Lady of Horses (29 page)

The horses stood close by, drenched, heads hanging, waiting
out the rain. Spearhead lay as he had, arms over head. Wolfcub reached over and
shook him lightly. “Here,” he said, “it’s over. Let’s go on while we’ve got the
cool to travel in.”

Spearhead did not move. His shoulder was cold, but so was
Wolfcub’s—wet with rain. With still heart, Wolfcub turned him onto his back.

The lightning must have struck him even as he went down from
his horse’s back. His breast was black over the heart, his face set in a rictus
of astonishment.

Wolfcub could not close the staring eyes, any more than he
could lower the lifted arms. The whole body was locked, rigid.

He drew back carefully and wiped his hands on his leggings,
over and over. His mind was empty of thought. His belly felt hollow and yet
oddly tight.

He spoke in a clear voice, not loud but meant to carry.
“Whichever of the gods you are that struck him, and whatever he did to earn
your spite, he did not deserve this.”

No reply came from earth or sky. Even the thunder was quiet,
though it had been rumbling just before. The sky was clear overhead, pale and
rain-washed blue. It promised serenity that he had not known since he left the
place of the gathering. Now, maybe, he would never know it again.

oOo

He buried Spearhead where he had fallen, taking the rest
of the day and much of the night to dig the grave and raise the cairn—for he
had to go back to the stream in the wood to find stones, and come and go many
times before he had enough to cover the grave. Then in wan moonlight he spoke
and sang the words that granted rest to the spirit so abruptly ripped from its
body. A shaman would have known a dance, too, that would bind it surely, but
Wolfcub was only a hunter.

He did what he could. He hoped it would be enough. As
morning came again, though he was hollow-eyed with exhaustion, he mounted his
dun and led the bay, and left the dead to his long sleep.

oOo

All the way through the plains, Sparrow and Keen had met
no one. The tribes were gathered in the sacred place. Any exiles or wanderers kept
well away from them as they kept away from any possible camps. But beyond the
river, where the tribes looked to a different gathering, they began to see signs
of people’s passing: ashes of campfires, dung and trampled grass where herds
had grazed, and more than once, a thread of smoke on the horizon that marked
the camp of a tribe.

Keen wanted to find a camp and trade such little as they had
for things that people in tribes were likely to have: cheese, bread, tanned
leather to mend her tunic which by now was very worn. But Sparrow, whose tunic
had been worn to begin with, had become as wary and skittish as a wild creature.
She looked like one, too, with her face thinned with long travel and short
commons, and her tunic worn through in places, baring glimpses of warm cream-brown
skin. Her eyes were darker than ever, wide and maybe a little mad.

Keen tried to reason with her. “We’ve outrun anyone who
might have pursued us. I doubt people here would know what horse you’re riding.
Your mother came from this country, didn’t she? Maybe they’ll think you’re one
of them.”

“When I speak,” Sparrow said, “they’ll know I’m not. I talk
like a blond horseman.”

“And I am one,” Keen said. “Come, you know what people say—the
tribes here are anything but warlike. They welcome guests, and they’re generous
to strangers. You told me that yourself. Maybe one of the tribes will offer us
a refuge.”

Sparrow shook her head. Her face was set, her will locked
tight. “We can’t trust anyone. Not anyone.”

“Then where are we going?” Keen demanded. She was not losing
her temper, no, not that, but she was somewhat less patient than she might have
been. “What will we do? Go on and on till we fall down and die? Or come to the
edge of the world and fling ourselves off? What are we traveling to?”

“Safety,” Sparrow said.

“But where is safety, if not with these tribes?”

“Out there,” said Sparrow, sweeping her hand toward the
south. “Far away from here. Too far for anyone to follow.”

“That may never be far enough,” Keen said, “as long as we
have the king with us.”

Sparrow shook her head. And that was that, for a while—days
of burning heat, nights of breathless stillness, broken by storms of awesome
ferocity. The first one nigh drowned them both, but they emerged none the worse
for wear. After that they knew to find such shelter as they could when the sky
grew dark and the wind began to blow, and wait and pray while the lightning
marched about them.

It never touched them or harmed them, nor did it come close
enough to be a danger. The gods were angry, but not, it seemed, with them.

That was preposterous after what they had done; but Keen,
though no shaman, could feel it. Horse Goddess protected them. The mare wanted
them alive and in her company, for whatever purpose, just as she wanted the
stallion.

Keen had had a great deal of time to think while she learned
to ride the mare. At first it took her mind off the pain in her legs and
buttocks, the tormented muscles, the skin rubbed raw in her tenderest places.
Then as the pain faded and the rawness turned to calluses, she whiled the long
hours in thought.

Here she was, riding on the back of a horse—and not any
horse; Horse Goddess herself, as Sparrow declared and she believed. She was a
woman, and Horse Goddess not only did not care; she was not profaned by Keen’s
presence. She wanted it, or at least tolerated it.

What if the men were wrong about other things, too? If women
could ride without danger to horses’ spirits, what else could they do that the
men insisted were against the gods’ laws? Maybe those were not the laws of gods
but the laws of men.

And why would that be? Why would men do such things?
Because—maybe because they were afraid of women’s power?

That was a frightening thought, and yet oddly exhilarating.
It made her heart beat hard and her hands go cold. A woman could have power,
real power, shaman’s power. Sparrow did. Sparrow said the Grandmother had, too;
and Keen had heard from other women, though in whispers, that the Grandmother
had been stronger than any shaman.

What if she had been?

oOo

One night as they waited for their dinner of roast rabbit
to be done, Sparrow told her again the story of Horse Goddess’ first gift—the
story that was true, not the one that men told. Of the girl, not the prince,
who first sat on the back of a horse.

After so many days of riding and learning and thinking, Keen
knew deep in her bones that it was the truth. A man had not been the first to
take the gift. It had been a woman, and a very young one at that.

“Why?” she asked Sparrow. “Why did the men do that?”

Sparrow shrugged. “Why do men do anything? Because they want
it all, all the power, all the glory.”

“Do you think,” Keen asked, “that they do it because they’re
afraid?”

“What, of women?”

Keen nodded.

Sparrow did not laugh at her. “I suppose they might be.
We’re smaller and weaker, and we don’t like to fight. But we do one thing that
no man can ever do: we give them sons. Without us, there would be no men.”

“I think they resent us for that,” Keen said. She realized
as she said it that her hand was resting on her belly. It was no rounder than
it had ever been. And yet, as she paused, she tried to reckon days and nights
and phases of the moon. How long had it been? Surely—

Surely not. But Sparrow had had her courses once already,
and she had just been finishing them when they ran away from the gathering.
Keen had not had hers since spring camp. When she lay with Walker—when had that
been?

Long enough. More than that, as she counted days. Angry though
she had been and still was, and as little pleasure as she had taken, if it had
given her what she hoped, she did not care in the slightest.

She was still angry with Walker. Her anger had set deep, as
much a part of her now as the breath in her lungs or the heart in her breast.

Did he even remember her? He must have married his strident
Blossom—even the shock of the king stallion’s vanishment would hardly be likely
to turn him aside from a course once he had chosen it. He might elect to
expunge Keen from his memory and the memory of the People, such a crime as she
had committed, not only to steal the king stallion but to run away from Walker
the shaman.

Still she missed him. The husband he had been before he went
all cold, the lover who had come so willingly to her bed, was still bright in
her memory. His touch, his kiss, the smell and taste of him, kept catching her
unawares. Sometimes she found herself weeping, as if to mourn the dead.

But she did not turn back, even if she could have hoped to
be accepted into the People again. This country was calling her: its green
rolling hills, its many rivers, above all its trees.

She loved trees. She had always found them magical somehow,
the ones on the steppe that she was not allowed to touch, and tales of forests
had captivated her since she was small. When she saw them growing together in
their green stillness, touched the cool smooth boles and smelled the smell of
earth and leaves, her heart had sighed and for a while forgotten its sorrows.

Sparrow would not stop for every copse and thicket, but as
often as Keen could persuade her, they paused to rest where there were trees,
or camped there for a night.

oOo

It was near one such thicket that they first met an
inhabitant of this country. They were intending to camp, for it was close to
sunset. As they approached the trees, the stallion snorted and shied, casting
Sparrow ignominiously on the ground.

Sparrow was up at once, before Keen could even stop the mare
and fling herself down, but she was taking no notice of either the horse or her
companion. She reached for what Keen had taken for an old broken tree-stump,
and pulled it to gnarled and ancient but incontestably human feet.

Whether it was man or woman, Keen at first could not tell.
It had thin wisps of white hair on chin and lip, but not enough to call a
beard; and its body beneath colorless tatters was so old that all suggestion of
shape was pared away. The eyes were the youngest thing about it: dark eyes only
faintly clouded with age, fixing Sparrow with a glare as keen as her own.

“You,” it said in a voice too light maybe for a man’s, but
rather deep for a woman’s, “are an exceedingly rude child.”

It spoke the language of the traders who came and went
across the plains and the green lands, a mingling of words from many tribes and
places. Nearly everyone knew a little of it, for convenience, and because
sometimes it was difficult to understand the dialect of a tribe from far away.

Sparrow bristled at the stranger’s words. “And are you
polite, to have startled my horse so that he threw me?”

“I think you were lazy and unwatchful, and he took advantage
of it.” The stranger peered at the stallion, who had got over his startlement
and lowered his head to graze. “He’s a pretty one. You should ride him better.”

“I would, if it weren’t for lurkers in the grass.”

“Lions lurk in the grass,” said the odd stranger. She—Keen
decided to call it she, whether it was or no; she was oddly like Wolfcub’s
mother Willow—slipped free of Sparrow’s grip and straightened her garb of
tatters. “I’ll be your guest tonight, so that you can make up for your
rudeness. I have a fondness for rabbit stewed in herbs from this thicket. Make
sure you cook it till it’s tender, and—”

“We have no pot for stewing rabbit in,” Sparrow said, “and
no rabbit to cook, either. If you want one, catch it for yourself.”

The old woman shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Shame,
child, shame. Where’s your respect for your elders?”

Sparrow opened her mouth. Keen intervened before she said
anything more unfortunate than she already had. “We should be pleased to share
our camp with you,” she said, “and our dinner, too. Do you have a pot that we
may borrow? We’ve snares, if there are rabbits to be had.”

The stranger clapped her gnarled old hands with glee. “Now
there’s a child with manners! Yes, yes, I have a pot, and snares, too. You’ll
find them under the trees; and if I know my craft, they’ve caught a brace or
three of fine plump rabbits.”

Keen smiled and bowed as she would have done to an elder of
the People. “Then I’ll go and look, since you’ve been so generous. With the
loan of your pot and a few fine herbs, we’ll have as good a dinner as we’ve had
on this journey.”

oOo

It was a fine dinner indeed, even with Sparrow sulking on
the edge of it. Half a dozen plump rabbits hung in snares among the trees. The
greenery on which they had been feeding was sweet and wonderful to the taste,
and flavored their flesh even before Keen cut it up and filled the pot which
waited in a pleasant clearing.

That was more than a night’s camp: there was a shelter of
laced branches, a firepit lined with stones, and a small flock of goats penned
near the shelter. The goats gave them milk to drink and cheese to nibble on
while the pot simmered.

The stranger did not offer them her name. Keen did not ask,
and Sparrow had relegated herself to sullen silence. As to why she lived alone,
far from any tribe—she made no secret of that. “I was shaman of a clan down by
the river. Horsemen came and killed them all or carried them away. I was
spirit-walking far from the people, or I would have died with them. I was a
strong shaman, but young, and the horsemen were terrible.”

“Horsemen like me?” Keen asked. She was not afraid; there
was no hostility in the old woman’s eyes. Only sadness.

The old woman shrugged a little. “Not as tall as you, or as
fair. But close enough. As soon as they learned that one can ride a horse as
well as eat it, they were hot to conquer the world.”