Lady of Horses (42 page)

His lips twisted in disgust. He had perforce to wait until
Linden, too, had noticed him—a time during which he was well apprised of his
king’s tastes in womanflesh. Maybe, he thought, he should send new messages to
the kings and bid them send daughters who had borne gods’ children, rather than
daughters who were at least publicly acknowledged to be maidens.

Linden emerged from his preoccupation at last, unperturbed
to find that he had an audience. Like White Bird, he seemed minded to offer
Walker a portion; but Walker forestalled him. “My lord,” he said, “if you please,
I’ve servants waiting to bathe and dress you.”

“A bath would be pleasant,” Linden said lazily. “But
clothes? Why? I’m not leaving here.”

“My lord, you are,” said Walker. “Tonight you dance in front
of the kings of the tribes. Tomorrow you take to wife a daughter of each. And
tomorrow night,” he said, smiling though his gorge rose, “you may rut like a
bull in a herd of eager heifers.”

Linden’s eyes gleamed at that, but White Bird cried out in
dismay—a sound less like birdsong than a hawk’s scream. “You can’t do that!
He’s mine!”

“Why, surely,” said Linden. “And you are mine. But just
think— all those pretty faces. All that soft skin. Won’t you be glad to share
it with me?”

“May I?” she asked, breathless.

He nodded.

She clapped her hands. “Oh! Yes, that would be so
delightful. But,” she said, sobering suddenly, “you must promise me. You are
mine. The others can belong to you, but you cannot belong to them.”

“You had me first,” Linden said—which was by no means a
promise, but she seemed content with it.

oOo

If he learned to seduce men as he seduced women, he would
be a striking figure of a king. Walker pondered the advantages of that as he
completed the last of his errands.

Drinks-the-Wind had left the stone of sacrifice and, it
seemed, sent the mare back to her herd. He was not in his tent or in the
shamans’ tent. Walker had nearly lost patience with the hunt when he found his
father outside the camp, sitting by the old king’s barrow. He looked like a
ghost or wandering spirit, a white and motionless figure, with the wind
plucking at his robe and running fingers through his beautiful long beard.

He was aware of Walker’s coming, though he did not
acknowledge it until Walker stood over him. Then he lifted those clear pale
eyes and said, “If you’re wise, you’ll let me live a while.”

Walker widened his own eyes, which he knew were neither as
clear nor as pale as his father’s; but his face, he thought, was more
distinctly beautiful. “Let you live, Father? Surely it’s the gods who do the
letting.”

“Don’t play me for a fool,” Drinks-the-Wind said. “Not that
I haven’t been one; I should have known long ago what was being slipped into my
cup. The girl who did it is dead. Next time, if you must corrupt one of my
daughters, find one with a little more courage. That one broke and wept before
I laid a hand on her. It was a dreadful and noisy chore to force the whole of
the vial down her throat. She took a long time to die, and not pleasantly,
either.”

Walker regarded his father in ungrudging admiration. “I see
I underestimated you,” he said.

“You do have that flaw in your character,” said Drinks
the-Wind. “Now that that other of my daughters is gone, and your visions with
her, what will you be doing about it?”

Walker had not been expecting that. It struck the wind from
his breast and left him gaping, bereft for a moment of words.

When at last he could speak, his voice was thin and somewhat
strangled. “The king’s men will bring her back. How far can she go, after all?”

“That,” said Drinks-the-Wind, “might be farther than you can
imagine. You should consider it, youngling. If she is not brought back within a
day, or two at the most, I won’t be able to hold back the tribes.”

“But I will,” said Walker. “Tomorrow the king will take a
tentful of wives. And I will take the daughter of the Tall Grass shaman. That
will absorb the people for a while, even without a horse-thief to punish.”

Drinks-the-Wind nodded. “Yes. Yes, that’s not an ill
thought. But after that, if there’s no king stallion, and no thief—you had
better find our king another horse.”

“Surely the herds will do that,” said Walker. “The royal
mares will gain a stallion, even as our king gains wives.”

“No,” said Drinks-the-Wind. “The mares have driven off
several already. Most strange, that is: who ever heard of mares refusing a
stallion? But so they have.”

“One will persist,” Walker said. “One will win them.”

“Maybe so,” said Drinks-the-Wind, “and maybe not. These are
not horses as we know horses. These are something else. Horse Goddess’
children. Her spirit is in them.”

“They are still horses,” said Walker. “And mares need a
stallion.”

“O son of my loins,” Drinks-the-Wind said, “believe me when
I say this. If your sister goes where my heart tells me she will go, and does
what my spirit fears she will do there, you will need me sorely—if for nothing
else than that I am not blind to the gods’ light.”

“Nor am I blind,” Walker began.

Drinks-the-Wind cut him off. “Without her eyes, you are. Do
you think I don’t know what she is and what you are? If she had been a man, you
would be a hunter and warrior of no particular distinction, with no hope in the
world of calling yourself a shaman. Because the gods chose to mock us all by
giving their visions to a girlchild, you stole those visions, and I allowed
it—because, as we agree, I am a fool.”

“They are my visions,” Walker said. “She is but the
messenger. And she will be brought back.”

Drinks-the-Wind regarded him in a kind of surprise. “Why,”
he said, “you believe that. Or you’ve convinced yourself that you do.” He
sighed heavily. “Ah gods. It would have been restful to drink your poison; I
would have been glad to see my battle-brother again. But I am not to go yet. I
will grant you your semblance of power, youngling, and feed it as I may, for
the People’s sake. But have a care. If you tire of me too soon, there will be
no one to give you visions. She will not, never again.”

“I will keep her alive,” Walker said. “There will have to be
the appearance of a sacrifice. We can’t avoid that. But after she seems to die,
I’ll keep her hidden. I’ll not blind my eyes that see the gods, however
valueless the body in which they reside.”

“I rather think,” said Drinks-the-Wind as if to himself,
“that you may be mad. Alas for my People! But you are what the gods have given
them. Far be it from me to question the gods’ purpose.”

Walker was sore tempted to slit his throat as he sat
babbling of follies. But he had spoken the truth, as unpleasant as it was to
contemplate. Until Sparrow was brought back, Walker would have no visions. He
would use Drinks-the-Wind as the old man bade him—warily always, alert for
signs of a trap, but he would hardly waste the gift.

“Need commands,” Walker said. “I accept your offer. Until my
sister returns.”

“If she returns,” said Drinks-the-Wind; but Walker chose to
take no notice.

Linden the king took to wife a royal daughter from each of
the greater tribes—and from Cliff Lion, which would not help but vaunt itself
even in defeat, twin daughters. And while he enjoyed the nine days’ riot of his
wedding, Walker took the daughter of the Tall Grass shaman, spoke the words
with her before her father and her tribe, and took her into his tent.

It was by no means the pleasantly austere place it had been
while Keen was his only wife. Blossom had filled it with her belongings—enough
to weigh down three oxen, and a flock of servants who would not go away even
when Walker took his new wife to bed. Walker was coldly, grimly angry at Keen;
she would die when he found her, at his own hand. But he could still remember
what a quiet and undemanding presence she had been.

Blossom was neither. She proved, rather to his surprise, to
be a maiden. She seemed also and by some miracle to have been prevented from
discovering what every woman of the People learned as a child, how a man was
made and what he did with a woman.

He wedded her in the daylight as was proper, led her into
his tent and left her there in the care of her mother and her servants while he
presided over the wedding feast. When, not overly long after sunset, he went in
to her, he found the outer room full of giggling maidservants. She was in the
inner room, watched over by her mother.

Walker knew a moment’s horror. Was he to take this woman
while her mother watched?

It seemed that even that queen of meddlers would not go so
far. She simpered—not an art in which she had any skill—and laid her daughter’s
hand in his and said, “Be gentle to my flower, my lord. Love her. Cherish her
as she deserves.”

Walker inclined his head. The woman hung about for a moment
that stretched interminably, but when he did not speak, at length she
retreated.

Perhaps she reckoned to hover beyond the curtain, listening
avidly to the proceedings. But Walker was in no mood for that. He left his
bride where she sat, strode to the curtain and swept it aside. “Out,” he said in
the voice he had learned as a shaman. “Begone!”

The maids fled. The mother might have lingered, but his
glare was too terrible even for her fortitude. She made herself scarce.

The tent was blessedly empty. Walker left the curtain as it
was and turned back toward his bride. She stared at him as if he had grown
fangs.

He smiled at her, a smile as carefully cultivated as his
voice. It soothed her somewhat.

She was beautiful. More beautiful than Keen, maybe.
Certainly more vivid, with her fire-red hair and her green eyes. Keen was gold
and blue, with skin like milk. Blossom’s was cream.

She was richer in the body, too, her breasts full and round,
her hips wide, her thighs—visible through the thin robe that she wore—as ample
as he had seen among their slender people. She would be a lusty armful, he had
thought when he first was permitted to see her. It was for that that he had
chosen her over several of her sisters.

His body was delighted at the prospect. He let fall his
shaman’s robe and approached her, still smiling. He was beautiful in his
maleness, and substantial, too.
My bull
,
Keen had been used to call him.
My
stallion.

Blossom shrieked. He recoiled, crouched, spun, searching
shadows for the thing that had so horrified her.

There was nothing. Her shrieking stopped. Her finger stabbed
at him. “That—
that
—”

His rod. She was pointing to his rod. Her screeching had
shocked it into hiding.

She was breathing hard, glaring at it. “What is that?”

“By the gods,” Walker said, too startled to measure his
words. “Haven’t you ever seen a man before?”

“
You
are a man,”
she snapped. “That is an abomination. Is that your deformity? Is that why they
made you a shaman?”

Walker rocked back on his heels. Gods. She meant what she
said. She honestly did not know. “Tell me,” he said to her. “Did anyone teach
you what would be expected of you here?”

She drew herself up. “Of course they did! A man comes in to
his wife. They kiss. He rubs her here.” She pointed to her lap. “He sets a baby
in her. Then he goes away and lets her be.”

“Did they tell you how he sets the baby in her?”

She shrugged. Her expression was sullen. “I suppose he keeps
it in a bag. Or a box. You’re a shaman—you do it by magic, don’t you? I hope it
won’t hurt. I do so hate things that hurt.”

Walker was truly, honestly amazed. This idiot’s father had
boasted to him that she was pristine, untouched, unsullied by any man—but he
had never expected her to be utterly ignorant of the ways of men and women.

“My dear,” he said, “this that horrified you—this is where
the baby is. It’s very, very small. It has to grow. Will you trust me? Will you
try to be understanding when I do what I must do?”

She narrowed her eyes. She was not so beautiful now. In fact
she looked distressingly like her mother. “Will it hurt?” she asked—that
question again.

“At first,” he admitted, “a little. But after that, not at
all. And the gods give you a gift in return for your bravery.”

Those narrowed eyes gleamed. “What kind of gift?”

“A wonderful gift. A glorious gift.”

“Is it a necklace? I want a necklace. I liked the armlets
you gave me for a bride-gift, but I do so love necklaces.”

“I will give you a necklace,” Walker said with careful
patience. “The gods will give you something different. Wait, and you’ll see.”

“I hate to wait,” she said. But then, magnanimously: “I
suppose I shall have to. Get to it, then. And try not to hurt me!”

Walker had seldom been less inclined to get to it—and the
more so when she realized that he was going to take off her tunic. She clutched
it and beat off his hands.

“No! No, you won’t! Let me be!”

She was adamant. It was all he could
do to lift the skirt enough for the purpose; then she did not see why she
should open her thighs. “A maiden of breeding does not—”

“But you are not a maiden now,” he said, struggling for
calm. “You are a wife.”

And not likely to be one in truth, if she did not stop
getting in his way.

She screeched, of course, when he breached the gate. She
clawed and fought, and kicked him painfully in the hip. He wrestled her down,
took her hard and fast, and never mind the slow ascents of pleasure. Anything,
he thought, to get it over.

His release when it came was quick, a handful of spasms and
it was done. She had stilled, at least, lying limp beneath him. She could be
taking no pleasure from it: she was dry, and she was clenched—he had to thrust
hard to open her at all.

She did not move when he lifted his weight from her. Her
face was set. There was blood on her thighs and on his manly parts.