“I’d not call it an objection. Brother Chief, not yet, at least,” the grizzled man replied, shaking his head. “I’d just like to know what’s wrong with her. When she rode into camp, she was bald as a baby’s arse and her scalp was terribly discolored; that discoloration has faded now and she’s sprouted at least a fuzz of hair on her head, but I want to know what brought about her original condition.
“And this is not nit-picking, Dik Krooguh. Just remember Disease it was killed the ancestors of the Sacred Ancestors and disease has put paid to more Kindred than war or raidings or any other cause I can just now think of. If I’m to keep company with Clan Krooguh, me and mine, I’d be damned certain that they keep their camp and their bloodlines free of disease.
“No, Chief Dik. let the girl speak for herself. She looks bright enough, and you say she mindspeaks. I’d hear her words and thoughts in this matter.”
But Bettylou could not speak, could not even form a thought-beaming, so confused was her mind with a jumble of old litany—Tainted Seed, Scarlet Women, Sinfulness, the Ancient and Deceitful Wickednesses of Womankind. How to make these new, strange people understand …?
However, she did not need to speak at all, for Milo arose from his place and said, “Kindred, the girl is not in any way or manner diseased. Her own folk kept her scalp, shaved smooth and dyed it with root juices.”
“But why, Uncle Milo?” queried the questioner, scratching at his own scalp beneath his thinning hair. “Admitted, these various breeds of Dirtmen harbor some exceedingly peculiar customs and practices that would gag a buzzard, but this batch must all be moon-mad—at least, that’s the opinion of Zak Skaht of Skaht.”
Milo nodded grimly. “I have scanned this girl’s mind and delved deeply into her memories, Kinsfolk, and I have found that I know of her ilk of old. They practice and live by a fanatic and much perverted form of what was, long ago, when the Sacred Ancestors saw birth in the holy city of Ehlai, the principal religion of this land. These folk call themselves the Chosen of God, though I doubt me that any sane god would willingly own them as his. Nor is the pack we raided all of them—there are possibly a full dozen groups scattered along the eastern verges of the prairie.
“As among all folk, more of their females usually live to full maturity than do males; but because their singularly senseless religion allows a man but a single wife and forbids the keeping of concubines, their forefathers devised a cruel means of reducing the excess females in each generation, perverting their already adulterated religion still further in order to countenance their cruelty.
“Even the primal form of their religion taught that woman was the font and container of all evil, that she was the real cause of godly man’s downfall from the grace of their creator. That religion also taught that woman was inferior to man, and that to serve man in all ways, to bear and to suckle his children, and, throughout the whole of her life, to implore the still-wrathful creator for forgiveness for her inherited part in her ancestress’ misdeed were and could be her only functions.”
A ripple of comments, both spoken and telepathic, lapped along the irregular lines of seated clansfolk. Consternation that such silly folk adhering to such arrant stupidities could continue to exist at all was voiced along with heated condemnation of such practices.
Milo raised a hand to draw attention back to himself and his words and beamings. “Wait, Kinsfolk, there is more … and far worse. The tenets I just recounted were of the old, the archaic religion upon which the current creed was built.
“Now each separate pack of these peculiar Dirtmen lives under the suzerainty of a man called by the title ‘Elder’; this is a hereditary office, I have been told, passed down from father to son and so on to grandson and great-grandson. It is one of the functions of this chief to swive each and every girl as soon as she is become nubile, continuing his swivings of them at intervals until they are wedded to some man of the community.
“However, should any of these girls conceive of the Elder, they are degraded, flogged, reviled; their heads are shaven and their scalps are dyed; they are cast out of their families and denied by all of their kin. They are clothed in rags, assigned hard, difficult and lowly chores and fed only such scraps and garbage as they can scavenge.”
The ripple had now become a murmur like that of distant surf. Warriors and matrons and maidens commenced that it might be a good thing to scourge the prairie of such bestial and clearly misogynistic half-wits.
Continuing, with louder voice and stronger beamings, Milo said, “Should the girl miscarry from her ill-treatment, she is flogged again, dragged far, far out on the prairie and left to wander, naked and helpless. For these folks are not as are we; they know not how to find food or even water and can easily die of hunger and thirst in the midst of what we would consider a plentitude of both.
“If she carried to term and delivers a boy-babe, she will be allowed to remain until that babe be weaned then flogged and cast out onto the prairie. Should she, however, bear a girl-babe, they both will be cast out as soon as possible.”
There was silence for a moment after Milo ceased to speak and transmit his thoughts, then Zak Baikuh of Krooguh shook his head slowly and spoke.
“It’s as has been said here, Uncle Milo, this pack of Dirtmen have all clearly lost their wits; not that Dirtmen of any stripe are renowned for wits to begin with, else they’d none of them live out their entire lives in immobile, stinking hovels, all a-wallow in their own filth, as they do.”
“Uncle Milo,” asked Djahn Staiklee of Krooguh, “has ever another Kindred clan admitted a woman born of this singular breed of Dirtmen?”
Milo nodded. “Two that! know of personally, Djahn. One was Clan Grai, and not too many days’ ride from this very spot, either. The other was wedded into Clan Tchizuhm and the girl-babe found with her was adopted, of course. I never got to meet the woman, but I did converse with the daughter, who by then was the first wife of a subchief of Clan Maklenuhn. No doubt there have been others, over the years, but widely spread as our clans are and must be, chances that we would hear of such cases are slim”
Staiklee wrinkled up his forehead and asked, “Grai? Clan Grai? Wasn’t it Clan Grai that was almost wiped out by some strange malady, years agone? Who better than strangers to bring in disease and needless death to our clan?”
Another warrior stood and added, “Yes, Uncle Milo, there are few enough of us Kindred, and our enemies are numerous, savage, and await only our weakening, whatever its cause.”
Chief Dik pursed his lips. “Yes. Uncle Mile, I, too, recall something about that which struck Clan Grai, but …?”
“That which struck Clan Grai, which all but wiped them out.” interjected Milo. had nothing to do with strangers, happened twenty or more years before they ever found that poor girl and her suckling babe. I don’t know what the illness was and I doubt that anyone else will ever know, but it bore some resemblance to one of the killer plagues that almost wiped out all of mankind in the world that once was. Perhaps the clan chanced to camp among, even dug up, artifacts that still harbored seeds of those terrible plagues. But that is all many years past and bears no relation to the matter of this girl, Bettiloo Hansuhn.
“Tim Staiklee of Krooguh lifted her, so he and his clan have first rights, but I rode that raid, too; I led it. She has dwelt in my yurt since the raid, and she and my wives are comfortable together. So be you all warned, if Tim Staiklee of Krooguh does not, for whatever reason, take her to wife, I, Chief Milo Morai of Morai, will surely do so.
Make up your mind, Dik Krooguh. Clan Krooguh’s loss will be the gain of Clan Morai! For,” he added shrewdly. knowing full well just how Horseclansfolk thought, what they truly valued in their lives, “the one characteristic that all of these adopted Dirtman castoffs seem to share is that they all have proved fine breeders; and as our kinsman here has but just remarked, we Kindred are precious few in these lands.”