Dragon's Teeth (24 page)

“Well, I have good news and bad news,” Daiv Mahrtun of Skaht announced, sinking wearily to the bare earth across the fire from his Chief. “The good news is that these Dirtmen look lazy and ripe for the picking—the bad news is that they’ve got traders with ’em, so the peace-banners are up. And I mean to tell you, they’re the weirdest damn traders I ever saw. Darker than any Ehleenee—dress like no clan I know—and—” He stopped, not certain of how much more he wanted to say—and if he’d be believed.

Tohnee Skaht snorted in disgust, and spat into the fire. “Dammit anyway—if we break trade-peace—”

“Word spreads fast,” agreed his cousin Jahn. “We may have trouble getting other traders to deal with us if we mount a raid while this lot’s got the peace-banners up.”

There were nearly a dozen clustered about the firepit; men and a pair of women, old and young—but all of them were seasoned raiders, regardless of age. And all of them were profoundly disappointed by the results of Daiv’s scouting foray.

“Which traders?” Tohnee asked after a long moment of thought. “Anybody mention a name or a clan you recognized?”

Daiv shook his head emphatically. “I tell you, they’re not like any lot I’ve ever seen
or
heard tell of. They got painted wagons, and they ain’t the big tradewagons; more, they got whole families, not just the menfolk—and they’re Horsetraders.”

Tohnee’s head snapped up. “Horse—”

“Before you ask, I mindspoke their horses.” This was a perfect opening for the most disturbing of Daiv’s discoveries.
“This
oughta curl your hair.
The horses wouldn’t talk to me.
It wasn’t ’cause they couldn’t, and it wasn’t ’cause they was afraid to. It was like I was maybe an enemy—was surely an outsider, and maybe not to be trusted. Whoever, whatever these folks are, they got the same kind of alliance with their horses as we have with ours. And
that’s
plainly strange.”

“Wind and sun—dammit Daiv, if I didn’t know you, I’d be tempted to call you a liar!” That was Dik Krooguh, whose jaw was hanging loose with total astonishment.

“Do the traders mindspeak?” Tohnee asked at nearly the same instant.

“I dunno,” Daiv replied, shaking his head, “I didn’t catch any of ’em at it, but that don’t mean much. My guess would be they do, but I can’t swear to it.”

“I think maybe we need more facts—” interrupted Alis Skaht. “If they’ve got Horsebrothers, I’d be inclined to say they’re not likely to be a danger to us—but we can’t count on that. Tohnee?”

“Mm,” he nodded. “Question is, how?”

“I took some thought to that,” Daiv replied. “How about just mosey in openlike? Dahnah and I could come in like you’d sent us to trade with ’em.” Dahnah was Daiv’s twin sister; an archer with no peer in the clan, and a strong mindspeaker. “We could hang around for a couple of days without making ’em too suspicious. And a pair of Horseclan kids doin’ a little dickerin ain’t gonna make the Dirtmen
too
nervous. Not while the peace-banners are up.”

Tohnee thought that over a while, as the fire cast weird shadows on his stony face. “You’ve got the sense to call for help if you end up needing it—and you’ve got Brighttooth and Stubtail backing you.”

The two young prairiecats lounging at Daiv’s side purred agreement.

“All right—it sounds a good enough plan to me,” Tohnee concluded, while the rest of the sobered clansfolk nodded, slowly. “You two go in at first morning light and see what you can find. And I know I don’t need to tell you to be careful, but I’m telling you anyway.”

Howard Thomson, son of “King” Robert Thomson, was distinctly angered. His narrow face was flushed, always a bad sign, and he’d been drinking, which was worse. When Howard drank, he thought he owned the world. Trouble was, he was almost right, at least in this little corner of it. His two swarthy merc-bodyguards were between Kevin and the doors.

Just what
I
didn’t need,
Kevin thought bleakly, taking care that nothing but respect showed on his face,
a damn-fool touchy idiot with
a
brat’s disposition tryin’
to
put me between
a
rock and
a
hard place.

“I tell you, my father sent me expressly to fetch him that blade,
boy.”
Howard’s face was getting redder by the minute, matching his long, fiery hair. “You’d better hand it over
now,
before you find yourself lacking a hand.”

I’ll just bet he sent you,
Kevin growled to himself.
Sure he did. You just decided to help yourself, more like—and leave me to explain
to
your father where his piece went, while you deny you ever saw me before.

But his outwardly cool expression didn’t change as he replied, stolidly, “Your pardon, but His Highness gave
me
orders that I was to put it into no one’s hands but his. And he hasn’t sent me written word telling me any different.”

Howard’s face enpurpled as Kevin obliquely reminded him that the Heir
couldn’t
read or write. Kevin waited for the inevitable lightning to fall. Better he should get beaten to a pulp than that King Robert’s wrath fall on Ehrik and Keegan, which it would if he gave in to Howard. What with Keegan being pregnant—better a beating. He tensed himself and waited for the order.

Except that, just at the moment when Howard was actually beginning to splutter orders to his two merc-bodyguards to take the blacksmith apart, salvation, in the form of Petro and a half-dozen strapping jippos came strolling through the door to the smithy. They were technically unarmed, but the long knives at their waists were a reminder that this was only a technicality.

“Sarishan, gajo,”
he said cheerfully. “We have brought you your pony—”

Only then did he seem to notice the Heir and his two bodyguards.

“Why, what is this?” he asked with obviously feigned surprise. “Do we interrupt some business?”

Howard growled something obscene—if he started something
now
he would be breaking trade-peace, and no trader would deal with him
or
his family again without an extortionate bond being posted. For one moment Kevin feared that his temper might get the better of him anyway, but then the young man pushed past the jippos at the door and stalked into the street, leaving his bodyguards to follow as they would.

Kevin sagged against his cold forge, only now breaking into a sweat. “By all that’s holy, man,” he told Petro earnestly, “your timing couldn’t have been better! You saved me from a beatin’, and that’s for damn sure!”

“Something more than a beating,” the jippo replied, slowly, “—or I misread that one. I do not think we will sell any of our beasts
there,
no. But—” he grinned suddenly “—we lied, I fear. We did not bring the pony—we brought our other wares.”

“You needed six men to carry a bit of copperwork?” Kevin asked incredulously, firmly telling himself that he would
not
begin laughing hysterically out of relief.

“Oh no—but I was
not
of a mind to carry back horseshoes for every beast in our herd by myself! I am
rom baro,
not a packmule!”

Kevin began laughing after all, laughing until his sides hurt.

Out of gratitude for their timely appearance, he let them drive a harder bargain with him than he normally would have allowed, trading shoes and nails for their whole equippage for about three pounds of brass and copper trinkets and a set of copper pots he knew Keegan would lust after the moment she saw them. And a very pretty little set of copper jewelry to brighten her spirit; she was beginning to show, and subject to bouts of depression in which she was certain her pregnancy made her ugly in his eyes. This bit of frippery might help remind her that she was anything but. He agreed to come by and look at the pony as soon as he finished a delivery of his own. He was going to take no chances on Howard’s return; he was going to deliver that sword himself, now, and straight into Robert’s palsied hands!

“So if that one comes, see that he gets no beast nor thing of ours,” Petro concluded. “Chali, you speak to the horses. Most like, he will want the king stallion, if any.”

Chali nodded.
We could say Bakro is none
of
ours—that he’s
a
wild one that follows our mares.

Petro grinned approval. “Ha, a good idea! That way nothing of blame comes on us. For the rest—we wish to leave only Pika, is that not so?” The others gathered about him in the shade of his
vurdon
murmured agreement. They had done well enough with their copper and brass jewelry, ornaments and pots and with the odd hen or vegetable or sack of grain that had found a mysterious way into a Rom kettle or a
vurdon.

“Well then, let us see what we can do to make them unattractive.”

Within the half-hour the Rom horses, mules and donkeys little resembled the sleek beasts that had come to the call of their two-legged allies. Coats were dirty, with patches that looked suspiciously like mange; hocks were poulticed, and looked swollen; several of the wise old mares were ostentatiously practicing their limps, and there wasn’t a hide of an attractive color among them.

And anyone touching them would be kicked at, or
nearly
bitten—the horses were not minded to have their two-legged brothers punished for
their
actions. Narrowed eyes and laid-back ears gave the lie to the hilarity within. No one really knowledgeable about horses would want to come near this lot.

And just in time, for Howard Thomson rode into the camp on an oversized, dun-colored dullard of a gelding only a few moments after the tools of their deceptions had been cleaned up and put away. Chali briefly touched the beast’s mind to see if it was being mistreated, only to find it nearly as stupid as one of the mongrels that infested the village.

He surveyed the copper trinkets with scorn, and the sorry herd of horses with disdain. Then his eye lit upon the king stallion.

“You there—trader—” he waved his hand at the proud bay stallion, who looked back at this arrogant two-legs with the same disdain. “How much for that beast there?”

“The noble prince must forgive us,” Petro fawned, while Chali was glad, for once, of her muteness; she did not have to choke on her giggles as some of the others were doing. “But that one is none of ours. He is a wild one; he follows our mares, which we permit in hopes of foals like him.”

“Out of nags like
those?
You hope for a miracle, man!” Howard laughed, as close to being in good humor as Petro had yet seen him. “Well, since he’s none of yours, you won’t mind if my men take him—”

Hours later, their beasts were ready to founder, the king stallion was still frisking like a colt, and none of them had come any closer to roping him than they had been when they started. The Rom were nearly bursting, trying to contain their laughter, and Howard was purple again.

Finally he called off the futile hunt, wrenched at the head of his foolish gelding, and spurred it back down the road to town . . .

And the suppressed laughter died, as little Ami’s youngest brother toddled into the path of the lumbering monster—and Howard grinned and spurred the gelding at him—hard.

Kevin was nearly to the trader’s camp when he saw the baby wander into the path of Howard’s horse—and his heart nearly stopped when he saw the look on the Heir’s face as he dug his spurs savagely into his gelding’s flanks.

The smith didn’t even think—he just
moved.
He frequently fooled folk into thinking he was slow and clumsy because of his size; now he threw himself at the child with every bit of speed and agility he possessed.

He snatched the toddler, curled protectively around it, and turned his dive into a frantic roll. As if everything had been slowed by a magic spell, he saw the horse charging at him and every move horse and rider made. Howard sawed savagely at the gelding’s mouth, trying to keep it on the path. But the gelding shied despite the bite of the bit; foam-flecks showered from its lips, and the foam was spotted with blood at the corners of its mouth. It half-reared, and managed to avoid the smith and his precious burden by a hair—one hoof barely scraped Kevin’s leg—then the beast was past, thundering wildly toward town.

****

Kevin didn’t get back home until after dark—and he was not entirely steady on his feet. The stuff the Rom drank was a bit more potent than the beer and wine from the tavern, or even his own home-brew. Pacing along beside him, lending a supporting shoulder and triumphantly groomed to within an inch of his life and adorned with red ribbons, was the pony, Pika.

Pika was a gift—Romano wouldn’t accept a single clipped coin for him. Kevin was on a first-name basis with all of the Rom now, even had a mastered a bit of their tongue. Not surprising, that—seeing as they’d sworn brotherhood with him.

He’d eaten and drunk with them, heard their tales, listened to their wild, blood-stirring music—felt as if he’d come home for the first time. Rom, that was what they called themselves, not “jippos”—and “o phral,” which meant “the people,” sort of. They danced for him—and he didn’t wonder that they wouldn’t sing or dance before outsiders. It would be far too easy for dullard
gajo
to get the wrong idea from some of those dances—the women and girls danced with the freedom of the wind and the wildness of the storm—and to too many men, “wild” and “free” meant “loose.” Kevin had just been entranced by a way of life he’d never dreamed existed.

Pika rolled a not-unsympathetic eye at him as he stumbled, and leaned in a little closer to him. Funny about the Rom and their horses—you’d swear they could read each other’s minds. They had an affinity that was bordering on witchcraft—

Like that poor little mute child, Chali. Kevin had seen with his own eyes how wild the maverick stallion had been—at least when Howard and his men had been chasing it. But he’d also seen Chali walk up to him, pull his forelock, and hop aboard his bare back as if he were no more than a gentle, middle-aged pony like Pika. And then watched the two of them pull some trick riding stunts that damn near pulled the eyes out of his sockets. It was riding he’d remember for a long time, and he was right glad he’d seen it. But he devoutly hoped Howard hadn’t.