Lady of Horses (60 page)

“Indeed,” said Keen in her new, cold voice. “He raped you,
too, did he? And left you forgotten?”

“He lies,” Blossom said, “and lies, and lies.” Her lips drew
back from her teeth. “We know. Women know. Men—men are fools.”

Walker struck at her again, to batter her down. She shrieked
and sprang. She found the knife in his shoulder; pulled it free in a bright
rush of blood; and stabbed, stabbed and stabbed, shrieking in pure mindless
fury.

People shrank away. No one moved to stop her. Not the kings,
not the shamans. Not the Tall Grass king or his shaman, though he had been ally
and kin to both. They watched in horror, with their hands at their sides.

Even if they had ventured to move, their women would have
prevented them. They stood in a wall about Walker as he died. Every one had
turned her back, rejecting him and all that he had been.

At last Blossom stopped shrieking. She stood over the
bloodied body. Her face was a perfect blank, like the mask of a priest.

The silence was enormous. In it, Willow made her way across
the circle—breaking the ban of kings without a thought or a flicker of fear—and
with great gentleness laid her arm about Blossom’s shoulders and led her away.
A path was cleared for her, women pressing back the men, watching without
sound.

It was Sparrow who spoke, softly, but every one of them
heard her. “Thus falls a world,” she said. “I am my father’s heir. If any
shaman fails to see it, then I reckon him blind, as blind as my late brother.
There will be no more lies, people of the plain. No more falsehoods. No more
thieves of visions.”

Woman she might be, but they were cowed, all those strong
warriors. They had seen the Walker Between the Worlds fall, struck down by a
woman. And there was White Bird with her terrible burden, smiling, singing
softly to herself.

Her eye fell on the Tall Grass shaman. Her smile sharpened.
She rode toward him. He shrank back, but his wives and daughters impeded him.
White Bird halted the mare in front of him and held out her husband’s head.

“Take it,” she said. “Drink from its cup. There’s a little
power left, that he kept for you. He said—he says to me, you are not wise, not
yet, but you may be. And you are all these people have.”

The Tall Grass shaman had little choice but to take the
grisly gift. It had dawned on him, perhaps, what he was being given. His eyes
flicked toward Sparrow.

“Take it,” Sparrow said. “All that he had to give, he has
given me.”

The shaman bowed—not willingly, but he was not one of those
who were blind. His eyes on her were briefly dazzled as he undertook to see what
power she had from her father.

She turned from him, leaving him to his new eminence, and
faced Linden in the circle. He was standing quietly, leaning on the spear,
patient as she had seldom seen him. He was not terribly wounded, though there
was a great deal of blood about him.

He smiled at her, as honest as a child, but she had learned
how strong he could be in that simplicity. The mare shifted beneath her. She
nodded, though there were no words between them.

She called the silvermaned stallion. He came obediently,
snorting at the stench of blood and death, but his heart was strong and his
courage high. “This,” she said, “is a king, and a maker of kings. Only one man
of the plains is granted leave to be his rider—both his master and his servant.
So Horse Goddess has decreed.”

She nodded to Linden. He barely needed encouragement. Naked
and wounded as he was, he swung onto the broad dappled back. The stallion
arched his neck and pawed. Linden slapped his shoulder in pure love.

Someone—it might have been one of the companions, or one of
Linden’s warband—raised a whoop, the war-cry of the royal following. Others
took it up, in pairs and handfuls and dozens, till the earth rocked with it,
and the sky rang.

The People had their king again. All of him.

oOo

There were kings to bury, and a shaman, however false, to
send to Earth Mother’s breast. Linden, with the elders of Cliff Lion and Red
Deer and Dun Cow, saw to the burial of the three kings. The tribes he disposed
of as he had promised: naming each wife of that tribe regent for the heir
unborn, and giving her a warrior to rule where men must rule.

Cliff Lion and Dun Cow had had prince-heirs already, one a
brother and one the father of the royal wife. The brother Linden put to death,
for he was intransigent. The father was offered a place of great honor as
grandfather to the heir. He, who was not an unwise man, chose to accept it.

While that was settled, the shamans saw to their own.
Sparrow sought no part of it. She had retreated among the Grey Horse People
where they had camped on the southern side of the river. Kestrel followed her
there silently, and stayed with her, offering nothing she did not ask for,
except his return to the People. “You are my People,” he said, “and all the
tribe I’ll ever need.”

She looked him in the face. “Truly?” she asked him.

His eyes were steady. “By my heart,” he said.

More might have come of that, but one of the wild children
who had ridden with the Grey Horse came calling at the tentflap. “Sparrow!
Someone’s come for you.”

Sparrow did not want to listen. But Kestrel was a man of
excessively dutiful temper. “Go on,” he said. “I’ll be behind you.”

oOo

Daylight still lingered in the sky, though the sun had
set. Fires were lit, oxen roasting—the Grey Horse had been given great gifts of
Linden’s generosity, and the first of them was a herd of fine white cattle.

The messenger stood by the king-fire, eyes fixed rigidly on
his feet, while a circle of bold young women remarked on his looks. He was
quite the pretty thing, paler even than Walker had been, and all but beardless.
He wore the tunic and leggings of an apprentice shaman, with the necklace of
bones that proclaimed him within a season of his trial and ascent to full
power.

He did not like at all to be forced to pay reverence to a
woman, but like the Tall Grass shaman, he had eyes that could see. He glared at
her, outraged, and said with stiff politeness, “Lady, the shamans of the
peoples bid me ask you, if you will—they would speak with you.”

“They could not come to me?” Sparrow asked. “It’s late; I’ve
traveled far. I’m going nowhere tonight. Tell them, come morning, I will
receive them here. They have safe passage. In the goddess’ name I promise it.”

The apprentice flushed. “Lady! You cannot—”

“I can do,” said Sparrow gently, “whatever the gods permit
me to do. If the shamans would speak with me, they may come to me here.”

The apprentice left at that, all politeness forgotten.
Sparrow found that she was shaking—with weariness, she was sure. She slid her
arm about Kestrel’s middle and leaned on him. “Gods,” she said. “I could sleep
till the dark of the year.”

Kestrel might have ventured commentary on her treatment of
the shamans, but wisely elected to keep silent. She kissed his shoulder to
thank him; decided that that was barely sufficient; pulled his head down and
kissed him on the lips.

oOo

Keen watched them from inside Cloud’s tent, torn between
joy for them and a deep sense of her heart being torn in two. When the Grey
Horse rode away from the gathering, she had seen no reasonable way to separate
herself, though her spirit cried out toward her son. Wherever he was, whatever
Walker had done with him—oh, gods, what if he had been killed? What if, even as
Walker died, his son lay dead in some forgotten place?

He was alive. He must be. Someone kept him, someone in the
vast camp that spread across the river. Its fires were beyond counting, its
pall of smoke and dust thick even in the dusk.

Cloud had not wanted to stay there. She reckoned him wise.
Best he keep to this side of the river, with free escape southward if somehow
the gathering should turn against him.

Tonight it was preoccupied with all that had happened: kings
fallen, shamans dead, lies uncovered and power laid bare. The sounds that carried
over the water were muted, the singing faint. Not many were celebrating
tonight, even round the king’s fire. Linden was in his own tent at last,
ministered to by his many wives, all of whom seemed besotted with him.

Somewhere in that camp was Keen’s son, the light of her
heart, for whose sake alone she had come so far. Her other dearly beloved was
outside by the fire, being prince to his people. He would not come to bed till
late, if he came at all.

She slipped out the back, taking with her a thing or two
that she might need. No one was on guard, though she had heard Cloud post
sentries. Those could not watch every fingerbreadth of the river; and clouds
had gathered to veil the stars and the waxing moon.

She forded the river in the dark, entering the cold swift
water carefully, placing each foot solidly before she essayed another step. The
river tugged at her, wrapping chill soft hands around her breasts and belly;
for she crossed naked, with her clothes and the rest of her belongings on her
head, to keep them dry.

At midstream the river nearly had her. Its softness turned
to terrible strength. She braced, dug toes into the river-mud, and pressed on
as fast as she could before the current plucked her loose and flung her
downstream.

She staggered the last few steps, dragged herself up the
bank and lay for a long count of breaths, emptied of strength. Slowly she came
back to herself. The night wind dried her. She shivered, remembering the cold
clutch of water, and sat up, fumbling into her tunic and leggings. Their warmth
was welcome.

She went on as a hunter might, making herself small,
stepping soft, fitting into the sough of wind in the grass, the lap of water in
the river, the night-sounds of the great camp. There were guards, but those had
not been watching the river. They were intent on matters closer to hand,
watching the camp’s edges. She slipped through them like a shadow, unseen and
unheard.

The camp dogs had troubled her mind; they were better guards
by far than human men. But any that might have been roving by the river were
gathered tonight near the fires, alert for such scraps as might come their way.
She kept her distance from the fires and did her best not to seem furtive in
ways that would rouse a dog’s suspicion. Men, too; once she was inside the
camp, she was better advised to walk tall and seem unconcerned than slink and
creep and look as if she had something to hide.

She did not know precisely where to go. But one place would
make a beginning. It was a larger tent than she remembered, by a considerable
degree, and it was pitched not far from the king’s. Walker, as king’s shaman,
had preferred not to keep to the edges. He wanted a clear view of the power
that he had claimed, and the tent that maybe, in the end, he would have taken
for himself.

Now he would take nothing but the road into the gods’
country; if the gods were just, that would be a long and bitter journey, beset
with torments. But there was a fire burning in front of his tent, and signs
about it that someone still lived within.

Keen stood straight in deep shadow, breathed deep, smoothed
her tunic and leggings. After a moment’s thought she loosed the bone pins that
had held her plait wound about her head, and let it slither down her back to
brush her thighs behind. She must look as much at ease as she could, and as
empty of either anger or hate, though both were seething deep within her.

Calmly then, as if she had every right in the world, she
entered Walker’s tent.

oOo

It was brightly lit, prodigal with lamps—proof in itself
of his new wife’s wealth. The reek of burning fat, scented with some
sickeningly sweet herb, made her gorge rise. But she kept it down.

There was no one here in the outer room. No one on guard, no
one watching for just such an invasion as this. Blossom’s belongings were
everywhere in towering heaps. Only one corner was cleanly bare, with a bed
spread there, and a single basket near it. Of Walker’s possessions there was
nothing else.

Keen’s lips thinned. So. He had not lived here. But his wife
had—and she would know what Keen needed to know.

She was rather obviously within. Her shrieking had stopped,
but her voice rang out at intervals, snapping orders, reprimanding someone for
clumsiness, lamenting her grievous fate. Her father, it seemed, had not sent
anyone to fetch her back to him, nor had her mother come to comfort her in her
widowhood.

Another voice spoke briskly and with an air of one who had
said such things many times since Blossom was led away from the king’s circle.
“My dear,” said Willow, “you can hardly expect your family to come for you, in
the circumstances. The king and the shamans will have to judge you first, and
decide what is to become of you.”

“Judge me?” Blossom’s voice rose sharply. “What is there to
judge? The man was a liar. He deceived us all. His death was just.”

“Women do not have that power of life or death,” Willow
said. “We bring forth life, yes, raise it and nurture it, and when it ends, we
lay it in the earth. But we are not permitted to take it with our own hands.”

“Men kill men,” Blossom said, “and boast of it at tedious
length. Should I be out by the fire, then? Should I be boasting? I have blood
on my hands, just like a man. Just—like—a
man
!”

She shrieked the last of it, quickly muffled, but not before
she had roused someone else.

That voice of all in the world, Keen knew as she knew her
own. Summer’s glorious bellow quelled even Blossom’s carrying on.

Keen was moving before she even thought, bursting into the
inner room. She took no notice at all of the women who filled it, the eyes
staring, faces white, astonished. She saw only one thing: her son in a
stranger’s arms, roaring his rage.