Lady of Horses (6 page)

In a passion of rage and frustration, he flung up his hand.
He would beat her till she bled; till she cried for mercy. She gave him no
choice. He must have his vision.

A shriek rent the air, a scream of pure rage. Walker whipped
about with hammering heart.

There was nothing there. The eddy was quiet, the sun
unsullied.

A horse, he thought, now that he could think again. A mare,
driving off an importunate stallion. One of the herds must have come down to
the river, out of sight round the bend of the eddy.

His heart slowed. His mind cleared. He turned back to his
sister.

She was gone. The eddy was empty of her. Nor was she to be
found anywhere among the People, though he looked hard and long. She had
vanished from the camp, or hidden so deep in it that she escaped him utterly.

oOo

On the morning when the shamans from the east consented at
last to leave the warmth and the good hunting of the People’s camp and return
to their cold and distant country, Walker pondered his need and his sister’s
intransigence. Drinks-the-Wind had given the easterners what they seemed to
reckon wisdom, but Walker barely saw even sense in it. The elder shaman bade
them fast and pray, and perform a ritual of cleansing over the herds, and make
certain that all the hunters performed the proper rites both before and after a
hunt. That would appease the gods, the old man said, and bring back the game.
Then they would be strong again.

Which might be true, but any man of sense could have advised
such a thing. They had not needed a full moon’s journey to be told of it.

Drinks-the-Wind had grown old. And the king himself was no
longer young. Walker saw him as he set the strangers on their way. His stallion
had grown thin in the winter, and the back that had been so strong was
beginning to sway. The man on that back had the same look to him of age
beginning to conquer his strength.

And this was a ninth year.

Walker left the camp without speaking to anyone. He needed
solitude to hear the gods’ voices most clearly. But as he climbed the long hill
above the river, a whooping crowd of young fools thundered past on half-wild
horses, with a pack of hunting-dogs baying before them. Linden the prince rode
hunting with his friends and followers. Some had great hopes: they carried
boar-spears.

Most of them veered wide round Walker. They were afraid of
him, though they might have chosen to call it hearty respect for the shaman’s
power.

But Linden paused. His stallion was very beautiful, deep
red, but its mane and tail were the same winter gold as Linden’s own long
plaits; and it made a great show of fire and fierceness, though Walker, who had
seen it in the herds, knew that it was not the best regarded of the stallions.
It was too inclined to defer to the mares.

Deference need not be an ill thing, if it was properly
judged. Walker reflected on that as he smiled up at the man on the horse’s back.
Linden smiled down a little uncertainly, but with a lift of the chin that spoke
of proper princely pride.

“Good morning, prince of the White Stone People,” Walker
said civilly.

“Good morning,” Linden said, without granting Walker a
title. “We’re going hunting. Shall we bring you back a fat deer?”

“Bring me back a tender piglet,” Walker said, “fresh from
its mother’s teat.”

Linden looked as if he did not quite dare to laugh. “That’s
tender meat indeed,” he said, “and not easy to get hold of.”

“Yes,” Walker said.

“Would you like the sow’s milk to cook it in?”

“That would be a dangerous thing,” Walker said, “to milk a
wild sow.”

“So it would,” said Linden. He laughed then, light and a
little wild. “You’ll dine on piglet tonight, seer. My word on it.”

Walker inclined his head. Linden wheeled his showy beast
about, laughed again and sent him thundering after the others.

oOo

Walker stood on the hilltop. His eyes followed the young
men as they galloped off northward, but his mind flew far above them, looking
down on them with cold falcon-eyes. They were little men, every one, and their
prince was hardly greater than they.

And yet that was a very pretty creature, sitting on the back
of his pretty stallion. He moved well, spoke well. He was hunter enough for the
purpose. He was much too thick of wit to know fear in battle, though he had
little judgment, either.

It was a ninth year, and the king was old. His son was
young, very young, and not the most clever of men.

It came to Walker out of the sun, in the whisper of the
wind. Shamans had always ruled the kingmaking—that was so from the dawn time.
And yet, in the long ago, the king had been king for but a year, served his
purpose, led the young men in battle and in the hunt, mated with the royal
women. Then when his year ended, so too did he.

There had been the great sacrifice then, the Stallion
offered up to the gods—but he had had a rider, always. The king of stallions
and the king of men had gone together before the gods, taking with them the
People’s prayers and their petitions, and all their tribute.

Then there had come a year of war that stretched into two,
then three; and the king in that time was a great leader of men. The shamans
had suffered him to live until the war was over. By then the People were
accustomed to him, and he was strong among them. The shamans bowed to his
power, even till the ninth year, when at last they mustered the strength of
will to offer him in sacrifice.

That had begun the decline. Now a king ruled as long as he
pleased, or as long as he kept his strength. He chose the time when he would
die, and the shamans submitted to his will.

It was time, Walker thought, to return to the old ways. The
king was growing old. His son was strong in body but weak in will. Any man of
wit could play him like a flute.

Walker turned his face to the blue heaven. The sun stroked
his cheeks with warm fingers. He spread his arms and wheeled slowly, as the
stars wheeled at night and the sun by day. The wind caressed him, sweeter than
any woman’s touch.

After all, he had had his vision. It had not come in dream
through his sister, nor in trance, nor after a great working. And yet it was
real.

It was strong. It filled him with certainty. He was the
Walker Between the Worlds. He would be a maker of kings and a ruler of the
People. He would be as shamans had been in the old time, great in power and
terrible in his strength.

Wolfcub heard what the shaman said to Linden, and how
Linden played into his hands with almost distressing ease. Wolfcub had been
going hunting himself, but alone, as he preferred to do. It was easier to track
the deer without a pack of idiots baying at his back.

But once he had seen that Linden meant to bring the shaman a
delicacy for his dinner, Wolfcub attached himself to the end of the riding. No
one minded at all. Wolfcub was the odd one, the one who liked to hunt alone,
but he was also the son of the great hunter of the People, and a hunter of
prowess himself. He was always welcome on hunts, no matter what impudence he
might have offered the prince.

Linden, at least, had a short memory for slights. He was an
easy man, which might be a virtue, or might not. Wolfcub could never quite
decide. He was carrying the pretty bow that Wolfcub had given him, for he
cherished it: it was, like his horse, like himself, lovely to look at if not
particularly practical.

Wolfcub, whose horse was no beauty, but hardy and sensible,
shrugged to himself and made his way to a place not far behind Linden. If
Linden was going to risk his neck going after a sow and her piglets, Wolfcub
would do what he could to keep the fool alive. The fool was, after all, the
king’s son.

oOo

A pack of wild pigs had made itself a tribe some distance
down the river, where an outcropping of rock gave shelter, and a little thicket
of wind-torn trees offered roots to graze among. The boar had claimed the upper
reaches of the hill, the sows and piglets the rest.

If Wolfcub had been consulted, which clearly he had not, he
would have preferred that they hunt deer, whose meat was sweeter and who did
not turn a hunt into a battle. But there was no glory in hunting deer when
there was a boar to hunt.

This one had been lord of his tribe for a hand of seasons
now. This was not the first hunt he had seen. Nor might it be the last. He had
killed men who came against him, taken wounds that would have slain a lesser
beast, but escaped to his lair and mended, and come back in time to challenge a
new hunt.

oOo

They left the horses to graze just out of sight of the
boar’s rock, with a handful of sullen boys to look after them. On foot then,
and as softly as they knew how, they made their way toward the rock.
Brighteyes, who was best with the dogs, had whipped in the leaders and bound
them, so that the others followed with heads and tails low. They would have
their part to play in the hunt, but not yet—not too soon.

Wolfcub hung back somewhat, still within spearcast of
Linden, but out of the crush of young men. He was wary, half of the sows and
their great boar, half of the shaman who had dared the prince to come here.
Wolfcub did not trust the Walker Between the Worlds. That one had ambitions, he
thought, beyond the simple reading of prophecies for the People to marvel at.

And maybe he wanted Linden dead. Or maybe he did not. Wolfcub
was not sure, yet.

But of this he could be sure: he would do what he could to
keep his king’s son safe. Not for any love of the pretty idiot, but because he
was the king’s son. And, certainly, because Wolfcub loved Walker not at all.

At this hour of the day, their quarry rooted and idled about
the base of the rock. The great sow, the mother of the tribe, cast her bulk in
the shade of the trees, while her piglets played at battle or at feeding in the
leafmold nearby. Other, lesser sows fed beyond them, or lay as she lay and nursed
their own litters. Of the boar there was no sign.

That meant little, Wolfcub knew. The old warrior would have
heard them coming from far away, and would know what they intended. He would
wait and watch, and when they were off guard, he would attack.

They had to hope that they took their prey and escaped
before the boar came. Though Linden might hope for something else—for the boar
himself, his hot heart’s blood springing over Linden’s hands. The shaman had
asked a thing that was mad, perhaps knowing Linden would want something madder
still.

There was nothing Wolfcub could do for that, except watch
and wait. Linden went in among the trees, the more fool he, rather than let
Brighteyes loose the dogs to bring the sow and her litter to him. He went in
and the rest followed; Brighteyes, too, and the dogs, the whole lot of them,
trampling into the shade of branches, tangling themselves in underbrush.

They were men of the steppe, high-grass people. Trees were
alien. Sky shielded by branches, feet tangled by undergrowth—they knew nothing
of such things. Wolfcub, hunter and son of a hunter, had made himself familiar
with them, the better to excel at his craft.

The lesser pigs squealed and scattered, but the great sow
knew no such cowardice. Her grunt brought her piglets flocking. Most fell
greedily to nursing at her udders, but one or two, bolder than the rest,
watched the hunters come.

She surged up, shedding piglets. Linden laughed and taunted
her, dancing his mockery. She charged.

He was not there. But his noose was—the same rope of braided
leather that he used to catch his horse, and strong enough to hold an enraged
stallion.

A charging sow strained it, but not to breaking. He leaped
to lash it round the trunk of a tree. The tree groaned as the rope snapped
taut, but held. The sow dropped like a stone.

Linden sprang in to bind her fore and aft. Then, still
laughing, he milked a skinful out of her, while his following pursued her
piglets. They caught one; the rest were too quick or too slippery to hold.

Still Wolfcub hung back. Linden rose triumphant, brandishing
his skin of sow’s milk—and, with a slash so swift the sow must scarce have felt
it, took the udder he had drained it from.

He should have left the sow bound; but that was a good rope.
He freed her. She lunged, screaming in rage. He danced away, mocking her, but
not altogether in folly: he had his boar-spear.

So too a handful of others. They circled her, whooping above
her squeals, laughing and singing battle-songs.

The boar came without a sound. He was huge, and yet he
passed like a shadow through the thickets. His eyes were tiny and blood-red.
His tusks curved thrice, piercing his lip with each curve, till they arched,
spear-sharp and gleaming, on either side of his eyes.

Wolfcub saw him clearly, far more clearly than he ever
wanted to see such a beast. The boar plunged straight for the one who had
violated his consort. Men and dogs fell before him.

Wolfcub was ready—as ready as any man could be for such an
assault. He had braced himself, and secured his spearbutt in a knot of roots.
As the boar came on, he called out, a deep grunting cry like the challenge of
boar to boar.

The boar heard. He veered—only slightly, but it was enough.
He launched himself at Wolfcub.

The spear would not hold. No spear could. Nothing of fire-hardened
wood or tempered bone was strong enough. But it slowed him. It freed the others
to escape bearing their prizes, the piglet and the skin of milk, though they
had perforce to leave the sow behind.

Wolfcub crouched eye to eye with the great boar. The boar
was pure living rage. Wolfcub was pure blind fear. Almost he lost the power to
move. The boar’s breath was hot in his face, so fetid that he gagged.

That freed him. He flung himself backward, rolled, came up
running, bolting toward the light.