White Mare's Daughter (17 page)

That last was close enough to the truth, if the king had
been Yama, that Sarama let her eyes widen a fraction. He took it as she had
hoped, for the ghost of a nod.

“So!” he said in satisfaction. “Children of an elder wife
are a great inconvenience if one would be king. So your brother is still a boy,
then? Still too young to contest his right?”

Again Sarama implied without speaking.

“Ah! Not so young then. But young enough. Not won his
stallion yet? That’s a pity. He’ll not likely find one here. All the herds run
northward, this time of year. There’s one—it grazes in Raindance lands—its
colts are strong and not too willful. But they go up around the Lake of Reeds
and stay there summerlong.”

“Is that a long way from here?” Sarama asked in what was,
for once, space to speak.

He blinked at her, as if the sound of her voice had startled
him. Nonetheless he answered her willingly enough. “Nine days’ journey,” he
said, “if the weather holds fair. Longer if it rains. The Lake of Reeds grows
then.”

“Maybe,” said Sarama, “we should go there.”

“It is a strong herd,” Gauan said. And was off again like a
colt with the bit in his teeth.

She barely listened. The sun hung low. Of the Mare and the
packhorse she saw and heard no sign. She could not escape yet; for all his
endless blather, he never took his eyes from her.

It was full dark before the deer was roasted, the bread
made, the mead brought out in its leather-wrapped jars. Sarama might have
thought to ask what kind of hunters carried mead enough for a feast. The same
kind of hunters, she thought, who dressed as if they were riding to a festival.
Somewhere amid Gauan’s babble she gathered that they were doing just that:
riding to his wedding in fact. But he had ridden more swiftly than he meant,
and must not, by the rite, show his face in the woman’s tribe before the new
moon, which was a hand of days hence.

“And so,” he said, “we hunt the runs just past theirs, and
wait to make our entrance.”

Tonight they dined on venison and antelope and honey mead,
on bread and herbs and pungent cheese. It would have been a pleasant feast if
Sarama had not felt like a rabbit among wolves.

No, she told herself sternly. A she-wolf in the pack of the
young males. She was not safe, no, but neither was she defenseless. She was
armed with teeth and claws, and with the power of the goddess.

She drank little of the mead: a sip only. She ate lightly,
as one should before battle. The others knew no such restraint. They gorged
happily, stuffing in the meat till the grease ran down their sparse young
beards, and drank in great gulps, vying with one another to see who could down
the most the fastest.

Gauan could hardly do otherwise than be the best of them. It
was a prince’s duty, one that he could not shirk. And yet, as a prince should be,
he was no soft-headed man. He could eat hugely, drink hugely, and keep a steady
eye on Sarama.

The inevitable, when it came, was surprising in its
gentleness. He reached in the firelight to trace the line of her cheek. “You
are beautiful,” he said.

She set her teeth and did not twitch away from him. The bow
was out of its case, eased there by excruciating degrees. Four arrows lay
beside it. The bow was unstrung; but she could string it at the run.

A run she could not make. Not yet. Her other hand, her free
hand, rested near the hilt of her longer knife, the one that was almost a
sword.

He swayed closer. She held her breath against the smell of
him: mead, meat, leather and wool and unwashed male. He was vastly sure of
himself. Softly, sweetly, he said, “I do not believe that there is a brother
out there waiting to come to your rescue. If he exists at all, he’s gone alone
to find his stallion—or to capture himself a tribe. He’d not be glad of a
sister’s presence, not unless he hoped to trade her for power in the tribe.”

Sarama smiled with sweetness to match his. “You don’t know
my brother,” she said.

“I know men,” said Gauan. “Come, beautiful lady. I’ll
protect you. No harm will come to you while you live in my tent.”

“Your wife might beg to differ,” Sarama said.

He regarded her in honest amazement. “How can she do that?
She is my wife.”

Sarama shook her head. “I have never lived in a man’s tent.
I never intend to.”

“You are a woman,” Gauan said, as if that ended all
discussion.

“I am Horse Goddess’ servant,” said Sarama.

He laughed as if at a glorious jest. “Are you now? And I
serve Skyfather and Earth Mother and the Storm Gods and the Ones below. Can
your one goddess stand against all of those?”

“She can indeed,” said Sarama, “if she is the goddess in her
own self, and not merely names in a braggart’s vaunt.”

He sucked in breath, and temper with it. She rose above him.
Her bow was in her hand: strung in a blur of motion, arrow nocked, aimed at his
heart. She loosed a clear call. A second call came back: the full-throated
neigh of a mare who finds that one of the herd is lost.

The Mare came out of the night into the red glow of the
firelight. In that light her grey coat was gleaming white, her eyes blood-red.
Her hooves battered men too drunk or too slow to spring out of her path. She
leaped the lesser fire, on which the bones of the antelope lay like an
offering, scattering bones and embers, and thundered to a halt before Sarama.

Sarama did not lower the bow nor shift her glare from
Gauan’s face. “I am the goddess’ servant,” she said.

Gauan was a fool, but not a blind one. He fell down before
her—and all of his people who could, did as he did. “Lady,” he said. “Lady. I
never—I didn’t—”

She almost took pity on him. “I do in truth have a brother,”
she said, “and he is in truth on quest for his stallion. Maybe he will find the
herd you speak of. Maybe he’ll find another. As for me, I ride at my Lady’s
bidding. She would not take it amiss if you were to ride with me to the edges
of this country. But offer no insolence, and take no liberty. Surely you have
seen how a stallion pays when he mounts a mare who has no desire for him.”

Gauan blanched. The first gelding, it was said, had been
made by a mare.

Sarama smiled. “I see you understand. And now I shall sleep,
and in the morning I shall ride, and you and your men will ride with me. And
when I have passed out of this country, you will go to claim your wife, and
dance at your wedding.”

“Lady,” he said, bowing to her will. Or at least, to the
power of the Mare, who had raised her head to snap teeth in his face.

Gauan was not an ill companion, for a man. His stream of
chatter had well recovered by morning, and he seemed to have bowed to
necessity. Not he nor any of his people had offered the slightest insolence to
Sarama in the night, or cast a glance astray since.

In their company she had no fear of meeting strangers. They
were a large and strong riding, and they knew all the best ways of their own
country, the springs and streams that her craft might have missed, the
hunting-runs and the paths of the herds. They made her think not a little of
her brother and his friends.

But like her brother, Gauan could not follow her past his
tribe’s borders. He had a wedding to ride to, a wife to take.

“Be kind to her,” Sarama said the night before they came to
the edge of his people’s country. “Listen to her when she speaks to you. She
has a mind, too, and intelligence, though it’s been stunted in the walls of her
father’s tent.”

“But,” said Gauan, whose awe of her had grown rather than
diminished in the days of their riding together—and goddess knew why that was,
but there was no denying it. “Lady, she’s a woman. Everyone knows women are
weak of wit as of strength, and sore in need of men’s protection.”

“So too would you be weak,” she shot back, “if you were
never let out of a tent nor allowed to ride or even walk.”

“But women are weaker,” he said, “and smaller. Lady, are you
as tall as I, or as broad?”

“That is so,” Sarama said willingly enough, “but I’m no
weaker than a man of my size. I can ride and shoot, and I hunt not badly. You
will be amazed, I think, to find that your wife has wits and will of her own.”

Gauan frowned. At least he was willing to listen; that was
more than most men would have done. Sarama sighed a little and let be.

oOo

There was little more they could have said in any case.
Gauan’s companions had conspired in a grand farewell, with the last of the
mead, and dancing and singing and telling of tales. Some had music with them,
pipe or drum, and one fine singer brought forth a tortoiseshell strung with
horsehair that, plucked, sounded sweet and faintly sad.

They danced and sang for her as if she had been a king. It
was in Horse Goddess’ honor, of course. Sarama alone would have been raped or
captured and carried off to Gauan’s tent. Nonetheless it was a fine thing, and
some of the singing was very good indeed. The dances were men’s dances, with
much stamping and shouting, exuberant as young stallions and quite as much
inclined to fall into mock war.

For honor’s sake Sarama must respond in kind. She waited
till the dancers had dropped exhausted, and the singers paused to cool their
throats with mead. The player on the tortoiseshell continued, and one or two of
those with pipes. They wove a wandering melody.

Sarama rose from the place of honor beside their chieftain.
One of the young men had laid his drum near her foot. She took it up. It was
one of the small drums, easy to carry on a horse, skin stretched taut over a
frame of supple wood. Its sound was rich for a drum so small. Sarama beat on it
lightly with her fingers, striking a pulsebeat.

With that she drew all eyes to her, and silenced the ripple
of chatter round the fire’s circle. Still beating the drum, swaying slightly in
time with the rhythm, she made her way to the cleared space. The grass was well
beaten down by the dancers who had come before. She tested it with gliding
steps, found it good.

The musicians had found the beat and made themselves part of
it. She flashed a smile at them. Perhaps they smiled back. She could not see.
She was in light, the rest in darkness, a ring of shadows, a flicker of eyes.

She danced slowly at first, little more than a step, a turn,
a sway, over and over, round and round. The earth was firm and yet yielding
underfoot. The stars arched overhead. She could feel the horses beyond the
reach of the fire’s light, some on guard, some grazing, some sleeping within
the ring of their herdmates.

The fire cracked suddenly and shot sparks up to heaven. She
leaped with it, and the music with her, swift as a startled mare. Like a mare
she wheeled, stamped, veered.

The music quickened. She matched it, swifter, swifter, till
the long plait of hair whipped out behind her, and the stars spun, and the wind
wailed in her ears.

She danced the Mare. That first slow meander had been the
horse at rest, grazing on the breast of Earth Mother. Then the leap into
flight, the mad gallop, the startlement turned to delight in her own swiftness.
And then, as the music bore her onward, little by little she eased her pace, to
canter, to trot, to walk again, to slow meander in search of the sweet grass.

The music softened and faded till it had sunk away beneath
the wind’s whisper. There was a moment’s silence.

Shouts shattered it, whoops and roars and the drumming of
fists and feet. Sarama dropped down beside Gauan. The young men cheered her on
for a while, for the sheer pleasure of making the stars ring.

oOo

Sarama rode westward again with a glad heart and a memory
of the young men of Gauan’s following, the whole rank of them, standing at the
edge of their camp and singing her on her way. Their song followed her long
after they had sunk below the curve of the horizon, borne on a wind out of the
morning.

The wind carried her far before evening. As she rode she
began to see a shadow in the west, like a low lie of cloud. At first she
thought little of it. But it remained, motionless, while the sky shifted and
changed, sun to swift scud of clouds to brief and startling spat of rain, and
thence to sun again.

By evening she knew what she had seen, and would see until
she came to the edge of it: the wood that walled the world. With each day’s
riding it loomed larger and seemed darker. Night never left there; the sun
never touched it. She began to understand the fear that had held back the
tribes of the west, that made the wood a wall more forbidding than mountain or
river.

In this season the tribes should be well scattered, seeking
each its own lands. And yet as she rode she saw remnants of camps close
together, signs of tribes moving as they did in the spring, as if to a
gathering. It was not a war: in war, the women would not go, nor the herds.
Something brought them together out of season.

Their path lay westward as did hers. Caution bade her move
carefully, and let none see her riding alone on the steppe. She could travel
more quickly for that; could pass ahead of the clans with their herds, their
laden beasts and women, their need to travel from water to water for the herds’
sake.

She began to wonder—to fear—that they had determined, all of
them, to venture the wood; to cross into that country to which Horse Goddess
called her. If the goddess had willed such a thing, she spoke no word of it to
Sarama. She was not mute—Sarama heard her voice in the wind, her blessing on
the land; heard her song in the Mare’s footfalls, and her will in the rustle of
the grass. But of these tribes moving westward, she said nothing at all.

Perhaps, thought Sarama, it was Skyfather’s doing. She knew
little of him. He was a younger god, a men’s god. Her people—her mother’s
people—had naught to do with him, or he with them.

She should go on, and take no notice of these tribes. They
were none of hers, nor had the goddess bidden her trouble herself with them.
But they held to much the same road, and their gathering would lie across her
path. If they were preparing to brave the wood, their purpose well might run
afoul of hers.