White Mare's Daughter (65 page)

“No,” said Agni. “That’s not what they’ll do. Listen now:
how long do you think it will be before the tribes learn what we’ve learned?
Once they know how rich this country is, they’ll all be turning westward,
hoping to take a part of it for themselves. But we hold it. It’s ours. Our
country.”

“Ah,” said Tillu, trailing off to a long sigh. Agni watched
comprehension dawn in the rest of them: slowly in a few, but in the end it came
to them all.

“We’ll have all the fighting we could ask for,” Gauan said.
“But not now. Not this moment, when we’re most likely to need it. It may be
years before the tribes come after us.”

“The longer the better,” Agni said, “and the more time we
have to make this country strong enough to face whatever comes.”

Eyes gleamed round the circle. There were doubters in
plenty, growling at his folly, but his will for the moment was stronger than
theirs.

“You know what you’re doing,” Patir said, drawling the words
from where he sat by the wall. “You’re turning this whole country upside down.
Once you teach its men to fight, they’ll never be the same.”

“Do you think that’s an ill thing?” Agni asked him:
honestly, because he wanted to know.

“I don’t think you can turn back the sun,” Patir answered,
“and for a surety the gods have shown us what they want of us.”

Agni nodded. “They’ve given us this country, and its people
with it. If we’re strong enough, we’ll hold it. If not . . . we
die. We all die in the end. But I choose to die a king.”

“I’d rather die old,” Tillu muttered. He raked fingers
through his beard. “This is a very large thing you’re thinking of. It’s not
just a raid—gallop in, grab whatever you can find, gallop out again.”

“Is that all you thought it was?” Agni asked.

Tillu shrugged. “How often does a tribe take over another
tribe’s lands? It happens—raid begets raid, and we’re all driven westward. But
this isn’t the steppe, and these aren’t tribes. These are people unlike any
we’ve ever seen. They live in cities. Their tents are made of wood and stone.
They don’t follow the herds from season to season. They stay where they are,
like trees. We’ll have to change, too, if we’re to live with them. We can’t
turn them all into tribes of horsemen.”

“Nor should we want to,” Agni said. “Think of it, Tillu.
These people live where they live, always. They make Earth Mother give them her
fruits. They eat whatever they like, whenever they want it. We can travel among
them as tribesmen should, take what they have to give, and never lack for
anything. We can take what’s best of both our worlds.”

“It will make us soft,” said one of the doubters. His
fellows nodded, agreeing with him.

“You can go back to the steppe,” Agni said, “and live as
hard as you like. But the rest of the tribes will follow me westward, because
the gods have led them. There is no turning back. We’ve done what we’ve done.
This sunset country is ours now, and the lands of the east will be full of
strangers. It’s always been so. Remember the tales you heard when you were a
boy. Remember where your tribe’s lands were then. Haven’t we all seen our
hunting runs shift, and move as the sun moves? The gods are driving us
westward—driving us here.”

“I wonder,” murmured Patir, “what happens when we’ve gone as
far west as we can go? Will we find ourselves looking at the sunrise, and
driving the eastern tribes ahead of us, back in a long circle?”

“We’ll fall off the edge of the world,” Gauan said.

“You’re mad,” said the doubter.

“So are you,” said Gauan, “or you’d never have come with the
rest of us.” He grinned, making the words light, inviting them all to laugh
with him. A few even obliged.

No one said anything precise, or agreed on anything, but
when the last of the wine was drunk, when the last elder had fallen asleep
where he sat, Agni knew that they would acquiesce to whatever he did. There
would be enough for all of them to do, even without the pleasure of a battle.

Strike, feint, whirl and strike. Strike again, parry,
stamp, whirl, strike.

Danu could do it in his sleep. He did it every morning with
staves in the practice-field; and after that he shot arrows at targets. His
dreams were full of arrows flying, horses galloping, men shouting in a language
that he heard—yes, even in his sleep.

And yet there was no shadow of war on Three Birds. The
summer burgeoned richly, swelling ripe to the harvest. Traders came and went.
Travellers passed through on their way to other cities, or to visit this one
that was the greatest in this part of the Lady’s country.

Catin, having delivered her message, had gone back to
Larchwood. Then for a long while the east was silent, and no word came.

At midsummer the quiet broke. It was no one Danu knew, a
runner from Widewater well to the north of Larchwood, but the message was the
one that he had dreaded.

“Horsemen,” the woman said. “Riders on horses, hundreds of
them, spreading like a plague over the towns to the east of us. We give them
whatever they ask for, and even what they don’t ask for, but they won’t stop.
They keep coming. They stayed in a village called White Oak, but one of them
raped a woman there, and her baby died. He was given the Lady’s mercy. Then
they went on.”

When Sarama heard that, she went white and still. She was
still carrying the child, her belly just beginning to round with it: invisible
under the coats or gowns that she wore like any woman of Three Birds, but well
perceptible to Danu’s hand when he lay with her in the nights.

At word of the horsemen’s coming and the death of the one
who had committed the only crime for which a man could die in this country, she
left the Mother’s house and disappeared. Danu found her much later, after
hunting everywhere that he could think of. He had not thought to look in the
room they shared, within those narrow walls, with the window that looked out to
the temple.

She sat with her arms folded on the windowframe, chin
resting on them, staring out at nothing. He had never seen her so still.

He touched her in honest fear, lest he find her reft of
substance, turned into air and mist. But she was solid and warm, with her
straight silken hair the color of tarnished copper, and the flecks of
sun-kisses across her nose. He wrapped his arms about her, cradled her.

She did not move into his embrace, but neither did she
resist it. She lay against him with a sigh.

He kissed her hair. It smelled of herbs and sunlight, and a
little, always, of horses. “No one will touch your child,” he said.

She twisted a little so that he could see her face, and the
frown on it. “I’m not afraid of that. I’d kill any man who touched me unless I
wanted it.”

“Then what?” asked Danu. “What scares you?”

“Imminence,” she said. And when he stared, puzzled, not
quite understanding: “It’s coming. The thing I came to warn you of, the thing
that maybe I brought to you—it’s here. It’s in the Lady’s country.”

“You’re afraid of war? Of dying?”

“No,” she said. “Of men on horses. Of—” She broke off. “Did
you hear what the woman from Widewater said? About the chief of the
horsemen—the one they’ve made their king?”

Danu nodded. “A young man. Very young—too young, one would
think, to claim such authority. He rides a red horse with the new moon on its
brow.”

“And he is a red man himself,” she said almost impatiently,
“but a coppery red, lighter than mine, and his eyes are the color of amber,
which is strange and rather frightening when he stares hard at a person. And he
is tall, one of the tallest of the riders, but lean, and yet wide in the
shoulders. His beard is still a young man’s beard, patchy in places, and he
wears his hair in a braid, thick as a man’s wrist.”

Danu’s brows went up. “She didn’t say all that. The red
hair, the yellow eyes, that’s all she said. And that he has a nose like the
curve of the young moon.”

She tilted her head up, with her nose like the arch of a
newborn moon, and fixed him with those leaf-green eyes. “Yes,” she said. “His
name is Agni. I was born first. He came clasping my foot in his hand.”

“Your brother?” Danu had not expected that. “You’re
twinborn?”

She nodded.

He drew a breath. “Among us . . . twins are
sacred. They’re the Lady’s own.”

“Yes,” said Sarama. “I don’t understand. Our tribe hunts far
to the east—very far. He was to be king of it. How can he have come here? I
told him not to follow me. I made him promise.”

“Did he?”

“No,” she said. “He never—quite—” She shivered in his arms,
caught at him and clung. “I didn’t want it to be true. I didn’t want Catin to
be telling the truth. I did bring the war. I am the cause of it.”

“I think it would have come without you,” Danu said, and he
did believe it. “It was coming, you told me, before you ever went westward.
People were thinking of braving the wood. Someone would have led them into it,
and even through it. If you hadn’t been here first, we’d never have learned how
to fight.”

She shook her head, but she did not argue with him. He held
her for as long as she would let him, which was a surprising while.

When she pulled away, he did not try to hold her. She drew
herself to her feet. “I have to talk to the messenger. Is she still here?”

“She has to go on to the Long Bridge,” Danu said, “but she’s
agreed to stay the night.”

“Good,” said Sarama a bit distractedly. “Good.”

oOo

Danu did not hear what Sarama said to the messenger. He
had duties in the house, and thereafter was caught up in looking after some of
the children for his brother Tanis.

When he came back to the Mother’s house, it was dusk. The
lamps were lit in the doorways, the stars coming out overhead. It was a
beautiful night, warm and sweet-scented, fragrant with bread baking, meat
roasting, spices wafting from kitchen fires. Somewhere a woman was singing, and
a child laughed, sweet and high.

Sarama was taking the daymeal with the Mother and her
daughters. She seemed calm, much as she always was, smiling at something that
one of the daughters said. But she did not glance at Danu when he came to sit
beside her, nor did she come to his bed after. She had gone to the temple where
he could not follow.

That grieved him. It should not have. Of course she would
commune with the Lady. She had much grief to bear, and much guilt. But he,
foolish mortal, wanted her to commune with him—to come to him for comfort.

It was a foolish thing to do, but he went to the temple, sat
on the doorstep and clasped his knees and waited there, while the stars came
out and the moon came up and the city went still around him. He emptied his
mind of thought as the city’s circles emptied of people. He practiced an art
that the Mother had taught him. He schooled himself to simply be.

Sleep came on him while he sat there. Her step woke him abruptly
and completely.

She paused beside him, a tall shadow, with the moon turning
her face to a white glimmer. “Danu?” she said. She sounded half asleep herself.

He unfolded stiffly and stood. She touched him, ran hands
along his shoulders as if to assure herself that he was there. “Danu? What’s
wrong? Is someone sick?”

“No,” he said.

“Is there a new message? Has someone come?”

“No,” he said again.

“Ah,” she said, as if suddenly she understood. “You were
afraid for me.”

He did not say anything.

She stroked his cheek, brushing fingers through his beard.
“It is my brother leading the horsemen. The messenger told me enough that I
could be sure of it. I’m not going to run off to him.”

“I wasn’t afraid of that,” Danu said. “I was afraid it might
break your spirit.”

“What, that he followed me after all? That’s as the Lady
wills—or as she allowed the gods to do.”

He laced his hands behind her. She leaned into them as she
loved to do of late. She said it eased her back. She was not greatly pregnant
yet, but the child’s weight could drag at her, unbalancing her slightness.

The Mother said that she was broad enough to carry a child,
but she seemed so slender, no wider than a boy. He fretted over that, too,
though he would never let her know it.

“They’ll come this way,” she said, “before too long.
Everybody comes here. It’s the greatest of the cities.”

“There are greater ones,” he said, “away west and south. But
hereabouts . . . yes. We’re the Mother city. So you think there
will be war.”

“He hasn’t done any fighting,” she said. “People have
offered him gifts and persuaded him to go on past their cities. If he can keep
his men in hand, if none of them breaks loose and raids the villages, he well
may bring no war at all.”

“Then what?” said Danu. “What does he want?”

“I think he wants to be king,” Sarama said.

Danu raised his brows. “A king? A man set over us?”

“That’s what he was raised to be,” she said.

“But the dreams,” said Danu. “Mine, Catin’s—if all he wants
is to sit on a horsehide and tell people what to do, where’s all the fire and
terror?”

“I don’t know,” Sarama said. She sounded troubled. “Agni is
a great hunter. Men love him. Women, too. He’s been strong in war, but he’s
never been as hot for it as some. Though he’d throttle me for saying it, I
think he’d rather tame a horse than kill a man.”

“But he would kill one,” Danu said, “if he were driven to
it.”

“Even you would do that,” said Sarama. She silenced him
before he could protest. “The Lady tells me nothing but that he’s in her
country. It’s as if—she’s glad. How can she be glad? He wants to be king.”

“I never tried to understand the Lady,” Danu said.

“I can’t help but try.” She sighed heavily.

“Will you be glad to see your brother?” he asked when she
did not go on.