Lady of Horses (12 page)

He grazed among his mares, oblivious to the men. One of the
mares had foaled not long ago, perhaps even this morning. She grazed closest,
keeping herself between the tiny stumbling foal and the king, but making it
clear that she sought his protection.

She was one of the royal band, the strange ones, the white
mares. The foal was dark as all that kind were. It wobbled about as newborns
did, exploring this world into which its mother had brought it.

The king took no notice of the foal, but he did not drive
off the mare. He was a glorious creature, golden dun, with a heavy mane and a
tail that dragged the ground. The scars of battle, wars of both men and horses,
were thick on him, and his back had begun to weaken with age, but he was the
king, the lord of the world. Perhaps he fancied himself immortal.

The young stallions had moved in close to the royal mares,
not so near as to seem presumptuous, but one of the mares on the edge was in
her foal-heat, and wanton with it. Sometimes the king would allow a lesser
stallion to cover such a mare, if it suited his whim.

The young stallions knew it. Those in the lead flared their
nostrils and arched their necks. Their rods were rampant, thick and long as a
woman’s arm. Those behind tumbled and nipped and intermittently fought. Too
timid to press to the front, they squabbled among themselves, finding excuses
to do battle: a choice bit of grass, a stinging fly, a fellow who came too
close and must be driven back.

Of the stallions who led the band, two were known to contend
for mastery. One was a dun, a son of the king. The other was young to stand so
high. He had been born in the spring after the grey mares came to the herds;
his dam had been in foal before the king ever saw her. He was dark, black
indeed, but dappled silver. His mane was bright silver, and his tail streaming
behind, bright as moon on snow. His beauty was very great, and well he knew it.
He put Walker in mind of Linden.

He left the herd of his fellows. The mare was visibly apart
from her own herd now, grazing with great nonchalance, but her tail was high.
She had turned so that the wind wafted her scent toward the stallions. She was
a wanton one, to be sure, even ignoring her foal who had wandered off with another
of the mares and her rather older offspring.

The silvermaned stallion approached her delicately, lifting
each foot and setting it down with mincing precision. He was at his most
beautiful, neck arched, nostrils flared, tail curled over back.

When he was still a little distance from her, he began to
dance. He lifted and floated over the grass. He halted, wheeled, curvetted. He
snorted and launched himself into the air, kicking exuberantly. He came down in
a lofty, prancing trot, circling her, showing her every side and facet of his
beauty.

She had raised her head at his approach. Her ears flicked
back, then pricked sharply forward. Her tail rose even higher, as her rump
lowered. But when he moved toward it, she squealed and struck with vicious
swiftness.

He retreated rapidly, snorting. The mare stood still. He
approached with great caution, stretched his neck out as far as it would go,
touched noses.

She squealed and struck again, but coyly. He held his ground
until she had quieted once more. Then, tentatively, he ventured to nibble her
cheek.

She would squeal again, of course, and upbraid him for
presumption, but permit successively greater liberties until she had allowed
him to mount her. But the king had taken notice at last of the interloper. He
abandoned his lady and her foal. He roared through the herd, ears flat, long
yellow teeth bared.

The young stallion was a beauty, but—unlike Linden—he was no
fool. He had known what price he might pay for so enticing a mare. As the king
charged toward him, he set himself between the king and the mare, and braced.

The king was tall and broad. He was aging but strong. The
silvermaned stallion was taller and suitably broad, but he was young. He had
yet to reach his full strength. The few fights he had fought were small ones,
or he would have boasted greater scars; and he had won none of them, else he
would have ruled a band of mares.

The king had been king for nine years. He was wise, and
crafty in battle. Just before he would have struck the young one with his body,
he veered.

The silvermaned stallion stumbled off balance. The king
lunged. He caught the silvermane on the shoulder.

The silvermane screamed and lashed with his teeth. He was
supple, and he was quick. He was also, perhaps, lucky—or a god favored him. As
the king drew back from the bleeding shoulder, rearing for a new assault, the
silvermane’s teeth closed in his throat. The silvermane gripped blindly and
tore.

The king’s trumpet of rage died to a gurgle. Blood sprayed.
The silvermane held on, tenacious as a wolf on its prey. The king battered him
with frantic hooves, but he eluded them. He thrust his weight against that
massive body, teeth still sunk in its throat, and cast it to the ground.

It fell with force that Walker felt on his hill. The
silvermane stood over the king. His mouth was bloody. He was eating of his
enemy’s flesh—ears flat back, lips wrinkled in disgust, but chewing and
swallowing. He had, in the way of magic, devoured his rival. He had taken the
power into himself.

So did a warrior do among men, in the madness of battle. So
did a king of men do when he conquered an enemy.

The silvermane stood over the fallen king of horses. The
king was still alive: legs thrashing, head tossing, though his throat was
bitten out. The silvermane reared on his hindlegs, poised, came crashing down,
full on the king’s skull.

The king of stallions was dead. The new king trumpeted,
pealing his victory. He danced about the fallen body, prancing and curvetting,
but once he had crushed its skull, he did not violate it further.

The herds, even the king’s herd, seemed strangely unmoved.
The lesser stallions kept to their places, guarding their mares. The royal
mares went on with their grazing, except the one whom the silvermane had won.
She beat him off when he approached, would have none of him.

But he was young and proud and full of his triumph. He
persevered. At last she suffered him to touch her, nuzzle her, offer her a
mouthful of choicest grass and a single white flower.

She ate the grass, spat out the flower. He nuzzled her nape.
She curled her tail over her back, and staled in the grass as mares will,
tormenting him with her scent.

Without warning he mounted her. She squealed, but softly,
bracing to take the weight of him. He fumbled about, both fierce and awkward;
then suddenly, with a grunt as if of surprise, found his target.

He bred her well, in the way of stallions, and long, which
was not common. When he was done, he slipped from her and nigh fainted in the
grass. She danced about him, eager still, calling to him, beckoning, bidding
him serve her again.

One of the other young stallions slipped close, hoping
perhaps to take advantage of his fellow’s exhaustion. But the silvermane had a
little strength left. He lunged. The other fled in great disorder.

No one else undertook to challenge the new lord of the royal
herd. As the day went on, he bred such others of the mares as were in season,
and bred the first of them again, with strength that Walker, watching, found
remarkable. In that way he laid claim to all the mares, and they accepted his
right to rule them.

None, even the old mare who led them, troubled to drive him
off. They did not mourn their fallen king, nor resent the young interloper.

Walker had his sign. It was the greatest that he could have
wished for, and the surest. What he would do among the People, the gods had
done in the royal herd. The king was dead. The young king ruled.

This young king had no ally, no shaman to aid him—unless it
were Walker’s presence, and his prayer for a sign, that had won him his tide.

Yes, Walker thought. His prayer had done this. Just as it
would aid Linden—and among the People he could do far more, and more strongly,
than he had done among the horses. Come the ninth-year feast, Linden would be
king, mounted on the king stallion. Walker would make sure of it.

Late in the day on which the king stallion died and a
young upstart took his place, Wolfcub came back to the camp with his father.
The People were in great disarray. For such a thing to happen so close to the
gathering of tribes, and in a ninth year besides, seemed to them a terrible
omen.

The king in particular was grey with shock. The conquered
king had been his companion, his mount in war and on the march from camp to
camp, and the great sign and seal of his kingship. Now a stranger ruled the
herds, a stallion who did not know the king, nor was there time to tame him
before the tribe must move.

Or so the king said. Certain of the young men declared, and
none too quietly either, that a true man needed but a rope of braided hide, a
morning’s span, and his own courage to tame a stallion. They seemed not to
understand or to care what a king was, or how a king stallion was made.

While the men strutted and came close to quarrelling, and
the king sat in his circle with that white and stricken face, the priests
flayed and gutted the carcass of the fallen stallion and brought it back in
procession to the camp’s center. The women hid themselves away lest their eyes
profane the rite. Especially they must not see the great and broken head raised
on a spear, with its torn throat and crushed skull, but royal still, and
somehow terrible.

That night they ate the flesh of the stallion, cracked his
bones and offered the sweet marrow to the gods, and set the king upon his hide.
The hide on which the king had sat, the hide of the great sacrifice that came
in the gathering of tribes, they wrapped about the broken bones and buried in a
secret place, with the skull set on it, and words of power laid over it. Then
they feasted till daybreak, all the men of the People, with a kind of grim
abandon.

oOo

Wolfcub had fretted at his father’s slowness in coming
back to the People. First it had rained in torrents, and they had waited out
the day in such shelter as they could muster. Then they met a hunting party of
the Black Rock People, allies and kin of their own tribe, and brewers of a sour
but potent spirit from the wild barley.

These hunters had pressed them to hunt a rogue lion that had
been stalking their herds. Aurochs could hardly refuse, for his pride as a
hunter and for generosity toward a tribe in need.

The hunt was quick, which was a mercy, and the kill clean,
with no men badly wounded, and the lion dead with Aurochs’ spear in its heart.
Then of course Aurochs must be feasted and praised in the Black Rock camp,
given great gifts and offered the pick of the women, and for courtesy he had to
accept it all, or do dishonor to the people and their king.

And all the while, Wolfcub fretted, twitching with urgency
that grew as the days crawled past. No wonder, either, with what they came back
to: a thing that had never happened before, a king conquered out of season and
a young stallion raised in his place. Nor was it any of the lesser kings and herdmasters,
but one of the wandering band of mareless stallions—such a young creature as
Wolfcub himself was, without wife or wealth, rank or standing among his people.

“He’ll fall,” Spearhead said by the young men’s fire, after
the youngest men had eaten their small portion of the king’s flesh and dived into
a large skin of kumiss. “He had a stroke of luck, or the gods were in the mood
for play. But once the older stallions get over the shock, they’ll challenge
him. One of them will bring him down and make himself king.”

“That’s what the old men say,” said Linden. As the king’s
favored son, he could have sat in the king’s circle, but he had chosen, for
whatever reason, to settle among the men of his own age. Most of his usual
companions lounged about, taking more than their share of the kumiss, but
neither Linden nor any of the others made an effort to stop them.

Linden was in a splendid mood—one of the few who truly was.
Nearly everyone else felt a bleakness in the heart of him, a cold knot of fear.
This kingmaking was not natural. It was out of season, and the king who had
risen was not the one who should have done it. But Linden was in high good
humor, drinking rather lightly of the kumiss but conducting himself as if every
drop of it had gone to his head.

“What if,” he said, “he doesn’t fall? What if the gods are
with him, and he holds his place and rules as king? What will all the old men
say then?”

“Why,” said one of his followers out of the shadows, in a
voice too slurred with drink to set a name to, “that they always knew he had it
in him!”

Linden laughed. Others echoed him. But most of those about
were somber. Spearhead said, “This is not a good thing. I heard someone wonder
if it might be the work of an ill spirit or a sorcerer, to throw us into
discord before the gathering. Not everyone is glad to call our king the king of
kings.”

“But any king may challenge,” Linden pointed out, “and if he
wins the fight, the power is his. Why would anyone enchant our king stallion to
his death?”

“To weaken our king,” Spearhead said. “To gain the upper
hand.”

“But a king who did that would do it at the gathering,” said
Linden. “Not here, at this odd time. No; I think the gods did it, or else it
simply happened. Horses do what they will do. They care little enough for the
wants of men.”

Now that, thought Wolfcub, was manifestly true, and rather
profound for Linden. Wolfcub had not drunk much kumiss, he did not think, but
his head was light. He had an urge to say something, anything, that would shock
everyone who could hear it. But the one thing he could think of, which was that
he thought he knew who had done this thing, was more shocking even than he
could bear to set in words.