The Horsemasters (44 page)

As they both knew, this was unarguably true. He said, “There is little to be done with the horses. And, with Arika gone, I need you to be in charge here to see to the shields and the food.”

“Berta can do that.”

“Berta will not be able to handle the mares.”

“Siguna and Beki can handle the mares.”

He closed his eyes. “Nel. You cannot come. It is impossible.”

She did not answer. He opened his eyes again and looked at her. The summer sun had tinted her skin to a pale golden hue, with just the faintest flush of rose over the cheekbones. Her lower lip was chapped from the way she chewed on it when she was worried. The loose strand of hair had slipped once more over her forehead and looked in danger of becoming entangled in the sweep of her eyelashes. He raised his hand and smoothed the lock back gently.

“I had a dream last night, Ronan,” she said in a low voice. “A terrible dream.” Her long eyes, gray with distress, lifted and clung to his face.

He set his heart against that look. “You cannot come,” he repeated. “As I told the girls of the Red Deer, I want none of our women within the reach of these rapists. If I bring you, then Haras will have the right to bring his wife, and Unwar his. Then the wives will want to bring their children. Then they will need more women to help with the children…” He shook his head emphatically. “Na, Nel. You cannot come.”

As he spoke, Nel’s eyes had been slowly changing from gray to the deep, glittering green that signaled anger. She said, “I see now that the Mistress was right.”

“Right about what?” The words were out before he could consider their wisdom.

“Right about the arrogance of men when they come into power.”

His mouth thinned. “Did she mention also the unfairness of women?”

They glared at each other.

“You did not even ask me about my dream,” Nel said.

Ronan took a hard hold upon his temper, reminding himself that he had not brought Nel to this secluded valley to argue with her. To gain time, he pulled up a single strand of long grass and squinted at it. “It is just that I am not in the mood to hear a sad tale about how you saw me lying dead somewhere in a pool of blood.” He put the long grass leaf in his mouth and began to chew on it.

His words did not soothe Nel at all. In fact, they incensed her. “You’re annoyed at me because you think I am paying too much attention to Culen and not enough to you. That is the true reason you are making these speeches about women and children being in your way.”

There was enough truth in this remark to infuriate Ronan. He jerked the grass out of his mouth. “You ungrateful little brat,” he growled.

“And I’ll have you know that I did not see you lying dead in a pool of blood,” Nel snapped. Her eyes were flashing, her cheeks flying flags of hectic color. The loose strand of hair slipped over her forehead again, and she lifted her hand to brush it away. Her buckskin sleeves were rolled in the summer heat, and Ronan could see the faint scar on the inside of her fragile wrist.

As he stared at that delicate, blue-veined wrist, his ill temper vanished. What a fool I am, he thought wryly. “Minnow,” he said, giving her one of his most beguiling smiles. He reached, and his own hard, calloused fingers closed around her wrist. “I don’t want to fight with you.”

Nel shot him a still-angry, distrustful look.

He was moving his thumb up and down on her wrist. “What did you dream, if it was not about me lying dead in a pool of blood?” he asked soothingly.

“I wish you would stop talking about lying dead in a pool of blood! It can’t be lucky, Ronan.”

The skin of her wrist was so smooth, so incredibly soft. He raised his other hand and again brushed the loose hair away from her brow, He sniffed the familiar fragrance that was her hair. Her head was tilted back now, her long cat eyes gazing up at him. “You are lucky for me, Nel,” he said and bent his head to her mouth.

He felt her arms come around him, and then she was clinging close, her whole body cleaving to his. “You are so unafraid,” she whispered, when his mouth had left hers to move to the hollow of her throat. “Don’t you see? That is why I am afraid for you, because you are so unafraid for yourself.”

“Don’t be afraid, Nel,” he murmured. He was drawing her down to lie beside him on the warm summer grass. “It does no good.”

She heaved a great shuddering sigh. “I know,” she said. “I know.”

* * * *

Shortly after Ronan moved the men and the horses away from the Great Cave, Nel pastured the mares and foals in a nearby valley. “This trying to keep both male and female horse-herds just does not work,” she said to Siguna ruefully as the two young women stood together in the bright sunlight watching the horses sample their new grazing.

“That is why my people keep only mares,” Siguna said. “We have just one stallion, and that is Thunder, who belongs to my father. Of course, we occasionally lose some of our mares to another stallion’s harem”—Siguna smiled—”but my father keeps guards with the herd always, and that does not happen as often as you might think.”

Nel sighed. “I have often thought how much easier horse-keeping would be if we could only have mares instead of stallions.”

“Why don’t you?” Siguna asked curiously. And Nel told her about Impero and the Valley of the Wolf.

“Do you mean you have had these horses tamed for only two years!” Siguna said when Nel had finished.

“Sa.”

Siguna stared at Nel. “Do you realize how amazing that is?”

Nel shrugged. “That is what Ronan says. Myself, I do not think it is so amazing. Animals have such a great-hearted generosity, Siguna. If you are kind to them, they will do almost anything for you.”

“Animals certainly give their hearts to you, Nel,” Siguna returned with a smile, “but that is not necessarily true for everyone else.” She bent her mind to Nel’s problem. “The only thing you can do is kill the stallion who is presently in the valley and replace him with one of your own,” she advised. “A stallion who has been tamed will let you handle his mares.”

“I have thought of that.” Nel bent her head and scuffed her moccasin around in the grass. “I’m sure Ronan has thought of that, too. Cloud would be a perfect replacement for Impero.”

Siguna smiled. “So there is the solution to your problem.”

Nel gazed out at the peaceful scene before her and shook her head.

“Why not?”

Still looking at the mares and foals, and not at Siguna, Nel said, “The valley was Impero’s home before it was ours. If we did that to him, then we should be as bad as your father.”

Siguna’s breath caught audibly.

Nel turned her head. Her face was somber, “It is true, Siguna. I am sorry to have to say such a thing about your father, but it is true.”

“He…” Siguna tried to find words to explain. “He is not bad, Nel. It is just that the men of my tribe know no other way.”

“They revere nothing,” Nel said flatly.

“Na,” Siguna agreed sadly. “They do not.”

“Do you wish to return to them?”

Siguna gave her a startled look. “Do you mean now?”

“You cannot return now. But someday…when all of this is over…will you wish to return?”

Siguna thought of the scheme she had made when first she had come to this camp as a captive. She would discover their plans, she had thought, and then return to her father and be a heroine. Slowly she shook her head. “I do not want to return, Nel. I have learned a little about reverence, and I do not want to return.”

Nel put an arm around Siguna’s shoulders and gave her a brief hug. “It is in my heart that the Mother put it into your mind to go wandering in the forest the day that Thorn and Mait found you, Siguna.”

“I have been thinking that also,” Siguna confessed.

Two long-legged foals galloped off across the pasture, one chasing the other. Nel smiled.

“Do you think the Tribe of the Wolf would take me in?” Siguna asked.

“Of course. But I am thinking that the Mistress has already marked you for her own,” Nel said.

Siguna’s crystal eyes grew very wide.

“You cannot be so surprised,” Nel said. “She has given you a very large amount of her time.”

Siguna was obviously flustered. “I have had many questions, and she is very kind.”

“Arika’s not kind,” Nel said positively. “If it were offered, would you like to join the Tribe of the Red Deer, Siguna?”

The great gray eyes grew luminous. “Sa,” Siguna said.

Nel said, “Talk to the Mistress.”

* * * *

Fenris sent scouts out again before moving the main body of his camp, and they returned with the news that the Tribe of the Leopard had evacuated their homesite on the Greatfish River.

Fenris’s thick blond brows drew together in a scowl. Nothing was going as it should of late.

“Perhaps the tribe simply moved to another location for the summer months,” Surtur said from his place at the kain’s side.

“Perhaps,” Fenris grunted. “Or perhaps they are part of that group of mountainmen who attacked us.”

The scout who had come to make the report said now eagerly, “We found some tribes dwelling farther down the River of Gold, Kain. They looked to be fully as rich as the first one.”

Fenris’s brow smoothed slightly. “You saw these tribes?”

The scout nodded emphatically. “We saw them. We thought at first of following the other river east, but it seemed to be leading into higher hills, and we feared we might find ourselves in the midst of another trap.”

Fenris’s scowl returned, as it did at any mention of the defeat in the gorge.

The scout continued hastily, “So we returned to the River of Gold and followed it south. It leads into very high mountains, but before the mountains rise, we found two tribes. We were very careful, Kain. They did not know we were there.”

“When did you see them?” Fenris asked.

“Early yesterday. We galloped all the way back.”

“Good,” Fenris said and nodded approvingly. He looked around the circle of his anda. “I do not want to give these tribes time to disappear,” he said. “We ride tomorrow at dawn. Pass the word to the men.”

Grins came from all his men as they obediently rose to their feet. “Tomorrow at dawn,” they said. “We will be ready.”

* * * *

The following morning, the Horsemasters galloped out of camp. They rode south for all the day, riding hard down the fertile plain that stretched on either side of the River of Gold. By nightfall, the horsemen were within striking distance of the Tribe of the Bear.

They would wait for the following day, Fenris decided. Dawn was one of his favorite times for attack, as he could be fairly certain of catching most members of a tribe still within their huts at dawn. So, as the light faded, the Horsemasters picketed their horses and settled down for the night, ready to be up and away in the early morning.

* * * *

The shaman of the Bear was an old man, and he slept lightly, especially toward dawn. On this particular day, as he lay in his sleeping skins waiting patiently for the morning, the murmur of distant hooves from down the valley came to his ears.

Reindeer? Reindeer should not be in the valley at this time of year. They should be in the mountains.

The drumming sound was coming closer. What could it be?

From out of nowhere, a picture of Ronan’s sternly warning face floated before the shaman’s eyes.

The Horsemasters, he thought, it is the Horsemasters.

The old man staggered to his feet and, without even stopping to put on his moccasins, rushed out his door and ran for the chief’s hut. “Wake up! Wake up!” he shouted as he ran. “The Horsemasters are coming!”

He reached the chief’s hut and plunged into the darkness within. “The earth is trembling like thunder!” he cried. “Get up, Sanje! The Horsemasters are coming!”

The chief, who had been sleeping naked with his wife in their sleeping skins, leaped to his feet. For a moment he stood still and listened. The earth was indeed resonating with the drumming of oncoming hooves.

“Wake the tribe!” he said to the shaman. “I am coming!” And he reached frantically for his clothing.

The shaman ran back outside, his breath wheezing in his old lungs. There were men carrying spears running out of the men’s cave in response to his earlier call. The grayish yellow light of early morning streaked the sky. Women and children were coming out of the huts now, the children crying with fear. The shaman collapsed next to the men’s cave, his old legs trembling so hard they would hold him no longer. The chief came rushing past him, shouting to the women to get back inside the huts.

The shaman looked toward the river. He looked up the valley.

They came out of the morning mist, falling upon the Tribe of the Bear in a storm of terror and death. The shaman felt his breath come short, felt a sharp pain knife through his chest. His last conscious thought was, We should have listened to Ronan.

Chapter Thirty-one

The day after he and his men had pillaged the homesite of the Tribe of the Bear, Fenris and the Horsemasters rode south and did the same thing to the Tribe of the Fox.

“No point in giving them any time to prepare a defense,” he said to Surtur as they conferred together once the main part of the attack on the Tribe of the Bear was finished. “A number of these people escaped into the forest, and they may try to warn the tribe to the south.”

Surtur grunted in acknowledgment.

The two men stood, reins in hand, and looked in silence around the devastated camp of the Bear. The bodies of men littered the ground. From within the huts came the sound of wailing children and weeping women.

“Have one of the huts stripped of its goods and pile the bodies in it,” Fenris said to his second-in-command.

“Hugin is already seeing to that, Kain.”

Fenris nodded. Over the years, he had found that the most efficient way to get rid of the slain was to pile them in a hut, along with as much wood as readily could be found, and set fire to it. If he left the corpses to the hyenas and the ravens, then he would not be able to use the tribe’s campsite, And indeed, as he watched, some of his men were beginning the business of stripping the bodies of the slain. Hugin stood by the hut chosen for the cremation and watched with hawk eyes to see that everything taken from the bodies was piled in one heap for the kain to distribute as he saw fit.