Lady of Horses (44 page)

Then in the spring, yes, the world would change. Walker
would change it.

Already he had chosen the means. One of the young men was
even more biddable than Linden, but also slightly more intelligent. Walker was
watching him, and occasionally offering him signs of favor: a lesson in
herb-lore, the offer of a choice portion at the daymeal.

Ash was of the royal clan, of course, Linden’s brother of a
wellborn mother. He would do well for the purpose Walker had in mind.

Walker was, all in all, content. Even when, at the gate of
winter, he discovered that Drinks-the-Wind was gone.

The elder shaman had vanished. His women did not mourn him,
nor would any admit to knowing where he had gone. If the gods were kind, the
old man had gone away to die. If not, then maybe his own age and frailty would
settle it.

Walker decided to let it pass. Whatever the old man thought
he was doing, he could not harm Walker or weaken his power over the People. He
was more than king now. He ruled them in body and in spirit. And he would
continue in that. That was his vision. He needed no more.

Kestrel left the Grey Horse with a cold heart. His eyes
were burning dry. His spirit wept.

But he had to go. He was bound. He could not bring back
either Sparrow or the stallion, but he could bring back word of where they had
gone.

It was betrayal. It was also his duty. Maybe, he tried to
tell himself, the People had recovered. There must be a new king of stallions,
a new lord of horses to make Linden forget his silvermaned darling.

Kestrel went for a hunt of some days’ length, mounted on his
dark-maned grey and leading a second, likewise a grey, but still bearing the
dapples of youth. It would have been a lovely ride if it had been the hunt it
pretended to be: clear sky, warm sun, burgeoning spring. But there was deep
winter in his heart.

He had thought—and indeed hoped rather than feared—that he
might be prevented, either by men or by gods. But the ways were open. The
floods of spring had passed. There were no storms. No wild beasts threatened
him. Earth’s blessing lay on him, when he would have given heart’s blood to
suffer her curse.

No one pursued him. Sparrow did not come after him. He could
not believe that she did not know. She must. But she let him go.

She must hate him. He hated himself—but his word was given.

oOo

The north was still somewhat in winter’s grip, snow in the
hollows, spats of cold rain over the steppe. He found that he missed the
shadows of trees—strange, for he had thought little of them while he had them.

He passed by the Tall Grass camp and the Red Deer camp, but
he did not stop in either. It was uncivil of him. He could not care. He was a
solitary creature, a hawk in the blue heaven. He had no desire to share
travelers’ tales, even with such friends as he had in those tribes.

Not far from the spring camp, Kestrel’s solitude was broken.
A rider met him on the plain, rising up out of a fold in the hillside and
setting himself athwart Kestrel’s path. He was a strange, wild figure, white
hair and long beard streaming in the wind, clad in a long tunic of white
doeskin, and mounted on an elderly white mare.

At first Kestrel did not know him. Apart from the tribe,
without the flock of people about him, he seemed a stranger. But when he spoke,
Kestrel knew his voice. “A fine morning to you, hunter,” said Drinks-the-Wind.

Kestrel peered into the shaman’s eyes, searching for a sign
of recognition. He might almost have said that Drinks-the-Wind was blind, so
pale were those eyes, and so full of light. But they met his stare keenly
enough. “A fine morning to you, O speaker to gods,” Kestrel said. “Are the
People nearby, then? Will I find them soon?”

“Soon enough,” Drinks-the-Wind said. “They’ve wandered
somewhat astray this season. Everyone is off his reckoning, one way and
another.”

“Yes,” said Kestrel. “Yes—I, too. The People are not in
camp?”

“They wander,” the shaman said, “where the horses lead
them.”

Kestrel paused. Something in the old man’s manner was
strange. “They—didn’t—send you out, did they?”

Drinks-the-Wind laughed, sweet and empty of either
bitterness or guile. “No, young hunter, I sent myself. It was time to go.” He sighed
a little. “Past time, maybe. This is a new world we’ve entered into, however
little some may understand it.”

“You’ve had visions,” Kestrel said.

“I always have visions.” Drinks-the-Wind reached down to the
sere grass, last year’s remnant, that brushed his knee. A few seeds clung to
the head. He stripped them, scattered them to the wind. “You go,” he said, “and
wait for the People. They’ll come to the spring camp late, but they will come.
Then do what your heart bids you do.”

“I am not fond of my heart now,” Kestrel said.

The shaman patted him on the shoulder. “There, boy. Be
brave. You’re wiser than you know, and you have more power than you imagine.
Trust to it.”

Then Drinks-the-Wind turned, or his mare turned, and rode
away across the plain. Kestrel’s stallions would not follow. Like his late and
lamented dun, they were bound by the will of a white mare, and by the gods’
command.

So for that matter was Kestrel. He could exhaust himself in
fighting it, or he could let it carry him where it would.

oOo

As the shaman had said, White Stone was not yet in spring
camp when he came there. He made his own camp up the bend of the river. The
hunting had been poor in much of this country, and was no better here. When the
People came, it would be a lean season.

The grass at least was good, if less plentiful than it could
be. The horses set about fattening their lean flanks, while Kestrel made shift
with rabbits and a lone deer. He could hunt down the People, he supposed,
against the shaman’s advice, and come to them in another camp or on the march.
But he elected to stay where he was. He was putting off the reckoning, to be
sure.

When it was ready, it would come. He waited in a strange
kind of contentment, with a hunter’s studied patience. In that brief meeting,
Drinks-the-Wind had soothed his spirit—not altogether, but enough to sustain
him in his waiting.

It was a gift, and he was grateful for it. Someday he hoped
that he could tell the shaman so. Though he feared the old man had simply
ridden away to die.

oOo

The People came to the spring camp on a day of mist and
rain, nearly a moon’s cycle later than they were wonted to. The lowing of
cattle, the squeals of horses, drifted ahead of them. Kestrel watched from the
hillside above the river, well hidden in the wet grass.

The horses led them as always. His eyes searched the royal
herd that held the van, but found only mares, and an old white mare leading,
who could have been sister to the mare who had carried Drinks-the-Wind into the
south. They were all heavy with foal, some seeming close to their time.

They had no stallion. The lesser herds, trailing behind,
were suitably graced with stallions, and the herd of the young stallions and
the men’s remounts jostled and squabbled in the rear. There was no lack of princes
to be king, but none had claimed that eminence.

The People followed the horses as they had for time out of
mind: women afoot, laden down or leading oxen; children perched atop packs or
running alongside; men and boys mounted and ranging the edges. Linden the king
led the warband, the gathering of young warriors in their fine tunics—wet and
bedraggled now with rain—and their bristling array of spears.

Linden was mounted on a very pretty stallion indeed, but the
horse was no king. Kestrel could see that clearly.

At first he thought Linden had not changed at all. But as
the People passed by his hill and began to make camp where they had done so
every spring since the dawn time, he saw that the fair and open face had grown
a little hard, and the honest eyes were narrower than he remembered. When he
had ridden to the center of the camping-ground and halted and sprung from his
horse’s back, he moved with a sharpness that had not been there before.
Easygoing Linden had discovered a temper—though somehow Kestrel did not think
that it had sharpened his wits as well as his gestures.

No king of stallions, and a king who had not grown well into
his office. Kestrel lost somewhat of the calm that Drinks-the-Wind had laid on
him.

To gain it back if he could, he searched among the People
for faces he knew. The king’s companions were there, all but Spearhead who had
died in front of Kestrel. His father’s tent was going up, his father’s women
bustling about it—and he recognized his mother among them, ruling them as she
always had. Of his father he saw nothing, but that was as it should be: Aurochs
would be out hunting.

Walker was there, whom Kestrel least wished to see. His tent
was larger now, nearly as large as the king’s. A round dozen women raised and
prepared it, so that one who sat idle while they worked could be led in.

That must be his new wife, the Tall Grass shaman’s daughter.
Kestrel glimpsed fire-red hair and white skin, but at this distance little
else.

Walker did not go in once the tent and the wife were established.
He was keeping company with the elders. When the camp was complete, the fires
set to blazing, and women preparing the daymeal, Walker entered the king’s
tent, where Linden had gone some while since.

oOo

Kestrel retreated from his hill. He told himself that he
should wait a day or two, or even three, for camp to be fully settled before he
rode in. The truth, as he knew too well, was that he was a coward. He could not
muster his courage to face what he knew he must face. It well might be his death.

He returned to his camp up the river, concealed as it was
from casual eyes, and made a wan supper, and lay awake nightlong, except for
brief dreams. Sparrow was in them, in his arms or being a shaman to the Grey
Horse People.

Dawn brought him no greater courage, but his heart knew that
he could not evade his fate. He prepared himself carefully. He washed in the
river. He put on the clean tunic that he had carried from the south, and fine
white leggings, and boots of good leather. He wore his boar’s tusks and his
lion’s teeth, and the lionskin waited to be spread on the back of his
dark-maned grey. He combed his hair, which was wet still from washing, and
plaited it tidily.

He was as seemly then as he could ever be. He mounted his
stallion, leaving the other loose; but that one elected to follow. He rode down
the river into the camp of the People.

They did not know him. His garments were made in Grey Horse
fashion, and his horses were strangers. And, it seemed, he had changed more
than he knew.

Dogs barked. Children ran after him. Men called greetings in
trader-tongue as they would to a stranger. Women watched him sidelong, heads
bowed—and that startled him, not for what it was, but for what it did to him.
He wanted to make them look up, to shout at them to stand tall, be proud, look
him in the face.

Yes, he had changed. People were remarking on his looks,
admiring them mostly, and reckoning his wealth and rank. The extreme plainness
of his clothing might mark a man of low standing, but the fine stitching, the
carving of his knife-hilt, the bow and bundled spears that he carried, and the
lionskin on his horse’s back, with the tusks and the teeth that he wore as
ornaments, led them to conclude that he was a man of rank, perhaps even a
prince traveling on some errand of the gods. His horses were very fine, royal
horses—and what was more, they were greys.

Some were even wondering if he was a shaman, or—and these
were the greatest fools of all—a god’s messenger. Or a god himself. At which he
would have laughed, but his throat was too tight.

oOo

He rode straight through the camp to the king’s tent. The
king had come out of it, drawn by the alteration in the camp’s accustomed
rhythms. Linden had his full complement of royal women now, Kestrel had noted
the day before, and he had been enjoying them as a man should enjoy a woman.
His hair was unbraided and tangled on his shoulders, his face rumpled with
sleep; he had pulled on a pair of leggings, hastily, and was still fastening
them as Kestrel halted and slid from the stallion’s back.

Linden, too, failed to recognize the man he had sent out
hunting for a thief. He managed something like royal courtesy, and a greeting
in trader-tongue: “Welcome, stranger, to the White Stone People. Have you come
searching for the king?”

“My lord,” Kestrel said in the People’s own language, “I
have come back to you.”

Linden frowned, puzzled. It was Curlew, from among the
companions, who cried out, “Wolfcub! By the gods, you came back.”

“Wolfcub?” Linden peered. “Wolfcub! Gods, it is you!”

The others were all shouting at once, word running through
the camp, a quite astonishing tumult.

For Kestrel, none of it mattered but the man in front of
him. The sound of his old name was like a voice heard from far away, a drum
beating across the hilltops: remote, familiar, but of little concern to the
self that he was now.

Linden seized his arms in a bruising grip and shook him;
then embraced him so tight he could not breathe. “Wolfcub. Wolfcub! We all
thought you were dead.”

He stood back, still gripping Kestrel’s arms. His eyes
flicked up and down, taking in the fashion of his clothing; marking the horses
he had brought with him, and fixing with a kind of desperate hope on the
second, younger and darker of the stallions. But although it was a very handsome
stallion, it was not the one whom he had lost.

Kestrel could have waited, and probably should have, until
he was alone with the king, but he could see no profit in delaying the
inevitable. “I found him,” he said. “But I couldn’t bring him back. I was forbidden.”