White Mare's Daughter (36 page)

“She’ll wait for you to tell her.”

“She shouldn’t wait too long,” said Sarama.

“I think you should tell her,” Danu said. “And soon.”

“And if she sends me away?”

“She won’t,” said Danu.

Sarama’s glance was doubtful, but she did not argue. There
were advantages, he thought, in a woman whose tongue was not entirely certain,
yet, of the Lady’s speech.

Sarama had delayed in speaking with the Mother because—at
last she would admit it—she was a coward. She did not want to be sent away from
this place, from this man who had, somehow, become as necessary as the breath
she drew. She did not need to be near him every moment, but when she was apart
from him, she felt the lack more keenly, the longer they were parted.

He did not feel the same. She could tell that. He was home,
among his people, in the place that was rightfully his.

A prince indeed, and the heart and center of this house,
too, though he seemed unaware of it. Everyone who came in went inevitably to
him, wherever he was. He was much too preoccupied to dream and sigh after a
woman.

But he had forced her to see what she must do. She was not
here simply to be his lover. She must speak to the Mother, must persuade her to
listen as the Mother of Larchwood had refused to do.

This Mother was stronger, hardier, and less overtly fearful.
And yet that strength might well betray Sarama; might persuade the Mother that
she need not listen to a stranger bringing tales that, for all she knew, might
be sheerest falsehood.

oOo

Sarama did not need after all to seek the Mother. The
Mother met her on the path that she had made from the city to the horses’
meadow. For once there were no children about, and no curious elders. Only the
two of them and the snow, and the low grey sky.

Sarama greeted her with wide-eyed silence. That she was well
able to walk despite her massive bulk, Sarama had seen often enough; and yet it
was startling to see her here, wrapped in a mantle like an ordinary woman,
without escort or guard of honor.

She smiled at Sarama. Sarama mustered something like a smile
in return. She began to walk, not toward the city but on the way that Sarama
had been going, toward the meadow and the horses. Sarama had to stretch to
catch her.

They walked without speaking. It was strange, because it was
not an uncomfortable silence. No hostility. No tension.

It had been so with Old Woman; but Sarama had been of her
own blood, her daughter’s daughter. This was a dark-haired, dark-eyed,
dark-skinned woman of an alien country.

The Mother spoke first, as would have been proper on the
steppe. “Tell me, woman from far away. Are you well looked after here?”

“Very well,” Sarama said.

“And my son: does he please you?”

Sarama choked, coughed. She must remember—she must—that a
woman here was as a man. A king would have asked such a thing of his guest whom
he had given the gift of a woman. She tried to answer as such a guest would
have done. “He pleases me well,” she said.

The Mother nodded. “Never tell anyone, but he is the best of
my sons—perhaps of all my children. The Lady loves him dearly.”

“I . . . can see why,” Sarama said.

“He tells me,” said the Mother, “that you came here not
simply to see our city.”

“Did not—” Sarama stopped; but the Mother’s level stare bade
her go on. “Did not the people from Larchwood tell you why I was sent here?”

“I sent them home,” the Mother said, “for they were ill for
want of it. If there was a message, it was left to you to deliver.”

Sarama could not believe that. As silent and forbidding as
those women had been, surely they would speak to the Mother of a city. Or the
Mother would command that they speak.

“My son tells me,” said the Mother, “that your people have
very different ways of doing things. Here, we cultivate patience. I’m not
compelling you to tell me now why you came here. I only ask that, when you
judge the time to be ripe, you speak and hold nothing back.”

“They told you nothing?” Sarama asked.

“It is yours to tell,” said the Mother. She could, it was
clear, be greatly patient.

Sarama drew a deep breath and walked on. She had mustered
words long ago, but it took a degree of courage to speak them.

They were the same words she had spoken to the Mother of
Larchwood, the same unvarnished truth: war, killing, the tribes of the steppe
running over the Lady’s country with fire and sword. She knew no other way to
tell it, none gentler or sweeter to the tongue.

This Mother heard her in silence as they walked on the path
that Sarama had made in the snow. Sarama finished just at the edge of the
horses’ meadow. They were at the far end, playing one of their games of
circle-and-chase, but at sight of Sarama their heads flew up.

The colt’s call was piercing in the still, cold air. They
wheeled and came on at the gallop, manes and tails streaming.

The Mother stood her ground beside Sarama as the horses
thundered nigh on top of them and halted, snorting, churning the snow into a cloud
about them. Needles of it stung Sarama’s cheeks.

She reached through it. The Mare lowered her head and blew
warm breath into Sarama’s hand.

“This is how they will come,” the Mother said. “On horses,
faster than any of us can run.”

“Yes,” said Sarama over the Mare’s neck, for the Mare had
slipped herself craftily between them.

“A horse is a beautiful thing,” the Mother said, venturing
to touch the Mare’s mane.

The Mare did not object. She recognized one of the goddess’
servants. The Mother stroked her, gingerly at first, then with growing
confidence. “It’s rather horrible that these people should use them to make
war.”

“Horses are fast,” said Sarama, “and strong. And they do a
man’s will. They don’t know if that is good or bad. Only that it is.”

“Perfect servants,” said the Mother a little wryly.

Sarama slanted a glance at her. “Not perfect,” she said.
“But—willing. For love or fear.”

“Yes,” the Mother said.

Sarama did not know if she understood. Perhaps she did. “Do
you believe me? About war?”

“I believe you,” the Mother said. “She of Larchwood sent you
away. Why?”

“Fear,” said Sarama. “Catin—the heir—said I brought the war.
If I went away, the war would go away. She thought I was leading the horsemen,
showing them the way.”

“Are you?”

Sarama’s lips twitched. “Catin said yes.”

“What do you say?”

“Would I tell the truth?”

“You can’t lie to me,” the Mother said.

“Larchwood’s Mother thought I could.”

The Mother shook her head. “No. But a Mother’s heir—she has
to be heeded. If she believes a thing, even if that thing is not . . .
what it should be, the Mother considers it. And, as now, may send the trouble
onward, to a Mother who is stronger, whose people are more numerous, who can
overcome it as she could not.”

Those were a great many words, and some of them confusing.
But Sarama comprehended enough. “You are stronger, and she was afraid. I
understand. But she should have kept me. They don’t know how to fight.”

“Necessity will teach them.”

“Necessity is not enough. They need—” Sarama groped for the
word, could find none. She thrust up her hand, clenched into a fist. “They need
to know how. The horsemen know. All their lives—they know.”

“They are born to fight? To kill?”

“Wolves are born to kill. Lions. Bears. Men.”

“Not our men,” the Mother said.

“You teach them not to,” said Sarama.

“Sometimes,” said the Mother, “a person—not always a man,
but often—goes mad, or loses his sight of the Lady. Then he takes up an axe or
a hunting spear, and he takes a life.”

“Do you kill him for it?”

“No,” said the Mother. “We invoke the Lady’s mercy.
Sometimes she cures him of his madness. Sometimes she takes him away. Sometimes . . .
she asks for his blood.”

“You kill him,” Sarama said. “I think you can learn to
fight.”

“Fighting is a terrible thing.”

Sarama sighed. Again, it went round again. “War is worse,”
she said.

This Mother did not refuse to listen. She regarded Sarama
over the Mare’s neck, with her fingers woven in the smoke-grey mane, and said, “You
know what you’re asking us to do.”

Sarama nodded somberly.

“And yet,” said the Mother, “we have no choice. Do we? The
Lady sent you to us. For this: to help us stand against the men’s gods.”

“Why couldn’t she see?” Sarama demanded. “The other one?”

“I have no doubt she could,” the Mother said. “But she was
afraid, and her daughter was even more afraid.”

“The war will come to them first,” Sarama said.

“Yes,” said the Mother. There was grief in her voice, but no
yielding. “Each of us does as she must. It’s no one else’s place to interfere.”

“That too you must learn,” said Sarama. “To interfere. To
help.”

“Ourselves first,” the Mother said. “The rest after.”

“It will change you.”

“Yes,” the Mother said.

Her calm had cracked, perhaps. It was difficult to tell.
Sarama saw her then as a woman, and not terribly old, either; troubled as any
other would be, and frightened, but determined to do whatever she must do, to
keep her people safe.

She was very like her son.

oOo

Sarama did not ride long that day: the snow fell early and
heavily, and drove her back toward the Mother’s house. The horses professed no
desire to follow. They were content with the shelter of their copse, and their
heavy coats.

The house was wonderfully warm. It was full of people, but
people who offered her neither suspicion nor dislike. They smiled and opened
their arms and welcomed her as if—by the Lady, as if she had been kin.

This was not the Mother’s doing. It had been the same
yesterday and the day before. She was welcome, she was kin, because she had
come with the Mother’s son.

If they knew why she had come—

They knew. Tilia sat next to her and passed her a bowl of
something fragrant and steaming, for which she had no word yet, and said, “Tell
me what fighting is.”

Sarama gaped.

“Yes, tell us,” said one of the other daughters. “We need to
know. The Mother said.”

“Now?” Sarama asked. “Here?”

“If not now,” said Tilia, “then when?”

Sarama drew breath to answer, but the words did not come.
She rose instead and set the bowl aside, and said, “Somewhere open. With room.”

There was no better place, in fact, than here, once the table
and the benches and the stools had been pushed aside, and the makings of dinner
covered or taken away, and space made that was, if not ample, then at least
adequate. It was a strange army Sarama had begun to train, and by its own
expressed will, too: a handful of women and girls, and a manchild or two, and
Danu and a pair of the elder sons dragged in from the kitchen whether they
would or no.

Sarama did not think that Danu was as willing as the women
were. But he had asked her to teach him to fight. Now she could begin.

She caught his eye as she mustered her troops. Yes: he
remembered. His expression was more rueful than sullen. She had not known she
was holding her breath till she let it go; or that it had mattered so much that
he accept this that the Lady, and now his own Mother, had laid on him.

If he accepted it, then so could she. Gladly, even. Even
with war in front of them, and fear, and maybe, if the Lady willed, death.

So be it, thought Sarama. As the Lady willed.

With the coming of full summer, the White Horse people
settled into the chief of its camps, the high camp where the grass was richest
and the water purest, springing from a cleft in the rock and spreading into a
broad pool before it ran down to join a greater river.

On the morning after the tribe had come to this place, Agni,
wandering in search of diversion, came on his pack of young wolves playing at
the game of princes. It was a milling, tumultuous melee of men and ponies, sticks
and clubs and no few bruises.

As Agni sat his pony, watching the uproar, the object of it
flew out of the melee and fell ripely at the pony’s feet.

The pony shied. Agni urged him back toward the reeking
thing: the goat’s head long since burst out of its leather bag, and separated
from the rest of the goat even longer since.

Stick or club he had not thought to carry with him, but
spear he had, and a good, thick one, too; he had been thinking somewhat desultorily
of going after boar. He kicked the pony over, swooped and caught the goat’s
head with the butt of the spear, and hurled it back into the mass of players;
and himself in hot pursuit.

It was a grand game, a game fit for princes. It distracted
Agni rather admirably from contemplation of the steppe without Sarama on it,
and the emptiness that opened in him; and from the fact that tomorrow he must
go out alone himself, and find his stallion.

A game could not go on forever. He drove the goat’s head at
last between two yelling players, straight at the peeled wand that was the goal
of all their battle, and sent the wand flying. He whooped and whirled his spear
about his head, calling out, “
Now
then! Who’ll go hunting boar with me?”

They were all avid for it, even Tukri, whose head was nigh
split: he had got in the way of a club. He had tied it up with a strip of his
shirt, and he sat his pony steadily enough, though he had a drunken look in his
eye.

Agni wheeled his sweating pony to lead them out of the camp.
But someone was standing in his way. The boys and men tangled behind him, some
pressing past before they could stop their ponies.

Agni swept his arm at the rest. “Go.” And when they
hesitated: “Go! I’ll follow.”