The Horsemasters

by Joan Wolf

  Fali made a little noise that may or may not have signified agreement.

  Arika continued bleakly, “But these last few years, as I have seen him growing into manhood, I have known that I was wrong to let him live. I was weak, Fali. For so many years I had longed for a child…and then he came…and I could not do it.”

  “It is true he is a leader,” Fali said. “But the men have always had a hunt leader, Arika. What is the danger in that?”

  Arika looked suddenly old. “There is something in Ronan that the other men do not have.” She rubbed her temples as if they ached. She said softly, “He has been asking questions about the Way of Sky God.”

  Fali said nothing.

  Arika dropped her hands. Her eyes met Fali’s steadily. “I am the Mistress of Earth Mother,” she said. “Out of all the tribes of the Kindred, only the Tribe of the Red Deer still follows the Goddess. It is my duty, Old Woman, to hold the tribe to her Way.”

  “Ronan is left-handed,” Fali said. “The left-handed way is the Way of the Goddess. I am thinking that perhaps she has put her mark on him, Arika. Perhaps that was the meaning of your dream.”

  “I do not think so,” Arika said grimly.

  There was silence. Then Fali sighed. “The reason the Tribe of the Red Deer has held to the Goddess for so many ages is that we have always had a Mistress strong in wisdom to lead us. In my own lifetime I have known Lana and Elen and Meli, and you. All understood what it meant to be Goddess on Earth to the tribe.” Fali’s voice changed. “After you, Arika, there will be Morna.”

  Arika’s chin came up. “Morna will be a good Mistress,” she said.

  Fali’s eyebrows, nested in wrinkles, lifted.

  “She is young,” the Mistress said to that obvious skepticism. “Young, and still a little thoughtless. She will mature.”

  “Will she?” Fali said.

  “She is all the daughter the Mother has given me,” Arika said grimly. “She must.”

  * * * *

  While Erek’s wounds were being attended to, the rest of the tribe was busy preparing the feast which formed the second part of the ritual of the Slaying of the Bear. This feast was traditionally held in the men’s cave, and there was a strict tribal rule that only initiated men and women were allowed to partake of the meat of the slain hear. Even the dogs were ejected from the cave on this day, lest they lick some of the blood or eat one of the bones. Both the men and the women had to gather the bones up after the feast and bury them.

  To Ronan, the bear slayer, fell the honor of removing the bear’s head with the whole hide still attached. Once he had finished this amputation, Ronan hung the pelt in a position of honor in the cave, so the bear would be able to watch the tribe as it feasted. The meat was then butchered and the women cooked it, boiling it simultaneously in two large mammoth-skull caldrons.

  Neihle took Ronan to his hut so the boy could wash and change out of his blood-stained clothes.

  “You will be playing a bigger part in this feast than ever you expected to,” Neihle said as the two of them left his family’s hut to return to the men’s cave. He smiled. “I hope you are hungry.”

  “I am always hungry,” Ronan replied truthfully. He ran his finger under the decorated leather browband he was wearing around his damp black head. The browband was traditionally worn by the bear slayer at this feast.

  “Is that too loose?” Neihle asked. “Let me fix it.” Then, when the band had been re-tied and they were walking toward the cave once more, Neihle warned, “You must finish all the meat you are given. There cannot be any sacred bear meat left; it must all be eaten at the feast. And the largest portion of all goes to the bear slayer.”

  “I can eat it,” Ronan said, with all the confidence of a still-growing boy.

  Neihle looked amused and did not reply.

  The men’s cave was crowded with people sitting cross-legged around a slow-burning fire upon which simmered the two great caldrons. The men were seated on the right side of the fire, the women on the left.

  The first person Ronan saw when he came in was his mother, seated in the place of honor at the point where the men’s side joined to the women’s. Neihle had told Ronan that, as bear slayer, he was to take the men’s place of honor next to her. Never within his memory had Ronan ever been within touching distance of his mother.

  Now, watched by the curious eyes of all the tribe, Ronan made his way around the fire until he reached the empty place beside Arika. He sat down.

  Only once did she look at him. Her red-brown eyes were perfectly opaque. Then she turned her face away.

  Blind fury swept through him. His hands curled into fists. She was so close that if he moved his arm but slightly he would touch her, yet still she would not acknowledge him.

  Ronan struggled to keep the anger from his face. He looked around the fire for distraction and met Tyr’s worried eyes. He made himself nod reassuringly. Next, he looked at the bear, hanging on a pole near the cave opening.

  Dhu, but he was big!

  I won’t let her spoil this for me, Ronan thought fiercely. I am the bear slayer, and I won’t let her spoil it.

  A great sheep’s horn filled with blackberry wine was being passed around, and when it came to Ronan, he took it from Arika without looking at her and drank deeply. He felt the warmth of it running through him. He felt himself beginning to relax. The next time it came around, he reached for it more eagerly. Inadvertently, his fingers touched his mother’s. Their eyes met in shocked surprise.

  Suddenly it was as if the cord that had once bound them together had never been cut, so clearly could he read her thoughts and her emotions.

  She was not as cold to him as she would have him think, he discovered. He could see her hurried breathing, could almost feel her effort to keep it slow and steady. Most of all, he could sense her fear.

  She had turned away from him almost immediately, but he continued to stare at her averted profile. Then he looked at the hands clasped in her lap. The knuckles were white with pressure.

  She was afraid of him.

  I am glad you are afraid of me, Mother, he thought, staring at those whitened knuckles with cold satisfaction. Very glad.

  He raised his head to regard the tribal circle in front of him and saw Adun looking at him with an odd, almost awed expression on his face. Ronan smiled.

  * * * *

  Arika thought the feast would never end. The chanting seemed to go on forever. On her lefthand side she could feel Morna’s restlessness. There was no conversation allowed at the bear feast, there was only chanting, and eating, and drinking out of the horn. The men and the women sat on opposite sides of the fire. They even ate out of separate caldrons, Morna was bored.

  Ronan was not bored. Arika could feel her son’s exuberance, could feel it through that connection between them that Ronan had also discovered. It dismayed her, this sudden awareness that had sprung up between her and Ronan. She did not want to know Ronan. That way lay only danger. Danger, and heartache.

  The men had been genuinely impressed by the way he had killed the cave bear. It was a huge bear. Arika had been impressed herself when she saw it.

  A wolfskin drum was beating softly, and now Pier began to chant the story of the kill. All of those gathered in the cave listened to the tale with quickened attention. Even Morna was listening, Arika saw. The Mistress looked again at the immense bear head. She imagined what it must have felt like, to rush forward into that fearsome embrace.

  Unbidden, unlooked-for, unwanted, maternal pride swelled in her breast. She turned from the bear to look at Ronan.

  He had Iun’s smile and Iun’s height, but that hawklike profile was all his own. She thought: He is as beautiful in his own masculine way as Morna is beautiful in the way of a woman.

  He must have noticed the motion of her head, for his own turned, and for the second time that day, Arika and her son looked into each other’s unveiled eyes.

  What each saw this time was a mirror image of the other. The
same blood ran in their veins, the same strength marked their wills; the same discipline, the same courage, the same cold determination had molded their characters. They were indeed mother and son. And for a brief and fleeting moment, both bitterly regretted that they also must be enemies.

  * * * *

  When Ronan’s food was placed before him, he understood why Neihle had been amused.

  I cannot possibly eat all of this, Ronan thought. He looked up from the enormous hunks of meat. They had given him at least half of the liver!

  From beside him Arika’s low-pitched voice said, “You must eat it all. And you cannot get sick.”

  Ronan stared at the amount of meat the Mistress had been given. It was miniscule compared to the hunks that were reposing on the reindeerskin rug in front of him. He gave her an indignant look.

  She smiled at him faintly. It was the first smile he had ever had from her. He picked up a hunk of the liver and bit into it.

  “Elder Brother had his revenge,” Ronan said to Tyr much later when the feast was finally over and both young men were settling themselves for the night.

  “I have never eaten so much in all my life,” Tyr agreed. “Not even when I was a boy and would stuff myself on the first salmon catch until I was sick.”

  “I wish I could be sick,” Ronan groaned, “Anything to get this stone out of my stomach!”

  “That is the price of being a hero,” Tyr said piously.

  “Remind me to pay you back for that remark,” Ronan said. “Someday, if ever I can walk again.” A chuckle was his only response.

  * * * *

  The girls also had been impressed by Ronan’s deed. A group of them sat gossiping in the women’s cave after the feast was over, not ready yet for sleep and unable to pass the time by doing anything else. For three days after the slaying of the bear, the men of the tribe were considered unclean and had to abstain from sexual activity. Consequently, all that was left to the girls was talk, and much of that revolved about Ronan.

  Morna listened and said nothing.

  “I wonder whom he will wed?” Cala finally said a little wistfully.

  “Why should he wed at all?” Borba asked with a laugh. “He is having much too good a time the way he is.”

  “All initiates must wed,” Tosa said. “Just as all girls must.” She shrugged. “It is how things are.”

  “Sa,” Borba sighed. “That is so.” She herself was to wed at the full of the next moon, and she was feeling nostalgic about giving up her freedom.

  “Not all girls must wed.” They were almost Morna’s first words.

  The rest of them stared at her.

  “That is true,” Tosa replied quietly. “The Mistress does not wed.”

  Morna looked from one firelit face to the next. “You will just have to share your husbands with me,” she said. And smiled.

  A tense silence fell. It was evident from their expressions that the girls did not find this thought particularly pleasing.

  Suddenly, Borba’s eyes widened. Her lips curved in a smile every bit as enchanting as Morna’s had been. “What a shame you will never be able to lie with Ronan, Morna,” she said. “That is an experience, I am telling you…” Borba allowed her voice to die away; then she heaved a shivery sigh.

  “That is so.” Iva was quick to second Borba’s effort. She glanced at Morna’s face and added with relish, “A woman has not lived who has not lain in Ronan’s arms.”

  Morna’s brown eyes were narrow as they flicked from Borba to Iva. “He is a man like other men,” she said, her voice hard.

  “Na,” said Cala with absolute sincerity. “Ronan is not like other men.”

  “How can you know that?” Tosa said with affectionate amusement. “You have never lain with another man.”

  “I have never wanted to,” Cala replied simply.

  “What does he do that makes him so different?” Morna demanded.

  It was Borba who answered. “It is not what he does but how he does it. Even that first time, at his initiation…” She slanted a look at Morna and smiled with satisfaction at what she saw on the other girl’s face.

  “I don’t believe you,” Morna said.

  Borba shrugged.

  Iva said, “If you cannot eat buffalo meat, Morna, I suppose it’s as well to believe that you would not like buffalo meat.”

  “I do not understand you,” Cala said in gentle confusion. “Why are you speaking thus of Ronan to Morna? Ronan is her brother.”

  “Sa.” Borba tossed back her golden braid. She and Morna looked at each other. “So he is.”

  Chapter Five

  The salmon began their yearly run up the Greatfish River, and the men of the tribe devoted almost all their waking hours to fishing. In the deeper water, they used boats made from bark and nets they had woven from branches and vines to bring in the salmon. Where the river was shallow, they speared the fish with three-pronged harpoons.

  Fishing was not a sport to the Tribe of the Red Deer; it was a livelihood. The salmon formed an important part of their diet in the spring, and what they did not eat immediately they dried and stored against the time when food was not so plentiful.

  A few days after the salmon had been running strongly, Ronan and Tyr decided to try the upland valley where they had previously placed traps. Nel went with them, ostensibly to collect herbs. The river was narrow in the valley, and the fish trap consisted first of a stone dam the boys had built from bank to bank. Then, upstream of the dam, they had laid circular stone traps in the water to catch the fish when they swam through the slits that the builders had left strategically in the dam. Once the fish were in the trap, all Ronan and Tyr had to do was wade in with a harpoon and spear them.

  Quickness was the essential skill if one was to be successful in spearing fish. The wooden-handled harpoon with its three points made out of antelope horn was an effective weapon only if one’s aim was sure and one’s arm was quick. Both Ronan and Tyr were famous for their expertise with the harpoon, and, after she had collected a token number of plants, Nel spent the day sitting on the shore of the river, enjoying the sun and watching the boys wade from trap to trap spearing salmon. Each time a fish was speared, the boys would hook a bone needle through its gill and run it along the sinew cord they had hung at their waists.

  The day’s catch was a good one, and the baskets Nel had brought were filled with fish when the three of them finally turned toward home. The boys each carried a basket, and Nel carried the harpoons. The three of them were pleased with the catch, and with each other, and they walked along easily, talking softly and occasionally laughing at a joke.

  Once they were back home they separated. Tyr took one of the baskets to his mother so she could gut the fish for him, while Ronan and Nel worked together on the other one. It was a tedious and a dirty job; each salmon had to be slit open, its precious oil poured into a reindeer bladder for safekeeping, and then the fish had to be hung to dry.

  “Whew,” Ronan said when at last they were finished. “I am as oily and as fishy-smelling as those salmon. I’m going down to the river to wash.” He looked at Nel critically. “You had better come too.”

  It was late and cookfires were being lit in all the huts. Nel sniffed the air longingly, but said, “All right. Just let me get Nigak first.”

  Ronan waited while Nel ran off to where she had tied Nigak to keep him out of their way while they were working on the fish. He crossed his ankles, leaned on his harpoon, and stared assessingly up at the sky. The weather had been clear for several days now, and it looked as if it was going to hold. He thought; perhaps tomorrow I will hunt that great stag Pier saw yesterday.

  Suddenly an enormous weight barreled into him. If he had not been leaning on his harpoon, he would have been knocked over. It was Nigak, standing upright with his great paws on Ronan’s shoulders. He began enthusiastically to lick Ronan’s face.

  “Dhu!” Ronan grunted, as the wolf gave a playful snap at his nose. “All right, fellow. Down. Down!” Th
en, to Nel, he said, “I wish he would not do that!”

  “I cannot train him out of it,” she said.

  “Why not? The dogs don’t do this.” Ronan had managed to extricate himself from Nigak’s fond embrace.

  “It seems to be one of the big differences between a wolf and a dog,” Nel said. “Both of them can learn to be fond of humans, but whereas a dog seems to realize that humans are not dogs, Nigak does not seem to know that we are not wolves.”

  “Is that why he persists in this face licking and muzzle biting of his?”

  Nel nodded. “I think so. It is the way wolves greet each other, you see.”

  “He thinks we are wolves?”

  She nodded again.

  Ronan grinned. “This is one very confused wolf, Nel.”

  “Well, we are his family, you and I. We have been since he was but a pup. Why shouldn’t he think we are wolves?”

  “The dogs don’t think we are dogs,” Ronan pointed out.

  “Dogs have lived with men for a long time. Wolves haven’t.”

  “I suppose that is so,” Ronan murmured. He began to walk toward the river, and Nel and Nigak fell in beside him.

  “I brought some soapwort,” Nel said, and she held up the plant so he could see it. Ronan grunted.

  Nel regarded him curiously. After a moment, she asked, “Were you sad when Borba married?”

  He looked surprised. “Na. Why should I have been?”

  “I thought you liked her.”

  “I do like her. I like her so much that I hope she is happy in her marriage.”

  “Oh,” said Nel, and her face brightened.

  They had reached the river’s shore. It was late afternoon, and the water looked gray and cold. The men and the boats had left the river an hour since, and the fishing nets were folded on the shore, ready for the morrow. Ronan raised his hand to his nose, sniffed, and said, “I cannot stand the stink of fish on me any longer. I am going to get into the water.”

  Nel did not seem surprised by this decision. All she said was, “You did not bring a change of clothes.”