Because the graze was becoming sparse and the game was now nonexistent, the council of chiefs decided to move the huge, sprawling camp closer to their theater of military operations, and over a period of hectic days marked by incredible amounts of unbelievable confusion, this was at last accomplished.
Even as they moved the camp and herds, however, more Kindred clans made their appearance; all claiming to have been fired by the words of old Behtiloo Hansuhn of Krooguh. Some were entire clans with their herds, others were war parties of warriors, maiden-archers, prairiecats and spare horses with pack trains. Another caravan of traders wandered in just in time to replenish the flagging supplies of metals and good eastern-made wines and hwiskee.
And on a day, two lone men rode in from due west. One of them was of advanced years, and a tooled-leather harp case was strapped across his back. The second man was much bigger and looked to be of no more than early middle years; he was armed and accoutered as a Horseclans warrior, and he bestrode a big, handsome red-bay stallion.
As the two men’s mounts ambled into the fringes of the camp, a subchief of Clan Kahrtuh recognized the younger, bigger, war-equipped man.
“Uncle Milo!” he breathed softly, then he wheeled his mare about and set off for the circle of chief yurts at her best gallop.
Captain-of-dragoons Roger Gorman came running at the first call of the lookout and the sentries on the palisade platforms, buckling on his scale shirt as he ran. There had been the unmistakable signs and sounds of the movements of large numbers of mounted men out yonder, all through the preceding night, and he had been dead certain of and prepared his group for a dawn attack in force.
But when he reached the ground level, no massed formations of mounted clansmen were in sight, though of course any number might still be concealed by the pea-soup-thick ground mist out there. Rather, four horsemen were moving slowly and deliberately in the direction of the palisades main gate.
“Roger,” said Lenny Knapp, his senior lieutenant and oldest living friend, unless I went blind overnight, that man in the lead there, that be Big Bob Fairbanks, cap’n of Old Homer Potts’ caravan guards And that sum resembles Old Homer hisself, behint him, too. I dunno who them other two is, prob’ly Horseclansmen. Chiefs, by the way they’re gussied up and all.”
Thirty yards from the gate, the mounted party drew rein. The scale-shirted man in the lead snapped up the cheekpieces of his open-faced helmet and slid up the nasal. Drawing his long, straight-bladed sword and grasping it by the point, he began to wag it at arms length over his head.
“Sword Truce!” snapped Roger and Lenny together. Then the captain turned and roared at no one in particular, “Bring me my horse, and one for Lieutenant Knapp, at the double, you fuckers! Immediately we’re mounted, unbar that main gate and swing it open … wide!”
When the two Freefighter captains had exchanged swords, kissed the Sacred Steel and engaged in the other elaborate mutual formalities that inaugurated a binding truce on the field of battle under the terms of the eastern-based Sword Cult, Fairbanks said solemnly. “Roger, Lenny, yawl done got yourse’fs in a shitstorm for sure, this time. Yawl may not know, probly don’t, but it’s more Horseclans warriors than anybody’s ever seed at one time out there.” He waved at the mist-shrouded fields. “It’s thousands of ’em, hear me, from near thirty diffrunt clans. They all done come here for to git the bugtits whut kilt them kids. I shore hope to hell it won’t you and yourn done thet, Roger.”
Captain Roger Gorman shook his head. “No, I had no part in that sorry business. Bob, nor did any of my men: those poor lads were dead before we got to them. That demented old braying ass Elijah Claxton and his prize crew of village idiots killed those boys, then mutilated the bodies, like the savages they are. If Claxton had had his vicious way, he’d have had the one boy we captured tortured to death in public, for amusement, I suppose. But I clapped the old ninny in irons and took over his dungheap yonder.”
One of the two Horseclansmen, the older, more flamboyantly attired one, moved his horse forward and spoke without preamble or introduction. “Chief of scale shirts, I have just mindspoken with my son, Tim. He says that you are a brave, decent and honorable warrior, and that you and yours have treated him well, shedding blood to protect him from those who would have harmed him. Release him now and I will spare you your lives.”
Roger sighed in relief. “Right gladly, my lord Chief. I’d have made just that trade weeks ago, but none of the riders I sent out to find you and offer it ever came back. But come you all; we are Truce brothers, for the nonce. Let us all ride in and sip some fine honey-wine and talk these matters through in comfort.”
It was decided that those women and girls of the Chosen not already spoken for by womanless troopers of Roger’s force would be divided among the assembled clans, and so too would the babes and children. Because blood cried out for blood, the Elder Elijah Claxton would be executed before the gathered clansfolk, a case of letting the chief take most of the guilt.
The council of chiefs, augmented by the recent arrivals of three more clans, had at first demanded the lives of every male of the Chosen over the age of thirteen, but Chief Morai, Uncle Milo, had talked them around.
The plains trader, Homer Potts, had bid quite good prices—to be paid partly from presently available goods and partly from goods he would bring in next spring—for the men and the bigger boys from the Abode of the Righteous, for while the Horseclansfolk had no use for male slaves, most of the peoples to the east, beyond the Great River, certainly did. If all else failed, Potts knew that he could earn a two- or three-hundred-percent profit from selling the big, strong, healthy farmers to the captains of the river galleys, who were in constant need of fresh oar slaves. And when Milo had the trader detail the lives of such row slaves for the council of chiefs, all agreed that immediate death would be far kinder … had any of them felt any degree of kindness toward the wretched murderers of children.
The chiefs had also wanted to burn Three-House to the ground but again Milo dissuaded them. He had talked long on the matter with the Freefighter officers and the traders. The two plains traders had been quick to comprehend the advantages to them and their ilk of a trade center located at the very edge of the Sea of Grass, rather than weeks away by wagon. With no more danger to be feared from the Horseclans, Roger and his men could dismantle the stockade, build more houses and soon have a new trade town—a convenience for both traders and nomads.
Before the clans dispersed, Chief Milo Morai sought out the Krooguh clan bard. “The old woman who brought about this unprecedented gathering of our Kindred—sing me of her.”
Halfway through the many verses, Uncle Milo slapped his bootleg and exclaimed, “Yes! The little pregnant girl that Tim Krooguh, Djahn Staiklee’s boy, took. I rode that raid with him and … damn! She was lifted from this very place, from Three-House!”
Epilogue
For long years after that great gathering, roving riders from Clan Krooguh rode the prairies and the high plains, the deserts of the south and the frozen-earth regions of the far north searching for, if not Behtiloo herself, at east some trace of her, some memory of her recent passing. But at last the search was given up as useless by Clan Krooguh.
But still, it is whispered in the felt yurts and the hair tents of the Horseclans Kindred, she rides.