White Mare's Daughter (84 page)

The filly would be grey, Agni thought; she had the signs, a
salting of white about the eyes. But the colt might not. They were both duns,
as far as one could tell: striped backs, mouse-colored coats, manes that might
be black when they were older.

Agni caught Sarama eyeing Danu’s young stallion balefully.
She could hardly have failed to know who had sired these foals. At the time
when the Mare could have been bred, there was only the colt in all this
country. But knowing and seeing were different things.

“They’re fine foals,” Agni said, and not simply because he
felt compelled to defend the colt.

They were indeed, as their father was. Maybe he was not
goddess-born, and maybe his mother had been a mere traveller’s mount, but he
was well made and strong. If a tribesman had come back from his hunt with such
a stallion, he would have been reckoned fortunate.

All of which Sarama knew perfectly well, but she had never
been a reasonable creature. She was rather proud of it, too, as a woman could
be: ever contrary.

Such unreason let her dote openly on the offspring while
glaring at the sire. “After all,” she said, “they’re their mother’s children.”

“Indeed,” Agni said gravely.

She knew he was mocking her: her glance was burning cold.
But she did not choose to go to war with him.

He was glad. There was war enough coming, without his being
at daggers drawn with his own sister.

oOo

The year began with rites and omens. It went on in a kind
of clenched-teeth quiet.

Those tribesmen who had yearned to go home were gone. The
rest stayed, which was well; there was much to do.

Agni had consulted with his elders and with the Mother and
elders of Three Birds, and from those councils he came to a greater one, a
gathering of Mothers from the towns and cities as far eastward as Larchwood
itself. The Mother of Larchwood was gone, vanished into the west, but Mothers
who had looked to her looked now to the Mother of Three Birds and, inevitably,
to the king of the horsemen.

Agni told them what he, and they, would do. They would make
their cities strong. They would dig moats such as Sarama had dug here, made
deadly to horse and horseman.

Most would line the pits with sharpened stakes. One or two,
suitably situated, could divert streams into the moat, and build a wall of
water between themselves and the war.

No one argued with him, or rebuked him for presumption. All
those who might have done that were gone, fled out of reach of the horsemen.
And so they would be, as long as Agni and his people stood in the way.

After they had taken counsel together in the Lady’s grove,
they gathered in the field between the camp and the city for a festival of
welcome.

There had been a great number of festivals in Three Birds
that year. Agni never ceased to marvel at the ease with which this country gave
of its bounty. Even in the depths of winter, when times were as lean as they
ever were, no one was hungry. No one suffered.

oOo

Now as summer swelled about them, even the camp dogs were
fat, lolling in the sun. Agni had had to command his men to practice their
riding and shooting and fighting, to send them on hunts and drive them like
cattle, to keep them from becoming as lazy as the dogs.

Today however was a feast-day. People of the city and men of
the camp had joined forces to welcome the Mothers to Three Birds. It was rather
wonderful to see them together, managing to understand one another, and working
in amity as far as Agni could see.

His black horsehide, new with the spring, was spread in the
shade of a tall tree. He would go to it in time, but for a little while he was
minded to wander about while the guests found their places and settled in
comfort.

The Mothers took little enough notice of him when he was not
sitting in front of them. He did not think they meant any rudeness. He was a
man. He was of little account beyond his narrow sphere.

Time was when that would have angered him terribly. Now he
was merely amused. They need only notice him when it served his purpose. If
they chose to keep their arrogance else, then so they might.

It was a peculiar kind of kingship, but it had made him lord
of this country. He held the reins of it even as he wandered with seeming
idleness, listening, speaking if he was spoken to, testing the temper of this
gathering.

Traders, seeing an opportunity for rich trade, had left
their stalls in the market and their boats on the river, and set up shop in a
corner near the Mothers’ gathering. They would never have dared do such a thing
in a festival of the Lady, but there was nothing sacred here; only the saving
of the people from the war that was coming.

Agni circled round them toward the eastward end of the camp.
A stranger had caught his eye, a face he had not seen before. This was neither
a trader nor the member of a Mother’s following. She had the look of one who
had traveled far, much worn and somewhat strained about the eyes.

Agni saw nothing extraordinary about her, dark-haired and
dark-eyed creature that she was, except that she was thin, as women here took
great pains not to be, and except for her eyes. They lifted to him as he
approached, and he nearly missed his step.

There were gods in her. Great powers stared out of her eyes,
piercing him where he stood. She was so full of them that there was nothing of
the simple self left; till she blinked and swayed and looked at him as a woman
might, especially in this country. She liked what she saw—before she remembered
to think of him as an enemy.

“You,” she said. “Who are you?”

“Agni,” he answered. It was the first thing that came into
his head.

“So you understand me,” she said.

“A little,” he said.

People came and went around them. They all recognized Agni,
or seemed to, but none was minded to call on him as one calls on a king.

It was a reprieve of sorts. He was not often given this
gift, to be a man like any other.

This woman honestly did not know who he was. After all, how
could she? He boasted no more splendor than many a tribesman, except for the
gold about his neck.

As if the thought had touched her, she stretched out her
hand and brushed the torque with a finger. “This is fine work. Did you steal
it? Or conquer it?”

“It was given to me,” he said.

“In payment for what?”

“I think you know,” he said.

Her lips tightened. “It all comes to that. We trade gold for
our cities’ safety. You take what your whim bids you take, and nothing stops
you.”

“That is changing,” Agni said.

“Yes,” she said. “The conqueror must hold what he’s
conquered. He’ll defend it against the ones who come after. But still it was
ours before it was his.”

“You do hate us,” he said, “don’t you?”

“No,” she said, and she did not say it altogether willingly.
“You are the burden the Lady has laid on us. We suffer you. We don’t love you.”

“I suppose,” he said, “that is reasonable.”

“Catin!”

She stiffened at the sound of the name. Agni half spun. He
had never been so glad to see Danu before.

Danu greeted Agni with a glance and a tilt of the head, but
his eyes were on the woman called Catin. “What brings you back?” he asked her.

She shrugged, lifted her hand, managed with the gesture to
take in the whole of it, city and camp and the festival between. “One hears,” she
said, “of what is happening in the eastern cities.”

“Such as yours?”

Agni had never heard Danu sound quite so cold before. Danu
was a warm man, even with Agni, whom he had no reason to like.

Catin kept her head up, but to Agni’s eye she seemed to
shrink a little. “We do what we must. Larchwood is safe. Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Danu said. “Because the horsemen protect it.”

“So I’ve heard.” She flicked a glance at Agni. “Its Mother
is dead.”

Danu bent his head. “May the Lady keep her,” he said.

“She was not supposed to die,” Catin said fiercely. “She was
supposed to stand fast, to be patient, till the horsemen had tired of their
game and gone away.”

“The horsemen are not going to tire of their game,” Danu
said. He paused. Catin said nothing. He said, “Then you are—”

“No,” she said.

“No? But—”

“There is no Mother in Larchwood,” she said, “nor will be
hereafter. Larchwood belongs to the horsemen.”

“You gave it up,” Danu said.

“We were afraid,” said Catin.

Danu greeted that with silence. It was a perfectly
expressionless silence, and yet it said everything that it needed to say.

“It’s not your place to judge,” she said.

“No,” he said. “It’s not.”

She laughed, a sound utterly without mirth, and turned and
walked away.

Agni stood with Danu where she had left them. After a
suitable while he said, “She’s mad.”

Danu nodded. He was as calm as ever, but Agni thought he saw
a flicker of pain.

“Your sister says,” said Danu, “that gods speak through her.
Too many gods, all clamoring at once. They eat away at her spirit.”

“Yes,” said Agni. “I saw.”

“You—” Danu shook his head. “I always forget. You’re of that
blood, too.”

“What, I see too far? Or not far enough?”

“You see what Sarama sees,” Danu said. “You hear the
Lady—and your gods, too. But it hasn’t broken your spirit.”

Agni shrugged uncomfortably. “They speak to me. Not through
me.”

“Yes,” said Danu as if Agni had spoken a revelation. “Yes,
that’s the way of it. You are like a Mother. She—she wasn’t strong enough. She
was always so much afraid.”

“Of what? The gods?”

“The dreams,” Danu said. “We all dreamed, you see. Blood and
fire. Dreams that we learned to call war.”

Agni looked at him. The dreams he knew of, and the portents
of war. But he had not understood, not quite, what they might mean to one who
had never known that men could kill men, or find glory in it. A person—a
woman—might break under the force of it.

All about them people laughed, danced, sang. If any of them
was afraid, if any of them dreamed terror, there was no memory of it now, or
none that any would admit. They saw the sunlight, and turned their minds away
from the dark.

Agni could will to do that. And so he would, in a little
while. But as he stood with Danu, with the man who in the way of the tribes was
to be thought of as his brother, he looked the dark full in the face.

It held no fear for him. War was glory; blood was sacrifice.
If he died in war, the gods took him to themselves and raised him up, and made
him a great lord among the dead.

He did not think that Danu would understand any of this. Yet
Danu was not afraid, either.

No one in Three Birds seemed to be. For most it was
innocence. For Danu, the only word that came easily to Agni’s mind was courage.

“Should I let her wander loose?” Agni asked, speaking of
Catin. “She’ll spread fear.”

“A little fear is not an ill thing,” Danu said.

Particularly, Agni thought, among these rampant innocents.
He bent his head to Danu’s wisdom.

Danu smiled, saluted Agni as a tribesman might—with
insouciance that could only be deliberate—and left Agni to make his way back to
the circle of elders.

One early morning near the end of summer, Sarama went
hunting with some of the women who had learned to ride and shoot. She left her
bed a little reluctantly, with Danu in it, and Rani well sated with nursing.

Sarama’s breasts would ache again before she came back, but
Rani would do well enough. One of the women would feed her with her own, Danu’s
sister Mareka perhaps. Mareka had milk enough for six.

The Mare, fortunate creature, had weaned her twins some time
ago. She had not forgotten them, but they were her charge no longer. They ran
with the other young ones, the half-dozen who had been born in the camp that
spring—improvident men, not to bring a herd of mares with all their vaunting
stallions.

The Mare was free of herself and her charge, restless, eager
to run. Sarama held her in for the moment.

Even so, the others had fallen behind, all but Taditi, who
could ride as well as any tribesman. Practice, she had said when Sarama asked,
and defiance. She had been an infamous hoyden in her youth.

“Was that why no one married you?” Sarama had asked
her—months ago now.

Taditi had laughed with honest mirth. “Oh, no! You’d have
thought so, wouldn’t you? But they were all after me. I was the king’s
daughter, after all. And I was interesting. I turned them all away. I had no
desire to belong to a man.”

“I . . . am sorry I never took the trouble to
know you,” Sarama had said.

“Ah,” said Taditi, waving away guilt. “You couldn’t have
known. I was of no account, an elderly aunt in the king’s tent.”

“You raised my brother.”

“But not you.” Taditi slapped her lightly. “Stop that. It’s
no good wallowing in it.”

Nor was it, Sarama thought as they rode side by side in the
rising morning. She had not known Taditi then, but she knew her now, and had
come to admire her. She was like Old Woman; like the Mother of Three Birds.
Strong.

oOo

They hunted eastward, where the best game was, in the
hunting runs near the new-walled town called Thorn. Here in a tumbled country
of hill and wood, too rough and stony for farming, deer and boar and wild
cattle roamed the copses and coverts, and birds flocked thick about a marshy
lake. They were hunting birds, as the best practice for the archers, and
bringing down a fair number, too.

At noon they paused to rest. Some had brought somewhat to
eat, bread and fruit and cheese, or hard-baked cakes that people made for long
journeys. A few seized the time to snatch a little sleep.

Taditi had set guards because in war such would be needed.
Nothing more dangerous than a boar was likely to come on them here; but it was
wise, she said, to make a habit of being wary.