“There was no fucking need to kill them anyhow, not as outnumbered as they were, and a passel of grown men against less than a dozen children, at that. But that pious fucking fool Claxton is so terrified of Horseclansfolk of any size or sex or age that his very ball-less fucking terror and this senseless fucking reaction to it has dropped us all—every man jack—into the shit, nose-deep, by Steel!”
The old soldier grimaced at a particularly unpleasant memory. “And whatall them fucking farmers done to them dead boys’ pitiful little corpses … the shit-eating bastards! Hell, we didn’t do things like that to them Gruenbergers, and everybody knows they plumb deserved such if anybody does.
“When the Horseclansfolks see those bodies, they’re sure to go plumb crazy-mad, and I, for one, can’t say I blame them one damn bit. Except, where we all are, they’re likely to take that mad out on us too, along of the ones what earned it.”
Suddenly. Roger was jolted from his dismal imagery of falling under the dripping sabers of blood-mad Horseclansmen by one of the troopers he had sent to share the guard of the captured nomad boy.
“Cap’n Roger, you better for to come quick, Them fuckin’ psalm-shouters is jest set to murder thet pore li’l younker. Guy and his sword is all that’s stoppin’ the cocksuckers, right now …”
During the course of their shared run up the length of the second-level porch, the trooper shouted out the gist of the tale above the hollow booming thuds of their heavy jackboots on the boards.
Roger suffered only an inconsequential stab in his left forearm during, his eyeblink-quick disarming of Tim Krooguh. Then, bouncing the blood-tacky little dagger on one horny palm, he openly mocked the enraged farmers.
“You poor, fucking. God-ridden, ball-less substitutes for men, you! I told you all this morning that this boy is my prisoner—mine, Captain-of-dragoons Roger Gorman’s! Had you heeded me at that time, you’d still have your balls, a good deal more of your blood and”—he grinned derisively at the sobbing, gasping, moaning Micah Claxton, whose blood-slimy jawteeth were clearly visible between the lips of the cheek slash—“your girlish beauty.
“Did you suppose yourselves to be dealing with one of your own browbeaten, dispirited spawn, eh? That boy in there is bred of a hundred generations of fighters, and with nary a hair on his chin yet, he’s more a man than any one of you here, who proclaim yourselves as such. I’ll wager my horse and sword that he has more fucking sand in his craw than the whole hagridden nest of you fucking religious maniacs!”
“But … but how could he have gotten that knife, unless a … a demon sent by his father, Satan. brought it to him? He was searched and disarmed, and the door is the only way to enter, and it was solidly locked and barred and guarded by your two men and two of us.” This speech came from the lips of Jeremiah Herbert through teeth clenched against the pain of his slashed-to—the-bone hand.
The trooper, Guy, laughed and slapped his thigh in mirth. while Roger snorted disdainfully. “Half-wit fucking amateurs! You had off his belt, and when you found no knives hung down his back or under his sleeves or strapped to his legs or sticking out of his boottops, you figured you’d stripped him of all his weapons, right? Then the more fools, you!”
Roger look the needle tip of the little dagger between callused fingertips and held it up before their eyes, saying, “Did no one of you hopeless fucking shitheads even think of having off that boy’s boots and seeing if perchance a flat. slender blade or two might be sewn between the layers of felt? Of course not! Your sole talents lie in the directions of psalm-shouting, plow-pushing, and shit-shoveling, and you’d all be fucking wise to remember that the next time you feel the itch to play at soldiering.
“Now, I’m placing a half-squad to guard this boy, and my orders to them will be to spill out the fucking guts of anybody as tries to get at him without me being with that anybody. Now you sorry fucking pack of arseholes just go tell your fucking Elder that, hear?”
But immediately the bleeding, limping, sobbing, much-chastened farmers were out of earshot. Roger turned to Guy and the other troopers, saying, “We’ll post a half-squad up here, right enough. But as soon as it’s dark, you two take that boy down and chain him in one of the slave wagons. Make sure he has plenty of water, a slop bucket and some hay bails, and a bedroll. Get him some cooked meal and some cheese and milk, too, if you can I doubt that he’d know what the bread and greens these people seem to subsist on is for.
“Guy, you’re now a sergeant and your sole duty is to care for and guard the nomad boy. lake as many men as you need to guard him round the clock, no less than a half-squad at any time, strung bows and bared steel.
“If this mess gets worse—and I am of the considered opinion that it will, and damned soon, at that—the lad may well be the condotta’s safe passage out of it all. And I don’t trust this Elder Claxton and his pack of murderous bible-thumpers any further than I could heave a fucking full-grown draft ox.”
“But where do you think to ride, Mother?” Hwahlis Hansuhn of Krooguh demanded exasperatedly.
“To the high plains, if necessary. To the lands of frozen earth. To the deserts. Wherever I must ride to find real men. Men who can still recall the old ways, the ancient Horseclans customs passed down to the Kindred from the Sacred Ancestors. Men who still think more of the sacred honor of their clans than they do of their own fleabitten hides,” Behtiloo snapped, while she tied the last knots holding the load on her single packhorse,
Activities throughout the clan camp had ground to a virtual standstill. Those of the warriors who had returned with Chief Sami were among the throng of clansfolk watching and listening, all red-faced or staring at the dust, as shamed by her scornful words as by their chief’s decision in the matter,
“But, Mother,” Hwahlis remonstrated, shaking his graying head, “you were there. You saw that fence of tall logs. Horses could not pass between them, so we would have to go in on foot, in the face of more than twoscore steel-scale bowmen and Wind alone knows how many Dirtmen. Every single warrior of Clan Krooguh might die without accomplishing—”
“Tell that to the spilled blood of your murdered kin,” said Behtiloo coldly. “Your dead father and I once took great pride in you and your brother and in Sami, our grandson. My dear, honorable Tim would have known what had to be done in this instance, and he would have spit upon you and Buhd and Sami for your cravenness.”
“Mother,” Hwahlis remonstrated with as much patience as he still could exercise, “you know that more than half the warriors and most of the mature cats are still camped about and scouting the environs of Three-House. Two-thirds of the cattle of those Dirtmen now are with or soon will be with our own herds, and some of their sheep and horses. Too.
“We’ve slain or taken every man who ventured out from the place and will continue to do so, since they’ve refused to trade us Tim for any of their own folk or beasts. So would you have us fire the place and roast your great-grandson alive along with his captors, then?”
Behtiloo paused with one foot in the stirrup, her corded old hands set upon pommel and cantle. “No, creature—I-once-called-my-son, I’d have you all stand up on your hind legs like the men you’re supposed to be … but you obviously have quite forgotten how to do so.”
The old woman spoke not another word, though her blue eyes flashed the cold fire of contempt. Once in the saddle, she mindspoke her mare, the packhorse and the prairiecat, Blackback, and the little group moved slowly the length of the camp, the throng parting before her. She rode west.