On the afternoon of the third day, now well into prairie country, with the riverside expanse of forest far behind, extreme good fortune favored Stehfahnah. She cut the trail of a clan on the march. The hoof-trampled and wheel-rutted expanse was a good half mile wide, nowhere straight and probably a month old. New grass sprouted up all over it, but the girl could easily recognize it for what it was. There was no way to tell which clan it had been, of course, but it could be none other than a Kindred clan, all non-Kindred clans having been driven out of this part of the prairie or exterminated long years past. Moreover, it was headed in the direction Stehfahnah had selected as her best bet, northwest, so she followed it the rest of that day and camped on it that night.
She had been sleeping. Suddenly the little ass began to bray loudly, his uncertain mindspeak projecting incomplete message-images which told only of a horrendous danger out in the man-high grasses a hundred yards distant The hairs prickling on her nape, the girl shucked off her blankets and crouched, her back against the load of the larger travois and her steel-headed spear clutched in both her grubby hands. When there was no immediate attack, she lit her small fire of cattle chips and some splintered wagon spokes she had collected during her day’s ride.
In the sudden flare, she saw a pair of eyes reflecting the firelight, just at the edge of the higher grasses beyond the new growth in the clan trail. And the eyes were large, set as high as her waist above the ground. Wolf? Not likely. Bear? They were fairly common on the high plains to the west but rare on the eastern reaches of the prairie. Then what… ?
Hesitantly, she sent out a mental beam. “Cat brother? Cat sister?” The answer was immediate and beamed with the well-remembered power of a mature prairiecat. “You were sleeping soundly, twolegs sister, so I have been conversing with our horse sister. She tells me that you are of the Kindred and are riding to seek out and rejoin your clan. She also tells me that you have been most cruel to her and that you are uncaringly overworking her.” There was an undercurrent of dry amusement in the cat’s mindspeak as he related the mare’s complaints of Stehfahnah’s misuse of her.
“That miserable mare is lazy, treacherous and rough-gaited, and nothing would please me more than to get a decent mount between my legs again. But why does not my cat brother or sister come into my camp?” “Cat brother, it is, Kindred sister; I am called Steelclaws and I was cat chief of the cat sept of Clan Danyulz last spring; now I am a subchief of the tribe’s Cat Clan. I will come in if that strange, woolly, horselike beast with the ears of a desert rabbit will stop making those terrible noises.” The campaign that Duke Alex had tried to wage against the nomads had been even more of a disaster than had been his ill-starred incursion into the lands of Duke Tcharlz.
Once his army was back on its own side of the river, he let them rest in Tradertown for only as much time as it took him to scrape together horses and mules to remount most of his cavalry. Then he marched southwest toward the border, with the primary intention of remanning the forts situated at the points at which the three principal trade routes from off the prairie entered his duchy.
The forts had first been erected fifty years prior to Alex’s birth and improved upon or at least kept in repair by most of his predecessors. The steady flow of monies from the transriverine cable had seen most of the original sod interior buildings rebuilt in brick and the more vulnerable stretches of the outer works—gateways and corners—done in brick and stone, with the addition of deep, broad, dry ditches fronting the gates and winch-controlled bridges to span them. But what the conquering nomads had left of the three formerly stout fortifications caused Alex to rant, blaspheme and chew his fists in rage. He would have to forget about re-garrisoning until there was time and peace for extensive rebuilding to be accomplished. The stretches of wooden palisade between the masonry strong points were become rows of charred, jagged stumps, and everything within that was susceptible to the ravages of fire had been subjected to it, which meant that not one building retained a roof. Weapons, armor, horses and their gear, wheeled transport, metal tools and artifacts and everything else that a nomad might fancy had been lifted, of course. Only the unburied remains of the defenders were left.
Even though his recent luck was bad and his judgment sometimes faulty, no one ever had need to question Alex’s personal courage. Sending the foot back to Traderstown, he rode on at the head of his dragoons and lancers—although many forked scratch horses and half-broken mules with no hint of war training—deliberately seeking out the bands of nomad raiders, widely acclaimed as the most savage and dangerous light cavalry known. There were, over the next weeks, a few inconclusive running skirmishes between small bands of raiders on their speedy, skittering pony-size beasts and units of his heavy-armed force on their larger, slower mounts. He lost a few troopers and the occasional nomad was killed, but the bands always escaped onto the prairie with their loot and captives—mostly nubile girls—leaving their pursuers sweating, red-faced and drooping and their mounts near foundering. Duke Alex then did the only thing that he could under the circumstances. He sent riders to every rural hall and village. Their message was simple: in its present poor condition, his army could not offer any measure of protection against the inroads of the nomads, and the border forts were no longer tenable. Therefore, they all should gather up their families and serfs, animals and valuables, and leave the land to seek the protection of Traderstown’s high stone walls and numerous well-armed soldiers.
Alex himself stayed in the field with his cavalry, returning to the city only long enough to draft and dispatch requests for troops, materia militaris and as many trained war horses as could be quickly located to King Uyr of Mehmfiz and to his late mother’s nephew, Ehvin, Grand Duke of Ehvinzburkport. Then he scraped again the already scraped barrel and, with the scanty supplies, replacements and remounts thus obtained, he went back to his sorely tried field troops.
Even with sails, favorable winds and a full complement of husky oarsmen on the benches, the war galley took an entire week to reach Ehvinsburkport up the winding loops of the river and against its swift current. In receipt of the plea from his cousin, however, Grand Duke Ehvin IX—reflecting on the plaintiffs well-known wealth and upon the possibility that he, too, might be in so tight a difficulty sometime or other— moved quickly and generously. The first ships to arrive were loaded with foodstuffs for both man and beast. The next ships brought a full squadron of mercenary dragoons and their mounts, with wages paid for a month, at which time their contract with the Grand Duke would expire. Ehvin had found their terms crushingly expensive, and he felt that Alex, rich as Croesus, could better afford them. Ehvin also cleaned out some old armories and sent down a shipload of archaic but still serviceable weapons and armor.
Last, he shipped some two hundred horses and sixscore mules. He also sent a letter. It profusely apologized for the fact that, lamentably, he was unable to bring his own huge armies downriver to the aid of his esteemed cousin in the hour of need. It gave as explanation the fact that the bulk of those armies were, even as he wrote, massing in his northern marches for the full-scale war that now seemed imminent, in the wake of the repeated raids and other treacherous acts of the brazenly aggressive Duke of Tehrawt. Alex saw to it that neither the mercenaries nor the remounts remained within Traderstown for any longer than it took them to disembark, form up and trot through the streets to the West Gate. His conscience told him that with the advent of nearly six hundred fresh cavalry, he should give at least that number of his run-ragged veterans a couple of weeks to rest and refit in Traderstown. But he knew that he could not, that he dared not, for he had urgent need of every man and mount.