Godbond by Nancy Springer

raiders the Red Hart might have come there more often. So this goodly land was roamed by everyone and no one.
    I grew no less thin as I traveled, for I was living on the redberry and onion and wild carrot in the grass, saving the provision Tyee had given me, wayfarer’s food—he had been generous, but it would be little enough to see me through the Steppes. And I was just as glad to build no cooking fires, for I felt exposed on the prairie, treeless but for small thorns and junipers.
    Later I had to build fires, when grassland thinned into the Steppes, and use some of my hoarded water for stone-boiling, because biscuit root and dried fish cannot be choked down uncooked except with wickfish oil, and I had none. And I found no forage, not even grubs or toads or snakes under the rocks I lifted, not even grass seeds on the stems. The Traders’ Trail, my first sight of it at dusk, was a rocky gully worn across a flat plateau nearly as barren as the trail itself. Short, scant grass and prickly blunderbrush grew on that high plain, and nothing else.
    I ate sparingly of my supplies, and saw that they would not last me the journey, and considered that I might starve. But as it turned out, the Fanged Horse Folk did not give me time to starve.
    My first day on the Traders’ Trail I saw them at a great distance across the flat shadowlands. And they also saw me, for I saw the dust rise as their horses leaped into the gallop, speeding toward me. Perhaps if I had put Muku to the run at once I might have escaped them yet. And Sakeema knows every muscle of me wanted to, for even Cragsmen were less dangerous than Fanged Horse marauders. Cragsmen could sometimes be diverted by talk. The Fanged Horse Folk made a custom of striking before parleying, and they were not known for honor or mercy. But parley with them I must, if I wished to know what their tribe said of Sakeema.
    I drew Alar from her sheath and awaited them, the sword’s hilt warm in my hand, her pommel stone glowing like a second sun.
    They galloped near enough for me to see of them more than their dust. Six of them, their greasy black hair flopping on their shoulders as they rode, and they grinned as they saw my weapon, and let out shrill yells of mockery. They were youngsters, I saw in a sort of disgust, merest puppies. Not one of them had the withered head of an enemy hung from his riding pelt or a tassel made of an enemy’s hair swinging under his horse’s chin. Indeed they were mere striplings, beardless, the armbands sliding down the flat muscles of their arms, their chests hollow under strings of bison teeth. Pajlat must indeed be hosting all his choice warriors to the westward, if he had sent these cubs to be his patrol on his eastern reaches.
    But youngsters though they might be, they were as dangerous as a nest of infant vipers, and I knew it well.
    I waited. Under me, Muku waited uneasily.
    The enemy bore those vicious weapons I most hated, long whips of heavy bisonhide, fit to take out an eye or stun a man and beat the life out of him. As they rushed toward me they taunted me with yipping laughter and raised the whips, eager to wrap a lash around me. Each pup of them would strive hard to take my head for his own, to wear at his knees, his first victim. They would vie with each other for the trophy.
    I waited. Until they had come within a stride of striking I waited. Then, “World brothers,” I hailed them, “where is Sakeema?”
    A lash curled around my neck. I steadied Muku with my bearing and did not move, though the sword flared bright in my hand. The blow had been aimed for my face, but the youngster’s hand had jerked at my words, I had seen it. The attackers swirled around me, but I did not turn. Then their dust coiled up like a squat serpent as they’ brought their horses to a halt in front of me.
    â€œWhere is Sakeema?” I asked again into the heartbeat of silence that followed.
    They opened their mouths wide