The Shepherd Kings (94 page)

Epona Sequence, Book 4

Judith Tarr

Book View Café June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61138-524-3
Copyright © 2015 Judith Tarr

First published: 1999

Cover illustration © 2015 Ashwin82
Dreamstime.com

Production Team:

Cover border: Texture Photoshop Wallpaper courtesy
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Cover Design: Pati Nagle

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Formatter: Vonda N. McIntyre

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Digital edition: 20150510vnm

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Book View Café Publishing Cooperative
P.O. Box 1624, Cedar Crest, NM 87008-1624

Judith Tarr’s first fantasy novel,
The Isle of Glass,
appeared in 1985, and went on to win the Crawford Award. Her space opera,
Forgotten Suns,
has just been published by Book View Café. In between, she has written historicals and historical fantasies—including World Fantasy Award nominee
Lord of the Two Lands
—and epic fantasies, some of which have been reborn as ebooks from Book View Café. She lives in Arizona with three cats, two dogs, and a herd of Lipizzan horses.

The Epona Sequence

White Mare’s Daughter

Lady of Horses

Daughter of Lir

The Shepherd Kings

Avaryan Rising Series

The Hall of the Mountain King

The Lady of Han-Gilen

A Fall of Princes

Avaryan Resplendent Series

Arrows of the Sun

Spear of Heaven

The Hound and the Falcon Series

The Isle of Glass

The Golden Horn

The Hounds of God

Novels

Ars Magica

Alamut

The Dagger and the Cross

Forgotten Suns

Living in Threes

Lord of the Two Lands

A Wind in Cairo

His Majesty’s Elephant

Collection

Nine White Horses

Nonfiction

Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting it Right

BVC Anthologies

Beyond Grimm

Breaking Waves

Brewing Fine Fiction

Ways to Trash Your
Writing Career

Dragon Lords and Warrior
Women

Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls

The Shadow Conspiracy

The Shadow Conspiracy

The Shadow Conspiracy II

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The Epona Sequence, Book 1

Sample Chapter

Judith Tarr

www.bookviewcafe.com

Book View Café Publishing Cooperative
January 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61138-356-0
Copyright © 1998 Judith Tarr

From far away she heard them, echoing across the steppe:
the drums beating, swift as a frightened heart. The voices were too far, too
thin to carry above the shrilling of the wind, and yet in her belly she knew
them, deep voices and high, strong and wild.

Blood and fire! Blood
and fire! Fire and water and stone and blood!

They had made the year-sacrifice, one of many that they
would make in the gathering of the tribes. On this day, from the rhythm of the
drums, it would be the Bull. Yesterday, the Hound; tomorrow, the Stallion, with
his proud neck red like blood.

She laid a hand on the Mare’s neck. In the rolling of years
it would be white, like milk. Now it was the grey of the rain that had fallen
in the morning, shot with dapples like flecks of snow. The Mare snorted lightly
and tossed her head. She could smell the stallions. It was her season, the
strong one that waxed with the moon in spring, and would wax and wane slowly
with each moon all the summer long, and in winter sleep.

She snorted again and pawed, impatient to be going. Her
rider eased a little on the broad grey back, freeing her to spring forward. The
wind tangled in thick grey mane and silver tail; caught the long thick braid
that hung to the rider’s buttocks and sent it streaming out behind. The
pounding of hooves blotted out the drumbeats. They raced the wind then, swift
over the new grass, into the westering sun.

oOo

The gathering of the people spread wide in a hollow of the
steppe, where a river ran through a cutting that deepened with the years.
Winter’s storms brought down the banks nonetheless, and the herds of horses and
cattle made broad paths to the water.

The herds were the girdle that bound the camp. The center,
the soft body, divided into circles of camps, each with the staff and banner of
its tribe: black horsetail, red horsetail, spotted bull’s hide, white bull’s
horns, and three whole handfuls of others; and in the center, in the
king-place, the white mare’s tail catching the strong wind of spring.

Agni was on his way to the king’s circle, but taking his
time about it. The dancing, that had begun where the hill of sacrifice rose
dark with blood, had wound away toward the river. He had been part of it when
it began, before the king’s summons brought him back in toward the white
horsetail. His father was entertaining the chiefs of tribe and clan in the
feast of the Bull, and had called on Agni to stand at his right hand. Rumor had
it among the tribes that the old man was going to name an heir at last; and he
had called for Agni, the avowed favorite of all his sons.

Agni was sensible of the honor, and of what it meant—how
could he not be? But he dearly loved the dance, and the delights that came with
it. He was none too eager to forsake it for the dull dignity of the elders in
their circle.

As he made his somewhat desultory way past the tents in the
center, a hiss brought him about. Someone had lifted the back of a tent. A
white hand beckoned from beneath, and a slender arm heavy with ornaments: carved
bone and stone, beads strung on leather, and one woven of horsehair that he
knew very well.

His breath quickened. Completely without thinking, he
dropped down and slithered into the tent.

It was black dark to his day-accustomed eyes, heavy with
scents of musk and sweat and tanned hides. Strong slender arms circled his
neck. A supple body pressed against his. Warm lips fastened on his own. They
fell in a dizzy whirl.

She was as naked as she was born, slick with sweat, white
glimmering body coming clear in the gloom; and her hair, her wonderful hair,
like a pale fall of sunlight. He could drown himself in the stream of it.

For the dance one wore nothing but a kilt of fine-tanned
leather—very fine, if one were a prince. It was no barrier to a woman’s
urgency, least of all if it were this one. She did not even wait for him to
shed it. She flicked it up and opened her thighs and took him where they lay
entangled. She was burning hot, as hill of the god as any man, and imperious in
her urgency.

He had brought with him the heat of the dance. The Bull was
in him, driving deep. She gasped; then laughed. “Again! O beautiful! Again!”

He was the Bull, the god’s own. He heeded no woman’s
bidding. But the god in her—that one he was glad to obey. He took her as the
bull takes the heifer, but with a man’s strength, and a man’s endurance, too,
riding her till her breath shuddered and a cry burst out of her—muted swiftly,
but sharp enough for all of that.

He let it go then, with a gasp but no cry; for he was more
circumspect than she. She locked arms and legs about him, took him as deep as
ever she could, draining him of every drop of seed.

When he was all empty, she let him go. He rolled on his
back, gulping air, quivering still.

She lifted herself over him, white breasts swaying. They
were the color of milk, the nipples pale, like the sky at morning. She teased
him with them, tormenting him, brushing his face and his sweating breast,
knowing full well that he had no strength left to rouse. “O beautiful,” she
said. “O prince. Be like a god. Love me again.”

He looked past her breasts to her laughing, mocking face.
She was beautiful in everything, with her white skin and her delicate bones and
her eyes the color of a winter sky. She could drive a man mad. Indeed she often
had.

His eye followed the line of her shoulder to her arm, and
down it to the wrist, to the one ornament of them all that mattered: the
bracelet woven from the hair of a white mare and a red stallion, woven on her
living arm, intricate and strong, to last lifelong. “The god is gone from me,”
he said, “and the king is waiting.”

“Ah,” she said without contrition. “Have you kept him
standing about? For shame!”

“Sitting,” said Agni, “in his circle as he always is, with
my brothers on the edges, vying to catch his eye.”

“But only you ever truly catch it,” she said.

“You should have married me, then,” said Agni, “and not my
brother Yama.”

Her face twisted delightfully, a moue of disgust. “That was
my idiot of a father, insisting on giving me to the eldest, and not the one who
would be king. I would have waited, and made him ask the king for you, once you
were a man. I want to be a king’s wife.”