Lady of Horses (18 page)

Or so Wolfcub had been told. He wanted no magic but what
aided him in the hunt, or—he could admit it—what was between man and woman.
Shamans were strange creatures. All of them, as he saw them together in their
circle, bore some deformity, some oddity of shape or form, that marked them as
belonging to the gods: a twisted leg, an eye born blind, a blood-red stain
marring the face. Only the White Stone shamans lacked that—and yet, might not
their beauty be a strangeness of its own?

Their circle was not openly forbidden, but people avoided
it. There was always someone sitting in it, sometimes one or two or three,
shaking a bone rattle or muttering to himself or staring at the fire. The rest
came and went from the great tent that was pitched on the edge of the stone
circle. Scents wafted out of it, drones of chants, a sense that raised the
hackles on Wolfcub’s neck.

He could not go in there. He would not enter the circle.
There was no way to discover what Sparrow wanted him to know. He mused briefly
and a little wildly on asking Walker outright: “Are you plotting to cast down
the king and raise another?” But Wolfcub was never so much a fool.

He turned his back on the shamans’ circle and let his feet
lead him through the camp, past a circle of dancers and a circle of warriors
and a gathering of women by the little river, who blushed and hid their faces
and giggled when he went by. Women had been doing that ever since he came to
the gathering. At first he had looked to see if his leggings had slipped to
bare his secret parts, or if he had some mark or stain on his coat, but he was
in as good order as ever. The women were being women, that was all.

oOo

Past the Cliff Lion and the Dun Cow, the Tall Grass People
had come in just this morning and made camp in their wonted place. Tall Grass
came from farther south than most, near the country of the little dark people,
and many of them were smaller and darker than the run of the tribes.

Wolfcub had a hunting-companion or two among the Tall Grass
men. As he was thinking of seeking them out and hearing what they could tell of
the world to the south, his eye found a very tall, very fair figure among the
shorter, swarthier ones. He slowed his advance, slipping without thought into a
gathering of men, glad for once that he was not as tall or as pale as some.

They greeted him with reserve in the way of the Tall Grass,
but there was warmth in it. Someone handed him a bit of dried meat; he offered
in return one of his mother’s honeycakes. That, shared out, was well received.

All the while he observed the courtesies, he was aware of
the tall man nearby, sitting with the king and a man even paler than he, white
as a bone indeed, who was the Tall Grass shaman. Walker was not saying anything
that Wolfcub could take exception to. But his presence there, the way he leaned
toward his brother shaman, made Wolfcub uneasy.

It was foolish. Sparrow’s fears made him see trouble where
there was none. Walker was observing the courtesies, that was all, just as
Wolfcub was doing; as men did all through the tribes, and women, too. That was
what gathering was.

And yet when Walker bade farewell to the king and the
shaman, Wolfcub lingered only a little longer. He did not want to follow the
shaman and be seen. But he took note of where Walker went. He was visiting the
tribes one by one, with seeming casualness, and in each one, paying his
respects to its king and its shaman.

Drinks-the-Wind was doing no such thing. He had not been
seen since the People came to the gathering. He was in the shamans’ tent,
performing great rites and preparing for the sacrifices. So should Walker have
done, but he chose to be out and about.

At least he had let Linden be. Linden was doing much the
same as Walker, but of him it was expected, even required. He was a king’s son
of the White Stone; he should be leading the dances and the games.

oOo

He was also one of those who guarded the horses. Which was
nothing to wonder at, but after Wolfcub left the Tall Grass camp, he wandered
by the herds. And there was Linden sitting on the back of his pretty
gold-and-red stallion, surrounded by an even larger pack of young hellions than
usual, watching the new king court a mare.

The mare was not particularly inclined to oblige her suitor,
but he was persistent. He was not well endowed with wits, Wolfcub reckoned, but
of beauty he had more than enough. He was prettier even than Linden’s
stallion—and that, surely, was what so enraptured Linden.

Wolfcub might have been able to escape Walker’s notice, but
his cousins and kinsmen about Linden marked him before he could fade into the
grass. They called to him with glee that had a fair ration of kumiss in it, and
would not hear of his leaving them. Linden, shaken out of his contemplation of
the silvermaned stallion, favored Wolfcub with his most dazzling smile, a
welcome so pure and so perfectly warm that Wolfcub could only sigh and give way
to it.

Wolfcub stood beside Linden’s stallion, where the crowd of
them insisted that he be. Linden bent down from the horse’s back and laid an
arm about Wolfcub’s shoulders and said, “Look at him now. What do you think?”

Wolfcub thought that the new king was terribly pretty,
terribly young, and terribly foolish. But he could hardly say that to the
king’s very image and likeness among men. He said instead, “He’s not going to
breed that mare today, unless she has a change of heart.”

Linden laughed. “I’ll wager he wins her over.”

“A wager, a wager!” some idiot sang out. “What will you lay
on it?”

“Why,” said Linden, “what’s it worth? A fine bridle, and a
skin of kumiss.”

They were all staring at Wolfcub now, waiting for him to
take the wager. He sighed faintly. “A well-tanned deerhide,” he said, “and a
skin of kumiss.”

They cheered at that, and no doubt thought him a great good
fellow. Wolfcub wondered why they made him feel so old. He was the same age as
they, but his spirit was never so light.

While he reflected on that, the stallion approached the mare
with clear intent to mount her. She squealed in rage and planted both hind feet
squarely between his legs. He groaned. She threatened with a restless heel. He
slunk off, head and tail low, walking, Wolfcub would have sworn, considerably
more spraddle-legged than he had before.

Linden had roared with the rest at the stallion’s
discomfiture. He paid his wager handsomely, and applauded when Wolfcub passed
the skin of kumiss round. He was altogether undismayed to have lost his wager.

He was also, Wolfcub noticed, fixed still, if subtly, on the
stallion. That lord of horses recovered soon enough, though he kept his
distance from the mares. Linden watched him steadily, perhaps not even aware
that he had done it.

When all the tribes of the plain had gathered by the river
near the sacred place, three days before the ninefold sacrifice began, the king
of the White Stone People went out to tame the new king of stallions. He had
prepared himself with fasting and honed himself in the dance, leaping and
whirling and stamping by firelight, naked and painted with signs of power. Then
he had gone into his tent and prepared himself in another way, lying with the
chosen of his women—it was Fawn, the women said to one another, and certain of
his other women had not taken it well at all.

Women could not watch this rite of taming the stallion. They
were kept in the tents as they would be for the sacrifices, shut away lest
their eyes and their presence pollute the rite.

But Sparrow could not stay away from it. She would far
rather have gone out onto the open plain than confined herself in close and
reeking dimness with women who did nothing but bicker among themselves, play
endless games of toss-the-bones, and drink far more kumiss than their men would
have been pleased to know of.

Indeed she would have done that as she had in years past.
But in the morning when the women were ordered into the tents, she woke from a
dream of the mare. The mare was calling her urgently, demanding her presence at
once.

She tried to resist it. She banked the fire in front of her
father’s tent. She herded the youngest children within. She gathered such
oddments as they all might need for confinement.

But the calling would not stop for that. When she tried to
enter the tent, her body turned instead and slipped away, concealing itself as
best it could till it had passed the camp and found the safety of the plain.

oOo

The mare was waiting for her, pawing with impatience.
Sparrow could not tell her that any woman’s presence at this rite would profane
it. The mare cared nothing for men’s laws. Sparrow would come. That was her
will.

Sparrow went, because Horse Goddess would not have it
otherwise. She was allowed at least to go in hunter’s wise, and to conceal
herself in the tall grasses above the field of the trial. It was a hollow in
the earth like the print of a vast hoof, somewhat steep-sided, smooth and
almost level within. The men were gathered there, all those of the White Stone
and as many of the other tribes as were minded to come. They perched on the
hillside and stood or crouched on the edges of the circle. They were utterly,
preternaturally still.

The priests had brought the silvermaned king to the circle.
He was not at all pleased to have been roped and bound and dragged apart from
his mares. But the priests were many and their ropes were strong. In the end he
submitted.

The king of the White Stone People stood near the eastward
edge of the circle, the morning side, waiting for the stallion to cease his
fighting of the ropes. He was stripped to the waist, baring strong shoulders
and corded arms, and a rich array of scars amid the king-marks swirling on
breast and back. He was barefoot, his leggings plain, no weapon on him. In his
hand he held a rope of braided hide.

The stallion stood quiet for a long moment. He might have
erupted again, but the mare snorted gently behind Sparrow. Sparrow tensed to
dive for cover, but no one seemed to have heard, except the stallion. He lifted
his head and flared his nostrils but held still.

In the silence Sparrow scanned as many faces as she could
see. There were the priests in their masks of featureless horsehide. There was
a cluster of shamans, and her father tall among them, with his flowing beard
and his heavy white braids. Her brother she did not see.

No—there. Not far from the king, standing beside Linden,
arms folded, wearing no expression at all.

Linden was oblivious to the shaman’s presence. He was intent
not on the king but on the stallion. Sparrow wondered that people did not
remark on the yearning in his eyes.

But the silvermaned stallion belonged to his father. He had
to stand unmoving while the king gestured to the priests. They hesitated for a
breath’s span, but his command was clear. They slipped the ropes that bound the
stallion, all but one, which the last of the priests handed, with a bow of his
mane-crowned head, to the king.

The stallion had not moved while he was freed. Nor did he
move when he felt a new hand on the rope. He was alert but quiet, ears flicking
nervously, soft black nostrils fluttering.

The king approached him slowly. That at least the stallion
could bear: he had had men about him since he was a foal, and a woman, too.
Sparrow had gentled him when he was small, and taught him to seek the touch of
a hand.

So he did now, to the manifest awe of those who watched. He
approached the king delicately, one step, two; he lowered his nose into the
king’s hand. The king ventured to touch his head, his ears. He shied only a little.

Was the king relieved? Sparrow could not tell. Swiftly but
carefully he fashioned his rope into a bridle and slipped it over the
stallion’s head. The stallion tensed but steadied. The king stroked along his
neck and shoulders, back and flanks. He barely quivered.

With sudden decision, the king sprang onto the stallion’s
back.

Sparrow tasted blood. She had bitten her tongue—it hurt
appallingly. But better that than a cry of outrage. Fool! Had he no patience?

The stallion stood stunned under that imposing weight. The
king clamped legs about his barrel. Fool, again; fool and thrice fool. The
stallion, appalled, went up.

Straight up, lunging for the sky. There could be no thought
in that lovely head but to be rid of the clutching, clamping thing. When it
hauled at his head, forcing it about, driving him down to the earth, he flung
up his heels in revolt.

Still the king clung to his back. He bucked furiously. The
king only laughed.

Sparrow did not see exactly what it was that sent the
stallion into another paroxysm of revolt. The king was riding more lightly now.
The stallion was growing calm again, beginning—she thought—to accept this
burden on his back. He was not evil of mind or spirit; he quite lacked the wits
to lull his rider into complacency and then fling him off.

And yet from almost-quiet he burst into sudden, spinning,
bucking fury. The king’s laughter rang out anew. Round the edges of the circle
men began to cheer, stamping their feet, clapping their hands in salute.

Maybe that was more than the stallion could bear. Maybe
something stung him. A bee—a dart? His bucking gained a frantic edge. He
twisted, flinging himself up, then down, over and over.

The king held on. But he was tiring. Maybe there was more to
it; maybe someone had laid a wishing on him. One moment he was riding well enough,
holding fast to mane and sides. The next, he spun through the air.

He seemed to hang there for a long, long while, many counts
of breath, many beats of the heart. Then slowly, oh so slowly, he fell.

Sparrow saw how he would go. He should have gathered
himself, drawn into a knot, rolled free. But he fell limply, all asprawl. His
head struck the earth first.