Erica now realized that she had erred in so readily assenting to Bowley’s suggestion that they ride northwest from the site of the landslide. They should have gone south, in the general direction of the Center. Not that she publicly disagreed with him, but she privately doubted that there were any of the old-fashioned Ganik lunatics still resident in any part of the Kingdom of New Kuhmbuhluhn—north, west, south or east. And now, thanks to her misjudgment, they were deep in hostile territory, with an aroused and pugnacious people between them and the direction of possible safety.
Had there been but herself and the three senior bullies, they would probably have been able to get through and out of the more densely populated northerly portions of New Kuhmbuhluhn fairly easily—going to ground in forests or wastes by day and riding hard along seldom-traveled ways by night. But such a solution to her dilemma would, were they to try it with their present numbers, most likely end in discovery by the New Kuhmbuhluhners and either a running harassment or pitched battles against forces so vastly outnumbering them that the possession of the firearms would, in the end, count for naught.
Nor, on the few occasions she had dared to broach the matter, would Bowley hear a single word in regard to deserting the lesser bullies and thereby reaching safety in the south.
“Ehrkah, these here boys is done stuck by us th’ough thick ‘r thin, awl alowng. An’ I aims fer to stick by them, naow, evun if it comes fer to mean dyin with ‘em.”
So, as she lay wakeful in the low, smoky cave, under the stinking bearskin, with the bloodsucking insects acrawl up and down the length of her unwashed body, Dr. Erica Arenstein was anything but optimistic. She thought, as she endeavored once more to find sleep, that the discovery of the cave was most likely the last piece of good fortune that she and her present companions would have. Actually, she mused glumly, it might have been better had they not found the cave; for had they tried to winter in the open, they would all most probably have frozen to death, which was, she had been told, one of the easier ways to die, if die one must.
Somewhere, far off in the forested hills and vales, she heard the bass bellow of some large animal. Possibly, she guessed, a shaggy-bull; they now had come far enough north to expect to begin meeting specimens of the outsize bovines. She wondered yet again as she had wondered for centuries just where and why and how these and certain other improbably fauna had first developed.
These shaggy-bulls, for instance, bore a slight resemblance to bison—the general shape of the skull, the huge hump of muscle set atop the shoulders, the long, shaggy coats of hair from which their name derived—but that resemblance was no more than slight. When mature, both bulls and cows bore great spreads of horn—thick at the bases and tapering out to a murderous needle tip sometimes more than a meter from those bases—and the shaggy-bulls were much larger than bison, tall at the shoulder as a moose, though thicker of leg and heavier of body than that far-northern ruminant.
They differed from bison in other ways, too. Where most of the bisoti—which once almost-extinct species had increased vastly in many parts of the North American continent during the centuries since the near extirpation of the races of mart— were herd animals of plain and prairie, their huge, shaggy cousins seemed to prefer forests and mountainous areas and often were found as solitary male specimens. When they did form groups, there was never more than one mature bull with one to three mature cows, possibly a calf or two, maybe one or two heifers not yet of breeding age and, rarely, an immature young bull, not yet driven off by his sire.
Because they were far more common west of the Mississippi River, Erica assumed that that most likely was where they had originated, but over the centuries, they had slowly spread until now they ranged as far east as that part of Kehnooryos Mahkedohnya which once had been known as Maine. And for all that they bred and matured slowly, their natural enemies were few. Despite their size and bulk, the monstrous bovines were incredibly fast and agile and, consequently, such deadly opponents that only the huge packs of winter wolves ever attacked adult specimens, and then only if starving and desperate.
Although the shaggy-bull hides were the basis for a fine and exceptionally tough type of leather, most humans tried to avoid the vicious, short-tempered brutes, which could outrun a full-size horse for short distances and absorb an appalling amount of punishment. Only the plains nomads and the gentry of portions of the Middle Kingdoms hunted shaggy-bulls with any regularity—the nomads for hides and meat, the burkers mostly for highly dangerous sport.
The distant bull bellowed yet again, but Erica did not hear him. Sleep had finally claimed her.
6
With the skill and rapidity of long experience, Gy Ynstyr the “Furface” or bugler of the squadron as well as the senior orderly of Duke Bili of Morguhn—packed his spare clothing and meager personal effects into his saddlebags and blanket roll. While doing so, he tried to pretend that he did not see the glowering scowls cast in his direction by the other occupant of the small tower chamber, who sat on a stool and clumsily attempted to hone an even keener edge on her already knife-sharp, crescent-bladed light axe.
The last storm of the long, hard winter was now but a memory and its final, remaining traces were fast melting to swell the icy streams cascading down the flanks of the mountains. The season of war was nearing; therefore, most of Duke Bili’s lowland squadron was preparing to take road toward the north of the Kingdom of New Kuhmbuhluhn, where Prince Byruhn and the Skohshuns—the foemen of this new season’s war—awaited them.
Earlier, Gy and his two assistant-orderlies had packed the chests of the duke and his lady, snapped the locks in place, then borne them belowstairs to the point at which the train of pack ponies would be assembled. Now there remained only his own gear to quickly pack or don, that he might speed to the commander’s side and be readily available to bugle orders or changes to orders as the occasion might demand.
He had known full well for the two weeks since the announcements of assignments that his war companion—the sometime Moon Maiden, Meeree—had taken hard this matter of being left behind in the Glen of Sandee while the bulk of the squadron marched north to war. But he knew that she knew why as surely as did he and the officers who had made the decision, so he was hurt that she seemed to be blaming him—who had had no slightest choice or voice in the matter— and thus was making his leavetaking even more unpleasant.
Those being left behind fell into several categories: the farmer-stockmen of the glen, those under sixteen or over fifty, at least; the women and children of the glen; a skeleton force of sound warriors to help the young or old or crippled to adequately man the almost invulnerable defenses of the glen; those of the former Moon Maidens who chanced to be too far along in their pregnancies to be safely aborted by the skills of the Kleesahks, Pah-Elmuh and Ahszkuh; the handful of crippled warriors; and two of the Kleesahks.
There was one other category: some two dozen of the once Maidens of the Moon had given birth during the winter months, and those infants, each of them now fostered with a wet nurse from one of the resident farm families, were all being left in this, the safest spot in all of embattled New Kuhmbuhluhn, until the invading Skohshuns were defeated and their parents could return for them.
Meeree—former lover of the hereditary leader of the Moon Maidens, the Lady Rahksahnah, who now was Duke Bill’s consort—had seldom lain with Gy and never conceived of him. That was not the reason she was to stay behind. Nor was she listed amongst the thin ranks of the warriors to man the formidable defenses of the glen; had that been the case, she might, just might, have been a bit less disagreeable. No, Meeree was on the short list of cripples, and she had alternately raged and sulked since first that list was published, for most of two full weeks, now. —