The Horsemasters

by Joan Wolf

  “Crawl in, minnow,” Ronan said, and she did. Within minutes she was deeply asleep.

  * * * *

  Fali knew what had happened the moment she awoke and saw that Nel’s sleeping skins were gone.

  “He has come back,” she said out loud. She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. Nel’s place was still empty. “Goddess,” the Old Woman said plaintively, “what are we to do now?”

  Slowly, creakingly, Fali got to her feet. Her joints were always so stiff in the morning. “I feared this,” she said to the empty air. “I never thought that Arika would be rid of him so easily. Now he has taken our Chosen One.” She passed her trembling hand in front of her face. “He always did remind me of Mar.”

  She would have to tell Arika. They must get Nel back.

  Arika will send to the men at summer camp, Fali thought. She will send to Neihle. Neihle will go after her and bring her back.

  Fali went to the door of her hut and lifted the skins. Seated outside, and obviously waiting for her to awaken, was Tyr. He stood up when he saw her. “My Mother,” he said respectfully. His blue eyes were grave. “I must speak with you.”

  Fali gestured for him to come in.

  “Let me make up your fire,” Tyr said as he ducked into the dark hut, which was redolent with the scent of the herbs drying on a rack in the corner. “You have not yet had your tea.”

  “That would be kind of you, Tyr,” Fali said. It was true she had not yet had her tea. Nel had always brewed her morning tea for her. A pang went through Fali as she thought of how she would miss Nel. Slowly she sat down in her accustomed place and watched Tyr as he started the fire with the live coal she kept stored in the hearthplace stones.

  “I saw Ronan yesterday,” he said, when the fire had caught and the tea was heating.

  “I knew it was so,” Fali replied. “When I awoke this morning and saw that Nel’s sleeping skins were gone, I thought immediately of Ronan.”

  “You did?” Tyr glanced at her admiringly.

  “I have long known Nel’s feelings,” Fali said. “And I have long suspected that Ronan was not finished with the Tribe of the Red Deer.”

  “If you think he took her for revenge, my Mother, you are wrong,” Tyr said.

  Fali handed Tyr two cups made from deer frontal bones, and Tyr dipped them in the tea and filled them. Fali said, “I do not know what to think, Tyr. What did Ronan say to you yesterday?”

  Tyr told her about the Horsemasters.

  Fali heard him out without interrupting. “If Ronan wishes to try to tame horses, let him do so by himself,” she said tartly. “He does not need Nel. You must go after them, Tyr, and persuade her to return.”

  “She will not return without Ronan,” Tyr said.

  “She knows nothing of our plans for her,” Fali said. “When she learns that she is to be our Mistress…”

  Tyr shook his head. “She knows,” he said. “I told her.”

  Fali drew her aging, fragile bones into an erect posture. “It was not your place to tell her such a thing, Tyr.”

  “Perhaps not.” Tyr stared down into the clear pale liquid that was his sage tea. “But she was leaving us, my Mother, and I thought to hold her with such a word.”

  “What did she say?” Fali asked after a moment.

  “She does not want it.” Tyr drained his cup. “She would not leave Ronan.”

  Fali muttered something under her breath. Then she said more clearly, “And what did Ronan have to say?”

  “He said we should send to him when the time for the choosing of a new Mistress came, and they would decide then what they would do.”

  “They?” Fali said.

  “That was his word.”

  “I know what is in his mind. He thinks to marry her,” Fali said angrily. “He thinks to marry her and rule through her.”

  Tyr pulled at his braid. “Sa,” he said, “I am thinking that is what he will do.”

  Silence fell within. From outside the hut they could hear the sound of children shouting with excitement as they played a chasing game.

  “So,” Fali said with great bitterness, “it has come.”

  Slowly, carefully, Tyr spoke the words he had been formulating in his mind all during the night. “That is the way the tribes of the plain do it, my Mother. The husband of the Mistress is the chief.” He picked up his cup and turned it around and around with his fingers, looking at it to keep from having to look at Fali. “After all, it is none so different from our way. The man who plays the god at the Fires is our chief. What is the difference?”

  Silence. When Fali spoke her voice was heavy with irony. “There is a great difference, Tyr, between a hunting chief who changes with the seasons and a tribal chief who is permanent.”

  This time Tyr was silent.

  Fali leaned forward. “There is great earth magic in Nel,” she said. “She is close to all things beloved by the Mother. I have long felt she was the one Chosen to lead the tribe.” Fali’s gnarled, almost skeletal hand shook as she set down her cup. “Arika knows this also, but Arika will never allow Nel to succeed her if Nel is married to Ronan.”

  “I still do not understand why such a marriage is so impossible,” Tyr said stubbornly. “Other tribes with a male chief follow the Way of the Mother. The woman is still Mistress of the Mother. No man would be fool enough to think he could intrude on such a sacred thing as that. The chief is not the son of a son, as it is with those who follow Sky God. The chief is the man who marries the Daughter.”

  “Ronan is too dominant,” Fali said.

  “I will tell you this, my Mother, and I speak as one who knows him well,” Tyr said. “In all his life there has been but one person to whom Ronan would listen, and that person is Nel.”

  Fali looked skeptical.

  “It is true. And if it was true when she was but a child, how much more will it be true now, when she has become such a beautiful young woman?” Tyr nodded. “You underestimate her, my Mother.”

  Suddenly Fali looked very weary. “I do not know,” she said. “I cannot judge. I am old, Tyr. I am old and full of sorrow for the loss of my daughter.”

  “She told me to ask for your forgiveness,” Tyr said. “She hoped you would understand.”

  “I understand all too well. She has chosen Ronan. Over the tribe, over me, she has chosen Ronan,” Tyr stared at his moccasins and did not reply.

  “I must tell Arika.” Fali began to rise and Tyr hurried to help her. “Arika will know what to do. Arika will know how to get her hack.”

  Tyr stood watching in silence as the Old Woman walked slowly out of the hut.

  * * * *

  Arika did not want Nel back. “I will not send after her,” the Mistress said after Fali had finished her story. “Above all else, the Mistress must be willing, and today Nel has shown us that she is not.”

  “It is not that!” Fali said. “It is that her attachment to Ronan is so strong…” Her voice trailed off at the look on Arika’s face, and Fali bowed her aged head.

  “I cannot get free of him,” Arika said dully. She was holding a scraper in her hand and now she banged it on the ground in rhythm with her words. “No matter what I do, I cannot get free of him.”

  “You have always thought of him as an enemy,” Fali said. “And I confess that I too have seen in Ronan a resemblance to a man I once knew, a man who once brought much trouble to the Tribe of the Red Deer. But I am thinking now that perhaps we were wrong, Arika. Perhaps Ronan is loved by the Mother. Perhaps that is why he has survived.”

  “I do not think so,” Arika said. Deep lines were carved on either side of her mouth.

  Silence fell in the Mistress’s hut. Fali was falling into a light doze when Arika finally spoke again. “It is fortunate that I have never formally put aside Morna.”

  “You are not thinking to have Morna follow you?” Fali asked sharply.

  “What choice have I got?” Arika replied.

  “Only two children have you borne in
your lifetime, Mistress,” Fali said bluntly, “and of the two, I prefer your son.”

  Anger flared in Arika’s red-brown eyes. “I will never give him the chance to get his hands upon this tribe! Never while I live will that happen, Old Woman.”

  “I hear you, Mistress,” Fali said heavily. Then, almost as an afterthought, she asked, “What of these Horsemasters?”

  “Let my resourceful son deal with them,” Arika snapped.

  “Sa,” said Fali, “sa.” She rose slowly and creakingly from her deerskin rug and passed out of the Mistress’s hut.

  * * * *

  Arika went to Morna’s hut to tell her daughter that Nel was gone.

  “Good riddance,” Morna said. “The Old Woman has made so much of her of late that she has been acting as if she were a shaman.”

  “Fali is very fond of Nel,” Arika said temperately.

  “Where has she gone to?” Morna asked next. She tossed her red-gold head. “Run away with some man, I suppose.”

  “Sa,” said Arika. “She has.”

  Despite her words, Morna was surprised. “Who?” she demanded. “Not a man of the Red Deer?”

  “Not a man of the Red Deer.”

  “Then who, Mother?” Morna asked impatiently.

  “Ronan.”

  “Ronan!”

  “Sa. Ronan.”

  A shifting current of emotions eddied across Morna’s face. Finally she said scornfully, “I suppose he has no women in that valley of his, and Ronan is not a man to lie alone. Nel always followed after him like a fawn after its mother. I suppose he thought lying with her would be better than nothing.”

  Arika turned toward the door. Morna had been jealous of Nel ever since Nel’s growing beauty first became apparent. Arika had never suffered from jealousy herself, and she hated to see it in her daughter. “I do not know his reasons,” Arika said, “but Nel has gone with him. I thought you should know.” She pushed aside the skins and left.

  Left alone, Morna frowned and darted restless glances around her hut. At Arika’s request she had not gone to summer camp this year, and she was hating the summer, stuck at home with only the old men, the boys, and besotted husbands like Tyr.

  The thought of Nel and Ronan together was eating into her. “I’m glad she’s gone!” Morna said out loud. And it was true. She was glad. She was not glad, however, that Nel had gone with Ronan.

  Morna went to the door of her hut, pushed aside the skins, and looked out at the peaceful camp. The only people visible were women and children. Morna was sick to death of women and children.

  I don’t care what Mother says, Morna thought defiantly. If I want to go to summer camp, then I will. Her spirits soared. She turned back into her hut and began to put together her hunting things.

  * * * *

  The sun was shining brightly when Nel awoke that afternoon. She sat up and saw that Ronan’s sleeping skins were empty. There was a roasted hare impaled on a stick over the doused ashes of a cookfire. He had been busy while she slept.

  At that moment Nigak cantered around the bend in the river. His ears pricked as soon as he saw Nel; he raced up to her and enthusiastically began to lick her face.

  Ronan’s voice said, “I was going to wake you if you were still asleep.” Nel raised her head and her heart caught as she saw him following Nigak up from the shore. The ends of his hair were dripping from his wash in the river, and for some reason, the familiar sight brought tears to Nel’s eyes. She looked away so he would not see.

  “It’s growing late,” she heard him saying.

  “I was tired,” Nel murmured apologetically. She sniffed the fragrance from the cooked hare. “The food smells wonderful. I’m starved.”

  “You have time to wash first,” he said austerely.

  Nel’s head snapped up. “I am not a little girl any longer, Ronan,” she informed him. “It is not necessary for you to tell me when I should wash.”

  “That is nice to hear,” he said. He began to remove the hare from the roasting stick. He looked up at her and raised his eyebrows. “It won’t take you long.”

  Nel almost refused. Then she thought that a refusal would only convince him that she was indeed still a child, so she rose with dignity and went down to the river.

  Nel’s thoughts were in a tumble of confusion; everything had happened so fast, from the time Ronan first showed himself until the time she had left the tribe with him, that she had had no chance to sort her feelings out. At first, she had assumed he had come for her in order to carry her away and marry her, a scenario Nel had dreamed about for years. Then he had said that he wanted her to help him tame the horses.

  It had almost sounded as if that was all he wanted her for, she thought, as she picked her way over the stones at the river’s edge. And he was still treating her as if she were a child…sending her to wash her face and hands! The other men of the Red Deer had certainly noticed that she was no longer a child.

  She plunged her hands into the water and bent to splash some on her face. Ronan had noticed the change in her too, she remembered.

  “I am still the same inside,” she had assured him. But it wasn’t true.

  A dreadful fear smote Nel. Perhaps he was already married, Dhu, if that were so, then what would she do?

  “Nel!” He even sounded as if he were calling a naughty child, Nel thought rebelliously.

  “I’m coming,” she called back, and waded out of the shallows.

  * * * *

  As soon as Nel had gone down to the river, Ronan began to cut up the roasted hare. Whistling between his teeth, he speared the tenderest pieces onto another stick for Nel. He waited, and when she seemed to be making no motion toward returning, he called for her. Without waiting any longer, he began to eat his own portion hungrily.

  He chewed slowly as he watched her coming back across the rocky shore to the sheltered place beneath the trees where they had pitched their camp. The afternoon sun played on her soft brown hair. He was finding it increasingly difficult to match this slim and beautiful girl to the skinny child with legs like a newborn foal that had lived all these years in his memory.

  He intended to marry her. It was why he had never looked to take a wife from the women who had joined the Tribe of the Wolf. He had always known that one day he would go back for Nel and marry her.

  But now that he was with her again, he didn’t know how to proceed. Any other Red Deer girl who chose to make this kind of a journey with him would expect to share his sleeping skins. But Nel had always regarded him as her big brother. He might frighten her if he tried to present himself as a lover. He did not want to frighten Nel.

  He must give her time, he decided. He must accustom her slowly to the idea of marrying him. The very way she had instantly agreed to come with him demonstrated her innocence. She had never once questioned his intentions, had assumed that all would be between them as it always had been.

  He would have to restrain himself, he thought firmly. He would have to give her time.

  Nel arrived back at the fire, cast him a reproachful look, accepted her food in dignified silence, and sat down to eat. When she had finished the hare she slipped off one of her moccasins, flexed her foot, and bent forward to rub her instep.

  “Are you hurt?” Ronan asked.

  “Not really, I stepped on a rock last night and bruised my foot a little, that’s all. I shall be fine.”

  “Let me see.” He came to kneel in front of her and she relinquished her foot into his hand.

  Her slim, high-arched foot was the color of ivory, clean and cold from standing barefoot in the river. Ronan looked down at the straight toes and healthy pale pink nails. “There,” Nel said, pointing to a bluish mark at the highest point of her instep arch.

  “I see,” he said.

  His hand looked very dark against her pale delicate skin. Her head was so close to his that he could smell the fresh scent of her hair. He held her foot almost gingerly and looked up into her eyes. She had very long black eyelashe
s. He had never before noticed how odd it was that her lashes should be so dark when her hair was so light. She looked back at him and said reproachfully, “My poor feet are freezing. That river water is like ice.”

  He dropped her foot as if it was burning him. “I know.” His voice sounded thick and he cleared his throat. He backed away from her. “I don’t think that bruise will hinder your walking.”

  “I told you it wouldn’t,” she said impatiently. She threw her empty stick into the trees. “I am ready to leave if you are.”

  He jumped to his feet. “Pack up your things and we’ll go,” he replied, and went to collect his own.

  They were following the same route Ronan had followed over three years before when he had been expelled from the Tribe of the Red Deer: south along the Greatfish, east along the Narrow River, through the Buffalo Pass, and into the hunting grounds of the Tribe of the Buffalo. Then they would go south along the Atata, following it all the way up the Altas and across to the other side. If the weather held, and they made good time, the whole journey should take them seven days.

  “We will have to detour around summer camp,” Ronan said, and Nel nodded in agreement.

  Ronan left the river track as soon as they turned eastward, choosing instead a series of deer tracks that ran through the thickly forested hills. The afternoon was quiet, but hidden within the protective pine and birch of the forest lurked a plenitude of wild animals, and Ronan’s eyes were wary, his large spear grasped firmly in his left hand as he kept a constant lookout for possible danger.

  He caught glimpses of deer as they flitted through the forest, the merest tremors of movement at the edge of his vision. Halfway through the afternoon he saw the unmistakable tracks of a bear, and his vigilance increased. But Nigak gave no sign that he scented a bear close by, and the tracks soon disappeared. The afternoon had advanced considerably when Ronan spotted a magnificent red deer stag, with splendid spiraling antlers, lying on a moss-covered rock halfway up the hill to their left.