Lady of Horses (58 page)

“No matter,” he said, “if most times you love me.”

oOo

They rested, then, and gathered strength. As they did
that, a rider came in on a hard-ridden horse, one of the king’s warband who had
stayed to ride in the morning after the new moon. Grey Horse was indeed riding
with them, with Cloud at their head, and Storm remaining behind to look after
her people. This day’s pause would bring the slower riders close, though not
quite together.

Sparrow nodded at that, and sent another of the king’s men
back with messages which she made him repeat over and over till he had them
perfect. Then she was a little more at ease, and a little less confused in her
mind.

That night they ate the flesh of two fat stags that Aurochs
had brought down, and drank the last of the kumiss. The next fresh meat or
strong drink they would have would be in the camp of the gathering—or among the
warrior dead.

Then they slept as the just sleep, deep and dreamless—even
Sparrow for once freed of the burden of visions. Dawn woke them with dark and
starlight and a keen wind blowing, as if it would carry them across the river.

Sparrow heard voices in it, faint cries, the murmurings of
spirits. They were close then, all of them, to the land of the dead. When
another morning came, some of them, and maybe all, would walk or ride there.

Sparrow, too. Sparrow perhaps most of all. She was to have
lived long and died old, with her successor ready to take her life and carve a
cup out of her skull. But in the world that Drinks-the-Wind’s sacrifice and
Walker’s escape had made, it was more likely that she would fall before evening
with her brother’s knife in her heart.

Even the gods were divided, tumbling in confusion. She shut
her mind to them all and fixed herself on the world of the living: dawn wind,
scent and sound of horses, men rising and groaning and readying to ride. They
remembered what they had sworn when they paused to rest, that they would
approach the gathering with pride. They had all cleaned and mended their
garments yesterday, brushed their horses, plaited one another’s hair.

Now they dressed and made themselves seemly, undid the
damage the night’s sleep had done to the hide or hair of man and horse, and
made certain that their weapons were ready and close to hand. Some of them sang
softly as they did it, war-songs, and here and there a death-song. Someone had
a drum, someone else a bone flute. To that skirling and drumming, they mounted
and rode. Their hearts were strangely light.

oOo

Linden rode beside Sparrow on the king of stallions. They
were both as beautiful as Sparrow had ever seen them. Linden smiled at her, the
warm smile he kept for women he fancied. “It’s a fair morning,” he said.

“And a fair day coming,” she agreed. “We’ll find the
gathering somewhat after noon, if we ride neither too fast nor too slow.”

“Is he already in it?” asked Linden, with a flicker of
shadow across his bright face.

Sparrow nodded. “He’ll have come there a day or two ago.”

“Then,” Linden said, “anything we could say or do, now he’s
had time to brew his poison—”

“You are the king,” she said firmly. “Remember that.”

She watched him remember it: sitting taller, smoothing the
frown from his brow. If fear still troubled him, he had buried it deep. He
would be as strong as she needed him to be, if Horse Goddess was kind.

oOo

A new messenger came as they rode on in the rising
morning. The others were not far behind now; they had ridden for part of the
night, were resting, would ride on at full morning. That was later than Sparrow
would have liked, but they would reach the gathering soon enough after she
would—well before sunset, certainly.

Which left nothing but the riding, and a scout or two sent
ahead to watch for spies and ambushes; but there was none. If Walker knew that
they followed, he was waiting in camp for them, secure among his allies.

oOo

They came to the river somewhat after noon on a fine hot
day of summer. The river was still a little swollen from the spring rains, even
so late in the year, but the ford looked passable.

The gathering camped beyond, spreading up and down the bank
and straggling away onto the plain. A pall of smoke hung over it, a reek of
cooking fires, dust from the hooves of horses and cattle, and massed humanity.

They had been seen: movement stirred in the camp, surging of
figures afoot and figures on horseback toward the riverbank and the ford.
Kestrel eyed the way they must take, and shivered. They would be open targets
for arrows and thrown spears, trapped like a herd of antelope in a ravine.

There was no other way. Bravely then, heads high, they rode
as Sparrow had bidden them ride: king’s companions foremost in an arc like a
bow, warriors behind, king between them like the arrow set to the string.

Sparrow rode beside the king, white mare beside grey
stallion. She was not armed. The king had not strung his bow or taken spear in
hand. The others rode with bows strung but arrows in quivers, shoulders stiff,
eyes alert.

They went down the bank into the water. It was knee-deep on
the horses, swift but not so much that it would carry them off if they went
slowly. And slowly they had to go, while the tribes waited on the far bank, a
long line now of men and horses. Kestrel marked the sigils of the tribes: Cliff
Lion, Tall Grass, Dun Cow, Red Deer, White Stone, and other, lesser people
among them. They, like Linden’s warriors, carried strung bows, but none nocked
arrow to string.

The king’s companions reached the middle of the river. It
was deeper here, the current stronger, waves lapping the riders’ knees. Their
horses braced, slipping a little but holding. The riders kept their eyes on the
men who waited.

They passed midstream. Still no arrow flew. The foremost man
reached shallow water, started up the bank.

The men atop the bank seemed disinclined to let him by, but
at the last instant they drew back, horses jostling, leaving a space wide
enough for one rider to pass.

Linden set heels to the grey stallion’s sides, so suddenly
that he took Sparrow by surprise. The stallion leaped forward, spraying water,
surging up the bank behind that first bold man. Linden was shouting with
laughter, whooping like a mad thing, whirling a spear about his head.

Men scattered. The silvermaned stallion danced, curvetting,
tossing his head.

Linden’s warriors rode up through the space he had opened,
into the midst of a wary army. They spread behind him as they could.

The stallion stood still, motionless, neck arched, snorting
softly. Linden smoothed his water-dampened mane and smiled sunnily at the
gathered tribesmen. “Well met, my people,” he said. “And such a welcome! Are
you glad, then, to see your king again?”

They seemed notably more amazed than glad. Linden rode
forward. Men gave way before him.

And, Kestrel noticed, closed in behind. There was no escape
now. They could only go on toward the camp’s center, where the king’s tent of
the White Stone stood tall among the rest.

oOo

Walker was waiting for them there, with the kings of Cliff
Lion and Dun Cow and Red Deer, and the Tall Grass king standing at his right
hand. He was dressed as a shaman, but he stood on the royal horsehide. If any
memory remained of his defeat on the gods’ hill, he had buried it deep.

“Take them,” he said to the men behind Linden’s warriors.

They closed in. The king’s men nocked arrows at last,
bending the shorter, stronger bows of the Grey Horse People, which could shoot
far and hard.

“Now then,” Linden said easily, addressing the kings as
brother to brothers, “isn’t this a bit ridiculous? Brothers, brothers, if it’s
my kingship you’re wanting, there’s a way to get it, and with little enough
bloodshed, too.”

Cliff Lion’s king rumbled laughter. “What, you’d fight us
all?”

Linden spread his hands in deprecation. “Oh, I’m not that
great a hero. One at a time—or two if you like. Whoever’s still standing at the
end, he takes this beauty of mine, and the kingship, too. Not,” he said with
his sweet, maddening smile, “that I expect anyone else to take him, but you can
dream.”

“We can take him,” said Cliff Lion’s king.

“You can try,” said Linden. “Here, I’ve been riding a while
and I’m thirsty. Shall we share a skin of kumiss before we fight, and a bite or
two with it?”

“Hungry for a last meal, boy?” sneered the Red Deer king.

“Starved,” Linden said brightly.

He had them, whether they knew it or no. They all
dismounted, but each man kept his horse near to hand, and his weapons, as women
brought food and drink. It was a strange feast for a battlefield, there in the
middle of the great camp.

Linden ate with relish, nor would he go when Sparrow tried
to draw him aside. Kestrel would have liked to do it himself. Linden had been
advised to offer combat with a single champion—not with every one of the kings,
still less one after the other. One man he could defeat; he was a great
fighter. But a dozen, or more if the lesser kings took it into their heads to
try for the prize—that was wholly unreasonable.

Kestrel managed to say so under cover of offering Linden a
cut of roast ox. Linden grinned at him, unrepentant. “I know, I know. But I
couldn’t fight just one—it wouldn’t be enough. It’s got to be all of them.”

“To the death?”

Linden shrugged. “I’m married to a sister or daughter of
each. My wives are all with child. I’ll name the offspring heirs and myself
regent for them—and appoint good men to play king while the babies grow up.”

That was breathtakingly ambitious and rather brilliant. But
it had a signal flaw. “All or most of those children could be daughters,”
Kestrel said.

“Then I’ll find husbands for them, yes?” Linden patted his
arm. “There, there. Would you like to be king in all but name of, say, Cliff
Lion? Or Tall Grass—I know you have friends there.”

“I don’t want to be king of anything,” Kestrel said. “I want
you to be alive and king of the People.”

“The gods will make sure of it,” said that gleeful madman,
biting into the haunch of antelope, and grinning as the red juices ran down his
beard.

Kestrel sighed deeply and withdrew.

oOo

Just before Linden could be accused of avoiding the
inevitable by prolonging the feast, he rose and drained the last of a skin of
kumiss. He belched enormously, laughed, and stretched. “Well now. Who’ll
begin?”

Men moved hastily to mark out a circle before the king’s
tent, where the people could see the battle clearly, and the combatants could
see what prize they stood first to win: the king’s wealth and all his women,
bright eyes and shy faces peering out from the tent’s flap.

Linden stepped into the circle even as it was complete,
stripped and tossed his garments wherever they happened to fall, wound his
yellow plaits about his head and bound them, and stood waiting, smiling,
gleaming in the sun. He could not but know how splendid he looked, with his
broad muscled shoulders and his strong rider’s thighs, and his rod, even at
rest, as long and nigh as thick as many a man’s at full stretch.

He rolled those shoulders, flexed his muscled arms. He
smiled his infuriating smile. “What, no one wants to fight me after all? Am I
so terrifying? Is it so obvious that I can’t but win?”

Cliff Lion’s king snarled and sprang into the circle. He was
a bull to Linden’s young lion, taller, broader, and notably heavier. His
strength was famous, likewise his ruthlessness. He loved to seize his enemies
in such a circle as this, and break them over his knee.

Linden beside him seemed a stripling, a golden child with
too little sense to know when he was overmatched. But Kestrel, studying the
larger man, noted that he was no longer young, and that for all his massive
strength, he had grown soft about the middle. If Linden could withstand the
first mighty charges, he could wear that bull of a man down.

But there were other, younger, fitter men waiting, and
Linden had agreed, in his folly, to fight them all. He could not play out the
game too long. He had to fell each opponent quickly, and hope to keep his
strength for the next.

He eluded the Bull’s charges, light on his feet, laughing,
which enraged the Bull. Then his foot slipped, and his rival caught him,
grappled him and flung them both bruisingly to the ground.

Linden twisted, so that the Cliff Lion king was beneath him
when they struck. While the Bull lay winded, he paused as if hesitating—with
his own men screaming at him to make the kill now, do it now, and get it over.
When he did strike, it was too late; a heavy arm swung up to turn the blow
aside, and a massive hand reached for his throat.

He flung himself backward, staggering, rolling, scrambling
to his feet. The Bull charged again. He might have had long curving horns and
great hooves, he was so like the beast of his name.

Linden let him thunder past, but caught him just before he
passed out of reach, whirling with the force of his speed, letting it carry him
down again. He was already turning in midair. Linden struck wildly. The Bull
ran full into that flailing fist, and dropped without a sound.

He was not dead. His breast heaved, though he was
unconscious. All about the circle, men roared, bellowing for his blood.

Kestrel bit the insides of his cheeks. The pain helped him
to focus, to keep his distance from that surge of sound. Linden could not let
the Cliff Lion king live—not that one of them all.

Whether he understood it or simply did as he was told,
Linden sank to one knee and took that massive head in his arms. His jaw set.
The muscles rippled across his back. He broke the man’s neck.

Linden was given no time to recover from the battle or the
killing. Red Deer’s king leaped into the circle.