White Mare's Daughter (39 page)

Then he moved, and the world came alive again, whisper of
wind in the reeds by the lakeside, cry of bird, and somewhere, somewhere not
far at all, the shrill call of a stallion.

That was his answer. With lightened heart and hollow
stomach, for he would not waste the time it would take to break his fast, he
scrambled clothes and belongings together, gathered the horses, and went in
search of the horse that had uttered the cry.

oOo

It was not an easy hunt or a brief one. He found where the
herd had settled for the night, but it was some time gone from there, leaving
trampled grass and droppings behind. Somewhere in the night, wolves had brought
down a foal: a weakling from what was left of it, thin and small. But the
tracks of its kin were large and their stride long. There would be good horses
in this herd.

It was the herd of mares, from the evidence of the foal’s
carcass, but the young stallions would not be far from it. Agni followed it
away from that largest of the lakes, up a long and relentless slope, to a windy
summit and a field of grass.

It was not the top of a hill as he had thought, but a
lifting of the land itself, a new and higher plain. The grass was rich there,
and streams ran through it, and some of them runneled down off the plain into
the place of lakes below.

The sun came out as he stood on the height, burned away the
mists and swept the dew from the grass. It was later than he had thought,
nearly noon. He followed the track that had led him so far, narrow and well
beaten and somewhat circuitous, as if generations of horses had made it on
their quest for the best grazing.

Then at last, as the sun touched the zenith, he found the
herd. He left his mares hobbled and grazing well apart from it, and crawled the
last of it through the high grass, drawn by the sounds of horses at their ease:
snortings, snufflings, the tearing of grass, the squeal of a mare.

There they were in a hollow just below him, in and out of a
little river: mares and foals as he had known there would be, and their
stallion mounted on a fine dun mare. He was a bay himself, rough-coated,
heavy-boned, coarse and hammerheaded, and riddled with old scars. One eye was a
puckered scar; his ears were torn. He had no beauty, but his strength was
incontestable.

He was too old for Agni’s choosing, too long and
incontestably the king. Just so was Agni’s own father. Agni, watching him, knew
a stab of homesickness.

The stallion finished his duty, slid off the mare and shook
himself and went calmly off to graze. She, who was young and a beauty, cried
her protest; danced and tossed her head and curled her tail over her back,
demanding that he pleasure her again.

He ignored her. He knew his strength, that one; and no
importunate young mare was going to move him.

She, being a mare and in high heat, was not inclined to
accept a refusal. She teased him. She tormented him. When he granted her no
more than a lift of the head and a curl of the lip, she left him in disgust.

She did not, Agni took note, leave the herd, nor did she
seek another stallion. That was strength, too; to so compel a mare. Mares did
as they pleased. It took a strong stallion to master them.

Agni sighed a little. A hand of years ago, or two hands,
this would have been a mount fit for a king.

And yet, thought Agni, such a sire would have sons. His
mares were very fine, fat and sleek, and taller than the run of horses in the
south. Most were duns and bays; a few were red chestnut.

There were no greys. One of the foals, a colt, might be
black when he shed his foal-coat; he was the color of mist over dark water. He
was very fine, and in a hand of years would make some tribesman a great
war-stallion.

He had a brother. Agni knew it in his skin. Somewhere near,
the young stallions would be grazing. Not all would be this stallion’s sons;
some might have come from other herds, banded together in the safety of
numbers, and one of them, perhaps, might be suffered to breed the old
stallion’s daughters, since he would not do so himself.

But it was a son of this stallion that Agni wanted,
somewhere between three and five summers old. Old enough to carry a man. Young
enough to accept him, once he had won the battle of wills.

Some tribesmen chose younger horses, as smaller and perhaps
more tractable. Yama had done that; had come home with a long yearling, and
ridden him, too, and lamed him with bearing the weight of so big a man before
the colt was strong enough to do it.

No law forbade such a thing. It only required that, in order
to be reckoned a man, a tribesman must hunt and tame and ride home on a
stallion from the wild herds.

Yama had a gift, Agni granted him that. He had blinded a
startling number of people to the truth: that he was a weak man, a poor
horseman, an indifferent hunter. Anyone else who returned with a yearling would
have been laughed out of the tribe. But not Yama. Yama conducted himself as if
he had won a king of stallions.

Agni meant to win such a one in truth. To ride into the camp
on the back of a great lord of horses, a battle-mount for a king, a sire of
herds that would be. He had dreamed death with a woman’s face—but he had not
dreamed defeat at the hooves of a horse.

He circled the herd. With all the cunning that he had
learned in hunting the shyest of prey—for he was a lord of hunters, as Yama was
not—he made himself invisible, inaudible, without scent, not even as
perceptible as a wind in the grass.

The old mare, the leader of the herd, raised her head and
snorted at a rabbit underfoot, but not at Agni slipping past. He could have
tugged at her tail, if he had been such a fool.

oOo

The hollow narrowed at its eastward end, and then widened
again, growing shallow, till it was level with the plain. There on the slope,
he found the young stallions.

They were a boisterous lot, racing one another up to the
plain and back again, meeting in mock battle, rearing and striking and feinting
for each other’s throats. They kept none of the order that one found in the
herd of mares. They did much as they pleased, but in pairs and threes and
handfuls.

No self-respecting wolf would trouble them, though a lion
might, if he were hungry enough. The predators, and therefore the greatest
wariness, went with the mares and the weakling foals.

Agni lay in comfort, chin on folded arms, and watched the
stallions play. There were no yearlings here. Those would have their own herd,
and a gaunt and scraggling thing it would be, too, as they learned to live in
the great world apart from their mothers.

These had survived that terrible year. They were the strong
ones, the princes who, if the gods were kind, would find their own mares and
become kings in turn.

He found the one who must be the lesser sire, the one whom
the old king permitted to breed his daughters. He was a handsome horse, tall
and well made, but Agni did not like the set of his shoulder. Nor did he have
the light on him that one looked for in a king.

He was a lesser creature, a favorite. He would not rule when
the old king’s time came. He lacked the strength of will.

Agni searched among the others, looking for those who had a
look of the old sire. The hammerhead was not common. The strong bones, the
height, the deep slope of shoulder and the strong rounding of croup—those he
found, and they were as fine as he had hoped.

One in particular drew his eye; caught it, then when it
wandered away, drew it back with a toss of the head. This one was, perhaps,
four summers old. He was young yet, less beautiful than he would be when he was
grown; his feet were too big, his neck too snaky long. But there was a light in
him, a promise of splendor.

He turned his head to snap teeth at an importunate younger
brother, and Agni’s breath caught. For a moment he was among the tribe again,
celebrant of the sacrifice, looking into the quiet dark eye of the Stallion.

This too was a red horse, a chestnut, taller and more
elegant than most. But the sacrifice had had no white on him at all. This one
bore on his brow a curve of white like a crescent moon.

Horse Goddess’ mark, as clear as if she had risen out of the
earth and drawn it with her own hand. Agni let his breath out slowly.

Yes
, he thought.
Yes
. This was the one. This was his stallion.

Agni returned to the place where he had left his mares.
They were much as he had left them, grazing in the contentment of their own
small herd.

The spotted mare, he thought, would come into season soon.
The dun sisters would not be far behind her. It was rather a wonder that none
of the young stallions had found them yet.

Well; and he had been careful to leave them downwind, and
they were in no need of a larger herd. He had asked for the two duns in
particular, because they were indeed sisters, daughters of the king’s old
stallion, and they had not been parted since they were yearmates together. The
spotted mare seemed pleased to be part of their company, and untempted by the
scents of other herds.

Now they would do what he had hoped they would do. But first
he must be certain that when they did it, he had the means to secure his
stallion.

He searched the whole of the country round about, noting
where the herds and their offshoots grazed, how they traveled, where they
paused for the night. It was a matter of days of searching, and of nights
camped out of sight and scent of the young stallions.

On the day when the spotted mare was in clear but not yet
full heat and the dun sisters had begun to show signs of following suit, Agni
found the place that, perhaps, the gods had meant for him. It was near the
plain’s edge, a small deep valley with cliff-sheer sides.

The entrance was narrow, but more than wide enough to admit
a horse. A fall of water ran down the cliffside into a cold clear pool. A
little stand of trees grew there, slender and tall, too thick in the trunk for
spearshafts but admirable for building a barrier across the valley’s entrance.
If Agni had ventured to pray for any one particular place, he would have prayed
for this.

He camped there that night, setting the mares free to graze.
In the morning he set to work cutting down the trees—with thanks to the gods
and to Earth Mother for giving him such a gift. Then he built a wall and a
gate, with posts set deep, and branches and withies woven through them and
lashed with thongs. The dun mare who had carried the burden of axe and adze,
thongs and bone saw and every other thing that he had reckoned useful, won a
bit of wild honeycomb for her service.

He built the wall as strong as if it must withstand a war.
And so it well might, once the stallion woke to awareness of his captivity.
Agni built it taller than himself and wove it tight, and made a bar for the
gate.

Then at last, on the third day since he began, with the
spotted mare in full heat and the dun mares close to it, he left the sisters
but took the spotted mare and led her to the place where the stallions liked to
graze. She was none too happy to leave the others, but once he had won the
argument she was willing enough to do as he bade.

The stallions were not yet in their field, but if their
pattern held, they would come to it soon. There they would find a mare all
alone as it seemed, nibbling on the choicest of the grass. Agni they would
neither see nor scent, buried deep in the grass close by the mare.

Or so he hoped. He had anointed himself with grass and with
the mare’s droppings, an odorous perfume but sweeter to stallion-nostrils than
man-scent could ever be.

So disguised, in hunter’s stillness, he lay waiting for the
stallions’ coming.

oOo

They came as they always did, bright in the morning,
racing one another, pausing for mock battles. The leader, Agni had seen
already, was the red stallion with the goddess’ mark on his brow. His friend
and rival, the whitenosed bay who was suffered to breed the herd-king’s
daughters, was not in evidence. He was doing his duty, then.

Agni let out a slow breath. That was well, and well indeed.
Of all the stallions, that one could claim the mare first; though he might
fight for it, and lose. But the one he would have fought with was the one whom
Agni yearned after. One or both might have been killed or maimed. And that,
Agni was glad not to risk.

The herd of young stallions stopped short on the field’s
edge, heads up, nostrils flared, struck motionless by the sight of a lone mare
in their pasture. She ignored them, though her ears flicked. She knew they were
there; and, in the way of mares, chose to be oblivious to their existence.

One of the young stallions loosed a low whickering call. The
mare took no notice. The red stallion however wheeled, ears flat back, and
lunged at the colt who had been so bold.

The colt retreated hastily. The red stallion glared at the
whole pack of them. One or two might challenge, but lowered their heads, biding
their time.

Satisfied, for the moment, the chestnut stepped delicately
toward the mare. He was at his most beautiful, and deliberately so: nostrils
wide, neck up and arched, knees lifted high. She, whose beauty was chiefly in
her good sense, did not even do him the favor of a glance.

If he had been a man, Agni would have reckoned him insulted.
He fluttered his nostrils at her. She made no response. He rumbled in his
throat, almost a growl, almost a song.

She looked up then, just as he ventured, at the farthest
stretch of his neck, to brush her nape with his breath. Her ears flattened. He
quivered a little and mouthed submission. She lunged with teeth bared. He
withdrew to a prudent distance. She went back to her grazing.

Agni bit down hard on laughter. There were men in plenty who
maintained, often at great length, that the stallion ruled the herd and
commanded the mares. Agni, who had eyes and ears, and who had grown up as
brother to the Mare’s servant, knew better.