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Authors: Morgan Llywelyn

BOOK: The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn)
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Dawn found them on the move again. Everyone seemed to have rested better and awakened refreshed—perhaps it was because the predator had been chased from camp. They were all in a better mood. Basl actually spoke to the young woman when he set aside her share of the morning’s meat, and Epona smiled at him, amused by the quick way he ducked his head to avoid meeting her eyes.
Even the gray stallion seemed happier. He nickered and pawed the ground, curving his neck into a graceful line of controlled energy, urging them to mount and ride. Ride!
A cool wind blew at their backs, pushing them eastward. For the first time, Epona felt no stiffness in her joints, no soreness in her muscles as she straddled the gray. This was good riding country; Kazhak rarely had her walk now, and she was glad of it. Her body felt oiled and new, perfectly blended into that of the animal beneath it. Her reflexes had learned to match themselves to those of the horse and she sat with easy grace.
She no longer bothered to braid her hair; her hair style could have no meaning to the Scythians anyway. Now it floated around her face and the wind blew long strands of it forward over Kazhak’s shoulders. He turned and looked at her with a smile in his eyes, and she smiled back.
“Kelti gold,” he said.
The horses cantered over springy earth. There was a glory in riding. The human became part of the animal, attached by invisible wires, muscle connected to muscle and bone merged with bone. Epona felt the strength of the stallion become her strength; its speed and grace were hers, too. She sat on the
powerfully thrusting haunches with her head thrown back and her eyes closed, not thinking, just feeling, light and free.
Free. This is what it is to be a horseman.
The day assumed the mood of a festival day. Kazhak was willing to talk again, and he told Epona the names of the plaqts they saw, teaching her the Scythian words for them. He identified the many animals glimpsed at a distance, the foxes and roebucks and eagles, the herds of dangerous wild pigs. He spoke of creatures they would see farther east, of deer with long backswept horns and big cats like the lions on Hellene pottery.
Kazhak enjoyed having someone at his shoulder to whom he could talk when the mood was on him. Epona was interested and quick-witted; the questions she asked made him think new thoughts and look at things in new ways.
He was aware that his men disapproved of her, and this made him perversely kinder to her, almost flaunting the girl in their faces, showing them he was the leader and could do as he pleased.
Epona began to feel a small sense of power herself. This was more than an escape, this was a new beginning for her, the start of a life unlike any woman of the Kelti had known before. And it was her very own, chosen by herself. She determined to drink it to the bottom of the cup.
“Do you suppose I could have a horse of my own?” she asked Kazhak.
The Scythian snorted. “Women do not ride horses.”
“But I am riding a horse right now,” she pointed out. “And I could handle one by myself, I know it. I think I could even ride this one without you.”
Kazhak scowled. “Women do not ride horses!” He considered the subject inarguable.
The horses slowed to a walk and Kazhak commanded Epona to get off and give the gray stallion a rest. He looked down at her tawny head in wonder. Woman, thinking she could manage a horse! What would his men say if they heard such a wild suggestion?
He chuckled to himself, thinking of it.
Epona walked at the stallion’s shoulder, stroking his neck from time to time. The horse had fully accepted her as a companion; he rolled his eye in her direction or slanted an ear toward her to pick up the sound of her voice. A bond had been established between them as Epona had once formed a bond with the cartponies of Toutorix. But those had been very different animals, with their slow reflexes and placid geldings’ thoughts.
The Scythian stallion was as quick as starfire, his attention flickering here, there, everywhere; his curiosity a match for Epona’s; his passion always simmering beneath his silky hide. The horses of the nomads were exquisitely sensitive in comparison with the stock of the Kelti. The gray stallion responded to every mood of his rider, like an extension of the human body. He could prance and rear in a fine demonstration of defiance, then calm at once and thrust his muzzle into Epona’s palm, nuzzling for the clover she pulled for him.
The horse was an emissary to her from the Sea of Grass, making Epona feel more alive than she ever had before. Watching him, she thought the Kelti had nothing that could compare with this Scythian treasure.
But when they camped and ate the unseasoned meats and chunks of indigestible bread the Scythians carried, Epona thought with longing of the Blue Mountains. Her tastebuds remembered the wide variety of food she had taken for granted, and the equally wide variety of ways the Kelti had for preparing the food. Not just burned on the outside and raw on the inside, like the game the Scythians sometimes shot. Kelti meat had been roasted, boiled, simmered in broth, buried beneath the glowing coals of a firepit, browned in goat’s butter, steamed in wet leaves … Mutton and lamb and venison, hare and coney and cheese pie, tender baby goat, roast suckling pig, stone-ground emmer bread and barleybeer, berries and honeycomb, fresh cress and fish from the lake, Kelti beans, boiled melde … And the seasonings! The omnipresent salt, but also the herbs of the country and the spices brought by the traders. Garlic and onion, peppercorns, varieties of mint, lees of wine, kinnamon and …
When the Scythians reached their home territory, she assured herself, they would eat better, too. It was not possible that their whole tribe subsisted on such miserable fare as the men carried in their saddlebags.
The land sank and became marshy; they saw blue herons and white storks, and the mud nourished tall weeds that Kazhak said, with contempt, were eaten by “those farmer people. Eat grass like horses.”
The plants looked green and juicy: Epona rode past them with wistful eyes.
They came to the Tisa, a smaller river than the Duna, low in this season, and forded it without difficulty. They rode and camped and rode again, and Kazhak entered Epona many times. Her pleasure increased with each encounter as her sensuality blossomed. The horse was part of it. His warmth kindled hers as she sat on the broad, muscular rump. She became aware, through the very pores of her skin, of the aura of the male animal—man, horse, man. Kazhak was sometimes a sexual partner, sometimes a preoccupied stranger, but the horse was a constant, glorying in his gender, neck arched with masculine pride, great full testicles glossy with health, hanging like ripe fruit between his thighs.
Riding the stallion she thought of Kazhak. Lying in Kazhak’s arms she imagined riding the stallion. It seemed to her that the two of them merged at times into one being, a statement of beauty and power that made fluid the dividing line between animal and human. She surrendered to the pleasure of being female to their male.
She came to accept the tastelessness of the food and the hardness of the ground on which they slept. Such things were merely a part of the life, the sun and the wind and the riding, riding …
They came to a deeply rutted road beside a dry streambed and found the path already occupied by trading wagons piled high with goods. It was a small train, and this time Kazhak did not hesitate to ride forward and salute the leader. The first wagon was driven by a long-skulled, fine-featured man with dark hair and the unmistakable look of a Thracian. Once
Thracians had sat with Toutorix around the feasting fire in the Blue Mountains; Epona and the other children used to sneak close to the fire, watching them, mimicking the way they walked and the cadences of their speech.
Sell you as slave to the Thracians,
Kazhak had threatened.
T
he wagoneers wore hooded felt cloaks, pushed back from their shoulders now because of the warmth of the sun. They had only a few wagons, but in true Thracian style they carried as much music with them as they could afford: a lone lyre player who rode with the driver of the third wagon, strumming his instrument and singing the song of the road. He was not an inspired singer, and he had been on the road a very long time. The other men only occasionally sang with him now.
The traders had spears propped beside them in their wagons, but seemed to be without the usual contingent of armed outriders. They were making a desperate push for the nearest trading center, hoping to sell enough goods there to resupply themselves with guards to replace those they had lost on the journey.
Meeting Scythians was a piece of bad fortune, putting them all out of tune. But at least, the leader thought, there were only four men on the horses; perhaps they were no more prepared for battle than the Thracians. Perhaps they were just
another band of weary travelers, anxious to get home. He saluted Kazhak as the obvious leader with an elaborate bow and courteous phrases of greeting. He added an effusive compliment about the gray stallion, and Kazhak replied in a cordial manner.
“Do you know that man?” Epona whispered at his shoulder.
“No, but is horse man,” Kazhak answered. “All true horse men are brothers.”
He began conversing with the Thracian in a rough approximation of the man’s own language, though without the musicality of vowels that made Thracian speech so pleasant. Epona had already learned that Kazhak’s gift for languages other than his own was rare among his people, who were suspicious of any foreign customs and ways, but it was a convenient asset for an exploratory expedition. Now she listened with interest, trying to follow the conversation as the two men discussed their animals, exchanging further compliments. She was able to understand more than she expected. Kazhak spoke admiringly of the pair of bay mares pulling the first wagon, and the gray stallion added his own softly nickered comment of praise.
The other three Scythians sat alertly on their horses, ready to follow whatever lead Kazhak gave them. The wagon drivers waited with equal tension.
The Thracian introduced himself as Provaton, nephew of a famed horsebreeder on the Struma. That explained his possession of wagon horses almost as large as Scythian saddle animals, rather than asses or the long-horned cattle sometimes trained to the yoke by southerners.
“Very fine horses,” Kazhak said again. “You want to trade?”
Epona sat rigid behind him. What did Kazhak have to trade for Thracian horses? He would never give up the iron swords, she was certain.
Provaton wrapped the leather reins around the bar provided for that purpose at the front of his box-shaped, four-wheeled wagon, and gingerly stepped down, with the stiffness of a
man who has spent many days jolting along rutted roads. He rubbed the small of his back and stretched himself, then approached Kazhak.
“What have you to trade?” he asked the Scythian. “And how would I haul my wagons home if I bartered away my good horses?” He kept his voice light and pleasant; this encounter must remain a friendly one, or he might never get home at all.
Before Kazhak could answer, one of the other Thracians called out, “What about the woman?”
Epona dug her fingers into Kazhak’s belt.
Provaton looked up at her as she sat on the rump of the gray stallion. A
keltoi
girl, by the looks of her; very fair. Young. Such creamy skin and blue eyes. The southern slave markets were always eager for such merchandise, though they rarely got their hands on one of the northern
keltoi,
who were a powerful people and known to prefer death to enslavement.
Provaton folded his arms and squinted up at Kazhak, inviting the Scythian to make the first offer. “What do you suggest?” he said.
“What you got in wagons?” Kazhak countered.
“Amber, furs, some woven wool. We traded copper and anise for it, and I have a good market waiting in Makedon.”
Kazhak’s brows drew down, hiding the expression in his eyes. “How much amber?”
Provaton was uneasy. You could never predict what a Scythian was going to do, and though a tenuous peace existed between the two peoples at the time, there were always attacks and skirmishes along the borders, and four Scythians might not hesitate to slaughter a merchant train of Thracians for their amber. His wagoneers were too tired and dispirited to fight well.
“Very little amber, very little,” he said hastily. “We were late getting north and the other merchants had been there ahead of us; we got the dregs. Even our furs are inferior this year. Mostly ermine, admired in Moesia and Thrace but very common among your people.”
“You know how it is on Sea of Grass?” Kazhak asked with sudden warmth.
“What man who values horseflesh does not? I, myself, have been as far as the great horse fair on the plain at Maikop; with my family I have bought many good animals from your people and loaded them with felt and furs to sell at home.”
Kazhak leaned forward eagerly at the mention of Maikop. “You know Kolaxais, Prince of Horses?” he asked, as a man does who is starved of news of home. “Kolaxais takes many horses to Maikop.”
The Thracian hesitated. “Who has not heard of Kolaxais?” he asked. There was a falter in his pronunciation of the name and the light went out of Kazhak’s eyes. “Never heard of Kolaxais,” he whispered in an aside to Epona. “Thracian lie.” Kazhak grinned suddenly; the brotherhood of horse men was thereby dissolved, as far as he was concerned.
Kazhak gestured toward Aksinya. “That man my brother,” he said, “has iron knives of the Kelti in pack on horse. You never see such good knives. You know good horses, Sea of Grass, so Kazhak offer you special trade. Pack of Aksinya, unopened, for one of Provaton’s wagons, unsearched. Blind trade, between friends. No one looks.” He grinned. It was a remarkably innocent grin, all teeth and wide eyes.
“I could not do that,” Provaton said stiffly. “How could I explain to my principals at home, who financed this train? A loaded wagon with two good horses is worth more than anything you could possibly be carrying in one pack. Unless you have gold as well as iron, that is.”
The grin was fixed on Kazhak’s face. “Is well known, Scyth always has gold,” he said noncommittally.
The Thracian cast a second glance at the bulging pack on the horse behind Aksinya. Aksinya scowled as a man does who fears he is about to be robbed.
It might be better to accept this trade, no matter how unfair, in hopes the Scythians would be satisfied and let us go on,
Provaton thought. And if it was really true about the
keltoi
iron … and it could be, they had the woman with them …
Suddenly the Thracian tensed and whirled around, looking
back along his little line of wagons. He had just realized that the other Scythians had moved away and were now bracketing the train between them, as hunting dogs would work a small herd of deer.
Provaton had been having a discouraging summer. He was definitely very far out of tune.
“What are those men doing?” he asked Kazhak sharply.
Kazhak’s reply was bland. “Sitting on horses. No harm.” He sounded disinterested.
Provaton did some quick mental calculation. It had been a disastrous trip, with many of his men lost to a fever contracted in a swampy valley between the Elbe and the Oder. His merchandise really was inferior, for the reason he had given Kazhak, but his backers would accept no excuses. If he had some superior iron-work to show them—and there were already rumors about
keltoi
iron—
A gamble on life was better than sure death.
He forced his voice to be hearty, as if there were no threat. “I like your trade,” he said to Kazhak. “It amuses me. I might be willing to let you have one wagon … that one, with the brown gelding and the chestnut mare … in return for your pack, if it really contains
keltoi
iron.”
“Shortswords Kelti call daggers,” Kazhak informed him. “Best anywhere. My men all wear now.”
Epona followed this exchange with relief. She had known a bad moment when the Thracian called attention to her, but now it seemed everything was going to be all right. Kazhak rode his stallion toward the wagon in question and she looked at the two horses, waiting in their traces.
Before the spirit within could warn her to keep silent, she said, “Not that wagon, Kazhak.”
Startled, the Thracian leader looked at her a second time, with the appraising eyes of a merchantman.
Such a woman would bring a high price in the great slave market at Thasos, where the Ionian colonials made fabulous offers for unusual females.
Kazhak turned in his saddle. “Why not this wagon?” he asked her.
“One of the horses is ill,” she told him.
Kazhak’s dark brows crawled up his forehead like caterpillars. “How you know?”
“I am Kelt,” she replied, the only experience she could give. How could she make someone not of the people understand the aura of pain that radiated from the chestnut mare?
“My horses are in perfect health!” Provaton protested.
“Show us,” Kazhak ordered.
While they all watched, Epona slid down from the gray stallion and walked to the team in question. The chestnut mare watched her approach, its eyes red rimmed and eloquent with anguish. It suffered silently as horses must, but the pain poured from it in waves, lapping around Epona. She had to brace herself against it; she had to force herself to touch the suffering animal.
She bent and pressed her ear to the mare’s belly. She heard none of the customary rumblings and gurglings of a healthy horse’s intestines. When she closed her eyes she imagined something burning inside, like fire, eating the mare alive.
She straightened up and turned to Kazhak. “This horse is poisoned,” she told him. “She has eaten some weed along the way and it has given her blocked bowels and a terrible pain in her belly. She will not live long.”
The driver of the Thracian wagon had not understood many of her words but he understood the familiar gesture of a head pressed against the belly of a horse suffering from colic. He knew his mare, the greedy mare who had snatched feed from the roadside all the way from Moesia to the Baltik and back again.
Now Provaton put his hand on the mare’s neck and felt it just beginning to dampen with sweat, the slick, unhealthy sweat of an animal in pain.
How could the girl have known, sitting many paces away on another horse?
The driver got down from his wagon and came to stand beside Epona. His eyes were dark with worry.
The mare’s head began to droop lower. As they watched, bloody strings of mucus started running from her nostrils and
her eyes half closed. Then suddenly they flared open as a spasm shook her and she tossed her head up wildly, pawing the earth.
The pain was unbearable.
“Take her out of the traces,” Epona said.
The Thracian men stared at her. Who was this woman to be giving orders? She had little command of their language but her gestures were expressive; she meant them to be obeyed, just as if she had some degree of authority.
Kazhak narrowed his eyes and glared at Epona, wondering what sort of Kelti trickery this might be. His men watched with cynical amusement. Kazhak had taken this on himself, this peculiar foreign woman. Let him deal with her.
Ignoring them all, Epona began fumbling with the traces and after a moment’s hesitation the wagon driver helped her. He jumped back, however, when the mare lashed out in her agony, her hoof narrowly missing his head.
Once free of the wagon the mare reared and pawed at the sky, pulling Epona off the ground as the girl clung to her bridle. The men tried to help then but Epona waved them back, and for some reason none of them could understand, they obeyed her. They stood in a circle, beyond the reach of the desperate, convulsing mare, and left the young woman alone with the horse.
The pain was a living thing, a hand that grabbed the intestines and squeezed. The mare and Epona suffered it together, fighting with crazed fear, but fear was not sufficient. Epona tried to block off that part of her mind so she could think; concentrate. She held on grimly as the mare whirled in a circle, dragging her. She reached out with her inner being, grasping for some touch of the great fire of life, summoning its strength and support.
A moment of peace came to both of them. The mare stopped her frantic struggling and stood with braced legs, fighting for breath. Epona relinquished her hold on the bridle and flattened her body against the body of the mare, her breasts against the heaving sides, vulnerable to any move the horse might make in its dying agony. Behind her closed eyes
she spoke to the spirits she knew and the unfamiliar ones that surrounded them in this place. She had not been taught the signs and invocations; she could only fashion them from her own intuition and pray that was sufficient.
The pain had come quickly; it would kill quickly. The mare was finding it agonizing to breathe, which added to her panic. Once her knees buckled and her forequarters sank to the ground, and Epona went down with her, holding on tightly, while the mare’s driver moaned and wrung his hands. A horse down was a horse dead.

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