The Children of the Winds did not usually wander far afield when Ithaqua left them to go striding among the star-voids, but one could never be sure. He had scouted out the ground ahead, as two other braves even now scouted it to the rear for though they were well clear of the territories of the Wind-Walker’s tribes, still they were wary of skulking war parties. Later, when Northan turned traitor, siding with Ithaqua and his ice-priests to help them wage war against the plateau, Kota’na the Keeper of the Bears had taken that life, had taken Northan’s head too and even though he was wounded in the fighting, Kota’na would not give up his grisly trophy to any man but his Lord Silberhutte.Īnd it was Kota’na who came now at an easy lope through the long grass toward where Silberhutte stood, Kota’na whose proud Indian head was lifted high, eyes alert as those of any creature of the wild. When he could by right have slain Northan, his hated, bullying Warlord predecessor-when nine-tenths of the plateau’s peoples had wanted Northan dead-Hank Silberhutte had let him live, had given him his life. He was as gentle as his strength and size would allow he instinctively understood the needs of his people when lesser men approached him in awe, he greeted them as friends, equals he respected the Elders and was guided by their counseling, and his fairness was already as much a legend as his great strength.
Mighty wrestler, fighter who could knock even a strong man senseless with a blow of his huge fist, weapons’ master whose skill had quickly surpassed that of his instructors, telepath (though the plateau’s simpler folk could not truly understand the concept) who could throw-had thrown-mental insults at Ithaqua, the Wind-Walker, and yet walk away unscathed: Silberhutte was all of these things. That had been before the War of the Winds, when the plateau’s might had prevailed over the bludgeoning assault of Ithaqua’s tribes, when Ithaqua himself had been sorely wounded by this man from the Motherworld. He had won her, and with her the total command of the plateau’s army. Silberhutte the Texan had been Warlord for three years now, since the time he deposed Northan in a savage fight to win Armandra. Yes, a strange man indeed, and Ithaqua must surely rue the day he brought him to Borea. And yet he mingled with his minions like a common man and led them out upon peaceful pursuits as surely as he led them in battle. He was a strange, strange man: the toast of the entire plateau and master of all its might, mate to Armandra the Priestess and father of her man-child, destroyer of Ithaqua’s armies and crippler-however briefly-of Ithaqua himself. To the oddly polyglot party that followed Hank Silberhutte, their Warlord seemed utterly enigmatic. Here were bronze Indians straight out of Earth’s Old West, squat, powerful Eskimos from the Motherworld’s perpetually frozen north, great white bears half as big again as those of the Arctic Circle, and a tall, ruggedly handsome, leather-clad white man whose open, short-sleeved jacket showed a broad, deep chest and arms that forewarned of massive strength. A stranger party could scarce be imagined. Only three of the animals went unburdened, and these were hardly bears for riding. They skirted the forest on foot, the Titan bears shambling along behind on all fours, their packs piled high so that there was no room for the men to ride.
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