Lady of Horses (46 page)

oOo

Keen regained strength as Cloud had promised. It seemed
slow, but he said not; he was pleased. He fed her like a prized heifer, saw
that she had her baby by her except when he had to eat, and often Spring was
there, too, sleeping or babbling or being delightful. Summer, at so young an
age, mostly slept; but when he was awake he was as lively as a newborn could
be, and noisy, too.

“He’ll be a warrior,” Sparrow said. She had kept away from
the birthing by custom of this tribe: they believed that a bearing woman should
not see what was before her, lest it frighten her out of all due measure.

For she was bearing. It had become evident in the early
spring, and was obvious now. No one asked who had fathered it. They all knew,
as they knew that he had gone out hunting and had not come back.

Sparrow had not grieved where anyone could know of it, nor
raged, either. “He did what his heart bade him do,” she said when Keen ventured
to ask.

She was much too calm. Keen watched her carefully, but she
seemed as she always had, rather quiet, rather reserved, and inclined to wander
off by herself. But unlike Kestrel, she always came back.

She was not a woman for children. Even with a child in her
belly, she had little interest in babies. But she could hardly ignore Summer
when she visited Keen; he was either asleep in her arms or yelling in his
cradle. “This is a warrior king,” Sparrow said.

Keen shivered. “Not—not a shaman?”

Sparrow frowned and looked closer. Keen held her breath.
Sparrow straightened and shook her head. “That gift the gods have kept from
him. It’s as well. He’ll be happier as he is.”

Keen could not disagree. “His father really isn’t a shaman,
is he? He’s all a lie.”

“His father is a shaman’s son of a line of shamans. It was
his misfortune that when the magic passed, it passed elsewhere.” Sparrow left
the cradle to sit by Keen. Keen was stitching again, making a covering for the
baby. “He’s coming, you know.”

Keen went still. “He—”

“Walker. He’s coming. They’re coming, Linden and the
warband, to take back the stallion.”

“And you’ll give the stallion to them,” Keen said, “and let
them go away.”

“No,” said Sparrow.

“But—”

“Horse Goddess has purposes of her own. She has little love
for the men of our people. They try her patience.”

“But if they come with war, the people here will die.
They’re not warriors. There’s not even a warband.”

“I know that,” Sparrow said. “I have to trust the goddess.
And so should you.”

Keen bit her lip. That was true. She should try harder to
trust in Horse Goddess’ will. But she could only think of Walker, how
relentless he was in pursuit of a goal. What he wanted, he had. No matter what
it was.

Would he want her?

Her eyes fell on the cradle, and on the child in it. That,
he would want. A son of his body, a strong and kingly child. Maybe, for
Summer’s sake, he would want Keen again.

Did she want him?

That was a question she would never have thought to ask
before she crossed the river into the south. She should not be thinking it now.
And yet there it was.

She had loved Walker so much, and been so eager for his
touch, his loving, his regard. All of that was gone. When she remembered him,
she remembered how he had abandoned her in the spring camp, and forgotten her
thereafter, pursuing his advantage through a loftier marriage. If he would take
her back—which she rather doubted—it would be as a lesser wife, subject to the
Tall Grass woman.

Keen had not known she could be so bitter, or could cherish
her anger so long. What she wanted . . .

While she was maundering, Sparrow had risen quietly and gone
away. Someone else was sitting in the place that she had left, waiting
patiently for her to notice him.

Her heart leaped at the sight of him. Her smile was sudden
and heartfelt. He returned it without an instant’s hesitation.

She wanted Cloud.

It was a terrible thought. She had to put it aside while he
was there, as difficult as that was. She wanted to touch him, run fingers
through his curly beard, feel the surprising softness of his skin. She wanted
to know with her hands the width of his shoulders, the muscled strength of his
arms. She wanted to feel his arms about her, and hers about him. She wanted—

She wanted to taste the salt of his skin. She wanted to kiss
him till she was like to drown. She wanted to feel him inside her, hot and
strong, filling her, making another child.

She was Walker’s wife. She belonged to him. But people here
grew angry when she said such things, and insisted that she belonged to no one
except herself.

Cloud lay with Rain, she knew that. Rain lay with other
men—had lain with Kestrel, people said, before Sparrow came. Then, they said,
Rain no longer lay with him. He was a single-hearted man as they put it; he was
a man for one woman, a rarity and much admired, though most of them did not
understand it.

They were so free here—so wanton. Women walked about with
their breasts bare, flaunting themselves, and no one disapproved. The king
herself did it, proud of her big round breasts with their dark nipples, and the
king-marks and shaman-marks swirling on them. She took men to her bed nearly
every night, and seldom the same man twice running. It was a kingly thing to
do, if she had been a man—to take many lovers and never devote herself to one.
It proved her strength before the people.

Keen could not do such a thing. It was not in her. But one
man of all the dark lovely men in this tribe, him she could dream of, and did.

oOo

Not long after she understood that she wanted him, he came
to her as she sat in the sun, rocking the cradle with her foot, and Spring was
in one end and Summer in the other, both blessedly asleep. Rain was gone
somewhere, not too far or for too long, but it was something to do with being a
shaman. It was very warm that day, the new moon before the moon of midsummer
when the tribes of the north would gather for the great sacrifice.

Tribes here did not gather so. Two or three or four would
meet sometimes on common ground, dance together and sing together and share
their young men and women. They would linger for a day or three, then part,
returning to their own lands. Only a month before, a tribe called Laurel had
met the Grey Horse on its journey from camp to camp, and they had danced and
sung together for a hand of days. Keen, still weak from the baby, had stayed
apart from most of it, but she remembered the singing; it had been wonderful.

Cloud as always was patient with her, and let her remember
him in her own time. The sight of him in the flesh, after the dreams she had
had, was almost too much to bear. Dreams could make a man more than he was,
more beautiful, more gentle, and far stronger. But Cloud was just as he had
been in the dreams.

Completely without willing it, she leaned toward him and
stroked fingers down his cheek. His beard was crisp and yet soft, as she had
dreamed it would be.

She snatched her hand back with a gasp, stammering an
apology. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—I don’t know—what I—”

“I do,” he said, warm and rich with—laughter? No, nothing as
slighting as that. It was joy. “I did come to tell you that you’re well, as if
you couldn’t tell. And that, if you’re minded—”

He did not finish. He did not need to. Keen knotted her
fingers together in her lap. Her traitor fingers, that would have loved to
finish what they had done, run down his cheek to his breast, down and down,
until—

She hammered the thought down and sat on it. “My husband is
far away,” she said.

“One who would be your lover is here.”

She caught her breath at such boldness. As wanton as these
people could be, she had never expected him to be so direct. Rain, yes. But
Cloud was a man of exquisite discretion.

Not, it seemed, in such a state as he was in now. He was not
at all embarrassed by it. He carried himself, in fact, as if it were something
she should be pleased to see: as if it were his gift to her. A tribute. A
homage to her beauty.

Part of her reveled in it. But the part of her that was a
properly brought up wife was appalled. She should not even look at a man not
her husband, let alone lust after him.

He reached across the slight space between them and took her
hands in his. It was a simple gesture. Anyone could do it, friend or kin. But
it made her heart shudder and threaten to leap out of her breast. He leaned the
last of the distance, and lightly, oh so lightly, touched his lips to hers.

She should recoil. She should escape. She should not open
her own lips to meet his kiss, or observe with dizzy delight that he tasted of
sweet grass and herbs.

He drew back. She followed by no will of her own. Her hands
freed themselves from his, to clasp behind his neck. He was only a little less
tall than she: a tall man among these southern people. He was much broader,
much stronger.

And yet he was so gentle. He was rampant between them, but
he made no move to seize her and fling her down. He kept his wits about him.

That, as small as it was, was her downfall. If he had moved,
if he had forced himself on her at all, she would have torn herself away and
fled. But he left it entirely to her. It was her choice, to go or to stay.

She had never been given a choice. When her husband wanted
her, she was expected to oblige him. She had never approached him. She had
learned to want him, and to want him sorely, but always it was he who had come
to her. It would have been unthinkable of her to go to him.

Here, a woman could ask. Or if a man asked, she could
refuse. It made her head swim to have so much power. She could send him away,
and he would go.

Or she could say, “Show me how a man loves a woman, here in
the southlands.”

He was quiet in his joy, but his eyes were almost too bright
to meet. He kissed her softly but thoroughly, taking his time about it, letting
her understand how many ways there were to take pleasure in a kiss.

When she understood that, he drew back. He said, “That is
the lesson. Tonight I’ll come to you. You may refuse me. Remember.”

Her shock was so great that he had gone before she found words
to speak. Summer woke then and began to bellow, and Spring, thus roused,
shrieked with him. In settling them, and with Rain’s coming to distract her,
she almost forgot what Cloud had said and done to her.

Cloud came as he had promised, slipping into the tent that
Keen shared with Sparrow. Sparrow was not there: she was gone from the camp
again. Summer was asleep in the king’s tent, close by Spring and her mother.
Keen was alone.

She had decided that she would not do it. She would sleep in
the king’s tent, or go away somewhere as Sparrow had. But when night came, she
went to bed as always. As always, she plaited her hair neatly and folded her
tunic as a pillow, and lay down in the darkened tent.

He brought light with him. He had one of his people’s clay
lamps that burned rendered fat from the cattle, its flame so dim and so
flickering that it did little to banish the dark. But that little was enough.
He set it atop a lidded basket and knelt beside her.

She rolled onto her face to cover her nakedness, blushing
furiously. But she kept an eye on him—for wariness, she told herself. He had,
somehow, shed his tunic.

She had not seen him naked before. He was much the same
below as above: not so broad in the hips as in the shoulders, by far, but
well-muscled, with strong black-furred thighs. His manly parts were as
substantial as the rest of him. He was beautiful as a bull is, or a stallion.

More than ever she felt like a peeled wand, thin and pale,
with no strength in her. But he regarded her in open admiration. “So
beautiful,” he said. “Like a white lily. Do you not show yourself to a man? Is
it something your people forbid?”

She hid her burning face; but inside her something cracked.
Something tight and hard.

She thrust herself up. She let him see what there was to
see: narrow hips, narrow shoulders, breasts not small as the People reckoned it
but little enough here. They were empty now, their little milk dried; they were
not quite as firm as they had been, and her belly was a little slack still,
scarred from carrying the baby.

His expression was so fierce and yet so tender that her
heart nearly stopped. He reached to run a finger down her cheek, down the
slender length of her neck to her shoulders, pausing just where her breast
began its soft swell. “Beautiful and beloved,” he said in his voice that was
full of slow music. “Will you let me love you?”

She could not speak. Her throat was shut.

“Well then,” he said as if that had been an answer. “I will
let you love me. Here, see. Touch me.”

She could not.

He took her hand in his and raised it to his cheek; then
drew it down as he had done to her, to his breast over the heart. “That is a
beginning,” he said. “Have you never loved a man of your own will?”

She shook her head.

“Then you must learn.”

She wanted to learn. She was afraid to learn. It was too
bold. It expected too much.

He would not stop until she had done it. He coaxed her till
she kissed him, herself, leaning toward him, touching her lips shyly to his.

Something in the touch made her bolder. She ventured to lay
her hands on his breast, to run fingers through the curly hair. She had never
touched a man so before.

And he was letting her—he was glad of it. He knelt quietly
while she explored him, doing what she had dreamed of: spanning the width of
his shoulders, testing the strength of his arms, and shyly, shakily, freeing
his hair from its plaits. Once freed, it sprang into a mass of curls, thick and
wonderfully soft.