Chür Høngan had killed his first man at twelve, a Texark border patrolman. Ombroz had absolved the boy at the time as he would have absolved any soldier in war, because the trooper had been on the wrong side of the river, in military uniform, and without a traveler’s flag as required by the Treaty of the Sacred Mare. As far as the Wild-dog was concerned—and the priest honored the sense of the horde— no treaty later than Sacred Mare had ever been signed with any secular powers including Texark, and the war against Texark had never become peace, it just had slowed down until it mostly stopped happening; it almost stopped because the only frontier across which the Wilddog faced the Empire was the Nady Ann River to the south, beyond which lay the occupied Jackrabbit country. There might be a time to fight there, but not until the Jackrabbit fought too. To the east, in the tall-grass country, the Grasshopper engaged the enemy when it saw fit, but it asked no help from the Wilddog while there was no Lord of the Three Hordes.
Ombroz had easily absolved him of that early killing, but gave him pure hell for honoring ancient custom as well. The boy had cut off the cavalryman’s earlobe and ate it as an honor to the slain enemy, as his Bear Spirit uncle had explained was proper. The priest called it something else. He made the boy meditate for an hour a day on the meaning of the Eucharist, and put him through parts of catechism again before he would give him communion. Høngan remembered it in the night with a grin. He never told the priest that while he was eating the earlobe he was crying for his victim. About the men he had just killed today, he could not see what Wooshin had tried to teach him to see. Something about emptiness. The Axe tried and failed to relate it to the Nomad’s Empty Sky. Something about emptiness becoming man. Or was that Christianity mixing in? There were too many ways of looking at things. A century ago, for his great-grand uncles, there had been only the one way. Høngan thought that old way might be a little like Wooshin’s way, but with more feeling and vision. The right way, his own way, was not clear to Høngan, not quite yet.
Before dawn he shook the frost from his blankets and rode on by the faint light of an old crescent moon in the east. Knowing the route the priest would take, he did not need to see their tracks to follow, and within two hours he had found them. Ombroz had rekindled their dung fire and they were drinking hot tea and eating jerky at sunrise. The chaplain hailed him, and the turncoat to whom he had not yet been introduced arose expectantly, but the Nomad went straight to their hobbled horses. He petted one of them, spoke to it gently, then cut the hobbling cord and lifted a front hoof to inspect it. Then he turned to confront them.
“Father, you’ve brought a spy among us!”
“What are you talking about, my son? This is Captain Esitt Loyte, the one Cardinal Brownpony suggested. He is married to a granddaughter of Wetok Enar, your own kin.”
“I don’t care if he married the granddaughter of the devil’s clan. He’s riding a shod horse to let them know he’s here.”
The priest frowned at the former trooper, then arose to stare toward the west.
“Don’t worry, Father. I killed two of them, and the other fled. Here are the papers.” He faced Loyte and drew his gun. The stranger spat in the fire, and said, “You might look at both sides of the horse. But thank you, if you killed my assassins.”
Høngan aimed at his abdomen. “Your assassin is right here.”
“Wait, Bearcub,” barked the priest. “Do as he says. Look at the brand.”
Reluctantly, he lowered the pistol and inspected the stranger’s mount again. “One of Grandmother Wetok’s horses,” he said in surprise. “And you had it shod in Pobla? You damn fool!”
“If they were out to kill me, why should I leave tracks for them?” Esitt Loyte began to explain, but Høngan ignored him, took tools from his bag, and began prying a shoe from a forehoof. “Give me a hand here,” he said to Ombroz.
Soon the nails were pulled and the task was done. He put the horseshoes in his saddlebag. “We’ll have to show them to your mother-in-law,” he said to the stranger.
“Imeant no…”
“Bearcub, he’s an expert in Texark cavalry tactics, and he knows their war plans. They came to kill him.”
“But now he’s useless to us, because they know he’s here.”
“From the tracks of one shod horse? It might be anybody. It might be a Churchman. It might be a trader.”
“Traitor, you mean. Before they died, they spoke his name.”
“Well, it’s done now, and the trail ends here. Loyte is right. They came to kill him. At least they must think he’s useful to us, even if you don’t.” He turned to the young former officer. “Why did you have the pony shod?”
“Before I rode into the mountains, I talked to the liveryman in Pobla and he recommended it. And I have always ridden a shod horse. It’s cavalry—”
“The trail ends here,” the priest repeated. “Bearcub, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Mount up,” said the Nomad, and pointed toward the horizon. “Look at the dust. There’s a migration trail just to the east of us. The herds are moving north. We’ll wait there until drovers come. Then we’ll ride ahead of their cattle for a few hours, and our tracks will vanish.”
“If we do that,” Loyte protested, “we won’t be home before dark.”
“Home?” snorted Høngan.
“The hogans of his wife and her grandmother,” Ombroz said firmly. “But I agree, we’d better do as you say.”
It was midafternoon before Holy Madness was satisfied that the woolly Nomad cattle that were following them in the distant cloud of dust would erase their tracks. They changed direction then, left the cattle trail, and resumed a northeastward course.
Ombroz was still trying to make peace. “If the cardinal’s plan succeeds,” he said, “the Hannegan will have to stop these incursions into Wilddog and Grasshopper lands, at least for many years. The hordes by then will be stronger under a single king.”
Høngan was silent for a time. They both knew that the Grasshopper lands, the tall-grass prairie lands, lying to the east, would bear the brunt of any invasion. Those of Blacktooth’s people who had remained herdsmen there had become the most warlike of the hordes, because they had to be. They faced Hannegan’s armies, and the slow encroachment of farmers onto the more arable eastern fringe. And yet the Wilddog was closest to the Church in Valana, and to possible allies beyond the mountains. There was friction between the hordes, made worse by Nomadic outlaws who had departed from the matrilineal system and attracted young runaways from the conquered Jackrabbit south of the Nady Ann.