White Mare's Daughter (31 page)

She was, but not as he meant. It was a dizzy laughter, as if
she stood on the edge of a steep riverbank and contemplated the leap into the
water below. “I never chose a man before,” she said.

“Did a man choose you?” He said it as if he did not quite
believe such a thing could be; but she had said it, therefore he indulged her
fancy.

She shook her head. “I was not—I belong to the Mare. They
were afraid.”

“Should I be?”

She blinked, frowned. “Only if you force me.”

“Force?” She saw the incomprehension, but before she could
enlighten it, he understood. “To—make war on you? You alone?”

His horror was sweet to see. Nor was it feigned. “Yes, that
is war, too. It can happen in war. Or a man can take a woman when she does not
want it.”

“And the Lady does not destroy him?”

“The gods help him. The gods love such things.”

“Your—the men’s gods are terrible creatures,” Danu said
after a pause. “I think we would call them demons.”

“I do not love them,” Sarama said.

Her head was throbbing. She had not been using so many
words, but she had used nearly every one she knew, over and over, to say things
that would have been hard in her own familiar tongue. She reached across the
bed and seized his hands, both of them. He did not resist. “Show me why Catin
is jealous,” she said.

He could refuse. She knew that. Perhaps he considered it.
But if he did, it was only briefly. His fingers tightened. He drew her to him
lightly, easily, as if she had weighed no more than one of the blankets.

So, she thought. The man could take, when the time came; if
he was given leave. Even here. And the woman could refuse to be taken.

She did not want to refuse. At all. And how she had come to
this, from barely tolerating his presence, she could not at the moment
understand.

He had somehow disposed of his garments while she knelt on
the bed with her mind a-wandering. She had seen men before. How not? But not a
man so close, with his dark eyes on her, and the lower part of him stallion-rampant,
but never so very rampant as a stallion.

He would never forgive her if she laughed. She bit her lip.
He was waiting for something. For her.

She knew a moment of piercing shyness, and ice-cold fear. If
she turned and ran now, he would never mock her. Not he.

Which was, in the simplest of senses, why she was here, in
this predicament, and determined after all to continue.

She scrambled out of her clothes and knelt shivering, bare
and pebble-skinned like a plucked bird. No sleek brown-skinned beauty she, and
no warmth of curly black hair, either.

Yet he did not seem repulsed. He wrapped arms about her,
enfolding her, shutting out the cold. His scent was pleasant, more musky than
pungent, overlaid with something sweet: herbs and a suggestion of honey.

She was keenly, almost painfully aware of his body against
hers. And, with more than pain, of the thing that pressed hard and hot between
her belly and his.

Any man she knew would have thrust it into her and had done.
He simply held her, master even, it seemed, of that.

She did not know what to do. Her arms were more comfortable
linked behind him, her hands stroking the smoothness of his back. There was a
whorl of down in the hollow of it, soft as a foal’s muzzle.

Her head fit tidily on his shoulder. They were precisely of
a height. He was broader, much; of course. Had she been thinking of this, of
standing like this, from the moment she saw him?

She had thought then that he would force her; had been
astonished when he did not. She was still astonished. Such strength—such
discipline.

His breath came a little quick, she thought. And he was very
hard. He must be in discomfort. But he made no move to take her.

Her hands explored what they could reach: shoulders, back,
buttocks. He liked it when she ran her nails lightly down his back. She ran
them back up again, and found the pin that knotted his hair at his nape. She
tugged it free.

His hair tumbled down, all the curling richness of it,
softer than it had looked, and wonderfully thick. She wound her fingers in it.

He sighed. She stroked her cheek along his shoulder. Then,
because it seemed worthy of the trial, she traced its line with kisses, tasting
it, salt and warm flesh and that suggestion of honey.

No man that she had ever heard of would let a woman explore
him so, and make no move to hasten the ending. And yet, as with the rest of
him, it was not weakness. It was great strength.

He was hers to do with as she pleased. She lifted her head
from his shoulder, tilted it back to meet his gaze. No mute endurance there. He
did this willingly. Gladly? She rather thought so.

He was younger than she had thought. No older than she. His
bulk and the richness of his beard, and the way he carried himself, had
deceived her. The face so close to hers was little more than a boy’s, still with
a suggestion of the child that he must have been.

Beautiful child, full-lipped and soft-cheeked, as lovely as
a girl. Had he been glad to grow into a man, to lose that prettiness? Or had he
been sorry for it?

Later, maybe, she would ask. He was beautiful now, as a man
is, and as a bull, and as a strong young stallion. She had learned to see that
beauty, day after day in this city of broad-built brown people.

“O beautiful,” she murmured in her own tongue. “O splendid.”
She swooped with great bravery, set a kiss on his lips. They opened for her. He
tasted of honey and fire.

She burned herself, a white heat that burned without
consuming. Her breasts were exquisitely tender, pressed against his broad
black-furred chest. But the heart of it throbbed between her thighs. She had
never—she had not imagined—

She gasped, half in impatience, half in protest; slid up the
rock-solidity of his body; found the tip of his shaft—his gasp echoed
hers—gritted her teeth and impaled herself on it.

It hurt. Oh, dear Lady, it hurt. She was too small. He was
too—

But there was pleasure on the edge of pain. A whisper of
something else that should be, if she passed this gate, if she endured this
rite. It was no worse than fasting on the steppe, than suffering the numbing
bite of cold, than riding till her tender parts were raw, all in the goddess’
name.

He rocked gently against her, a rhythm she knew. She had
danced it. The sensation of him inside her, sliding against her, was
unutterably strange.

He was holding her up. She locked legs about his middle,
sighing a little, for it made the pain a little less, the pleasure a little
more.

He betrayed no sign of distress. His face was intent,
abstracted, but he smiled and set a kiss on her lips.

For him, it seemed, this was indeed a dance. An art. A thing
that he did as he hunted the red deer, or as he set his house in order: for the
joy of it, and for the pride of a task well done.

Irritation pricked. She did not want to be a task. She
wanted to be—by the goddess, she wanted to be the world to him.

There was another rhythm like this, another rhythmic rocking
motion, as familiar as the breath in her body. A horse at the canter, long and
easy, smooth, untiring. Once she had found that, she found the limit of pain,
and passed it. It lingered, and more than a whisper of it, too; but it ceased
to matter.

He had great endurance. Not that she knew much of this, but
she had heard enough. Men came, took, left again. They did not go on and on.

This one did. But not forever. Not even he. His stroke quickened,
his breath with it. She rode it, not quite comprehending, until he stiffened,
gripping her tight enough to startle the breath out of her. There was
something, a glimmer . . .

It was gone. A long sigh escaped him. She loosened her grip
on him and slipped free. He sank to his knees on the bed. “Sorry,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”

“What ever for?” Her own voice was if anything more
breathless than his.

“I failed to pleasure you,” he said. “I could not—I lacked
discipline.”

“Stop that,” she said.

He was trained to a woman’s voice: he stopped. She bore him
back and down, flat on the bed, and sat on him. “You were beautiful,” she said.

“I didn’t—”

“Stop!”

He shut his mouth with a click. She pressed her finger to
it, to keep it so.

“Do not ever say
sorry
,”
she said.

His eyes begged to differ, but his voice was silenced, even
after she had reclaimed her hand.

She was aware, then, of the ache inside. She pulled herself
somewhat stiffly to her feet.

There was blood on her thighs, and on him, too. He was
staring at it—not appalled. But faintly horrified.

“You have never taken a man before,” he said, as if it were
an accusation. “Where was your mother when it was time to teach you? How could
she allow you to suffer this?”

“My mother is dead,” Sarama said. “I was born, she died.”

That silenced him, but only briefly. “Sweet Lady! Your
people are savages.”

He rose as she had, but never as stiffly. If he was aware of
her resentment, he did not show it. He wrapped her in a soft blanket, made her
come into the outer room, bathed her with warmed water. His hands were gentler
than his expression. He bathed himself, too, thereafter, and for all the ache
in her outraged parts, she felt them begin to warm again, her breasts to
tighten, wanting him.

If that made her a savage, then so be it. She had heard—not
from men—that men had limitations, but this one seemed to have fewer than some.

He was less swift to rise, but rise he did. This time she
knew better what to do, and her body knew what it had wanted: the completion of
the rite, the thing that had failed her before—and not by his fault, whatever
he might choose to think.

She had not known what to seek. No more did she now, except
that there was something, and one reached it . . .

So
.

So
. Indeed. And
indeed again. And . . .

Danu had heard many a sound from women in the throes of
the Lady’s gift, but that shout of triumph was wholly new. And, like Sarama
herself, it was both marvelous and shocking. She clung to him, locked tight as
he completed his own rite, and laughed like a wild thing.

It was impossible to resist that laughter. Even
uncomprehending, even mildly appalled. She was the Lady’s own—now, for his
heart and soul, he had no doubt of it. Only the Lady’s chosen could love as
this one loved.

She had chosen him. Had she known she would do it? Would she
even want to have done it, once the Lady’s presence was gone from her?

He did not wonder if he would. That doubt had lost itself
somewhere, he did not remember where.

oOo

They lay tangled together in front of the hearth, warm where
the fire touched, snow-cold where it could not reach. Danu groped for the
blankets that had wrapped them both.

She laid her head on his shoulder and sighed. She was
asleep, the deep and sudden sleep that came with the Lady’s gift.

He should be sharing it, except that his thoughts were in
such confusion. He had never thought to be lying here, least of all on this
day, after Catin had come and flung sharp-edged words in his face and gone
furious away.

Blindness. Jealousy. Demons speaking in her?

Perhaps. What would she do now that she had cast him off?

He would learn the answer to that soon enough. But not now.
For this moment he would be content, wrapped in the arms of this woman as she
was wrapped in his; and if he could not sleep, at the least he could rest.

He buried his face in her hair. So wonderful, so straight
and fine, like tarnished copper, or leaves in autumn. She smelled of leaves and
grass and horses, and of clean musky woman.

Astonishing, that she had never taken a man before.
Miraculous, that she had taken him. He was blessed, twice and thrice blessed,
to be so chosen.

oOo

He slept after all, and woke to the snorting of horses.
Something had caught their attention; from the sound of it, they had trapped it
in a corner below.

Sarama was still asleep. He left her the blankets, retrieved
his mantle and wrapped it about him, and descended not too quickly, but not
slowly either.

The horses had indeed cornered their prey; and a pitiful
scrap of a child it was, too, white with terror and desperately glad to see
Danu.

“Ah, laddie,” Danu said with rough gentleness, “they only
want to be petted. See, here, stroke her neck, so—and push young impudence
away; he will nip. But he’ll never eat you.”

It was, when he had got it up the ladder and pried it from about
his neck, one of the children from the Mother’s house. Its face was familiar.
It must be one of those who were always about, watching and listening and
parroting the words when Sarama spoke in the language of the tribes.

It—he—had a message for Danu and for Sarama. “Come to the
Mother,” he said.

“Not without breakfast,” said Danu calmly. “Here, stay, eat
with us.”

“You keep the king waiting?” Sarama wanted to know.

“She won’t be pleased to see us if we’re growling with
hunger.” And, he thought, it would be best if their strength was up.

His belly had gone hollow when he saw the Mother’s messenger
and knew what he must be. Catin’s words this morning, the Mother’s
summons—which a Mother almost never made use of—at noon: they might have
nothing to do with each other. Or, far too likely, one might have bred the
other.

The child, whose name was Mika, was not at all averse to
being fed. Danu could remember when he was as young as that, when he had been
endlessly hungry. He wondered if the uncles who fed him had been as gratified
as he was now, to see his labor of hunting and cooking put to such good use.