White Mare's Daughter (79 page)

In this rich country, vexed by little more than the cold,
Agni had begun to consider the dangers of soft living. He had his men out in
all weathers, riding, shooting, mock-fighting; and the Lady’s people, too,
though most of those did their fighting on foot.

He had spared Sarama a score of horses with which she had,
until she grew too big with the child, been teaching the pick of her troops to
ride. When Sarama found herself confined to gentler pursuits, Taditi had
surprised everyone by announcing that she would take the Lady’s riders in hand.
She had done it, too, and was teaching the best of those the beginnings of
mounted archery—an art that Agni had not even known she knew.

She was in the camp just now, tending the fire in front of
the tent that was Agni’s when he stayed among the tribesmen. She had a brace of
fat rabbits and a yearling deer turning on spits, and a pot of something
fragrant with herbs.

Agni squatted beside her, watching her. She greeted him with
a nod and a grunt, but kept most of her attention for the pot, to which she was
adding pieces of this and bits of that. She looked content—as much as Taditi
ever could. The sourness that had been in her for a while, the sense that she
endured her days here rather than enjoyed them, was gone. Had been gone, now he
thought of it, since she took to training the riders.

Why, he thought: Taditi needed somewhat to do. She had been
living with Agni in the Mother’s former house, but there was nothing for her to
do there. First the menservants and then, after the Great Marriage, Tilia, had
done what needed to be done. There was only so much that she could do in a
king’s tent that was seldom if ever occupied by the king. But to make riders
out of lifelong walkers, and to teach them to shoot from horseback as well—that
was a challenge. It brought her alive again.

That was a new thought for a tribesman, that a woman could
be as eager to be up and doing as a man. Sarama had always been like that, but
that was Sarama. Taditi was of the tribes, born and bred, and though
blunt-spoken and undeniably formidable, was still, after all, a woman.

Agni’s head ached a great deal these days, as it struggled
to think thoughts that were alien to it. Tilia had a way of contradicting
everything that he thought he knew, just by being herself. Sometimes he thought
he could not bear any more; he would snap, he would break. But he never did.

Still without speaking to him, Taditi filled a bowl and set
it in his hands. Its warmth was greatly welcome, the scent and taste of it
delectable, herbs and roots and meat and a bit of fruit all stewed together.
They filled his belly and warmed him from the inside out.

When he had finished the bowl and received another, Taditi
spoke at last. “Aren’t you going to tell us?”

“What?” said Agni.

“Sarama,” she said with a snap of impatience.

“But don’t you know—”

“We know she had a daughter,” Patir said, appearing behind
Taditi, and Tillu’s terrible scarred face behind him, and a crowd of others,
faces of kin and of western strangers, all fixed on him. Patir went on speaking
for them. “All we know is the bare fact. Give us a story.”

Agni looked at them all. With a sound that was half sigh,
half laughter, he said, “It is a daughter, she looks like her father, and
Sarama is resting well. I didn’t linger overlong. She’ll be brought out and
presented to Earth Mother on the third day, it’s said. Then you’ll all see
her.”

“The baby will be the Mare’s servant in her time,” Taditi
observed. “That’s a fine thing, to see the line go on.”

“Imagine,” said Tukri of the White Horse. “A daughter, and
she matters in the world.”

“Daughters do, here,” Agni said. He shifted a little, making
room for Patir to dip from the pot, and some of the others with him. They sat
or knelt or squatted together, eating Taditi’s excellent stew and after it the
rabbits and the deer, and washing it down with honeyed wine.

As Agni finished a cup, someone touched his shoulder. He
recognized one of the westerners: a man of the Golden Aurochs, notable for the
white streak in his hair and the bear’s claws that he wore as a necklace.

He had a pleading look about him now, and a wheedle in his
tone. “My lord, not to trouble you, but Modron and I, we had a wager, and he
says he won, and I say I won, and—”

Agni levered himself to his feet. That was the king’s part:
to judge even petty things, because they mattered to the people. He went to
settle the wager between Modron and the Bearcub, and after that was the
beginning of a blood feud between cousins from the Stormwolf people, and a rash
of contentions both greater and smaller, as if the resolving of one only bred a
dozen more.

When at last he came back to Taditi’s circle, he was seeing
the camp in a different light—and not only because the sun had set in ice and
fire. Its quiet was deceptive; the peace that had lain on it, that he had
thought ran deep, was as shallow as a flicker of light on water.

It was nothing as obvious as a war. The tribes were not
feuding. No one had killed anyone, or quarreled badly enough to endanger a
life. And yet the little conflicts, the arguments, the wagers won and lost, the
restless feet and twitching hands and the tempers too easily frayed, came
together into a single, greater thing.

Agni was not at all surprised when he had settled beside the
fire to find himself face to face with yet another gathering of men. These were
elders of the tribes, men of rank and substance, though Agni noticed that
Tillu, while present, was not joined with them. Nor were others who held
themselves closest to Agni. These were lesser men, or men who had kept their
own counsels.

Agni did not move, nor did he allow his expression to
change. But inside he had drawn taut, as one does before battle.

oOo

There were preliminaries. More wine. A confection of
honeyed fruit, a gift from one of the Lady’s cities. The last of the sunset
died from the sky. Clouds veiled the stars. Beyond the fire’s warmth, the air
was bitter.

Those on the circle’s edge must be numbed with cold. But no
one wandered off. Agni, wrapped in his bearskin and close by the fire, was in
as much comfort as he ever needed to be.

One of the elders, a man of the White Bear whose name, as
Agni recalled, was Hagen, spoke at last and evidently for them all. “Lord king,
it’s winter yet, and deep in it. But spring comes soon enough.”

Agni lifted brows at that. “Indeed,” he said.

“Surely,” said Hagen with no appearance of discomfort. This
was the counsel of elders, meandering, indirect, skirting round and round the
point. “Warm days will be welcome, and nights that don’t freeze us to the
bone.”

His fellows nodded as if he had uttered great wisdom.

Hagen sighed. “No, it’s not long at all before the grass
grows green again, and the soft winds blow across the steppe. Then the spring
fawns will come, and the calves, and the foals in the horse-herds.”

“And the young men will grow restless,” said another of the
elders, “and dream of raiding, of cattle and horses and fine strapping women
fit to bear them strong sons.”

“Not,” said Hagen, “that they don’t have much of that here.
But the wind on the grass, the sky free above one, and room to gallop—those
things are the more precious the longer one lives away from them.”

That was as direct as an elder was likely to be, this early
in a council. Which, Agni thought, proved the seriousness of it, and the
strength of the concern that had brought them here.

He read it well enough. “You want to go home,” he said.

The elders regarded him in silence. They could not reprove
him: it was a king’s privilege to be abrupt. But they could make it clear that
they were not ready yet to be so direct.

He sighed and warmed his hands at the fire, and determined
to be patient.

At length Hagen said, “We would be content to live in this
land of plenty forever. But our young men . . .”

His companions nodded, a waggling of beards round the
circle, a gleam of eyes as they watched Agni. Agni held still. This was a test.
He had expected it long before now, but the strangeness of the wood and then of
the Lady’s country, and the confusion of a conquest that had had little to do
with war, had diverted them. Now it seemed they had leisure to challenge him.

He let them drag it out as they pleased, now that he knew
what they were doing. He could be as patient as a hunter needed to be. He
turned his eyes to the fire, resting his spirit in the dance of the flames.

At length Hagen said what he had come to say. “Our young men
are asking to end this war that never began. They want to take the booty that
they’ve won, the gold and copper and such women as will go, and go home, back
to their own lands and their own people.”

“All of them?” Agni inquired.

“A good number of them,” Hagen said.

Agni nodded. “Yes. Yes, I can see that some would be
homesick. It’s very different here.”

“Too different,” Hagen said.

“You do understand,” said Agni, “that all the tribes will
come westward in the end. They’ll have to. Already they’re pressed close
against the wood. If they don’t break through, they’ll have nowhere to go.”

“They can fight back,” said one of the other elders.

“For a while,” said Agni. “But the east presses hard upon
us. It’s like the wind and the storm. It blows as it blows, and there’s no
defense against it.”

“There’s nothing for us here,” Hagen said. “We’ve taken
everything we can carry. If we ride back eastward as soon as the spring breaks,
we’ll be in our own lands by the Great Sacrifice.”

“Indeed,” said Agni. “Have you heard that it’s been a bitter
winter? It will be a lean sacrifice. Your people will be hard put to feed the
lot of you.”

“We’ll take all the provisions we can take,” Hagen said.
“We’ll come bearing great gifts. They’ll make us kings.”

“I am already a king,” Agni said, “and I say they’re coming
here. They’ll have to. The steppe won’t feed them. They’ll hear of this
country, how rich, how easy to live in. They’ll come, and we’ll all have our
war.”

“Yes,” said Hagen, “but when? This year? Ten years from now?
Our young men have been away from their people for a year. If it’s the will of
the tribes to come back—so be it. But until that happens, they want to go
home.”

“I can’t stop them,” Agni said.

Hagen looked at him with something close to hope. “You’ll
go? You’ll lead us back?”

“I didn’t say that,” he said. “If they want to go, let them
go. I am staying here. This is the country that I won, that gave itself to me.
It’s mine. I’m not leaving it for the next man to take as he pleases.”

“And if we all go away?”

“I’ll not be left alone,” Agni said. “My own kin will stay.
The rest may go or stay, as they choose.”

“You don’t care?” That was a hanger-on, a man much younger
than the elders, and somewhat gone in wine from the sound of him.

“I care greatly,” Agni answered him. “I will not provoke a
war among our people, or force any man to stay who would rather go.”

The elders glanced at one another. Agni wondered if any of
them had had a wager. “You think you can hold this country without us?” one demanded.

“I can try,” said Agni.

“Idiot,” said yet another, and not to Agni. “He can’t go
back. He’s cast out. He knew when he came that he was here to stay. Hasn’t he
even taken the she-king’s daughter to wife?”

Agni spoke before they could murmur of betrayal. “I could be
king on the steppe. I choose to be king here. Those who are loyal will stay.
Those who are not will go. What more need any of us do?”

He caught and held each pair of eyes, and made each fall. He
was king. While they sat in front of him, drinking his wine and enjoying the
warmth of his fire, they were subject to his will. What they chose to do or
think elsewhere was between them and their gods, and the oaths that they had
sworn to Agni as king.

When the last of them had yielded, even Hagen, Agni nodded
and allowed himself a thin new moon of a smile. “Tell your men,” he said, “that
I set them free. To go where the winter is far more bitter than here, or to
stay in warmth and in comfort. And come the summer . . . a war
to delight any warrior’s heart.”

“You can’t promise a war that soon,” Hagen said, startled
out of his submission.

“Why not?” said Agni. “Your men will go back. They’re fat,
sleek, loaded with riches. Their people will look, see how well they’ve
prospered, and determine to go in search of such riches for themselves. They’ll
bring the war straight to me—in haste, and without long preparation. I’ll give
those who stay enough fighting to content even the fiercest.”

There was a silence. Agni could not tell what they were
thinking. None would raise his eyes, even Hagen who spoke for them all. Who
said, at length, “You are both clever and farsighted.”

That was praise. Agni did not acknowledge it. A king did
not. He expected it; he took it as tribute. He rose, wrapping himself more
tightly in his mantle. “I give you goodnight, sirs.”

oOo

No one tried to hold him back. He walked erect and haughty
long after they could have seen him in the dark, lest one of them had followed
him. Only when he was well away, and well within the circles of the city, did
he let himself relax.

He reeled against a house-wall, caught it and let it hold
him up. He had not meant his knees to let go quite so completely. It was
exhaustion: the long fret while Sarama was brought to bed of her daughter, and
a long day’s hunting before that, and kingship pressing in close when he had
looked to find—what?

Kingship. If he had wanted to rest in peace, he would not
have gone to the camp. People were always at him there, demanding that he do
their thinking for them.