Lady of Horses (7 page)

The boar sprang after him. But the spear was lodged in its
breast, amid more scars than Wolfcub dared to count. It slowed him; staggered
him.

He fell to his knees. His great body, so heavy in the head
and shoulders, so light behind, tumbled end over end. Wolfcub darted out of its
path. Even in midair the boar slashed with hooves and tusks.

When it fell, the earth shook. Wolfcub stumbled and went
down. Fire burned his leg. He scrambled away.

The boar did not come after him. It did not rise. It lay,
massive and still. The spear lodged deep in its breast.

Wolfcub should not stop. Should not even pause. It was
feigning death, surely it was. It was the great boar, the king of boars, the
mocker of all who hunted it, slayer of men and hounds and horses. It could not
be dead.

And yet no breath stirred that massive body. Blood and foam
stained the tusks. The stink of death overlay the stink of boar.

Like a fool or a madman—like Linden, if Linden had lingered—Wolfcub
approached the carcass. No life trembled in it. What no man had been able to
do, the boar’s own weight and speed, and a spear lodged just so, had done and
more than done. The great boar was dead.

Linden was to come back triumphant—or dead, but Walker had
no real expectation of that. A great deed, a feat of prowess, would serve
Walker’s purpose well.

Linden came back with the piglet and the udder and the milk,
but that paled beside the greater feat: the great boar, the king boar, was
dead. But Linden had not killed him, or presumed to claim the honor. The one
they all celebrated, the lord of the hunt, master of warriors and slayer of the
great boar, was that odd lone creature whom everyone called the Wolfcub. To be
sure, he was a son of Aurochs the hunter, but he appeared to have no ambition
but to hunt alone.

Then why, Walker demanded of the gods, had he decided to
hunt with the pack at this of all times? It was more than inconvenient. It was
maddening.

The gods were not answering. Linden, curse him, would not
give way to jealousy or claim the kill for himself. He seemed delighted to
honor the boy as they all did, bringing him home in procession, and gaining his
father’s leave to call for a feast.

Well; and that might serve Walker, in its way. People
noticed a generous man. A man who claimed only what was due him, who gave honor
to those who had earned it . . . yes, that was kingly, too. Walker
could make use of it.

But he would not forget this one who had spoiled his plan
for the prince. A boar was a great kill, one of the greatest. A man who killed
a boar was a lord of the tribe. Even such a man as this Wolfcub, who heretofore
had claimed little and seemed to aspire to less.

oOo

Sparrow saw how Walker looked at Wolfcub after he came
back from the hunt with the boar’s tusks on his arms and the boar’s hide for a
saddlecloth.

It was not easy to get at Wolfcub. Everyone wanted to sit
with him, eat and drink with him, touch him to gain a bit of his luck. Wolfcub
did not look as if he minded.

That woke her temper. It was foolish, she knew perfectly
well—did not every young man yearn to be honored so?—but she could not help it.
She was used to seeking him out whenever she had a mind, or being sought out as
often as not, by someone who walked alone as she did, and cared no more to be
noticed.

Now he was the People’s darling. The king had set him in the
place of honor, seen to it that he was fed the best of the feast and the
strongest of the kumiss, and offered him a very great honor: his choice of
captive women.

Linden the prince undertook to advise him in that. In too little
a while, the two of them had vanished into the king’s tent, to the grand glee
of the men at the feast. The king’s laughter followed them, and a blessing with
it.

Sparrow sat in the shadows and simmered. Something was odd
in all of this, and she suspected that Wolfcub knew what it was. And he was in
the king’s tent, tumbling the king’s women.

How like a man, after all. How utterly like a man.

oOo

Wolfcub had never meant it to go on like this. At first,
he tried to tell people that he had not killed the boar, the boar had killed
itself. But they would not listen. “That’s your spear in his heart,” Linden
said. “Of course you killed him.”

And that, for the rest of them, was that. None of them
seemed the least displeased to give Wolfcub the honor of the hunt. Certainly
not Linden, who showed every evidence of delight. He offered his knife for the
flaying, and lent a hand with it, too; and he helped Wolfcub free the tusks
from the great jaws and slip them onto his arms. They fit almost disturbingly well,
holding him in a warm strong clasp, as if they had been a god’s hands.

He did not feel any stronger or any wiser for having taken
that of all lives. The boar’s strength had not entered into him. And yet its
power, the potency of its name, had become his. He was the boarslayer. He was a
lord of hunters.

He could let himself be glad of that, since no one minded;
no one stooped to envy. The wolf who walked alone was one of the pack after
all. That was not so ill a thing, now it had happened. Linden was alive and
whole, whatever the shaman might think of that.

The feast he had expected. To sit by the king—yes, that was
the place of honor. But when the king, warm with kumiss and expansive with the
rich fat of the boar, gave him the night’s freedom of his own tent, Wolfcub’s
first and indeed only impulse was to bolt for the shadows.

He might well have done it, if Linden had not laughed and
said, “Here, brother! I’ll help you. If my father wills?”

The king smiled indulgently and waved them both away. “Go!
Go. Both of you. Don’t let me see your faces till morning.”

Linden had Wolfcub’s hand before he could prevent it, pulled
him up—staggering as the kumiss rushed to his head, but steadier on his feet
than he strictly wanted to be—and carried him off to the king’s tent.

oOo

Wolfcub had never passed that flap before. When he came
with his father to visit the king, the king was always seated outside by the
council-fire or taking his ease in the elders’ circle. The tent was his private
place, a kingdom of women, and of children too young to be sent to the boys’
tent.

It was the largest tent in the camp, of course, as was
fitting. The floor was covered with the finest tanned leather, and with mats of
woven grasses, sweet-scented and pleasant underfoot. The sleeping-furs were of
the best, and there were great treasures scattered among them: weapons of rare
quality, coats and cloaks beaded and embroidered in patterns as magical as they
were beautiful, necklaces of bone and stone and precious shell spread atop
baskets of close and intricate weaving, skull-cups inlaid with bright stones
and bits of shell, drinking-gourds painted with care and complexity, and, great
treasures those, clay pots, some ornamented, some plain, that had come in trade
from countries far away.

There was too much to take in all at once. Wolfcub let it
enter his eyes as if he had been on a hunt, to remember later piece by piece,
as he chose and as it amused him.

Now what he chiefly saw were the women who waited by the
king’s sleeping-furs. The rest would be hidden away behind a curtain, or
perhaps had gone elsewhere for the night. He never had known what women did
when men were not thinking of them, nor had he known to care.

These were the captives, the prizes of battle or raids, whom
the king had chosen or who had been allotted him as the best of the booty. They
were not all the most beautiful, though none was ill to look on. Some, he knew
from rumor, had gifts that served the king: weaving baskets, tanning hides,
cooking or singing or, as people whispered, pleasing a man in the
sleeping-furs.

Wolfcub did not know which of them was which. They all stood
as women were supposed to stand, eyes lowered, hands folded, submissive. Most
were fair or redheaded like women of the People. Two were darker. These came
from the south and west, Wolfcub knew, where the little dark people lived;
where Sparrow’s mother had come from, taken in war long ago.

Neither of them had quite her cast of feature. Both were
lovely, doe-eyed and soft-cheeked, with full breasts and deep round bellies.

Wolfcub turned resolutely away from them, and chose almost
without a glance, stretching out his hand to a blur of white face and fair
hair. “Well chosen!” cried Linden, whose presence Wolfcub had all but
forgotten. “Beauty and skill both, and a voice like water running. You’ve a
fine eye for a woman, brother.”

Wolfcub, who had brothers enough, but none of them was this
one, held his tongue and made himself look at this paragon of women whose hand
had happened to be closest. She was beautiful indeed. She seemed compliant,
which the dark women had not. If it troubled her to be given to a callow boy,
she did not show it. Maybe he would be a relief from the old man who was her
husband, and the elders to whom she must be given most often as a gift.

His body had no difficulty in wanting her, whatever his mind
did and wherever it wandered. He looked about. The women whom he had not chosen
had withdrawn, but Linden was there still, and one of the women, a plump
freckled creature with hair as red as fire. She had a bold look, now she was
almost alone, and a wicked eye, which she cast on the thing thrusting beneath
Wolfcub’s leggings.

“There now,” said Linden, “be patient. I’ll let you have
him—but you have to take me first.”

The woman laughed. “You’re pretty,” she said in a barbarous
accent. “He’s not pretty. But when he grows up—aaahhhh.” She let the sigh go on
and on.

“But I,” said Linden, “am pretty now.” He swept her up in
his arms and, to Wolfcub’s considerable relief, carried her off behind one of
the curtains that divided the tent. Wolfcub had feared that he would be forced
to couple in front of the king’s son—and, perhaps worse, in front of the plump
and lecherous woman Linden had chosen.

But Wolfcub was alone with his own choice, who was not plump
and who did not appear to be lecherous, either. Indeed she seemed a cold
creature, such a one as suffered a man’s presence but took no pleasure in it.

Maybe, after all, he should have taken one of the dark
women, or the red one. A curtain was little enough barrier, and his ears were
keen. Linden was more than pleased with his choice. And his choice was loudly
and emphatically pleased with him.

Wolfcub sighed. If he walked away now, he dishonored the
king and insulted the gift. He faced the fair woman. She had not moved since he
singled her out: hands folded, eyes downcast. The tunic that she wore was finer
than some men’s wives could claim, well-tanned pale leather that caught the
pale gold of her hair and made her skin seem even whiter than it was. She wore
a necklace of bones and stones and beads, such as a man would trade fine furs
for at the gathering of tribes.

This was a favorite, then. But surely not only for her
beauty, though that was considerable: skin like milk, face carved as if from
ivory, and eyes set wide in it under a swoop of fair brows.

Wolfcub slipped the tunic from her shoulders. It hesitated
over the rise of her breasts, then slid to her waist. She made no move to stop
it.

His manly parts had ascended from ache to pain. But he did
not indulge them. He touched her round high breasts. The nipples hardened under
his hand. He stroked them slowly. Her breath caught.

So: she was not as cold as she seemed. “Do you resent me?”
he asked her.

She raised her eyes. They were clear blue, pale as a winter
morning, and hardly warmer. “I am my lord’s to keep or to give as a gift,” she
said—and yes, her voice was like water falling, low and sweet.

“I am asking you,” he said, “do you resent me?”

“I have learned,” she answered, “to resent nothing.”

“Would you rather I went away and left you alone?”

“Then my lord would beat me,” she said, “because I had
failed to please you.”

Wolfcub bit his lip. There was no escape, then. Nor should
he have wanted one, or been as eager to find it, and yet it was so.

He sighed before he knew what he did, and shed his leggings
and his good tunic that he had put on for the feast. He was nothing to enchant
a woman’s eyes, he did not suppose, except that he was young and lithe and
honed with all his riding and hunting. She was exquisite as she rose to face
him, with her tunic pooling about her feet.

She too seemed to have resigned herself to this. She did not
put on a smile, but he hardly minded; he wanted nothing so false. Her eyes
warmed, perhaps, as she took him in. She took his hot and aching rod in her
cool hand.

It burst at the touch, in spasms so fierce he tumbled to his
knees. She followed him down, still calm, not laughing at him, nor mocking him
for a fool of a boy. But then she had no need. He did it for her, bitterly.

She laid a hand over his mouth before he had well begun.
“No,” she said. “It’s no shame. Here, lie by me for a while. Tell me of your
hunt.”

He stiffened against her when she would have drawn him down.
“You don’t want to hear me boast.”

Her pale brows rose. “No? And why should I not? Men are
charming when they vaunt themselves. They say you are more charming than most,
and can tell a fine tale when you have a mind.”

“Who says that?” he demanded. It was rude, but he could not
help it.

She tugged at him. This time he gave way, till he was lying
beside her but at a little distance. “Women talk to one another,” she said.
“They say you are very pleasant to listen to, and almost as pleasant to lie
with.”

“You see how true that is,” he said.

She shrugged. “It’s been a long while since the winter
fires. You’re young; your blood is hot. You killed a great boar today. Tell me
how you did it. Tell me everything.”