White Mare's Daughter (19 page)

She grieved to lose the packhorse, but she would die before
she lost the Mare.

The packhorse had carried most of what she owned, but she
had a little with her: her bow and arrows, the spare bowstrings, her waterskin,
a little dried meat and a few roots and herbs. She offered the Mare to drink
from the waterskin. The Mare, accustomed to such courtesy, drank as much as
Sarama would allow her: nearly all of it, with a swallow or two for Sarama.

That was no cause to fret; there was a whole river to drink
and to fill the skin from, once she dared venture out. The meat and herbs were
enough to keep her fed till morning. Fodder for the Mare was a greater anxiety.
There was nothing here, not even leaves; it was all rotted to mold.

Goddess in flesh the Mare might be, but that flesh was a
horse, and horses must eat. Sarama moved with sudden decision. “Stay here,” she
said to the Mare. The Mare regarded her blandly, as a horse could when it had
not decided whether to listen. “Stay,” Sarama commanded her. “I will come back.
My oath on that.”

Oaths meant little to a mare. But she did not try to follow
when Sarama slipped out the way they had come. When Sarama looked back, she was
hipshot, head low, dozing as a wise mare might when she reckoned herself safe.

Sarama sighed faintly. It would do—it would have to do.

oOo

The hunt had run far ahead. Sarama kept to the shadow of
the bank, alert for hiding places if it should come roaring back upon her; but
it seemed well gone. Perhaps it had found another hapless quarry: a deer, or a
spy indeed from the tribe that seemed to be their rival.

The river bent several times more. It was flowing, she began
to perceive, out of the wood. Its banks grew less steep as she went on. In time
she could see where a horse might scramble up.

The light was growing long. The shadows down by the river
were deep: night had already settled there. She could, perhaps, fetch the Mare
and bring her back to this place, and ascend to the steppe; but then she would
be caught in the open, fair prey for any hunter who passed.

After dark, she thought. There would be a moon tonight; the
sky was clear, no threat of clouds or rain. Demons walked after the sun had
set, but Sarama had less fear of them than of men under Skyfather’s power.

Travel by night or travel at dawn and pray the hunt did not
come back or find her, travel she must, and soon. The wood was close. She felt
it on her skin, a darkness and a coldness beyond what grew in the river’s bed
as night came on.

She would travel by night, and trust the goddess to defend
her. An urgency was on her, apart from simple fear. She must go westward. She
must hang back no longer.

The Mare came willingly out of the cave. Sarama did not
try to ride her, but let her follow unled while the shadows deepened, though
the sky was bright above.

The hunt did not come back. She found the fallen place, the
slope less steep though still punishing for woman and Mare alike.

The Mare’s haunches bunched as she sprang up it. Sarama,
caught behind, scrambled after. The Mare did not slip or falter, but Sarama saw
how those haunches trembled, how her breath came hard. She was touching the
edge of her strength.

So were they both. And yet they must go on. Up out of the
river’s deep bed, on under a waning moon and the fields of stars, walking
slowly through the tall whispering grass. Neither led the other. They simply
walked toward the darkness ahead, darker than the night about them.

No hunter of this country would follow them into that place.
But first they must come there. As close as it seemed, still it was a long
stretch of steppe to walk, and demons and night-creatures between, and hunters
perhaps, if they had laid an ambush.

Sarama did not know what Skyfather might do. The west did
not worship him, from all she had heard. He would covet it, its tribes of
people, their riches, their sacrifices. And his people would be his instrument.

But where a goddess could move a lone woman to do her will
at once and in unquestioning obedience, even a god could not sway whole tribes
together; not swiftly, and not easily. He could set a pack of young men on the
track of the goddess’ servant, but none of them had had the power to pierce her
subterfuge, to find Sarama where the Mare had hidden her.

Skyfather would not be pleased this night, to have lost his
quarry. Without the sun that was his all-seeing eye, he was blind; but some of
his servants walked the darkness, too, and they could see as clear as if it had
been day. Sarama heard them hunting at some little distance: wolves squabbling,
it seemed, over prey.

If they caught her scent they would harry her. Wolves in
this country were scavengers, hunters of carrion, followers after the lion’s
dinner, but a pack of them could pursue a weakened woman and a weary mare. And
where wolves were, the lion was seldom tar away.

She could walk no faster. Her strength was nearly gone. And
still she had the forest to face.

The forest was not Skyfather’s place. No, not his of the
open sky. If she could pass under the trees, shut out the sky, she would be
safe from him. His creatures would not pursue her. Not yet. They were not brave
enough.

She did not know that she was, either; but like a rabbit
running ahead of a fire on the steppe, she would leap into the wolves’ den
rather than burn.

Only a little farther. The Mare stopped suddenly. Sarama stumbled
into her.

She turned, ears flattened.
On my back
, the sharp gesture said.

Sarama drew breath to protest. The Mare’s teeth snapped in
her face. It was not so very far—and the Mare, even so wearied, could move far
faster under Sarama than could Sarama on foot. With a mutter that might have
been a curse, or might have been a prayer, Sarama pulled herself onto the
Mare’s back.

The Mare wasted no time in satisfaction. She moved into a
canter, slower than her wont but swift enough to wake the wind in Sarama’s
face. Sarama strained her senses; but there was no sign of uncertainty in the
Mare’s gait. Her footfalls were steady, unwavering, though the ground rose and
fell, the endless roll of the steppe.

oOo

The wolves caught them under the first eaves of the trees:
a manifold ripple in the last of the grass, a gleam of eyes in the moonlight.
The lion would be behind them, if he had followed. Lions were lazy; they waited
for their lionesses, or even for wolves to make the kill for them. But if they
lost patience, their strength was deadly.

Sarama’s bow was strung, an arrow nocked. She would have
given much for fire, for certain terror to her attackers. But there was no time
to muddle about with the firestick. Her arrows would have to be enough, and her
knife if they came so close.

The Mare carried her with no evidence of fear, straight
toward the darkness and the cool breath of the trees. Sarama had twisted back,
seeking a target. The wolves, as if sensing her purpose, had hidden themselves
and their eyes in the grass. But they were close on her track.

Tree-branches wove together, shutting out the starlight. The
moon shone fitfully through, dappling the forest floor. Sarama, faced still
toward the steppe, nonetheless felt the dark wrap about her.

Perhaps Skyfather drove them; perhaps the lion behind grew
short of patience. Dark bodies burst out of the grass, running under the trees.
Fangs caught a fleck of moonlight. An eye gleamed red.

A wind swept past the Mare, a torrent of motion. And yet
Sarama felt nothing on her cheeks. It was all below, skimming the ground: dark
bodies, soft feet, the mutter of a growl. A wolf yelped, piercingly sharp.

Wolves again, but of a different kind: bigger, darker,
fiercer. The wood defended itself.

It let Sarama pass. But the wolves it drove back, hunting
them into the grass; putting even the lion to flight. No lion was a fool, or
inclined to fight unless he must.

oOo

The Mare carried Sarama some distance into the wood.
Without moon or stars she could not tell how far, or in what direction she
went; only that it was away from the steppe and its dangers.

It was dark, dark and still, no wind blowing. Yet it was not
silent. Whispers, rustles, the distant howl of a wolf; the murmur of leaves
high overhead, and the hooting call of a bird, and a brief, blood-curdling
shriek as something died for a hunter’s dinner.

The Mare moved among the trees, treading softly on the mold
of years. As she walked she snatched at leaves and bits of things growing along
the ground: feeding herself as she had not been able to do in her run from
river to wood.

Sarama reflected on the bit of dried meat in her bag, but
hunger had shut itself away. Far more urgent was the need to sleep.

As if it had known her desperation, the forest opened
suddenly into a broad clearing. It seemed a memory of steppe: a roll of grass
under the moon, a scattering of flowers. A stream ran through it from wood’s
edge to wood’s edge.

Sarama pulled saddle-fleece and bridle from the Mare and
dropped them in the grass. The Mare grunted with pleasure, snatched great
mouthfuls of grass, went down suddenly and rolled till every itch and ache was
gone. Sarama loosed a breath of laughter and let her knees buckle at last, and
fell headlong into sleep.

oOo

She woke with a start. Guard—she should watch—

Sunlight dazzled her. She shaded her eyes against it,
sitting up and peering about. The Mare grazed not far from her, peaceful,
unafraid. Nothing had touched or harmed her.

Dimly Sarama remembered being hunted: men in daylight,
wolves under the moon—and wolves hunting wolves, forest guardians driving the
strangers away. There was no sign of wolf here. Only sun and grass and flowers,
the stream that sang over its stones, and ripe sweet berries hiding in the
grass. She ate till she was sated, then drank deep from the stream.

The water was icy cold. Nonetheless, after a moment’s
thought, she stripped and bathed in it, head to foot, scrubbing away the memory
of hunting and hiding, running and fear. Sweet herbs that grew on the bank both
cleansed and scented her, till she tingled all over, beautifully and blissfully
clean.

She lay naked on the grass, letting the sun both warm and
dry her. She should go on, she knew that. She could not know for certain that
the hunters had turned back at the wood’s edge. And yet she could not make
herself rise, dress, move.

It was hunger that roused her at last, a growling in her
belly that would not be ignored. Berries alone had barely whetted its appetite.
She fed it the last of the dried meat; she would have to hunt and kill more, if
her body craved it.

Her courses were on her. She gathered grass from the meadow
and moss from the treetrunks, to do what was necessary; then gathered up bow
and arrows and set out to find what she could find.

oOo

As soon as the wood had surrounded her and the meadow
vanished behind, she knew that she had erred. On the steppe she knew her way,
even when the country was strange to her. In this tree-bound place, cut off
from the sky, she could not choose right from left, forward from back. She was
all out of her reckoning.

With an effort she quieted her thudding heart, breathed
deep, willed calm. Her tracks were visible behind her, more visible indeed in
the leafmold than they would have been in tall grass. If there were rabbits
here, or deer, she would find them by sign or scent, and retrace her own path
to the meadow. It could not be so difficult. She was a hunter from her
childhood. She could learn to hunt here as she had on the steppe.

It was none so simple, but need drove her, the gnawing of
hunger. Panic stood at bay. Foolish to be so frightened of these closed spaces,
these rustling silences. If demons walked here, Horse Goddess would protect her
from them. Was she not on the goddess’ errand? Must she not live, and thrive,
in order to perform it?

Perhaps it was the goddess who led her to a place
crisscrossed with rabbit-sign. She shot two in quick succession, and a third
after a not inconsiderable while. They were larger than their cousins of the
steppe, plump and well fed. A deer would have given her more meat, to eat and
to carry, but these would more than suffice.

She traced her way back with no more than a handful of missteps
and pauses to calm herself yet again. The sun in the meadow, now much shifted
toward the west, was a golden blessing on her face.

The Mare was grazing as she had been when Sarama left her.
She raised her head and whickered a greeting, and after a moment’s
consideration came to investigate the quarry and to have her nape rubbed.

Flies had been a great torment to her. Sarama wove an
eye-fringe of grass and bound it to her headstall. She tossed her head to make
the braided fringes fly, snorted disgust at the dead things swinging from
Sarama’s belt, and went back to her grazing.

Sarama caught herself smiling as she skinned and cleaned the
rabbits by the stream, gathered bits of wood and grass for a fire, and waited
with snarling stomach for the cooking to be done. A bit of liver, sweet and
blood-raw, calmed the worst of the snarls, and a double fistful of berries from
amid the grass.

She lay on her stomach not too near the fire, chin propped
on hands. The Mare cropped grass with singleminded determination, her white
tail flicking steadily at the flies.

She was beautiful, Sarama thought. She often thought so, but
it was different to lie here, at ease, even content, and simply watch the Mare
be beautiful.

It was not so much the lines of her, though those were good,
solid and yet elegant, or her coat like moonlight and rain, or even the way she
moved, with both strength and grace. It was more than that; a way she had of
carrying herself. She knew that she was beautiful. She took great pride in it.
And she would be more beautiful still, when she was grown out of her dappled
youth.