Crystal Gorge Page 5

  Ekial and the other young men of their clan found the story of “one price” to be very amusing, but they had other, more serious things on their minds just then. The herding of cattle might appear to be quite simple, but the young men of the clan soon discovered that it was extremely complicated. Cows are not the world’s brightest or bravest animals, and it doesn’t take very much to frighten a cow. One frightened cow isn’t much of a problem, but a hundred frightened cows could quickly turn into a disaster. The standard practice involved “turning the herd,” and that was extremely dangerous. Ekial’s boyhood friend Baltha was killed when his horse stumbled and threw him during one of those stampedes.

  There were other things involved in the lives of Malavi herdsmen that had very little to do with cows. Disagreements about the ownership of streams and lakes were quite common, and there were frequent disputes about which clan owned a stray cow. Those arguments were quite often settled with sabres or lances.

  As Ekial, Ariga, and Skarn matured, the older men of the clan gave them instructions in how to use the sabre. “‘Slash,’ don’t poke,” was the cardinal rule. As one scar-faced old man put it, “If your sabre happens to get tangled up in your enemy’s innards, there’s a fair chance that it’ll get jerked right out of your hand as your horse runs past him, and that’s a very good way for you to wind up dead.”

  The lance, on the other hand, was made for poking. The Malavi lance was about twenty feet long, and its original purpose had been to turn a running cow. Back in those days, the Malavi lance had been blunt-ended, and it could literally push a cow in a different direction. The addition of a sharp metal point was a recent development that had appeared during the Trogite invasion, and that in turn had led to the extension of the Trogite shield. The world of weapons seemed to be changing all the time.

  As the seasons passed, Ekial’s reputation became based more upon his skills as a herder and warrior than upon those early years when he and Beast won every race they entered. The older men of the clan approved of his growing maturity and skills as a herder.

  And then, not long before his twenty-eighth birthday, there arose a dispute with a neighboring clan about the other clan’s decision to dam off a small brook. There was no question that the brook originated in the other clan’s territory, but damming off streams of water that flowed into the lands of a neighboring clan had always been considered to be an act of war.

  Ekial’s response, however, was somewhat unusual. Instead of mounting a daylight attack on horseback, Ekial, Ariga, and Skarn waited until nightfall and then followed the now-dry streambed into the other clan’s territory on foot.

  “This is so unnatural,” Ekial’s friend Ariga muttered as they quietly clambered over the large dry rocks and through the dense brush.

  “Quit complaining so much, Ariga,” Skarn said. “One of the main rules when you go to war is ‘always surprise your enemy.’ The last thing those water-stealers are likely to expect is just exactly what we’re doing now. We’re not attacking them on horseback in broad daylight. We’re attacking their dam at night on foot.”

  “The moon’s coming up,” Ekial whispered. “We’d better stick to the shadows until we get farther on up this draw. The enemy clan’s probably got patrols out along the border.”

  The pale moon rose up over the meadowland, and it seemed to Ekial that she was leaching all color out of the surrounding countryside, and everything looked different now. The bushes along the now-dry streambed were not green as they were supposed to be, but rather were black, and almost threatening. Ekial didn’t like bushes very much. They always seemed to get in the way, and they seemed to irritate horses—probably because they didn’t smell like grass. In the present situation, however, the bushes were quite useful, since they filled the dry streambed with shadows, and shadows concealed him and his friends from the dam-builder clan.

  The pale moon rose higher and higher in the star-studded night sky, and she was almost directly overhead when Ekial and his friends reached the enemy dam.

  “Maybe we should have started just a bit earlier,” Skarn whispered. “It’s going to take us quite a while to tear that thing down.”

  Ekial studied the dam in the bright moonlight. “Not quite as long as you might think, Skarn,” he disagreed. He kicked a fairly substantial boulder in the center of the structure. “This is the real dam. The rest of this gravel was piled up around it to keep the water from dribbling on down into the streambed.” He looked at his friends. “Do either of you know how to swim?”

  Ariga laughed. “Where have you been, Ekial? We ride horses, not fish.”

  “If we manage to pry this boulder out of place, that pond behind the dam’s going to start going downhill in a hurry,” Ekial said. “I think we’d better be just a little careful here.”

  Ariga shrugged. “All we’ll have to do is use longer poles, Ekial, and longer poles will give us more leverage.” He muffled a sudden laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Skarn demanded.

  “The dam-builder clan’s going to go wild when they see what we’ve done,” Ariga chuckled.

  “They’re the ones who broke the rules,” Ekial replied. “All we’re doing is putting things back to the way they’re supposed to be.”

  “You know that, and I know that, but I don’t think they’ll see it that way. They must have spent weeks building this thing, but it won’t be here tomorrow morning.”

  “You do know that this will probably start a war, don’t you, Ekial?” Skarn said.

  Ekial shrugged. “We haven’t had a good war for quite some time, Skarn. The horses are starting to get lazy, and a nice little war should pep them up a bit.”

  “That’s true,” Skarn agreed, “and, since we’re doing this for the benefit of the horses, nobody should really object, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Of course,” Ekial piously agreed. “Looking after the horses is one of our main obligations. Let’s see if we can work that center boulder loose. I’m sure that once we roll that one out of the way the whole dam will collapse, and our little brook will come back to where she belongs.”

  It took them the better part of an hour to pry the center boulder loose, and then the pond behind the dam quite suddenly took over. Ekial and his friends got very wet as they scrambled on up out of the streambed, and they stood staring in awe at the huge wave that went roaring on down toward their own clan lands.

  “I hope the cows aren’t bedded down too close to the streambed,” Ariga said.

  “This would be a quick way to deliver a herd of cows to the Trogite cattle buyers out on the coast,” Skarn noted speculatively.

  “I don’t think you’d get a very good price for drowned cows, Skarn,” Ariga disagreed.

  “I’d say that we’ve pretty much taken care of what we came here to do,” Ekial told them. “Why don’t we go on back home and get some sleep?”

  “What a great idea!” Ariga said. “I think we might just want to step right along. If the dam-builder clan has patrols out, that wall of water running on down the hill will probably get their attention in a hurry. I don’t want to be too obvious here, but there are only three of us, and we are on foot.”

  “Shall we go, then?” Ekial said.

  The neighboring clan mounted their first attack about midmorning on the following day, but Ekial and his friends beat them back without much difficulty, since they’d more or less expected that response.

  All in all, it turned out to be a rather nice little war. The lands of Ekial’s clan lay somewhat to the north of the lands of their enemy, and they were able to block the enemy’s customary route to the north coast where the Trogite cattle-buyers eagerly waited to buy cows. The enemy clan didn’t make very much money that year, but from the point of view of the northern clans, that turned out to be very nice. Since there weren’t as many cows for sale that summer, the price went up.

  It was during a skirmish along the southern edge of the clan-lands that Ekial picked up his first sabre-scar. It was a r
ather nice scar on his left cheek, running from just below his ear down to the point of his chin. He was quite proud of it, and he kept one of the ears of the enemy who’d slashed him across the face as a memento.

  The clan-war continued for about two more years, and then the wiser heads in the enemy clan prevailed. Their cattle-herds had continued to expand during the war, but since they no longer had access to the Trogite cattle-buyers, their meadows had been grazed almost down to the roots.

  The negotiations continued for quite some time, because the elders of Ekial’s clan imposed some fairly harsh conditions upon their enemy. They were required to deliver five hundred cows for every man of Ekial’s clan who’d been killed during the war, and one hundred cows for every injury.

  That produced a great deal of screaming, but not nearly as much as the demand that the border between the two clans should be adjusted so that the source of that brook would now and forever be in the lands of Ekial’s clan. The alternative, “back to war, then,” reduced the screaming to a few whimpers, and the matter was settled right then and there.

  Ekial thought that all in all it had been a rather interesting war, but now it was time to move on. Wars are rather nice, but they tend to interfere with more important matters.

  As the years plodded on, Beast began to slow down quite noticeably, and Ekial decided that it was probably time for him to train a new mount and put Beast out to pasture.

  It took Ekial several weeks to choose his new mount, but he ultimately chose a chestnut stallion with a white patch on his forehead. The owner of the young horse called him “Bright-Star,” probably because of that patch. Bright-Star was not as aggressive as Beast had been, but he ran nearly as fast, and he seemed to have a great deal of endurance. That was very important in the Land of the Malavi. It didn’t take Ekial nearly as long to break Bright-Star in as it had taken him to train Beast, and the two of them got along quite well. Bright-Star was more playful than Beast had been, but he was obviously younger than Beast was when Ekial had begun his training.

  There were several other clan-wars in the next few years, and Ekial collected more sabre-scars—and ears—as time moved on. His reputation seemed to grow with each scar—and ear—and by the time he reached his midthirties, he was generally believed to be the finest horse-warrior in the Land of the Malavi.

  In all probability it had been that reputation that had persuaded a foreigner named Dahlaine to seek him out in one of the north-coast enclaves where the Trogite cattle-buyers had set up shop. Dahlaine was an older man with burly shoulders and an iron-grey beard. “I’ve been told that you’re the finest horseman in the entire Land of Malavi,” he said.

  “That’s probably true,” Ekial replied, “but I don’t get involved in horse-races anymore.”

  “I wasn’t really talking about horse-races, Ekial. There’s a war in the Land of Dhrall, and I need soldiers. Have you been involved in many wars?”

  “Once in a while, yes. Not very many here lately, though. The word seems to have been spread around that it’s not a good idea to get involved in a war where I’ll be a member of the opposing clan.”

  “Are you really all that good?”

  “I’m the best. Of course, my horses probably have something to do with that. Bright-Star isn’t quite as good as Beast was, but he’s still better than any other horse in the Land of Malavi.”

  “Isn’t ‘Beast’ a peculiar sort of name for a pet?”

  “I didn’t really think of Beast as a pet. The first time I tried to ride him, he threw me off and broke my arm. It took me quite a while to persuade him to behave himself. He was the fastest horse in the Land of Malavi, though, so we won every race we ran.”

  “What sort of weapons do the Malavi use?”

  “Sabres and lances. We slash with the sabre and stab with the lance.”

  “You seem to have quite a few scars on your face. That sort of suggests that you’ve lost a few fights, doesn’t it?”

  Ekial shook his head. “I came out of those fights alive; my enemies didn’t. That’s how we define winning and losing here in Malavi. I don’t really think I’d be very interested in fighting a war in some foreign land, Dahlaine. Wars are fun, I suppose, but we make our money by selling cows to the Trogites—for gold.”

  “I think we’ll get along just fine, Ekial,” Dahlaine said with a faint smile. “You like gold, and I pay with gold.” He reached under his furry tunic and pulled out a bright yellow block. “Pretty, isn’t it?” he asked with a sly smile as he handed the block to Ekial.

  Ekial noticed that his hand was trembling violently as he hefted the block. “Why don’t we go someplace quiet and talk about this?” he suggested.

  2

  They went a short way out into the meadow where nobody was near and then stopped.

  “I’ve heard some of the men of your clan referring to you as ‘Prince Ekial,’” Dahlaine said. “That means that you’re the ruler here, doesn’t it?”

  “Well, sort of, I suppose,” Ekial replied. “Actually, it’s a term we picked up from the Trogites a while back. It impresses the Trogite cattle-buyers, so we use it to get the price we want when we sell cows to them. When you get right down to it, the clan doesn’t really have what other people call ‘rulers.’ We talk things over before we make any decisions. The clan-chief is older than the men and boys who do the work, and we usually follow his suggestions, but we’re quite a bit more relaxed than the Trogites are. Let’s talk about this war that’s going on in your part of the world and how much gold you’ll be willing to pay us to go there and fight your enemies.”

  “How many horsemen would your clan be able to send to help us?”

  Ekial squinted across the open grassland. “I’d say about ten thousand—or so. We can’t take all of the men, you understand. At least half of the men of the clan have to stay here to tend the cattle.” Ekial hefted the gold block. “I’m sure that I’ll be able to get the interest of other clans if I show this to them, though,” he added.

  “We can get into that somewhat later,” Dahlaine said. “There’s a war in progress in my brother’s Domain right now, and I think it might not be a bad idea for me to take you there as an observer. That should give you a chance to see the enemy and come up with some tactics that might help us push them back.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Ekial agreed. “Now, then, how are we going to get there?”

  “Leave that to me, Prince Ekial,” Dahlaine replied with a faint smile.

  It seemed to Ekial that he’d drifted off to sleep for some reason during his conversation with Dahlaine, and he woke up suddenly just outside a strange-looking structure that quite obviously was not anywhere in the meadowland. It was also quite obvious that it was nighttime here. “What’s going on, Dahlaine?” he demanded suspiciously.

  “Don’t get excited, Ekial,” Dahlaine replied. “We just made a little journey, that’s all. We’re in the southern part of the Land of Dhrall, and our enemies will begin their attack before long. That building is the house of my younger brother, Veltan, and there are people in that house that you need to know.”

  “Just exactly what do you mean by ‘a journey,’ Dahlaine? I’m not going anyplace until you tell me what just happened.”

  Dahlaine sighed. “We went from one place to another in a very short period of time. I just happen to have a mount that can go even faster than Beast. She’s a little noisy, but she can take me to where I want to go almost instantly.”

  “I don’t think I’d call it ‘instantly,’ Dahlaine,” Ekial persisted. “It was morning when we were talking in the Land of Malavi, but it’s nighttime here.”

  “That’s because we traveled east. We’re quite a ways to the east of your homeland.”

  “A couple hundred miles, maybe?”

  “Quite a bit farther than that. We can talk about that later, Ekial. It’s nighttime now, so you’ll need a place to sleep—and probably something to eat as well. Let’s go on inside and get you settled in for t
he night. You’ll be meeting people tomorrow that you should get to know. They’re on our side in this war, and that means that they’ll be your friends.”

  Ekial shrugged. “You’re the one who’s paying,” he said, “so we’ll do things your way—for now, anyway.”

  They went on into the stone house and down a long, torch-lit corridor that appeared to be totally deserted.

  “Just how late at night is it, Dahlaine?” Ekial asked in a quiet voice.

  “About midnight, I’d say. Why do you ask?”

  “We’re a lot farther east of the meadowland than I thought, then.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Let’s stop by the kitchen and get you something to eat.”

  “I don’t really need anything,” Ekial replied. “I ate breakfast an hour or so ago.” He shook his head. “I think it’s going to take me a while to get used to this place.”

  Then a young fellow came along the hallway from the other direction. He was obviously a Trogite, but the black leather clothes he wore almost exactly duplicated the standard clothing of Malavi horsemen, and that didn’t sit too well with Ekial.

  “How are things going, Keselo?” Dahlaine asked the young man.

  “They just got a lot better, Lord Dahlaine. Commander Narasan revoked Jalkan’s commission and put him in chains yesterday, and getting rid of Jalkan made the whole world seem brighter.” He looked somewhat inquiringly at Ekial.

  “This is Prince Ekial of Malavi, Keselo,” Dahlaine said. “It’s quite likely that he’ll be joining us somewhat later, and I brought him here to observe the war here in my brother’s Domain.”

  “A horse-soldier?” Keselo asked. Then he bowed. “I’m honored to meet you, Prince Ekial.”

  “Am I supposed to talk to this one?” Ekial asked Dahlaine.

  “It wouldn’t hurt, Ekial,” Dahlaine replied. “I’m fairly sure you two will be working together before long.”

  “Not all Trogites are as corrupt as the cattle-buyers I’m sure you’ve encountered in the past, Prince Ekial,” the young man said. He hesitated slightly. “Just out of curiosity, what price will the Malavi demand for a cow this season?”