White Mare's Daughter (63 page)

He pulled himself up and onto Mitani’s back. Mitani shifted
a little, uneasy, but at the touch of Agni’s hand on his neck he quieted. “I’m
well, brother,” Agni said, and did his best to believe it.

He sat on that warm damp back, looked up at the steep slope
down which he had come, and considered that his trousers were at the top of it,
and he as naked as he was born.

He found that he did not care. He might when the numbness of
body and spirit went away, when he woke to the doubled pain of the sun’s
burning and bare skin on horsehair, but like a priest in a rite, he felt
nothing. It was a sacrifice.

oOo

He rode back as he was, and as he rode the sun dried him.
The city was quiet. Too quiet, maybe. People were not out and about as they
should be on as fine a day as this. They stayed close to their houses and to
each other, and fell silent when he rode by.

Maybe that was only bemusement. He must have been a wild
sight.

His own people had kept to their camp as he had commanded.
He did not pause to praise them, nor did he set them free. They followed him
nonetheless, silent as the people of the city were.

The Mother’s house was most quiet of all. No sound came out
of it; none of the wailing that would have marked a death among the tribes.
Only a bleak silence.

Agni left Mitani on the doorstep, took a steadying breath
and stepped into the dimness of walls and roof. The house was full of people,
and yet it smelled of emptiness. Empty heart, empty soul.

The hawk had taken two birds. Agni remembered that, seeing
the still figure in the midst of the women. The girl had died, bled out her
life while he played lover to the earth.

Her Mother sat at her head, still and heavy as stone. Agni
looked about for Tillu.

For once the western chieftain was nowhere to be seen. Nor
was there time to hunt for him.

Agni met that flat dark stare and said deliberately in the
only tongue he knew, “You will have your justice. That I swear to you. But you
will pay for it. This city is mine, and all that is in it. I take it in return
for the life of a fool.”

Taditi, who understood, fixed him with an unreadable stare.
Agni could not escape it, but his eyes were on the Mother. He spoke with signs,
as best he could. “The man will die. I promise you. But your city belongs to
me.”

The Mother did not respond. Nor did it matter. Agni left her
and went in search of Rahim.

Patir and Gauan had looked after him well, had kept him shut
in a storeroom. It was not an ill prison, filled as it was with wine and bread
and fine things to eat, smoked meats, cheeses, fruits in jars and in barrels.

Rahim had indulged rather freely in the wine, and fed
himself well. He greeted Agni with a broad wine-reeking grin. “Ho, brother! Been
seducing the ladies, have you? You forgot your trousers somewhere.”

“On a hilltop,” Agni said, “under Skyfather’s eye.”

“Don’t we all,” said Rahim. He held out a jar. “Wine?”

Agni ignored him, though the scent of it was sweet. “The
gods spoke to me,” he said. “I’ve taken this city and made it mine.”

“About time,” Rahim said.

“I have also,” said Agni, “sworn a vow to the Mother that
she will have justice. The child is dead, Rahim. And so is its mother.”

Rahim tilted his head and squinted. “Ah,” he said in winy
sorrow. “That’s a shame. She was a beauty. Sweet, too. Even fighting.”

Agni’s heart twisted. He had told himself that he could do
this, that the gods commanded it; that he was a king born. That he could be
hard, and he could be cold. He could do what he must do. But this drunken fool
whom he had known since he was a child, who had been playmate and agemate and
companion in war and on the hunt, who had followed him into exile without a
word of protest, who was dearer to him than his blood brothers—this idiot, this
destroyer of innocents, looked at him with wide watery eyes and shook him to
the roots of his resolve.

He had sworn an oath. The gods had witnessed it. Earth
Mother had taken it and sealed it with his seed.

A life for a life. One life now for two. Justice, and no
mercy. Mercy had died when the child died.

Agni must make Rahim understand. The gods did not require
it, but for his own soul’s sake he must do it. He said, “She’s dead, Rahim. You
killed her. By the laws of our people and hers, your life is forfeit.”

“Of course it’s not,” Rahim said. “She’s not one of us. I’m
sorry she died, but she shouldn’t have tempted me.”

“She did nothing,” said Agni. “You raped her. She is dead
because of it.”

“I said I was sorry,” Rahim said.

“Of course you are sorry!” Agni flared at him. “You couldn’t
control yourself, and you’ll die for it.”

“You won’t kill me,” said Rahim. “You’ll send me somewhere
else till it all blows over. It will, you know. Everything does.”

“Not this,” Agni said.

“Yes, this,” said Rahim. “Come, we’ll play a game. You’ll
pretend to put me to death, and I’ll fall down convincingly, and you’ll smuggle
me away, and—”

“No,” Agni said.

“What do you mean, no? You can’t kill me. What have I done
to you?”

“Angered the gods,” Agni said. “Betrayed the trust I had in
you. I might have expected it of another man, some young idiot from a western
tribe, with more balls than sense. But you, Rahim. You I trusted.”

“I won’t do it again,” Rahim said. “On that you have my
word.”

He did mean it. If Agni could have softened, he would have
softened then. But the wind of the gods blew through him, shrill and cold. He
said, “No. You won’t do it again. You’ll be dead.”

Rahim laughed as if at a jest, but his laughter faded before
it was well begun. At last, thought Agni, through the haze of wine and
cocksurety, he caught a glimmer of the truth.

He did not want to see it. Agni watched him try again to
laugh, and fail; watched his eyes widen, then narrow. “You can do this? After
what the tribe did to you?”

“
I
was innocent,”
Agni said. He stepped back.

At the signal, young men of the western tribes crowded into
the room, took Rahim by the arms while he stood amazed, and half-dragged,
half-carried him out. He was too stunned to struggle.

oOo

They brought him into the sunlight, blinking, ruffled,
unkempt from his night of captivity. There would be no dignity for him, no more
than there had been for the woman who was dead.

The people of the city had gathered in front of the Mother’s
house. They made no sound as they saw Rahim. That in its way was more terrible
than any snarl of anger.

He put on a swagger for them, a reckless bravado. He did not
believe it even yet, Agni thought. Maybe he never would.

People came out behind them: the Mother and her daughters,
bearing the body of their sister. The silence grew deeper still, and more
ominous.

There would be a rite, Agni supposed. Words. Anger fed to
fever-pitch. And then, in whatever way their law decreed, they would kill him.
Bare hands, he supposed, or flung stones.

He could not bear it. He whirled, snatched the spear from
Gauan’s hand, whirled back and about.

The moment was blindingly swift and yet eerily slow. In it
he met Rahim’s eyes; saw the astonishment there, and the disbelief. And at the
last, as the spearhead bit flesh and bone, nothing at all. Only the empty dark.

Rahim was dead before he struck the ground. Agni set his
foot on the body with a kind of numb horror, and pulled the spear free.

It did not come easily. Its head had lodged in bone.

That was a petty thing, and ugly, and slower than Agni could
easily endure. But he could not leave the spear in the body. This was his
friend, the brother of his heart, the blessed fool who had gone too far.

At last the spear was free. He laid it down carefully and
straightened Rahim’s limbs, as if he could wake and find himself all twisted.

When Rahim was as tidy as he could be, Agni straightened.
“Bring me his horse,” he said.

It was Gauan who obeyed, Gauan who was not of Agni’s tribe
or people. Agni could not meet the eyes of Patir who had stood beyond him.
There was no altering this, and no softening it. It must all be done as the
gods willed.

It seemed a long while before Gauan came back leading
Rahim’s fine bay stallion, and yet the sun had hardly moved. The stallion was nervous,
snorting at the people gathered about the Mother’s house, and shying at the
scent of blood.

Agni took his rein from Gauan, soothed and gentled him until
he would stand, if wild-eyed. Agni stroked him, murmured to him. Slowly he
eased; little by little he lowered his nose into Agni’s hand.

“Brother,” Agni said. “Go with my brother. Bear him company
among the gods as you bore him company here below. Let him walk with pride,
though an error bought him his death.”

The stallion sighed and leaned lightly on Agni’s shoulder.
Agni set his teeth; firmed his heart and mind, and thrust with the spear that
had killed Rahim.

It was a clean death, a pure sacrifice. The stallion sank
down slowly and without panic, as if into sleep.

When the life was gone from him, Agni completed the rite as
it was done among the tribes: took the head to set on watch over Rahim’s grave,
and flayed the body, and stripped it of its hide.

No one moved to help or to interfere, which was right and
proper. This was Agni’s doing, all of it; his right and his fault. His the
praise for it, if any was to be had. His the blame. No one else would bear the
burden.

Agni’s people took away the flayed carcass, emptied as it
was of life and potency. They would dine on it tonight. Then they would complete
the rite, as if it had been a great sacrifice.

Now, in the hard light of morning, Agni spread the hide in
front of the Mother’s house and sat on it as a king sits. He called to Tillu,
careful always not to treat the chieftain as an errand-boy or a servant, and
waited as Tillu found it in himself to oblige.

This could not go on, Agni thought remotely. Either these
people would learn his language, or he would learn theirs.

Whatever he intended to do, for this moment he had to trust
to Tillu’s tongue and his considerable wits. “Tell the Mother,” Agni said,
“that this is my city, and that I have paid for it in the blood of my friend.
She will consider all debts paid and all justice done.”

Tillu’s brows rose at that, but he refrained from comment.
He spoke to the Mother.

She sat by her daughter’s body as if she had lost the will
to move. She did not answer in words. She spread her hands.
As you will,
the gesture said.

oOo

Agni sat on the new-flayed horsehide and spoke, and when
he spoke, people obeyed. Just so simple was it to be a king.

He saw Rahim taken away for the burial. He saw the Mother’s
daughter taken likewise, though he did not know if they would bury her, burn
her, or lay her out for the birds of the air. She vanished into the temple, and
the elders of the women with her, and the Mother walking heavy and slow. He
sent then for the rest of his people, and bade them come to him in this place.

Somewhere in the midst of it he was brought food, drink,
clothing for his body. It was not his well-worn and comfortably redolent
leather but garments made all new, woven of the beautiful cloth that was so
common here. From naked wild man he found himself transformed into the image of
a king.

It was a cold and splendid thing, to be at last what he had
waited for so long to be. Though people crowded about, pressing in close, he
was alone. The blood of his friend stained his hands. His heart was heavy with
grief, walled away and consciously forgotten until he could stop to think of
it.

The other of his dearest friends, Patir, who had been even
more beloved than Rahim, was nowhere that Agni could see. If he had gone away,
if he had turned his back on Agni for what he had done to Rahim, Agni would not
fault him in the slightest.

At evening, under the waning moon, they sent Rahim to his
long sleep. They built a barrow for him on a hill beside the river and laid his
weapons in it, his belongings that he had loved, and provisions for the journey
into the gods’ country. Then when they had closed the earth’s gate upon him,
they set his stallion’s head on a spear and left it to watch over the grave.

Some of the people from the city lingered to watch them. Men
mostly, and children, silent and still.

What they thought, Agni could not imagine. They did not seem
glad that Rahim was dead. They did not seem to feel anything at all.

He did not discover what the women did with the dead woman’s
body. Once it had disappeared into the temple, it did not reappear again. That
was a women’s rite, he could well see, and forbidden to men.

He was not minded to set foot in the temple. Let the women
keep their secrets for yet a while.

He had no sleep that night, though he stumbled into the
Mother’s house near dawn and fell onto the bed that he had left—was it the full
round of the day and night past? There was no willing woman to share it with
him. They were all in the temple still.

He lay aching in his bones, his eyes burning dry, and
watched the morning brighten slowly beyond the window. There was an empty place
inside him where Rahim had been. He caught himself wondering how many such
places there would be before he went to the knife, when he was old and could be
king no longer.

oOo

At full morning he rose stiffly, stifling a groan, and
made himself as presentable as he could. Breakfast was laid out for him, the
bread fresh and warm, the wine cool in an earthen jar. He ate a little, drank a
little. So strengthened, he went out to face the sunlight.

The rest of his people were coming, and would be in the city
before the sun touched the zenith. The women of the city were still nowhere in
evidence. Patir was waiting for him, sitting in the shade of the Mother’s
house, beside but carefully not on the bay horsehide that had, the morning
before, belonged to Rahim’s stallion.