Author’s Introduction
The following tale is a fantasy, pure and simple. It is a flight of sheer imagination. It contains no hidden meanings and none should be read into it; none of the sociological, economic, political, religious, or racial “messages,” with which far too many modern novels abound, are herein contained. The Coming of the Horseclans is, rather, intended for the enjoyment of any man or woman who has ever felt a twinge of that atavistic urge to draw a yard of sharp, flashing steel and with a wild war cry recklessly spur a vicious stallion against impossible odds.
If I must further categorize, I suppose this effort falls among the sci-fi/fantasy stories which are woven about a post-cataclysmic age, far in our future. In this case, the story is set in the twenty-seventh century. The world with which we are dealing is one still submerged hi the barbarism into which it was plunged some six hundred years prior to the detailed events, following a succession of man-made and natural disasters which extirpated whole nations and races of mankind.
For the scholars and just plain curious: Yes, the language of the Blackhairs or Ehleenoee is Greek. I have, indeed, indulged in a bit of literary license with regard to spelling, both in that language and in Merikan or English. I tender no apologies.
Prologue
After two hundred years of roaming over most of a strange, altered world, I came back to the area from which I had begun my fruitless quest, the high plains of what had once been the United States of America. Search as I might, I had been unable to find that fabled isle, said to be peopled exclusively by men and women like myself.
Near the headwaters of the Red River, I rode into the camp of Clan Morguhn. They had summered in the mountains and were moving toward the Llano IJstacado to meet with other clans and establish a winter camp. I represented myself as a clanless man, dropping vague references to a mysterious plague which had wiped out my clan-of-birth, and I was granted the hospitality of Chief Djimi’s tent.
We wintered at a bend of the Brazos River, along with four other kindred clans. As the river was beginning to swell with spring snow-melt, our camp became host to Blind Hari Kruguh, the tribal bard. He remained with us until New-grass-time. When the clan dispersed, both he and I rode north with Clan Ohlsuhn. From that day to this, he has ever remained near to me and we have become the closest of friends.
It was the exercise of his not inconsiderable powers which prevented the tribe from separating three years after my return, following the Tenth Year Council and feasts. Bidding the chiefs into yet another sitting, he introduced me. As sole survivor of my clan, I was automatically Morai of Morai, their peer. He recounted the manner of my arrival, sang the entire “The Prophecy of the Return,” then pointed out the host of similarities between my coming and the verses of that ancient song. The upshot was that I was acclaimed War Chief of the tribe. The clans began to prepare for the long awaited return to the Sacred Sea, to rebuild their Holy City, Ehlai.
From my travels, I knew better than to attempt a trek to the true place of origin of their ancestors, what had been southern California. The worldwide seismic disturbances of some three hundred years before had tumbled most of that nuclear-scarred area into the Pacific Ocean. Therefore, I led them east….
1
The farmers were big men. They outnumbered the small contingent of nomad raiders by more than two-to-one and they fought with desperation, but it was the desperation of hopelessness and this counted against them. Also against them were the facts that their opponents had been born in the saddle and had cut their teeth on their sabers and axes. Their cuirasses of boiled leather turned aside the agriculturists’ hastily snatched weapons. Besides, most of the farmers were drunk.
The arrow-volley which preceded the first charge had dropped more than a dozen of the olive-skinned dancers. Most of the remainder fell, as had the ripe grain whose harvest they had been celebrating, beneath the keen edges of the riders’ steel or the churning hoofs and ravening teeth of their mounts.
Cut off and alone, a flashily dressed, beefy man swung a poleax with such force that it severed the foreleg of a passing horse. But he dropped his well-used weapon and staggered back, clutching at the coils of his intestines which spilled through the abdominal slash dealt him by the crippled horse’s wiry, towheaded rider. Another second found the nomad kneeling by his victim, choking on his own blood, an arrow transfixing his throat.
As Milo Morai jerked his saber free from the body of his latest opponent, a hunting arrow caromed off the side of his spiked helmet. Glancing in the direction whence the shaft had come, he saw the archer shoot the tow-headed man. He urged his palomino stallion, Steeltooth, toward the gangling teen-ager, who loosed one more shaft at Milo, dropped his longbow, and turned to run. Milo leaned from his saddlelike kak and, with a single slash of his heavy saber, sent the boy’s wide-eyed head spinning from his body. The headless trunk, spouting twin cataracts of blood, ran several more yards before it fell, twitching and jerking, to the firelit dust of the village square.
After the riders’ third sweep across the village, nearly all the Dirtmen lay dead or dying in the bloody, hoof-churned mud of the dancing ground. Only one point of resistance remained: A knot of six or eight fanners, plus two men whose garb, armor, and fighting skill attested them professional soldiers, had formed a semi-circle, their backs to the front wall of the headman’s house. They were holding their own; in the space before them lay the bodies of four nomads and one horse.
The riders were drawing up to charge yet again, but Milo pulled a shinbone whistle from within his cuirass and blew the signal to halt, then nudged Steeltooth over to the bunched raiders.
“Arrows,” he said shortly. “No honor to be gained by allowing scum like this to send more of you to Wind’s Home. Drop all but the money-fighters.”
Grinning, three of the horsemen uncased their short hornbows. When the last of the farmers had been felled, Milo toed Steeltooth to a point midway between his riders and the two armored soldiers, each armed with a three-foot broadsword and a long, wide-bladed dirk.
“Meelahteh Ehleeneekos?” Milo inquired. “Or can you speak Merikan?”
The bigger of the two, a man a couple of inches taller than Milo, couched his answer in a drawled, very slurred dialect of the second tongue. “I talk ’em both, you murderin’ son of a bitch, you!”
Milo’s white teeth flashed startlingly against the background of his weathered face as he smiled his approval of the defiant words.
“You’re a brave man, soldier. Are you free-fighters? If so, I’ve always employment for men with guts.”