The Horsemasters

by Joan Wolf

  “And I to those of the Fox,” said Yoli.

  “And I to those of the Buffalo,” said Fara.

  “There is little point in our speaking to the women of the Goddess,” Tora said. “We marry whom we like.”

  “The women of the Goddess might be glad of an opportunity to marry with real men,” Heno said.

  Tora regarded him scornfully. “The women of the Goddess are the only women who bring forth real men,” she answered.

  Nel once more bit her lip.

  Ronan said briskly, “I believe we have resolved the problems we came together to discuss. I have noticed we are growing low on wood. Bror, take the men and bring in a fresh supply.” Ronan stood up. “This council is over.” As the men and women of the tribe rose to go about their business, Ronan turned to Nel. “You and I, minnow,” he said, “are going to look at horses.”

  PART THREE

  The Horsemasters

  (Two years later)

  Chapter Twenty

  Fenris, leader of the tribe known to the Kindred as the Horsemasters, sat on the stallion he had named for one of his gods and surveyed the camp spread before him. The women had the cookfires burning, and children prowled from tent to tent in hopes of a stray bit of food. At a little distance up the river from the buffalo-hide tents, the tribe’s great horse-herd grazed voraciously on the newly burgeoning spring grass.

  The day was cold and clear and bright, the scene before him peaceful, but Fenris’s brow was furrowed with trouble. The horses had already grazed down their present pasture and would have to be moved again on the morrow. The hunting these last few days had been scarce, and the local tribes long since thoroughly vanquished.

  No grass for his horses. No plunder for his restless warriors.

  We have been too long in this place, Fenris thought. Winter is finishing, and it is time to move on.

  To many chiefs, the prospect of moving so large a group of people and animals would have been daunting in the extreme. It did not daunt Fenris, whose grandfather many years before had collected his people and his herds of short-maned, stocky horses and led them from the freezing open steppes of the north into the rich, temperate river valleys of this southern land.

  It was a vagabond life the Horsemasters had led since leaving the steppes, the sort of life attractive to adventurers, to men who were restless and ruthless, wild and brave. Such a people were the men of this tribe, and the chief of them all was their kain, Fenris.

  The grass of this river valley was rich and green, Fenris thought now as he surveyed the sunlit scene before him. The River of Gold, the men of the Kindred called it, and the grass it nurtured was more beautiful than gold to the horse-herd Fenris and the men of his people held more sacred than they did their own children.

  For it was the horse that had made these men what they were: hunters and warriors, fierce and mobile, the nightmare of the peaceful, unmounted tribes over whose lands they so ruthlessly swept. The horse was their chiefest treasure, their greatest wealth, the symbol of their status and their power. They were the Horsemasters, the terror of the world.

  * * * *

  The spring grass was growing in the valley of the River of Gold, but in the Valley of the Wolf the snow still lay deep. Ronan, coming into Bror’s hut after a day spent outdoors, looked grateful to be met by the warmth of a fire and the cheerful faces of the group of men who were sitting around the hearthplace talking, drinking tea, and chewing on pieces of frozen fish.

  Thorn immediately jumped up and went to fetch a bone scraper, saying, “I’ll brush your coat for you, Ronan.” He met Ronan in the doorway, and the chief stood patiently with his arms extended while Thorn carefully beat the snow out of his reindeerskin tunic. The tribe had long since learned the importance of keeping their clothes as dry as possible, for wet skins became very stiff and had to be rescraped.

  When Thorn had finished, he took Ronan’s coat and hung it, along with his gloves, on the drying rack that was affixed to the hut’s right wall. “What did you find?” Ronan was asking Bror as Thorn returned to his own place by the fire.

  Bror replied, “The snow is still very deep in places, but it is possible to get through the pass.”

  Ronan held out his hands to the warmth of the fire. “Good,” he grunted.

  Thorn stared at Ronan’s face, trying to read the chief’s thoughts. Crim, who was sitting on Thorn’s left, said, “We need more tea,” and busied himself by ladling water into the skull kettle from the large pottery pot that stood close by the fire. Over the past few years, the Tribe of the Wolf had devised different ways to cope with the bitter winter weather that prevailed at the valley’s high altitude. The problem of keeping water available they had solved by cutting blocks of ice from the lake directly after the first freeze. The ice was then piled on trestle tables near the huts, and whenever someone needed water, all he had to do was bring in a block of ice and drop it into the water pot near the fire.

  It was killing work, getting the ice out of the lake, but on the whole the tribe had found this to be a much easier way of securing water than the slow and tedious method of collecting and melting snow.

  There was silence as everyone watched Crim with an intensity that suggested they had never before seen a man ladle water. The silence at last was broken by a nasal voice that yet bore the distinctive accent of the Goddess-worshipping plains. “I have been wondering, Ronan, why you are so interested in whether or not the pass over the mountain is open,” Cree remarked.

  Ronan was busy chewing the piece of frozen fish Okal had handed him, Another winter survival trick the tribe had learned during its years in the valley was the value of uncooked frozen fish. About twenty minutes after one had finished it, the fish would begin its warming work, and it would continue to keep one warm for hours. Ronan had been out in the cold for most of the day, and he was chewing now appreciatively. After so many years, he, like the rest of the tribe, had even come to like the taste of it.

  Heno answered for his otherwise-engaged chief, his voice faintly belligerent: “You know why he is interested, Cree. He wants to spy once more upon the Horsemasters.”

  “Of course,” Crim said in his calm way. “It will be spring now in the lower altitudes and they will be moving from their winter camp sometime soon. If they follow the River of Gold or the Atata, they will be coming directly into our mountains.”

  Cree tossed the cold dregs of his tea into the fire, which sizzled when the liquid hit it. He said, looking at Ronan and not at Crim, “I do not see why that should concern us.”

  Ronan looked thoughtfully at Cree, continued to chew slowly on his fish, and did not reply.

  “If the Horsemasters come down the Atata, they will come to the home caves of the tribes of the Squirrel and the Buffalo,” explained Crim, who, like Thorn, had been born to the Buffalo tribe.

  Kasar said, “If they follow the River of Gold, they will come to the tribes of the Leopard and of the Red Deer.” His young jaw was set. “Surely you can see that we have cause, Cree, to be concerned about the movements of these horsemen.”

  Thorn stared with apprehension at Cree. Over the last three years, the divisions between the men of the Goddess and the men of the Kindred, once so troublesome, had seemed to evaporate. Thorn was perhaps more aware of this change than most, for he had been making a kind of chronicle of tribal life on the walls of a valley cave, and so he had marked the growing sense of comradeship that was by now such a distinguishing feature of the Tribe of the Wolf.

  But Thorn had not forgotten that Cree had always been the spokesman for the men of the Goddess, and he waited now in some trepidation for Cree to speak again.

  When he did, Cree’s voice was gentle, but in the dangerous way that Ronan’s could be gentle before he unleashed his temper. Thorn shivered. “It seems to me,” Cree said softly, “that the tribes of the Squirrel and the Buffalo and the Leopard and the Red Deer have far more cause to be concerned about the Horsemasters than does the Tribe of the Wolf.” He pause
d to spread his hands in a gesture that encompassed them all. “We are in no danger. The horsemen will never find this valley.”

  The crackling of the fire was the only noise in the hut. Like every other man present, Thorn was well aware that Ronan had made a plea at the last Autumn Gathering for the Kindred chiefs to organize a unified defense against the Horsemasters. Thorn also knew that Ronan’s words had fallen on deaf ears.

  When Ronan still did not reply, Cree went on. “Surely we have more than done our duty in this matter? If the endangered tribes fail to listen to our warnings, that is their sorrow, not ours.”

  “Sa,” Mitlik agreed. “After your failure at the Autumn Gathering, Ronan, we were certain you would cease to carry on this watch of yours.”

  Thorn watched as Ronan swallowed the last of his fish. “There is no harm in it,” the chief said mildly.

  “It takes hunters away from the valley for long periods of time,” Cree pointed out. “And there is a certain measure of danger involved in all this spying as well.”

  Heno said hotly, “You are not concerned, Cree, because the tribes of the plain are not yet endangered! We of the Kindred cannot afford to be so disinterested.”

  Thorn felt his stomach muscles cramp. It was happening again, he thought despairingly; the old division was once more rearing its ugly head. Now Cree was saying, “I think Ronan is right when he says these Horsemasters will come south into the mountains. I think that the tribes of the Kindred are fools not to be preparing to fight to save what is theirs. But I also think that the Tribe of the Wolf has no stake in this fight and that we ought not to involve ourselves in a danger that is not ours.”

  There was a rustle of movement; then Mitlik spoke again to back up Cree. “It seems to me that the men of the Kindred have forgotten that they are no longer bound to the tribes of their birth.” He turned to Heno, demanding, “What concern can it be of yours if the tribe that drove you out is plundered by these Horsemasters?”

  For once, Heno’s bluster failed him. “It seems senseless, I know…” His voice trailed off, and he scowled.

  Thorn fixed large, urgent brown eyes on Ronan’s face. As if he had heard Thorn’s unspoken plea, Ronan finally spoke, “I can understand that the men of the Goddess should feel this way.” His voice was quiet. “Indeed, you all have been very patient with what you must regard as my…obsession…with these Horsemasters.”

  Cree said, “The tribes of the Kindred have not listened to you, Ronan. You have tried to warn them, but they think they can hide themselves away from these plunderers, can go to earth like the fox and wait for the storm to pass over.”

  “They cannot,” Ronan said.

  Cree shrugged.

  The water in the kettle began to boil.

  “We cannot live in isolation, Cree,” Ronan said. “Human life would vanish from the earth if it were not for the fact that people live together in communities.” His dark gaze touched face after face around the fire, making each man feel he was being spoken to directly. “It is in my heart that the people of this tribe understand more than most just how vulnerable the solitary individual is,” he said.

  That is true, Thorn thought with deep emotion.

  Asok, another man of the Goddess, said with intense passion, “We have our community, Ronan! It is here in this hut, with the men of the Wolf.”

  The air in the hut quivered with the power of those words. The men of the Wolf, Thorn thought, and looked with something like anguish toward Mait, the friend of his heart. Mait looked gravely back.

  It was Kasar who first found the words to answer Asok. “What you say is true, Asok, and, believe me, we men of the Kindred feel as strong a loyalty to this tribe as do the men of the Goddess. But I cannot forget that I have a mother still living in the Tribe of the Leopard. And sisters and brothers as well.” Kasar’s voice quivered slightly. “I cannot turn my back upon them. It is just not in me to do that.”

  “I am thinking that is true for all the men of the Kindred,” Crim agreed softly.

  Thorn thought of his mother. Of Rilik. And bowed his head in agreement.

  Some of the water boiled over and steamed on the fire. In silence, Crim lifted the kettle off the fire and dumped in the herbs to steep for tea. Everyone watched him, their faces somber with the recognition that a crisis was upon them.

  Bror was the one to drag it out into the open. “Last autumn you asked the tribes of the mountains to join together in defense,” he said to Ronan. “Do you plan to ask them again?”

  Ronan’s face was expressionless, his voice calm. To look at him, Thorn thought, you would never know he was facing the possible disintegration of his tribe. “I do,” he replied. “It is true that they did not listen to me in the autumn, but part of the reason was that the chiefs were still angry with the Tribe of the Wolf for luring away some of their girls. If I can bring them news that the Horsemasters are definitely coming south, however, I think they will be forced to listen.”

  “And if they agree this time?” Bror pursued. “If they do in fact join together to form a defense, then will you expect the Tribe of the Wolf to join with them also?”

  Ronan’s eyes were brilliant in the light of the fire. “Sa,” he said. “I will.”

  “Even the men of the Goddess?”

  Thorn held his breath.

  Ronan said, “Even the men of the Goddess.”

  Cree spoke just one word. “Why?”

  Ronan’s eyes lifted toward the hole in the roof where the smoke was escaping into the cold clear air of outdoors. When he spoke, his voice was reflective. “In the winter,” he said, “when the blizzard comes, we all work together, seeking only the welfare of the tribe. It is the tribe that matters, because only if the tribe survives will the individual members of the tribe survive as well. If a hut is damaged, it is not one man or one family who is responsible to repair it. We all respond together, each forgetting his individual concerns and answering to the common need of the tribe.”

  Ronan’s gaze lowered fractionally. “Is this not so?” he asked.

  Nods came from all the men.

  The timbre of Ronan’s voice changed. “Then understand this. These Horsemasters are like the blizzard. They are the storm that endangers all the people of these mountains. In the face of such a threat, it is no longer possible for a man to say My tribe or My land.” At last Ronan’s gaze came to rest upon the men before him. “Do you not see?” he asked them all. “It is our world that is threatened. In this, none of us can stand alone.”

  Thorn felt tears sting behind his eyes, and angrily he blinked them back. Surely, he thought fiercely, surely even Cree would be swayed by such a plea.

  He was astonished when Cree shook his head in disagreement. “I am sorry, Ronan,” the man of the Goddess said, “but the people of the Kindred tribes are not my people, nor are the mountains beyond the pass my world.”

  Ronan’s left hand moved and was abruptly stilled. His dark eyes watched Cree. How bitter this moment must be for him, Thorn thought. For five long years had Ronan toiled to bring these men of different tribes and different faiths together. Now, just when it seemed that he had succeeded, were they to break apart over the issue of the Horsemasters?

  “What I am,” Cree went on, “is a man of the Wolf.” He looked at Ronan, and his face was very grave. “I have said what I felt had to be said. Now I will tell you this. If it is the decision of my brothers to join in this defense, then I am with you.”

  Something flashed in Ronan’s face, and then he bent his head to peer intently at his trouser leg, apparently concerned with a hair that was clinging to the buckskin.

  “I too,” said Mitlik.

  “And I,” said Asok, and Mait, and all the other men of the Goddess.

  Thorn was grinning at Mait and Mait was grinning back. Then, like everyone else, the boys looked toward Ronan.

  “Dhu,” said Ronan, abandoning the phantom hair. In the light of the fire, his skin looked very flushed. His eyes glowed. “It s
eems we are a wolfpack indeed.”

  Thorn’s throat closed down.

  Heno dropped a big hand upon Cree’s shoulder. “You are a good man, Cree. We have had our differences, but I have always thought you to be a good man.”

  Thorn’s attention was suddenly arrested. He looked at Heno and Cree and saw a picture.

  Ronan said, his voice sounding a trifle breathless, “The first thing we must do is discover in what direction the Horsemasters are going. If they turn back north, or toward the east, then all our plans are unnecessary.”

  “Do you want me to do the scouting this time?” Bror asked.

  Ronan shook his head. “I will go myself, Bror. You and Nel can take charge of the tribe until my return.”

  Nods all around indicated the general agreement of the men with this arrangement, which had worked satisfactorily before. “The tea is brewed,” Crim announced, and Thorn moved to help him fill the cups.

  * * * *

  It was an hour later when Ronan finally approached his own hut, the same one he had inhabited two years before when Nel had first come to the valley. He pushed back the skins at the door, ducked in, and was greeted by warmth and brightness, two dogs, one wolf, and his wife.

  Nel had been with him all the afternoon, working with the horses, but during the time that he had been in the men’s hut she had got the reindeer stew they were to have for dinner heating on the fire. Her own furs were draped on the drying rack, and Ronan went to hang his in the same place.

  “The pass is open?” she inquired from where she sat by the fire, surrounded by animals.

  “Sa.” He balanced his mittens on top of the rack and turned to look at her. “The pass is open.”

  She nodded. Leir and Sinta, two of last year’s puppies, now fully grown, arose from their warm nest near Nel and came with wagging tails to escort Ronan to his own place. Nigak, who was lying with his nose pillowed on Nel’s lap, opened his eyes to watch the dogs, then closed them again. Nel had taken the puppies as soon as they were weaned, and Nigak tolerated them.