Mother-of-Many-Many had once borne and successfully reared no less than six kits in the same litter, though her present litter numbered only three. Fast-Swimmer also had a litter of three kits, and the two females were sharing the single den, as well as hunting responsibilities for and protection of the six kits. The male, for all that he also used the same enlarged muskrat burrow, hunted only for himself, and, from the various “conversations,” Stehfahnah was never sure if he had fathered both or either of the litters. Otters, apparently, had never developed the close familial ties of the prairiecats or of the nomads’ breed of horses.
Shortly after nightfall, the three otters took their leave and waddled swiftly into the brush toward the river, the bellies of all three bulging with a surfeit of rich red venison. The two females bore, as well, strips of the deer flesh which Stehfahnah had sliced from the quarter specifically for the waiting kits in the riverbank den.
In the following days, Stehfahnah did her hunting to west and south, studiously avoiding the north. The otters’ information about the trapper had been disturbing to her. He was occupying a “den-of-dead-wood” at some indeterminate distance northward and within sight of the river. She reflected that since it was imperative that none of the local dirtmen—the nomads’ epithet for farmers and all other folk who lived in one set place—suspect her presence, here, she had been very foolish to spring and upset so many traps without touching the baits. The single bloodstained trap might have left the impression in the trapper’s mind that the animal had managed to pull free of the cruel jaws, and if she had taken away the baits from the sprung traps and smoothed away her footprints, he just might have attributed the deliberate spoilage of his line to a possible wolverine and maybe even moved into another territory.
Now that he, through her unconcerned carelessness, was certainly aware that someone was nearby, Stehfahnah took pains to be extremely cautious in hunting and in everyday living, going so far as to forsake her warm, wind- and weatherproof lean-to for that tree crotch wherein she had spent her first few nights in these woods; though now she slept warmer and in more comfort for the two deer hides over the mattress of pine tips, and the odor of the fragrant needles went far toward masking the reek of her blanket of half-cured rabbit skins.
Fearful of being surprised at night, while sleeping, the girl kept all her weapons aloft with her and within easy reach. But the dreaded confrontation came by light of day.
On that ill-fated day, Stefahnah bad, early in the morning, come across a spoor she had long sought in vain—that of one of the cattle whose ancestors had gone feral after the death of the earlier civilization, had in many areas interbred with truly wild bovines and slowly evolved into the long-horned, shaggy-coated and ill-tempered beasts known as “shaggy-bulls” and still roamed the hills and backwoods in small herds or individually.
The girl had first tracked, then stalked the huge old bull for hours, at last getting sufficiently close to drive three arrows almost to the fletchings within a palm-sized space just behind and below the massive left shoulder. After a time of roaring and stamping about, the behemoth sank suddenly to his knees and began to vomit up vast quantities of frothy blood. Then, slowly, the head came to rest on the blood-soaked ground and the mighty beast’s near-ton of hulk thumped onto his right side, chest rising and falling spasmodically, the thick legs driving the deadly cloven hooves in the final agony.
Recalling the words of the hunters of her clan, the slender girl patiently waited until the big animal had ceased any movement, until the urine and dung gushed through the death-relaxed sphincters. Not until then did she approach her stupendous kill and set herself to the long, arduous and singularly messy job ahead of her.
Alone, without an axe of any description, she had known ahead of time that she would be able to take only half the fine, thick hide, but that would be more than sufficient for her purposes… if she could get the heavy, unwieldy thing back to her camp.
When she had hung as much of the carcass as she could manage to hack loose high in several nearby trees, she gorged on rich, raw, bloody liver and used her thongs of deer rawhide to tie the half hide into a load she could fasten to her pack frame, with the rest of the liver, the succulent tongue and a kidney stuffed into one of the bovine’s stomachs added to the load. It was near sunset when she stumbled, bone-weary, out of the brush and down the incline to her camp. Weaving with utter exhaustion under the heavy packload, she was just too tired to take her usual precautions or even to notice that the camp was not as she had left it.
Just as she shrugged out of the straps of the pack frame, something crashed against her temple, and Sacred Sun Itself seemed to explode inside her head. Then there was blackness.
3
For a week after Stehfahnah’s spectacular and sanguineous escape from the ferry barge, the men guarding the two kidnapped boys moved warily and in augmented force about their charges. Heeding their sister’s wise counsel and their own native cunning, however, the Horseclans boys seemed model captives, successfully giving the impression of an increasing passivity. Therefore, as seasonally hired men dropped off along the way to seek their homes or some winter employment, the boys’ guards grew fewer and far more slack.
A fortnight of travel eastward from the Great River had brought the vastly diminished caravan of wagons, pack beasts and horsemen to within two days’ journey of Pahdookahport—a true metropolis of about five thousand souls, largest river port on the western reaches of that mighty waterway called the Ohyoh River and always bustling center of the east-west trade. Within and without the towering granite walls which protected the riverside capital of the Republic of Pahdookahport a visitor might see men of almost every race, creed and color—each attended by his hired bravos. Merchants from near and far haggled over bundles of furs, bales of hides of deer and shaggy-bull, bison and elk. A hundred or more forge fires fouled the air around the quarter of the smiths, wherein rusty or corroded metals dug from the ruins of the long-dead Ancients were reconverted to the uses of living men. Factors of the far-eastern kings, princes and archdukes sat in their guarded carriages clad in rich clothing and sipping at richer wines in arrogant disdain whilst their hordes of well-trained agents scurried hither and yon sniffing out the best of the wares of incoming caravans and barges. In other guarded carriages lolled an Ehleen or two—swarthy, big-boned men, their black hair shiny with pomade, their full lips like as not encarmined, their golden swordhilts bejeweled, the nails of their heavily beringed fingers lacquered—sneering at the “barbarians,” any not of their own race.