Lady of Horses (52 page)

Keen went white. She did not move. Cloud was standing close,
not touching her, but the bond that had been between them from the beginning
was as strong and nigh as solid as a rope of braided hide.

That bond was her strength. Even with it, she looked near to
fainting.

“Come here,” Walker repeated. “Now.”

Still she did not.

He strode toward her. And as the mare had done for the
stallion, Cloud arranged to be between. If Walker would touch her, he must do
it through that much shorter but much broader and no doubt stronger man.

Walker glared down his long white nose at what, his
expression declared, was a creature beneath contempt. “Out of my way,” he said.

Cloud smiled his sweet and guileless smile. “Sir,” he said,
“far be it from me to be rude to a guest; but this too is our guest. She is
under our protection.”

“She is my wife,” Walker gritted. “Stand aside.”

Cloud shrugged slightly, spread his hands, and stood
immovable. He was still smiling.

Walker raised a fist.

“I would not do that,” Aurochs said mildly, “all things
considered. Since this is, after all, the prince of the tribe.”

Walker wheeled. Aurochs stood at ease, offering no threat,
venturing no command. But there was no evading the truth he had spoken.

Walker, who lived for power as Linden lived for women, stood
stiff. It must be a terrible dilemma, Kestrel thought: torn between his wife’s
defection and his passion for princes.

Kestrel watched him measure where he was, count the numbers
who stood at Cloud’s back, and recall what he had plotted—with, no doubt, the
lovely memory of the army that was coming. It must have torn at him to retreat,
but retreat he did, though not without casting a final, poisoned dart.

“The woman is mine,” he said to Cloud. “If I find that any
man has touched her, that man’s privates shall shrivel, and he shall enjoy no
other woman.”

Cloud seemed unperturbed. “You should have a care,” he said.
“Curses have a way of rebounding on those who cast them.”

“Are you threatening me?” Walker asked, as if he honestly
wished to know.

“I only warn,” Cloud said, “as I would any guest whose
safety was my concern.”

Walker’s lip curled. He turned on his heel and left the
field.

Keen’s knees gave way. Cloud wheeled to catch her. They
touched only for a moment, she leaning, he supporting. Then they drew apart.
But Kestrel had seen enough.

For Cloud’s sake, he hoped that Walker’s curse had no power
to harm.

Sparrow did not ask the stallion to carry his doubled
burden far: only as far as the wood, and somewhat within, away from eyes that could
pry or ears that could hear.

She let him halt in a clearing with grass for him to graze
on and a stream from which to drink. She knelt by that herself, slaked her
thirst, laved her face.

Linden had dismounted when she did, and stood as if dazed,
looking about. He was fully as lovely as she remembered, indeed perhaps more
so. He was taller and his shoulders were broader. His beard had come in
thicker, almost thick enough to braid as the great warriors did.

He was still as much boy as man, and no great marvel of
intellect, either. “Is this where your magic is?” he asked.

Sparrow raised her brows. “My magic is wherever I am. Why?
Did you think I’d sweep you off to my lair?”

He nodded. “And do unspeakable things to me. Kill me, even.
Isn’t king’s blood the strongest of magical potions?”

“Who told you that? Walker?” She sat on her heels, looking
up at him. He was very pleasant to look at. “I don’t need your blood. I do need
your alliance.”

“My—” He seemed astonished. “But that’s what I came here
for! Or,” he said with the hint of a frown, “that’s what Aurochs and Kestrel
said I should come for. Walker wants to kill me, you know. At the new moon. So
he can make a new year-king. We’re not sure who it will be. Maybe someone from
the Red Deer, since they came with us.”

Sparrow nodded. Cold walked down her spine, but her heart
was steady. “Or a man of the Tall Grass. That’s who’s following you. Tall
Grass, Cliff Lion, Dun Cow. But Cliff Lion won’t be allowed to take the
kingship—it’s too arrogant. And Dun Cow isn't bound by marriage to Walker.”

“But it is to me,” said Linden.

“So it is,” Sparrow said. Amid all the crowding visions and
the intoxication of his presence, it was hard to think, let alone speak.

“You really are a shaman, aren’t you?” Linden seemed to have
recovered command of his body: he went down on one knee in front of her,
peering into her face. His fear had retreated in favor of curiosity. “Kestrel
said. But a woman—who’d have thought it? And you. He’s right. You’re not
beautiful. But you shine.”

“You can see, too?”

She had puzzled him. “I’m not blind. You’re like Storm. Your
beauty is inside. It’s strange, but rather wonderful. Different.”

“You don’t talk to your wives, do you?”

That baffled him, too. “Why would I want to do that?”

Sparrow shook her head. “I suppose you wouldn’t,” she said.

“This really is your country,” said Linden. “You must have
been wretched among the People.”

That took her aback. “I wasn’t—” She had to start again. “I
wasn’t unhappy. I wasn’t happy, either; but I didn’t wallow in misery.”

“You needed to be here.” He touched her hair, which was
rioting out of its braid as usual, and brushed her cheek: light, daring much,
but as if unable to help himself. “You’re not my enemy. Are you?”

“Never,” she said.

“Walker is.” His fair brows drew together. “It’s all very
difficult to keep track of. Kestrel and Aurochs, they can do it; it’s easy for
them. Kestrel said you wouldn’t hurt me. But you stole my stallion. You’re
keeping him away from me still. How can I be king before the People if I let
you live?”

“That,” said Sparrow, “I can show you how to do. Will you
trust me?”

“Kestrel said I could.”

“You trust him.”

Linden nodded. “With my life.”

“Why?”

“Because,” said Linden, “he never lies to me. He never
flatters me. And he came back, even knowing I could kill him.”

“But you didn’t.”

“How could I? I needed him for a guide. And,” Linden said,
“he turned out to be so much more than that.”

“Yes,” said Sparrow, “there is a great deal to him.” It
hurt, almost, to sit here with this man whom she had yearned after all her
life, and to speak Kestrel’s praises. Kestrel, whom she loved to the heart’s
core. But she loved Linden, too.

The child stirred in her, restless, stretching beneath her
ribs. Kestrel’s child. She still wanted Linden; rather strongly as she sat
there, close enough to feel the heat of his body, and catch his scent of musk
and sweat and horses. Kestrel’s was different, less strong, and somewhat
cleaner. Kestrel was a fastidious man.

It did not matter. Nor did it matter to know that if she lay
with this man once, then once would be enough. She wanted that once.

He was looking at her as she had dreamed he would, in
something like wonder and something that most definitely was desire. He touched
her hair again.

She moved into his arms. He was broader than she was used
to, and taller; much larger than she was.

He surprised her with gentleness, with forbearing to fall on
her like a bull in rut. He had some skill, and some regard for her pleasure. He
did not adore every inch of her as Kestrel did, but he admired her full round
breasts and her ample hips, and he kissed her thighs.

She took him inside her. His broad breast above her, almost
as thick with tawny hair as a southerner’s, struck her piercingly with memory
of one narrower, smoother, and dearly beloved. She buried her face in the
hollow of his shoulder and let their bodies finish it.

He dropped away without lingering—and without, at least,
falling asleep at once. His hand stroked the domed curve of her belly.
“Kestrel’s?”

She nodded.

“He’s lucky,” Linden said. “Though he doesn’t know it. He
thinks you must hate him.”

“I love him,” she said.

“I can tell.”

“Why?” she asked in dismay. “Was I—”

“No, no,” he said, patting her as if she had been a hound.
“You pleased me very much. But when you talk about him, your eyes go all soft.”

She began to laugh. Once she had started, she could not
stop, even when he dashed water in her face. She was alarming him. She had to
stop.

It took a long while and another cold drenching from the
stream. Linden was eyeing her wildly, as if she had gone mad.

“No,” she said. “No. It’s only—I’ve wanted you so long. And
when I have you . . . we talk about someone else.”

“That’s because you’re his,” he said. “I suppose I should
arrange it that you two can marry, once this is over.”

“I don’t want to marry,” she said.

“But—”

“This is the south,” Sparrow said. “Things are different
here.”

“But how will your children know their father?”

“They’ll know,” she said.

He shook his head. He did not believe her.

With Kestrel she could have said what she was thinking,
which was that if a man had to keep his wives imprisoned in order to be certain
his children were his own, then the man was hardly the lord and master that he
fancied himself. But Linden would not understand.

Beautiful Linden, who had given her pleasure, but not as
Kestrel could. “Let’s go back,” she said.

He frowned. “No. Not yet. Tell me why you brought me here.
It wasn’t just to lie with me. Was it?”

“Actually,” she said, “it was.” And as he stared at her:
“Also, to talk to you. To see what you knew. To know if you were honest—if you
really meant to turn against the shaman who made you king.”

“The stallion made me king,” Linden said. “He was mine
before Walker touched him.”

“He was never yours,” said Sparrow. “But your spirit calls
to him. You know what he is. You really are a king.”

“But I need him to—”

“Not to be king,” Sparrow said. “That is in you, and always
was. But to be king in front of the tribes: yes, you need something obvious. A
horsehide to sit on. A stallion to ride.”

“Then you’ll let me have him?”

“I do no letting,” Sparrow said. “That’s for Horse Goddess
to decide.”

“Make her give him to me.”

“I can’t do that,” Sparrow said.

His face darkened. “You won’t.”

“Can’t.” She laid her hands on his shoulders, stroking along
them, soothing him as if he had been a large and restless hound. “You have to
ask her yourself.”

“Yes? Then I’m asking. I want my stallion back.”

“One asks the gods in proper wise,” she said. “At the new
moon—”

“Are you going to sacrifice me?”

“Not likely,” she said in the face of his fierce wariness.
“You should have your full span as king, and be given opportunity to become
wise. Earth Mother loves the blood of her children, but kings’ blood is no
sweeter to her than any other. She’ll be as glad of a fine young bull or a
stallion.”

“She doesn’t care if it’s a king?”

Sparrow shook her head. “Men’s laws mean nothing to her.
When she asks for a human life in sacrifice, she wants it wholly willing. It
must go to her gladly, in its full time.”

“What if I did that?”

“Someday you will,” Sparrow said. “But not now. You’re young.
Your blood is hot. You have great handfuls of life still to eat.”

His gratitude was as simple as the rest of him. “I don’t
want to die,” he said. “But Walker—”

“Walker will be dealt with. And you will help to deal with
him. Can you play the game a while longer? Can you pretend that I laid a spell
on you, and bent you to my will?”

“Didn’t you?”

She laughed—startled again by his flash of perception. About
most things, she was coming to understand, he was rather slow-witted. But
people he understood. And women best of all.

She reached suddenly and pulled him toward her, and kissed
him until he gasped. Then she rose and held out her hand. He took it, drawing
himself up. He was smiling, rather to her surprise. “I’m sorry I never noticed
you,” he said.

“I’m not,” she said. “I could watch you, you see, and you
couldn’t stop me.”

“Not any more.”

“No,” she said a little sadly. “Not any more.”

Linden came back as he had left, riding behind Sparrow on the
back of the silvermaned stallion. Sparrow dismounted on the camp’s edge and
walked calmly to her tent. Linden rode on as if in a dream, till he came to the
warband’s camp and the herd of stallions beyond. There he left the stallion.

No one could mistake the meaning of that. Linden, in what
way no one knew—but there was ample speculation—had won back his silvermaned
king.

He insisted that he had not. “He’s not mine,” he said. “I
was allowed to borrow him, that was all. I have to earn him back.”

“How will you do that?” Walker demanded. He had come out at
Linden’s return, composed as if he had never lost his temper so strikingly in
front of the warband.

Linden shrugged at the question. “Horse Goddess will tell
me,” he said.

“Through whom will she tell you?”

“She’ll tell me,” said Linden. “Here, I’m thirsty. Who’s got
a skin of kumiss?”

Kestrel did not have one, but he was the first to find one.
Linden smiled as he brought it. “You,” he said, “should go to her.”

Kestrel flushed. “Go? To her?”

“Yes, go,” said Linden.

“But I can’t—”

“Go,” said his king.

oOo

Kestrel went, and with a fair portion of sullenness, too.
What those two had been doing alone in the wood, he could well imagine. She had
been dreaming of it all her life. And Linden had a look—he would not fail to
notice Sparrow again. Oh, no.

The Grey Horse camp welcomed him with every evidence of
gladness, and none of the cool distance that Kestrel had met earlier. But of
course: he came alone. None of the People came with him. He was dressed in
their fashion, too, and walking as they would remember, striding long-legged
among these shorter, quicker people.