White Mare's Daughter (97 page)

“No one will,” she said. She raised herself up. “Come,
enough. The sun’s up. Yama is in his grave. We’ve a world to put together
again. Will you lie here and mourn the breaking, or help me mend it?”

He glared at her in quite unwonted resentment—signs of a
temper that she had hardly known he had. But he had not changed as much as
that. He mastered himself; he rose to his feet. He looked down at his nakedness
and blushed a little, but he was not one to stop for a bit of modesty.

Sarama was pleased to offer him garments that Taditi had
found and laid out the night before: coat and trousers of fine-tanned leather,
and a shirt woven in this country.

Danu looked at them, measured them against his body. They
were a fair fit. “Yama’s?” he asked.

“Does that bother you?”

“No,” he said. “No.” He took them, put them on. He looked
well in them—better than Yama would have done. There were boots, too, a little
large but passable, and a belt, and a knife that he quietly but firmly put
aside.

He was still Danu. It would be a while before he realized
it; but Sarama, seeing the knife laid on the chest beside the bed, knew it for
a surety. Nothing, not even war, could corrupt the spirit that was in him.

With day would come the judgment. But in the time between
dawn and full morning, Agni looked for refuge in sleep. He made his way to the
king’s tent in the camp of the White Horse, found a corner that had no one in
it, and let the darkness take him.

A fleeting thought, that he was outcast from this place,
that he could be killed for trespassing here, touched him and flickered away.
If anyone wanted to slit his throat while he slept, then so be it. He was far too
tired to care.

A soft touch roused him. Fingers stroking him; the
feather-brush of kisses. He smiled, still in great part asleep, and reached to
fill his arms with Tilia’s warm ample body.

What stirred in his embrace was a slighter figure by far. He
snapped awake, already in motion, recoiling against the wall of the tent.

Rudira lay where he had left her, in a tumble of pale hair,
pale skin, pale impudent breasts. She laughed at his expression. “What, my
love! Weren’t you expecting me?”

“Get out,” said Agni. His voice was thick.

She moved only to prop herself on her elbow and fix him with
a steady regard. “Do you know, the boys Catin showed me—they were only boys.
None of them was you.”

“Get out,” Agni said again. “I don’t want you here.”

“Of course you don’t,” she said. “You’re angry with me. You
think I’m all kinds of monstrosity.”

“Aren’t you? By the gods, woman! You betrayed me, exiled me,
murdered my ally. Do you think I’d ever want you near me again?”

“Some part of you does,” she said with an arch glance
downward.

He took no notice of that, or the ache in his loins, either.
“You have no heart,” he said. “Your spirit is an empty thing. All you know, all
you see, is that you want to be a king’s wife.”

“And won’t I be?”

“I have a wife,” he said.

“Certainly,” she said. “She’s a king now, too. I saw her.
She won’t have time to spare for you. She’ll be much too busy being king.”

Agni’s heart constricted. Rudira had a tongue like a snake,
both subtle and poisonous. That she spoke the truth, after her fashion, only
made her the more deadly.

He had let her live when he should have killed her. He could
fall on her now, seize her, snap that slender neck in his hands. But his blood
was not so cold, nor his strength of will so great. He would only fail.

And she knew it. Her smile was sweetly mocking. “Come, my
love. Surrender. I’ll share you with her. You don’t love her, after all. How
can you? Fat cow. But she’s made you a king. That’s a fine thing for a woman to
do.”

Agni drew breath to tell her how very wrong she was. But he
thought better of it. She would only call him deluded; and she might do
something rash. She had killed one Mother of Three Birds. She would think
nothing of killing another.

He shifted, moving toward her. Her smile turned gleeful. He
made as if to take her in his arms; veered and rolled and came to his feet well
beyond her. As it dawned on her what he had done, he snatched up such garments
as came to hand, and made his escape.

It was the coward’s way, but no other was of any use with
Rudira. The daylight offered refuge, morning light over a camp so familiar it
struck him with pain. Camp of the White Horse in the gathering of tribes, and
each clan-standard where it had always been, and Taditi tending the king’s fire
as she had done since he could remember. The only difference was the standard
next to the white horsetail, the flame of gold that marked the first king of
the Lady’s country, the first lord of horsemen to rule where only women had
ruled before.

Taditi greeted him with the rake of a glance, and gave him a
cup that proved to be filled with much-watered wine. There was bread to go with
it, and cheese. “It’s not much,” she said, “but it’s all you’re getting till
you send people out to forage.”

“The city can provide,” he said, “and we’ll cull the cattle.
How hungry is everyone?”

“Not at all,” she said, “yet. They’ve been seen to.”

With a faint sigh he drank his wine, ate his bread and
cheese. The camp had come to life as he sat there. Men came out of tents,
yawning and stretching. Women went about their shadowy business.

No one looked particularly cast down, and no one came to
fling him out. People who passed offered him respect as one did to a king, an
inclination of the head, sometimes a greeting, a soft “My lord.” Just as if he
had never been exiled. As if he had been king here since the old king died.

So did people school themselves in war, to accept what its
fortunes might bring. Conquest; defeat. Return of a man whose name had been
taken away, who had been made as nothing, yet who had won them all in battle.

It was only sensible to accept the inevitable; to greet him
as their king. To let him be what he should have been from the beginning.

Fortunes of war. Agni drank down the last of the wine.
People were hovering, not quite trying to draw his attention. Some were
familiar: elders and warleaders, clan-chieftains and lesser kings. A few bore
the marks of wounds.

They were his. He had conquered them. Now they waited on his
pleasure.

A king could let them wait about for most of the day, then suffer
them to approach him as he sat in the circle of judgment. But Agni was not a
particularly kingly king.

He tilted his head. First one, then another, then the lot of
them came to sit round the fire. No one needed its warmth, for the day was hot
even so early, but what it signified was greater than simple comfort.

They were vanquished, and he had not yet spoken his judgment
over them. Until he did, they could only speak if he spoke first. But no words
came to him. He sat, feeling faintly like a fool, while the silence stretched.

As he sat there, others came. Those indeed he knew, and by
name. Patir his yearbrother, Tillu with his terribly scarred face. Elders of
the western tribes, young men and battle-captains of Agni’s own eastern people.

They claimed places nearest Agni, and no one dared contest
it. Kings and elders who had been displaced, moved aside without protest. That
too was the fortune of war.

Patir settled on one side of Agni, Tillu on the other. Patir
said, “All’s done on the field. The healers have the wounded in the city.
They’re expected to live, the gods and the Lady willing.”

Agni bowed his head. “Thanks be,” he said. “And the dead?”

“All sent to their rest,” Patir answered. He yawned
cavernously and stretched. “Ah! I could use a little myself.”

“You haven’t slept?”

“A little,” Patir said. “When this is over I’ll sleep from
new moon to new moon, and let the work look after itself.”

“So shall we all.” Agni looked round the circle of faces. To
his own people he was an easy burden, their own king and friend, whom they had
chosen of their free will. As far as he knew, they were content with the
choice.

The strangers who had come to take this country now found
themselves taken instead, and no certainty of what he would do to them. He
might kill them. Blood-feud did not touch a conquering king. Or he might
restore them to all that they had had before.

He finished his bread and cheese, drank the last of his
wine. When he rose, some made as if to rise with him. He waved them down.
“Stay,” he said.

They stayed. They obeyed. It came to him then, the full
force of it, breaking at last through the wall of numbness that had been about
him. What he had done. What he had won.

And could he hold it?

No doubts. No weakness. He held himself erect as he walked
away.

oOo

He did not go far. He only wanted a little peace. When he
went back, he must judge them all, all the men who had come from the east.

He was not going to kill them. He never had intended to. But
what else he might do . . .

He walked out past the camp’s edge, up the hill that
sheltered it from the battlefield. That was as Patir had said, cleared as much
as it could be. Two mounds rose on it, one crowned with spears, one with
flowers. Dead of the horsemen, dead of the Lady’s people. Carrion birds squabbled
over scraps, remnants that had been forgotten.

The grass was all trampled and torn and stained dark with
blood and mud. It would grow back richer than ever. That great gift the gods
had given, that Earth Mother grew most fruitful on the field of death.

Agni sat on the hillside. The sun beat down, but the wind
eased the strength of it. His body was a pattern of aches, bruises and small
wounds.

None of them mattered. Nor did the ache in his loins. But
the memory of Rudira’s hands on his skin—

At first he thought he was dreaming it. Someone had come up
beside him and sat there in silence; and when he looked, he saw that it was
Tilia.

She neither touched him nor spoke to him, and yet her
presence warmed him through. After a while he said, “I thought you had to stay
in the city. Until—”

“I came where I was needed,” she said.

“But the Mother—”

“She sleeps,” said Tilia.

Agni shut his mouth carefully. Her words were gentle, but
they were as firm as a slap. The Mother was dead. Her story was ended.

After a moment Agni said, “You hold her place now.”

She nodded.

“Will that—”

“No,” she said.

“I hate when you do that.”

Her glance was as unrepentant as it had ever been, and as
brightly wicked, too. It comforted him. “And you’re king now,” she said.
“Really king.”

“That won’t change me,” he said.

Her brow arched. “Did I ask if it would?”

Maddening. Wonderful. He smiled; but memory intruded, like
the rake of nails down his back. “Gods,” he said. “I should have killed her.”

“You should not,” said Tilia.

“I can’t keep her here. She’s like a child or an animal.
She’s as treacherous as a spring wind. She’ll kill you if it suits her whim, or
kill me, or betray us both.”

“Leave her to us,” Tilia said.

Agni shook his head. “No. I can’t do that.”

“Why not? You people talk of the men’s side, the women’s
side. This is a thing of the women’s side. We’ll deal with her. You go, do what
men do, be king.”

“But she is my mistake.”

“How arrogant,” said Tilia, “and how perfectly like you. She
is a whole world’s mistake. Your world made her. Let my world heal her.”

“But—”

Her dark glance silenced him. “Go,” she said. “They’re
waiting for you.”

Certainly they were. Agni had bound them to it. He bent
toward her, kissed her lightly.

She looked a little startled, and a little pleased. He
leaped up lightly and held out his hand.

She let him draw her to her feet. Hand in hand they walked
down the hill into the camp.

Agni the king sat in judgment over the men from the east.
It was a sight the tribes had never seen before. Not only the king under his
golden standard with his golden torque about his neck, but the woman who sat
beside him and the women who sat and stood where elders should. Women unveiled,
unconstrained, conducting themselves as equals in the council of the tribes.

Tilia sat on the black horsehide, upright and still. Her
gown was of the finest weaving, a pattern of red and green and white, and her
ornaments were gold.

Agni’s coat was of the same weft as her gown, but his belt
and trousers and boots were a tribesman’s. He wore a weapon as a horseman
should, a long knife sheathed in leather and hafted in carved bone. Its blade
was copper, forged in Three Birds.

He was of both worlds. So must his people be, if they were
to live as the gods ordained.

Agni’s own people had settled themselves among the women
with a kind of cocky defiance. Patir was one of the last of them to appear. He
would have taken a place close to Agni but somewhat away from the elders; but
Agni caught his eye.

His brow rose. Agni nodded slightly. With a careful lack of expression
but a spring in his step, he took the place of honor, the place given to the
captain of the king’s warband, standing at his right hand and upholding the
golden standard.

The lords and chieftains of the invading tribes advanced to
stand before the king. They eyed the Mother and elders of Three Birds with
little liking, and the elders and chieftains of Agni’s following with little
greater pleasure. Those that were of their own people were the young, the
reckless, the outcast; and now they sat in judgment over their own fathers,
brothers, princes.

It should not have been so. If they had chosen another king,
Agni might have been standing before them, waiting as they waited, compelled by
custom and the laws of the tribes to abide by their sentence.