“No, Old-Cat, of all the many races of man, only among the men of the Horseclans can little Aldora expect life. Since her future lies with them, it were well that she came to know them. It is unfortunate that she had to learn first of the bad of Horsepeople; but let her, now, learn of the good.”
After Hari had fulfilled Horsekiller’s request for a bit of the sheep-cheese, his hand moved unerringly to his wine cup. While sipping, he mindspoke, “Still, Milo, you might have kept her here. Her mind needs training, if she is too advance to her full powers. Good and well-meaning as they are, what can Hwahlis and his clan provide that we could not?”
Milo concentrated his gaze on the surface of the resinous wine in his cup. “Did you ever sire and rear children, Hari?”
There was a twinge of ancient pain the bard’s mind. “No. When I was a young man, I took as wife a lovely maiden of the Clan Koopuh, one Kairi. In the two years before she conceived of me, she became all things, all that ever I could want or need. When she died a-borning—she and the child together—I never again felt desire for, and never took, another woman—wife nor slave.”
While Old-Cat nuzzled Hari’s thigh sympathetically, Milo went on. “You have never reared a child, Hari, nor has Mara. I have, but it was centuries ago and in another world. Aldora is of, and must learn to live in, this world. For all that she is, she is still a child and she needs the love and guidance and companionship of parents and a family—and she needs them now. As for training her mind, that can come later, one thing that my clan never lacks of is time!”
One morning about two weeks after the event-filled day of her adoption, Aldora Linsee awakened to the realization that she had never in her life felt happier or more secure. All her icy fears of these people, acquired by dint of the sufferings experienced at their hands, she found to have completely dissipated in the warm glow of the very real and oft demonstrated love which her new family and clan—all members of them—lavished on her; and, thanks to ” her daily-increasing mental abilities, she was keenly aware of the verity and depth of their feelings.
She had not yet been a year old when one of the contagions, which swept the cities of the Ehleenoee every summer (being especially virulent in dry summers), had carried off her mother. So, having been reared almost entirely by slave-women, she had never known what it was to have a mother. Now she had two—Tsheri, Hwahlis’ eldest wife, and Beti—on a full-time basis, in addition to every matron in the clan, part-tune. Also, there was the eldest of Hwahlis’ concubines, Neekohl.
Aldora’s natural father had never really liked females, considering them a necessary evil. He married and begat only because it was expected of him. After his wife’s un-mourned death, he devoted very nearly all his waking hours to his minions, his peers, his commercial enterprises, and his sons—in descending order. In the few scraps of time he grudgingly allotted to his daughter, he was coldly correct and stiffly formal—even for his tightly controlled and undemonstrative race. He did not like to have to touch females anyway, and if any had ever suggested that he hold or kiss his little girl, he would very probably have vomited.
Hwahlis, on the other hand, was a typical nomad warrior—volatile, uninhibited, emotional, intense. He was open-handedly generous, not only with his personal effects and possessions, but with his love, of which he seemed to have an endless supply. For the first few days, he had been scrupulously careful to neither touch nor kiss this concubine-become-daughter, lest his motives be misunderstood—a thing that his sensitive soul could not have borne, so filled with repentance was it already. And, to a man to whom visible demonstration of love was an integral and necessary part of life, this torture was unbelievably severe. It could not last and it didn’t.
By the third morning after the day-and-night-long chief-feast, most of the tribe had more-or-less recovered and camp-life had resumed near-normality. Aldora did not know how to ride and for one who was to be a horseclanswoman, this was a calamitous condition which could not be allowed to continue. So, mounted behind and clinging tightly to Beti, she arrived at the tribal horse-herd to choose and be accepted by two or three horses. As they drew near to the herd, they were mindspoken by a late-adolescent female cat, preening herself on a hummock, from which she was afforded a clear view of the portion of the herd to which she had been assigned.
“Greet-the-Sun, Cat-sisters. Have the two-legs at last recuperated from the sickness of cloudy minds and shaky legs and bad bellies?”
“Yes, we have all recuperated, sister-mine, and it only took two days. But if you make yourself anymore beautiful, it will take you the best part of three moons to ‘recuperate’ from your ‘bad belly’!” replied Beti, laughingly.
The cat gave vent to a shuddering purr. “Wind and Sun grant that that kind of sickness come quickly. Already poor Mole-Fur is nearly twenty-four moons, and she has no desire to die a maiden.”
Beti’s delighted laughter trilled again. “Small chance of that, Cat-sister.” Then she cantered on around the outskirts of the wide-spreading herd.
At what appeared a likely spot, Beti slid from her mare’s back and helped Aldora dismount. Then, after removing saddle-pad and halter, she mindspoke her mount and the mare trotted into the herd.
Bewildered, Aldora regarded the thousands of horses—whites, grays, bays, chestnuts, sorrels, roans, claybanks, and blacks with occasional pintos, piebalds, and that flax-en-maned and tailed variety of golden-chestnut known as palomino.
At last, she burst out, “But Beti, how can I tell which ones are Linsee, which ones belong to us?”
Beti smiled and patted the child who stood nearly as tall as she. “It is simple, Aldora. None of them are ours. No man owns a horse, not in this tribe. The horses are with us because they choose to be. Other races enslave horses. They have to because they’re incapable of communicating with them. It has never been thus with us. Since first the Undying-God came to the Sacred Ancestors, the horse has been our partner and equal. It is a partnership older even than that of the Cat.
“Though not as intelligent as our Cat-brothers and sisters, the horses have their own tribes and clans and, over all, a king-stallion. It was him that I sent Morning-Mist to . seek. King Ax-Hoof will mindspeak you—he is far more intelligent than the bulk of his kind—and then conduct you through the herd, introducing you to you to those he feels would best suit your mutual needs and temperaments. I think … wait, here they come now.”
Aldora looked to see Beti’s long-barreled, short-legged little mare trotting back. Beside her was a huge, scarred, red-bay stallion.
Beti was first to mindspeak. “Greet-the-Sun, Horse-King. I am Beti, wife to Chief Hwahlis of Linsee. This other two-leg female is the adopted daughter of the Linsee and she has come to exchange the horse-oath. None of your hellions, mind you, Ax-Hoof, this female is not born of the tribe and knows nothing of horses or riding.”
The big, rangy, horse stepped closer. “Do you mind-speak, Chief’s daughter?”
“Yes,” Aldora answered him. “I … I am called Aldora, Horse-King.”
“And you fear me, little two leg,” stated the red-bay.
“Why?”
“You’re … you’re so tall,” Aldora replied. “So big and … fierce and dangerous-looking.”
Morning-Mist snorted and stamped one hoof. Though she did not mindspeak, her amusement was discernible.