Shannivar (4 page)

O
N
the Azkhantian steppe, the Moon of Mares had given birth to the Moon of Golden Grass. Now, on a bright summer day, Shannivar daughter of Ardellis rode laughing through the feathergrass. Grasshoppers scattered beneath the hooves of her horse. The scent of the ripening seeds rose up around her. Surely, she thought, the goddess Tabilit must have been drunk on
k'th
when she created the steppe and covered it with such a sky as this, such rolling hills, such a sweep of gold and green. What more could anyone desire in life but a fine horse, a hunting bow, and the wind on her face?

Like all her people, Shannivar was small and bronze-skinned, her body sculpted by long days in the saddle. Her hands were broad and strong, her dark eyes hooded like a falcon's. A single braid of glossy black hair hung down her back from beneath her peaked felt cap. Feathers from the totem animal of her clan, the Golden Eagle, fluttered from the point of the cap. She wore no jacket, only a shirt and felt vest, embellished with stylized eagles and symbols of good fortune, loose camel's-wool trousers, a wide woven sash in bright colors, and butter-soft boots laced to the knee.

Shannivar's dun mare, Radu, skimmed the earth with her soft-foot gait. The pack pony trotted placidly behind them, the legs of the dead gazelle flopping against his sides.

The sun dipped toward the ridge, beyond which lay the river valley where Shannivar's clan had set up their
dharlak
, their summering-place. Ribbons of brightness spread across the western horizon. The grass rippled in the lengthening shadows. The sky was clear of any trace of the strange white star, so much more brilliant than its fellows. Surrounded by a peculiar misty halo, it had swept across the northern rim last summer and then disappeared. Now the heavens seemed untroubled, as serene as if the star had never existed.

There would be light enough, and time enough, to do all that was meant to be done. That had been her father's favorite saying, and she wondered if he were smiling down on her from the Sky Kingdom, urging her to patience as he had so many times in her childhood. She sighed, for the memory was both a blessing and a shadow on her heart. It was yet another reason to hate the Gelon, whose raids into Azkhantia had increased in recent years. Shannivar's bond with her father had been unusually strong; daughters bore the names of their mothers, as sons did their fathers, each following in the traditional path of their same-sex parent.

Shannivar passed the lake and the outlying pastures where the wealth of the clan, the cream-and-russet sheep and the shaggy two-humped camels, grazed. In the
dharlak
encampment itself, felt-sided
jorts
stood in concentric circles around a common area. Beyond the crumbling walls of an ancient fortress, a mews housed hunting falcons, but they were only for men.

One of Shannivar's younger cousins led a string of horses to drink at the lake's edge. He spotted her and waved, giving a whistling cry. A covey of children ran out to meet her.

“Shannivar the hunter!” the children cried. “May your arrows fly true! We will feast tonight!”

“Yes, little ones,” she said, laughing. Giggling, they clustered around her. “May your words always be sweet! Here, carry the gazelle to Grandmother.”

She slipped the carcass of the gazelle from the back of the pony and laid it across their joined hands. Even the youngest had learned the ways of working together. Separately, none of them could have managed its weight.

The Sky People, Tabilit and her consort Onjhol, made us one
.
We praise them by our oneness in work, in love, in war
, went an ancient saying.

Not one in all things
, Shannivar reflected somberly. There came a time when men and women went apart, a time she had been dreading.

She set aside her tack, the saddle of use-softened leather with its high cantle for support over long distances, the girth and breastplate, the thick blanket, the bridle ornamented with beads of silver and turquoise. She began rubbing down Radu with a plait of dried feathergrass, one long stroke after another. Layers of dried sweat came away, motes of dust billowing in the slanting light. The mare leaned into the rhythmic pressure, eyes half closed in contentment.

The dun mare was not nearly as fast as Shannivar's other horse, Eriu, a black with fire in his eye, but few horses could match him. Radu was getting old and had not borne a foal this last spring. She was one of two horses left to Shannivar by Ardellis, the mother who had died at her birth, and was a treasure indeed, one of the fabled soft-gaited horses, said to be Tabilit's favored children. The other, a washed-out gray mare of indifferent quality, had given birth to Eriu, a mount worthy of any warrior.

When Shannivar finished, giving the muscled rump a pat, Radu turned to look at her with an aggrieved expression.
More?
the mare seemed to say.

Shannivar tugged the long forelock. “You would stand here all night to be groomed, but I have other duties.”

Radu blew out a resigned sigh. She followed docilely as Shannivar took a handful of mane and led her to the horse field.

Eriu pricked his small, inwardly curved ears and flared his nostrils as Shannivar approached. Like most Azkhantian horses, he was compactly built, with a short, strong back and dense hooves. Unlike the others, however, he had not been turned out to run wild for the first two years of his life. Shannivar, guarding her small treasure of horses, had kept him close and fed him by hand. She'd sung to him through the long winter nights. He had never needed spurs or whip, for he answered to her voice, the shift of her weight, and the pressure of her knees.

“Soon,” she murmured, stroking his neck. “We will run, you and I.”

Small fires, many of them fueled with dried camel dung, burned brightly in the encampment. Shannivar's friends and cousins waited beside the largest, where the gazelle was roasting. The younger married women had already brought out the rest of the evening meal, cheeses made from the milk of sheep and camels, flatbread, summer greens cooked with herbs, and boiled wild barley.

Shannivar nodded to her friends before presenting herself to Grandmother. She could not remember a time when Grandmother had not been the oldest living person in the family, perhaps in the entire sept of her clan, and terrifying. It was said she had outlived three husbands and four sons, including Shannivar's own father. Although her eldest son was chief in name and in war, everyone deferred to Grandmother.

Grandmother's
jort
dominated the center of the
dharlak
, always the first to be set up and the last to be taken down. Age had darkened the framework of birch and willow, although the brightly dyed felt was thick and new. Inside, layers of carpet, some of them from Grandmother's own grandmother, covered the floor. The door flap had been tied back to admit the night breeze, framing the small upright figure on her hassock of stitched camel hide.

Grandmother wore the traditional dress of a married woman of importance, a long robe of Denariyan silk of a green so dark it looked black, its sleeves brightened by embroidered eagles, the totem of the Golden Eagle clan. Instead of the usual felt cap, she wore a headdress, a silver band in which were set pale-red corals. Chains of jade beads and silver good-luck charms hung from the band on either side, chiming softly with her movements.

Shannivar approached and bowed respectfully. She kept her eyes lowered and her voice gentle. “May your hearth fire always burn brightly.”

“May good sense grace your
jort
,” Grandmother answered dryly. The old woman's voice had once been strong, like the cry of a hawk, but the last few winters had left her with a lingering hoarseness. “Sit beside me, Granddaughter.”

Shannivar lowered herself at her grandmother's feet. They sat for a moment in silence. A fragrance arose from within the
jort
, old wool and cedar, a touch of cleansing incense.

Sounds filled Shannivar's ears, men singing, children shrieking at their games, and iron pots clanging. At the far edge of the encampment, the smith was still at his work in the ancient stone hut. She could hear the tapping of his hammers. Only his apprentice knew the secrets of the smith's craft, another mystery she would never learn.

“The other young women have set aside their bows for husbands, all but you.” The old woman paused. “Shannivar daughter of Ardellis, it is time.”

Time?
Shannivar thought irritably, although she had been expecting and dreading this moment.
Why now? Was the white star an omen?
With an effort, she remained silent. How could it be her time when something wild and thirsty, like the totem of her clan, sang in her blood? She still dreamed of battles to come, of loosing her arrows at the enemy over the back of her horse.

Once she had asked the clan
enaree
what these dreams meant, whether they were memories of past battles with the Gelon or a prophecy of deeds to come. The shaman had only shaken his head and retreated into his smoke-filled
jort
.

“I do not yet see the clear way,” Shannivar said. In her voice, trembling mixed in equal measure with truth.

“Do you think you are the first woman to find the chase more pleasing than the cookpot? You are a skilled hunter, and I have never seen a woman who rides more boldly. Already you have seen more battle than most. You have killed your enemy, and thereby brought honor to yourself and your lineage. No one can challenge your fitness to marry.”

“Until my people are safe, until the Gelon no longer come to our land, how can I put aside my bow and my sword? How can I sit at my ease while my cousins fight and die in my stead? No one suggests that any of
them
set aside their bows. I am as good an archer, and I am a better rider!”

This was not entirely true, for although Shannivar could certainly ride as well as any of the young men, neither she nor anyone else of the clan could equal their best men archers with the recurved, laminated bow.

Grandmother turned to Shannivar, black eyes glittering. The beads and silver ornaments clashed lightly on their chains. Shannivar lowered her gaze. It was unseemly to have spoken so to an elder, in particular this formidable ancestor.

“There will always be an enemy to fight,” Grandmother said, but not harshly, “if not Gelon, then some other. That is the way of things, and it is not a valid reason to refuse your obligations. Granddaughter, I care for your happiness, but I am also responsible for the welfare of the clan. If every young woman thought as you do, then who would bear sons and daughters to carry on after us? Who would tend the flocks and milk the she-camels, prepare the
k'th
, and keep the traditional songs alive? In my day, women proved themselves in battle the same way they do now, but then we settled down decently, with our husbands and babies. That is the way of things.”

Shannivar wanted to answer that times had changed, that since the coming of the new Ar-King, Gelon pressed them harder than ever before. A year or so ago, the Ar-King's heir had led an expedition into the territory of the Antelope clan. Everyone had heard the story at the last gathering, how the Gelon had been driven back and the Ar-King's son had been slain, but at a terrible cost, for many fine steppe warriors met their deaths as well. Since then, the Gelonian monarch had sent even more soldiers. Azkhantia needed all her defenders now, daughters as well as sons. Those very songs Grandmother spoke of, did they not tell of women winning glory with their courage and skill? Shannivar had grown up on tales of Aimellina daughter of Oomara, of her own namesake, the first Shannivar, and of Saramark daughter of Julisse, perhaps the greatest heroine of them all.

Every child of the steppe knew the legend of Saramark. Three generations ago, when her chieftain husband was severely wounded and unable to lead the men into battle, her entire clan had faced annihilation. Saramark took up her husband's sword. At midnight, she led her band of women warriors against the enemy. Heartened, the men of her clan followed her, and disaster turned into triumph. It was Shannivar's favorite story, one she never tired of hearing.

Do you presume to follow in Saramark's footsteps?
her uncle, Esdarash son of Akhisarak, who was chief of their clan, would say whenever he heard her humming the tune.
Those times are long gone.

The night wind must have blown smoke from the cooking fire in her direction, for Shannivar's eyes stung. A lump thickened her throat.

Grandmother was trying to help, to warn Shannivar that she had run out of time, and to offer a chance to gracefully bend to what was expected of her without suffering the humiliation of a public confrontation. Shannivar knew that if she refused outright, that would not be the end of it. Her uncle would pressure her to marry. He could not compel her to take a husband, but he could make it impossible for her to remain with the clan. Even as the fledgling golden eagle must fly from the nest of its parents, so too she must leave.

“In a short time,” Grandmother said, “you will travel to the
khural
.”

The annual gathering of the clans was a month-long festival, with contests of archery and horsemanship, feasting, dancing and drinking
k'th
into the night, buying and selling livestock, and the inevitable courtships. Her older cousins had either stayed with the clans of their new husbands or brought home strange wives. Always before, she had returned as she had gone, unpromised, her heart untouched. At the
khural
, there would be eligible young men from distant clans, men who had not known her when they were children together and she had outraced so many of them.

Outraced . . .

A plan took shape in Shannivar's mind. She would go to the
khural
under the guise of obedience, but once there, she would put off any suitors until she had won the Long Ride. Of all the races, the Long Ride was the most grueling and carried the greatest honor. Then, with triumph upon her shoulders, she would accept a husband of her own choosing and on her own terms, one who would permit her to ride and hunt as she always had, and, when the Gelon returned, as they surely would, she would fight.