Then, all at once, the cold prickling began in Bili’s far-gathering mind and he knew that he was approaching a danger. Though it seemed imminent, it lacked the strength of human minds, so he did not uncase his axe, unslinging his boarspear instead.
He never had an opportunity to use that spear, however. Beneath the spread of a thick-foliaged old tree, a heavy form hurled itself down upon Bili, driving him from the saddle, smashing him to earth. The last sound he heard, ere darkness claimed him, was the terrified screaming of his horse.
It was with a sense of mild satisfaction that Hwahltuh Sanderz of Sanderz withdrew his hand from inside the waistband of his loose, filthy trousers. That pestersome flea would never again taste of blood. Absently, he wiped his thumbnail on a grimy shirtsleeve and ruminated on the journey so far.
True, the lands lay fair enough, but there were far too many people on them. It virtually teemed with people, and almost all of them were Dirtmen too, living-if such a life could be truly called living-in immovable lodges amid their own stink from birth to death. And the way that all of them stared and stared at him and his clanmen, especially at the Cat Brothers. Why, one might think that they had never before even seen Prairie Cats!
Even those who claimed the ancient Kinship with him-claimed descent from the Horseclansmen of Ehlai-dwelt in stonewalled lodges. Of course, he ruminated, he was not sure but that some of these had lied in their teeth, for only two of them had even looked like Kindred. One of these two, who had represented himself as the Kahrtuh of Kahrtuh, had had so little mindspeak that it would have been a great compliment to call his talents marginal-and what clan would have for Chief a man who could not mindspeak Cat and Horse and other Chiefs? As for the other, he had been fat, his hands as soft as a woman’s breast.
But, Hwahltuh thought on, so much soaking in water the temperature of fresh blood might very well make a man that soft. And that was yet another thing that set the Sanderz’s teeth edge-to-edge, the washings and scrubbings and senseless-and certainly unhealthful-bathings which seemed to so obsess these strange people. Although all the clanspeople made use of a sweatlodge on occasion, they seldom immersed their bodies in water more than a couple of times a year, and then it was in a river or lake. But the odd people of this weird land sometimes bathed twice in one day, and in heated water at that!
Hwahltuh had been born with a better than average nose-thank Sacred Sun for that gift! With eyes and ears hooded and stopped, he could identify each of his warriors by smell, alone. So it made him distinctly uneasy when he was confronted by persons who bore so little odor that he could rarely even distinguish the women from the men, without seeing or hearing them.
One of the clansmen riding behind him suddenly guffawed and it was picked up by several of the others; then came a snarled curse. He glanced back over his shoulder in time to see his sister’s youngest son, Rik, leap from his kak, his hands working frantically at the drawstring of his trousers and his snubnosed face twisted in distress.
Hwahltuh halted the column, for it was not good to leave a Kinsman alone in unknown territory. Rik squatted beneath a tree, glaring at his Kinsmen from under his thick, reddish blond brows and grunting insulting comments on their appearances and personal habits, while they serenaded him with a chorus of jeers, laughter, and ribald suggestions.
The Sanderz shook his graying head in sympathy, for he too had suffered from that violent griping of the guts, as had they all, many times since they began to traverse this land. After discussion of the matter, they had decided that the problem was the dearth of decent food and the overabundance of wine. All their lives, they had been nurtured principally on the produce of their herds-milk and its products, flesh of cattle and sheep and goats. Although they sometimes traded (or raided) for dried beans or grain and the occasional pig, most of their accustomed plant foods had been wild, hunted as a matter of course, like game. The Chief could have counted upon the fingers of one hand the number of times he had tasted of wine, ere they had come to this land. Not that he and his did not like the stuff, but, Sun and Wind, it roiled the guts!