White Mare's Daughter (64 page)

Agni sat on the horsehide. It would need to be taken soon,
cured and tanned, or it would rot where it lay. But for the moment it sufficed.

“I thought you had gone,” he said.

Patir shrugged. He had a knife and a bit of bone that he was
carving into a shape that might be horse or deer or maybe, if one squinted just
so, a man. It was careful work, and it absorbed much of his attention. But Agni
did not commit the error of thinking him distracted.

Agni did not press him. People came, seeing Agni there, and
wanted this and that. Some of it was silliness, men indulging in the luxury of
a king to do their thinking for them, but Agni was patient. Much of what a king
did was silliness. People needed it, and him. In its way it made them stronger.

All the while he did what a king does, he kept half an eye
on Patir. Patir finished what looked to be a dagger-handle: a man, yes, crowned
with horns like a stag, rampantly and exuberantly male. He leaned out over the
horsehide and dropped the carving into Agni’s lap.

It was a gift. Agni did not reckon that it was tribute. It
fit his palm with lovely exactness. He would have a blade made for it, a
wonderful blade, a blade of copper, such as no lord of the tribes had ever had.

He slanted a glance at Patir. Patir was watching him. “How
much do you hate me?” Agni asked him.

Patir scowled. “Why not ask me how much I hate him?”

“Do you?”

“No,” said Patir. He stabbed at the earth with his knife,
over and over, as if it had been living flesh. “Sometimes he could be
the—worst—idiot.”

Agni bent his head.

“Do you know what he did to you?” Patir demanded. “Look at
you! He made you a king.”

A snort of laughter escaped before Agni could stop it.

Patir stabbed at the earth, stabbed and stabbed at it. “For
all I know he meant to do that. Rahim was the gods’ own fool. But he loved you.
He would have done anything for you.”

“Except keep his hands off a woman.”

Patir’s glance burned. “What do you know of that? They
always want you.”

“Not if you ask the Red Deer people,” Agni said. He turned
Patir’s carving in his hands, smoothing his thumb along the curve of it. “I’m
going to find the greatest city in these parts, the mother city. I’m going to
take it and rule in it.”

“That would be Larchwood,” Patir said. And as Agni stared at
him: “Tillu’s been talking to people. They say that Larchwood is the greatest
city in these parts, and its Mother is the wisest. They also say . . .”
He paused. Agni waited. He said, “They say that the word for war came from
Larchwood.”

“It came from the steppe,” Agni said. His eyes narrowed. “Do
you suppose . . .”

“It’s near the wood, they say: nearer than this place, but
farther to the south. If travelers came through there, they might have brought
their words with them.”

“Yes,” said Agni. “It’s Larchwood we need, then. And I
wonder—”

“If she was there? Or is still?”

“Sarama,” Agni said. “Yes. There’s been no word of her. I
won’t believe she died in the wood, or is trapped there and can’t come out.”

Patir did not respond to that. Agni let it slip into the
silence. After a while he said, “We’ll ride in the morning.”

“Yes,” Patir said.

It was not as it had been when Rahim was alive, when their
friendship ran clear and bright between them. But it was better than hate.

Almost as soon as Agni’s tribesmen had come to the city,
they rode out of it again. Agni had conceived an urgency, a need to see this
place called Larchwood—where he might find, or find word of, his sister.

They said no farewells. They simply left. They took with
them whatever they could carry. Copper and gold, and lesser treasures too. But
no women.

That lesson, for however a brief a time, they had learned.
It was sealed in stone and crowned with a stallion’s head, Rahim’s grave where
he would sleep until the world ended.

They rode south and somewhat east, through the cities and
their attendant towns and villages. People watched them but did not approach.
The cities were quiet, the way open, the message clear.

Whatever they took, they took freely. No one offered
protest. But they were not made welcome as they had been before. They were
allowed to ride through, but not invited to linger. Nothing came to them as a
gift. It was left for them to take.

In this way the tribes lured prides of lions away from their
hunting runs, or diverted a stampede of wild oxen from their camps. Agni chose
not to challenge it. It suited his purpose to drive direct for his goal, and it
pleased him well enough to find no obstacle in his way.

He was careful not to relax his guard. These people did not
fight; they yielded. They gave way rather than contest for mastery. But even
they might rebel at last, stand fast against him, even move to defend
themselves. Then he must be ready for war.

His people were growing cocky, and more so the farther they
rode from Rahim’s barrow and his death. If Agni did not find a fight to give
them, and soon, they might rear up and bolt. But he was not ready yet to slip
the rein. He held them in tight, led them onward, pressed toward Larchwood at
speed that left them too breathless to rebel.

oOo

They came to it at last on a day of mist and rain, a soft
grey day that muted even the highest of spirits. The world closed in; distances
shrank. Hills vanished beneath a veil of cloud. They felt rather than saw the
wood draw in close again, the cold green breath of trees wafting out at them,
bringing memories of the long ride westward.

Agni shivered in his splendid new coat. Larchwood, he had
been warned, was a woodland city, built in and about groves of trees. At that,
when he came to it, it was not so closely hemmed in as he had expected.

There was open land in plenty, and more so toward the river.
There as elsewhere, boats should have crowded along the banks, and people
should have been coming and going in the bustle and hum of a western city in
the summer. But there were only a few boats. The city was quiet, winter-quiet,
muted and still.

He rode in without asking leave, led his people as straight
as the curving ways would allow, to the city’s center and the temple that
marked it. Indeed this was the greatest of the cities that he had seen, circle
upon circle. It had not seemed so large when he rode into it, masked as it was
in trees; but like the forest itself, it went on and on.

Still the forest had ended at last, and this city yielded up
its center. Its people made no move to hold him back. They stood in doorways
and beside walls, watching, saying nothing.

Here for the first time Agni saw a glimmer of fear. It was
subtle, but he did not think he mistook it. They were afraid of the horses.

No one else had betrayed such a thing. Only these people.
Only here.

The city’s heart was empty and quiet. No one waited there,
except for a small figure sitting outside the temple. It was a child; male,
Agni rather thought, though it was hard to tell. As Agni halted, with the
others drawing up as they could behind and the ranks to the rear spreading
cautiously outward toward the city’s edges, the child rose from whatever game
it had been playing and stood staring.

Here was no fear. Here was the kind of naked yearning that
Agni had seen in boys of the tribe watching the men on their stallions. He had
known it himself, and not so long ago, either.

It was striking in this place, among these people. Without
thinking, without calculation, Agni held out his hand.

The child grinned, as bold and brash a manchild as Agni had
seen, and leaped happily up behind Agni.

He had sat a horse before. There could be no doubt of it.

And then he said in words that Agni could understand, “My
name is Mika. What is yours?”

Agni swallowed his first response, which was to demand where
in all the world this child had learned to speak the language of the tribes.

Time enough for that. First he answered, “My name is Agni.
You’re not afraid of me.”

Mika laughed as a child could, with a kind of bubbling glee.
“I’m not afraid of anything. Are you bringing war?”

“Only if people bring war to me,” Agni said.

“We don’t do that,” said Mika.

“I see you don’t,” Agni said. And then he asked it: “Where
did you learn to speak my language?”

“A man came,” said Mika, “and he had a horse. He talked a
lot. I listened. Then he went away. And
she
came, and I listened some more. It was easy.”

“
She
?” Agni asked
when Mika did not go on, in a kind of dizzy hope.

“Sarama,” said Mika.

Agni had been prepared for that, and still the breath rushed
out of his lungs. He slipped from Mitani’s back, intending to do it, but not
perhaps so bonelessly as that.

Mika stayed where he was, happily, regarding Agni with
bright-eyed fascination. “She looks like you,” he said.

“She is my sister,” said Agni. He wanted to seize Mika and
shake him till his teeth rattled. But he stood still. “She’s here?”

“She’s in Three Birds,” said Mika. “So is the Mother. And
Catin.” Whoever or whatever that was. “They all left. They said war was
coming.”

“Sarama? Sarama left? Was she a captive? Had they hurt her?”

“She went with Danu,” said Mika. “From Three Birds. Catin
hates her. I don’t like Catin. I like Sarama. Did you come looking for her?”

“Yes,” Agni said, because it was simplest, and it was true
enough. “The Mother is gone? Who rules here?”

“Nobody,” said Mika.

“They just left?” Agni demanded. “Just walked away?”

Mika nodded.

“I will never understand these people,” Agni muttered.

“It could be a trap,” said Patir behind him.

“It could,” Agni conceded.

He turned slowly, taking in the city, such of it as he could
see. Strange to know how much more there was, and to think that he had seen
only a small portion of it.

He stopped abruptly and said to Patir, “We’ll carry on as if
we have no worry in the world. I’ll rest in the Mother’s house. Post guards
there and bid the rest pitch camp near the river, and see that everyone’s fed.
We’ll see just how docile this city wants to be.”

“We don’t want to fight,” Mika said. “The Mother is afraid
to.”

“Is that why she ran away?” Agni asked him.

He shook his head, wide-eyed. “Oh, no. She went to the
Mother in Three Birds. The Mother in Three Birds is the wisest in the world.”

Agni pondered that, but said nothing directly of it. “You
speak my language well,” he said.

“I listen,” said Mika. “That’s all.”

“The gods have given you a gift,” Agni said. “Come with me.”

Mika was happy to oblige, though he did not like to leave
Mitani. Mitani, eager to shed his gear and roll, was rather too pleased to take
his leave of Agni and Mika both and follow Patir back through the circles of
the city.

Agni had hoped to keep him nearby, but there was nowhere for
him to graze here. The houses were too close together, the grass too sparse
beneath the trees. Agni would have to hope that if anything came upon him it
would come from without, and would have to pass his guards long before it came
to him.

oOo

The Mother’s house was not deserted: there were people in
it, servants from their look and bearing. They received Agni less than
joyfully, but they did not drive him out, nor did they fail in their duties. It
seemed to be a matter of pride.

This would do. He settled in the house as if it had been his
tent, took the largest of the sleeping rooms for his own and left the rest for
the men who rode closest to him.

There were no women in the house, he could not help but
notice. All the servants were men.

He could reflect that they were being permitted to conquer
this country. Or he could conquer it as he best could, and trust in the gods
for the rest.

Toward evening, as the servants prepared the daymeal, he summoned
the elders to him. He refused to consider that they would not come.

And indeed, well before darkness fell, they were all
gathered in the Mother’s house, sharing the daymeal that the servants had made.
They were no more submissive than ever, nor any more cheerful, either.

Tillu said it for them all: “Riches are very well, and so is
an easy conquest. But the young men need a fight. We can only send them out
hunting for so long—and with so many cities crowded together here, there’s
precious little game to be had.”

“Or if we can’t give them blood,” said an elder from one of
the western tribes, “women would appease them. For a while. But what good is a
warrior without a war?”

“These people won’t fight,” someone else said. “They’re like
sand and water. Push and they give way. Strike and they scatter.”

“They do take well to being ruled,” Tillu observed.

“Aye,” growled one of the elders, “and what good is that?”

“Plenty,” Tillu shot back, “if it gives us everything we ask
for. Copper. Gold. Willing women.”

“War?”

“Maybe,” said Tillu, “if we take enough, push hard enough.”

Agni did not like the direction that was taking. “Listen to
me,” he said: and it was gratifying to see how they all turned at the sound of
his voice. “We have restless young men and a country that won’t fight. That’s
certain. Now suppose we find a way to keep them occupied. I’m not minded to
dissipate our forces by scattering them over this country. But if I send them
out by clans and kin-bands and tell them to secure the cities—and bind them with
oaths to provoke no killing—how busy do you think I can keep them? More than
that: if I tell them to muster the men, turn them into warriors, and raise from
them a force to defend this country, they’ll be months, years, in the doing of
it.”

“And then?” said Tillu. “What then? If they teach these
people to fight, they’ve raised a force to cast us all down and drive us out.”