll be dipped in dung!” exclaimed Milo, “A dagger-horn, it is, or I’m the king stallion. I’ve seen a dozen bowmen loose a cloud of arrows at a herd of these without hitting a one, and here’s a prime buck downed by a girl of six with a damned sling! Will wonders never cease?”