White Mare's Daughter (30 page)

There was little challenge in tracking a deer in the snow,
but when the track was confused and tangled by a herd of them, and a pack of
wolves had trampled through, and a herd of wild pigs, then it was not so easy
to find one slotted hoofprint amid so many. They had gone well past the hill
that sheltered the town of Running Waters, toward the wood itself. If the
deer—a stag, from the size of his tracks and from the marks of antlers that he
had left on the trees that thickened, the nearer they came to the forest proper—if
the deer escaped into the wood, they well might be there nightlong.

So be it. He was being tested, he knew perfectly well. Women
underwent such a testing in the Lady’s temple, the rite that no man was allowed
to see. He had seen his sisters coming from it, his cousins, the women of Three
Birds and later of Larchwood, and seen how they had changed: how their eyes
were deeper, as if they had looked into the Lady’s heart. That light was on
them ever after, though it sank beneath the surface of their ordinary selves.

For men there was no such thing. A boy grew up. His voice
deepened, his manly organ grew large, his body thickened with hair, his face
sprouted a beard. When all of that was done, if a woman had not chosen him, he
lingered in his mother’s house and did as she bade him, raised his sisters’
children, faded into one of the grey uncles who sat in the market watching the
youth of the world go by.

Danu did not want to be a grey uncle. Neither did he want to
be this thing that Sarama had shown him, this horror, this slayer of men, this
warrior. He wanted to be what he had always been. Loved, valued, given duties
beyond the usual lot of a man. Could not the world go on as it always had? Why
must it change, and change so terribly?

All the while his spirit ran on the dark tracks, his body
ran in the light, seeking the red stag. He did not care if he outran
Sarama—though in truth she kept pace with him, breathing as softly as she could
while running through snow. He ran at the wolf’s pace, long steady lope, alert
to the shifts of the quarry’s path.

They brought the stag to bay not far inside the wood, in a
stand of young trees, birches, tall and white and slender. He was a great one
indeed, with a lofty crown of antlers, his neck swollen with rut, and the musk
of him so strong that Danu had caught and followed it easily the last few
hundred paces.

The stag stood blood-red against the snow and the trees,
head high, poised, motionless and yet vividly, vibrantly alive. Danu nocked
arrow to string with a heartfelt prayer to the Lady, begging her forgiveness
for the taking of this life, giving her thanks for the life it gave him. The
arrow flew straight and true, and buried itself in the great beating heart.

The stag leaped, high and high, up to the sky. Even before
he fell, he was dead.

“Out of death, life; out of blood, sustenance.”

Sarama did not know what all the words meant. They were a
prayer, she knew that much. Danu wept as he spoke them. Yet even as he wept, he
was cleaning and trussing the stag, lashing together branches, fashioning a
litter to haul the carcass home.

On the steppe one gave thanks to the gods for granting one
success in the hunt. But one never mourned the quarry. Beasts were beasts, even
those of sacrifice. Their lives were set on earth for men to take.

This man wept as if for a brother, and begged pardon for
each stroke of the skinning knife, as if the stag could feel it even in death.
Yet he had hunted as skillfully as any she had seen, and killed cleanly, with
one beautifully aimed shot. He was not a weakling.

Nor would he make a warrior. Not as he was now.

oOo

She helped him drag the carcass the long way back to the
city. It was dark before they came there, but there were stars, and a wan moon
through scudding clouds. Those, and the snow, lit their way well enough.

The Mare and the colt met them well outside the city,
bounding through the snow, the Mare quietly glad, the colt noisily so. They
made a royal escort, and watched with interest and no little snorting as the
two of them finished butchering the stag and hung it on the outside of the
house, high up lest the wolves come.

It was very late when they ascended at last to the blessed
warmth of the banked fire, took turns washing in water from the cauldron that
Danu had hung that morning, and fell headlong to bed or pallet.

Morning came rather too soon for Sarama. This time Danu was
up before her. The scent of roasting venison drew her out at last, to find him
in his usual morning semblance, even to the murmur of song.

The stag was all butchered, and roasting or smoking or
drying; Danu was scraping the hide, readying it for curing. Its bones and
antlers would be put to use, its hooves, its sinews, every scrap of it—and a
great labor it was, too, but he seemed glad of it. His mourning had been brief.
And yet she thought it was heartfelt.

He greeted her with the flicker of a smile, and tilted his
head toward the table, where her breakfast lay safe under a cloth.

She realized that she was ravenous. She had eaten nothing
since yesterday morning, nor noticed the lack.

When the edge was off her hunger, she looked up to find him
standing over her. “Now tell me what hunting has to do with fighting,” he said.

He was not going to be merciful. That was a good thing. A
warrior needed to be relentless.

She lacked the words to say that. Instead she said, “Hunting
and fighting are much the same. But in war, you kill men. And even weep for
them, if your heart is soft.”

“So you think me soft,” he said. He seemed more amused than
not.

She shrugged. “You need to be hard.”

“That will come when it must,” he said, “but I’ll do my best
to fight it.”

“See? You can fight.”

He snorted. She thought he might be annoyed. Or perhaps not.
He could laugh, even when the laughter was at himself.

It struck her that she rather liked him. He was a bright
spirit, and strong. He carried himself like a prince, light and proud—except
when he was bowing his head to a woman. The tribes would never understand that,
or him.

Somewhere amid this was a way to do what the Lady willed of
her. A way to make these people strong as the tribes would perceive it.

She spoke rather abruptly, but she knew no other way. “What
do you do when a—an animal attacks you? Do you fight?”

“We defend ourselves,” he said. “But we never attack each other.”

“Still,” said Sarama. “If men attack, you can defend. Yes?”

He frowned. “You should know what Catin thinks. She thinks
that you haven’t come to protect us. You’ve opened the way. You’ll bring the
war that you say you come to prevent.”

Sarama stared at him. She did not want to understand him.

“She says,” said Danu, “that you came to lead your people
against us. That your men’s gods have overwhelmed the Lady, and therefore you,
and sent you ahead in order to weaken us with fear.”

“Catin thinks like a man of my people,” Sarama said. “Where
did she learn to think like that? She has never known war.”

“She’s afraid,” Danu said. “Her fear speaks for her. That’s
what war is, isn’t it? War is fear first of all.”

“War is fear,” said Sarama, nodding. “She is afraid. That is
good. But I bring no war. War is coming without me.”

“She says it follows you,” said Danu.

“I do not lead it,” she said. “The Lady leads me. The
gods—the gods are angry. They talk to Catin. Fear opens the spirit to them. She
listens.”

Danu’s brows had gone up. “Men’s gods talk to a woman?”

“The Lady talks to you,” Sarama said.

“So,” he said. He went back to his hide-scraping, but not to
shut her out. It seemed to help him think. “You know what this could mean.”

“People kill for fear,” said Sarama. “If she makes people
afraid of me—maybe they learn to kill.”

“My people don’t—” He broke off. “She’d say the same of
you.”

“I am not what she says,” Sarama insisted. “I come to help,
not to hurt. Listen to the Lady! She told you. Do you forget?”

“I remember,” Danu said. He sighed heavily. “The Mother will
remember. But Catin is the Mother’s heir. How can she be deceived? People will
say, maybe you think you came to help, but the gods are using you.”

“The gods are using Catin.”

“I don’t know these gods,” Danu said. “I barely know you.
The others don’t know you at all.”

“You must tell them,” Sarama said.

He straightened, arching his back as if it pained him. “I’m
a stranger here, almost as much as you. I come from another city. They’ll not
listen to me.”

“They listen,” Sarama said. “You hear the Lady.”

He shook his head. “They won’t want to listen.”

Sarama could not contest that. She had seen how he was when
she told him of war. If Catin had turned against her, then the people would
follow. People followed those set over them. It was the way of the world.

She mustered all the words she could, though her head was
aching with the effort. “You must tell Catin,” she said. “Wake her up. Win her
away from the voices she hears. They lie to her. She must not listen.”

“What makes you think I can do any such thing?”

She touched his arm. She never had before, not of her own
will. His warmth startled her; his solidity, strong as the earth under her
hand. “You and she—” she said. It was too difficult. She did not have the
words. “When a man and a woman are—like that—a man will listen to a woman.
Sometimes. She might listen to you.”

He looked from her hand to her face. “She says,” he said,
“that I would turn from her in a moment, if you but lifted your hand. I told
her that she was jealous. She sent me away for that.”

“When was this?” she demanded.

“This morning,” he said. “She came while you slept. You were
sleeping deep.”

“Then she did not send you away.”

He hissed; then snorted in the way he had, that made her
think of the colt. “She went away. But she told me not to come seeking her.”

“Ah,” said Sarama. “We would say, she put you away. When a
man grows tired of a woman, or she has no sons for him—he puts her away.”

“No,” he said. “No, it wasn’t—she was angry, that was all.
She’ll come back when her temper cools. But I am not to go looking for her.”

“Ah,” said Sarama. She did not think he liked the tone of
that. He bent to the hide again and attacked it fiercely.

She had been sorry when he slipped from beneath her hand. She
did not try to touch him again. He was not happy to have been put aside—even if
that was not exactly what it was.

She wondered anew what there was between those two. As far
as she understood, a woman chose a man here. “Why did Catin take you?” she
asked him.

He froze. For a moment she thought that he would get up and
stalk out, which she would have done if he had been as impertinent as that.

He was too polite in the way of his people. He answered
without looking at her, which was also courtesy, but might have held a hint of
defiance. “I was the Mother’s son of Three Birds. I dreamed the same dreams
that tormented her. And maybe she thought that I was good to look at.”

That last would have been cause enough for a man of the
tribes. Sarama tried to imagine seeing a man so, as a man would see a woman. It
was not difficult. Only strange.

“If you were a woman,” Sarama asked him, “would you choose
her?”

“I am not a woman,” Danu said.

“If you were,” she persisted, “would you?”

His eyes flashed up. “Why do you ask? What is it to you?”

She flushed—and that, she had not expected at all. “I want
to understand.”

“Understand this,” he said with great care. “You are the
Lady’s child, and a woman, and she speaks to you. She has made you her voice in
her country. This I believe. But what I am to Catin, or what she is to me—that
is between the two of us and the Lady. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said. “You wouldn’t, would you? You’d rather be
in—Three Birches?”

“Three Birds.” She heard the sound of gritted teeth in that.
“The Lady sent me here.”

“Not Catin,” said Sarama.

If he had been a man of war, he would have struck her long
since. Because he was what he was, he stripped the hide with blinding swiftness
and left it shining clean. She thought he might take it to the tanner then, but
he chose to wait. Consciously chose.

A thought had been growing for a while. It was preposterous.
Of course she would never utter it. Unless he provoked her.

Which he did, by insisting that today of all days he must
scour the house inside and out, air the bedding, scrub down the floor, clear
away the evidence of the stag’s butchery. Not that Sarama had any objection to
hard work and plenty of it, but he seemed to be flinging it in her face.

oOo

As they put the bed back together, with his strength and
her balancing hand, she asked him, “What would you do if I chose you?”

He barely hesitated. The bedding settled onto the frame. He
smoothed it with his big deft hands. “Would you do that?” he asked in return.

Of course not
, she
had meant to say. But her tongue ran on ahead of her. “I might,” she said. “But
it would have to be your will, too.”

“What does my will matter?”

“Much,” she said.

“You don’t even like me.”

“No,” she said.

He faced her across the broad expanse of the bed. She had
not thought till then what she had done in choosing this moment to speak.

“Then why choose me?” he demanded.

“Because you hunt well,” she said.

He snorted. “That’s a poor enough cause to choose a man.”

“Why? We’ll always eat well, and be warm, and have needles
to sew with and hides to trade and—”

“You’re laughing at me,” he said.