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Authors: Morgan Llywelyn

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“Very well, girl.” He was angry, but he would not push her; he could not afford to make her more hostile. “But when the full moon rises I will see you. Do not forget.”
He left her alone then, with the horses.
“Oh, please,” she whispered, not knowing which spirit to address in this instance and so addressing the all in one. “Please!”
The sun moved across the sky and the shadows grew tall from the west. At last Taranis and the elders approached with tense faces, carrying the selection of weapons the Scythians had seen earlier. As they neared the lodge Kazhak’s men, Basl, Aksinya, and Dasadas, stepped forward to guard the door. Epona noticed that both parties kept their hands close to their weapons.
“We have come, Kazhak,” called Taranis in his booming voice, “to ask the health of our friend.”
There was silence within the lodge. The Kelti waited.
“I wish you sunshine on your head in the name of the tribe of the Kelti, and of Taranis the Thunderer!” the chieftain cried more loudly.
No answer. The Kelti shifted their feet and looked at one another; the Scythians fingered their sword hilts.
Uiska appeared in the doorway carrying a basin, and then Kazhak stood behind her, a new pallor underlying his swarthiness. Addressing Taranis, he said, “Kelti have good wishes for Kazhak?” There was no mistaking the sarcasm in his voice. It cut through his thick accent like a blade made of star metal.
“Of course we do,” Taranis assured him. “Your unfortunate accident on the mountain grieves us …”
“Accident.” Kazhak considered the word, chewing it as if it were meat. Then his lips curled; he did not like the taste. “No accident. Kelti broke own law of hospitality. Try to kill Kazhak.”
The members of the council all began speaking at once, each disclaiming such a possibility. They built one elaborate statement atop another in an attempt to convince the Scythian the Kelti had never hurt a guest in the history of the people.
Kazhak folded his arms across his chest—carefully, for his tightly bound ribs were sore—and listened to them impassively. His dark eyes gazed beyond to some distant horizon. When their speech ran down of its own weight, he turned as if to go back into the lodge.
Taranis held out his hand. “Wait!”
“Why wait? Kazhak rest tonight, ride tomorrow. You not want us here, we go.”
“But what about the swords?”
Kazhak waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Swords not matter. Friends matter. Kazhak and Taranis were friends. No more. Kazhak will tell wherever he rides, Taranis of the Kelti cannot be trusted.”
Taranis was dismayed. The whole affair had been bungled. His reputation would be permanently damaged if the nomadic Scythians spread stories about him throughout the lands beyond the Blue Mountains, lands crisscrossed by the traders.
“Wait, listen, I will prove that you are wrong,” he pleaded. He turned to the man at his shoulder. “Go quickly to Goibban’s forge and bring back the best of whatever he has; swords, spearheads, knives. Bring it here right now.”
He turned back to the leader of the Scythians. “We will prove our good faith by giving you much more than we originally agreed upon. Is that not a sign of friendship? I give you my word, no further harm will come to you or your men in the territory of the Kelti, and when you leave your horses will stagger beneath our gifts.”
Kazhak’s face gave away nothing. “At dawn, we go.”
Taranis became effusive. “Certainly, certainly, if that is what you wish. We will have the iron ready for you whenever
you want to leave. In the meantime, we will prepare another feast, a feast for friends, and we will … ah … hold games to entertain you and your men. As we do for friends,” he emphasized.
“Your priest will be there?” Kazhak’s voice was harsh.
“No. No! Kernunnos will not join us thisnight.” Taranis had no intention of feasting with the shapechanger, not after thisday’s disaster.
Goibban, tight lipped and red faced, came from the forge with two apprentices. They carried finely crafted daggers, iron spearheads, and the sword Goibban had been preparing for the new chief, its polished bronze hilt inlaid with coral and amber. It pleased Taranis to see how beautiful the sword was; at least he could offer the best the tribe possessed.
At his direction, the apprentices laid the iron weapons at Kazhak’s feet. “The Kelti request you take these as a small token of apology,” Taranis said.
Goibban, who could expect no additional gold for this assortment of his best work, made a noise deep in his throat, and old Dunatis coughed to cover it up.
Kazhak examined the weapons by pushing them around with his foot. “Good things,” he commented. “Better than first ones, is it so?”
Insulted again, Goibban answered haughtily, “All my work is equally good. The hilts of these are more decorated only because they are for the nobles of our tribe.”
“Kazhak is noble of his tribe,” the Scythian replied. “These knives, this sword, almost good enough for Kazhak. Almost,” he added, and deliberately spat in the dirt.
Another silence ensued. Everyone waited while Kazhak considered. Then he permitted a very small smile on his lips only, in the manner of the shapechanger.
“Kazhak accepts,” he said. “We take weapons, leave gold. But tomorrow we go.” There was a guarded quality that had not been in his voice before. From it, Taranis knew that in spite of Kazhak’s acceptance of the trade, things were irrevocably changed. The Scythians might feast with them, and, if he was very fortunate, they might not accuse him elsewhere
of having attempted to kill their leader. But whatever tentative bonds had been forged between the two peoples were broken.
The council would be sure to point out to him that Toutorix, in his prime, would have handled the matter very differently.
From the Scythian gold hoard, Taranis carried a special piece back to his lodge as a gift for Sirona. It was a cat of solid gold, pinned to be worn as a brooch, exquisitely graceful and lifelike as it clawed at its own tail.
Sirona fingered the heavy piece. “It is strange that these savage men choose to take such beautiful things from the people they rob. I would not have expected them to have an eye for beauty.”
“The Scythian Dasadas told me his people ordered that made as they have much goldwork made to their own requirements, by Hellene craftsmen. Gold has great significance to them.”
“But where do they get the raw gold?”
“Ah, I suspect that begins as other articles they have stolen, and is melted down and reshaped. But you are right; they have quite a taste for craftsmanship in spite of their wild ways.”
“Is it possible they are a people of many layers, like the Kelti?” Sirona suggested.
“No one is like the Kelti,” Taranis said.
At the order of the tribe, games would be played during the remainder of the long summer twilight, in an effort to improve the Scythians’ humor. Areas were quickly staked out for wrestling, a course was marked for a foot race, and targets were set up for spear and bow. The best athletes among the Kelti drew lots to determine which would compete with the Scythians.
Taranis himself was to fight with sword and shield as part of a team competition: he and two others against Kazhak’s three men. The winner was to be the first side to draw a drop of blood from the other.
Sirona brought her husband his weapons, chanting in the traditional way as she presented them: “Your sword is sharp;
your shield is polished. With my own teeth and the sweat from my breasts I have softened the leather of the shield strap. When you fight, fight well. If you die, die laughing.”
The first race was run, seven laps around the commonground, and Vallanos won it handily, beating his Scythian opponent, Basl, by an impressive distance.
Watching from the sidelines, Kazhak commented, “Boy has legs like deer.”
Epona was standing close to Taranis and the Scythians once again, both in her capacity as hostess and because she did not intend to let Kazhak out of her sight before he left the village. Now she told him, “Living in the mountains makes us agile.”
“Agile?” Kazhak stumbled over the word.
“Graceful,” she simplified.
For the first time since his accident, Kazhak summoned a genuine smile. “Graceful, yes! Like Kelt girl, is it so? Move like running water?”
He chuckled. Epona blushed, pleased.
The games progressed to mock battles. Taranis and his three men fought the Scythians, and under the order of the chief, Kwelon allowed Aksinya to nick his arm and draw first blood. It was skillfully done, for the Kelti would never have forgiven a chief who took their victory from them, but even so the Scythians were suspicious. Kazhak’s dark eyes flashed. “Do not make easy for Kazhak’s men,” he warned Taranis. “No more tricks.”
“No tricks!” Taranis assured him. What was it about these Scythians that kept forcing him into dishonorable positions? Kernunnos was right after all; they were a menace.
But soon they would be gone, and trouble with them.
As the games progressed in difficulty the villagers crowded around, cheering their favorites, making extravagant wagers as men took turns lifting boulders or hurling large stones and comparing the distances. The Scyths did indeed hold their own, and Taranis granted them no further concessions. None could come close to them in the competition with bow and arrow, where their skills were awesome. The yelling of the
crowd rose in volume as the contest produced an increasing rivalry in the participants, and soon there were injuries and lost tempers on both sides.
The brawny, pale-eyed Scythian named Dasadas proved to be exceptional at wrestling, putting down three mountain men in quick succession. This exceeded the bounds the Kelti were willing to concede, even to guests; and there were angry words and the beginning of a sullen undertone in the voice of the crowd.
The elders approached Taranis. “The wrestling victory is always ours,” they reminded him. “If these strangers win it we are disgraced.”
“Send for Goibban,” Taranis said.
The smith was not in the mood to have further advantage taken of him, but he did not resist the authority of his chief. He approached the contest area naked, save for his brief plaid battle apron, and even in the gathering twilight the muscles were clearly visible beneath his smooth skin.
Epona looked at him coldly. She would not allow herself to think him beautiful, now.
The smith stepped to the center of the wrestling area to stand with Dasadas and Taranis. As referee, Taranis set forth the few rules governing the final contest of the day. He was determined to be fair beyond question, hoping to regain his reputation in some small measure before the Scythians rode away, carrying tales.
“Because Dasadas has already had three fights and the smith is fresh, I order that a handicap be placed upon Goibban,” Taranis announced. “He will fight with one hand only; the other shall be belted to his side, and should he free it, he will at once be declared the loser.”
Kazhak nodded. “Is fair. But do not bind the man, let him fight free. Dasadas can beat Kelt anyway, is it so?”
It was an act of courtesy matched by an act of courtesy, and the people applauded Kazhak. Only Goibban did not. He stood with his golden head down, quietly waiting for the signal to begin, and when he stepped forward to meet Dasadas he held his knife hand arm fixed against his side as if it were tied there.
T
he two men went into a fighting crouch, circling one another with bent knees, eyes staring, each waiting for that moment of hesitation or acquiescence in the other which would signal an opening. Dasadas saw it—or thought he saw it—in Goibban’s face, and hurled himself onto his opponent like a lion leaping off a rock onto the back of a deer.
Goibban merely shrugged him off with an incredible heave of his body and stepped away. The smith turned, coming back into his crouch, arm still held against his side, weaving back and forth on the balls of his feet, waiting for the Scythian.
Dasadas grunted and leaped at him again.
Again the smith tossed him aside.
“Hunh,” commented Kazhak, not smiling now. He stood next to Taranis; he had been offered a bench in deference to his injuries and refused it with scorn. His thumbs were hooked in his belt and he watched the wrestlers through his heavy black eyelashes. Epona glanced at him, but he was not thinking of her now.
Dasadas had learned his lesson; he attempted no third leap. This time he ducked his head and ran forward like a butting ram, intending to slam into the smith’s belly and knock the wind out of him. Goibban did not move aside.
Sirona gave a little squeak and closed her eyes, then watched through parted fingers.
The army of pines marching up the mountainside beyond the palisade watched darkly, whispering.
The Scythian’s head butted into Goibban’s stomach with terrific force—and nothing happened. The smith did not even grunt.
Surprised, Dasadas forgot himself and straightened up, staring at his opponent.
Goibban’s cup hand arm seized him.
It was all over in a few blinks of the eye. Goibban whirled his opponent around in spite of the mighty efforts Dasadas made to resist him, then hooked his cup hand arm behind the Scythian’s chin and squeezed until the man’s eyes bugged from their sockets. The other struggled to reach behind himself and grab the smith in some way, but his hands kept slipping off Goibban’s sweaty skin. The crowd was yelling now, “Goibban! Goibban!” and the smith arched his back and flung the Scythian away from him. Dasadas hit the ground hard, too winded to roll and break his fall, and even as he gathered himself to get up he felt the foot of his opponent come down hard on his neck.
Looking toward Taranis, Goibban lifted his unused knife hand aloft in a clenched fist and the crowd went wild.
“Good fight,” Kazhak admitted grudgingly.
Epona felt a thrill of pride for the Kelti. Everyone had been so obsessed by these horse riders they had forgotten the grandeur of their own people, but now Goibban had reminded them. And Kazhak was applauding with the rest. Epona looked from man to man, wondering.
Kazhak turned away from the wrestling area and saw her eyes on him. He smiled at her then, not the quick habitual grin intended to disarm strangers, but the slow smile reserved for brothers, for intimates of the spirit.
It felt to both of them as if they had reached out and touched.
Disconcerted, Kazhak moved off and lost himself in the press of men around him, trying to push away an inner disturbance unlike anything he had experienced before. The fast, hard life of The Horse, a man’s life, beneath sun and stars, in clean wind, the tempo of the gallop, the slash of the sword, the sweet high singing of the arrow in pursuit of its prey—these things he understood. But to meet a woman’s eyes again and again, and feel as if she had walked inside his head … it was an invasion and he resented it.
It was a unique experience and it tantalized him.
As the sky darkened the feasting fire was built up again, and the Kelti assembled to honor their guests once more. Kazhak would have preferred to be sleeping already, pillowed on his horse’s neck, but first he must finish what he had begun. He gave a signal to Basl and the swarthy Scythian hurried away, soon to return with a bulky object wrapped in a blanket.
Kazhak had him drop it at the feet of Taranis. “The Scyth understand honor,” he said. “Kazhak promise you feast on stag; now you feast on stag.”
Basl stooped and unfolded the blanket, revealing the antlered deer that lay within, its heart stopped by his arrow. It was not a big buck, nothing like the stag Kazhak had thought to kill on the side of the mountain that morning. But it was sufficient to fulfill his pledge, and the Kelti appreciated the symmetry of the gesture.
If Kernunnos had been among them at that moment, he would have realized the pattern was wrenched irrevocably out of shape.
“Taranis and Kazhak even, is it so?” the Scythian inquired.
Taranis was sitting in the chief’s place, dressed in his finest tartan and wearing a massive gold armband from the Scythian treasure. He smiled broadly at Kazhak, once more playing the genial host. “Yes, we are even,” he affirmed. “Epona, bring us the feasting cup.”
It was a long night. Sometime during it, after the feasting cup had gone around many times, Kazhak left the fire and sought his horse. His eyes were blurry with fatigue. He did not see that Epona had gotten there ahead of him, and was curled up in a ball a little distance away, sleeping with her face turned toward the horses and her bearskin robe for a blanket. The Scythians could not leave without her knowing it.
The next morning, Rigantona awoke with a sense of having drunk too much wine and having endured a bad night. She could still see all that gold gleaming on Sirona and Taranis. Her mouth tasted the way feet smelled. The flesh of her face felt thick. She swung her legs off the bedshelf and looked around the lodge. The carefully banked fire was still alive; the younger children were still sleeping on their beds. Both Okelos and Epona were missing.
Alator yawned and began the long journey toward being awake.
“Where is everybody?” she asked him, jerking him abruptly into thisday.
The little boy sat up, digging his fists into his eyes. “I heard Okelos go out a while ago. I don’t know about Epona; I didn’t see her come in lastnight at all. Maybe she went to watch the Scythians; everyone does.”
Rigantona sniffed. She wanted the girl’s help in the lodge this morning. She dressed and went out to find her. The first person she encountered was Sirona, still sporting the Scythian gold and a belly swelling with the son or daughter who would soon enlarge the chief’s family.
“I hope you give birth to weasels,” Rigantona murmured to her in passing.
“I wouldn’t want to have children who looked so much like you,” Sirona answered mockingly.
Epona was probably with the Scythians, as Alator had suggested. Playing hostess. The thought pleased Rigantona. Sirona, with her pretty face and her fertile belly, did not possess an unmarried daughter who was willing and trained in the arts of making the stranger welcome. And it was that same
daughter who would join the
druii
, vastly increasing the prestige of her family. There was nothing Taranis and his vinegarmouthed wife could do to prevent it. Hai!
Rigantona lost interest in retrieving her daughter. Let her stay with the Scythians; Rigantona was relieved that she herself no longer had to waste time and energy serving strangers. She would go to the squatting pit and then have a leisurely meal with her younger children. Perhaps even Okelos would stay busy elsewhere and not spoil the morning with his malcontent and tedious schemes. Perhaps this headache would go away if she could just lie down for a while.
As Rigantona was returning to her lodge, the Scythians were preparing to leave the village. Epona had been watching them since first light, hoping to get a chance to speak with Kazhak, but almost immediately a deputation composed of Taranis and the elders had arrived to make effusive farewells and supervise the packing of the iron onto the Scythian horses.
Kazhak was anxious to leave. He did not care to waste any precious daylight listening to these talkative people drone on and on. Hoping they would take the hint, he thrust his new sword—the sword that would have belonged to Taranis—through his belt and unhobbled his horse.
According to the tradition,
druii
came to wish the travelers safe journey, but Kernunnos was not among them. Uiska shyly presented Kazhak and his men with filled waterskins, and Poel informed them he would sing a song about them to the children.
“You tell stories to small people?” Kazhak asked in surprise.
“Of course. It is the responsibility of the
druii
to instruct the young in all those things they need to know and remember,” Poel explained. “Knowledge must be passed on. Do you not have teachers for your children?”
Kazhak looked puzzled. “They watch. They learn, or they die, is it not so?”
Poel was shocked. “All animals teach their young; our children are our future! They must be properly shaped.”
The Scythian argued, “They grow strong, ride well, fight good. Is enough.”
He was tired of dealing with these complicated Kelti. He hungered for starry skies and open plains. Heedless of the pain in his ribs he vaulted onto his horse and spun the animal on its haunches, scattering loose dirt. “We go now!” he sang out, and joy made his voice beautiful.
The gray stallion leaped forward, headed for the opening in the palisade and the road beyond. The other Scythians followed gladly.
Epona began running then. If she was very quick, she could intercept Kazhak where the trail almost doubled back on itself along a pine spur. She was sure the Scythians would be heading east, around the lake, rather than west to the Amber Road. The horsemen would be going home.
Thisnight the moon would be full.
She ran harder than she ever had in her life, skimming over the earth mother with the speed born of desperation. No one paid any attention to her. The young were always running somewhere.
She took a short cut long familiar to the children, following a narrow path past a solitary tree bent into the shape of a hump-backed man by its own deformed spirit. Nematona had taught the children to hang strips of bright cloth on the lower limbs of the grotesque tree to encourage it to feel beautiful, so its spirit within might be reshaped. As Epona ran past she saw her own contribution of last sunseason, a wide strip of blue wool now faded by the elements.
Bow down!
commanded the spirit within suddenly, breaking a long silence, but she would not take time to obey. She ran on.
The path wound through a scattering of boulders, the ribs of the earth mother thrusting through her flesh, and then Epona came out on a little knob of soil overlooking the trail
and there were the Scythians, riding toward her.
She scrambled down the slope and stepped into the road, blocking their way. She had to act quickly, without thinking, or she might lose her nerve.
Kazhak held up his hand to signal a halt. His dark brows were drawn into a line across his forehead; he was not smiling.
“What is?” he asked suspiciously.
“I want you to take me with you,” she told him, coming to stand at his knee.
Kazhak’s brows swooped upward toward his peaked felt helmet. There seemed no end to the astonishment of these Kelti! “Is joke?” he asked uncertainly.
“I am not making a joke; I am very serious. Please, take me with you. I want to leave this village; I want to get as far away as I can before dark. There is nothing for me here anymore.”
The Scythian shifted on his horse. His face revealed nothing. Unlike her people, he kept everything hidden behind those dark eyes.
“Why should Kazhak take you? You any good to Kazhak?”
At least he was considering the possibility. She recalled his comment about the Scythians’ finding a woman they liked: “take and go.” Her eyes sparkled, and she lifted one of her heavy braids for him to see. “The gold of the Kelti,” she said. “It is yours if you take me with you.”
To her surprise the Scythian laughed aloud. “You are not like other women,” he told her. He turned to his companions and said something in their own tongue. It sounded very harsh to Epona’s ears. The other men looked at her dubiously.
She listened for the spirit within, expecting it to tell her she was making a mistake, but it seemed to be silent. Or perhaps she could not hear it over the beating of her own heart.
After an exchange of conversation among the Scythians, Kazhak addressed her again. “We must go now,” he said. “Not like this place. Too strange. Too …” At a loss for
words he waved his hands in the air in the complex design, and Epona understood. “We go,” he repeated. His eyes swept her body, from her head to her feet and back again. His legs clamped the stallion and it skittered on the stony trail.
“May be you be some good,” Kazhak decided. He leaned forward and extended his hand toward her. “You come?”
She swallowed hard. “I come.”
The strong hand clamped on her wrist and she felt herself jerked forward. There was a heave, a struggle, and then she was lying across the horse’s withers in front of Kazhak, face down, her nose pressed against the stallion’s shoulder. Kazhak kicked his mount, and the Scythians galloped away from the village of the Kelti.

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