These here younguns is ever bit as much yore ’spons’bility aa they is mine. You jest tek their gut bucket an’ empty it an’ mek sure it’s a good number of hay balls in’t’ box. Then you broach one them bales o’ b’arskins, or with no fire, Bahb ’n’ lil Djoh here’ll plumb freeze’t’death or at leas’ come down with th’ dang bloody croup’t’night with them thin pallets an’ motheaten blankets.” The wooden latrine bucket in hand, the tall but paunchy Klahrk paused at the door, his brows knitted, picking with cracked and filthy nails at a pustulating sore on his chin under the matted beard.
“Sleepin’ col’ ass one night ain’t gonna hurt them lil bastids none, an’ I don’ think Mistuh Custuh’d be too happy if I broke no bale opuned, an’…” Ahzee straightened up and whirled to stand, arms akimbo, his seamed face revealing more disgust than real anger.
“ ‘An… ? Dang yore lazy ass, Klahrk, you musta been gone to tek you a piss whin they’s handin’ out brains! Bestest thang fer you’s’t’ let a body’s got sumthin more’n rotten ches’nuts in they haids’t’ do th’ thinkin. Heah me? “You’s a wagoner helper, boy. I’s a full senior wagoner, with dang near twenny years awn’t’ plains, an’ I knows, boy! Mistuh Custuh, he won’ say pee-turkey bout one dang bale, oncet he comes to fin’ out why it ‘uz broached, cause these here younguns is money, big money. An’ evun was he’t’, he cain’t do a dang thang’t’ me, he wouldn’ dast.”
Ahzee grinned broadly. “See, boy, this here train is still the Stooahrt Comp’ny’s, fer all poor ole Shifty’s a-layin’ back in Twocityport with jes’ one arm an’ a legil be gimp fer the resta his life an’ his balls a-tore near off him. Mistuh Custuh’s only got charge till we gits back upriver to Looeezfilburkport Then, if Shifty cain’t tek the train out nex’ spring, mos’ likely his brother, Zeek Stooahrt, ‘ll do it. Don’t matter to me none, boy, ‘cause both Shifty and Zeek, they’s my son-in-laws, see. “Now you jes’ shake yore stumps an’ git ‘long bout whut-all I tol’ you f do.
Heah?”
Later, when he had allowed the helper to go back down the stairs to crowd his way onto a bench and begin stuffing his face, old Ahzee sat while the boys ate, chatting with them.
In a casual tone and manner, Bahb shrewdly elicited all that the wagoner knew of the towns, inhabitants and terrain of the duchy, but kept his face blank to hide his deep disappointment from both his little brother and their captor. Short of trying to swim the vast and deadly width of the river, Bahb Steevuhnz could comprehend no possible way to win back to the west bank and even a thin chance to regain freedom. Nonetheless, his resolve was firm to continue on with the plan—better to die in honor, fighting to the end, than to become a possession again.
When the boys seemed replete, Ahzee placed the leftover food in the covered dish. Leaving it, the two cups and the milk in the pitcher, he gathered up the rest of the crockery and the lamp and departed, carefully locking the stout door behind him.
The moment they heard the iron lock snap into place and the descending footsteps of the old wagoner, Bahb and Djoh drew forth the three pieces of scrap metal they had managed to pick up near the wagon shop and forge during their brief time in the yard. All during the afternoon, while Bahb had held himself suspended by one arm from the sill of the window and picked at the shallow seating of the two bars, Djoh had been absorbed in honing the other, larger pieces to keenness on a flattish stone he had found and secreted. While Djoh, mostly by feel in the dimming light from the small, high window, began to slice an edge of one of the heavy bearskins into thongs, Bahb took the longer, slenderer bit of steel he had used on the bars and commenced to patiently work it into the big iron lock securing the chest. Neither of the boys knew what was in this or any of the other wooden goods chests, but with luck they might find better weapons than three clumsy handleless slivers of metal. Bahb worked the pick deeper, then twisted and turned at it, recalling the movements of the men he had seen thrust similar bits of metal into this and other locks; one bit of metal was as another to him, and he had never heard the words “key” or “lock” prior to his captivity.
Just as he felt the mechanism of the padlock begin to give under his efforts, there were footsteps beyond the door and a key grated in its lock. Then the door swung wide to admit three men—the two trader sub-chiefs and a tall, plumpish stranger.
6
Lord Urbahnos rapidly gained a grudging respect for the grubby, smelly little barbarian, Custuh, and could easily See just why the injured Trader Stooahrt had appointed the man his senior deputy. Behind the facade of his talented theatrics, his country-bumpkin-fresh-off-the-farm demeanor, the Ehleen could sense now and again the real Custuh—the born merchant, driving straight for the jugular, thinking on his feet, out to and usually able to squeeze out the best price the traffic would bear.
And Urbahnos just as rapidly came to hate the junior deputy, Hwahruhn, who had not made any effort to disguise, by word or by action, the fact that he despised the Ehleen merchant and detested all for which he stood. Had it been Hwahruhn’s decision alone, Urbahnos knew that he would never have been able to purchase the boys. As it was, the junior deputy’s barrage of attempts to scuttle the deal had made the eventual purchase price inordinately steeper than Urbahnos had anticipated. For, naturally, the shrewd, cool, calculating Custuli—having sensed that these little Horseclans boys were unnaturally important to the man he was stalking—feigned to seize upon each of Hwahruhn’s well-meant objections and points and take them as yet another way to jack the price several thrakmehee higher.
But after the two traders had abruptly retired outside to have loud and heated words on the gallery, they had returned for Urbahnos to close the deal with Custuh alone. Hwahruhn simply sat silently beside the other trader and stared at the seller with soul-deep disgust and at the purchaser with murderous hatred and bottomless loathing.
The leathern money belt that Urbahnos lifted from the table and handed back to Nahseer was but a bare shadow of its former, well-stuffed self, but Urbahnos had two copies of each bill of sale. He had been surprised to notice that both of the barbarian traders could write their names—not in civilized Ehleeneekos, of course, but that would have been an unadulterated phenomenon in this benighted land.
Lord Urbahnos was, of course, wrong in his belief that he and he alone was the sole civilized and cultured man from the western slopes of the Blue Mountains to the Great River and beyond.
On the prairie, many and many weeks’ hard ride to the west of that river, sprawled the largest camp ever seen by any of its inhabitants. No less than a score and a half of Horse-clans made up that camp, and all with their warriors, their maiden archers, their wives, their children, their concubines, yurt wagons, carts, tents, oxen, cattle, sheep, a few clans with goats and dogs, and huge, eddying herds of those mindspeaking horses that were equal partners with these folk rather than their chattels. And even above the incredible tumult of the camp, every day the screams of the clan stallions pealed forth as, with teeth and hooves, they went about settling the question of which was to become the king of this tribal herd.
Present also were more than a score of septs of the Cat Clan. Mindspeakers, like the horses and a majority of the humans, and like the horses equals, these prairiecats were ancient allies of all Horseclansfolk. Had Lord Urbahnos ever confronted a specimen face to face, he would likely have died of fright Huge they were, adult males standing nine hands and more at the heavily muscled shoulders, and adults of both sexes bore fangs three to four inches long. The predominant colors of these mighty felines were a tawny brown or a mouse gray, but there were more than a few examples of other hues among them—pure white, jet black, ruddy brown, blue-gray, many shades of yellow and, among the cats of the more southerly clans, traces of the dark spots and rosettes that testified to long-ago breedings with the wild teegrais.