White Mare's Daughter (96 page)

She could refuse it. There was no disgrace in that. She
could give it to Mareka or to one of the elders; to women who had borne and
suckled a plenitude of children.

She had yet to suckle even one. Some might cry out that she
was not worthy. And maybe they would be right; but the Mother—her Mother who
was dead—had named her heir.

She must trust the Lady. She would take what she was given.
She would be the Mother of Three Birds.

Agni would call her arrogant. Strange sunlit thought for
that dance in the moonlight.

His face came clear in her memory. She danced the spiral
dance around it, around him. His quick laughter, his quick temper. The lift of
his chin when he caught sight of someone he knew. The long clean line of his
back. His beauty that was nothing like a woman’s.

She made a gift of that memory to the Mother who was dead: a
beautiful young man to keep her company in her long sleep; a warmth of sunlight
to brighten the dark.

His spirit would not miss the little bit of it that she
took. Nor, she thought, would he mind too greatly that she had done it. He had
honored the Mother, too. Maybe, in his way, he had loved her.

oOo

Sarama elected to see the Mother to her rest, and to leave
Yama to the men who had fought him and the men who had fought under him. And
yet as she danced the Lady’s dance, it gave her no peace. Danu’s face kept
intruding on her memory. Danu’s voice kept sounding in her ear, speaking words
that she could never quite understand.

She had not seen him anywhere. Not in the camp, not among
the people who had followed the Mother to the grove. There were companies
abroad on the battlefield, gathering and tending the wounded and looking after
the dead. He must be among those companies. Not among the dead.

She would know if he had died. Surely, by the Lady, she
would know.

She left the dance and the grove before the moon was well
risen. She had honored the Mother as much as she could. The Mother would not
mind too terribly that she had left so early. The Mother had loved all her
children, but Danu had been closest of all to her heart, except for Tilia.

The Mare would have been happy to crop grass on the edge of
the Lady’s field, but she offered no more than a token protest when Sarama
asked her to bear bridle and saddle-fleece again. Sarama was none too delighted
to be back in the saddle, either; she was tired, and her bones ached. But she
would sleep in no bed unless it had Danu in it.

Impulse and a kind of crazy hope led her to the Mother’s
house. People were in it, sleeping or awake, but not Danu. Only Rani was asleep
in the arms of Danu’s brother Tanis.

Sarama did not try to wake either of them. Rani would only
want her mother to stay, and cry when Sarama left. Or worse—she would call for
her father, and Sarama could not provide him.

Danu was not in the city. No one had seen him leave the
battlefield. The last anyone knew, he had been among the fighters sent to lay
an ambush.

Some of those had come back, wounded or whole, but none
recalled seeing the Mother’s son past the first disposal of forces. He had gone
north to the old boar-coverts. That much appeared to be certain.

Sarama returned to the field. It was a strange bleak place
under the moon, a field of the dead and dying, and shadow-shapes moving among
them. The dead of the tribes would burn on a pyre, come sunrise, and their
ashes be buried thereafter. The dead of the city would lie unburned in the
earth. Now, in the night, people labored to find and separate them, and give
the mercy-stroke to such of the wounded as they found.

None of the black-bearded men was Danu, nor had he been
found among the dead. Sarama rode slowly over that field, peering in the
moonlight. Some of the searchers had torches, but she did not wish to be
encumbered with one. The moon was bright enough.

The farther from the city she went, the more of the dead
were yet unclaimed. Wounded there were none. That was a mercy, perhaps. And
yet, if no one lived, then Danu—

He was alive. She would not let him be dead. She searched
for him with a kind of desperate care, pausing beside each body and making
certain that it was not his.

She found Beki who had been Danu’s second in the Mother’s
house, and Chana who had amused herself for a while with Agni’s yearbrother
Patir. They had taken ample escort with them into the gods’ country: men and
horses, even a warhound that had died with its teeth sunk in Beki’s throat.
Sarama had not known that any of the tribesmen had brought warhounds. They were
an eastern affectation, and little known on the western steppe.

She slipped from the Mare’s back and left her to follow or to
stay, as she chose. The soft sound of her footfalls trailed after Sarama.

These were people whom Sarama knew, these dark-haired dead.
The horsemen were all strangers, their banner unfamiliar. They had all fought
hard, died hard.

She found him in the thick of it. There was a horse down,
and a knot of tribesmen. And beneath them a hand that she knew, and a golden
armlet gleaming pallid in the moonlight. She would remember later the thought
that came to her, the dull wonder. No one had taken the gold from him.

She reached to touch it. It was cool. But the hand—

Warm. It was warm. Not very; not as if it surged with life.
But it was not as cold as death, either.

With sudden fury she attacked the heaped bodies, lifting
them, hurling them away. In her right mind she could never have done it. Now,
the moon filled her. It made her strong.

The last dead tribesman fell bonelessly to the side. Danu
lay sprawled on the trampled grass. He was naked but for belt and baldric, and
his body was wound about with livid scars.

He had painted himself richly, as if this war were a dance.
Only a few of the marks on him were blood. That was darker than the paint, and
thicker, and its patterns had no order in them. She could not see what was
fresh and what was dried.

Her hand lay trembling on his breast. It was cool, unmoving.
She stroked fingers through the curly fleece of it. He never stirred. Her
fingers clawed; raked hard, almost hard enough to draw blood.

Nothing.

A great wail rose up in her. He was not dead. He was not. He
did not dare be dead.

His lips were as cool as the rest of him. Cool, not cold. He
tasted of blood and earth.

In a kind of madness, she stripped off her garments, her
coat, her trousers, and all her weapons. The night air was chill on her skin.

She covered him with her body, all of him that she could.
She gave him her warmth. She stroked him, rubbed the cold out of him. She took
his soft cool rod in her hand and struggled to wake it. She cursed him, raged
at him, hated him for refusing to stir.

He was refusing. She knew it. “Wake up, damn you!” she
railed at him. “Wake up and look at me!”

She was being unreasonable. A distant part of her was aware
of it, but she was not inclined to care. He had not died. She would not let
him.

At first, when something about him changed, she hardly
noticed it. She was too preoccupied. And yet in a little while there could be
no mistaking it. The thing that had lain limp in her hand was coming alive. It
was warming, growing. Rising up as a man might rise from the dead.

A breath shuddered as he drew it in. Another followed it,
racking his body. He arched against Sarama’s hand.

She took him inside herself. Blindly, without mind or will,
he took the rhythm of that dance, the oldest of them all.

He stiffened and shuddered. Dying—damn him—

No. Not unless the Lady’s gift was a kind of death.

His eyes snapped open. He gasped.

She caught his breath before it escaped, and gave it back to
him. All the life, all the strength that she had to spare, she poured into him.
He was warm, warm to burning.

His arms closed about her with blessed, bruising strength.
He rolled, flinging her onto her back, rising above her.

His eyes were clouded, yet as she met them, slowly they
cleared. He saw her; knew her. Knew what she had done. He blushed darkly in the
moonlight.

She laughed for joy, and because he was so terribly shocked.
“I couldn’t think of any other way,” she said.

“I’m sure you couldn’t.” His voice was deep and sweet. It
was the most wonderful sound in the world.

“I wouldn’t let you die,” she said. “I wouldn’t let you
dare.”

He frowned. The shadow had come back to his eyes, but there
was no confusion there. Not any longer. “I—wanted—” His frown deepened. “I
killed. I killed men. I killed—many—”

“You fought in a war,” she said.

“But I wasn’t supposed to be
good
at it!”

She let the echoes die. None of the dead started awake. The
moon stared down, cold and serene.

Softly after his great roar of anguish she said, “Get up.”

He stared at her.

She sharpened her voice a little. “Up. Get up. Now.”

His habit of obedience had not left him. He staggered to his
feet.

A hiss escaped him. He was wounded. Not to death, but not
lightly, either. He must be dizzy with loss of blood, and the sudden and
manifold stabbings of pain.

She could not be merciful. Not until he was strong in his
spirit again. She rose as he had risen, and braced him as he swayed. He needed
to eat, drink. He needed to sleep somewhere apart from a heap of the dead.

He did not want to do any of those things. He wanted to stay
on the field, to bury the dead, to wallow in his self-disgust.

She would not let him. “Don’t you go away from me,” she said
fiercely. “I need you. Rani needs you. Your sister needs you. The whole world
needs you.”

“Then let the world take care of itself.”

That was so utterly unlike him that she froze. He nearly
escaped her; but she was not as easily dismayed as that. She pulled him back to
face her. “I won’t let you go.”

“Maybe I don’t want to stay.”

“I don’t care.”

His eyes blazed on her. She was glad. Heat was life. Heat of
temper would bring him back to himself.

She tugged at him. He staggered after.

The Mare was grazing close by. Sarama got him onto her back,
cursing him when he resisted, striking him as if he had been a recalcitrant
child.

He was acting like a tribesman. “And you know better,” she
snapped at him.

That quelled him. He sagged on the Mare’s back, clutched
mane before he fell. “I don’t—I can’t—”

“Be quiet,” she said. And for a wonder he obeyed.

oOo

Of all the places that she could take him, the enemy’s
former camp was closest. It was safe, she reckoned, and she had seen Taditi in
the king’s tent before she went in search of Danu. He might lose his wits again
in a camp of the horsemen, but she had to hope that that was past.

He seemed calm enough, and unshaken when he saw where she
was taking him. The camp was quiet, most of its people away seeing Yama to his
grave. But Taditi was in the king’s tent as Sarama had hoped, and she knew at a
glance what was needed of her.

She brought wine, food, water to wash Danu and a blanket to
wrap him, and a calm presence that brooked no nonsense. Between the two of them
they saw him cleaned and fed and settled in a quiet corner. He had sworn that
he would not sleep, but sleep took him almost as soon as he lay down.

Sarama stayed with him. There was much that she could have
been doing, but nothing that mattered as much as this. No one who mattered as this
one man did. Not her brother, not her kin. Not even her daughter.

She would never make a king, nor ever a Mother. A king could
not leave all his people for one man alone, or a Mother cast aside duty to
watch over her beloved.

Sarama, who had done both, sat on her heels in the tent’s
dimness and watched him sleep. When he stirred uneasily or murmured, she spoke
softly to him. And when the black dreams struck, she lay beside him and held
him till they passed, through the long hours from deep night into morning.

oOo

She slept herself then, a little. She woke to find him
open-eyed, regarding her with a dark and unreadable stare. “Good morning,” she
said.

His brow lifted. “Is it morning?”

She nodded.

“It’s still night here,” he said.

“We’re in the king’s tent of the White Horse,” Sarama said.
“I brought you here because it was closest.”

“No,” he said. “No.
Here
.”
His fist struck his breast over the heart. “I didn’t dream it, did I? I fought.
I killed people.”

“You helped to save your city.”

“Yes.” It was a sigh. “I don’t want to be proud of what I
did.”

“Are you?”

His eyelids lowered. His lips set. “I don’t . . .
want to.”

She touched him softly, brushing fingers over brow and
cheeks. “Beloved,” she said.

He shivered. His eyes closed tight. “None of us who fought
there will ever be the same again. We’ve lost something, Sarama. We’ll never
get it back.”

“I know,” she said softly. “I know.”

“And,” he said, and his eyes opened, and they were darker
even than before, “do you know the other thing? The thing that eats my spirit?
I would do it again. Every bit of it. Every drop of blood. Because if I, if we,
had not done it, our city might have fallen.”

“It would have fallen,” Sarama said. “Agni couldn’t have
held them off. His men were too few. He’d have fallen himself, and maybe died.
And Yama would be king in Three Birds.”

“It does matter,” said Danu. “Doesn’t it? Which horseman
calls himself king. I would rather Agni, who made the Great Marriage with
Tilia, than the man who made a path of slaughter to our eastward door.”

“Yes,” said Sarama.

“But I am not glad of it,” he said fiercely. “I can’t be
glad of it. No one can ask me to be.”