White Mare's Daughter (86 page)

This time she knew. Deep inside her, the seed was taking
root. She shaped a prayer to the Lady, a prayer without words. It was pure
will.
Let this one live. Let it be born.
Let it grow up and grow strong.

oOo

Tilia was happy therefore, a happiness too deep to speak
of, while the rain fell and the river rose—unheard of in this season—and the
fields turned to mud and the roads to mire, and tempers shortened to snapping.
Then came the sun, but with it the cold. Water turned to ice, mud to something
remarkably like stone.

The trickle of tribesmen had slowed and then stopped. Then
on the wings of a new storm, a storm that blackened the whole of the northern
horizon, came a new and very great riding. Men, two dozen and more. And horses.

Horses in hundreds: mares, foals, a stallion or two that
would not be left behind.

Patir who had gone out from the Lady’s country in the
spring—Patir had come back, bringing with him the mares that he had promised.
There were more than Agni had dared to hope, more maybe than the land could
support. But he would find a way. There were cities enough, and there would be
fodder enough, particularly if he sent the horses to winter pastures.

As he watched them come in under a lowering sky, he was
aware that another watched with him. Sarama had ridden out of the city to see
the arrival that had been so long awaited.

Just as Agni turned to greet her, the Mare’s head flew up.
She loosed a peal that drowned any sound he might have uttered.

An echo came back, manifold. Among the oncoming herds, one
band of mares had held itself somewhat apart. Agni was not aware of it until
his eye was drawn to it.

His breath caught. They were all greys, from very young and
nearly black to snow-white with age. They were not so greatly different from
the rest in shape or size, and yet there was a fineness to them, a clarity of
line that one found only in the best of horses.

The Mare’s kin had come into the west of the world. They had
left the Goddess’ hill, perhaps for all of time, and come to their sister, and
to their sister’s servant.

“How in the world—?” Agni wondered aloud.

“Not for him,” Sarama said, tilting her head at Patir where
he oversaw the drovers. “For Horse Goddess. And for her.” She stroked the
Mare’s neck, smoothing the long smoke-grey mane.

The Mare ignored her. She was fixed, intent on her sisters
and aunts and cousins. She tossed her head and snorted lightly.

“Yes,” Sarama said in the tone she reserved for the Mare and
maybe—though Agni rather doubted it—for Danu when they were alone together,
“yes, beloved.”

The Mare sprang into a gallop, with Sarama clinging,
laughing, to her neck. Agni watched them go, and watched the reunion, the mares
calling to the Mare, and the Mare running, mane and tail streaming, to be
reunited with her kin.

When they were all gone, the mares and the Mare lost among
the herds again, Agni drew a faint sigh. He had given no thought at all to the
Mare’s people, no more than any horseman did; they were no thing of man or of
men’s concerns. But to have them here, in this country that he had taken, was a
blessing, and a great one. Horse Goddess had sent her own children to swell his
herds. Maybe, after all, she had some care for him, for the younger born, the
mere and unregarded male.

He laughed shortly. No, of course not. The herd had come for
the Mare, as Sarama had said. It had never come for him, nor for any of his
doing.

Still it was a great thing, and he was glad of it. It
rounded out the world. It made his conquest complete.

oOo

For this day and for the days after, however long the
storm lasted, Agni saw the mares settled in Three Birds’ own winter pasture, in
the sheltered valley with its stream that ran too swift to freeze, and its
grass that grew all winter long, green beneath the snow. Agni rode back with
the others who had ridden to help, in the teeth of a gale. By the time he came
to his tent, it had begun to snow.

Taditi was looking after Patir, feeding him from the pot and
plying him with wine. She had always been fond of Patir. He was wrapped in one
of Agni’s coats, with Agni’s bearskin over it.

He grinned as Agni ducked into the tent. His grin seemed
enormous, too large for his face. He was thinned to the bone. There were new
scars on his arms, knife-cuts from the look of them, and more probably where
coat and mantle covered him.

He walked with a hitch in his step. But it was a jaunty gait
nonetheless. He was greatly pleased with himself.

“Hard battles?” Agni asked him.

He shrugged. “A few. Most seemed glad to have fewer mouths
to feed.”

“Is it bad?”

Patir’s face sobered. “Not—as bad as it could be. But close.
Last winter was cruel. The spring rains didn’t come. Then it was a dry summer.
There was a fire on the steppe—you heard of that?”

Agni nodded.

“Well,” said Patir. “So you know the most of it. All
portents are for a winter worse than the last one. People are dreaming of the
west. They call you the sunset king, and some are starting to talk as if you’re
a god.”

“I’ve gathered that,” Agni said. “We’ve had our own
invasion, boys from the tribes, looking for legends. I disappoint them, I
think. I’m too young. And I don’t tower up to heaven.”

Behind them, where she was putting together their dinner,
Taditi snorted. “That’s not what I’m hearing. They’ll make a hero-god out of
anyone. You have the same air that horse of yours does: you know how pretty you
are. Young males are remarkably easily swayed by such things.”

Patir laughed at Agni’s expression. “See! I believe her,
too.”

“The more fool you,” muttered Agni.

He was glad for the reprieve of dinner. Patir fell to it
with singleminded determination. He had not, he professed between the bread and
the venison, eaten so well since he left Three Birds in the spring.

Agni wondered if he had eaten much at all. A man could live
on mares’ milk and bootleather, but he was hardly likely to thrive on it.

Agni, well-fleshed and comfortable, dressed in the rich
weavings of this country and ornamented with gold, began to feel soft, as he
had not felt in a while. He would eat less, he promised himself, and spend more
time in the practice-field, even when the weather was dismal. War did not wait
upon clear skies and gentle sunlight. A wise chieftain waged it in snow and in
bitter rain, when the enemy was most off guard.

Not that there would be any riding or fighting tonight. A
wind had come up with the evening, tugging at the tent’s walls, making them
billow and sway. The storm was on them.

oOo

It raged for three days. The tents held against it, most
of them; those that did not were old or worn or ill secured.

In the city the houses stood fast, but one of the
storehouses, and one of the largest at that, had the mishap to stand in the
shade of a tree. Under the weight of wind and snow, the tree shattered, and
took the storehouse with it—and a great store of grain and fodder, fruit and
wine and provender laid by against the winter.

It was not a terrible disaster, but it promised a leaner
season than they had hoped for, with so many people in city and camp. They
salvaged what they could, once they could make their way through the snow. It
heaped and drifted to the rafters of the houses, covered over the tents and
would have taken them down had not the tribesmen or the women who lived with
them labored to keep the tent-roofs clear.

That was only the first storm of the winter. None thereafter
was quite so long or so fierce, but they came hard on one another, storm after
storm, with seldom a respite between.

The flocks and herds began to suffer. Not only the herdsmen
made camp in the winter pastures, but such of the people—tribesmen as well as
people of the city—who had the will or the skill to look after the animals.

After the storms came cold so fierce it snapped trees in two
and turned even the swiftest-running streams to ice. Beasts of the wild and
birds froze where they slept.

Then followed a thaw, which would have been a great relief,
except that it brought with it a wave of sickness. What snow and cold had been
unable to do, the sickness did: it laid low both man and beast.

Some died, though not as many as might have died on the
steppe. The healers were strong here, and their art greater than it was among
the tribes. Their herbs and simples, their potions and prayers, did what good
any mortal remedies could. And yet there was death, in the city, in the camp,
and in the pastures among the herds.

It was a cruel winter, the most cruel in memory. And when
the spring came, warm with sweetness, came also the first new travelers from
the tribes; and they brought the word that been so long awaited.

War
.

The tribes were gathering. The steppe had killed the weak
and convinced the strong. Their way was westward. Their fate was to conquer, to
overrun the Lady’s country and take it for their own.

Just so had the gods spoken to Agni, and just so had he done.
But now he was king in the Lady’s country, and it had, inevitably, become his
own. He was the one whom the tribes would conquer. He was the focus of their
war.

He was as ready as he could ever be. Now he must wait, and
hold fast, and pray to his own gods and to the goddess of these people, that he
would have the victory.

Catin had come and gone from Three Birds throughout all of
that year, even into the winter, when no one else was mad enough to venture the
roads. She even came, once, walking on the snow-laden ice of the river, stayed
for a day or two, left again without a word.

The tribes knew her like, as did the cities: one of the
Lady’s children, wandering and mad. People listened to her ramblings, because
they were holy, and some were omens. Many were not; but that was the task and
challenge, to tell which was which.

When she was in Three Birds, she liked to ride with the
women who were meant to be fighters. She would not take up a weapon. “That’s
not for me,” she said. But she rode as well as a tribesman—even Taditi admitted
as much.

She had a way with horses; she could speak to them and they
would seem to listen. Even the Mare had some little use for her, for whom all
the world but Sarama was an endless nuisance.

In the spring after that grim winter, when the snow still
lurked in the hollows but the grass had begun to grow green, Catin came back to
Three Birds. The first anyone saw of her was on the back of a mare who had lost
her foal in the winter. The mare had recovered well enough, but had been much
cast down. Now, under Catin, she arched her neck and danced a little, and
taunted the stallions.

oOo

One of those stallions was Danu’s colt, or so people
persisted in calling him. He was well grown now, somewhat gawky still but solid
and strong. The winter had not troubled him enough to notice, though he was
ribby as they all were, men as well as beasts. He was not as tall as Agni’s
Mitani, but he promised to be somewhat larger, with his deep chest and his
broad hindquarters.

Sarama had informed Danu that it was time. The colt was
ready to be ridden, and Danu would ride him. Danu had too ingrained a habit of
obedience. He tried to argue, to protest that he was no fit rider for a horse
so young, but Sarama overrode him.

“He is your stallion. You will ride him. If you fall, we’ll
be there to catch you.”

Danu was not afraid of falling. He was afraid of ruining an
innocent. But Sarama would never understand that. She had grown up in a world
full of horses. She could not imagine what it was like to have discovered the
beasts when one was already grown, and to have learned to ride after one’s
bones and muscles were fully formed.

All the things that she did without thinking, that were
honed to instinct, he had to remember, one by one. If he forgot one, it might
be the most important, the crucial thing that, undone, would destroy the rest.

But Sarama would not hear of his refusing. “He’s your
stallion,” she said. “It’s your duty to ride him.”

Therefore he was standing in the field, in the new green grass,
and eyeing the colt. The colt, who was now a young stallion, had been taking
liberties with the mares, and had the scars to show for it. He approached Danu
with his head up and his ears back, with intent that was clear to read. If he
could not win a mare with his charming manners, he would overwhelm a man with
his strength.

Danu faced him down. He was a brave spirit, but not brave
enough to tempt fortune. He lowered his head, with a snake and snap to see if
after all he might still win; but Danu was ready for him. He backed down
swiftly then, and yielded to the inevitable.

Sarama was grinning. So was her brother, whom Danu had not
heard coming, and a gathering of people from both city and tribes. By the Lady;
did they think this was a festival?

He could walk away. But if he did that, he would only have
it to face again. He straightened his shoulders resolutely and made himself
think only and wholly of the colt. The colt never took much notice of people
apart from Danu and, on occasion, Sarama.

Once Danu had begun, it grew easier. The bridle with its bit
of leather and bone, the saddle fleece, were familiar; the colt had worn them
both before. Sarama was there to hold the bridle. And there was that broad
back, and the colt standing still, waiting.

He knew what he was doing. He was wondering, from the tilt
of his ears, what was taking Danu so long.

Danu took a deep breath, grasped mane, and mounted. The colt
staggered a little; Danu was not a small man. But the colt steadied. He even,
after a pause, essayed a step, then two. And thus, with remarkable ease and no
fuss, he carried a rider.