White Mare's Daughter (68 page)

“Therefore,” Sarama said, standing on the edge of it,
“this.”

Tilia peered down at the stakes with an expression half of
awe and half of horror. “If anyone falls on these . . .”

“Yes,” said Sarama.

“I think I hate this thing called war,” Tilia said.

“Most women do,” said Sarama. “The men reckon it a grand
game. No man is a man unless he’s won his stallion and proved himself in war.”

“Is that what they’re doing?” Tilia asked. “Proving
themselves?”

Sarama nodded.

Tilia snorted. “All they prove to me is that they’re
savages.”

“They don’t care what you think,” Sarama said. “You’re a
woman.”

“Then they should care very much indeed,” said Tilia.

Sarama bit her tongue. It was going to be interesting when
Tilia and Agni stood face to face. Each so sure of the world’s admiration. Each
raised from birth to rule over the people. And each convinced that the other’s
race and sex were by far the lesser.

oOo

Danu seemed unruffled, impervious to the fog of fear that
hung over the city. And yet it was he who said to the Mother of a morning, when
the horsemen were no more than two days’ ride outside of Three Birds, “It’s too
dark in the soul here. Let’s hold a festival. Let’s dance the dark away.”

It was a mad thing to do, as if they celebrated a victory
before the battle was even fought; and foolish, too, if the horsemen came on
quicker than expected, and found them all drowned in wine. But the Mother gave
it her blessing, and the city flung itself into the doing of it.

There was desperation in their eagerness, but an honest
pleasure, too. They had not had a festival since spring. It was time and more
than time to build the Lady-fires, prepare a feast, put on their best clothes
and ornaments and come out as the sun rode low, late in the long summer day.

For tonight they forgot fear. They forgot the war. They sang
and danced together. Some sooner, some later, disappeared two by two into the
shadows, all of them who were old enough and some whom Sarama would have
thought too young to think of such things. Even the Mother, that placid
mountain of a woman, beckoned to the one called Kosti-the-Bull, and went away with
him.

Sarama did not see what anyone saw in Kosti. He was a gentle
soul, soft-handed with the children, but much too much like his namesake the
bull for Sarama’s taste. Danu beside him seemed almost lightly built, and
beautiful in it.

He had thrown himself into preparations for the festival as
if no one else could do as much or as well as he. Sarama had expected him to
bury himself among the cooks and the servants, but when the feast was spread
and the wine had begun to go round, he came out among the dancers. In the sweet
skirling of the pipes and the beating of drums, he stamped out a rhythm that
set all their hearts to pounding.

Sarama’s had had a fair beginning at the sight of him.
People here were modest as they should be, except in festivals. In festivals,
one’s best clothes were the ones that came off most quickly—or that never went
on at all.

He had on a kind of kilt, a skirt like those the women wore
under their gowns, with long fringes from which hung bright beads and bits of
carved wood and bone, and copper bells that chimed sweetly in the lulls of the
music. The rest of him was bare, the Lady’s signs painted on his arms and
breast and legs, long sweeping curves and spirals, dizzying and holy. When he
began his hair was knotted tight at his nape, but as he leaped and whirled,
stamped and spun, it escaped its bindings and tumbled down his back.

He was beautiful, beautiful and wild. He had half-masked his
face, flat curve of white, dark wells of eyes. So the people of the Lady’s
country signified their gods or their strong spirits. This was a young god,
swift and light of foot, wooing the earth with his dancing.

Wooing Sarama, too. The turn of his head, the breadth of his
shoulders limned in firelight, made her breath come quick, her heart beat hard.
She wanted to run her hand down that strong smooth back, and kiss the furrow of
it, and taste the salt of his sweat.

She drew a shuddering breath. He danced, tireless, to the
beating of the drums.

He was dancing defiance. He mimed the horsemen, their horses
galloping, curvetting, tossing their manes. He mimed battle as Sarama had
taught him, leap, thrust, retreat. He mimed the strut of the conqueror, the
arrogant lift of the chin, the thrust and roll of the hips that made Sarama
choke on laughter. He was more like a tribesman drunk on his own splendor than
maybe he knew: exact, to the life, who had never seen a man of the tribes in
the flesh.

He ended the dance with that wicked thrust, on a single,
bone-jarring beat of the drum. The fire flared suddenly, startling them all.
When their eyes cleared, he was gone.

oOo

Sarama found him where she had expected, down by the river
washing the sweat and the paint from his body. Moonlight and starlight and a
faint light from the fire turned him to a shape of glimmer and darkness. The
night was caught in his hair, shadow deeper than shadow.

She watched him with great satisfaction. He had dropped his
kilt to bathe. He took his time about it, long lazy strokes, sweetening himself
with a potion of herbs and sand and somewhat else that she did not know, that
was a marvel for making a body clean. Its scent, sharp and sweet, drifted to
Sarama.

She followed it as if it had been a wishing laid on her, a
yearning for the warmth of his skin.

It was as warm as she could wish it to be, damp and
fragrant. He turned in her arms, still a little breathless, laughing as she ate
him alive with kisses.

She pulled back. “You did that to drive me wild.”

“I did it to wake you up,” he conceded, “but I did it for
the people, too. So they’ll remember.”

“I don’t want to remember,” she said. “Not tonight. Make me
forget.”

“I want to remember,” he said.

“I don’t.”

“Then I’ll remember,” said Danu, “and you can forget.”

“Women are supposed to be this accommodating among the
tribes,” Sarama said. “Men are supposed to be intransigent.”

“I am being intransigent,” he said. “I’m exasperating you to
no end.”

She peered at him in the moonlight. He was not feigning his
antic mood. His eyes were bright, his teeth glinting as he laughed.

He was exasperating. Indeed.

She pulled away. “Go pleasure yourself tonight. I’ll be
dreaming of war.”

He caught her before she had gone a step, and held her with
that effortless strength of his.

She stared at him. She had not expected him to do so manly a
thing.

“You will dream,” he said, “if you dream at all, of sunlight
and quiet. And maybe, a little, of me. Now come here.”

A command. How startling. Sarama was already, perforce, in
obedience. He drew her closer, folded his arms about her, and said softly in
her ear, “Hold on now. Hold tight. Remember nothing but moonlight and starlight
and the dance that the Lady taught me.”

That dance, she thought, was all the distraction she could
ask for. His body against hers, the clean warm scent of him, the wild curling
of his hair as it dried, the heat that rose in him, found a heat in her to
match it.

The child leaped in her belly. It danced as its father had
danced, in joy that defied terror.

He bore her back and down and laid her in the grass. Its
sweet scent filled her nostrils. He took her gently—took her, as he never had
before; as she had despaired of teaching him. He did it with a kind of
astonishment, as if he had not expected it, either.

Just as he slackened, as the enormity of it struck him, she
wrapped arms and legs about him, round the blessed curve of the child, and held
him tight, warm and hard inside her. She rocked gently to keep him so. “You are
a wonder,” she said, “and a marvel. If you get yourself killed doing what’s
necessary for this city, I’ll hunt you through all the dark lands, hunt you
down and haunt you.”

He could not answer just then. Nor, in a moment, could she.

oOo

When the heat had cooled, the urgency subsided, she
cradled him in her arms. His hair was all a tangle. She would be half the
morning unsnarling it, and with him champing at the bit to be about his duties.

It would keep him close, which was not an ill thing. She
resisted the temptation to ruffle it further. He would never thank her for
that.

“I do love you,” she said. “Believe that.”

“I don’t simply believe. I know.” He kissed the curve of her
breast.

She shivered at the touch. “Stop that,” she said. “Listen. I
want you to be sure. I’m not going to go running to the horsemen. I won’t
betray any of you. This is my place now, and these are my people.
You
are my people.”

“Yes,” he said.

“You can’t be so sure of me,” she said. “It’s not
reasonable.”

“And yet you ask me to be sure?” He teased her breast with
his tongue, a bit of wickedness that got him slapped; but he only laughed.

“I know what you’ll say,” she said. “The heart knows. I
suppose it does. But except for Catin, none of you people is wary enough, ever,
or sure enough of your own mortality.”

“We are very sure of that,” he said with fair to middling
gravity. “Don’t mistake clarity for idiocy, or the Lady’s calm for a fool’s
oblivion. We know what lies ahead of us. Death for some of us, maybe. Maybe
not. Whichever it is, we’re ready for it. We trust ourselves to the Lady.”

“Is that why you danced tonight?”

He nodded. “And because I wanted you to want me.”

“To choose you,” she said. “Again. As if I could ever fail
to.”

“I hope you never do,” he said.

She clasped him tightly, till he gasped and protested. She
eased a little. “Don’t change,” she said. “Don’t ever be other than you are.”

Mika wanted to learn to ride a horse. He was insistent on
it.

Agni was inclined to indulge him. If nothing else, Mitani
would be glad to be relieved of the burden.

Since the battle, most of the people of this country did not
even try to stand and fight. Either their villages were empty, their people
fled, or a few ill-schooled young persons tried to make a stand.

They always failed. This country was Agni’s, and no one
seemed to doubt it, or to be much inclined to defend it.

And yet those who lingered professed a belief in the city to
the west, the mother of cities, this place called Three Birds. Some power
seemed to reside there, some force that would hold back the horsemen. People
thought of it as a wall to hide behind.

“Its Mother is wise,” Mika said when Agni asked, “and strong
in the Lady’s spirit.”

“We’re stronger,” said Agni.

“Maybe,” Mika said with the air of one who is determined to
be polite.

Agni forbore to upbraid him for it. Mika had kept his
innocence even through the red roar of battle. Fear he had none. He was a
strong spirit himself, and a bright one.

oOo

“He’s plotting against you,” Tillu said.

He had come to Agni’s tent in the evening, professing to
carry a message that would not wait. But when he had come in and been given
wine and sweet cakes and such courtesy as was due his rank and station, he had
nothing more to offer than baseless fears.

“That boy is your enemy,” he said. “He spies for his own
kind. He’ll harm you if he can. He might even kill you.”

“Maybe,” Agni said. He had been resting when Tillu came and
demanded entry, closer to sleep than he had been in more days than he liked to
count.

He yawned, but Tillu was in no mood to care for subtleties.
“My lord,” he said. “Think. You don’t know that he can be trusted. He’s not one
of us. He wants to ride horses in order to steal one. Then he’ll go back all
the more quickly to the women who rule him.”

“I do think,” Agni said. “I think maybe you’re jealous.”

Tillu stiffened.

Maybe this was not wise, and maybe Agni was too tired to
judge rightly, but he had trusted this man. He still did, enough to speak
freely. “You are, aren’t you? You were my voice to the people of this country.
You labored long at it, and lowered yourself greatly, even stooping to run
messages for me. Then came this slip of a child with his ready tongue and his
outrageous manners, and took it all away. I thought you would be glad to be a
prince again.”

“I am glad,” Tillu growled. “I’m angry, too. Do you think
that little of me? Do you judge me so poorly? I’ve no need to be jealous of a
child, no matter how close he may cling to you. I know his kind, and I know
what they can do. He’ll betray you if he can. Why not? You’re no kin of his.”

“He’s not a tribesman,” Agni said. “He doesn’t think as
tribesmen think. I’m safe from him. I’m sure of it.”

“You’re cocky,” said Tillu. “Have a care you don’t get
yourself killed.”

“I am always careful,” Agni said. He made himself smile and
slap Tillu lightly on the shoulder. “Come, my friend. It warms my heart to see
you fret so for me; and I’m grateful for it. But I’m in no danger.”

“You are in great danger.” Tillu stood. “At least remember
what I said. Let Patir set a guard on you.”

“Patir always has a guard on me,” said Agni.

“Then have him double it.”

“I’ll speak to him,” Agni said. “Will that set your mind at
rest?”

“Not much,” said Tillu. But he seemed to understand that he
would get no more from Agni. Not tonight.

oOo

When Tillu had gone, Agni could not compose himself to
sleep. Tillu’s concern was honest, and that warmed him, but he did not believe
for a moment that there was any cause for it.

Nonetheless it jangled at him. It made him remember where he
was, in what country. And while Mika was not his enemy—of that he was
heart-certain—the same could never be said of the rest of Mika’s people. In all
that country, only here were people who wished Agni well.