But Abner and Gouger and the other bullies kept them at it as long as there was light enough every day, dealing a swift and brutal and very public corporal punishment to any shirker or laggard, trying hard to ensure that the lesser Ganiks would all be too exhausted through the long, dark, windy nights to do more than sip a few drafts of hot broth and then sleep.
But it did not always work out that way, of course. These outlaw Ganiks were hard, hardy, vital men, else they would never have survived long the savage, primitive life they had chosen to lead. In the cramped quarters, there were fights, many of them, night and day, for any reason or none. At last, alarmed at the number of fatal encounters, the bullies stripped the lesser Ganiks of all their weapons, even their assortments of knives. They collected all of this vast agglomeration of hardware in the largest, most complete house—wherein dwelt Abner, Gouger and Leeroy, among others—issuing only what was needed for immediate foraging tasks, then taking it back before the Ganiks were allowed to return to their quarters for the night. There were still fights, of course, but fewer of them now ended in deaths or serious injuries. Nonetheless, some of the bullies and lesser Ganiks would live to rue and regret this universal disarmament.
At the first hint of a partial slackening of the ferocity of the ten-day-long blizzard, a strong patrol rode out of the palisaded village of Ahrszin Behdrozyuhn—four Freefighters under Captain Pawl Raikuh, Tohla and three other Moon Maidens, and a baker’s dozen of Ahrmehnee led by Mahrzbehd Behdrozyuhn, the headman of the burned-out village they now thought the Muhkohee raiders to be occupying.
They set out in the gray light of false dawn, moving very slowly in the deep snows, exhalations of both humans and mounts smoking whitely out through the thick swaths of woolen cloth wrapping their faces against the sharp-toothed cold.
Observing just how slowly they advanced and with what difficulty, Geros did not expect them back soon. Nor was he wrong in his estimate. It was full dark before the near-frozen patrol, weaving and stumbling with utter exhaustion, plodded through the gate.
When once Pawl Raikuh had unwound enough of the frozen lengths of woolens to disclose his deep-sunken eyes and stubbly cheeks, he croaked, “They’re there, Sir Geros. The Muhkohee and their ponies, all of the stinking bastards, I’d reckon. Been there since the start of the blizzard, from the looks of the place, with makeshift roofing on all the standing walls and every chimney smoking. They must be packed in like herring in a barrel, but they’re all there.
“Now, by your leave, is there anything hot to drink abouts?”
But the blizzard had only been resting, marshaling its frigid resources for yet another fresh assault on the folk and beasts and lands it held in its pitiless grip. The winds howled their song of death through the most of that night and much of the following day, turning that day into a twilight of icy discomfort for those unfortunates who had to be out of doors for whatever reason.
At the hour that should have been sunset at this season of the year, but was now but a deepening of the darkness, yet another meeting was convened in the main room of the house in which Sir Geros resided.
Looking much less akin to walking, frozen corpses thanks to having eaten, thawed out in the sweat house, then slept for most of the night and a great part of the day, Pawl Raikuh, Tohla and Mahrzbehd Behdrozyuhn were there. So, too, were the other leader of the Moon Maidens, Klahra; Dehrehbeh Ahrszin and his cousin and sxxb-dehrehbeh, Hyk; the old man, Behdros; Lieutenant Bohreegahd Hohguhn; and, of course, Sir Geros.
In answer to a question, Pawl Raikuh was answering in his usual blunt way. “Lord Ahrszin, for all they was borned here and all, your men suffered just as much as the rest of us did out on that patrol yesterday, and if you don’t believe me, just ask old Mahrzbehd here. So it won’t be no attacking of them shaggies out yonder till the weather eases her up a mite.
“Sure, we could set the squadron on the march; we might even make it down there to that village by midday, was we to leave afore dawn. But I warrant that nobody—Ahrmehnee, Moon Maiden, Freefighter, horse or pony—would be in any fair shape to fight when they did get there. It was all we could do to just watch the shaggies for a while, then turn round and ride back here. That cold saps a man worse than a four-week drunk.”
Absently rubbing at his great beak of a nose, the headman, Mahrzbehd, agreed. “It is true, dehrehbeh; all that Pawl says is fact. Almost forty winters have I lived through, and never have I seen the like of this terrible storm.
“But this there is, as welclass="underline" The accursed Muhkohee are in no sense better off than we are; in many ways, they are worse. No game is about, so they must either be starving or, more likely, eating up each other. And each one that a cannibal dish becomes is one less that face we must when at last the time does arrive for fighting.”
When the headman had fallen silent and applied himself to his jack of mulled wine, the woman, Klahra, her prickly Moon Maiden pride surfacing, demanded, “The men have spoken, but what say you, Tohla? Could Maidens of the Silver Lady march down there and fight, think you?”
The young woman thus addressed gave off for the moment cracking nuts in her powerful callused hands, to reply no less bluntly than had Raikuh. “In a word, Klahra, no. A question of fighting skills or courage, it is not. Rather is it the true and pure fact that the flesh and the blood of woman or man or beast not equal is to such a task. It is as Pawl said; wait we all must until not so deep is the snow and clearer is the weather, with less wind. To attempt to now attack will death be for many even before is struck the first blow at the Muhkohee.”
So Geros, Ahrszin and old Behdros decided to wait for better weather, and wait they did. They all knew that they had insufficient force as matters stood, and to rashly risk any of that force would have constituted rankest folly.
The last few days of the blizzard were the very worst, and the raiding party of Ganiks huddled in their crowded, inadequate shelters did not fare nearly so well as they had earlier. All of the Ganiks in one of the smaller cottages—some score and a half of them—froze to death one night when the gusting winds tore the roof off their sleeping place. Although the bullies saw the corpses dragged out and the cottage reroofed, none of the superstitious Ganiks would reoccupy it, so it was thenceforth used to stable some of the ponies, affording slightly more room in others of the packed shelters.
The only other good thing that the tragedy accomplished was to provide a ready source of food without the fuss and bother of clubbing down a living man. Now all that was necessary was to choose a stiff cadaver, drag it into one of the cottages and leave it near the fire until it thawed out enough to be skinned and butchered. There followed, of course, an ebbing of the deep distrust each man had felt of every other during their stay here, and there were, consequently, fewer fights. Had it been entirely up to Abner, he would then have given the men back their weapons, but Gouger, overcautious, disagreed and dissuaded him.
But no storm can last forever. One dawn, two weeks and two days after the first gusts of the blizzard had driven them to this place for shelter, the day arrived bright and clear and warmed sufficiently as it progressed to send showers of half-melted ice cascading down off the trunks and branches of the trees, while the ice-sheathed stone walls of the village began to drip and dribble water.
Naturally for the time of year, when the sun set, the temperature dropped and standing water or slushy snow froze. But the next day was just as warm if not actually warmer— opinions were mixed on this—and with all the ponies pawing through the wet snow covering the fields surrounding the village, the bullies began to think of moving on in a day or two, did the weather remain so warm.