On the fourth day after Kickaha’s warning, they topped a rise and saw a black band ahead.
“Trees growing along the Winnkaknaw River,” Kickaha said. “We’re almost halfway to the Trees of Many Shadows. Let’s push the horses until we get to the river. I’ve got a hunch we’ve eaten up most of our luck.”
He fell silent as he and the others saw a flash of sun on white several miles to their right. Then the white horse of Wicked Knife, a scout, disappeared into a shallow between rises. A few seconds later, a dark mass appeared on the rise behind him.
“The Half-Horse!” Kickaha yelled. “Let’s go! Make for the river! We can make a stand in the trees along it, if we can get there!”
CHAPTER NINE
With a single lurch, the entire war party broke into a gallop. Wolff crouched over his horse, a magnificent roan stallion, urging it on although it needed no encouragement. The plain sped by as the roan stretched his heart to drive his legs. Despite his intensity on speed, Wolff kept glancing to his right. Wicked Knife’s white mare was visible now and then as she came over a swell of the plain. The scout was directing her at an angle toward his people. Less than a quarter of a mile behind, and gaining, was the horde of Half-Horse. They numbered at least a hundred and fifty, maybe more.
Kickaha brought his stallion, a golden animal with a pale silvery mane and tail, alongside Wolff. “When they catch up with us—which they will—stay by my side! I’m organizing a column of twos, a classic maneuver, tried and true! That way, each man can guard the other’s side!”
He dropped back to give orders to the rest. Wolff guided his roan to follow in line behind Wolverine Paws and Sleeps Standing Up. Behind him, White Nose Bear and Big Blanket were trying to maintain an even distance from him. The rest of the party was strung out in a disorder which Kickaha and a councillor, Spider Legs, were trying to break up.
Presently, the forty were arranged in a ragged column. Kickaha rode up beside Wolff and shouted above the pound of hooves and whistling of wind: “They’re stupid as porcupines! They wanted to turn and charge the centaurs! But I talked some sense into them!”
Two more scouts, Drunken Bear and Too Many Wives, were riding in from the left to join them. Kickaha gestured at them to fall in at the rear. Instead, the two continued their 90-degree approach and rode on past the tail of the column.
“The fools are going to rescue Wicked Knife—they think!”
The two scouts and Wicked Knife approached toward a converging point. Wicked Knife was only four hundred yards away from the Hrowakas with the Half-Horses several hundred yards behind him. They were lessening the gap with every second, traveling at a speed no horse burdened with a rider could match. As they came closer, they could be seen in enough detail for Wolff to understand just what they were.
They were indeed centaurs, although not quite as the painters of Earth had depicted. This was not surprising. The Lord, when forming them in his biolabs, had had to make certain concessions to reality. The main adjustment had been regulated by the need for oxygen. The large animal part of a centaur had to breathe, a fact ignored by the conventional Terrestrial representations. Air had to be supplied not only to the upper and human torso but to the lower and theriomorphic body. The relatively small lungs of the upper part could not handle the air requirements.
Moreover, the belly of the human trunk would have stopped all supply of nourishment to the large body beneath it. Or, if the small belly was attached to the greater equine digestive organs to transmit the food, diet was still a problem. Human teeth would quickly wear out under the abrasion of grass.
Thus the hybrid beings coming so swiftly and threateningly toward the men did not quite match the mythical creatures that had served as their models. The mouths and necks were proportionately large to allow intake of enough oxygen. In place of the human lungs was a bellows-like organ which drove the air through a throat-like opening and thence into the great lungs of the hippoid body. These lungs were larger than a horse’s, for the vertical part increased the oxygen demands. Space for the bigger lungs was made by removal of the larger herbivore digestive organs and substitution of a smaller carnivore stomach. The centaur ate meat, including the flesh of his Amerind victims.
The equine part was about the size of an Indian pony of Earth. The hides were red, black, white, palomino, and pinto. The horsehair covered all but the face. This was almost twice as large as a normal-sized man’s and was broad, high-cheekboned, and big-nosed. They were, on a larger scale, the features of the Plains Indians of Earth, the faces of Roman Nose, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse. Warpaint streaked their features and feathered bonnets and helmets of buffalo hides with projecting horns were on their heads.
Their weapons were the same as those of the Hrowakas, except for one item. This was the bola: two round stones, each secured to the end of a strip of rawhide. Even as Wolff wondered what he would do if a bola were cast at him, he saw them put into action. Wicked Knife and Drunken Bear and Too Many Wives had met and were racing beside each other about twenty yards ahead of their pursuers. Drunken Bear turned and shot an arrow. The missile plunged into the swelling bellows-organ beneath the human-chest of a Half-Horse. The Half-Horse went down and turned over and over and then lay still. The upper torso was bent at an angle that could result only from a broken spine. This despite the fact that a universal joint of bone and cartilage at the juncture of the human and equine permitted extreme flexibility of the upper torso.
Drunken Bear shouted and waved his bow. He had made the first kill, and his exploit would be sung for many years in the Hrowakas Council House.
If there’s anybody left to tell about it, Wolff thought.
A number of bolas, whirled around and around till the stones were barely visible, were released. Rotating like airplaine propellers that had spun off from their shafts, the bolas flew through the air. The stone at the end of one struck Drunken Bear on the neck and hurled him from his horse, cutting off his victory chant in the middle. Another bola wrapped itself around the hind leg of his horse to send it crashing into the ground.
Wolff, at the same time as some of the Hrowakas, released an arrow. He could not tell if it went home, for it was difficult to get a good aim and release from a position on a galloping horse. But four arrows did strike, and four Half-Horses fell. Wolff at once drew another arrow from the quiver on his back, noting at the same time that Too Many Wives and his horse were on the ground. Too Many Wives had an arrow sticking from his back.
Now, Wicked Knife was overtaken. Instead of spearing him, the Half-Horses split up to come in on either side of him.
“No!” Wolff cried. “Don’t let them do it!”
Wicked knife, however, had not earned his public name for no good reason. If the Half-Horse passed up the chance to kill him so they could take him alive for torture, they would have to pay for their mistake. He flipped his long Tishquetmoac knife through the air into the equine body of the Half-Horse closest to him. The centaur cart-wheeled. Wicked Knife drew another blade from his scabbard and, even as a spear was driven into his horse, he launched himself onto the centaur who had thrust the spear.
Wolff caught a glimpse of him through the massed bodies. He had landed on the back of the centaur which almost collapsed at the impact of his weight but managed to recover and bear him along. Wicked Knife drove his knife into the back of the human torso. Hooves flashed; the centaur’s tail rose into the air above the mob, followed by the rump and the hindlegs.
Wolff thought that Wicked Knife was finished. But no, there he was, miraculously on his feet and then suddenly, on the horse-barrel of another centaur. This time Wicked Knife held the edge of his blade against his enemy’s throat. Apparently he was threatening to cut the jugular vein if the Half-Horse did not carry him out and away from the others.
But a lance, thrust from behind, plunged into Wicked Knife’s back. Not, however, before he had carried out his threat and slashed open the neck of the Half-Horse he rode.
“I saw
that!” Kickaha shouted. “What a man, that Wicked Knife! After what he did, not even the savage Half-Horse would dare mutilate his body! They honor a foe who gives them a great fight, although they’ll eat him, of course.”
Now the KhingGatawriT came up closely behind the end of the Hrowakas train. They split up into parts and increased their speed to overtake them on both sides. Kickaha told Wolff that the Half-Horses would not, at first, close in on the Hrowakas in a mass charge. They would try to have some fun with their enemies and would also give their untried young warriors a chance to show their skill and courage.
A black-and-white-spotted Half-Horse, wearing a single hawk’s feather in a band around his head, detached himself from the main group on the left. Whirling a bola in his right hand, holding a feathered lance in his left, he charged at an angle toward Kickaha. The stones at the rawhide ends circled to become a blur, then darted from his hand. Their path of flight was downward, toward the legs of his enemy’s horse.
Kickaha leaned out and deftly stuck the tip of his lance at the bola. The lancehead was so timed that it met the rawhide in the middle. Kickaha raised the lance, the bola whirled around and around it, and wrapped itself shut. A good part of the energy of the bola was absorbed by the length of the lance. Also, the lance was brought over in an arc to Kickaha’s right side nearly striking Wolff, who had to duck. Even so, Kickaha almost lost the lance, for it slid from his hand, carried by the inertia of the bola. But he kept his grip and shook the lance with the bola at its upper end.
The frustrated Half-Horse shook his fist in fury and would have charged Kickaha with his lance. A roar of acclamation and admiration arose from the two columns of centaurs. A chief raced out to forestall the youngster. He spoke a few words to send him in shame back to the main body. The chief was a large roan with a many-feathered bonnet and a number of black chevrons, crossed with a bar, painted on his equine ribs.
“Charging Lion!” Kickaha shouted in English. “He thinks I’m worthy of his attention!”
He yelled something in the chief’s language and then whooped with laughter as the dark skin became even darker. Charging Lion shouted back and spurted forward to bring him even with his insulter. The lance in his right hand stabbed at Kickaha, who countered with his own. The two shafts bounced off each other. Kickaha immediately detached his small mammoth-hide shield from his left arm. He blocked another thrust from the centaur’s lance with his lance, then spun the shield like a disc. It sailed out and struck Charging Lion’s right foreleg.
The centaur slipped and fell on his front legs and skidded upright through the grass. When he attempted to rise, he found that his right front leg was lamed. A yell broke loose from his group; a dozen bonneted chiefs ran with leveled lances at Charging Lion. He bore himself bravely and waited for his death with folded arms as a great, but now defeated and crippled, Half-Horse should.
“Pass the word along to slow down!” Kickaha said. “The horses can’t keep this pace up much longer; their lungs are foaming out now. Maybe we can spare them and gain some time if the Half-Horses want to blood some more of their untrieds. If they don’t, well, what’s the difference?”
“It’s been fun,” Wolff said. “If we don’t make it, we can at least say we weren’t bored.”
Kickaha rode close enough to clap Wolf on the shoulder. “You’re a man after my own heart! I’m happy to have known you. Oh oh! Here comes an unblooded now! But he’s going to pick on Wolverine Paws!”
Wolverine Paws, one of Kickaha’s fathers-in-law, was at the head of the Hrowakas column and just in front of Wolff. He screamed insults at the Half-Horse charging in with circling bola and then threw his lance. The Half-Horse, seeing the weapon flying toward him, loosed the bola before he had intended. The lance pierced his shoulder; the bola went true anyway and wrapped itself around Wolverine Paws. Unconscious from a blow by one of the stones, he fell off his horse.
The horses of both Wolff and Kickaha leaped over his body, which was lying before them. Kickaha leaned down to his right and stabbed Wolverine Paws with his lance.
“They won’t take delight in torturing you, Wolverine Paws!” Kickaha said. “And you have made them pay for a life with a life.”
A period of individual combat followed. Again and again a young untried charged out of the main group to challenge one of the human beings. Sometimes the man won, sometimes the centaur. At the end of a nightmare thirty minutes, the forty Hrowakas had become twenty-eight. Wolff’s turn was with a large warrior armed with a club tipped with steel points. He also carried a small round shield with which he tried to duplicate Kickaha’s trick. It did not work, for Wolff deflected the shield with the point of his lance. However, his guard was open for a moment, during which the centaur took his advantage. He galloped in so close that Wolff could not turn to draw far back enough to use the lance.
The club was raised high; the sun glittered on the sharp tips of its spike. The huge broad painted face was split with a grin of triumph. Wolff had no time to dodge and if he tried to grab the club he would end with a smashed and mangled hand. Without thinking, he did a thing that surprised both himself and the centaur. Perhaps he was inspired by Wicked Knife’s feat. He launched himself from his horse, came in under the club, and grappled the Half-Horse around the neck. His foe squawked with dismay. Then they went down to the ground with a shock that knocked the wind from both.
Wolff leaped up, hoping that Kickaha had grabbed his horse so he could remount. Kickaha was holding it, but he was making no move to bring it back. Indeed, both the Hrowakas and Half-Horse had stopped.
“Rules of war!” Kickaha shouted. “Whoever gets the club first should win!”
Wolff and the centaur, now on his hooves, made a dash for the club, which was about thirty feet behind them. Four-legged speed was too much for two-legged. The centaur reached the club ten feet ahead of him. Without checking his pace, the centaur leaned his human trunk down and scooped up the club. Then he slowed and whirled, so swiftly that he had to rear up on his hind legs.
Wolff had not stopped running. He came in and then up at the Half-Horse even as it reared. A hoof flashed out at him, but he was by it, though the leg brushed against him. He crashed into the upper part carried it back a little with him, and both fell again.
Despite the impact, Wolff kept his right arm around the centaur’s neck. He hung on while the creature struggled to his hooves. The centaur had lost the club and now strove to overcome the human with sheer strength. Again he grinned, for he outweighed Wolff by at least seven hundred pounds. His torso, chest, and arms were also far bulkier than Wolff’s.
Wolff braced his feet against the shoving weight of the centaur and would not move back. The grip around the huge neck tightened, and suddenly the Half-Horse could not breathe.
Then the Half-Horse tried to get his knife out, but Wolff grabbed the wrist with his other hand and twisted. The centaur screamed with the pain and dropped the knife.
A roar of surprise came from the watching Half- Horses. They had never seen such power in a mere man before.
Wolff strained, jerked, and brought the struggling warrior to his foreknees. His left fist punched into the heaving bellows beneath the ribs and sank in. The Half-Horse gave a loud whoosh. Wolff released his hold, stepped back, and used his right fist against the thick jaw of the half-unconscious centaur. The head snapped back, and the centaur fell over. Before he could regain consciousness, his skull was smashed by his own club.
Wolff remounted, and the three columns rode on at a canter. For awhile, the Half-Horse made no move against their enemies. Their chiefs seemed to be discussing something. Whatever it was they intended to do, they lost their chance a moment later.
The cavalcades went over a slight rise and down into a broad hollow. This was just enough to conceal from them the pride of lions that had been lying there. Apparently the twenty or so of Felis Atrox had fed off a protocamel the night before and had been too drowsy to pay any attention to the noise of the approaching
hooves. But now that the intruders were suddenly among them, the great cats sprang into action. Their fury was aggravated even more by their desire to protect the cubs among them.
Wolff and Kickaha were lucky. Although there were huge shapes bounding on every side, none came at them. But Wolff did get close enough to a male to view every awe-inspiring detail, and that was as close as he ever cared to be. The cat was almost as large as a horse and, though he lacked the mane of the African lion, he did not lack for majesty and ferocity. He bounded by Wolff and hurled himself upon the nearest centaur, which went down screaming. The jaws closed on the centaur’s throat, and it was dead. Instead of worrying the corpse, as he might normally have done, the male sprang upon another Half-Horse, and this one went down as easily.
All was a chaos of roaring cats and screaming horses, men, and Half-Horse. It was everyone for himself; to hell with the battle that had been going on.
It took only thirty seconds for Wolff and Kickaha and those Hrowakas who had been fortunate enough not to be attacked to ride out of the hollow. They did not need to urge their horses to speed, but they did have trouble keeping them from running themselves to death.
Behind them, but at a distance now, the centaurs who had evaded the lions streamed out of the hollow. Instead of pursuing the Hrowakas at once, they rode to a safe distance from the lions and then paused to evaluate their losses. Actually, they had not suffered more than a dozen casualties, but they had been severely shaken up.
“A break for us!” Kickaha shouted. “However, unless we can get to the woods before they catch up again, we’re done for! They aren’t going to continue the individual combats anymore. They’ll make a concerted charge!”
The woods that they longed for still looked as far off as ever. Wolff did not think that his horse, magnificent beast though it was, could make it. Its coat was dark with sweat, and it was breathing heavily. Yet it pounded on, an engine of finely tempered flesh and spirit that would run until its heart ruptured.