White Mare's Daughter (38 page)

Outside of the circle waited the men of the tribe. No woman,
no mother or sister, for this was the men’s rite. Each father or elder brother
held the bridle of a horse, or more than one, if his son or brother could or
would muster the wherewithal; and each horse was saddled and laden with
supplies for the journey.

They stood as if they had been there nightlong, though they
must have come out of their tents just at dawn; they would have roistered till
the stars grew dim, then rested for a while, till it was time to greet the
initiates as they came out of the circle.

Agni, leaving the cold of the stones behind, found himself
face to face with his father. The king stood upright without assistance, with a
fair handful of the elders at his back, and three fine strong ponies waiting
beside him—one more than Agni had looked for, but that was well and more than
well.

They were all, as Agni had hoped, mares. People were looking
askance at that, perhaps, if they thought to turn their eyes from their own
kin, but Agni had asked for mares and no geldings. He had no fear of his manhood,
and some little hope of bringing home a stallion.

Agni did not see Yama, or indeed any of his elder brothers.
But of younger brothers and fellow hunters and his friends and companions there
were more than enough, a whole grinning pack of them, though some of the grins
were strained with the aftermath of too much kumiss.

They all hung back in awe of the king. He embraced his son
ceremonially and kissed him on both cheeks, and held him so, speaking swiftly
in his ear. “Find your stallion, and come back as soon thereafter as you may.
I’ll be king still when you return. My word on it.”

Agni stiffened, his eyes widening, but the king’s grip was
too strong; he could not pull away.

“Listen to me,” the king said, fierce and swift, as if he
must say it all before anyone could grow suspicious. “The factions are forming.
The wolves gather to pull down the old stag. But not before the autumn dancing.
Not, if the gods will, before you come back. Come back soon, O best of my sons.
While I live I can protect you. Once I am dead—”

“You won’t die,” Agni said, just as fiercely. “I’ll come
back. And you’ll live years yet.”

“Maybe,” the king said. He slapped Agni’s cheek lightly,
more blessing than rebuke. “May the gods bring you a king of stallions, and
bring you back safe to the tribe.”

Those were the words that tradition prescribed. Agni barely
eased for the speaking of them, even as he bowed and murmured the response:
“May the gods grant that I come back a man.”

The king let him go. He had to take his horses and mount and
ride away as all the initiates did, each in his separate direction. Agni’s was
north and somewhat west. He was not bound to it, but it seemed as good as any.

He glanced back once, at the ring of stones that seemed far
smaller and less terrible in daylight than it had in the darkness, and at the
men standing in a circle beyond it. The king had not moved since Agni left him.
Agni’s friends and kinsmen leaped and whooped and sang him on his way.

He flung a grin at them, a flash of insouciance, and put a
swagger in his seat on the dun mare’s back, keeping it till the earth bore him
out of their sight.

oOo

Agni kept to the northward way, remembering what he had
been told of a herd that ran on the northern plains. Where the others went, he
did not know, nor was he permitted to know. Sometimes some of the initiates
would hunt together, but they were not to do so until the herd was in sight.
Until that time, each hunted alone.

He did not think any of the others had gone northward. There
were other herds nearer, that were known to have colts of the age that was
required. But Agni’s spirit yearned after something greater. Even knowing that
his return could be delayed, that it might be days before he came near the
northern herds, he determined to win his stallion from among them.

Often as he made his way across the steppe, as he hunted his
dinner and as he lay in camp of a night, he pondered the things that his father
had said. He had been aware of nothing that was not as always. His brothers
vied for the king’s favor, as they had done since he could remember. Yama the
eldest declared that he would be king. And yes, there had been rumblings that
the old king should submit himself to the knife, and suffer a new king to rise
in his place. But nothing greater than it ever was. Nothing to raise the
hackles, to urge him to walk more warily.

Yet the king had seen fit to promise Agni that he would
still be living when Agni came back. Agni’s hackles did rise at that. What did
the king know? And why had Agni not known it?

What if—gods, what if Yama had discovered that his wife
found greater pleasure with his brother? That would not serve Agni well among
the men of the tribe. It would not serve him well at all.

It was useless to gnaw that same bone over and over, all
alone with the steppe and the sky. Agni could not return until he had won his
stallion. No more could he be king.

He must do this. It was not a thing that he could choose, or
that he might delay. Until it was done, he had no other duty, and should have
no thought apart from it.

He decided on that, his third night out from the tribe. It
was easier in the thinking than in the doing, but the gods were kind, after
their fashion. They sent a misery of wind and rain, which absorbed his
attention rather completely for the days and nights that it lasted; then when
he had thought never to be dry again, the rain blew away and the sun beat down.

He was dry then, dust-dry, and hot. The grass parched about
him. Water he could find, but less of it, the farther he traveled; and what he
could find, he offered first to the horses.

If he must go thirsty, so be it. He could not do what he
needed to do if he was alone and afoot.

oOo

The steppe was a living thing. Bleak as it could seem, it
was alive with creatures, from biting gnat to eagle on the zenith; from rabbit
nibbling greenery to lion hunting the wild bull.

Men in companies could sweep the steppe and never know what
creatures dwelt in the grass. A man alone in that immense sea of grass, even
mounted and leading a pair of horses, was as much a part of it as the wolf
wandering alone, or the bird feeding on seeds of the grasses.

A man alone was also prey, and his horses sore temptation
for the great predators. Agni rode warily, veering wide from lion-sign and
avoiding the herd-runs of the wild cattle. Wolves he feared less. In this
season they had ample young of deer and cattle to feed on, and tender young
rabbits for the cubs. But lionesses hunted greater prey to feed their
offspring, and the lions, if they could be persuaded to forsake their lordly
laziness, would reckon man-flesh a delicacy.

Of horse-herds he saw none. He did not fret, yet, that he
had chosen the wrong path. He rode between the lion and the bull, soft as a
wind in the grass, and trusted that the gods would guide him.

Sometimes he saw the great herds of wild cattle, the sweep
of horns like the young moon, cows grazing and calves gamboling, and the herd
bull keeping watch over them all. He would choose a cow, a young heifer
perhaps, to be his favorite; would bear her company, guard her as she nibbled
on the choicest of the grasses, mount her when she invited him, and make her
all his own.

Each herd seemed to have its own pride of lions. Lesser
herds of deer and gazelle gathered on the edges, fine prey for a lion, all
gathered together and ripe for the choosing. Just so did the tribes of men keep
their cattle, their sheep and goats: to serve their needs, and to thrive and to
increase at their will.

Maybe the tame cattle were not so foolish, with men to guard
them and see that they were fed. Men fought off lions, and chose carefully of
those that they would slaughter. They gelded the he-calves, too, so that the
bull would not kill them or drive them off. Perhaps the cattle would reckon
themselves fortunate.

Agni was growing antic in his solitude. He dared not speak
or sing, lest the lions find him, or the bulls take exception. He made his way
in silence, traveling as swiftly as the land would allow; even into the night
if there was a moon. Northward, as straight as the herds and their predators
would allow.

Urgency began to grow in him. The moon died and was born
again, then waxed to the full. He fed himself on fruits and on seeds of the
wild grasses, on rabbits and ground-dwellers and even, one or twice, a lion’s
leavings. His beard grew out again, itching ferociously as it did it, till his
cheeks were protected from the sun once more, and his prettiness hidden as it
well should be. Pretty was for a woman. A man should be strong.

The land began to change. It was a subtle change as were all
such things on the steppe, but the hills were steeper, the air less fiercely
warm.

Water flowed more freely here. There were springs and
streams, even a river or two, and a lake bounded in reeds that took him a full
day and part of another to circle.

The cattle were fewer in this part of the world. This was a
land of birds, great flocks of them that blackened the sky.

Here with his bow he ate well, and could have eaten more
than well, could he have paused. But he was summoned, north and ever northward,
into a country of mists and soft rain, where the grass was rich and green, and
rivers broadened into chains of lakes strung like bright stones on a thread.

oOo

There at last he found the first sign that there were
horses, a scattering of prints in the mud of a lakeside, a few droppings, a day
and more old. Mares, he thought, and foals: prints no more than two of his
fingers wide, tiny and perfect, with a wobble in them that spoke of extreme
youth.

A wolfpack was following them, in hopes of catching the newborn
unawares. Of lions he saw no sign, nor had since he walked into the mist. Maybe
their gods did not like this country which was so different from their high
desert of grass.

For mares and foals he had no use, but where they were, the
stallion could not be far. He had to pause for the first dawning of excitement,
a catch in the breath, a quickening of the heart. But the track of a foal was
not the foal itself, nor did it promise him a stallion. He forced himself to
calm, gathered his wits together, and followed the tracks along the water’s
edge.

Northward round the lake and deeper into the mist, Agni
followed where the mares and their foals had gone. The wolves had kept their
distance. A flurry of tracks told of one that had grown overbold and met the
wrath of a mare. There was blood on the grass, and bits of grey fur, and the
mark of a body dragging itself away to heal.

The most skittish of Agni’s mares snorted at it, but they
were all sensible beasts. They were more interested in the horse-sign, as Agni
himself was.

He smiled at it. That was a strong mare, and large of foot,
too; which boded well for the size and quality of her stallion.

He rode swiftly now, but with great care, though the tracks
were old. Others overlaid them as he went on. This was a herd’s grazing-ground,
then, and the lakes were its watering place.

Smaller bands came and went within the larger one. He marked
the bands of mares and foals, and the yearlings with their smaller feet and
lighter traces, and the young stallions all together in a boisterous herd.

There
, he thought.
There
.

The sun was sinking fast. He camped by the broadest of the
lakes that he had found, where a ring of trees let him fashion an enclosure for
the horses. A warren of rabbits provided him with dinner, and herbs grew wild
along the shore, and fruit in the grass, red and sweet. They made a feast, he
on the fruits of his hunt, the mares on sweet grass, as the stars came out and
the moon rose.

oOo

Agni lay in a bed of fragrant grasses. The air was soft.
He slid into a dream of moonlight and a woman’s face, a fall of moon-pale hair,
and arms as white as snow and as warm as fire.

In his dream she was never his brother’s wife. She was all
his own, sleekly compliant, everything that a man could dream of.

Just before he woke, as she rode him to the gods’ country
for the third time, she swooped over him, laughing with delight; and her face
was the face of a woman days dead.

He fell gasping into the chill dawn, shaking and gagging on
the stench of her. Sweet grass and dew swept the stink away. He had spent
himself in his sleep. The sweetness of the dream was all gone in horror and in
humiliation.

As a wise man should, while he washed himself in the cold
water of the lake, shivering and spluttering, he tried to make sense of the
dream. A dream that a man remembered was the gods’ sending; that, every
tribesman knew.

It was simple enough to find the fear; the truth that he was
given to evading, that she belonged to his brother. That, by the laws of
certain gods and of his own tribe, what he did with her was a betrayal. That he
could be killed for it, and she too, or maimed for their lives long.

This was a warning, then. Strange that it came now, in this
place, while he hunted his stallion. He should be dreaming of horses; not of a
white-faced witchy woman whose gift of the gods was to drive a man mad.

He scrubbed himself until his skin stung, and turned his
face to the east where the sun hid, shrouded in mist. “Skyfather,” he said.
“Father Sun. Don’t deny me my stallion because of a thing that is—that must
be—your will. Give me my king of horses, so that I can be a king of men.”

The air was still, the water flat, not a breath of wind.
Birds had chittered and shrieked and sang; but for that moment they had gone
silent. The horses were unwontedly still.

There was no sound at all but the hiss of his breath as he
drew it in, and the beating of his heart. He might have been the only living,
walking thing that was in the world.