White Mare's Daughter (55 page)

“Do you fancy that you’ll lead us?”

Agni met that level stare. “I know that the gods set me in
front of the rest. If their blessing holds, I’ll be a king in the sunset
country. But I’m not a king yet. Nor do I ask to be. I only ask that you ride
with me.”

“Even to death, or the world’s ending?”

“Wherever the gods decree.”

The warleader nodded, grim as ever, but a spark had
brightened his eye. “I’ll do it. I don’t speak for the rest, but I’m willing.”

The others glanced at one another. It was all agreed, Agni
knew that. They were only feigning this last debate, to keep the stranger off
balance.

He could not tell whether they would go as the dark-browed
warleader had said he would go. Many looked as if they would refuse.

Yet, after what no doubt they reckoned a judicious pause,
they nodded, one after another.

“We’ll go,” one said, a man as fair as the other was dark,
so fair that though he was a man of middle years he had hardly more beard than
a boy. He stroked what there was of it, nodding, frowning at Agni. “Yes, we’ll
brave the dark places. But not in your name. You we don’t know.”

“You know Skyfather,” Agni said, “and the Thunderer, and the
lords of the storm. I ride in their names. And you?”

“For Skyfather and for the burning god and for the lords of
blood and battle,” the fair man said, “we ride together.”

“That will do,” said the dark man.

It would more than do. But Agni could not in wisdom let them
see how relieved he was. He smiled, nodded, did his best to look as if he had
never expected any other choice.

The armies of west and east settled together in camp, if
briefly, for time was passing. Agni as the leader of the eastern tribes was
admitted among the warleaders, but they made it clear that if he would be more
than they, he must earn it.

He was not inclined to argue that. These were seasoned men,
men of power and substance, rich in cattle and horses. He beside them was a
ragtag boy with a pack of restless young wolves. But if they could make common
cause, then that was all that was needed. The gods led them. Nothing else need
matter.

Taditi did not happen to agree. These men had brought women
with them, a few only, favorite wives or bold-spirited concubines to keep them
warm of nights. She went among the tents—prowling, Agni would not quite call
it—and came back with a face as grim as the dark warleader’s, and even less
forgiving of youthful follies. “You are too humble,” she said.

Agni mimed vast astonishment. “Why, aunt! I’ve never been
accused of humility before.”

“You’ve been accused of idiocy more than once,” she said.
“It never hurt you badly, but you never led an army before, either. They’re
saying in the tents that the men are laughing together at the eastern boy, and
telling one another that you’ll be an easy one to command. You’re no one to
reckon with, they say, you with your callow boys and your meek manner.”

“You’re trying to provoke me,” Agni said.

“If the truth provokes you,” said Taditi, “then I’m not the
one to regret it.”

Agni propped himself on his elbow in the heaped furs of his
bed. He would not gratify her with a flash of temper.

“‘Callow’? They said that?”

“And meek,” she said, “and no threat to any man. The women
reckon you pleasant to look at. You might even make a man if you lift your head
a little and look their husbands in the eye.”

That stung. It must have shown on his face: Taditi’s
laughter was like a lash of cold rain.

“I’m the youngest of them by a hand of years,” he said.
“I’ve never led more than a double handful in war. Should I declare myself
king, and give them honest cause to laugh at me?”

“Carry yourself like a king,” she said, “and the rest will
follow.”

The taste of bitterness filled his mouth. “What, as I
carried myself when they cast me out of the tribe?”

“Stop that,” she said, sharp as a slap. “You were conspired
against. And you will be again, unless you act against it. You owe respect to
your elders, but those elders owe you respect as the gods’ own. They’ve no
leader here, no one man who hears them out and then decides for them all.
They’ll quarrel and scatter before they come through the wood.”

“They have a leader,” Agni said. “The dark man, the one I spoke
to—”

“He speaks for them more often than not,” she said, “but his
tribe is small and his strength limited. There’s also some doubt as to his
loyalty. Do you mark how different he looks? He’s kin to the forest people. He
speaks their language and can command them to a degree, but if it comes to a
choice between the tribes and the forest people, no one knows which he’ll
choose.”

“Well then,” Agni said. “The fair one, the one everyone’s
eyes seemed to rest on. Surely he can command them when he’s so minded.”

“Not he nor any other of the western tribesmen,” Taditi
said. “Why do you think the gods sent you? They need someone from outside, one
of them but set apart, with the strength of will to hold them together, and a
little magic, too.”

Agni snorted. “Will I may have. I’ve been called stubborn
often enough. But there’s no magic in me.”

“You don’t need feathers and chants and a bone flute to
bring men to your call. You did it among the White Horse people and in most of
the tribes to the west of it. Now do it here.”

“But I don’t know what I did.”

“Does that matter? Just do it.”

oOo

Taditi had always been much too wise to endure. Agni lay
awake longer than he meant to, chewing over the things she had said. Ridiculous
to expect a raw boy to set himself above seasoned warleaders. Worse than
ridiculous to castigate him for acting as a youth of his age should do.

Yet how proper was anything that he did? He was exiled. He
should be nameless, friendless, hunted wherever he dared to show his face. Not
lying in comfort in a tent, with a woman to tend him and a whole army to do his
bidding. He the outcast lived as well as he ever had when he was a prince; and
had a greater following, too.

It was all skewed about at the gods’ whim. If he had
misheard them, or never heard them at all, and the whole of this riding was a
delusion—

That path he dared not walk. He had not asked any of the
youth of the White Horse to follow him when he fled the tribe. They had done it
of their own accord. He must trust that what he did, he did by the gods’ will.

If he did that, then he must do as Taditi urged him to do.
He must carry himself like a king. Even if it ended as it had at the
kingmaking, he could not fail to do it.

These people knew what he was and why he had left his tribe.
He had made no secret of it. No more had they dwelt on it. It was not their
tribe nor their dishonor. If he made enemies they would crush him with this
thing, but while they remained his friends, they chose to ignore it.

The world was not a simple place. By some jest of the gods,
Agni had been set high in it. They gave him no choice in the end but to do as
they willed.

Walk like a king, Taditi had said. Think like one. Expect
that people would do as Agni bade them, and never doubt that they would obey.

It was no more or less than he had been taught to do, as his
father’s son. Here where he had not been born to rule, where he must earn it,
he walked into the circle of elders as the sun rose on a fair morning.

He had seen as he came there how no one seemed inclined to
move. They might be camped in this place for the summer, for all that he could
tell.

He had learned that the dark warleader’s name was Tillu and
the fair one’s was Anshan. Agni spoke to Tillu, who sat as a leader sits,
despite what Taditi had said of him. “Tell me, man of the Stone Tree people.
Can the people of the wood be persuaded to guide us through it?”

There was murmuring, as he had expected, against the upstart
who would not take his proper place on the edge of the circle and listen meekly
to the words of his elders. But Tillu answered him straightly enough, with no
apparent reluctance. “Some may. Are you asking me to see to it?”

“I am asking,” Agni said, “that we prepare to ride as soon
as may be, but that we not ride blind. If there is a way through the wood, if
we may come through it safely and in good time, can we find it?”

“We may try,” Tillu said.

oOo

Agni left the elders to their leisure. He had no doubt
that once he was gone, they were not merciful. But if Tillu did as Agni asked,
and if in doing it speeded their departure, Agni did not care what the rest
said or thought.

Aside from the warleaders, this was an army of young men. So
were all armies. Men who did not fight well died before their beards went grey.
The greatest numbers were always the boys and the new-made men.

These were Agni’s own agemates, agemates in the hundreds
that he had brought to this gathering. With them he was at ease. If they were
hostile, he could face them down.

Mostly they were not. He walked through the camp with Rahim and
Patir, Gauan and a handful of the others who had come here with him, and as he
walked he gathered a band of young men.

They followed him here as their fellows had on the steppe.
He did not think he did anything or said anything apart from greeting this one,
smiling at that one, watching as another practiced hurling his spear through a
ring no larger than a man’s hand, and cheering when he succeeded.

It was nothing he made himself do. His father had taught him
the way of it when he was small, how to be welcomed among the people, till it
was as natural to him as the breath he drew.

If it would bring these people together and persuade them to
begin the ride into the west, then Agni would do it till the sun went down, and
into the night; and rise at dawn and carry on with it, till he knew the name of
every tribe here, and the names of many of its men, too.

Names were part of a man’s soul. If one had a man’s name,
one had his attention. Then one could become his master—or his friend.

oOo

On the second day since Agni came into the camp, the elder
Tillu paid him the honor of seeking him out. Agni was inspecting the horses,
seeing to their feet, marking those that were looking a little worn and those
that had taken this wound or that on the road or in the herd. Mitani was taking
an interest, following just behind him, thrusting an inquisitive nose between
Agni and the bruised hoof that he was tending.

He laughed and thrust it away. As it retreated, he met
Tillu’s dark stare.

Agni kept the smile. Maybe Tillu warmed to it a little. On
that terrible scarred face it was hard to tell.

Agni finished tending the hoof, left the horse to his rider,
straightened and said, “A fair morning to you, man of the Stone Tree.”

“And to you, man of the eastern tribes,” Tillu said. He tilted
a brow at Mitani. “That one thinks the world of you.”

“And I of him,” Agni said, stroking the sleek red neck.
Mitani lipped his hand, found nothing there, nipped and wheeled and fled in
mock terror at the blow that never even began.

Agni grinned to see him go. Even Tillu proved himself
capable of a wintry smile. “If your king of horses will give you leave,” he
said, “there’s somewhat that you should see.”

Agni nodded to Rahim, who moved on to the next of the
waiting horses, and began the inspection that Agni had set aside.

Rahim would do well. Agni followed Tillu, and Patir followed
them both, and a handful of young men who might simply have been curious, but
who were conveniently well armed.

Tillu marked that, too, with a glance and a raise of the brows.
Agni met the glance with a bland expression. He had not asked to be guarded.
They did it because they chose to—as Mitani followed him. That was unusual in
that the stallion did not wander off as they left the horselines, but continued
in Agni’s wake.

Tillu led them all through the camp toward the looming
shadow of the wood. Agni had found that his eye tended to slip away from it, to
see it but not to see it, as if it were a shape of living darkness. Yet from so
close it was only a wall of trees, with outriders straggling along the hillside
and clustering by the stream.

In the shade of such a copse, men were sitting. Agni did not
at first see what was strange about them, except that they were all dark-haired
men. They were dressed in tanned hides, and not a great deal of those in the
warmth of the morning.

Most of what he had taken for rough-tanned leather, he saw
as he came closer, was their own skin, weatherworn and thick with black hair. One
was even naked, though that was not immediately obvious: he wore belt and
baldric, long bone-hafted knife and slung bow, and his burly chest was hung
about with ornaments of feather and stone and bone.

His head was crowned with the skull and ears and branching
antlers of a stag. Its hide, hooves and all, hung down like a cloak. He looked
as if he had been embraced by the shell of the deer.

His body was thick-carved with scars, knotted and roped with
them. Whorls of blue and black made a mask of his face.

It was, beneath the patternings, a face like Tillu’s, but
heavier, stonier. Tillu, Agni could see then, was a halfling of these people,
his features fined and—if one could believe it—softened by the crossing of
eastern blood. This was the pure breed, one of Earth Mother’s own, like a man
carved out of stone.

As Agni took in the sight of him, so he took in the sight of
Agni. Agni could not tell what he was thinking. His face was empty of
expression, his eyes black stones. Whether he saw a king or a callow boy, a man
like himself or a creature of another kind than his own, Agni did not know.

Tillu beside this one was as familiar as any tribesman.
“These men will guide us,” he said.

“Do they ask anything in return?” Agni inquired.