The Horsemasters (3 page)

“Then I do not understand you, my Mother,” Nel said patiently. “If it is not the Wood ties, then what is dangerous?”

“You and Ronan together—that is dangerous.” Fali reached out and took Nel’s chin in her hand. The Old Woman’s grip was surprisingly strong. “This is your idea, Nel? Ronan has not mentioned marriage to you?”

Nel shook her head, to indicate a negative reply and to free her chin from that grip. “But I still do not understand you,” she cried, retreating beyond Fali’s grasp. “If our marriage would break no taboo, then why is it dangerous?” Her voice echoed with frustration and bewilderment. “What have we done?”

“It is not what you have done,” said the Old Woman somberly. “It is what you are.”

Then as Nel sat, mute and defiant, the Old Woman explained. “Your grandmother was Arika’s elder sister, was Mistress before her. You are the next in line after Morna. Arika will never let you marry Ronan, Nel. Put it out of your mind, my child.”

Nel bowed her head, to hide the rebellion in her eyes.

* * * *

During the warm weather the hunters of the tribe moved to their summer camp, which lay in the high country to the south and east of their permanent home. This was a move that was necessitated by the migration of the herds, which ascended during the summer into the pastures of the higher country to feed on the rich, snow-fed grass that could be found there.

The Red Deer summer camp lay at the apex of an elongated triangular basin at the point where the Narrow River suddenly entered a narrow and winding gorge. The basin was bound on all sides by steep slopes formed by the confluence of several small valleys. All of these valleys were cul-de-sacs except the one that led up into the high pass which opened into the country of the Tribe of the Buffalo.

The two large caves which formed the summer home of the Tribe of the Red Deer overlooked the river, and the men of the tribe had also pitched hide tents to extend the amount of shelter.

Life was easy in summer camp. The very old and the very young had been left behind at the Greatfish River; only the initiated males and the women who were not encumbered with small children moved to summer camp. The purpose of the move was to hunt the reindeer and the red deer in order to feed not only themselves but also those who had been left at home. Hunting was not difficult, however, and the living was free and pleasant.

It was Ronan’s first season in summer camp, and he found it fine. By day he and his agemates would roam the mountains, hunting in total freedom, wrestling with each other in the warm sunlight, singing the tribe’s hunting songs, holding spear-throwing contests when there was no animal within their weapon’s reach.

The nights were for girls. Red Deer girls, with sweet seductive smiles and soft willing bodies.

Ronan had heard from his fellows that in the other Kindred tribes, which followed the male god of the Sky, the unmarried women did not have the same freedom as did the girls of the Red Deer. That was certainly one thing about the Way of Sky God with which Ronan did not agree.

The boy is looking happy, Neihle thought when he came up to the initiates’ cookfire one evening to find Ronan eating a supper of stewed deer meat in the company of his agemates. Ronan respectfully rose to his feet when he saw his uncle, and offered him some food.

“Na, I have eaten,” the man replied. He looked into the dark eyes of his nephew and saw with some surprise that they were on a slightly higher level than his own. “You have grown two fingers since your initiation,” Neihle said. “Something must be agreeing with you.”

Ronan grinned.

“Borba is agreeing with him,” Tyr, one of the boys at the cookfire, said. “And Iva and Tosa and Lula and…”

“That is enough,” Ronan said, but a faint smile still lingered on his lips.

“We all have to wait until Ronan makes his choice,” another boy complained humorously to Neihle. “The girls will not go with us until he has chosen. Even the older initiates have to wait.”

“I am thinking they don’t like that,” Neihle said, lifting his brows in inquiry.

“They wouldn’t put up with it from anyone else,” Tyr said matter-of-factly. “For some reason, however, they put up with it from Ronan.”

“The reason is perfectly simple,” Adun put in. “Ronan can outwrestle and outfight every one of them.”

“A potent reason indeed,” Neihle murmured. Then he asked his nephew, “Would you like to come walking with me?”

“Of course.” Ronan lifted his spear from the stack piled beside the fire and followed Neihle to the path along the river.

“It is beginning to grow cold in the evenings,” Ronan remarked, courteously waiting for the older man to broach his reason for seeking Ronan out. “The summer weather is ending.”

“Sa,” Neihle agreed. He drew a deep breath, not yet ready to broach a topic of whose reception he was unsure. He said instead, “You like living in the men’s cave, I think.”

Ronan blew out through his nose. “Sa,” he answered shortly.

Of course he likes living in the men’s cave, Neihle thought to himself. After years of living with that shrew of a stepmother, the men’s cave must seem like paradise.

In the Tribe of the Red Deer, as in all matrilineal societies, a boy’s closest male relative was not his father but his mother’s brother. Even had Ronan’s father not died, Neihle would have had responsibilities toward Ronan, They were responsibilities he always felt guilty he had not sufficiently fulfilled.

Neihle looked down at the ground, stabbing his spear into the dirt as he walked. “Ronan,” he said, his voice a little muffled, “I hope you know that if it had been in my power, I would have taken you to live in my own hut. But my wife had so many of our own children to see to… She could not cope with my sister’s child as well.” Unspoken, although well-understood between the two of them, was the fact that Arika would have opposed such an arrangement, and it was his sister’s opposition more than his wife’s that had weighed with Neihle.

Ronan did not answer right away, and after a moment Neihle turned to look at him. The boy’s face was unreadable. Neihle thought painfully that Ronan had learned at much too early an age how to keep his feelings from his face.

“I know that,” Ronan said finally. He shifted his spear from his right hand to his left. “You have always done your best for me, Uncle. Be sure I know that.”

His best had not been good enough, Neihle thought now, as he walked through the cool evening at the side of his tall young nephew. Ronan’s father had died when the boy was but six winters old, leaving him in the hut of a resentful stepmother. Then Orenda had remarried, and more children had come along. Neither she nor her husband had wanted Ronan. They had kept him only at the Mistress’s command.

The Mistress, Neihle thought. Arika. In most things, Neihle found his sister to be both just and wise, but he had never understood her in the matter of Ronan.

Arika had lain with Neihle’s heart-friend, Iun, at Spring Fires, and had borne Ronan, her first, long-awaited child. But a boy was of no use to the Mistress of the Tribe of the Red Deer, and Arika had not even suckled him, had immediately given him over to Iun’s wife, who also had a child at the breast. Orenda’s child had died shortly thereafter, and she had blamed Ronan for taking too much of her milk. The boy had never known a happy moment under Orenda’s roof.

Arika knew that, yet she had commanded Orenda to keep the boy and made it clear that Neihle was to leave him under his stepmother’s care. Neihle had never understood why, until this summer.

He heard Ronan saying, “I bear no ill will toward you, Uncle.” There was a faintly sinister emphasis upon that “you,” and a shiver ran up and down Neihle’s spine.

He sought to change the subject. “Erek brought back word from home that at the full of the moon, Morna is to be initiated.”

The men looked at each other. It was always an important moment in the world of the Red Deer when a girl first showed the moon blood that would guarantee the future life of the tribe. When that girl was the future Mistress, the occasion was one for great rejoicing. Yet neither man looked at all elated.

“She has become a woman, then,” Ronan said, his voice curiously flat.

“Sa. She has become a woman.”

“If Morna will ever be a woman.”

Neihle pulled his upper lip. “She is…thoughtless…sometimes, but she will grow up. Now that her moon blood is flowing, she will grow up.”

Ronan snorted. “Nel has more sense in the nail of her little finger than Morna has in her whole head.”

“Do not say that to anyone besides me!” Neihle said warningly. “If such words should come to the Mistress’s ears…”

“I am not a fool. I know how blind she is when it comes to the Chosen One.”

The bitterness in Ronan’s voice was deep. Neihle understood, but it was dangerous. Ronan’s growing reputation among the initiates was dangerous also. Arika did not like it. Neihle frowned worriedly at the hawklike profile of his nephew and finally brought up the subject that was on his mind.

“I have been thinking, Ronan, to take you with me to the Autumn Gathering this year to find you a wife.”

“What?” Ronan swung around to face his uncle. His eyes were wide with surprise. “I do not understand you, Uncle,” he said.

Neihle was not surprised by Ronan’s reaction. It was certainly Neihle’s place as the boy’s maternal uncle to make his marriage arrangements, and the boys of the Red Deer often left their home when they wed, but Ronan was still young for marriage. As he said now to Neihle, “It is not yet time for me to take a wife.”

“Morna is young for her years, but you, sister’s son, are old for yours,” Neihle returned. “Nor are you the man ever to be happy living under Morna’s rule. Even though it seems you could certainly find a girl of the Red Deer to take you”—here Neihle smiled briefly, then sobered—”I have been thinking it would be well for you to consider making your home in another tribe.”

Ronan’s expressionless mask was not, after all, impenetrable, and Neihle saw the flash of hurt. “It is not that I wish to lose you,” the older man said gently. “It is that…I fear for you in this tribe, Ronan.”

Now Ronan looked astonished. “Fear for me? Why should you fear for me, Uncle?”

Neihle shrugged and answered obliquely, “I have long thought you would be happier in a tribe that followed the Way of Sky God.”

Ronan’s astonished expression faded, and he looked away.

“I know you listen to stories of such tribes from the men who were born to them,” Neihle said. “I have seen your face when Midac tells tales of the Tribe of the Horse and Azur tells tales of the Tribe of the Buffalo.”

Ronan did not answer.

“Of all the tribes of the Kindred, only the Tribe of the Red Deer yet follows the Way of the Mother,” Neihle said. “They follow the Mother in other places, this I know from the traders, but among the Kindred it is only the Tribe of the Red Deer. That is why Arika is so careful to keep us pure, Ronan. That is why when a young man marries into another tribe, she will not allow him to return here. She does not want the ways of Sky God creeping in.” Neihle put his hand on his nephew’s arm. “If I have noticed how you listen to the tales of Sky God, then be sure that she has noticed also.”

Ronan’s chin came up. “Noticed me? The Mistress? You are thinking of someone else, Uncle.”

Neihle winced, the bitterness in that young voice was so raw. “She knows everything about you, Ronan,” he answered. “She knows you are becoming a leader among the boys. She knows the girls are hot to lie with you. She knows you are interested in the Way of Sky God. And even if she never shows it, she knows you are her son.”

Neihle’s hand on Ronan’s arm tightened. “All of these things are dangerous, sister’s son. You already have cause to know how ruthless the Mistress can be. If she thinks you may be a threat to her rule…”

“A threat to her rule,” Ronan repeated. Once more he looked astonished. “Can Arika really imagine that?”

“I think so,” said Neihle. The two men stood there, facing each other under the darkening sky. “That is why I wish to take you to the Autumn Gathering to find a wife. I wish you would consider it.”

There was a long silence. Then Ronan answered, “Perhaps I will, one day. But not this year, Uncle.”

Neihle dropped his hand. Trying to throw off his sense of foreboding, he made himself say humorously, “You are having too good a time, I see.”

Ronan’s dark face lit with its irresistible smile. “Sa,” he said. “I am.”

* * * *

The summer weather faded, and Leaf Fall Moon rose in the night sky. In the highest passes of the mountains, snow fell. The deer began their annual trek back to the lower-altitude grazing around the Greatfish River, followed by the hunters of the Tribe of the Red Deer.

As Leaf Fall Moon waned, preparations began for the great semi-annual fertility rite of the tribe, Winter Fires.

It would be the first Fires ceremony Ronan had ever attended, and he looked forward to it with enthusiasm. Not even the news that his half-sister Morna was to make the Sacred Marriage this year could dim his anticipation.

The three girls who had been initiated since Spring Fires were awaiting the coming ceremony with scarcely less anticipation than Ronan. A girl of the Red Deer tribe was not introduced to sex at her initiation rite as was a boy. The girls waited until the next ceremony of the Fires, when the pounding drums and unrestrained dancing brought heat to the blood and fire to the loins. Then they had their first mating, and the pain was muted by the sweet urgency of the need.

Morna had been pleased when Arika told her she would be the one to make the Sacred Marriage this year. According to ritual, at each Fires the Goddess mated with the god and their joining was what brought fertility to the tribe and to the herds the tribe depended upon for survival. The Goddess’s role was usually taken by the Mistress, but this year the role would be played by the Mistress’s daughter.

“It makes for a powerful ritual when the Goddess is played by a maiden,” Arika explained to Morna. “That is why I will allow you to make the Sacred Marriage this year, at your first mating.” The Mistress smiled at Morna’s expression. “You must name the man, my daughter. It is always the prerogative of the Goddess to name the man who will play the god.”