Lady of Horses (41 page)

“As if,” Rain said once, “he had devoted more than a few
moments’ effort to it.” But she said it as gently as she said anything, with a
shrug and a smile at Cloud.

Cloud for once was taking notice of her rather than Keen,
and he returned the smile, unabashed. He was quietly proud of the baby growing
in her belly.

It was not his first, Sparrow discovered, though Rain had
not had a child before. Half a dozen of the dark-eyed children running about
the camp had his pleasant blunt features and his beautiful long-lashed eyes.
Their mothers made no claim on him that Sparrow could see, nor thrust the
children at him, but they appeared to know who was their father.

It was a strange, rather subtle way of doing things, but
people seemed content with it. Since mother-clan was the only one that
mattered, mothers’ brothers helped raise the children, or if there were no
brothers, elder sons or, rarely, fathers performed the duty. All of Cloud’s
children had uncles to teach them the ways of the tribe.

That maybe was why he was so intent on Rain’s child. He was
its father, but also its clan-uncle. He would raise it and seal it with its
name, once its mother had told him what that was.

Sparrow, cherishing the secret within her, reflected that
Kestrel was as close to a true heart’s brother as she had ever had. Like Cloud,
he could be both brother and lover. And he would help her raise this child. He
was wonderful with children, patient and forbearing with the handful who
followed him about; he was teaching them to hunt, and make and fletch arrows,
and knap flint for arrowheads and spearheads and knifeblades. What joy he would
take, she thought, in teaching his own child to do all of that; to make a
hunter of it as his father had made of him.

oOo

Spring came all at once and almost unexpected. One day
they were gripped in the icy heart of winter, suffering a blizzard so fierce
that it plucked several tents from their moorings and froze one of the oxen
where he stood among his fellows. The next morning rose clear and bright and
unwontedly warm. The snow began to melt, the ice to slip from the branches of
the trees. They were able to butcher the ox and share a feast, a rite of
newborn spring.

That night Rain went into the birthing-house, which in this
tribe was in the camp’s center—not set apart and hidden from the eyes and ears
of men, but full in their midst, so that everyone knew and shared in the
birthing. By morning she had delivered a daughter, a fine strong creature who
had, her mother swore, her father’s eyes.

Sparrow could not tell. Babies were babies, red squalling
things of no beauty or charm. But its mother was vastly proud of it, and its
father doted on it. It was, she conceded, a good omen, that winter’s end should
bring so strong a life into the world.

The child was named Spring, aptly enough. Her mother
recovered quickly from the birth, suffered neither fever nor weakness, but was
blessed of the gods and of Earth Mother.

That too was an omen. It heartened the people, and
brightened the rising spring.

oOo

When the snows had melted and the snow-waters roared past,
and the rivers quieted somewhat, Kestrel left the Grey Horse People. He rode
out hunting, or so everyone thought. But he did not come back.

Sparrow had known. In her heart, she had felt it. His joy in
her was as great as ever, his loving both passionate and tender. But after he
had gone, she saw what she had been refusing to see.

He had agreed that he had no hope of taking the stallion
back to the People. He had never quite promised that he would stay. His duty
bound him, and his given word. Once winter’s long waiting was over, he had to
go. He had no choice.

He said no farewells. He went hunting, that was all. The
trail he took led to the great river in the north, and over it, and on to the
plains and the People.

oOo

Sparrow raged. She tried to raise magics, storms, floodwaters.
But the gods were not listening. Earth Mother would not obey her. Whether this
was ordained, or the gods simply did not care, Kestrel went unhindered; and she
could not follow. The mare would not go. The stallion, who might have been
willing, was in the mare’s power. She kept him by her, nor suffered Sparrow to
approach him.

Sparrow was bound to this camp and this tribe. Here Horse
Goddess had sent her. Here she must stay.

No one could offer her comfort. None but Rain, who was
neither her friend nor her ally, but they were, in a fashion, sisters. “He’ll
come back,” Rain said.

“Yes,” said Sparrow bitterly. “At the head of an army. Or as
a head on a spear.”

“Then at least you’ll see him again,” Rain said: rough
comfort indeed, but in its way it lessened her grief. Not her anger, never
that, but it braced her spirit.

When the king of the White Stone stallions was taken away,
the gathering of tribes rose up in revolt. A king stripped of his stallion,
cried his brother kings, was no king at all. And if the White Stone People had
lost their king of stallions, they had lost their kingship. They were no longer
chief among the tribes.

Cliff Lion was swift to claim that eminence. Red Deer and
Dun Cow raised rival claims. Well before evening of the day after the stallion
was stolen, the gathering had broken into a dozen squabbling factions.

Linden had come back to the camp, riding behind Curlew on
that young man’s sturdy bay, and halted in front of his tent, and shut himself
in it. His companions would not let even Walker pass. He had to invoke the
power of his office. Even then they made him surrender such weapons as he
allowed unsanctified eyes to see.

He took the insult to heart, and would remember it. But for
now he had greater matters to attend to.

Linden was deep inside the tent, pacing and snarling like a
lion in a cave. Every now and then he seized on something within reach, tore it
or kicked it or flung it.

Walker watched him with interest. For so equable a man, he
had a rather imposing temper. But there was a distinct air of petulance in it.
He did not have the gift of the grand passion, the towering wrath that made a
man terrible.

Walker, whose own anger was winter-cold, considered the uses
and misuses of this man whom he had made king. He had put aside for the moment
the other thing, the thing that ate at his spirit: the discovery that his
sister, the messenger of his visions, had taken his wife and his king of
stallions and ridden away. Curlew, who was far-sighted, had seen who it was—

impossible, preposterous, but there
could be no denying it.

That would be dealt with in its due time. For the moment it
mattered more that he rein in this pretty idiot of a king, and teach him to say
the words that would quell the tribes.

“Lord king,” Walker said in his sweetest voice.

Linden wheeled. “You! Get out.”

“My lord,” said Walker, “the tribes need their king.”

“Pestilence take the tribes! Those—those
women
stole my horse!”

Walker suppressed a sigh. “My lord—”

Linden was not listening. “I’ve sent men after them. I’ll
send more. I’ll raise an army. Any man who brings them back to me alive, and my
stallion safe, I’ll reward him—what shall I give him, shaman? Will women do?
Cattle? Horses?”

“My lord,” said Walker, raising his voice slightly in hope
of catching the king’s attention, “that is well thought of, and shall be done.
But while your hunters pursue the thieves, you and only you must settle the
tribes. I would suggest that—”

“You do that,” Linden said. “Tell them the stallion will be
back in a day or two. Then I’ll show them how a king punishes such
profanation.”

“It’s not that simple, my lord,” Walker said. “The people—”

“Tell them,” Linden said. “Leave me alone. Tell everyone to
leave me alone. Except a woman. I will have a woman. Tell one of the servants.
They’ll fetch one for me.”

Walker would dearly have loved to wring that pretty neck.
But he needed this man still—not for terribly long, perhaps, but long enough.
“I’ll send you a woman, my lord,” he said. “Be at ease. Rest as you can. Try to
calm your spirit.”

“Yes, yes,” Linden said testily. “Go away. You’re not bad to
look at, mind, but I’d rather be looking at a woman.”

oOo

Walker sent him a woman. He sent his father’s wife White
Bird, who was quite as pretty and fully as stupid as Linden.

She did not care that another man than her husband had
called her out of the tent and given her orders—for they were orders that she
was glad to take. “The king!” she cried, clapping her hands. “Oh, yes. I’ll go
now. I’ll make him forget all his grief. He’ll love me, yes he will.”

Walker was sure that he would. He stared down the crone who
had wandered in while he instructed White Bird. The crone met his stare
brazenly, but she was only an old woman. He forgot her as soon as he had gone
on the next of his errands.

oOo

The kings and shamans and some of the elders of the tribes
had gathered in the sacred place around the stone of sacrifice. Their factions
were obvious, small scowling knots of men, each separate from the other, with
much shouting back and forth. Cliff Lion’s king, who was called the Bull, had
leaped up on the stone of sacrifice and begun to harangue the crowd.

He was, in his way, little more intelligent and hardly less
foolish than Linden. Walker looked about for a man of greater sense. Red Deer
and Dun Cow were ruled by warleaders, men for whom battle was meat and drink.
Black Bull’s king was old, with a pack of quarrelling sons. Tall Grass—Walker
nodded to himself. Yes, there was an alliance he could use, and the king was
comfortably in the shaman’s power.

As he moved toward the western edge of the field, where Tall
Grass stood with a gathering of lesser allies, a ripple ran through the crowd.

Someone new was coming. A man on a grey horse, one of the
royal mares no less, and no shame that he, a man grown, an elder and a shaman,
should stoop to ride so lowly a creature. He rode slowly down the track that
priests took in procession. Silence followed in his wake.

Walker watched him in shock. Drinks-the-Wind should have
been lying in the innermost space of his tent, lost to dreams and slow poison.
He was pale, he was thin to emaciation, but his grey eyes burned in his white
face. He was not only alive, he was stronger than he had any right to be.

The mare carried him to the stone of sacrifice. The Bull,
whose speech had trailed off as the shaman drew closer, lowered his head and
hunched his heavy shoulders and retreated from the stone.

The mare climbed up on it. She was a massive thing, and not
young, with a heavy broodmare’s belly, but she was agile and strong. The stone
was just large enough to hold her and the man astride her back.

Drinks-the-Wind looked out over the gathered kings and
elders and shamans. His eyes were full of light. Walker had not yet learned the
trick of that. Maybe it needed the full pallor of white hair, white beard, and
colorless skin, and the sun striking the eyes just so.

The shaman spoke. His voice was not particularly loud. It
was clear, and carried well enough, if those on the edges moved in closer.
Which they did, drawn as if by a spell, but it was only the power of curiosity.

“My lords, my brothers, my kin. This is a terrible thing
that has befallen us, and it dishonors us all. But if a spirit of ill-will
wrought this thing, then it rejoices now to hear you. The breaking of the
tribes would be its dearest hope, and war would give it great satisfaction.”

“Surely!” shouted a man from among those of the Dun Cow. “It
was your daughter who stole the kingship. What do you have to say to that, old man?”

Drinks-the-Wind did not seem dismayed. “I say, sir, that
when she is found—and I pray that be quick—I will be foremost among those who
call for her judgment. My fault that in naming her I gave her life. I will
redeem that fault once she stands before us.”

Men nodded at that, and muttered approval. But the man of
the Dun Cow was not satisfied. “I hear tell she’s a witch’s child. What if
she’s in league with the dark gods? Can you protect us against them?”

“If that is so,” said Drinks-the-Wind, “then all of us
priests and shamans will protect you and your people. That I swear to you, as
elder shaman of the White Stone People.”

Maybe he had not won them all over, but he had won enough.
When he dismissed them, and bade them wait, be patient, pray to their gods for
guidance, they obeyed him. He had great presence, and great skill in wielding
it: white man in white garment, mounted on white mare, standing on the stone of
sacrifice.

oOo

Walker could admire the beauty of it, even as he brooded
over the failure of his potions. He had had in mind to do something rather
similar, but in the end it mattered little that his father had done it. It
quieted the tribes, for a while; that was what mattered.

He could see that he would have to dispose of the old man
rather more directly, and rather soon. He could not have Drinks-the-Wind
claiming back his old place beside the king. That belonged to Walker now, and
Walker meant to keep it.

In the meantime Walker set about making use of the lull
between the first shock of anger and the eruption that would follow. He sent
word to the shaman of the Tall Grass that the wedding would proceed, and
quickly. He sent word also to each of the kings, in his own king’s name,
proposing a great alliance, a royal wedding, with each king invited to send a
daughter to the king of the White Stone People.

And while that was in train, he approached Linden again.

Linden was lying in White Bird’s arms. Her wonderful white
breasts were bare, and he was suckling at them. Her face wore an expression of creamy
pleasure, which altered not at all when she saw that Walker was watching.
Indeed she smiled, heavy-lidded, and tilted her head just so: inviting him to
partake, too, if he was so minded.