“Meaning well never yet filled a stewpot,” was the silent reply. “Nor did bragging, out-and-out lying and the taking of stupid chances of the like of juggling sharp knives while standing on one’s head in the saddle of a galloping horse; little children sometimes do things like those, Karee, but remember these are supposed to be young, proven warriors, all blooded and ready to take their places in the warrior-councils of their clans after they have ridden out as guards with the traders for a season or two. My father, the Skaht of Skaht, would have—”
Karee Skaht Linsee had had enough, however. “Your father, Myrah, owns all of my respect as the good chief he has been, but every one of us clansfolk knows and has long known that where it concerned you, he had a large soft spot in his head. You are and have always been a spoiled brat. You’re dead certain that only your desires, only your beliefs, should have any value. You had better thank Sacred Sun that our Gy is a basically gentle man, for you’ve richly deserved a sound thrashing for months . . . and he still may tan your hide, if your intemperate beamings and outbursts continue to embarrass him and Uncle Milo and Bard Herbuht.
“Now, get your lazy, slugabed self out here and do some real work, for a change!”
But only Karee, Bard Herbuht’s two wives—the middle-aged Mai and the slightly younger Djinee—and his nine-winters-old daughter, Kai, were on hand when the two hunters led their horses into the flat area on which the yurts fronted. Gy frowned and sent a private beam, and presently his other wife, Myrah, stepped sullenly out of the yurt.
As she helped the elder hunter to untie the stiff carcass of the whitish antelope, Karee remarked, “Uncle Milo, the young warriors have found a ruined place, a large one, they say. And although they all say they have hunted in this area before, they also say that none of them had ever come across this place or even suspected that one lay hereabouts. They didn’t get much game, though, only a few rabbits. And another of their spotted dogs disappeared last night, too.”
“Good.” He nodded. “Thank you for telling me of it, Karee. But where are my wives, Djoolya and Verah?”
She waved an arm to indicate general direction. “Away over on the other side of the little lake, I think. They went out shortly after you and Gy rode off. They are looking for roots and greens. Two of the Staiklee warriors are with them, looking for any traces of the missing dogs.”
“What of the other Staiklees and the two Gahdfree boys, Karee?” inquired Milo.
She shrugged. “Downstream somewhere, with hopes of arrowing or spearing or catching fish or frogs, they said.” Then she wrinkled up her brows and said, “This is another of those peculiar deerlike things, Uncle Milo—what did you say the folk of ancient days called them? I’d never before seen any of this kind until we came into this country.”
“They were called addaks, Karee. And, no, they never seem to be found here anywhere north of southern Kansas, and they’re none too common even here, but they’re good eating and their hides make good leather. With this one and the big young buck that Gy dropped, all of the camp will eat well this night, at least, even the cats. Where are the cats, anyway?”
“Out guarding the horses, I suppose, Uncle Milo. None of them has come into camp today, all day long, although I’ve seen Snowbelly and Spotted One both drinking from the lake at various times, since the nooning.”
After a nod of thanks to the young woman, Milo sent a mindcall ranging out and was immediately rewarded by the answering beamings of all three of the cats. “The twoleg Gy and I both killed fourleg grasseaters,” he informed the felines. “So there will be offal for you all, shortly, as well as some odds and ends of rabbit and maybe fish and frogs.”
Pleased and pleasantly anticipatory beamings came from the two prairiecats, but the “tame” jaguar, Spotted One, replied, “This cat killed and fed last night, twoleg cat friend Milo, so let the other two cats come in to eat—Spotted One will keep watch over the herd.”
Milo had had his doubts about just how well the wild-born and -bred jaguar was going to work out living with the Horseclans, for all that she had voluntarily joined with the prairiecat Crooktail in fighting off a pack of hyenas that had killed a mare, a foal and a boy farther north in the previous year, but the wild feline had laid his fears to rest; she had never once made to attack any horse, bovine, sheep or goat or their young. She usually kept a sizable physical distance from twolegs, which was understandable enough, though she was civil and very cooperative when mindspoken and, more important, she was carrying a litter sired by Snowbelly, which last meant to Milo that the singular race of prairiecats—the result of a succession of breeding experiments ended by the nuclear and biological warfare that had all but extirpated mankind worldwide—was more Leo than Felis. Now if the kittens she bore proved to be fertile, rather than mere sterile hybrids, there never again would be any need to subject the race to possibly deleterious inbreeding.
The skinning had been accomplished, the cleaning and butchering were underway, and the two prairie-cats were crouched feeding on the tender, bloody offal before the four Kindred warriors rode up from the southwest, whooping exuberantly, bearing strings of assorted fish and a brace of sizable writhing, decapitated vipers.
A short time later, five horses, four of them with riders, were seen to crest the low rise of ground on the opposite side of the lake and head around the water toward the campsite. The led packhorse bore two bulging sacks and a huge caldron, discolored with thick verdigris and with bits of loam still adhering to it. As the party drew closer, it could be seen that, though clothed similarly, two were adult women and two, young warriors.
Arriving in the central space, the elder of the two women—an auburn-haired, green-eyed, stocky woman of between thirty-five and forty winters—slid easily from her saddle, strode back to the packhorse and began to loose the big caldron from its load, mind-speaking the while.
“Milo, love, this lovely pot came from a place about three miles northeast of here. It’s either copper or brass and so big, you could feed a whole clan out of it. And the pot’s not all, either—wait until you see what else Verah and I found.”
The next morning, while Bard Herbuht rode out for his day of hunting with Little Djahn Staiklee and Djim-Djoh Staiklee, Milo took Gy Linsee, the four remaining Teksikuhn Kindred warriors and a cart and they all followed his premier wife, Djoolya, to the place where she had found the large copper caldron. In addition to their normal, everyday weapons, they bore along spades, axes, a wooden maul and assort-ment of wedges, a wagon jack and some hardwood pry-poles, strong ropes and a hand-carved wooden pulley.
First sight of the place from the crest of a low hill was most disheartening, however. Although patterns of vegetative growth gave indications of where the edges of fields and pastures had been so long ago, nothing resembling a building remained. Up close, the clearing away of vines and brush and bushes revealed fire-blackened stones and crumbly concrete. Between the walls of what had once been a large, rambling structure, beneath several centuries’ worth of soil and decomposing vegetation, was a jumbled layer of cracked and shattered sheets of slate, and below that layer, ancient charcoal that had once been thick beams and joists.
Early on, they disturbed two rattlesnakes, but quick slashes of sabers took off the reptiles’ heads, and, tied together by the tails over a tree limb, the bodies were left to thrash and drain and later become part of the daily meal of the camp.
Bits and pieces of rusted iron and steel and corroded, discolored other metals were scattered all through the charcoal layer—nails, screws, hinges, doorknobs and locks, wire lengths, piping lengths, little solidified pools of copper and brass and lead. In one room they unearthed a sizable chunk of solid silver protruding out of which were several rusting, pointless knifeblades. This find and the other melted nonferrous metals went into the cart, along with the copper and brass and any hardware items not too rusty or deformed to be of further use. Another find that brought a smile to Milo’s face was a complete, relatively undamaged set of hearth tools of heavy, solid bronze. More treasures were dug out of a room close to the one wherein the chunk of melted silver had been found—more than a dozen pans and pots of copper with brass handles, some plates and utensils of brass and of pewter, including a magnificent pewter mug that looked to Milo as if it would hold at least two quarts of liquid. That these finds had not melted of the heat of the long-ago fire verged on the miraculous. Most of the steel cutlery had become only lengths of flaking rust, but a few blades still were found sound, along witha sharpening steel and a dozen tinned skewers, a large, two-tined fork and a copper ladle.