The bargemen, long familiar with cases of near-drowning, had pumped the water out of Trader Stuart’s body. Then his own men had stripped him of his soaked clothing and carefully bedded him down in his personal wagon. It was not done out of love or even liking for the man, but rather out of respect—respect for him both as a man and as a fighter of some note, not to mention the fact that he paid a decent wage for hard work. Never had he been known to try to cheat an employee out of monies due him.
Senior Wagoner Donnhwyt dropped heavily to the upper deck from the tailgate of the wagon. The aging but stocky and still powerful man was the nearest thing to a true physician that the caravan had. He was paid an extra amount for doctoring horses and oxen, but he practiced on the men as well whenever there was need. Now his thin lips were drawn even thinner into a grim line. Three men awaited him—the two junior traders who had chanced to be on the lead barge, Hwahruhn and Custuh, plus Stuart’s bodyservant-cum-sometime-bodyguard, “Clubber” Fred Doakes.
Custuh, almost qualified to be a senior trader himself, was the first to speak. “Well, man,” he lisped through the gap left when the nomad boy had smashed out his front teeth with the pommel of a saber, “will he live or not? If he will, ith he tho badly hurt he won’t be able to command nekth yearth venture?” Old Don shrugged, his broad shoulders rising and falling, his big, callused hands spread wide, palms facing outward. “Lordy, Misruh Custuh, I ain’t no real doctor. And it’d tek one to tell yawl awl thet. Misruh Stuart’s left shoulder is broke, bad broke—thet oar done as much damage as a iron mace, and even if some surgeon don’t tek the arm off, he won’t never use ‘er much agin. “And the outside tendon a-hint his right knee’s done been sliced clean in two, but thet ain’t awl. His bag was damn near tore loose from his pore body by the there damn HI bitch. It’s a pow’ful good thang he done a’ready got him a son ‘r two, ‘cause I ‘spect he ain’t never gonna git him no more younguns of no kind awn no woman… if he does live, thet is.”
“The real question is,” commented Hwahruhn, scratching at the scalp beneath his silver-shot black hair, “dare we—any of us—go back on the plains next year, since the gal’s gotten free? If you’ll all recall, I was against the whole dirty business from the outset—the treachery, the killing, the kidnappings, not to mention the way that gal was abused during these last few weeks. If she gets back to her clan…” Custuh snorted derisively. “Bert, you maunder like an old woman, you do! ‘If the gal gits back to her clan,’ indeed! Did you ever hear tell of anybody swimming this here river with all their clothes on? Huh? And too, while all the rest of you were set at getting ol’ Stuart out’n the water, I had a pair of darts ready and was watching to see her haid come back up… and it never did, so she probly drownded.”
But Hwahruhn shook his head, unease in his voice and worry in his dark-brown eyes. “What you aver is just possible, true, but these nomads are tough, wiry, resourceful people. They’re survivors, Liasee. If the child you all insisted upon wronging gets out of the river alive… God help us all!” Stehfahnah had not intended to come out of the river in close proximity to the trader town, but she certainly would have preferred to get out of the cold, swirling water much sooner than was the case. When at last she was able to drag herself up an inclined and muddy bank on the western side of the broad waters, she could but lie for a long while on the brush-grown verge, her muscles jerking and twitching with the fatigue of her efforts.
At length, as hunger began to nibble at her belly, she sat up and commenced—as she had been taught—to think out her situation, to take stock of her possessions and gauge their potential usefulness for accomplishing her purpose. She knew that she was far, far east of the last place her clan had been encamped. She and her brothers, one of dozens of farming hunting parties, had been a good two days’ ride from camp when they had been taken, and the wagon train had lumbered on for nearly three weeks after. Therefore, she estimated that a span of not less than three days’ ride west would bring her near the tents and yurts of her people… but she had no idea just how far south the river might have borne her this day. Also, she had no horse or any hope of easily acquiring one, unless she should chance across one of the increasingly rare wild herds and could mindspeak the king stallion into allowing one of his sons or daughters to accompany her on her quest. She knew better than to approach any of the scattering of dirtman settlements; such would only mean slavery or worse. She sighed, then spoke aloud to herself. “So I must walk. Sun be praised that the wolves are well fed this time of year.”
But if she must plan upon making a journey of such length solely on foot, it might well take a month or more. Winter storms had been known to come very early, and if she was to survive alone, dismounted and friendless upon the open plains, she must have many things she now lacked—more and heavier clothing, more effective weapons than one large and one small knife, some kind of food that could be packed without quickly spoiling, a container for water, a means of making fire.
The last necessity was fulfilled almost at once. When she got around to closely examining the weapon she had torn from the trader’s belt, she found not only a knife, but a number of smaller enclosures within the leathern sheath. A hone stone occupied one pocket, another held a flint and a steel for fire-making, and two smaller ones contained a tiny steel eating skewer and food-knife plus a small silver spoon.
The belt knife itself was a heavy, handsome, formidable weapon—a full foot of thick, broad blade, honed to razor keenness along all of one edge and the first third of the other. Below the polished steel ball pommel, the wooden hilt had been well covered with black leather and wound with many yards of silver wire, and the number of deep nicks in the blade side of the shiny brass guard showed that the weapon was not simply a gaudy showpiece. Knowingly, Stehfahnah weighed and balanced the knife, finding its weight properly distributed to render it an effective missile. A design had been etched onto both sides of the blade, and Stehfahnah grunted satisfaction when she closely studied these. She had had little experience at the arts of reading and writing—not many of her people had, for few books had survived six hundred years of chaos, and neither of these two talents were necessary for survival on the prairies, high plains and mountains wherein Horseclansfolk dwelt—but she could write her own name and that of her clan, so she easily recognized that the letter S was the central motif of the designs and at once felt that Wind had intended this fine, deadly, lovely weapon just for her, Stehfahnah’s, hands. The boot knife was typical of weapons of its type—a leaf-shaped, double-edged blade of some half-inch width and some four inches in length, guardless and with a plain hilt of deer antler. Stehfahnah found that it fitted securely into the sheath built into her own left boot top.
Her gnawing hunger partially assuaged by a few handfuls of berries and the raw legs of a large frog she was fortunate enough to catch, the Horseclans girl sought and found a willow tree, and her nimble fingers had soon produced a quantity of twine from the inner bark. After locating three game trails in the riverside brush, she constructed as many simple snares of whittled twigs and twine nooses, plus a log deadfall where the mark of cervine hooves was plain; if even one of the traps proved effective during the night to come, she would have fresh meat, a skin or hide of some description, bone and possibly sinew or horn with which to fashion other tools and weapons.
By the time she returned to her starting point, the late-afternoon wind had completely dried the shirt and trousers which she had carefully draped over bushes. Dressed, she began to cast about for a safe place to spend the night, finally settling for the spacious crotch of a huge mimosa tree. Cold she knew it would be, but safe from any prowling predators, poisonous snakes or the like. That decided, she cut armfuls of springy pine tips and coarse grass and filled the depressed crotch with them. She debated kindling a fire with which to warm herself before she climbed aloft to sleep, but decided to not do so, for if her former captors were searching along the river for her, smoke or flame might give away her position.