White Mare's Daughter (89 page)

There were even women: veiled figures in the shadows of
tents, though she saw no children. She recognized standards and banners.
Stormwolf, White Bear, Golden Aurochs. Raindance, Red Deer, Black River, and a
dozen others. And, unmistakably in the center, the White Horse.

Her throat tightened as she stared at that moon-pale
horsetail streaming out on the wind. They were not her people, not any longer,
but she had grown up on the edges of them. She could not see them here and
remain unmoved.

Taditi stirred beside her. “I’m going down,” she said.

Sarama rounded on her. She did not flinch. She was dressed
as Sarama had never yet seen her in this country, in a woman’s gown, with both
head and face covered. Sarama had forgotten how like a shadow a woman could
look, who showed nothing of herself but her eyes.

Still Sarama said, “You can’t. What if you’re caught?”

Taditi laughed in her veil. “Who’ll see me? I’m a woman. Don’t
you want to know exactly what these people are up to?”

“Not if it kills you,” said Sarama.

Taditi shrugged. She crept along the edge of the crest,
quiet as any hunter, and vanished into a hollow. When Sarama saw her again, she
was a shadow ghosting through the outermost herds, working her way inward.

There was nothing Sarama could do, nor if Taditi was
properly cautious would Sarama see anything in the camp; and yet she stayed
where she was. She watched the warriors come and go. She saw a stallion breed a
mare—these conquerors had thought to bring the means to make new horses. And
she saw the circle of men near the White Horse banner, men who even at this
distance seemed older, heavier than the young warriors round about.

They were holding a council. She strained to hear, but she
was too far away.

She could not see particularly well, either, but she had
little doubt of the man who seemed to be sitting where the king would sit.
There was no mistaking that bulk or that bluster.

Yama seemed to have made himself king of more than his
single tribe. Sarama peered under her hand, willing it to be another man, some
one of the elders who happened to be thickset and fair-haired and given to a
certain broadness of gesture; or some king of another tribe than the White
Horse. But her eyes persisted in informing her that that was indeed her
father’s son, the man whom she supposed she must call her brother.

Either Yama had outgrown his tendency to be a fool, or the
rest of the tribes were idiots. Even if he had not been what he was, he was
young; he was new to his office. He should have deferred to one of his elders
among the kings.

For there were other kings there. Each had his mark of rank:
headdress, mantle, ornamented spear. But only one sat where all the others must
face him, on a horsehide, with a gleam of gold about his neck and arms and
brow.

Sarama could not help but remember Agni in his torque of
gold and amber, sitting cross-legged on his black horsehide. He never kept much
state apart from the torque and the hide, or put on airs beyond what people
expected of him as king. She had heard some of the more callow horsemen
complain that their king was too modest; he was not kingly enough.

They would have loved Yama. Even sitting down, he strutted.
She watched him hold forth, inaudible at this distance, but his gestures told
her all she needed to know. He was boasting. Yama had always loved to boast.

She watched till she could bear it no longer, and until she
was sure that she would not see where Taditi had gone. Then she left the
hilltop, returned to the rest of the company, and set herself grimly to wait.
If Taditi had not come back by morning, she would venture the camp herself. She
could creep and lurk and be a worthless woman as easily as Taditi could, if she
was forced to it.

oOo

Taditi came back long before morning. Sarama woke with a
start from an uneasy doze, to find a shadow looming over her. It stooped, and
lowered itself with a faint creaking of bones, and said in Taditi’s rough
familiar voice, “You’ve done well. I almost couldn’t find you.”

“Then maybe the enemy’s scouts won’t, either,” said Sarama.

“No worry of that. There aren’t any.”

“They’re that arrogant?”

“They’re that sure of where your brother is. They mean to
strip the country of its wealth, then take him in his lair.”

“Just as we thought they’d do.”

“Yes,” Taditi said. She dipped from the pot over the tiny
shielded fire, and sipped and nibbled at herbs and stewed rabbit. “This is
better than anything they had.”

“There aren’t any women to do their cooking for them?”

Taditi’s eyes gleamed in the flicker of firelight. “There
are women. But most of them are more suited to keeping a man warm in bed than
keeping his belly filled.”

“So,” said Sarama.

“So,” said Taditi. “I don’t suppose you saw who was sitting
as king.”

“Yama.”

“Yama,” Taditi said.

“Have they all gone mad? Or have the gods wrought a miracle?
Have they transformed Yama into a king?”

“Yama is just as he always was.”

“Then why?”

Taditi sighed. “When tribes gather together, they seldom
choose the king who can rule them with a strong hand. They choose the one who
will give them the freest rein, and interfere the least with their own kings’
whims.”

Sarama knew that. She had learned it as a lesson, as lore
from long ago. It had been—how many lifetimes since the tribes gathered in such
numbers?

“Then they don’t have a leader,” she said. “They’ll go
wherever they take it into their heads to go.”

“For the moment, they’re all agreed to conquer these cities
and end with Three Birds. And Agni, of course. They’re calling him the Outcast,
and telling one another he’s no true king.”

“They would,” said Sarama. She drew her knees up and clasped
them. It was a mild night, quite lovely in fact, neither too warm nor too cold.
Yet she felt a chill, a shiver beneath the skin. “Yama will want his skull for
a cup.”

“Set in gold,” said Taditi. “He was singing it out for
everyone to hear. Did you know he brought his mother and sisters? And one of
his wives?”

“So that they can gloat over Agni’s downfall?”

“So that they can do his thinking for him,” Taditi said. She
paused. She had never in her life spoken diffidently, nor did she do so now,
but her words came a little slowly, and seemed a little more carefully chosen
than they were wont to be. “You do know why he was cast out.”

“Of course,” said Sarama. “The woman from the Red Deer. The
lies she swore to before she died.”

“Do you know to whom she swore them?”

“Her father and brothers, I should think,” Sarama said, “and
the priest who attended her dying.”

“That’s what your brother thinks, isn’t it?”

“Wouldn’t anyone?”

“Yes,” said Taditi. “Except that if she was prevailed on to
lie even to swearing a great oath, could you possibly expect anything else to
be true, either?”

“I . . . suppose not,” said Sarama.

Taditi nodded briskly. “I wasn’t thinking, either. The more
fool I. I had my suspicions, but I never thought . . . well.”
She drew herself up short, took a breath, said it direct. “Yama’s mother and
his youngest wife had word of this woman among the Red Deer, how she was
married to a eunuch and restless in it. They prevailed on her to seduce your
brother, spun a great tale of his desire for her, and promised her that he
would marry her if she disposed of her husband. But after she’d done what she’d
agreed to do, two things happened. She saw your brother walk away from her, and
she followed him. She saw him go to another assignation that he clearly liked
much better, and knew how she’d been lied to about his love and loyalty. And as
she stumbled away from that, Yama came on her and gave her honest reason to
tell her husband that a prince of the White Horse had taken her by force.”

Sarama was not surprised. Agni had suspected as much, though
he had only said so under the influence of a great deal of wine. “So the rest
of it was like a mountain falling: a few small stones gathered other, larger
ones, till my brother was buried in an avalanche. But,” she said, “why swear
against him? Why not against the one who actually raped her?”

“Jealousy,” Taditi said. “Anger. Who knows what she was
thinking, there at the last? She might have blamed him for being the cause of
it all, as people will when they’re pushed to the edge. She had nothing left to
gain then, and nothing to lose. There’s a great freedom in that, you know. You
can do anything then. Anything at all.”

There was a silence. Sarama thought of Agni, how he had
known all that, or guessed it, and still kept the brightness of his spirit.
“He’s a strong man,” she said.

“For a man,” Taditi agreed, “he is.” She paused. Her eyes on
Sarama were sharp. “You don’t know the rest of it, do you?”

Sarama frowned. “What are you saying?”

“You know what I’m saying.”

“No,” said Sarama. “I want you to tell me.”

“Very well,” said Taditi with a snap of annoyance. “Agni
your brother and Yama’s wife Rudira were lovers for a year before Agni was cast
out.”

“A year?” Sarama could not say she was shocked; it made
sense when she thought on it, from things that Agni had said, glances he had
cast. So too did all the rest make sense: Yama, Yama-diti, and yes, that sad
child of the Red Deer.
Poor Agni
, she
almost said, but stopped herself. No; there was nothing poor about her brother,
great fool that he had been, and great price that he had paid. “They must have
begun on the night she was married to Yama.”

“Very nearly,” Taditi said. “She cast eyes on Agni at the
wedding, and claimed him when it was over. He never protested too strongly. Why
would he? She’s a beauty.”

“He might have considered what would have happened if Yama
had caught him at it.”

Taditi snorted. “You think he didn’t? She was like a drug to
him; like wine. She has a name in some quarters as a witch, though I never
noticed any particular talents in that direction. All the witchery she ever
needed was her body.”

“And her face,” said Sarama. “I remember her now. A
white-faced woman, with eyes as pale as water. She was with the king when I was
last in the camp, when I decided to go away. She stared at me.”

“Looking to see your brother in you, I suppose,” Taditi
said.

“Is she that besotted with him?”

“Maybe,” Taditi said. “It’s known she wanted to be a king’s
wife—and she never stopped for an instant in betraying your brother.”

“But she never accused him of the thing that would have
killed him. She let another woman accuse him. A woman of another tribe, so that
he’d be exiled but he wouldn’t be put to death. Maybe in her mind that was a
kindness.”

“What, she did it for his own good?” Taditi shook her head.
“She might even see it that way. She’s a strange one. Rather stupid really, but
very clever when she sees something that she wants. Mostly what she wants is a
man, the prettier the better. Or if not a man, then something pretty to wear.
She’s found her element here. She was dripping gold and trying on gowns when I
saw her.”

“You were in Yama’s tent?”

Taditi laughed at her alarm. “There, there! The tent is
enormous—it’s your father’s old one—and no one saw me at all.”

“You don’t know that,” Sarama said. She suppressed an urge
to leap up and begin striking camp. It was dark enough and the camp well enough
hidden that it was hardly likely a hunter would find them before morning.

They would leave as soon as it was light. For the rest of
the night, there was nothing they could do that they had not done, either
posting guards or concealing their camp from passing eyes.

oOo

She rested as she could. The night was dark, no moon to
brighten it. The trees concealed the stars.

More than once she woke with a start, certain that she was
in the wood again, and all the rest—Danu, their daughter, the horsemen and
their conquest—no more than a dream. Then a horse would snort or a woman murmur
in her sleep, and Sarama would sigh and relax slowly. It was no dream. It was
real. And even with blood and battle ahead of her, she would far rather this
than the endless shadows of the wood.

Even with the fear of discovery knotting in her belly,
Sarama turned aside from the straight road home to ride through one of the
towns that the horsemen had sacked and abandoned. It was emptied of the living,
and yet it was grimly alive with beasts and birds, fattening on the flesh of
the slain.

The stink of it struck the riders well out in the fields,
and thickened as they rode closer. Their horses, bred in the tribes, snorted
and skittered but did not turn and bolt.

Only Sarama’s will held most of the archers behind her. She
heard retching, but would not turn to see who it was. It spared the woman’s
pride, and it spared her own.

Fire had leveled much of the town and been a pyre for many
of the dead: the sweet-savory stink of roasting flesh overlaid the smell of
death and burning. Sarama rode with her eyes open, seeing but unseeing, as one
learned to do in war.

So these women would learn, as she undertook to teach them.
They must know what was coming; why they had trained so long and so hard, and
what they must defend against. Charred and blackened walls, blackened and
twisted bodies, the white gleam of bone in a flyblown face. Women, children,
men flung together and heaped like firewood, half burned, half rotted,
abandoned without mercy and without pity.

“They are not human, who did this,” said one of the boldest
of the archers, stocky outspoken Galia who could draw as strong a bow as a man.
Nothing had ever frightened her, that Sarama knew of, nor was she weak in the
stomach. Yet this sickened her.

“They’re all too human,” Taditi said.