Far to the west-southwest, clouds of dust arose high into the blue skies over and in the broad wake of mounted riders, carts, a few wagons, men, women and children afoot, herds of horses and mules, cattle and sheep and goats, packs of hunting dogs and a few prairiecats. The Kindred clans of Staiklee and Gahdfree were on the march. This time, however, they were not simply moving half-aimlessly to find fresh graze for the herds and game for the stewpots, but had a definite destination in mind and a desire to reach it as soon as possible, so they pushed each day’s march as fast as flesh and blood would bear.
There was, despite appearances to the contrary, a definite order to the aggregation of people, beasts and conveyances. Far ahead of the van, a few mature prairiecats trotted, all their keen senses at full alert for danger of any sort as well as for large game or any meaningful quantities of smaller, keeping always telepathically in touch with van and main body.
Depending upon many factors of terrain and weather and happenstance, the van—those who immediately followed the great cats—rode anywhere from a half to a full mile behind. These were young men and women armed with bows or darts, riatas or bolas or slings, spears or lances strung across their backs, their belts all abristle with the hilts of sheathed knives, a few of them bearing hooded hawks on their padded arms. Although they all joked and joshed in a lighthearted manner, their purposes were deadly grim.
Any frontal attack of the column would hit them first, which was why they all rode in at least partial armor, helmets on their heads and with sabers and targes hung from the horse housings, while axes depended from saddle pommels. But their main purpose was to down any game across which they chanced, for if such offerings were not enough to fill the stewpots of the clans this night, cattle or goats or sheep might have to be slaughtered, and kine were wealth, something that both clans held little enough of, as it was.
But the hunting, thank Sun and Wind, was good, so far, this day.
Younger boys and girls shuttled back and forth between the line of hunters and the main column leading packhorses or pack mules laden with bloody carcasses, their destinations being some open carts, wherein slaves’ flashing knives cleaned and flayed and dressed those carcasses, carefully saving every scrap and drop of blood, working always in a thick, metallic-hued, droning cloud of flies. The carts each were trailed closely by a pack of puppies and younger dogs, which licked at any spilled blood and frequently fought briefly over anything dropped through mis-chance by the laboring slaves.
Mature dogs, well trained and generally obedient, accompanied the arc of hunters or aided the drovers in handling the herds of cattle, sheep and goats. The horses needed no such canine or human urgings. Most of them were telepathic to at least some degree, and the laggards quickly responded to a sharp nip of the teeth of the king stallion or one of his subordinates. Prairiecat kittens were borne in a cage cart, driven by a human slave of the cat septs.
Behind the arc of hunters, but always within sight of them, rode the blooded warriors of both clans. These men all rode in full armor—most of this being of hardened leather; metal was so scarce and so hideously expensive that it was saved for the fashioning of weapons and tools only, and among the poorer clans even the heads of arrows were often of knapped stone, fire-hardened bone or sharpened horn to conserve metal supplies—their short, recurved, horsemen’s bows ail strung but cased, weapons and targes slung within quick, easy reach, minds open to receive any communication from the cats or the hunters ahead of them, the flankers to either side or the rearguard who trailed a half-mile behind the tail of the column.
At variable distances behind the warriors came the wagons and carts, wagons drawn by three or four span of brawny oxen, carts by oxen or mules or horses, many of them trailing on tethers milk cows and nanny goats. The herd of sheep and goats were driven on the flanks and fairly close to the carts and wagons, sometimes even among the fringes of them. But the cattle were kept back as much as possible, at least a half-mile back, usually. Where the drovers of the smaller herd animals went mostly afoot, those driving the cattle were all mounted not on hunting horses or warhorses, but on quick-footed, fast, and highly intelligent horses long accustomed to dealing with the big, dangerous, stupid and ever-unpredictable cattle; over the years, more Horseclansmen and Horseclanswomen, boys, girls, horses, dogs and slaves had been killed or injured by cattle than by any other single cause—war, accident, hunting, anything.
Dangerous or not, however, the herds were very necessary to the nomadic clans, for no meaningful number of folk could live well or for long through hunting and wild-plant gathering alone. Cattle and sheep and goats were necessary for more than simply their milk and meat. The vast majority of the leather goods of the Horseclans was made of cowhide, the hair of the cattle made felt, horn became many utensils and armor and backing for hornbows, sinew had hundreds of uses, hooves were rendered into jelly and glue, internal organs became liners for skin water carriers and pouches to carry items such as tobacco and other herbs that must be constantly kept from dampness, bones became tools and weapons, fat was rendered into tallow for the lighting of yurts. And because the possession of them was so necessary, the wealth of a clan had come to be reckoned by the number of cattle in its herds. Sheep and goats were important in their own rights to the continued survival and well-being of their owners, but they still were not afforded the same degrees of importance as were the vile-tempered, stubborn, powerful and incipiently deadly cattle, not among the free-roaming clans of nomads of the south, did they chance to be Kindred or no.
Clans Staiklee and Gahdfree had camped and trekked together for long years, and generations of intermarriage had rendered the two practically a single clan, a clan with two chiefs. Big Djahn Staiklee and Djim-Booee Gahdfree complemented each other, Staiklee being a superlative war chief and Gahdfree being equally good at planning the pursuits of peace, diplomatic dealings with those too strong or of too close a degree of Kindred to fight overtly or raid covertly and at bargaining with plains traders.
Staiklee and his father before him had the well-earned reputation of being extremely warlike; within two bare generations they and their clansmen had managed to wipe out or drive off most of the non-Kindred nomads and settlements of Dirtmen from end to end of their accustomed range, leaving only Clans Gahdfree, Ohlsuhn, Morguhn, Reevehrah and a very few other Kindred clans anywhere near. And even these Kindred tried to not stray too close to the stamping grounds of Big Djahn Staiklee for the good and sufficient reason that his nature was incurably acquisitive when it came to cattle and that a good portion of his herd consisted of “previously owned” beasts. The free-roving Horseclans did not engage in the practices of ear-notching or branding their cattle, so theft was a difficult charge to ever prove, and the various chiefs all felt it to be more circumspect to stay out of easy cattle-lifting distance of the otherwise quite amiable Chief Djahn of Staiklee than to risk a bloodfeud over a few steers and heifers and a bull or two.
But despite, and really because of, its wealth in cattle, Clan Staiklee (and, consequently, Clan Gahdfree, as well) was poor in metal. All of the ruins within the range had been long since combed over for metals, and Chief Djahn was most loath to sell or trade cattle for iron. His sire, Sam Hoostuhn Staiklee, had been of equal mind, and therefore most of the metal they did own had been taken in raiding or warring.
Of more recent years, Chief Djahn’s most frequent sparring partners had been the minions of Jorge, El Rey del Norte, northernmost of the five kings of Mexico. Chief Djahn had never met the man, of course, but he figured him to be a leader much like himself, considering the instant response that occurred whenever the Staiklees and Gahdfrees rode down into his kingdom after cattle, horses, women and loot.