In the very center of this vast assemblage stood a yurt the likes of which few had ever seen before. True, the latticework sides were only half again as high as those of the average yurt—six feet as compared to four—nor did the top tower overly high, but the circumference of the circular dwelling was stupendous to the clansfolk camped about it. Four hundred and eighty and one half hands was its outer measure; more than sixty-five paces might a man take around the yurt’s perimeter before returning to where he had begun. This great yurt was home to Blind Hari of Krooguh—for seventy and more years, the tribal bard—and to his slaves, to the men and women from various clans who had freely joined his household and to one other, the newly chosen war chief of all the Kindred clans, Milo of Moral There was, on the surface, nothing too unusual about this man. True, he was taller than the average clansman, with the heavier bones, larger hands and feet and black hair-shot-with-silver of a dirtman (Lord Urbahnos might have taken this new war chief for a Northern Ehleen, what with his aquiline nose and olive skin tones), but a large minority of clansfolk varied—mostly through concubine mothers captured in raids on the dirtmen—from the short, slender, wiry, blond norm to make Milo of Morai’s physical appearance pedestrian. In other ways, there could be no doubt that he was Horse-clans born and bred. His mindspeak was superlative with human, horse or prairiecat; he sat his golden-chestnut stallion as if they two were but one creature; his heavy, ancient saber was clearly an extension of his arm, and he was just as clearly a master bowman. And that he was a natural leader of men, a chieftain in every sense of that word, was clear to everyone who met him. Some sixteen to seventeen winters’ agone, he had ridden up from the far south on his palomino stallion, accompanied only by two female prairiecats and a packhorse or two. He had wintered over with Clan Morguhn, where Blind Hari also was wintering that year, and with the rebirth of spring he had ridden north with the aged tribal bard.
The story he told—that he was the only survivor of a clan destroyed by a sudden and deadly pestilence—was tragic but easily believable, for a few clans had been extirpated in just such horrible a fashion over the centuries. Other clans had drifted away—to north, south, east and west—never to be heard of again. The Clan Krooguh, Blind Hari’s own clan of birth, had disappeared in such a manner ten or fifteen winters past Blind Hari himself was an incredibly old man. To the best reckoning of the clansfolk he had weathered at least one hundred and thirty winters, yet still he rode hither and yon, reciting the centuries of the history of the Kindred in rhymes to the plucking of his fingers upon the strings of his harp, collecting the new vital statistics from each clan on his years-long circuit—notable births, heroic deaths, mighty deeds of war or raiding or hunting, ascensions of new chiefs’ and the like—then weaving the news into his endless rhymes. But these were not the sole functions of the bard. As he was clanless, he was the full equal of any clan chief, while being but very distantly related to any of them or their folk, and as he knew all of the hundreds of Couplets of Horseclans Law, he was often called upon to break off his circuit in order to serve as mediator between clans on the brink of a feud. And for so many years had he served in this role when called upon to do so that he was the one being upon whom every living member of the Kindred freely lavished true reverence. Too, there was a mysterious, almost magical quality about the frail-appearing, white-haired and bearded old man. Blind for as long as any could remember, yet it seemed that often he could see more clearly than any sighted man present, and none knew how this was accomplished. Eerie too was his control over the actions of men. On one notable occasion, he arrived to mediate too late. A vicious little melee between the fully armed warriors of Clans Danyuhlz and Muhkawlee had already commenced; Blind Hari had surveyed the carnage from the back of his weary horse—or so it had seemed to those who watched—then he had dismounted, removed his leathern helmet, his saber and even his dirk and eating knife. And, unarmed, unprotected, accompanied only by his prairiecat companion, he had walked slowly and deliberately into that pitiless maelstrom of whetted steel and deadly hate.
Full many had been the horrified cries from the noncombatants begging the irreplaceable old man to come back to safety, but he had not heeded them. He had paced on until he stood in the very center of that small, bloody battlefield. Then he had been seen to raise his hands so that his sleeves fell back from his scarred, withered old arms, and then the more sensitive of the mindspeakers there had felt, they later attested, the vague sense of a… a pressure. While horses in the two camps reared and screamed or went running off onto the prairie, while prairiecats not engaged in the fracas yowled and snarled and spat and clawed at empty air and then, finally, slunk off to hide in tents or yurts or in the man-high grasses, Blind Hari of Krooguh had simply stood, as if carved in stone, he and his cat, with blade of axe and saber and spear and heavy dirk flashing and ringing about them.
Then those gathered about felt that arcane pressure increase, increase until it became well-nigh unbearable, until children began to cry and women to scream. The twoscore combats ceased—not slowly or individually, but all at once and suddenly, as if the motive power to swing steel or to lift shield had been abruptly denied every man on that field. Bleeding men simply stood in place, arms at sides, panting with exertion, hands still gripping hilt and haft and shaft and handle, staring into the eyes of recent opponents. Then the pressure had eased slightly and Blind Hari had begun to speak, not loudly, but loudly enough for all to hear. No one afterward seemed to recall his exact words, but only how telling they were. He had spoken of the Sacred Ancestors, of the Undying God-Man who had succored those Ancestors and who had, for more than three hundred years, remained with their own forefathers, teaching, guiding and protecting, giving them law and alliance with horse and cat. He had reiterated the close blood and heritage ties of all the Kindred, every clan, of Ehlai—the Holy City, whence had come the Sacred Ancestors, children, fleeing the War of the Old Gods, which had left them the only true men upon the face of the ravaged land.
He had spoken long of their centuries of bitter conflict with the bestial dirtmen on the verges of the prairies and plains, and of the equally deadly warfare with non-Kindred nomads for control of graze and water. He had reminded them that neither fight was successfully concluded and that since their Undying God had departed them more than ten-score years agone, their only chance of certain survival lay in firm solidarity of the clans, of brotherly love for Kindred brother.
And all at once, whilst the tribal bard still spoke his words of sad admonishment, steel began to ring once more… upon the hard, dusty ground. Prized and trusty weapons were dropped to clatter unheeded as hardbitten veteran warriors, whose bloodshot eyes were suddenly a-brim with tears, clasped hands with or fondly embraced those whom they had So lately been earnestly endeavoring to kill or maim.
At the next tribal council, this tale had gone far and wide among the Kindred clans, adding a luster to the very real awe with which Blind Hari of Krooguh was viewed.
Therefore, at the most recent tribal council—the gathering held every five years—when Blind Hari had sung portions of the familiar “Prophecy of the Return of the Undying.”
“The Song of Ehlai” and “How Strange our Old Lands”, and then had presented Chief Milo of Morai for the benefit of those few who had never before met him, commenting upon how exactly the circumstances of his arrival at the Clan Morguhn camp upon the Brazos had meshed with those prophecies in the old songs, a fevered excitement had been generated and was still spreading. Due to Blind Hari’s immense age, there had been but three in the succession of tribal bards since the departure of the Uncle of the Kindred to seek out his own clan of Undying in some far-off land. So the chiefs could be reasonably certain the three musical renditions of history and prophecy—the most crucial of which was “Prophecy of the Return”—had not been garbled by different bards over many, many scores of winters. Furthermore, upon the summoning of the clan bards to the chiefs’ council, not by more than a single word were any of their renditions different from that of Blind Hari. The tribal bard’s version stated that Ehlai—“by her shining sea”—lay eastward, and a good half of the versions of the clan bards agreed; the others contended that the Holy City lay to the west. The chiefs eventually decided that Hari’s version must be the correct one. Uncle of the Kindred, the Undying God of them all, had not said that he himself would return, only that “one” would return, “from the south, upon a horse of gold”; just so had this Chief Milo arrived, years back, from the south and astride a big stallion of shimmering golden chestnut. The Undying had said that this “one” would be a leader, and this Milo of Morai most assuredly was, and that he would be one of them, and precious few doubted the Kindred antecedents of the Morai. The Undying had added that, with the title of War-Chief-of-the-Tribe-That-Will-Return-to-the-Sacred-Sea, and acting as chief-of-chiefs, this “one” would lead all those clans with unstained honor on a years-long migration back to the ruins of the city of the Sacred Ancestors’ birth to reclaim and rebuild.