Behind the warriors, formed in a rough extenuated crescent, came the king stallion and his herd. Then the high-wheeled carts and the wagons trundled along, the former drawn by teams of mules or horses, the latter by lowing spans of oxen. The matrons rode beside the draft animals directing the horses and mules by rein or mindspeak, the oxen by judicious use of ox prod or stockwhip.
Poles and hides and felt strips and the lathing frameworks of tents and yurts, the meager furnishings—carpets, brass lamps, folding tables, chests and the like—spare clothing, bedding, weapons, and personal possessions, nonperishable foodstocks, bales of hides and furs, tools, everything, were packed into or onto the wagons and the carts or onto the loads of pack beasts. Atop the laden wagons and carts rode the very aged, the few ill or infirm, and those children assigned to watch over the prairiecat kittens and cubs tethered here and there to the cargo. (Kittens and cubs not only tired quickly and overheated easily, but were cursed with a distressing and virtually inborn tendency to stray.)
To the rear were the herds—cattle, sheep, a few goats—all herded by a few superannuated warriors and a horde of mounted boys and girls still too young to commence their serious war training. A bit behind the herds, eating dust, rode a widespread rearguard of maiden-archers and a few prairiecats.
Beside one of the chief wagons of Clan Krooguh, the first and principal wife of the chief in all save name ambled along astride a smooth-gaited piebald mare. Having passed her ox prod to her husband’s second wife—Anee Makaiuh of Krooguh—and unlaced the front of her shirt, Behtiloo Hansuhn of Krooguh had lifted her winter-born boychild from the cradle rack affixed to the cantle of her saddle and given him her bright-red left nipple.
On this day, Behtiloo had been Tim’s wife and a clanswoman for almost fifteen years, and none save her adoptive kinfolk would have or could have suspected from her appearance, bearing, behavior or demeanor that she was anything save Horseclans-born and -bred. Indeed, Behtiloo herself often experienced some difficulty in recalling how things had been when she was not a Krooguh.
Her exposed skin surfaces were now every bit as weather-darkened as were her husband’s, her long, golden hair was done into thick braids and lapped over her crown to bear the weight of her helmet, and she was attired like any other man or woman of the Kindred—the loose, baggy shirt and trousers of richly embroidered homespun, calf-length boots of felt with leather soles and wood—and-leather heels, broad leathern waistbelt supporting a pouch and a couple of knives, with a frog for attachment of the dirk.
Chief Dik Krooguh was so feeble this spring that he could not sit a horse but had to ride in a specially fitted cart, and most people opined that he would never see another spring. But then they had been so opining for more that fifteen years, and he had outlived many a one of the opiners. True, his health had not been good since the first day Behtiloo had seen him, but he had managed to survive all of his wives and concubines, his sister, Lainuh, and all other close kin save Tim, his heir. He had lived longer than any of his old cronies, save only Djahn Staiklee, who upon the demise of his wife, Lainuh, had wed a young, pretty blond woman, Mairee Daioh, when Dahnah had made it clear to him that she would rather remain a concubine than become a Horseclans wife.
The aged chief still sat in clan councils, but every other function of the chieftaincy was carried out by Tim, had been for more than ten years now. Tim it had been who had led the Krooguh warriors who had joined with the warriors of several other Kindred clans in extirpating a savage, treacherous non-Kindred tribe of nomads. This had occurred four years ago, far and far to the northwest of their present location.
At fourteen summers, Hwahlis Hansuhn of Krooguh was already the second-tallest man of his clan (only Djahn Staiklee stood taller) and, with the big bones and rolling muscles of men of his mothers stock, he was an impressive figure of a Horseclans warrior as he rode beside his “father” and chief, Tim, in the warrior line.
The twins, Buhd and Behti, were almost a year younger than Hwahlis, and both were of the small-boned, flat-muscled Kindred stock in appearance, although Buhd was already a bit taller than were most of his peers.
Four of Behtiloo’s children by Tim had died at various ages of various causes. Her next-eldest living child was a girl, Ehlee, who at the mature age of six summers was seldom to be found far from her year-younger brother, Shawn. Behtiloo considered herself fortunate in the extreme that so many of her children had so far survived.
For Clan Krooguh stood in dire need of every living soul. Although the united Kindred clans had been eventually and fully victorious in their protracted fight against the northerner nomads, their foemen had fought hard and long and well and the battle losses had been truly staggering. Only a bare score of Krooguh men now flanked Tim and Hwahlis, and nearly half of these men were too young to have taken any part in the costly campaign. The long trek back south had taken three years to accomplish, and with so few veteran hunters left to forage for the clan, each of those three harsh, pitiless winters had cost dearly in terms of young and aged.
They had wintered most lately with Clan Dohluhn, but this Kindred clan, though of normal strength and numbers, had few young men of marriageable age, so Tim was hurrying toward the great Kindred gathering of the clans with the openly avowed purpose of luring young warriors from stronger but poorer clans to the marriage beds of his well-dowered Krooguh maidens.
And well-dowered those maidens would surely be, for the sack of the camps of the northern nomads had vastly enriched each and every clan that had taken part in exterminating those who had dwelt therein. Cattle they had taken, and sheep and goats. Weapons, of course, and horse gear, carts and wagons and harness, furniture of-all sorts, metal lamps, fine furs—bales of them—more bales of hides, foodstocks, jewelry and items of adornment, thick carpets and blankets, cookware hardware, hundreds of yards of cloth as well as existing clothing and cloaks and boots.
In addition to the more mundane items of loot, there had been several yurtlike structures mounted on huge wagons. One side of each wagon could be dropped so that the two halves of the dwelling might be fitted together, and each oversized wagon was drawn by four spans of huge, shaggycoated, longhorned, but quite docile oxen of a breed unfamiliar to the Kindred. It was decided during the division of loot that one of these curiosities should go to each chief, with the extra one going to Clan Krooguh in recognition of their especially hard fighting and heavy losses.
Behtiloo Hansuhn of Krooguh had been living in one of the wagon-mounted habitations for most of four years now, and she still was not certain that she would not have preferred a simple, honest, everyday yurt. Chief Dik, of course, loved the device, since it kept his bed and swollen joints raised well above the cold and dampness of the ground. But to Behtiloo, it was harder to keep uniformly warm in winter, much more of a bother to get and keep clean inside, and she was always secretly afraid that she or whoever was cooking with the still-unfamiliar metal brazier would burn down the wagon-yurt and everything in it.
It was not the second wagon-yurt in which Behtiloo kept house and lived (that one was occupied by Djahn Staiklee and his new wife, concubine and get) but the larger, more luxurious one, for since the death of the last of his wives, Chief Dik had had Tim, Behtiloo, Anee and their children take over the chief yurt.
In addition to seeking husband/warriors for the clan, Tim had often stated his intention to trade off some of the superfluous loot awarded Clan Krooguh for enough metal to enable Rohluhnd Krooguh, the clan smith, to fashion strong helmets, all of steel and designed in a distinctive pattern developed by the two of them; there was to be a helmet for each of the Krooguh warriors. Tim also yearned for one of the leathern shins sewn with steel scales, but doubted that the clan could afford so hellishly expensive a purchase, not with so many dowries to be paid.