“Aye!” Vaskos’s grin faded and his dark eyes clouded with anger. “His dogs and those of Hehrah-the-bitch very nearly did slay me, would have, but for the warning of my half sisters, bless them. My poor Frahnkos gave his life that the four of us might get away. We arrived at Komees Djeen’s hall just after the Clan Bard had left. Lady Ahnah and her women bandaged our hurts and provided me with armor, then they took over the care of my sisters and I took command of the mercen … uh, Freefighters.”
After formally greeting the ladies of the party—Lady Ahnah, Komees Djeen’s vivacious wife, her daughter, and the three Daiviz girls—Bili detached one of his troopers to guide Vaskos on the quickest route to the Hall, commandeering a brace of Vaskos’s Freefighters to fill out the patrol.
When he had seen the refugees on their way, Bill instructed the troopers in the location of their rendezvous point, then all set out in a wide-spreading crescent. They rode on and on through the deserted fields, meadows, and woodlands. At the beginning, the westering sun bore upon their right, then directly into their faces, finally bathing their left sides. Bili allowed the new horse his head in walking across a freshly plowed field, then warily traversed a narrow strip of woods. He mounted grassy knolls at the trot, galloped over the rolling leas, leaping lichened fences and the deep-cut brooks which chuckled amongst rounded stones.
Then, all at once, the cold prickling began in Bili’s far-gathering mind and he knew that he was approaching a danger. Though it seemed imminent, it lacked the strength of human minds, so he did not uncase his axe, unslinging his boarspear instead.
He never had an opportunity to use that spear, however. Beneath the spread of a thick-foliaged old tree, a heavy form hurled itself down upon Bili, driving him from the saddle, smashing him to earth. The last sound he heard, ere darkness claimed him, was the terrified screaming of his horse.
It was with a sense of mild satisfaction that Hwahltuh Sanderz of Sanderz withdrew his hand from inside the waistband of his loose, filthy trousers. That pestersome flea would never again taste of blood. Absently, he wiped his thumbnail on a grimy shirtsleeve and ruminated on the journey so far.
True, the lands lay fair enough, but there were far too many people on them. It virtually teemed with people, and almost all of them were Dirtmen too, living—if such a life could be truly called living—in immovable lodges amid their own stink from birth to death. And the way that all of them stared and stared at him and his clanmen, especially at the Cat Brothers. Why, one might think that they had never before even seen Prairie Cats!
Even those who claimed the ancient Kinship with him—claimed descent from the Horseclansmen of Ehlai-dwelt in stonewalled lodges. Of course, he ruminated, he was not sure but that some of these had lied in their teeth, for only two of them had even looked like Kindred. One of these two, who had represented himself as the Kahrtuh of Kahrtuh, had had so little mindspeak that it would have been a great compliment to call his talents marginal-and what clan would have for Chief a man who could not mindspeak Cat and Horse and other Chiefs? As for the other, he had been fat, his hands as soft as a woman’s breast.
But, Hwahltuh thought on, so much soaking in water the temperature of fresh blood might very well make a man that soft. And that was yet another thing that set the Sanderz’s teeth edge-to-edge, the washings and scrubbings and senseless-and certainly unhealthful-bathings which seemed to so obsess these strange people. Although all the clanspeople made use of a sweatlodge on occasion, they seldom immersed their bodies in water more than a couple of times a year, and then it was in a river or lake. But the odd people of this weird land sometimes bathed twice in one day, and in heated water at that!
Hwahltuh had been born with a better than average nose-thank Sacred Sun for that gift! With eyes and ears hooded and stopped, he could identify each of his warriors by smell, alone. So it made him distinctly uneasy when he was confronted by persons who bore so little odor that he could rarely even distinguish the women from the men, without seeing or hearing them.
One of the clansmen riding behind him suddenly guffawed and it was picked up by several of the others; then came a snarled curse. He glanced back over his shoulder in time to see his sister’s youngest son, Rik, leap from his kak, his hands working frantically at the drawstring of his trousers and his snubnosed face twisted in distress.
Hwahltuh halted the column, for it was not good to leave a Kinsman alone in unknown territory. Rik squatted beneath a tree, glaring at his Kinsmen from under his thick, reddish blond brows and grunting insulting comments on their appearances and personal habits, while they serenaded him with a chorus of jeers, laughter, and ribald suggestions.
The Sanderz shook his graying head in sympathy, for he too had suffered from that violent griping of the guts, as had they all, many times since they began to traverse this land. After discussion of the matter, they had decided that the problem was the dearth of decent food and the overabundance of wine. All their lives, they had been nurtured principally on the produce of their herds-milk and its products, flesh of cattle and sheep and goats. Although they sometimes traded (or raided) for dried beans or grain and the occasional pig, most of their accustomed plant foods had been wild, hunted as a matter of course, like game. The Chief could have counted upon the fingers of one hand the number of times he had tasted of wine, ere they had come to this land. Not that he and his did not like the stuff, but, Sun and Wind, it roiled the guts!
Rik had finished his business and was about to remount when Hwahltuh received the mindspeak of one of the three Cat Kindred who had been ranging ahead.
“Keep cased your bows, Brothers-of-Cats, for Whitetip comes with another Brother, a Chief!”
Bili was bereft of consciousness for but a moment, but his vision remained blurred longer, and he could not immediately tell just who or what had unhorsed him and was presently pinning him down with its considerable weight. He could hear points of some description rasping on his armor and there was a hot, acrid smell close to his face.
Abruptly, his vision cleared to disclose a cavernous red pink expanse of open mouth, equipped with a rough-looking tongue of incredible width and a full complement of big white teeth, crowned by a pair of glistening fangs at least three inches in length. Bili had never seen the like, but he knew from the very presence of those fangs that it could be no other animal but that one described in the ancient bardsongs.
Confidently, he mindspoke. “You would slay your Kinsman, Cat-brother?”
The heavy body started in surprise. “You mindspeak, then, Dirtman-who-wears-steel? This is truly a land of wonders.”
“I must have erred,” retorted Bili. “I had supposed yon of the Cat Clan. A one of the true Clan of Cats would not seek the life of a Morguhn. So you most certainly are just an animal!”
The attacker rippled a snarl and the claws rasped again across Bili’s breastplate. “Whitetip is no animal, Dirrman! He is a Cat of the Sept of Sanderz. But how is he to know that you are a Cat-brother?”
After a long moment of cudgeling his memory, Bili beamed, “I will care for your kittens and nursing females, and vouchsafe you a clean death when your teeth have dulled and the pains of age rest upon you.”
The crushing weight lifted from Bili, while a four-inch width of sandpaper tongue gently scraped over his sweaty face. Stiffly, he sat up and stared at this creature of bard-song and legend.
The Cat’s paws were large, as was the head, and intelligence sparkled in the amber depths of the eyes. The pelt was shortfurred, of a golden chestnut hue, with the ghosts of slightly darker rosettes speckling the graceful, muscle-rippling body. Whitetip stood a good nine hands at the withers and Bili estimated the weight at possibly three hundred pounds, for the Cat was bigboned, with a deep chest and forelegs much more thickly muscled than those of Treecats or lynxes. The white-tipped tail was short, its two feet or so giving him an overall length of some seven feet.