Behtiloo could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that the paths of Clan Krooguh and the plains traders had crossed. The mere sight of the long columns of lumbering wagons snaking across the prairies, well guarded by Kindred warriors of many clans who had been hired on for the season, as well as by big steel-clad men on brawny horses from the half-mythical lands far and far to the east, had always been sufficient to give the clansfolk fresh talking-fodder for months after.
Now, Behtiloo could barely wait to tour the dozens of trader booths certain to be erected at the gathering. Tim might have his own “shopping list” of husbands and steel armor, but she had her own. First and most important, she wanted steel needles of varying lengths, sizes and shapes, and with them she was in search of the fine, brilliantly colored, fast-dyed threads and yarns with which Horseclans embroidery was done. If she could find them at a decent price, she also intended to buy a few pounds of brass-headed tacks for decorating a certain chest. So much for the professional traders, but for her other desire, she would need to seek out a man or woman of one of the far-southern clans, for only from them could one obtain the all-leather boots that came almost to the knee and were so beautifully tooled and colored and stitched.
With the boychild full of warm milk and sleeping soundly, Behtiloo tuned in her saddle and returned the infant to his carrying cradle, secured the straps and thongs, then bade her mare halt while she threw her off leg over the pommel and slid from the saddle. Completely oblivious of the folk moving in carts and wagons, on horseback and afoot all about her, she hitched up her weapons belt, unloosed the drawstring of her trousers and half-squatted long enough to void her bladder, before remounting the mare and taking the ox prod back from Anee.
In addition to more personal purchases, of course, Behtiloo would be obliged to seek out and bargain for certain items for special purposes within the clan; this came with her function of chatelaine of the chief’s yurt, there was need, for one thing, to replenish the supply of alcohol—taikeelah or, this far north, probably one of those bastard concoctions that the traders sold under the generic name of hwiskee—a half-dozen twenty-gallon barrels of it, anyway. There were other oddments, as well. Also, Behtiloo had had the joyous surprise of a personal windfall recently, and she had decided to use it to surprise someone else.
Always thrifty, made so by their harsh life, the Kindred had taken everything that had even looked as if it might possibly be of some future use from the camps of their foes, Among the items which had fallen into Behtiloo’s hands were some bundles of clothing, most of it bloodstained, having been stripped from the corpses of warriors.
One of these bundles had somehow gotten shoved into the bottom of a chest, and she had excavated it only a few months back, in the depths of the winter just past. It had been while she was picking through the old clothes that she had felt the hard and regular outlines of some dozen items sewn into the quilting of a blood-darkened canvas pourpoint.
Upon removing the stitchings, she had discovered twelve thick, heavy discs of what could only be gold, all the space on both sides covered over in a tracery resembling intertwined vines. As a very young girl, she had seen coinage of gold and silver and copper passed between the Elder and the Patriarchs of the Abode of the Righteous when dealing with traders, so she was dead certain that she now held some variety of coinage, but there was no mark that she could read on it to tell her its true value. She had no slightest trust of any of the traders—none of the nomads (or the Dirtmen, for that matter!) trusted them—and chances were very slim that any of the Kindred clansfolk would know any more about the coins than did she, so she could only hope that Uncle Milo would be there.
He was, looking no whit different than she recalled of him from fifteen years ago. But he did not recall her, not immediately, and she quickly realized that she had been silly or foolish to suppose that he might, so much had time and age and circumstances altered her appearance.
“So you are the woman that that pitiful child became?” he said wonderingly, at last. “Poor, old Ehstrah—Wind keep her—always said that one day you’d be the very epitome of all the Kindred. Your husband—Tahm, was it?—he became chief of Krooguh, then?”
She shook her head. “Not yet, Uncle Milo, though he fills every function of that office, shoulders every responsibility; no, old Dik Krooguh still clings to life and his title.
“But … but, please, Uncle Milo, when did Ehstrah … go to Wind? She always was so kind to me, like a mother, she was.”
Milo sighed. “Yes, our Ehstrah was indeed a good, a very good woman, it was seven … no, eight years ago. I was off on a hunt and she was kicked in the back by a mule. No bones seemed to be broken, though she was winded, of course, and sore, but she went on about her usual tasks. Then, some week or so later, after I was returned from the hunt, she began to piss bloody urine, then pure blood. I suspect that mule’s kick damaged her kidneys, but whatever the cause, she continued to lose blood by day and by night, she weakened dramatically, then a flux took her and, weak as she was become, she died of it.
“Gahbee drowned during a river crossing ten yeas ago. But Ilsah still bides with me. She’s my first wife now, though I have taken two others to share the burden with her. You must come and visit our yurt, Behtiloo.”
“I will, Uncle Milo, and you must come to the Krooguh chief yurt, too. If old Chief Dik can remember you—for he recalls things and folks seldom anymore, and then only in brief snatches—I know that he’ll be mightily pleased to see you. Tim, my husband, will, too; and you must see my son, Hwahlis, and my other children.
“But here and now. I have some strange loot I would like you to look at, I need to know the true value of these pieces, for I mean to buy steel scale shirts for my husband and my eldest son. If possible, I also would like to get enough steel and brass sheets to fashion a score of helmets.”
Squatting, facing her in the dust, Milo Morai fingered the twelve discs of ruddy gold, each of them a good two inches in diameter. With his horny fingertips, he traced the weaving, cursive lines standing up from both obverse and reverse of the golden coins.
At length, he asked simply, “Where did you come by these?”
Briefly, she told him.
He nodded once, then said. “The design is not decoration merely, though it serves that purpose too, of course. No, the lines are letters in a very old language called Ahrahbik. This language was in fairly wide use even in the time before this time, and so little has it changed since then that these could well be from that long-ago period. But I think they are newer.
“For one thing, they are not much worn and have not been shaven or clipped at all, as most really ancient coins usual have been. The damage done to that one looks to me like sword or dirk cut, and the one there that is bent and almost holed, that damage was almost assuredly done by the point of an arrow or small dart point. Sewn into the quilting of a warrior’s gambeson, they could easily have been so abused over the years, totally unbeknownst to the erstwhile abusers.
“No. Behtiloo, I am of an opinion that these are coinage a kingdom that they say lies far to the east of this place beyond the Great River by moons of traveling. But let us now go to a trader I know of old and see if I’m right.”
The head and face of the trader, Flaivin did not match his beefy, muscular body, nor did his delicate hands with their long, tapering fingers. The head was small and almost completely round, the features sharp and vulpine, the eyes as black and glittery as bits of obsidian. But he seemed friendly enough greeting Milo warmly, like an old and much respected friend.