Lady of Horses (48 page)

Some of the men went down to the ford to see how deep the
water was. It ran high, but not, Kestrel reckoned, high enough to be
impassable.

His father agreed with his reckoning. “We’ll manage,” he
said, “though we might lose a horse or two. It’s treacherous toward the middle,
if you don’t know the way of it.”

“You know this river?” Kestrel asked.

“I’ve crossed it,” said Aurochs. “There’s good hunting in
the woods beyond.”

Kestrel nodded. His breath was coming short. It had struck
him rather too suddenly, if far from the first time, that past this crossing
there was no turning back. Linden would not stop until he had his stallion.

There was nothing at all Kestrel could think of that would
turn Linden from his course. The gods’ own storms had only been able to delay
him. They had given up—or were biding their time.

That could well be so. Had they not waited till Kestrel
crossed before, to smite his companion with lightning and sweep his horses
away?

“There’s death in your eyes,” his father said.

Kestrel closed them. “I am thinking,” he said in the
blood-tinged dark, “of the gods and their playthings.”

“Yes,” said Aurochs.

Kestrel opened his eyes again and turned them on his father.
“Would you have done it? Or would you have stayed?”

“I would have done it,” Aurochs said.

It did not comfort Kestrel as much as he had hoped, hut it
soothed him a little. There was another man in the world at least who was as
stiff-necked as he was.

oOo

That night in camp, Walker approached Kestrel as he sat
apart. Others had tried to persuade him to join in the dancing and singing
about the fire, but he had ignored them.

Walker he could not ignore. The shaman sat beside Kestrel,
took the skin of kumiss that he had been trying to drink himself senseless
with, and drank deep. “You’ll be our guide once we cross the river,” he said.
“Is it far, where we’ll be going?”

“Far enough,” said Kestrel. Kumiss had lost its allure even
before Walker drank a good portion of it. His head ached, but was damnably
clear nevertheless.

“Will we come there before midsummer?”

Kestrel slanted a glance at him. He was too casual. This
question mattered. “Why?” he asked. “Are you hoping we’ll have gone there and
back again in time for the gathering? That’s not likely.”

“I didn’t think it was.” Walker drank again from the skin.
He had been drinking before that: he was steady and his voice was unblurred,
but his eyes were a little too bright. “We’ll have our sacrifice in the
warband. The gathering has been seen to.”

Kestrel raised a brow. “Yes, I thought it would have been.
The elders, who speak for the king—”

“The elders will speak,” said Walker, “and the shamans will
proclaim their visions. My visions, O hawk of the gods. But that matters
little. What matters is here. After gathering, the tribes will gather again
here, in this place, to wait for us.”

Both of Kestrel’s brows went up. For some reason he was
calm, though this was a thing he had not known. “Do the others know of this?
Does Linden?”

“Oh, no,” said Walker. “The word has gone through the
shamans, from the Red Deer onward. Their gathering is for the gods, and for the
making of marriages among the tribes. The other, the new gathering . . .
that is for something else.”

He put Kestrel rather vividly in mind of a dog who has
stolen a bone and carries it off to bury. Whatever he plotted, it pleased him
very much indeed.

“I don’t suppose,” said Kestrel, “that you’re mounting a war
against the southern tribes.”

“Oh, no,” said Walker. “Not at all. We don’t need the
southlands yet. This is for the north.”

Kestrel’s breath left him slowly. He had not even known he
was holding it. “That . . . may be wise,” he said.

“It’s very wise,” said Walker. “It’s my plan. Mine. You’ll
see. You might even marvel with the rest of them. Though you’re not the sort to
marvel at much, are you? You have a cold heart.”

Not where he loved. But Kestrel did not say that.

He sat in silence, watching the dancers about the fire. They
were dancing the wardance, leaping high, whooping and chanting their vaunts. As
he watched, Linden sprang up in their midst, naked, gleaming with oil, hair
loose and streaming bright sun-gold. Whatever he lacked in wit, he lacked
nothing in beauty, or in virility, either. And he was incontestably fierce in
battle.

“Pretty, isn’t he?” said Walker beside him. “We should put
him to stud like a fine stallion, and breed lovely fools for the warbands.”

“He is the king,” Kestrel said. “You raised him up. Are you
regretting it now?”

“Not at all,” Walker said. “Maybe we’ll have our
stud-service, at that. He’s got all his wives with child, and most of his
women, too.”

“Even the old shaman’s wife?”

“No,” Walker said. “Not White Bird. Pity. She’s the most
like him of any.”

Since Kestrel had often thought the same, he held his peace.

There was a pause. He dared to hope that Walker would grow
weary of silence and wander off, but Walker seemed determined to torment him to
the utmost. “Tell me, hunter. Tell me the truth. Is my wife—out there? With the
others?”

Kestrel could not see the use in denying it. “Yes. She is.”

“She was stolen, too,” Walker said. “Taken from me, to mock
me as the stallion was a mockery of the king. She’s mad, you know—my sister.
She hates us.”

“I wouldn’t call it hatred,” Kestrel said.

“What would you call it, then? Malice? Contempt?”

Kestrel did not answer.

Walker grinned mirthlessly at him. “You did find her, didn’t
you? Did you ever lie with her? Southern women are wanton, it’s said. Her
mother would have lain with half the men of the People if my father hadn’t kept
her muzzled and bound.”

Kestrel set his teeth.

“You did, didn’t you? Was she worth it? Because of course,
you know, I should geld you, since you dishonored my sister.”

That was a jest, or Kestrel was meant to take it so. But he
had little enough humor when all was considered. His smile was completely
without mirth: a baring of teeth, no more. “You’d do better to kill me. Because
if you did less, I would hunt you down and kill you.”

“You are a great hunter, of men as of beasts.” Walker’s
glance took in the boar’s tusks and the lion’s claws. “Will you add a shaman’s
skull to your ornaments?”

Kestrel had a moment’s flash of Sparrow standing by the fire
in the Grey Horse camp, holding up a skull-cup set with blue stones and carved
with swirling signs.

Those signs he knew very well. They were limned in her
flesh, sealing her power. Out of that vision he said, “Never fear that,
shaman’s son. If I should take a skull, it would be to drink true power.”

With that he rose and walked away, it little mattered where.
Nor did he look back, to see what Walker made of his words.

Sparrow stood by the fire on the eve of midsummer. The
Grey Horse People were camped at the northernmost edge of their lands, by a
grove that was sacred to Earth Mother.

In the daylight, Cloud had sacrificed to the great goddess:
slitting the throat of a snow-white bull and letting the blood pour out on the
ground. Time was, they had said, when it was not a bull who died but a youth of
the people; but that custom was forsaken. Just so in the north, each year a
young king had gone to the altar- stone and given his life for the people; and
the one who took his life took with it his kingship.

The world had grown soft in its age. Yet Sparrow felt no
softness in it tonight. The stars were fierce in their multitudes. The fire
leaped high. The scent of roasting bull was strong.

She lifted the cup of Old Woman’s skull, offering it to the
ravenous stars. It was full of berry wine, leavened with a sprinkling of blood.

The people watched in silence. Even the horses were
watching: the mare, the silvermaned stallion. The mare was vastly in foal, and
uncomfortable with it, but she had come in from the herds to see this offering
to her goddess mother.

The stars found the offering good. Sparrow poured out a
little on the ground for Earth Mother to drink. Then she sipped the sweet
strong wine and passed it to Storm who stood nearest. Storm bowed low over the
cup, sipped, passed it to Cloud, and he to Rain; and so on through the circle
of the people.

It came back not quite empty. One drop lingered. Sparrow
offered it to the fire, which hissed in response.

So was the feast blessed and consecrated. Sparrow laid the
cup away in its wrappings and gave it to one of the children to take back to
her tent. At that signal, the silence burst in a torrent of sound: singing,
skirling of pipes and beating of drums, and the pounding of feet on earth as
the people began to dance.

Sparrow was not too heavy with child yet to dance, but her
mood was strange. When she held the cup to the stars, in the fire’s flare she
had seen for a moment Kestrel’s face. It was stern and might have seemed cold,
but he always looked so when he was heart-sore. She wanted to reach out to him,
touch him, assure him that all was well; but he was gone.

oOo

She retreated from the firelight and revelry toward the
white gleam of the mare. The mare had no greeting for her. She was intent on
something far more important than her servant. Her tail lashed; she stamped,
snapping at her sides.

Sparrow might have withdrawn, but the mare made it clear:
she was to stay. So too the stallion, though not too close—she lunged at him
when he ventured nearer.

She foaled there on the outskirts of the firelight, while
the people danced and sang in Earth Mother’s honor. From the glimmering caul
emerged a dark nose and dark feet, elegant curling ears and shoulders broad
enough to give her pause. Sparrow eased the foal from its mother’s womb till it
lay on the grass, glimmering wet, struggling already to stand.

It was a colt. He was all dark but for a star on his brow;
he would be grey, she knew, though in youth he would be black. He was the very
image of his sire, who stood well apart, neck arched, nostrils flared, alert in
every muscle. As his son drew breath in the world of the living, he loosed a
peal, a trumpet of greeting and of triumph.

The dancing paused. The music faltered. The fire flared,
catching the small dark thing and the recumbent mare. The stallion stamped and
tossed his head.

Somewhere among the people, a young man whooped. A woman
answered him. They whirled into a wilder dance than before, a dance of greeting
and of gladness, welcoming this new prince, this omen, this promise of glory:
Horse Goddess’ firstborn.

oOo

On the day of midsummer, as Sparrow lingered with the mare
and the new colt, teaching the colt to trust and never to fear a human touch,
one of the children came running, shrilling her name. “Sparrow! Sparrow!
Sparrow!”

“Yes,” said Sparrow when the child was close enough to speak
to without shouting. “That is my name. What is it? Does someone need me?”

It took the child a moment to recover her breath, and with
it such dignity as she had. “Storm needs you,” she said. “There’s a messenger.
He comes from Greenwood clan. He says—”

Greenwood was north of Grey Horse, not far from the river.
Sparrow remembered to thank the child, even as she sprang into a run.

oOo

The man was sitting with Storm, drinking herb-tea and
eating berry cakes. He did not look as if war or terror had overcome him; he
was a stolid person, unassuming, but something about him said that he could
speak and be obeyed.

Storm greeted Sparrow politely, but she did not wander off
in indirection as elders could in council. “This is Bracken, king’s heir of
Greenwood. He brings word that you should hear.”

Bracken inclined his head to Sparrow with the respect that
everyone showed her here; they all knew who she was. “Horsemen,” he said, as
direct as Storm had been. “They’ve crossed the river west of us. We counted a
hundred, riding as in a warband. Their king has yellow hair.”

Sparrow nodded. She had been expecting it. Hearing it,
knowing that it had come, gave her a feeling almost of peace. “I thank you,”
she said. “If I may ask . . . were there others riding near the
king?”

“Kings are always well accompanied,” Bracken said solemnly.
She could not tell if his eyes glinted. He did not seem the sort of man to jest
on such an errand, but one never knew. “This one rode in a band within the
band. All men, no women. I noticed one close by who was paler than I’ve seen
before, like a bleached bone; and two together like twin falcons, keen-faced,
with ruddy hair.”

“Two?” Sparrow blinked. Two of Kestrel?

No; of course not. Everyone knew how much he looked like his
father. Aurochs had come, then. That was interesting in ways she would examine
later, after she had spoken to this messenger.

Aurochs and Kestrel. And Walker. Of course he had come. He
must need her visions sorely, as sorely as Linden needed his stallion.

Storm and the stranger were silent while Sparrow pondered.
They were waiting for her to tell them what to do. It was not a weak thing;
indeed it was a kind of strength. She bowed her head to it.

“If you will,” she said to Bracken, “or can, tell the tribes
between here and the river to withdraw. Let them leave the way open, and clear
the path for the warband.”

“I can see to that,” Bracken said.

“Good,” said Sparrow. Then to Storm she said, “I’m not
commanding you. I’m asking. Are you willing to stay, to wait for them? You need
not. You can go, and protect your people.”

Storm nodded slowly. “Yes, I can. Perhaps I should. But this
is our place. We belong in it. We’ve camped here every summer for time out of
mind.”

“These are men who live to fight,” Sparrow said.