“But what about our Horseclans boys, Uncle Milo?” demanded Sub-chief Djeri Baikuh. “If these damned young Ehleenees get all the land and all?”
There was a broad measure of humor in Milo’s beamed answer. “Oh ho, now we get to the bottom of things. Never you fear, Kindred, you have never seen these lands into which we ride on the morrow. They are truly vast, when compared to those lands you have seen; there will be more than enough for all, believe me.”
“Are these lands as long and as wide as the Sea of Grasses, Uncle Milo?” queried Chief Hwahlt Skaht.
“Not that large, Hwahlt,” Milo replied. “Before the great earthquake and subsidences of so much of the coasts and tidewater lands, the lands that later became the kingdom of Southern Ehleenohee took up some one hundred and seventy or one hundred and eighty thousand square miles, and even today, the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee stretches and spreads over an expanse of one hundred and thirty-odd thousand square miles.”
“And just how large is, say, Kehnooryos Ehlahs, Uncle Milo?” the chief asked.
“Between the landward edges of the salt fens and the latest-won portions of the mountains,” was Milo’s reply, “between the Karaleenos border and the Kuhmbuhluhn border, Kehnooryos Ehlahs covers about two-fifths as much land, Hwahlt.”
The chief spit out his grass stem arid hissed softly between his teeth, looking very thoughtful, but carefully shielding his thoughts from the scrutiny of his two companions.
But not shielded from the powerful mental probing abilities of him who abruptly joined them.
The agouti-colored cat slipped noiselessly from out the tiny copse between the three men and came to sit between Chief Hwahlt and Milo, his chin resting on the latter’s knee and his thick tail overlapping his forepaws.
Even as he yawned gapingly, the westering sun glinting on his long, white cuspids, he was beaming, “Why would my cat-brother, the honored and valiant Chief of the Skahts, think of taking all of his clan away from Ehlai, whence first came the Sacred Ancestors, the progenitors of his folk?”
“To begin with, cat-brother,” was Hwahlt’s answer, “there is some doubt that this Ehlai is the original Ehlai, amongst the bards of the clans, for some versions of the Prophecy of the Return and How Strange Our Old Lands say that the direction of The Ehlai of our Sacred Ancestors lies in the home of the setting, not of the rising, of Sun. So there may well be nothing in any way holy about that crowded, overgrazed, mosquito-ridden place up in Kehnooryos Ehlahs at all.
“I mean to take my clan out of it, too, whether we come down here to the Consolidated Thoheekseeahnee or take over the lands and titles that King Zenos has offered me and mine, and Chief Ben of Baikuh means to go, too. Nor are we two the only chiefs considering the offers of Karaleen lands; no, there’s Vawn, Morguhn, Danyuhlz, Rahsz and more.”
Milo was not surprised to hear the chief’s thoughts. He of all men knew just how crowded the high island in the midst of the great salt fen was become as the Horseclansfolk and their herds bred year after year. Nor was the ancient man at all displeased at the news, for the clans squatting on Ehlai were becoming more and more inbred, and this fact could be the beginning of racial disaster, yet few of them living cheek by jowl with close Kindred could be persuaded to take Ehleen women or men in marriage. However, were the clans to settle far away from other clans, in Ehleen-populated lands, then perhaps they might begin to scatter their racial seed farther afield and reduce somewhat their present consanguinity.
In fact, did this chief and the others he had mentioned know the full truth of the matter, King Zenos had requested and been gladly given Milo’s permission to offer his handsome propositions to the chiefs after the defeat of Zastros’ great army, six years back. It had taken longer than he or the young king had expected, but it now would seem that that particular barme had begun to ferment.
To the newly arrived prairiecat, Milo beamed, “Did my cat-brother see or smell aught of danger nearby our campsite?”
The cat had begun to lick at his chest fur with steady strokes of a long, wide, red-pink tongue, nor did he cease his grooming while he beamed his silent reply to Milo. “No two-legs den up anywhere I went in the lands ahead, God Milo. There was one place where once they denned, but no faintest scent of them now lies anywhere within it, only the smells of the beasts which for long have used its shelter. Around the road, yonder toward the rising of Sun is the only place in which there is recent scent of two-legs, and even that is not too recent. This cat … wait, God Milo, Shadowspots beams to this cat.”
After a moment, still licking, the prairiecat resumed his beaming: “God Milo, Shadowspots has found a sandy place down the river. Two-legs without toot coverings have walked there this day, and small, very narrow boats were pulled up out of the river there. The bones and scales of several fish are scattered there, also the bones of a large water viper.”
“Any trace of fire?” asked Milo.
“No, God Milo,” the cat beamed back, “only that which this cat has repeated from the beaming of Shadowspots.”
Milo came up to a stand, ordering, “Hwahlt, before anyone goes too far in settling up hereabouts, tell them we won’t be camping here after all. Shadowspots has found a place where barefoot men pulled canoes or pirogues ashore on a little riverine beach and had themselves a meal of raw fish and a raw moccasin, leaving behind bones from the snake but not the head. What does that sound like to you?”
The chief’s lips became a grim line. “Fen-men! No damned wonder this stretch is unsettled, on either side of the river; those devils must have killed or driven off everyone who tried to live around here … if they were anywhere near to the river, that is. Fen-men will never willingly get far from water and their boats, ever, for any reason.”
Hurriedly, the carts were reloaded and the march resumed in a southwesterly direction, away from the river and the swamps into which it eventually flowed. The fen-folk were the avowed enemies of every man or woman or child not of their scanty numbers and had always been such for as long as anyone could recall. They were a primitive and a singularly savage people, living deep in the fens and swamps in small extended-family groups, joining forces with others of their unsavory ilk but rarely.
Their most-feared arm was a blowgun which expelled darts smeared with deadly poisons; other than these, most carried a large, multipurpose knife and maybe a second, smaller one; they were said to use spears in hunting boars, alligators and certain other large, dangerous beasts, but they never used such in warfare. Fen-men wore no armor, no footwear of any description and few clothes, for that matter. They went about almost naked and smeared from head to foot with some sort of grease that smelled reptilian and was said to repel insects. Adult fen-men shaved or pulled out all of the hair from both scalp and body, but otherwise were of distinctively unclean habits. All folk so unfortunate as to live near them hated and feared the night-stalking killers with their deadly blowpipes; they were killed on sight, like the deadly species of vermin they were considered to be. But wiser folk tried to avoid fen-men and their haunts altogether, which was just what Milo and the others were doing.
“Better to be safe than sorry,” he thought, “but someday I’m just going to have to find a way to eradicate those damned man-shaped things from one end of the fens to the other. I hate to think of countenancing, leading, genocide, but the fen-folk have been at war with all the rest of humanity since at least the time of the great earthquakes and I don’t think they will ever be otherwise then cold-blooded, creeping, sneaking murderers, coming by night or killing from ambush any man or woman or child they see who is not one of them. Even the Ehleen pirates, who have had shaky agreement with them for a couple of centuries now, admit that the fen-men are sly, treacherous and completely devoted to murder as a pleasant pastime. And people like that cannot be dealt with—I know, I’ve tried for years with the subrace of them who inhabit the fens of Kehnooryos Ehlahs—save with a bow at ranges that their devilish poisoned darts won’t reach.”