White Mare's Daughter (91 page)

Agni nodded shortly, turned, put the child out of his mind.
He sprang onto Mitani’s back. Mitani was fresh and rather headstrong. It was a
fine few moments before he would settle.

By the time Mitani would agree to walk, if not sedately, out
of the camp, it was time. The deep throbbing voice of a ram’s horn sang from
the city, from the summit of its temple. The enemy had come within bowshot of
the ditch.

The camp roused behind him. The city would be waking, too,
though it also was much depleted, and not only by people fleeing westward.
Those who were left in it, who were not bound to look after the children or
tend the houses and the holy places, took weapon and followed Agni eastward, to
the ditch that had become the boundary of the city.

He had had it widened and set with more and deadlier stakes.
A wall of brush and bundled grass rose on this side of it, chin-high on the men
of this country, somewhat over chest-high on Agni. Already many of the city’s
fighters were there, waiting with admirable patience for word to string their
bows or ready their throwing-spears.

Agni’s horsemen rode calmly out and spread along the
barrier. From beyond it would seem that only they were there; the archers were
invisible. Every man wore his best battle finery, and some had painted their
faces in fierce patterns, stripped off their coats and painted their bodies,
too, to make them more terrible to look at.

Agni was quite plain in comparison. He wore no paint. But he
wore the coat that he had worn to the kingmaking, though it was a warm coat and
the day was already sweltering, and he wore the golden torque that he always
wore, that some were calling his mark of kingship.

When Mitani had reached the barrier, he agreed at last to
stand still, though it was a very active stillness: head up, neck arched,
snorting gently at the wall of strangers that came toward him out of the
sunrise. They seemed to fill the whole of that valley, to advance like a river
in flood and spread wide as it found its passage blocked.

Agni had ample time to discern and mark the banners. Just as
Sarama had said: they were all here. All the tribes that he knew of, and more
that he had never heard of. Their numbers were overwhelming; daunting. And not
one of them looked either weary or cast down.

Nevertheless, he thought, they had come a long way. They had
fought, perhaps more often than they expected. They had spent their strength in
sacking the towns left open for them. Some maybe had even left, gone back to
the steppe or elected to stay in one of the eastward cities rather than
continue the advance.

But they looked deadly, and they seemed eager to seize this
of all cities. This that had been great enough, and rich enough, to become the
camp of the gathered tribes; that held the outcast himself, the nameless and
kinless man who had made himself a king.

That kinless man, whose name had refused to go away when he
was exiled, sat his stallion unmoving. The archers were watching him, alert for
his signal. But he was not ready yet to give it. He was looking for one banner
amid the many, and one face beneath it.

There. Not in the lead as a proper king would be, but in the
middle, with a wall of other tribes before him and a wall of tribes behind.

Prudent; cowardly. Just so would Agni expect Yama to do.

Yama was not visible amid so many mounted men. That rather surprised
Agni. He would have expected his brother to be borne above the heads of the
rest, or to travel in a blaze of gold.

There was gold in plenty, and some of it heaped to excess;
surely a man so weighted down could not lift his arms to fight. But which of
the gleaming princelings was Yama, Agni could not tell. They were all strutting
fools.

He drew a deep breath. His heart was beating hard. His palms
were damp. He was not afraid, nothing so shameful. He was ready, that was all.
Prepared for whatever would come.

Closer and closer the enemy came. The archers held their
fire. The signal, the clear horncall that they all had agreed on, was in Agni’s
own hands, the horn hung from his saddle, waiting for him to lift it. But he
did not, though eyes rolled at him, and horses began to champ and fret. He
waited.

A trickle of sweat ran down his back. He could not regret
insisting on this coat of all that he might have worn, but he would be
wonderfully glad to strip for battle.

He had his own standard now. Patir lifted it as the enemy
came to halt at last: a hoop of beaten gold set on a spearshaft. Beads and
plates of gold and copper hung from it, suspended on strings of tight-plaited
horsehair. They chimed as the wind caught them, and the flame of them went up
to heaven.

He felt the eyes of all that army turn and fix on him,
caught by the splendor of his standard. He sat no straighter, nor did he lift
his chin any higher. Let them see him at ease, unperturbed by their advance.
And please the gods, let them not see him crimson and sweating and wishing he
had had the sense to leave the coat behind.

When the full weight of their attention was on him, when
they were as thoroughly distracted as he could expect them to be, he lifted the
horn at last and blew a long wailing note. It was, as it happened, the call one
used in Three Birds to proclaim that the quarry in a hunt had been brought to
bay. Patir’s snort behind him let him know that his friend had recognized it.

As the notes of the horn died away, bowstrings sang. Arrows
flew. And out of the woods to right and left, and from the hill behind, came
all the forces that Agni had made ready. Men of the tribes, mounted women,
people of the city on foot with bows and spears.

They did not have to fight well. They simply had to be
numerous.

It was hard and cold, that thought. Sarama was out there,
riding with the warrior women, and Taditi no doubt beside her. Danu, whom he
did not like but trusted to the bone, was somewhere among the cityfolk. And
here was Agni with Patir, waiting still, watching the massed tribesmen discover
that they had, at last, found a battle. He heard a whoop, a yell of pure glee.

They were trapped and rather thoroughly surprised, but they
were hundreds strong. They divided into tribes and clans, smaller knots of
fighting men amid the greater mass of them, and chose each his enemy.

That, Agni had expected, had hoped for. Many small bands
were easier to strike or to disregard than one great massed wall of men. One
did the same when hunting beasts in herds: divided them, the better to conquer.

A king with any skill in hunting would have known what this
was that Agni did, and seen that it did not happen. But Yama made no move to
prevent his army from scattering. His own men closed in a circle about him,
shielded him from arrows and turned spears outward against attack. But no one
ventured within reach of them.

In a very little time, what had been a fallow field was
transformed into the field of battle. Shouts, cries, the ring of metal that was
new in the world; shrieks of men and horses wounded; battle-songs from those
with breath to sing. Bright scarlet of blood. Men falling. Horses dying.

Battle. And as the knots of fighting men, women, horses spun
away, there was Yama in the middle, untouched.

Maybe he began to understand that he was singled out. If so,
he did not know what to do about it.

Now
. Agni nodded
to the ones who waited, strong men and women of the city. With a sound perhaps
of relief, some of them drew aside the barrier. The rest lifted up the bridge
and swung it down.

It was a great thing, greater almost than they could do. At
the summit of its ascent it wavered. They braced with all their strength.

For a stretching moment it looked ready to fall back; but
they prevailed. It swept around and crashed to the ground, secure on the far
side of the ditch.

It was all Agni could do to hold Mitani. The stallion danced
on his hindlegs, wheeling and snorting. Agni cursed him under his breath and
drove him forward.

When his forefeet clattered on the bridge, he nigh went up
again. But Agni was ready for that. He clapped heels to rigid sides and sent
Mitani plunging across. A booming of hooves on wood, a blur of deep-dug ditch
and deadly stakes; then Earth Mother lay underfoot once more, and the field was
clear for a little way before him, and his own men, his friends and kin, were
crowding at his back.

He gave them room to come across the bridge. Just as the
last horse was firm on solid ground, the people behind hauled the bridge back,
leaving them with one way home: straight ahead through the enemy, till they
could win to the northward road.

oOo

“It’s a beautiful day to die,” said Patir, reining his
spotted stallion to a halt beside Agni. He had the look he always had before a
fight, wild and a little glazed, with a grin that came and went irresistibly.
He always said the same thing, too: for luck, he maintained.

Agni always made the same reply: “It’s a better day to
live.”

And a grand fight, Rahim would have said, third in their
chorus. But Rahim was dead. They left his part to silence.

Agni called himself to order. Yama’s company had not moved
in all this while; they stood like a walled city, bristling with spears. No
doubt they thought to wait out the battle, let the rest do their fighting for
them, and claim the prize when all was done.

Agni had no intention of letting them do any such thing. He
wheeled Mitani to face his men, his best, his strongest, his own; his kin who
had come with him all the way from the White Horse. There was battle all about
them, tribe against tribe, Lady’s children against men of the steppe. But here
was a matter for family. White Horse against White Horse. King born against the
one who had betrayed him into exile.

This would do for a battle. Oh, yes. It would do indeed.

Danu went out long before dawn, hours before the Mother
sang the sun into sky. The stars were out in their myriads. So were the insects
that plagued the night; even an ointment of pungent herbs could not keep them
altogether at bay.

He found the rest of those he was supposed to meet, by the
sounds of slapping and the occasional soft curse. They were all gathered by the
ditch, ready to cross it when the last of them had come.

Although the horsemen were camped well away to the east, no
one ventured a light. Night-eyes and starlight were ample for most; those who
were night-blind held close to their more fortunate kin.

Danu could see very well. He lent his hand to a smallish
woman who proved by her voice and the glimmer of her face to be Chana—not so
eager now to be a tribesman’s woman, not since these new horsemen came with
their fire and slaughter. He had heard that her tribesman had objected to her
going, and commanded her to stay. If he had asked, she might have agreed. But
since he had not, she was here, one of the company that marched to fight for Three
Birds.

It seemed a very long time before everyone was there, the
bridge was lowered, and all of them had gone across. The bridge’s tenders
hauled it back and restored the barrier of brush, making a wall against the
enemy.

They went quickly, in a long line, running as hunters run.
They all knew what they were to do. Agni had tried to insist that one of them
lead, but no one wanted the burden. If in the heat of battle it came to one of
them in particular, so it would. Agni had muttered something about impossible
idiots, but no one had seen fit to notice.

In any event they were well on their way, armed and supplied
as hunters turned warriors, and everyone knew where they were going.

Danu was not a particularly fast runner, but he was steady,
and he could run for as long as he needed to. He was content to run among the
last of them, keeping to an easy lope. No use in wasting his strength now, or
tripping or twisting an ankle in the dark.

He meant to face this battle with his eyes wide open and his
strength at its fullest. Because, no matter how reluctant he might be, he had
learned to fight for precisely this. He had no intention of running away from
it.

They were all of the same mind. Late-night musings in
solitude and noontide reflections in the market were all done with. There was
only the truth to face. Whether any of them could do what had to be done.
Whether they could bring themselves to fight; to wound. To kill.

After the first few dozen strides, Danu had found the rhythm
of his pace, easy and all but mindless. His breath came easy, his legs moved
without stiffness.

Many of the women ran naked but for their crimson skirts.
The men were more modest, but there was no great need to be. He stripped off
his tunic as he went, thrusting it into the pack with his provisions, his spare
bowstrings, and the few odd bits that he had judged might be useful. The night
air was soft on his bare skin. Biting creatures were less pleased to seize on
moving prey; he had no great fear for his tender parts.

It would have been pleasant, this running from dark into
dawn, if not for what waited at the end of it. He turned his mind away from
that while the night lasted, let himself be content with the surge and flex of
muscles, the steady pumping of his heart, the drawing in of breath only to be
let out again.

So must a horse run, for the joy of running. So must the
colt do—the young stallion that everyone insisted was his. He had left that one
safe among the herds. Mounted fighting he could do, but he could not bear it if
the colt was hurt.

And so he ran with the foot-fighters, and the colt grazed
and played and plagued the mares, and never knew what he was missing.

oOo

Dawn was greying the sky when they came to the place where
they would wait upon the enemy. Some went to the northern copses, others to the
grove to the south, there to hide till the horn called them out to the battle.