Lady of Horses (15 page)

By the third day Sparrow could no longer deny it: Keen was
gone. No one had seen her. Sparrow thought then to ask the children. Children
knew everything and went everywhere. “Oh,” they said, “she went to the women’s
place. She was sick.”

“Her face was green,” said one of the girlchildren. “I
didn’t know skin could be that color.”

Sparrow’s heart went cold at that. Ill, and gone to the
women’s place—and no one had noticed. No one had thought of her at all.

Sparrow was used to that. She welcomed it. But Keen was
valued, for a woman. She had a husband of rank and standing. She should not
have been forgotten.

Except that that husband was Walker, and Walker cared for
nothing. He had no other wives or women to miss her; and her family, like
Sparrow, no doubt had supposed that she was elsewhere among the People.

There was a way to go back to her, and quickly, but it would
need great care and stealth, and the cover of night. Sparrow knew where in the
herds the mare was—she always knew that. But the herds on the march were
guarded and kept in close, for fear of hunters both animal and human. Sparrow
had already resigned herself to separation from the mare while the march
lasted.

But to find Keen again, she needed the mare.

It was a long wait from midday till sunset, and past it to
dark. Sparrow was very quiet, kept her head low, and was careful not to attract
any man’s notice, least of all Walker’s. Tonight of all nights, she did not
want to confront him, or be taxed with his need for a vision.

But he seemed to have had a foreseeing of his own for once,
or what he imagined to be such. He had been full of himself since the king of
stallions died, not strutting or boasting as another young man would do, but he
had taken a place among the elders. And they, perhaps out of astonishment, had
allowed it.

Tonight, as he had done since the march began, he settled
near Linden, not watching the prince, but Sparrow could feel his awareness, how
it focused, fixed on the target. Whether he meant to kill Linden or make him a
king, Sparrow did not know yet. Maybe Walker himself did not.

But that she must leave to Wolfcub. While she made camp for
her father and his wives, she set aside quietly such things as she would need,
hiding them in shadow. She did her duties, kept her head down, avoided drawing
notice.

At last, and none too soon, it was full dark. The children
had gone to sleep, all but a few who were determined to outlast their elders.
The men sat in their circles, drinking or drowsing, or else went out to stand
guard. The women finished the day’s tasks and went at last and gratefully to
their beds.

When the camp was as quiet as it would be, Sparrow retrieved
the bundle that she had made, and slipped away.

oOo

Wolfcub was out and about that night among those set on
watch over the horses. He came there late, later perhaps than he should: he had
delayed while the others went on ahead, first because he made sure that Linden
was safely bedded down in the middle of his following, and Walker was well
apart from them for once; then because his mother wanted a word with him.

It was nothing terribly important. She wanted mostly to see
him and feed him cakes made from a honeycomb that one of the lesser wives had
found on the march. He was never averse to being spoiled, if there was honey in
it.

He was still licking his fingers as he walked through the
camp, and there was a packet of cakes in his bag, still warm from the baking.
He was not looking for Sparrow, though as he passed Drinks-the-Wind’s portion
of the camp he wondered if he might see her. Everyone there was asleep, rolled
up in blankets or sheltered under canopies.

He went on quickly and quietly as a hunter should, slipping
past the guards on the camp—with a small and secret smile that none of them
either saw or challenged him—and circling the herds. The herdsmen stood guard
at wide intervals, tall shadows afoot or seated next to their grazing horses.
Wolfcub had retrieved his stallion before anyone saw him, slipped the bridle on
and walked openly out to the edge where his post was.

He passed Spearhead, who greeted him with a lift of the
hand, and Hemlock, who started up as if struck and would have sprung at him if
he had not stepped quickly aside. Hemlock growled as he saw who it was, not at
all gracious about his own failing.

Wolfcub shrugged. He and Hemlock were not friends, but
neither were they enemies. He went on without commentary, giving Hemlock time
to compose himself—and to wake enough to stand guard as he should.

Past Hemlock no one seemed to be on guard, though here was
the royal herd. The mares gleamed in the starlight; the new king stood hipshot
beyond them, with his mane like a fall of white water and the rest of him a
shadow on shadow. His head came up at Wolfcub’s presence, but apart from a
sharp snort of warning, he made no move toward either Wolfcub or his stallion.

Wolfcub had in mind to set himself outside the royal herd,
on a low rise that he had marked on his way there. But as he made his way
toward it, something made him stop.

There was a shadow among the white shapes, too small for one
of the foals, too large for a wolf. It walked upright as no lion ever did. Its
gait, the way it flitted through the starlit grass . . .

He was a hunter. He could remember a track once he had seen
it, and name the deer that he had let pass a season before. His eye was keen
and his mind attuned to subtleties. He knew that shape, the way it moved—though
it could not be here. It should not, ever, be here.

And yet he could not mistake it. Sparrow was in among the
royal herd, slipping soft as a breeze through the sleeping or grazing mares and
foals. And none of them, not one, not even the stallion, drew to the alert, or
seemed to care that she was there.

While Wolfcub stood gaping, his mind wandered off on its
own. Gossip in the camp, idle talk on the march. His sister Ember, her voice as
clear as if she stood beside him: “They say Sparrow has a lover.”

“No!” said his father’s youngest wife, whose name was Swift.
“Not that little brown bird. Who would want her?”

“Someone does,” Ember said. “She creeps out every night and
goes to him. Lark saw her. So did Arrow’s wife.”

“Oh,” said Swift. “Arrow’s wife—that whey-faced thing. She’s
just saying it so nobody will notice her running off to tumble in the grass
with her favorite of the hour.”

For a moment Wolfcub, listening, had thought they might
wander off in pursuit of that riper scandal. But it seemed it was too ripe.
Ember persisted. “It is true. Sparrow goes out all the time. Nobody knows who
he is.”

“I’m sure he’s not boasting,” Swift said with a toss of her
head. “All the men would laugh at him and wonder why he couldn’t find something
better.”

Wolfcub would have been happy to sweep down upon them then
and throttle them both, but they were not his wives or his women, and he was
not supposed to be listening to women’s gossip. He went on about his business,
but with a trouble in his heart.

Sparrow, creeping off to lie with a lover? Wolfcub had never
thought of such a thing. And not because no one could want her. It was not like
her.

But after he heard Ember and Swift at their gossiping, he
had listened, and other women chattered of it, too: how Sparrow had a lover,
but no one knew who he was. Certainly none of the men had admitted to it. Some
thought it might be Wolfcub—but unless they were meeting in dream, that was not
so.

He was not jealous. No, of course he was not. Why should he
be? He could be outraged, to be sure, that she should sully her honor so; but
he hated the darkness of that, and the wrongness.

Now he saw her among the horses, and a thought had risen in
him. It was preposterous. It was much more appalling than that she was lying
with a man in the nights, a man who had not taken her as his wife, nor gained
her father’s leave to do it. A woman’s virtue was a valuable thing. A woman
among the horses was a profanation.

And yet she was there, passing among them, aiming with
purpose for one who stood on the far edge, some little distance from the
stallion. It was one of the mares, a younger one, and beautiful—she was as fine
a creature as Wolfcub had seen. He had noticed her before, with a horseman’s
eye, and the thought that here was a fine mother of stallions; but despite her
ripe and suitable age, she seemed not to have bred or borne a foal.

As Keen had done before him, if he had known it, Wolfcub saw
Sparrow meet and greet the mare. He was perhaps more shocked than Keen had
been—a deep and heartfelt shock. And not, indeed, that a woman dared touch a
horse, and more than touch it, mount on its back and turn it southward. No,
though that was shock enough. Wolfcub had never imagined that Sparrow would
keep such a secret—and more than that, that she would keep it from him.

Of course she would. He was her friend, closer than any of
her brothers. But he was a man. How could she ever trust him with this? It was
a terrible thing she did, forbidden on pain of death.

If he had been thinking clearly at all, he would have turned
his back and gone to his post beyond the herd and set himself resolutely to
forget what he had seen. Maybe he had dreamed it, after all. Maybe it was a trick
of the starlight.

But he was not thinking clearly. He sprang onto his
stallion’s back, but quietly, crouching over the rough-maned neck, so that
Sparrow would not see and take alarm. He waited so, till Sparrow was well on
her way. Yes, she was headed to the south in a wide sweep round the herds and,
he could suppose, the camp.

When he was sure of her path, he slackened rein. The
stallion needed no more encouragement than that to set off in pursuit, but
quietly, as quietly as he could, and as swiftly. He kept the mare in sight but
did not close the gap, not till the herds and the camp were well past. Then and
only then did he press for speed.

The mare was moving quickly, but Wolfcub came on at the
gallop. She made no effort to increase her pace, nor did Sparrow urge her on.
Wolfcub caught them just below the summit of a long hill, veered around them
and pounded to a halt.

The mare stopped perforce. Sparrow’s face was a pale blur in
starlight, but he could sense no fear in her. “Truly,” she said, “I do need to
be more careful.”

“You’ll be killed for this,” Wolfcub said. He was breathing
hard, and not only because he had been riding at the gallop.

“I suppose I shall,” Sparrow said serenely. “But not
tonight, or you’d have killed me before you said a word.”

That was true. Wolfcub was none too pleased to acknowledge
it. “Why?” he demanded.

Sparrow did not answer. She rode past him to the hilltop,
eluding him as easily as if he had been a breath of wind. He had his bow and
his spear, for guarding the horses. He could, indeed should, have felled her as
she rode away from him. She made no effort to protect her back, nor seemed to
care that he was behind her.

He sent the dun after her. This time he could not catch the
mare so easily, though she seemed to move without haste. He could only ride
beside her in the wake of her silence.

“Tell me why,” he said as they crested the hill and started
down the other side.

“Keen,” Sparrow said, startling him—he had expected no
answer, and certainly not that one.

As he gaped, Sparrow sighed, audible over the thudding of
hooves. “Keen is not with the People. No one’s seen her since we left the
spring camp.”

Wolfcub did not want to be diverted from the fact of her
transgression against the great law of the People. And yet there was no
avoiding what she had said. “Keen is missing? But how—”

“Who would notice, if her husband didn’t?”

That was bitterly true. Still, Wolfcub came back to the
other thing, the terrible thing. “You can’t be doing this. You can’t—”

“I am doing it.” Sparrow’s voice was completely immovable.
“I’ll find her, if she’s to be found. You go back. Watch Linden. Make sure
Walker doesn’t do something we’ll all be sorry for.”

“You trust me to go back? What if I bring the whole wrath of
the People upon you?”

“You won’t,” she said with maddening certainty. “Now go.
I’ll bring Keen back. No one need ever know how I did it.”

“I’ll know.”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “I can’t do that. I can’t. You go back.
I’ll fetch her, and we’ll all be safe.”

“Keen knows.”

His mouth opened, then shut with a snap.

“I can’t keep watch over Linden,” she said with audible
patience. “You can. What I can do, I am doing. Who taught me to hunt, after
all? Who but you? Now go!”

He could not obey her. He would not. But his stallion was
another matter. He stopped short as if he had struck a wall. Wolfcub, caught
off guard, somersaulted over his head.

When the stars had stopped whirling overhead, Sparrow was
long gone, and the white mare with her. Wolfcub snarled at his traitor of a
horse. The dun did not look even faintly contrite. Nor would he go forward at
all, for anything Wolfcub could do. He would go back, and happily, stretching
into a long easy gallop, back to the herds and the herdsmen and a secret that
Wolfcub would have given heart’s blood not to keep.

Keen had never been alone before. Not truly—not all alone
in the world, far from kin and friends. It was strange. It was frightening, but
she refused to give in to fear.

On the third day the lion found her track. Lions of the
plain were not given to stalking the children of men, unless they were old or
mad or terribly hungry, but a woman alone, unarmed, afoot, was tempting quarry.

Keen saw it first as she paused at the summit of a long
hill, stopping to breathe and to strain her eyes, knowing she would see
nothing, but hoping rather foolishly that she could see the dust of the
People’s passing. But they were long gone. It was when she turned back,
slumping in despair, that she saw the tawny shape in the grass.