“Flee, brothers, run!” Again came Whitepaws frantic mindspeak. “Run! Run back to the clan camp and fetch back the cats and the warriors, for more Dirtmen now come on horses. They are too many to fight, they …”
The cat’s mindspeak broke off suddenly, and none of the triplets could again find Whitepaws’ mind, range as they might. Between them. Tim and Peet managed somehow to lift the bleeding, dead-weight carcass of Kills-elk onto the withers of Peet’s dancing, nervous horse, binding it to the saddle pommel with a length of tough braided hide hurriedly cut from a bola. More bola cords went to bind the three wounded boys into their saddles.
That done, Tim unsnapped his arrow case from the saddle of his dead mare and slung it over his shoulder, then pulled his spear from beneath her. Grasping a handful of mane, he swung astride one of the pack horses that they had not taken the time to saddle, and the six boys rode west at a flat-out run, Tim in the lead, his thick red braids whipping behind him.
They had ridden on for almost a mile when from out a stand of taller grasses on their left ran at least a score of big, tall Dirtmen, with spears, a few long bows and straight-bladed swords, and one with a long, shiny contraption of metal and wood.
“Around them, to the right!” Tim broadbeamed to all the boys. “Fast, brothers, before they can extend enough to block us off!”
Obedient to Tim’s command, the knot of riders swerved. Then they were in the clear … or so they thought. But another of those horrendous. thunderlike. roaring cracks bellowed behind them and Tim’s packhorse mount went down by the nose, sending the boy tumbling over the head of the stricken animal. The arrow case was torn from off his back, but he stoically bore the inevitable bruises and abrasions, refusing to release his grips on either spear or bow or the three arrows between the fingers of his bow hand.
Leaving the wounded in the care of the other unhurt boy, Gil Daiviz of Krooguh. Peet wheeled his clumsy, overburdened horse about to ride back to where his brother was just arising from the ground.
“NO!” Tim shouted and mindspoke, both at once, then added in mindspeak only. “No, brother, there are just too many of the bastards for three of us to fight … for long, anyway. And your horse has too much of a load already. Tell Father that I died as befits a Krooguh. Now, ride, brother mine, and bring back the clan to avenge my blood and life.”
The Dirtmen were now running toward the lone boy and the dead horse, and Peet lingered just long enough to speed a bone-headed hunting arrow which thunked into the chest of the big brown-bearded swordsman in the lead. Then the boy reined about and galloped in pursuit of his comrades, his little white teeth set in, drawing red blood from his lower lip, and his unashamed tears flowing freely over his dusty cheeks.
His mind still locked with Tim’s, he saw what followed through his brother’s eyes. Considering the man with the long thing that he assumed correctly had somehow killed his horse to be his most dangerous opponent, Tim sent his first shaft winging on its goose feathers and took grim pleasure in noting that the tall, gangly man dropped the long thing, a rod that resembled an unfletched arrow and a decorated cow horn, to clutch frantically with both big hands at the short arrow now sunk to its fletchings into his body just below the short ribs.
Tim’s second loosing dropped a spearman ten yards away, and his third and last arrow sank into the eye of a smooth-shaven blond man armed with one of the long, straight swords. Then the little boy dropped his now useless bow and crouched with his spear grasped in both small hands for his last stand, breast to breast, hugely outnumbered, but unafraid.
The first Dirtman to reach Tim was fatally overconfident. He stamped in, shouting and swinging a powerful slash with his broad-bladed sword, Tim simply ducked under the hissing steel and used the knife-edged blade of his wolf spear to slash his unarmored opponent’s throat. It was all over so fast that the man immediately behind the first had that same bloody spear blade between his ribs before he could even set himself to fight.
Unable to jerk his own spear free, Tim armed himself with the longer, heavier, less well-balanced weapon of his second opponent. He was carefully maneuvering, weighing the unfamiliar spear to locate points of balance and watching the three big Dirtmen warily stalking him, when, with a sudden, intense and unbearable pain all along the left side of his head, all the world became a single, impenetrable blackness.
XIV
When he had had the full story from the open memories of Leenah and Behtiloo (for little Peet, utterly drained, both physically and emotionally, was sunk deep in an exhausted sleep). Chief Sami look only long enough to exchange his boiled-leather hunting armor for his inherited steel scale shirt and his game-wise hunting horse for his big roan stallion, Bonebreaker, king of the Clan Krooguh herd.
Then, summoning all the warriors, maidens and matrons, he gave them a brief rendition of the events—the completely unprovoked sneak attack upon a party of peacefully hunting Krooguh boys by adult Dirtmen. He related the murders from ambush of the first three children to die, told of the two who had suffered grievous wounds and lived barely long enough to get back to camp and of one of his own young sons and a brave cat brother who now lay in the chief yurt, sorely hurt.
Lastly, he spoke with grim pride of the glorious death of little Tim Krooguh, who had Slain at least five adult men, then willingly given his own young life that his brothers and his wounded comrades might escape. Speaking, as he was to Kindred Horseclansfolk, he did not need to stress the inherent baseness of Dirtmen or the depthless evil of men who would coldly slay innocent little children.
Leaving the clan camp guarded by the maidens, the matrons and a few superannuated warriors under the command of his uncle, subchief Buhd Hansuhn of Krooguh, Sami, at the head of seventy-two fully armed warriors and twenty mature prairiecats, shortly rode out, on the trail—the very real blood trail—by which the battered party of boys had returned.
They rode out fully prepared for a raid in force or whatever else might befall them: four spare horses for every rider, more horses fitted with the special saddles needed by the prairiecats, packhorses and mules laden with case on case of arrows, bundles of war darts, spare weapons, coils of braided-rawhide rope, pitch and oil for fire arrows, dried herbs and prepared ointments and soft cloths for dressing wounds, many pounds or hard cheese, jerked meat and pemmican, waxed-leather bags of water.
Behtiloo Hansuhn of Krooguh rode behind Chief Sami and beside her eldest son, Hwahlis Hansuhn of Krooguh. Rant and rave and shout as they might, not one of her sons or her grandsons had been able to dissuade her of her intention to ride with the war party. Finally, and as gracefully as the circumstances made possible, Chief Sami had caved in, able to console himself and his pride somewhat by thinking aloud that his grandmother, for all her advanced years still could pull a heavier bow than could some of his warriors.
Blackback, the prairiecat, had gleaned some useful facts regarding the topography of the route the boys had taken toward the east from the minds of Peet and Kills-elk, and that, combined with her keen senses and those of the other cats, plus the plain splashes of blood here and there, allowed the war party to travel fast and confidently; therefore, it was more than an hour before sunset when they spotted from afar the numerous black specks wheeling in the sky.