Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (39 page)

    
“We think that your friend will do what he sees you doing,” Two Spears said.  “Which is why we offer you my sister.”

    
I hope my jaw didn’t drop then, but it probably did.  Even as a sailor, this made me uncomfortable.  Kills and his daughter had played and won.  I wondered what sort of seed would issue from Blizzard, if they could make their plan work. 

   
“Done.”

    
Two Spears, my brother-in-law now, stood and slammed his own hand on my back in congratulations.  Why couldn’t he have offered that Two Spears come with me?

    
“Done and done,” Kills said.  He took my forearm in his, and I took his in mine.  While we held each other, his daughter stood, pulled off her skirt and halter-top and tossed them casually into the flames.  My eyes widened as she revealed herself naked in the firelight, standing proud, looking up at me no differently than she had in the field.  The fire caressed her skin; the washboard stomach muscles made hard by a life that demanded strength, the bushy pubic hair and her dimpled butt.

    
I turned to Thorn knit my eyebrows.  “Those were the clothes of a virgin,” he said, and shrugged.

    
She reached out her hand to me, and I took her hot fingers in mine.  The things I do to keep the peace!

     Blizzard and the mare, She Runs and I went off into the plains – on different pathhs but parallel directions.  It surprised me how much reverence they had for the sexual act as the horses experienced it.  One of the stallions had put up a fuss when he got downwind of the mare in heat, but the handlers were ready for him.  None of the stallions were a match for Blizzard, and a wild stallion would kill them and take the herd if given the opportunity.

    
Not that Blizzard would.  Blizzard looked down his nose at “lesser” horses.  I don’t know that he considered them horses at all.  I wondered what would happen if he snubbed the mare’s advances.

    
Runs had two mares and a gelding.  We rode off on one of the mares, roughly parallel to Blizzard and his girlfriend.  We rode bareback, I wore a breechcloth and leggings, bare-chested, Runs remained naked in front of me, pressed against my chest and stroking my arm.  Her hair smelled like hay and her skin felt soft and cool again.

    
“I want to be able to see your stallion the first time you take me,” she said frankly.

    
I smiled.  “OK.”

    
She looked back over her shoulder, up into my eyes.  “This isn’t your first time too?”

    
I looked back into her eyes.  “No.”

    
“Good,” she said.  “Any wives?”

    
I thought of Genna. 

    
“One close call, but no,” I said.  “And no children I know of.”

    
She settled back against me. “I think I will change that.”

    
I laughed and squeezed her.

    
She looked back, “You doubt me?” with just a trace of anxiety in those cool brown eyes.

    
I rubbed her nose with mine.  Might as well start the marriage off on the right foot.  “I laughed because you want them so fast,” I told her.  “You barely know me, how do you know that you want my children?”

    
She leaned back against me.  “Oh, I know you, White Wolf,” she told me.  “I know you well.”

     Blizzard took the mare about a mile from the herd before she finally turned on him.  You could hear them, posturing, snorting and rearing.  There were a few handlers shadowing them, but I knew they couldn’t handle Blizzard.  It didn’t matter, though.  We weren’t going anywhere.

    
We slid from the mare together, Runs giving her a pat on the butt to send her back to the herd.  It must have been uncomfortable to ride naked and bareback, but She Runs didn’t say anything and just brushed herself off.  She stretched her full length and wrapped her arms around my neck.  Standing about 5’4”, she would get a stiff neck with me for a mate.  At least, that’s what I thought as I leaned down to kiss her.

    
She had my clothes off before I knew it, handling me first curiously, then with confidence.  Her body felt as firm as an athlete’s, her butt a little wide from years spent in the saddle, but not unattractive in any way.  When the time came, she got down on all fours, watching as Blizzard finally subdued his girlfriend.  He and I both mounted at the same time and relatively in the same position.

    
“Ow,” she complained.

    
“Too hard?” I asked.

    
She shook her head, throwing her long, black hair like a mane.  The stallion grunted about a hundred yards away.  You could hear his efforts and the mare’s reaction.

    
Perhaps Blizzard understood the situation in his own way. Perhaps he just took the opportunity. Stallions are very much sexual beasts, yet Blizzard had rejected all opportunities up to now.  Maybe now that the offer came so blatantly, he had decided to take it.

    
Other than the fact that he finished before I did, and that afterwards the mare tried to kick him before finally settling beside him, I think Blizzard and I did equally well.  Near the end, She Runs did a lot of groaning and pulling up of grass.  I had no doubt that I had years of sore backs before me.  She climaxed before I did, then we settled down in the grass where she laid her head on my shoulder.

    
“That was – I mean,” she said, her long fingernails on my skin.  “I didn’t expect – not at all.  I mean, it
hurt
, and it still hurts, but it was
good
.”

    
I laughed and kissed her head. 

    
I liked her – I found it impossible not to.  So frank of beauty and mind, taking a world she served in, and forcing it to serve her instead.  The fire that burned in her had lit in me, as well.  This one would not likely need much protecting.

    
“How old are you?” I asked her.

    
I could feel her head move to look up at me.  I didn’t look down.  “How many summers have I seen?” she asked.

    
“Or falls,” I said.

    
She punched my ribs with a tiny fist.  Did all women do that here?

    
“I have seen sixteen summers and sixteen falls,” she said.  “I know some people count the day of their birth, but an Andaran knows better.  My mother bore me when the wheat turned golden, like most people in my tribe.”

    
I nodded.  Sixteen!  Rob that cradle!  I felt a twinge knowing that this was illegal where I came from.

    
“I know,” she told me.  “Most girls are mated from their first blooding, but my father withheld me.”

    
Well, at least I wasn’t a perv by local standards.  She reached up and kissed me, her tongue in my mouth before I realized it.  Frank of beauty and mind, I thought to myself.  If she wanted it, she took it.

    
But something would go wrong – I knew it.  Something always went wrong. It had to be me – it couldn’t be
that
many women finding something in me to hate without there actually being something there.  Too aggressive, not aggressive enough; too needy, too distant; either I didn’t know what love was or the other didn’t.

    
And, in all that time, I had never loved one of them.  Not Genna, not Aileen, not the girls in college, not my girlfriend in high school.  The long relationships and the short ones, they had all found their way to disaster because of something in me that seemed designed to bring out something in them.

    
She Runs lay warm on my body and wet on my thigh. The grass smelled good and the night burned starry.  Blizzard nickered nearby by way of settling down, and I felt ready to do the same.

    
“And who is this woman who haunts such blue eyes,” she asked me.

    
My heart stopped.

    
“Huh – um, what, who?” I sputtered, caught entirely off guard.

    
Her rich laugh came as if from an older woman.  She stroked the side of my face. 

    
“Only the dread of a woman makes a man look like that,” she said.  “Have I already a competitor for your love?”

    
One shot, right to the heart.  I remembered her eyes burning into mine – what had she seen there?

    
I sighed, collected my thoughts.

    
“My friends, and some others, went on a mission,” I said, not sure how much I could tell her under the fire bond.  “There was a girl, her name is Genna.”

    
“Are you married to her?”

    
“Ugh, no – not married, no,” I said.  “She wanted me to love her, but I didn’t.  I – couldn’t.”

    
“You had no room for her in this heart?” she asked me, laying her cool hand on my breast. 

    
“No one has found a place in there,” I said.

    
She Runs nodded, holding her lower lip in her teeth.

    
“Where is this girl now?” she asked.

    
“She is in Chatoos, now,” I said, “with the rest of my friends.  We are part of a bond, she is not in it.  She is not well.”

    
“She was always so?” she asked.

    
I shook my head.  “She had been
so
vital, and now is very weak.  She has a hard time with the weakness.”

    
“When the strong ones fall and do not die, they suffer most of all.  She must have driven you away like an old dog.”

    
I nodded.

    
“Do not blame her for that, White Wolf,” she said.  “You lay with this girl, she loved you.  Now, you remind her of the life she lost.”

    
“She drove me away and told me to go find another woman,” I said.  I looked in her eyes.  “I have to be honest, I never wanted to go looking – “

    
She put her fingertips on my lips.  “You owe me no apology, White Wolf.  Your heart sang of this lost love the first time I saw you.  This comes as no surprise.”

    
“No?”

    
She shook her head.  “Your heart is true, White Wolf.  If you are with me now, then I don’t question how you got here.”

    
She Runs kissed me, first on the cheek and then the mouth.  Then she got up on her elbows, and looked down into my eyes.  I saw her more as a being framed against the starlight than by her features.  I felt her pendulous breasts as they dragged across my forearm.

    
“So,” she finally said.  “What are you going to name me?”

    
We slept, and in my sleep, as I so rarely do, I dreamed.  In that dream I rode Blizzard, as I had many times, as the sun set, and I challenged it again, as I had challenged it before I left the Great Northern Mountain Range, heading into Sental.