White Mare's Daughter (73 page)

Tilia was set against them both. Nor would the Mother speak
to her, to command her as a father would have done among the tribes. That
seemed not to be the way here.

Agni rose. He had said as much as he could say. He bent his
head to the Mother, and bent it somewhat less deeply toward Tilia. Then he left
them.

Agni could be patient. He was a hunter. As he had hunted
the antelope and the aurochs and the wild birds of the steppe, so he hunted
Tilia.

He watched. He waited. He intruded on her consciousness only
as much as it served his purpose.

He could not hunt her every moment of every day. He had his
men to look after, furred and feathered game to hunt, and a country to learn
the ruling of. It was different, ruling cities—particularly cities that had no
desire to be ruled. But rule he must.

It was an urgency in him, greater as the summer waned. They
must be made strong, must learn to face the truth, that he was only the
beginning. Those who followed would be far less gentle than he had been.

It was difficult going. He rode round about the towns and
cities near Three Birds, made himself known to their Mothers, showed his face
in their streets and in their markets. As he had been elsewhere, he was given
whatever he cast his eye on, as if that alone would make him go away.

He had no such intention. The Mother’s house of Three Birds,
that at first had seemed so strange and so constricted within its rigid walls,
grew familiar, and then almost pleasant. He was learning to hear the wind in
the eaves, and to accept the silence of it in the walls.

His men in tents were less happy than he, constricted by the
closeness of the cities here. Much riding about and much hunting, and the
warming of the women toward them, kept them somewhat in hand.

oOo

“You could give them something to do.”

Agni had come back from settling a quarrel in the camp,
something petty that had grown out of all bounds and stopped just short of
bloodshed. He was looking for a little quiet, and maybe something pleasant to
eat.

The one who brought it to him was Tilia herself, speaking
words that he could understand.

He seized on that first. “You’ve been studying my language.”

She shrugged. “It amused me,” she said. The words were oddly
formed, and sometimes she stumbled, but her meaning was clear enough. “Your
people are not amused. They want to fight.”

“Fighting is what they do,” said Agni.

“All the time? They never stop?”

“Sometimes,” he said, “one would think so.” He did not know
if she caught the subtleties of that. She seemed to be waiting for him to say
more. “They have to be kept busy,” he said.

“I said that,” she said.

She had caught him as he was about to fling himself onto a
heap of rugs and furs. He did it with a kind of recklessness, because she was
watching him.

She sat more decorously, tucking up her feet, which was not
a thing that a woman should do in the presence of a king; but she would not
think of such a thing. Maybe a man did not do it here in the presence of a
Mother’s heir.

“Tell me what you would have these men do,” he said.

She shrugged a little, not coyly, but not sullenly, either.
“I would teach them things. Teach them to speak our language. Teach them to
build a house, make a pot, weave on a loom.”

“Women’s work,” Agni said.

Her brows arched. She had an admirable way with them. “Certainly.
And so much the more honorable than men’s work. Yes?”

No
.

Agni did not say the word. Her glance stopped him.

“Think,” she said. “How people will think of them. If they
act like—like people. Not like conquerors.”

“A little fear is a good thing,” Agni said.

“You are afraid of what they will do if they don’t—if—” She
stopped, searching for the words.

He offered such of them as he could think of. “If they don’t
have a fight to keep them busy?”

She nodded. “You are afraid. They kill then. Don’t they?”

“And other things,” Agni said.

“So,” she said. “Teach them to be busy.”

“And send them elsewhere?” Agni half said, half asked. “Send
them to the towns to learn—and to be present, to hold or to defend as need
commands. Yes. Yes, they’ve been pleased to do that. But don’t ask them to look
after the children.”

“Oh, no,” she said with no irony that he could detect. “I
would never ask them to do a thing as hard as that.”

Agni wondered if he should be insulted. Probably; but he did
not think that she would care.

There was a silence. It stretched. She seemed comfortable in
it. He was reminded, without her saying a word or making a move, that this had
been her house before it was his. Maybe he was sitting in her accustomed place.

It was a magic of sorts, he supposed. A wishing laid on him,
a subtlety of stillness.

He refused to be caught in it. The jar was where he
remembered, half full of wine, and there was a loaf wrapped in a cloth, left
from the morning. He brought them both to where he had been sitting; and
because he had been raised to courtesy, he offered her a share of each.

She accepted them, which rather surprised him. None of these
people had a gift for enmity.

Maybe they did not need one. This too-perfect comfort, this
ease in his presence, began to gall him. She had no awe of him, and no fear
either. Her glance was bold. She carried her head high. She was as forthright
as a man, with a man’s confidence, and his certainty that the world would yield
to his will.

And yet she was as womanly a woman as had ever sat across
from him, sharing bread and strong sweet wine. The shape of her was as rich as
this land she lived in. The woven fabric of her gown stretched tight across her
full breasts and showed clearly the broad swell of her hips. She would bear
strong sons and beautiful, with her great doe-eyes and her ripe red lips.

She had no coyness, no arts of allurement, yet she was
utterly alluring. His hands twitched, yearning for the sweet curves of her
body. Her skin would be as soft as sleep, her hair as sleek as water running
over stones. She would meet him as he came to her, open herself to him, take
him inside her . . .

He came to himself with a snap. Dream though he might, truth
was a colder thing. She had come here, which might be encouraging, and might
not. But she was far from asking him into her bed, still less agreeing to be
his wife.

Still. She was here. They finished the bread together, and
the last of the wine.

He had to go out again, and soon. There were people waiting,
a quarrel to settle in the camp. But he lingered.

She showed no sign of leaving. It was he who had to rise,
stretch, consider what to say.

In the end he said nothing, only nodded. She nodded back.
Whatever that might mean.

oOo

Sarama refused to join in the hunt. “I will not force any
woman to be a wife,” she said.

He had caught her well afield, both of them mounted, and the
Mare in season: she teased Mitani shamelessly, and tried his patience with it.

Agni kept him in hand. To Sarama, who was making no such
effort, he said, “I said nothing of force. I’ll win her, and win her fairly.”

“Then you’ll win her without me.”

“Why?” he demanded.

“Because,” she said, “I’ll not be party to the subjection of
a friend.”

“Subjection? What makes you think I would ever—”

“Oh come,” she said. “You want to bend her to your will.
She’ll never let you. Nor will I help you conquer her.”

Agni might have hit her if they had not been mounted, and if
the Mare had not just then chosen to squeal and strike at Mitani for the great
crime of walking beside her.

When they had untangled that, Agni’s temper had cooled not
at all, but his urge to strike had vanished somewhere amid the Mare’s eruption
of temper. He spoke through gritted teeth. “Once you knew me. When did you
forget what I am?”

“When you called yourself king of this country.”

“I’m still your brother.”

She nodded with no reluctance that he could see. “And I
still won’t help you snare Tilia.”

“Then I’ll do it myself,” he said in a fine flare of temper.
He wheeled his stallion about and sent him plunging back toward the city.

She let him go for a little distance. But when he had
slowed, she was there, and the Mare flattening her ears and snaking her neck at
Mitani. “Brother,” said Sarama, “give it up. You’ll find wives enough among the
tribes, once they recognize you as a king among kings. You don’t need one of
these women who know nothing of submission.”

“Women like you?” he asked. “Women like that?”

“Women who won’t be wives.”

“Then what are you to the Mother’s son?” Agni demanded of
her.

“I chose him,” said Sarama.

“Ah,” said Agni, and let her make of that what she would.

She had given him something. Maybe she knew it; maybe she
did not. There was a thing he had needed, that maybe now he had.

A man could not be a wife, and a king could not submit to a
woman. Particularly if that king was Agni, with the memory of a night when he
had tried to be like the men of this country. It soiled him still, that
recollection.

Nevertheless a hunter could let the prey come to him. A
horseman could convince the untried colt that he obeyed by his own will.

oOo

Agni set out to seduce this woman as he had seduced
Mitani. He was there where she was, as much as he might be: fletching arrows or
weaving cloth with the young women, dancing in front of the temple on a
festival day, dining with the Mother of an evening.

He would happen past. He might pause, or he might not. He
would let her see him.

He had heard that she liked a tall man and a man with a fine
free stride. He had heard too that she fancied a sweet voice. He could sing
when he was minded to; and maybe when she was nearby to listen.

She could not help but notice him. What she thought, she was
not telling.

She happened by on her own, sometimes when he was resting in
the house that had been her Mother’s, more often when he sat on the horsehide
and settled affairs for his men. Her people never came to him. His came often,
as they properly should, to pay their respects, to bring him word of his people
who had gone far afield, to bid him settle quarrels and confirm alliances.

She would come in the midst of this, hovering about the
edges, not seeming to watch, but inescapably present. She was testing her skill
in their language, she would say if anyone asked.

Agni made sure that someone did ask—and he laughed at the
answer. That might have driven a tribesman away, but she stayed where she was.
She had pride and to spare, but it was a different kind of pride. She would
face even laughter, before she would retreat.

They danced around one another. There were other
broad-hipped beauties casting eyes on Agni, but he was in no mood for them. He
wanted Tilia. He wanted her, he realized, very much.

oOo

He dreamed on a night of thunder and of rain, between the
crashing of the thunder and the pounding of the rain. It was different inside a
house, under a roof. He kept waking, or dreaming that he waked, and falling
fast asleep again.

Somewhere between waking and sleep, on the edge of the
dream-country, he stood in a field of grass the color of mist and rain. The sky
was the soft sky of morning, casting a grey veil across the sun.

Someone walked toward him through the colorless grass under
the colorless sky. No more color was in the stranger than in the rest of the
world. It was a shrouded shape, a woman’s perhaps, for that was a woman’s veil
and mantle. It seemed not quite solid; it shimmered a little as it moved, as
mist will when the wind scatters it.

Agni waited for it. He was bound to the earth, still and
solid as a stone. A stone’s weight dragged at his shoulders, his arms and legs.
He could not have moved even if he had willed to.

As the shape drew closer he saw more clearly that it was a
woman’s. The face was hidden altogether in veils, but the wind molded the
mantle to the unmistakable curve of hip and breast.

He could see it very clearly, even the taut nipples, and the
navel in the smooth rounded belly, and the soft mound at the meeting of the
thighs. It was no such goddess-glory as the women here, more slender by far
though womanly enough. It was, he thought with the detachment of dream, a woman
of the tribes: taller, narrower, more quick and yet less strong in its movements.

It stopped just out of his reach. He could not see its face
at all. Veils and mist obscured it.

It stretched out its arms. Its hands were white, white as
bone, with long restless fingers. They made him think of the roots of trees, or
of weeds reaching up through water, weaving and swaying. And yet there was
something about them that made him think of death, of the worms that prey on
carrion, and of bleached bone.

Dreams were great magic and great portents. One did not
contest a dream. And yet Agni yearned to escape from this one. Thrice now he
had dreamed a white horror of a woman. Thrice he had been given this omen,
warning, whatever it was.

He could not move at all. His skin shuddered at the approach
of those unearthly fingers. They never touched him, never quite.

A voice spoke to him out of the veils. It was a woman’s
voice, clear, not unpleasant: eerie coming from such strangeness. He knew it
very well, and knowing it, searched the veils for sign of Rudira’s face. But
there was only grey blankness.

“Agni,” she said. “King of the outcast people, lord of the
tribes that went into the west. Did you hope that none would follow you?”

The dream compelled him; it roused his tongue to answer. “I
hoped for nothing. I went where the gods led.”