White Mare's Daughter (48 page)

He bowed his head as he had seen the king do. “You may go,”
he said.

In strict propriety she should wait until all choices were
made, but Yama’s mother had no desire to be proper. She rose, and her daughters
rose with her. Agni would have wagered that their belongings were all packed,
and that those were few; that the rest had long since been carried into Yama’s
tent.

Memory woke in him, of this woman deep in converse with
Rudira, speaking of plots and of things that should be done. He might have
served himself ill by sending this of all people into the enemy’s camp.

And yet if he had compelled her to stay, he would have had
an enemy in his own tent. Best to let her go.

When she departed, and without a word of farewell, either,
others rose also. Them too he granted leave. They would go to fathers,
brothers, and no doubt new husbands when the time of mourning was over.

When they had gone, they left behind more than half of the
wives and concubines and most of the daughters, and Taditi looking grimly
pleased. It was an honor to Agni that so many had stayed, had chosen him over
their own kin.

He would have to learn all their names. And the wives . . .

He found himself flushing. Patir had suffered enough for the
choice of half a dozen sisters, and he had only had to marry one. Agni stood
face to face with half a dozen wives, and all of them his by the custom of the
tribe.

He knew what was expected of him. “I welcome you,” he said.
“I take you as my father would have wished, to be mine as you were his, and to
bear my sons for the strengthening of the tribe.”

They bowed to him, submissive as women should be. Not one
offered him a bold glance or lured him with the hint of a smile. Only Taditi
would look him full in the face, and she was an aunt, and could never be his
wife.

He swallowed a sigh. A tentful of Rudiras would have worn
him to nothing and made him unfit to be king. Yet he could not help but yearn
for what he could not, and should not, have.

He put on a smile for them and sent them back to their
duties and their places. They went willingly, taking comfort perhaps in the
return to daily things, in knowing that nothing would change except the face of
the man who summoned them to his bed in the nights.

Maybe that was not so terrible, either. He was young, after
all, and not ill to look at.

oOo

He would not be expected to take up his duties until after
the mourning. That was a reprieve of sorts.

The king’s tent returned to its familiar round, the babble
of voices, babies’ cries, even a woman singing as she tended her child. Agni
escaped from it into the cold and the spit of snow; to the company of his
friends and his red stallion under him and the exhilaration of a hunt.

They brought back a pair of winter-gaunt deer, poor enough
prey but welcome. Agni gave his share to one of the smaller tents, to the widow
there, who was more than glad of it. She and her children would eat well for a
handful of days, if she was thrifty, and the deer’s hide would make a fine coat
for one of the sons.

“Generous as always, I see,” Yama said as Agni turned from
the woman’s tent. Agni had not seen him coming. He smiled at Agni, seeming
amiable, as brother should be to brother. “Do you do it because it’s well done,
or because people will think it is?”

“Should it matter?” Agni walked past his brother. It was
open rudeness, but Yama was choosing not to remark on it.

“It looks well,” Yama said, matching step with Agni. “So
you’ve taken his wives.”

Agni smiled thinly. “Were you thinking to claim them?”

Yama shrugged. “I have enough of my own. Though if they’re
too great a burden for you . . .”

“I’ll remember,” Agni said.

“I’m going to be king,” said Yama.

Agni did not pause, did not glance at him. “And how do you
intend to accomplish that? I struck the king-blow. I saw the king to his grave.
I claimed the king’s women.”

“It’s the elders who elect the king,” Yama said.

“The elders hold to custom,” said Agni. “They honor the
wishes of the one who is dead.”

“Custom,” said Yama, “yes. And the gods’ law.”

Agni’s heart went still. But Yama did not say it. Did not
challenge him.

Nor would he. To challenge Agni would be to admit that he
could not keep his own wife satisfied. More than honor, more than law to Yama
was his precious self. Yama might strike Agni with a knife out of the dark, but
he would never stand up in front of the elders of the tribes and confess
himself a cuckold.

Agni, knowing that, smiled sweetly at his brother and went
lightly on his way. Nor did Yama follow.

Maybe he fancied that he had won. Well enough if he did, if
it gave Agni a moment’s peace.

“He’s up to something else,” Patir said. They had come to
dinner in the tent that was now Agni’s, Patir and Rahim and a fair handful of
the others. To most, still as lanky as young wolves, and still unmated, too, it
was a matter for much staring about and some ribaldry, that Agni had become
such a man of substance.

Agni bore it with such fortitude as he might. There was no
ill-will in it. It was only friendship.

They sprawled at their ease in the warmth of the tent, round
the fire in its hearth of stones. Some of the smoke even wound up through the
opening in the roof. They were eating from the great pot and drinking the last
of the summer’s mead, savoring it, remembering warm air and the sweetness of
honey.

But Patir’s mind was fixed firmly in winter. “Yama has some
plan that he’s sure will make him king.”

“He can’t be king,” said Agni, “unless I’m killed. And I
don’t intend to be.”

“Still,” said Patir, “we’d all best watch your back.”

Agni laughed at him. But after they had all gone away, when
Agni lay in his sleeping-furs, buried deep and wonderfully warm, the one cold
thought lingered with him.

They could not live in the same tribe, he and Yama. Not if
one of them was king. And since that one must be Agni, Agni well might have to
kill his brother.

Yama could challenge. That was custom. Agni would win. That
was truth. Agni was the better fighter, the better hunter. But Yama could be
treacherous; and therefore, as Patir had said, Agni must watch his back.

oOo

Agni watched his back. His pack of young wolves guarded
it, turn and turn about. And the elders began to come, riding off the steppe,
windblown and raw with cold. They brought tales of winter even more brutal
elsewhere, hunting not merely thinned and difficult but shrunk to nothing,
tribes forced to wander far within their winter ranges simply to stay alive.

They had been fortunate here. There was hunting still, and
the herds could find forage. Westward, the newcomers said, it grew worse, and
word was that the farther one traveled, the more terrible it was.

“Skyfather is angry,” said an elder of the Dun Cow as he
feasted on roast kid. He sucked the meat from a bone, noisily, and wiped the
grease from his beard, and licked his fingers. “No one knows why he’s angry, or
why he’s angrier at people who live toward the sunset countries. The omens tell
us nothing. The signs are all unreadable. It’s as if he’s lost all patience.”

“All’s quiet here,” Agni said. “Our ill omen was the fall of
our king; but the rite of the bull appeased the gods.”

“Not all of us have kings ripe for the killing,” the elder
said. Because he was an elder, no one upbraided him for his callousness. He
tossed the stripped bone to the dogs and downed a full cup of kumiss. “Though
mind you, if every tribe sent its king to the gods, they might sit up and take
notice. At least they’d have to listen to so many newcomers at once.”

“That might make them even angrier,” grunted an elder of the
Spotted Hound.

“I can imagine,” someone else said; Agni did not see who it
was. “All those young fools yapping and whining at the gate.”

A snort of laughter ran round the fire. Agni was mildly
shocked by it. Elders could be horribly irreverent. It was a privilege of their
position.

A king had to be more reverent than any. Agni preserved such
aplomb as he could, saw to another round of kumiss, made certain that no one
lacked for food or drink or comfort. He received no thanks for it, though he
would have heard, and soon, if anything had failed of perfection.

They seemed content. Tomorrow was the full moon, and the
kingmaking. There were still a few elders absent; they were coming, messengers
said, but slowly, for a storm had delayed them. The sky was clear now, and
would remain clear, the priests said, until after the kingmaking.

It would be well. Agni convinced himself of that. He
maintained an air of calm, or so he hoped; did the duties of a host, saw his
guests provided with everything that they could wish for, and maintained
judicious silence when he saw one or another of them in company with one of
Yama’s followers.

Tomorrow it would be done. He would take the place that had
been made for him, and be what his father had raised him to be.

oOo

He could, in courtesy, leave his guests early, see them
well tended, and seek out his solitude. It might have served his cause better
if he had stayed, but he lacked the stomach for it.

He half expected to find Rudira in his bed, sulky as ever
and demanding that he atone for his sins of neglect. But his bed was empty.
Tomorrow one of the king’s wives—his wives—would fill it. Tonight he had it to
himself.

Briefly and rather wildly he thought of slipping out,
finding the opening in Yama’s tent, winning Rudira’s forgiveness. It would take
the whole night long, and promises of nights to come, but he could do it.

If his brother caught him tonight of all nights, he would
lose everything that he had lived for. He dropped onto his furs, wrapped them
about him, sank gratefully into their warmth.

His body would have been glad of another warmth, soft arms,
supple hips. He groaned and rolled onto his face. He would not—would
not
—go to Rudira.

One night. Only one night. Tomorrow, when he was king, he
would let himself think of her again.

oOo

On the morning of the kingmaking, the elders gathered in a
tent raised for them, heated with a fire burning sweet herbs. The latecomers
had come in near sunrise, having ridden through the night; all but the men of
the Red Deer. Those would come or they would not. The kingmaking would not wait
for them.

Agni had no part in their council. Even if he had been of
age to sit among them, they would have excluded him, because he was the chief
cause of their deliberations.

They would, he knew, settle other business first, disputes
and petitions, matters of the clans and the tribes that looked to the White
Horse. Last of all they would consider the matter that had brought them here,
the making of a king.

The women of the king’s tent had arranged a diversion for
Agni. It was a gift and a marvel. They had set up a small tent beside the
larger one and lit a fire inside, and set over it a cauldron, and filled that
with water from the river. Taditi fetched him to it with a command that he was
not inclined to disobey, and the youngest wives and concubines drew him in,
giggling like silly girls.

A bath in winter. Some might reckon it an invitation to
catch one’s death of cold. But hot water on winter-chilled body, and steam to
draw out a whole season’s worth of sweat and dirt and the inevitable vermin,
and herbs for sweetness, and a salve that Taditi had made, worked with slow
strokes into clean skin, were pure bliss.

Agni almost did not mind that these women saw him naked, and
remarked on it, too. They were not displeased, he gathered.

“So smooth,” one of them marveled, stroking his back and
sides as if he had been a horse.

They groomed him as if he had been one, too, washed and
combed his hair and plaited it with feathers and bright beads, trimmed his
beard and dressed him in clothes that were all new, even to the belt and the
boots. They were made of finest leather, and a little of the woven cloth that
traders brought from the west and the south, ornamented with beads and with
clever stitchery.

The coat was a wonder of fine work, embroidered with the
great tales of the tribes: men on horses riding out of the sunrise, women
bearing burdens and carrying children on their backs, men at war and at peace,
the sacrifice of the Stallion and the dance of the spring festival, and the
king on his sacred horsehide above the gathering of the people.

It was a wonderful coat, a glorious coat, a coat for a king.
Agni stood up in it with pride and a kind of awe. The labor of kingship he had
always known, and the power that it brought with it, but the splendor was a new
thing. His father had cared little for pomp and show. He had been a plain man,
if never simple.

Agni might choose to be beautiful. Sometimes. For his own
pleasure and for the honor of his people.

He smiled at the women whose gift this was. “I thank you,”
he said. The words were little enough, but he thought they understood.

“Go on,” Taditi said with the roughness that in her always
masked great emotion. “Show the men what a king you’ll make.”

Agni went out as casually as he could. As he had more than
half expected, his friends were waiting for him, a guard of honor round the
tent that the women had raised. They were remarkably handsome, too, he noticed,
fresh-plaited hair and best coats and new boots here and there. They whistled
and hooted at Agni.

“O beautiful!” Rakti warbled. “O light of our eyes!”

Agni chased him down and thumped him, but the others were
quicker on their feet; and he did not want to spoil his wonderful new coat. He
settled for a glare and a snarl all round, which they met with a singular lack
of concern.