Daughter of Lir (17 page)

Maybe death would come in the morning. Maybe it would come
later, after they had tried and failed to steal a chariot. Tonight it did not
matter. There was only the moon and the music, and the heat of her blood.

Minas heard the music from across the roll of the steppe.
He had been out hunting, he and Dias and a handful of the young men, and they
had let night catch them half a day’s ride from the camp. They had a fat deer
roasting over their fire, a skin or two of kumiss, and one another’s
company—what more could a man ask for?

This was good country, good hunting, ample water. Small
wonder its tribes had gathered to do battle with the People, with so much to
defend. They were broken now. Their women served the women of the People. Their
men’s skulls watched over the lands that they had lost.

“We could stay here,” Aias was saying as the kumiss went round.
“Did you see how the deer all but walked into our arrows? This is the gods’
country.”

“What, are you tired of fighting?” Kletas asked him—mildly,
for Kletas.

“I could rest a bit,” Aias said. He was a big man, very big
indeed, but gentle. He fought well and killed many, but he never seemed to take
such joy in it as the others did. They might have been merciless toward him if
he had not been so large or so strong.

“We’ll rest when we’re dead,” Kletas growled.

Aias shrugged and passed him the kumiss.

Minas’ bladder twinged. He wandered off a little distance,
not quite to the line of their horses, and relieved himself in the grass.

He heard the music as he paused, turning his face to the cool
light of the moon. A little wind played about him, brushing his hair with soft
fingers. It carried with it a sound like the skirling of pipes and the beating
of a drum.

The shamans, he thought. They were calling him. This was
just such a night as they loved.

He dug in his heels. He would not go. He was like Aias: he
wanted to rest.

Dias came up beside him, fitting there like a sword in its
scabbard. “Someone’s camped out there,” he said. “They don’t care much for
keeping hidden, either.”

“You hear them, too?”

Dias’ brows went up. “What, you think I’m deaf? They’re not
far away.”

“Maybe it's a trap,” Minas said. “Renegades of the fallen
tribes, or raiders from farther west.” And that, he thought, would be
preferable to a foregathering of shamans.

Dias was already in motion, passing like a shadow in the
moonlight. Minas hardly hesitated before he followed.

It was not far at all, just over a hill and down into a
shallow valley with a river running through it: the same river that, farther
east, flowed past the camp of the People. Dias dropped flat just below the
hill’s crest and, with Minas close on his heels, crawled up to the summit.

They lay side by side, transfixed.

Traders, Minas knew, seeing the donkeys tethered in a line,
and horses that must belong to the guards. They were darker, broader, sturdier
than any people he had seen before. The men’s beards were black and thick and
curling, their hair in single plaits as thick as a woman’s arm. They made him
think of black rams, with their curly fleeces and their wide blunt-nosed faces
limned in firelight.

But he was no more directly aware of them than of his
brother barely breathing beside him. They were all men, and however strange
they might be, they were starkly ordinary before the one who danced to the
skirling of the pipes.

It was a woman beyond any possible shadow of a doubt. She
was as bare as she was born, her smooth skin gleaming in the moonlight. Her
hair poured like black water down her back, brushing the rich rounding of her
buttocks. Her thighs were round and strong, her waist surprisingly small. Her
breasts were both full and high, with broad dark nipples. Her face had a beauty
such as he had never seen before: full round cheeks, oval chin, long straight
nose. Her eyes were large and dark under level brows.

She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. She danced
with grace that caught at his throat.

He wanted her as he had never wanted a woman before. It was
not as a stallion wants a mare, or a bull the heifer. He wanted all of her: not
only that white body, but the mind, the spirit that shone in her. She was laughing
as she danced, spinning till her hair whipped those wonderful flanks.

A distant part of him remarked on how utterly immodest she
was, dancing naked in front of a company of men. But his eyes on her, the
spirit in him, knew how all of them saw her: not with lust but with worship.
This was a goddess. This dance was a rite of her cult, and these men her
servants.

He had gripped the earth till his fingers were sunk deep in
it. His heart beat so hard, his breath came so faint, that he was dizzy. He was
like to die with wanting her.

It was a pity he was sane. He did not leap up and charge
howling on the traders’ camp. Nor did he wait till the dance was ended and the
fire had died and the traders fallen asleep, then creep in and steal that glory
of a woman. No; he watched until she was done, and saw her drop still laughing
beside one of the men.

That was a big man with shoulders like a bull, but something
about him was strikingly like her. Her brother, Minas thought. He found it
comforting, somehow, to see her in the company of family. That was right; it
was proper.

It was likewise proper that this brother tossed a tunic at
her, and she grimaced at him, but she put it on. It covered her like a cloud
across the moon. She was breathing hard, her breast rising and falling,
straining the bonds of the garment. One of the men handed her a cup. He stooped
to do it, making of it a bow, a gesture of worship. She saluted him and drank
it down.

She had the manners and conduct of a man: free of herself,
and proud. It should have been appalling. It was splendid.

“Minas.”

Dias’ voice came faint, as if from far away.

“
Minas
!” His
brother was shaking him, bringing him back to the world from which the sight of
this goddess had taken him. He blinked and gasped, remembering at last how to
breathe.

“One would think,” Dias said dryly, “that you’d never seen a
woman naked before.”

“A woman, yes,” Minas said. “But a goddess, never.”

Dias’ brow went up. “She is a beauty. What will you wager
that her men are coming to trade with the People?”

“No wager,” Minas said. “Where else would they be going?”

“They’re bold. I wonder what country they come from? I
haven’t seen their like before.”

“Maybe they come from beyond the river of souls.” Minas had
said it lightly, but once it was said, it had the solidity of truth.

“If she comes from that country, then she is a goddess.”
Dias’ voice was light, too. They understood each other very well. “What do you
think they came for? To spy on us?”

“To trade with us,” Minas said. “And maybe to see what we are.
I would do that, if invaders came near to me. To know what I faced.”

“Maybe gods from beyond the river are braver than the tribes
we’ve always overrun.”

Minas heard that, but his mind was running down another
track. “I think,” he said, “that we should visit them come morning. We can
welcome them to the lands that the People have won, and conduct them to the
camp.”

“Them?” Dias’ glance was wicked. “Or her?”

“I don’t think they’ll let her come alone,” Minas said
dryly.

Dias grinned. “Oh, they’d be fools to do that.”

Minas rolled onto his back. It was like tearing the scab off
a half-healed wound, to take his eyes from her. But the stars soothed him, and
the moon bathed his face.

Was this how it had been for his father and Etena? The
thought did not frighten him. He felt nothing of the dark in this woman, this
goddess from the sunset country. “At first dawn,” he said, “we’ll put on our
best faces and go, and greet our guests.”

Rhian did not know if she slept that night. She supposed
she did. Her dreams were full of moonlight and a strange, wild joy—as if when
she woke, she would wake to something wonderful.

She sat up just as the moon was setting. The sky was grey
with the first light of dawn. A breath of wind murmured through the grass. They
were coming, it said. The morning would bring them. But when she asked it what
it meant, it would not answer.

Her companions were asleep, even the guards out past the
horselines. It was as if a spell had fallen over them all. None of them stirred
as she walked among them, not even Conn, who seldom slept the night through.
Bran was deep in dream, snoring softly.

She knotted her hands behind her to keep from touching his
face. The distance between them had widened, the farther they traveled in this
country. They never spoke at all now, even to be civil.

In the daylight she was too preoccupied with travel to think
of such things. At night she was asleep, or preoccupied with the allure of this
young man or that—but never Bran. Now in this hour between the worlds, for a
little while she had no choice but to remember. What they had been to one
another. What her leaving had done to them.

The moment passed. The moon set. The sky filled with light.

She had rekindled the fire and made the bread and set it to
bake before the sun was up. Her companions woke just as the bread was baked, as
if the spell had lifted from all of them at once. They yawned, stretched,
roused noisily to the new day.

Rhian sat by the fire, demure in tunic and trousers, with
her hair plaited tidily and nothing left of the night’s wildness. Only Emry
would look directly at her. She was amused to see who blushed the hottest. So:
not every vaunting youth was as bold as he pretended.

Emry approved her choice of garments, from the slant of his
glance, but he did not trust it. She flashed a grin at him, approving such
finery as he had to put on. He was a beautiful man, and it pleased her to see
him show it. These lords of chariots would find nothing to scorn in the
Goddess’ servants.

o0o

They were preparing the horses, brushing their coats till
they gleamed, when a cry from the hillside brought them all to a halt.

“Riders!” Dal called out, leaping down from his
sentry-perch, running headlong and heedless of dips and stones.

“Chariots?” Emry called back.

Dal stumbled, caught himself, kept on coming. “Horses. No—
ah
!” He tumbled head over heels,
rolling, fetching up with a squawk at Emry’s feet. His face was scarlet.

“No chariots,” Emry said kindly. He pulled the boy to his
feet.

The others had drawn in, his warriors and the traders of the
caravan. Many had drawn swords. He shook his head at those. “Sheathe them,” he
said.

“But—” said Mabon.

“We’re traders,” said Emry. “We don’t fight.”

It was not easy for some of them, but he was a strong
prince, and they were sensible enough when they had to be. The riders found
them still in camp, lingering as it seemed over their breakfast, with horses
and donkeys tethered and packs of trade-goods laid casually by the fire-circle.

These were men like the tribesmen that they had met as they
rode farther eastward: lean, rangy, fair-skinned, with hair that was often
ruddy or gold. But there was a difference in them. They were a little taller, a
little rangier. Their faces were carved sharp and clean. They had no
beards—though Rhian saw the glint of stubble on lean cheeks. How odd, she
thought, that they vaunted so of their manhood, yet made themselves look like
boys.

They wore a great deal of gold, bright stones, shells and
beads. Their coats were heavily embroidered. Their weapons were bone or flint
or copper. Only the man who rode first, on a handsome dun stallion, had a
bronze hilt gleaming above a richly tooled scabbard.

He must be their captain. He had the look, such as she had
seen before on the sea of grass: a headlong arrogance, a glance that raked the
strangers and reckoned them beneath him, but he would suffer them, of his
charity. He would not meet Rhian’s eyes at all. None of them would, in this
country.

The riders halted just past the line of Emry’s young men. As
if at a signal, they sprang down all at once, matched as in a dance.

“We are the People of the Wind,” the captain said in the
traders’ argot. His accent was a little surprising: soft, slow, with a hint of
a burr. “You are welcome in our lands.”

“We are traders from the west,” Hoel said. “We bring you the
wealth of our people.”

The captain’s face did not alter. These were not greedy
children, Rhian thought, or else they did not like to seem so. She looked for
some sign in them of the terrible warfare that the tales told of. None of them
wore a necklace of skulls, nor were they stained with the blood of innocents.
They seemed ordinary enough young men. There was nothing overtly deadly about
them.

“We are pleased to see traders,” the captain said. “Our
people are camped yonder. They will be glad of your coming.”

“We will be glad to come to them,” said Hoel. “Will you stop
a while, my lords? We have food, drink. Share it with us.”

The captain nodded. “Then we will ride to my people.”

“And not a moment too soon,” someone muttered behind Rhian,
but not in traders’ speech. The riders did not appear to understand. They
settled to eat the last of the bread, and drink wine that Rhian had not known
the caravan carried. Traders, Conn had taught her long ago, never brought out
all their goods at once.

The riders had smoked meat and the appalling liquid fire
that, Rhian had learned many camps ago, was made from mares’ milk. Though none
of the westerners was hungry, they all ate a little, to be courteous.

She, too, though women did not eat with men here. She
remembered that she was supposed to be a goddess. She broke bread and took up a
strip of meat, and caught the skin of kumiss as it went round, and suffered a
swallow of it.