Edited by Robert Adams and Pamela Crippen Adams
A SIGNET BOOK NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
Introduction
Well, ladies and gents, The Friends of the Horseclans ride again! Some of those who appeared in the first volume of these stories appear also in this one—Sharon Green, Steven Barnes, Paul Edwards, John Steakley, Roland Green, and John F. Carr—but they are joined on this go-round by Dr. Susan Shwartz, Mercedes Lackey, and Harry Turtledove. (And if you have not yet read Harry’s Videssos cycle, then I order you to troop out and buy it, yesterday! Rousing good adventure tales, splendidly crafted, meticulously researched.)
There is no story by me in this one, however. I never have been able to do shorter fiction—anything of less than novel-length—easy or comfortably; every one of my attempted short stories or novelettes has eventually wound up becoming a novel. I suppose that this is just the way in which one’s talent is put together.
To date, there are eighteen Horseclans books in the Horseclans series. (The first collection of Friends of the Horseclans and this one are not included in that numbering system.) I contemplate a total of about thirty novels. The next one, Horseclans 19, will take up from the ending of Horseclans 18, continuing the exciting tale of the twentieth-century genesis of the prairiecats and the twenty-second-century discovery of them by Milo Morai, their domestication of the smelly twolegs, etc. There will also be another volume of Friends of the Horseclans, probably in 1990.
For all you Middle Kingdoms buffs and Bili the Axe fans, yes, we will eventually get back around to your special interests. There are to be at least two more Bili the Axe novels and also a brace of Sir Geros novels in which Thoheeks Bili of Morguhn will be a peripheral character.
In addition, we also will get around to finishing the story left dangling at the end of Horseclans 17; there will be two more novels set in that cycle, then another loosely related to those chronicled events.
And for all you fans of role-playing games, there is now a Horseclans game available. It’s a production of Steve Jackson Games, and the game book has a great Ken Kelly cover, of course. I put in many long hours of consultation with Steve on the preparation of this game book and, therefore, it can serve as an excellent glossary on the Horseclans books. It also includes several maps and quite a number of drawings and sketches of Horseclans characters, weapons, and equipment. And by the time this introduction sees print, there will be a supplementary adventure, Up Harzburk, out from Steve Jackson Games.
This book you are reading constitutes my eleventh published anthology; there will be more, both original stories written by some of the best authors working today and reprints carefully searched out and collected by me and my able collaborators. If you enjoy this collection, then you will enjoy all of my others, five of which you will find advertised elsewhere in this book.
—Robert Adams Somewhere in the wilds of darkest Florida
Precious Treasure
by Harry Turtledove
HARRY TURTLEDOVE has a degree in Byzantine history. Possibly this is where he gets his puns. It has proven valuable in his Videssos Cycle series, which are establishing him as a writer to watch.
He that is stricken blind, cannot forget The precious treasure of his eyesight lost. —Romeo and Juliet, I,i
The lowing of the cattle and the constant rumbling of their hooves were almost enough to lull Peet Staiklee to sleep. Almost, but not quite. Any rider of the Horseclans who lost alertness around the longhorns deserved whatever happened to him.
Peet stretched in the saddle. He was a strapping blond young man, tall for a Horseclansman, and in all respects but one a perfect physical specimen. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the heel of his hand. This far south, close to the domain of Don Jorge, El Rey del Norte, summer was a sauna of torment. The sweat re-formed as soon as Peet’s hand was gone.
He lifted his glasses from his nose to rub away the moisture that had gathered under them. He sighed with pleasure as he took off his straw hat and fanned his face. The moving air felt particularly good against his damp eyelids.
“I wish,” he said aloud, “I could leave the damn things off all the time.” He was as practiced a telepath as any other Staiklee, but sometimes, riding alone on a flank of the herd, he liked to hear the sound of his own voice.
No, his flaw did not lie there. But while he was holding his glasses instead of wearing them, the world, or at least that part of it farther than about six inches from his face, became an indistinct blur. These were not easy times for a nearsighted man.
Sighing, he put the glasses back on. The world jumped into something close to focus. The frame was made of wood, and heavy; he’d carved it himself, a slow, careful job made even slower because he’d had to bend over until his nose all but bumped the work. The lenses were from the time before the Great Dying. No one, these days, could make their like.
“I suppose I oughta to count myself lucky,” Peet said. Not many Horseclansmen had trouble with their eyes. Most of those who did were older men whose sight was growing long. The convex lenses that helped them were worse than useless to Peet.
Only wildest fortune had led to the Kindred Gians a few years ago a trader with a couple of concave lenses looted from some dead eastern city. “I don’t even know why I picked these up,” the fellow had said. “Not much call for them.” He’d sold them cheap, glad to find anyone even a little interested.
For Peet, though, they’d made all the difference in the world. Without them, he’d been tied to the yurts, a man doing mostly women’s work because he could not see well enough to hunt or herd or fight. But he had a man’s strength and a man’s desire to match his fellows— and a man’s burning shame at being unable to do so. With his glasses, he could.
All the same, they were miserably hot to wear. He took them off, rubbed his eyes, and wondered how long it would be till Mikk rode out to relieve him. Mikk had been late two days running. If he was again today, he’d regret it. A little friendly wrestle, Peet thought—he didn’t need to be able to see much to wrestle, and if Mikk’s face got ground in the dirt a bit more than was quite needful, well, that was one of those things.
A sparrow hawk circled, high overhead. The little hawk approved of the Horseclans’ herds. As they rambled on, they stirred up plenty of grasshoppers and mice. The sparrow hawk was plump and sleek; its plumage, gray-blue and ruddy, glowed with life.
Something caught its eye. It cocked its head to one side, peered down. It was as curious as its fierce nature would allow. It had never seen anything like the flashes of light that sparkled up from below. Ultimately, though, only one thing mattered: Was that food or wasn’t it? Sleek or not, the sparrow hawk was always hungry.
There! The flash came again. It had to be something alive. The sparrow hawk folded its wings and plummeted.
Peet was holding his glasses again when they were suddenly, rudely, struck from his grasp. He had no idea the hawk was stooping on him till it hit his hand almost hard enough to break his wrist. One talon scored a thin, bloody line across the backs of three fingers.
He jerkfcd reflexively. Taking its cue from that, and from the startled alarm shouting in Peet’s mind, his horse reared, snorting. The beast bucked and plunged until, using knees, hands, and telepathic soothing, he calmed it again.
He gentled the horse quite without thinking, for his heart was like a cold stone in his chest. He had heard the crunch the first time its forefeet descended. . . .