Briefly, she quivered in newfound terror, but then her keen mind took charge. Yes, the raiders did drink fresh, hot blood, but they drank water, as well; they might be headhunters, cannibals or both, these facts remained to be proved or disproved, but up to now, they had offered no violence or any real ill treatment to Bettylou. Indeed, they one and all had treated her far more kindly than had her own folk of late, at least since she had been proved one of the Accursed of God.
As regarded those other disgusting attributes of the legendary barbarians. Bettylou could not call any she had been near filthy. Yes indeed, they did smell very different from the boys and men around whom she had grown up, but they looked no grubbier and smelled no worse than any farmer or herder or hunter of the Abode might look or smell between his monthly baths.
And as she watched, this particular matter was resolved, as by twos and threes, raiders trooped down to the brook bank, stripped to bare skin and dived in to swim and frolic like boys, shouting and splashing for a while, then squatting in the shallows to wash their dusty, sweat-tacky trousers and shirts.
When the raiders stripped to swim and wash, Bettylou noted that although their faces, hands and other regularly exposed skin was nut-brown from sun and weather, the bodies of most were as fair as was her own, all save one man who was so different in so many ways as to make her think him sprung of a different race than the others.
Where they were fair, he was of a light-olive skin tone. Few of the other raiders were much taller than was she, but this man towered to better than four cubits, she reckoned. His bones, too, were heavier than those of the other raiders, though not quite so heavy as those of the men of the Chosen. And where men of the Chosen all developed thick, round, rolling musculature, this tall man and most of the smaller ones were equipped with flat muscles. Moreover, the tall man’s hair was as black as a crow’s wing, though streaked at the temples with strands of gray. He had not yet come close enough for her to see the color of his eyes.
Bettylou had decided finally that the pile of meat and innards was really and truly a sacrifice of some kind, when those for whom it was intended slipped silently out of the woods behind her to claim it from the heaving, crawling, buzzing carpet of metallic-hued flies.
The girl sprang to her feet, shrieked but the once before an excess of terror froze her throat. Then her eyes rolled upward in their sockets and she slumped bonelessly to the ground.
The bigger, dark man, he who had fired the stable, paced over to where Tim Krooguh crouched over the Dirtman girl, concern writ plainly upon his face. Laying a hand on the shoulder of the wiry clansman he spoke aloud.
“I’m sorry, Tim. I should either have mindspoken the cats to come into camp slowly so that she could come to see that they were not dangerous to anyone here, or beamed assurance into her mind beforehand, as I did on the first part of the ride, last night. But I’m tired and … Oh, well, what’s done is now done. Lets just hope the poor child hasn’t been shocked into premature labor.”
Two huge felines strolled over to stand flanking the taller man, communicating silently, mind to mind, even while licking broad tongues absently at bits of meat and spots of blood on their furry muzzles.
“We, too, are sorry. Uncle Milo. We did not mean to so frighten cat brother Tim Krooguh’s captured female.”
The tall man just shrugged. “As I just told Tim, what’s now done is done, irrevocable. But it was all my fault, really. not any misdeed of yours. What news from our cat-sister? Do the Dirtmen make to follow us?”
The average prairiecat could send its thoughts ranging over far more distance than any human telepath could expect to either send or receive; this was but one of the talents that had made the human-feline alliance of the prairiecats and the Horseclans a very valuable one.
Since first this unique breed of great cats had come to live among the clans some fourscore years agone. they had helped their two-leg “brothers” to either exterminate or absorb the vast majority of other tribes of nomads upon the prairies, plains and high plains, so that now young warriors could be blooded only through means of raiding the permanent settlements of Dirtmen—the despised, alien farmers who had begun several generations ago to encroach upon the prairie here and there, coming from older settlements in the east, the southeast and the northeast to plant colonies, fell trees, erect permanent buildings, burn off the tall grasses, dam or divert streams and bring the dark soil under the merciless sway of their ox-drawn. iron-bladed plows.
The larger of the two cats—a mature, red-brown male, with a pair of upper canines between three and four inches in length—had seated himself close beside the tall man’s leg. With his long, thick tail curled about to rest upon his widespread forepaws, he commenced to lick his chest fur, mindspeaking the while in answer.
No, Uncle Milo, Mother-of-killers says that most of the craven Dirtmen are fighting the fires in their great yurts of wood and stone, they and their females and even their cubs. Some few are trying to round up the stock you two-legs drove out and this cat and flopears scattered so thoroughly last night.
“She wishes to know how much longer she should watch the silly Dirtmen. She says that the noises they constantly make hurt her ears and that the unholy stink of them sickens her.
The tall man scratched his scalp, beaming his thoughts. “Even if the bastards find our trail quickly, the distance we covered last night will take the likes of them close to two full days to traverse, and by tomorrows dawn, well be back safe in the clan camps. Tell our cat-sister that she can now forget the Dirtmen.”
Flopears—an immature male of lighter color than Elkbane, the older male, but with big bones and the outsize paws and head which presaged the growth looming just ahead in time—did not have ears that were at all floppy. But the name was an old and most honorable name, and he had been granted it to replace his cub name of Steakbone. It was most unusual to grant a warrior-cat name to a less than mature feline, but Flopears had earned it in full measure the previous year when, barely more than a big, gangly cub, on night herd guard, he had slain three full-grown wolves.
This youngest cat was the first to notice the signs of returning consciousness in the female Dirtman captive and without order began to beam soothing, formless thoughts into her awakening mind. While so doing, he noted with mild surprise that her mind was that of an incipient mindspeaker, an inexperienced and completely untrained telepath.
Bettylou Hanson opened her eyes to see the freckled face—even more freckled than her own—of the man who had tied her to the elm tree hovering over her, concern and worry evident upon it and shining from the blue-green eyes under the thick auburn brows. Glancing to her left, she could see the bigger, darker, black-haired man squatting between two monstrous long-fanged cats. Although she clearly recalled screaming and then losing consciousness when those two cats had so suddenly leaped into the midst of the camp from out of the woods behind her, she could not now imagine just why she had then been so in fear of them.
it was like last night; in her mind she once more felt that sense of an utter rightness, of comfort, freedom from any danger, total absence of fear of those men and their cats.
The bigger man spoke, his words understandable Mehrikan, but with slight differences in accent and pronunciation of words. “What is your name, child?”
“Bettylou, Honored Elder, Bettylou Hanson,” she replied, rendering him the title automatically, for although he did not appear to be so old as was Elder Claxton, he too radiated that same, silent, unexpressed and inexpressible air of natural leadership. Then she calmly questioned him.
“Honored Elder, are you all of the heathen rovers? Do you cut off folks’ heads and then eat the bodies?”