White Mare's Daughter (62 page)

Agni tensed to bolt, but held himself still. “That’s Rahim’s
life if the baby dies. If I give way to these people. If I don’t—”

“If you don’t, you don’t think you can hold this country.
What makes you think you’re holding it now? You’re an unwelcome guest, plied
with everything they can think of to persuade you to move on. You haven’t held
a single town. You’ve gone where they’ve led you, and let them lure you deeper
into their country. How is that a conquest? What have you done but see the
sights?”

“You are telling me,” Agni said, “that I should bring war on
them. That I should force them as Rahim forced this woman.”

“I am telling you that you’ve been trusting too much in the
gods and too little in your own wits. What do you want here? Do you want to
travel from town to town, taking what each will give, then moving on, all the
way to the end of the world? That’s what they’ll have you do.”

“What does that have to do with Rahim’s mistake?”

“I suppose it was an honest mistake,” Taditi said. “Or
honest idiocy at least. It’s costing a life, maybe two. Three, if you submit
him to these people’s justice.”

“I don’t have to,” Agni said. “They know nothing of
fighting. If they curse us, I’ll invoke our own gods. There’s nothing they can
do to us.”

“Nothing,” said Taditi, “except refuse to welcome you
anywhere you go. They won’t feed you, lodge you, give you comfort. You’ll be
outcast here as you were among the tribes.”

“But here,” said Agni, “I can take what I need, and hold it
by force of arms.”

“Surely,” she said. “Three hundred of you. Uncounted
multitudes of them. Maybe they won’t fight—maybe they can’t. What will you
wager that they won’t set their bodies between you and whatever you reach for?
How many can you kill before you sicken with it? How ruthless are you prepared
to be?”

Agni had brought her here to say such things to him—to speak
the words that no one else had the wits or the courage to say. He did not have
to like what she said, or be glad that she had said it. “You’re telling me that
I have to let them kill Rahim.”

“I’m not telling you anything,” she said, “but that your
fool of a friend has struck a spark that can burn to ashes everything that you
hope for here. What do you hope for? Do you even know?”

“I hope,” said Agni, “I want—the gods want me to be king.
They cast me out of my tribe. They sent me here. Now, for a few moments’ play,
we lose it all.”

“That was not play,” Taditi said with startling venom. She
drove Agni back with it, till the wall caught him.

Her face filled his world. “Understand something, boy. I
love you, I’ve loved you since you were born. I raised you after your mother
died. I brought you up, as much as anyone did. But this was no mere error. It
was not play. It was sheer wanton heedlessness. I say let him die for it.”

“He didn’t know,” said Agni, and hated himself: it came out
weak, little better than a whine.

“He knew the price you paid for a rape you never committed.
It should have occurred to him that this was rape, too. He’s not a simple fool.
He was born to be a chieftain, to be head of a clan. He should have
understood.”

“You are merciless,” Agni said.

“I believe,” she said, “in this country they call it the
Lady’s mercy.”

Agni’s head was pounding. He rolled it against the wall,
taking what pleasure he could in the movement.

Behind Taditi he saw women gathering, heard sounds that made
his heart grow cold. Their goddess was not going to spare anyone. She was
taking the child even as Agni cowered there, taking it back to herself.

Just so had Earth Mother done with the woman of the Red
Deer. But that had been no fault of Agni’s, except in that he had fathered the
child. It had lived and died out of his knowledge, and its mother with it.

Rahim had done a worse thing than that. He had begun no
life, only ended it.

A warrior who killed in war, who took a woman captive, who
slew her menchildren lest they grow up to be his enemies—he was an honorable
man, with the honor of war. There was no honor in this. There was no glory.
Only blood and pain.

How could Agni understand, when no one else could?

“Maybe because you have more wits than most,” Taditi
answered him. “And maybe because your mother was Horse Goddess’ own. Through
her you come of a different blood. Sometimes when you catch yourself off guard
you don’t think as the others do. You see differently. You understand things
that leave the other tribesmen baffled.”

“
You
are of the
tribes,” Agni said, thrusting the words at her. “How do you know these things?”

“I’m a woman,” Taditi said. She stepped back, freeing him
from the weight of her shadow. “You want me to tell you what to think. I tell
you what I think. If you want to be a king, you have to have thoughts of your
own. You’ll find a way out of this tangle.”

“Alone?”

“However you best may.”

oOo

Agni left them all to it, the girl weeping as she gave up
her baby’s life in blood, the women weeping with her, and Taditi standing in grim
silence. He would have liked to see what happened when they noticed her, but he
had to go away. He had to escape those walls.

It was very early morning, just short of sunrise, cool but
with a promise of strong heat later. Barefoot, bare-chested, in the trousers
that he had snatched when he was roused from sleep, he was comfortable enough.

There were people about, a surprising number of them. Most,
to his amazement, were men. They dandled children or stood about with floured
hands as if they had come from the baking; or they were armed as if for the
hunt. They surrounded the Mother’s house, staring at it, dark-eyed and silent.

He was aware, abruptly, that he had no weapon. Even his
meat-knife lay forgotten in the room where he had slept. He had no defense but
his hands.

This country had corrupted him indeed, if he would leave his
bed without at least a knife. He half-turned to go back, to fetch all his
weapons, but he could not go back into that house.

If that was cowardice, so be it. He would trust in these
innocents, that none would rise and slaughter him in the place of the fool
Rahim.

He walked through them, and they made no move to stop him.
In the camp just beyond, his people were beginning to stir. Some had come out
to stare, a few with drawn knives, watchful; but none offered provocation.

He did not enter the camp but walked past it. They called to
him from it. “Agni! Agni prince! Is it true? Is there a war?”

“Not yet,” he called back.

“We heard they killed Rahim,” someone said.

“Rahim is alive,” said Agni, more grimly than he wanted to;
but he could not lighten his voice. “Stay here, be quiet. Don’t provoke
anything. Wait till I come back.”

“Where are you going?” That was Tillu, freed of messages and
charges but clearly ready to go wherever Agni went.

Agni looked him in the face. “I’m going to talk to the gods.
I must go alone.”

“Unarmed? Half naked?”

“As the gods call me,” Agni said. “Look after my people
here. See that they stay out of trouble.”

“First tell them what happened,” Tillu said, “or they’ll be
running riot in the city.”

Agni’s brows went up. “You didn’t tell them?”

“It’s not mine to tell,” said Tillu.

Agni sighed. No, it was not. It was Agni’s burden, and his
choice: to bear it in silence while the rumors ran rampant, or afflict his
people with the truth.

He raised his voice for all nearby to hear. “Rahim took a
woman who wasn’t willing. She was pregnant; she’s losing the child. Their law
demands his life if the child dies.”

A murmur ran through the tribesmen. There was a growl in it,
a shiver of danger. Agni pitched his voice to quell it. “I go to ask the gods
what to do. Do nothing till I come back. Swear to it.”

Tillu, who was closest, swore for them all. Not everyone was
glad that he did it, but once it was done, no one tried to undo it.

Agni nodded in the face of their silence, and walked away
from them. No one moved to follow.

Mitani was grazing with others of the horses in the field
near the camp. Agni took him as he was, with halter and rope, and rode him away
from the city, up a long hill that rose above the lake. As he rode the sun came
up, shedding a long golden light across that green country.

At the hill’s summit he slid from Mitani’s back, hobbled him
and left him to graze. Agni sat at the very top, with all the world spread out
below: field and wood, river and lake, and the circles of cities stretching as
far as he could see. Some were larger, some smaller, but each signified untold
hundreds of people. And every one worshipped Earth Mother, ignorant of the
younger gods: men in submission to women, and women ruling like kings.

While he sat there, a flock of birds rose fluttering and
chattering from a little grove of trees. Just as they reached the level of his
eyes, a dark shape hurtled down out of the sun. A hawk, too swift almost to
see.

Straight in front of Agni he struck. Feathers flew. He
plummeted a dizzying distance, clear to the ground below, and in each claw he
gripped a dying bird.

Agni let his breath out slowly. The gods were seldom so
clear in their omens, or so prompt with them, either.

Take this country, yes. Make himself lord of it. Rule it as
the hawk ruled the lesser creatures of the air.

And what of Rahim?

To that they gave him no answer, or none that he could
perceive. A man of the tribes would punish Rahim, but mildly: a few blows with
a horseman’s whip, or the taking of one of his horses. He had, after all,
committed no crime against one of his people.

But Agni could not forget the girl’s face, how she had
looked at him, how she had doubled up in pain as her womb began to empty
itself. Rahim in his incomprehension, heedless arrogant boy, could not at all
understand what he had done.

Agni had loved him, still loved him. But this transgression
Agni could not forgive.

Agni had never thought of himself as an implacable man. He
was a man whom women loved, whom men were pleased to call friend. This hard
cold thing that he felt inside of himself, that was new. It was as heavy as the
collar that he still wore, that he seldom took off, the twisted ring of gold
and amber.

It came from the same place, from the people of this
country. It had the weight of an oath, though he had sworn none; or none that
he was aware of.

Was that what these people had bought from him? Not only his
quiescence, but a portion of his honor? And with it, his loyalty?

He shivered in the sun. The wind tugged playfully at his
hair, that was loose, fallen out of its braid. He raked it out of his face and
drew up his knees and set his chin on them, knotted tight, glaring into blue
infinity.

The world was not supposed to be complicated. He was
supposed to be king of the White Horse people, sire a son to be king after him,
rule the tribe and lead its wars, and when his time came, go into the earth in
the sacrifice of kings.

He should not be here on this hilltop in the sunset country,
contemplating the death of his friend. His friend who was irretrievably simple.
Who would never understand why he had to die.

That was what it was to be a king. He could hear his
father’s voice saying it. “A king must choose for the people,” Rama had said.
“Not for one man, or even for several, but for them all.”

“Even these people who are no kin of mine at all?” Agni
asked of the sky.

The sun shone down. The birds sang, returned to their copse
and their contentment now that they had given due sacrifice to their lord the
hawk. Mitani grazed peacefully. Now and then he snorted or stamped at a fly.

Agni unknotted and lay flat on the grass. His trousers bound
him, hot leather, a swiftly waxing annoyance. He peeled out of them and lay
naked.

The sun pressed on him like a hand. He felt the heat of it
on his fair skin, but it was pleasant, with just a hint of edge to keep it from
cloying.

He spread his arms to brace himself against the wheeling of
the heavens. If he let go, he would fall into the sun.

His tribe was taken from him. He was cut off from his kin.
He was outcast for a crime that he had never committed.

He had not let himself think of it, not once his new tribe
began to gather to him. But here, in the wake of Rahim’s folly, he could no
longer run away from it.

Either he took this country and ruled it, or he turned and
fled and withered into nothing. Flight had a greater allure than he liked to
admit. An outcast, a nameless man, a creature without presence or life or
substance in the world—how restful. The gods could do nothing but kill him; and
that would be a welcome thing.

He had been born to be a king. Such a king: lying on a
hilltop, naked but for a collar of gold. His rod had stiffened and come erect,
as if in challenge to the sun. Earth Mother held him in her warm embrace.

He turned as one in a dream, and as in a dream she took him
in her arms. He made slow love to her, in the warmth and the green coolness of
her body, face buried in breasts that smelled richly of earth and grass and
flowers. She whispered in a voice as soft as the wind, stroked him with a touch
as light as air. When at last the seed burst out of him, hot and potent, a
great sigh escaped her.

He lay on the grass, spent. The sun was hot on his back;
burning. The grass was bruised beneath him. He was all stained with it.

He rose stiffly, stumbling. It was a long rocky way down to
the lake, but to the lake he was determined to go.

He did not try to mount or ride Mitani. The stallion slipped
his hobble with disturbing ease and followed.

Agni skidded down the last of the slope, fell and rolled,
and plunged gasping into icy water. It was as cold as snowmelt, and clean. It
scoured the stains from his body and the confusion from his mind. It cast him
on the stony shore, with the sun to dry him and his stallion bending over him,
sniffing curiously at his hair.