The Horsemasters

by Joan Wolf

  Ronan sat down.

  “When will you go?” Nel asked.

  “As soon as I can. I just told the men that I would be leaving Bror and you in charge of the tribe.”

  Nel nodded again. She and Bror had managed very well last autumn and last spring when Ronan had also left the tribe for a moon in order to spy upon the Horsemasters.

  “I wish I could take you, minnow,” Ronan was saying now regretfully. “Aside from the fact that I will miss you, it would be good for you to be able to see for yourself how these people manage their horses. But I cannot leave Bror to lead the tribe alone, and he is the only man who can replace me without causing jealousy.”

  “I understand that, Ronan,” Nel said softly.

  Ronan stared broodingly into the fire. The two dogs had lain down on either side of him, their white noses propped on their front paws, and they too stared into the fire. Ronan said, “I wonder sometimes if I am deluding myself, Nel, with this watch that I keep on these invaders. We have tamed some horses of our own now, it is true, but ours are a mere handful in comparison to the vast herd kept by the Horsemasters.”

  “At least you are doing something,” Nel pointed out. “The rest of the tribes are just sitting and waiting. Even when you told them at the Autumn Gathering of how close the invaders were, still all the other chiefs could do was hope that the Horsemasters would turn north once more and bother someone else!”

  Ronan’s expression was grim. “It will not be long now, and we shall all know for certain what it is they are going to do.”

  Nel reached up to push a loose strand of hair off her forehead. Her movement disturbed Nigak, who raised his head and yawned, his tongue curling over the sharp points and ridges of his teeth. The dogs watched him with respectful fascination.

  “Who are you planning to take with you?” Nel asked.

  “I am thinking I will take a man from each tribe,” Ronan answered slowly. “If the Horsemasters do indeed begin to move south along one of the two rivers, it will be necessary for us to move quickly to organize a defense. If I send a man of their own as messenger, I think the tribes are more likely to listen.”

  Nigak was treating Leir and Sinta to an unwinking yellow stare. Both dogs dropped their ears a little in submission and glanced anxiously at Nel.

  “Nigak,” Nel said reprovingly, and the wolf rested his head once more on her lap. She buried her fingers in his ruff.

  “Who will you take from the Buffalo tribe?” she asked Ronan.

  “Crim.” Ronan’s voice was muffled, as he was bent over unwrapping the thongs that tied his boots.

  “Why do you not take Thorn instead?”

  “Thorn?” Ronan’s head came up in surprise. “Thorn is just a boy.”

  “He is older than you were when you were expelled from the Red Deer tribe,” Nel pointed out.

  Ronan went back to unwrapping his boots. “Thorn is not like me.”

  “He has an artist’s vision,” Nel said. “He may see things among the Horsemasters that you have missed.”

  Ronan snorted with disbelief.

  Nel looked with affectionate amusement at his bent black head.

  The thongs were untied at last, and Ronan pulled off his boots, flexing his bare feet with obvious relief. Then he began to pull the grass liners out of his boots, so he could dry them before the fire.

  Winter boots were a serious thing in the Tribe of the Wolf. Unlike moccasins, which were made from the thin skin of the reindeer’s leg, boots were made from the thick skin that was found over the forehead between the antlers. To wear the boots, one lined them first with grass, which the tribe dried and put up in skeins precisely for this purpose. The dried grass kept the feet warm and dry by absorbing the perspiration and passing it through the porous hide so it was evaporated into the cold, dry external air. This was important, as in great cold any moisture left on the skin left it vulnerable to frostbite.

  Ronan finished spreading the grass and went to put his boots along the wall near the drying rack, next to Nel’s much smaller pair. He picked up his moccasins and came back to the fire. “Why don’t you want me to take Crim?” he asked.

  “I rely on Crim’s level head when you are gone,” Nel admitted.

  Ronan slid his feet into the moccasins, “I suppose I could take Thorn,” he said at last, “His father is a man of some standing in the Buffalo tribe.”

  There was a pause; then Nel said bitterly, “It was impossible to talk to the chiefs last autumn, Ronan. They none of them would listen to you. Why should it be different this time?”

  “They listened,” Ronan said. “They just would not believe that they could be in danger. I hope that they were right.”

  “But you do not think so.”

  He shook his head. “I do not think so.” Then he sniffed. “That stew smells good,” he said. “When do we eat?”

  At those magic words, Leir and Sinta sat up and barked.

  * * * *

  Later that night, Nel lay awake in the dark listening to the sound of the dogs snoring. Ronan’s bare shoulder was warm and smooth under her cheek, and their combined body heat made the sleeping skin they shared extremely comfortable. They had not made love earlier, as Nel’s moon blood had begun to flow the day before.

  Ronan always said he did not mind that they had not yet had a child. In fact, he had said on more than one occasion that perhaps it was for the best, that he did not know what he would do if she were unable to carry on the work that she had undertaken with the horses.

  Nel knew there was some truth to his words, but it did not make her feel better about her childlessness.

  Every other woman in the tribe had a baby. Only she was barren. Ronan had fathered children before, she knew. Borba’s and Cala’s sons had both borne unmistakable resemblances to him. But every month her moon blood flowed, and none of the herbs she had brewed and taken had changed that.

  The other women would occasionally tell her how fortunate she was to be married to Ronan, who would never put her aside because she was barren. “All can see how much he does love you,” Fara had said just yesterday, when she had caught a glimpse of the despair that Nel usually managed to hide.

  It was true, Nel thought now, lying safe and cherished within the curve of Ronan’s body, he did love her. She was his minnow and he would never do anything to hurt her. Besides, he was so involved just now with the horse-training, where he needed her, and with the threat of the potential invasion, that a child simply was not important to him.

  She had so much, Nel told herself. It was foolish of her to want more.

  But she could not help it. She wanted a baby. She loved her husband. She loved her animals. But with all her heart and soul, she yearned for a baby.

  Nel’s deepest fear was that she had offended the Mother and her childlessness was her punishment. The Goddess had marked her out to be the next Mistress of the Red Deer, and instead Nel had chosen Ronan. Theirs was not a union that the Mother was likely to bless.

  What could she do? Every moon, when her blood flow came, Nel’s thoughts traveled along the same familiar track. What could she do to placate the Goddess?

  We should go to the sacred cave.

  This was the thought that of late had been coming ever more frequently into Nel’s mind. If she and Ronan could make the Sacred Marriage together in the Goddess’s most holy place, then perhaps the Mother would relent. Then, perhaps, Nel’s womb would wake with the life of a child.

  Somehow, Nel thought, placing her hand on her flat stomach, somehow she had to get Ronan to the sacred cave.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The sun was hot on her head as Nel stood regarding the herd of horses the tribe had penned into the large open space between the cliff, the lake, and a long fence they had built of saplings and tree branches. The horses were all young stallions, taken as yearlings when Impero had driven them forth from the main herd when their dams had dropped a new foal. The three-year-olds were all regularly ridden now by the
tribe’s men, although the two-year-olds so far had not been ridden by anyone but Nel and Beki and Thorn and Mait, all of whom were lightweight enough for a youngster’s back.

  The horses saw her and four of them came over to the fence, hopeful of getting a treat. Nel had discovered that most horses loved one in particular of the wild roots that grew in the high mountain forest, and she usually kept a supply on hand to use as bribes and as rewards.

  “Sorry, Nettle,” she said, showing an empty hand and then patting a pink nose. “Sorry Acorn, Clover, and Nep.” The horses snorted and turned away. Nel watched them return to the herd.

  These young stallions were dark in color, but if the horses in the main herd were any indication, many of them would turn lighter as they aged. The predominant color in the main herd was gray shading to white, and it was a common sight to see an almost pure white mare with a dark brown foal running by her side.

  There was the sound of squeals, and Nel looked toward the cliff wall just as two of the horses reared and struck out at each other with their front hooves. Nel frowned. For about the hundredth time she reflected that mares would be much easier to keep penned up together than stallions were. The Horsemasters rode mares. Ronan said that the only stallion kept by the Horsemasters belonged to their chief.

  The problem Nel and the Tribe of the Wolf faced was that if they tried to separate some of the mares out of Impero’s herd, the stallion would certainly attack them.

  “He has done half our work for us by forcing out the yearling colts,” Ronan had said when first they discussed their horse-taming project. “We can drive the colts into the corral and work with them without any fear of Impero trying to liberate them. And if we keep them separated from the main herd, then I do not think that Impero will object to their presence in the valley.”

  Nel had agreed, and so it had come to pass. In fact, building the corral fence had been much harder work than driving the small band of yearlings into it. Nor had it been difficult for Nel, with her finely tuned instincts, to get close to the animals. As long as she always preserved perfect calm and made no unexpected movements, she had soon been able even to touch them. Nor had the yearlings proved anxious to escape from their confinement, knowing that Impero’s bared teeth and lashing heels awaited them on the other side of the fence.

  The tribe had watched with fascination as Nel went about the taming of their captured horses. She was infallible when it came to animals, knowing just when a youngster was afraid and when it was merely being cantankerous, when it was necessary to reassure, and when to be stern. The tribe had made nosebands with reins attached, copied from the halters Ronan had seen used by the Horsemasters, and Nel had gotten each yearling accustomed to wearing one.

  Then, one momentous day in late fall, shortly before the snow was due to fall, Nel had gotten on the first horse’s back. For the experiment she had chosen Sunny, a stocky dark gray youngster with a markedly pleasant disposition. For days she had been accustoming him to her weight, leaning on his furry flank, draping both her arms over his broad back, all the while rewarding him lavishly with treats, and then, finally, Ronan had put his hands about her waist, lifted her high, and plunked her directly onto an agreeable Sunny’s back.

  It had been surprisingly easy. The colt had stood perfectly still at first, his ears flicking back and forth in surprise. Then he had turned his head to look at her. Nel had patted his neck and talked to him. Then, with little clicking sounds, she urged him on, and the colt had begun to walk. Nel had grasped the long silky mane in one hand and held the rope reins in the other, and the Tribe of the Wolf was horsed.

  Of course, it had not always been so easy. Not all the horses were as agreeable as Sunny, and it had taken the tribe some time to learn how to sit on a horse’s faster gaits. There was not a one of them who did not have a collection of bruises from falls taken when their mounts had made an unexpected stop or turn. But in this, the second year of their horsekeeping, all the men and women of the tribe could ride. Some were unquestionably better than others, but all could keep their seats on a horse.

  There were enough horses to mount all the tribe, not including the next crop of yearlings Impero would drive out when the new foals came this spring.

  There were already too many horses for this corral, Nel thought. For the past two winters the tribe had cut the late summer grass from other parts of the valley, dried it, stored it, and fed it to the herd during the winter. It was a tremendous amount of work, and unnecessary if only they could let the horses out of the corral to roam the valley. All they had to do was put a fence in front of the opening to the passage out, and the entire valley would become a corral. But they couldn’t do that because of Impero and the mares.

  Nel sighed. “Are you worried about Ronan?” Beki asked her, and Nel turned to look at her friend.

  Nel shook her head. “In truth, I was wondering where we were going to put the new yearlings.”

  Beki said, “Perhaps we could drive Impero and the mares out of the valley.”

  “Perhaps, but if we did that, then we would lose our source of new horses.”

  “Not if we kept some of the mares,” Beki said.

  “If we kept some of the mares, the stallions would fight over them.” Nel sighed again. “When a stallion sees a mare, he has but one thing on his mind.”

  “In that they are not so different from the males of humankind,” Beki said drily, and both women laughed.

  Nel’s eyes moved slowly up the cliff, then moved even higher, to where the distant peaks of the Atlas towered against the blue sky. “I wonder how they are faring,” she said.

  Beki’s eyes followed Nel’s. “I do not have good feelings about what they will find, Nel.”

  Nel’s uplifted face took on an expression that was strangely stern. “Nor do I, Beki.” She turned away from the snow-covered peaks. “Nor do I.”

  * * * *

  Fenris squinted into the sun, watching as the vast train of horses and people wound its way along the river in the direction that he had chosen. His scouts had reported that this river rose in the mountains to the south, that there were many tribes living in these mountains, and that the grazing there was excellent in the spring and summer. Plunder for his men, grazing for his horses: these were the chief conditions sought by the kain of such a tribe as Fenris’s, and so south they would go, following this river the local tribes called the River of Gold.

  It took less than a day for the tribe to break camp, even a camp that had been home to them for all the winter. The women loaded the tents and household necessities onto sledges, which were harnessed to horses for pulling. The men stacked their treasure onto their packhorses and mounted their steeds. The remainder of the horse-herd was driven before them, followed by some of the mounted men, the sledges, then the rest of the mounted men, and finally the women and children on foot. It was a daunting sight, to see the Horsemasters move so large a camp so quickly.

  Fenris gazed toward the mountains, and, not for the first time, he contemplated the spinelessness of these people of the south. Life had been too easy for them, the kain thought scornfully, The game here was too plentiful, too easy to hunt; these southern tribes knew nothing of the struggle for life that had toughened his people in the far north. These tribes of the Kindred did nothing but hunt the teeming herds and draw pictures in their caves. Thus far Fenris and his men had swept them away with scarcely a fight.

  “Kain,” said Surtur, one of his anda, the men who made up his elite fighting circle. Fenris looked and saw that Surtur was pointing to a solitary figure that had separated itself from the slowly moving group of women and children and was standing alone and stationary by the river.

  Fenris’s thick blond brows drew together.

  “Shall I get her?” Surtur asked.

  “Na. I will,” Fenris said shortly, clapped his heels against his horse’s sides and galloped off.

  The girl stood still at the water’s edge and watched him come, nor did she flinch when h
e pulled up only inches before her. Instead, she bared her small white teeth at him in a grimace that was not a smile.

  “Why have you left the women?” Fenris demanded. His gray eyes, with the white squint lines radiating out from the corners, were dark with temper.

  The girl did not seem discomposed by the kain’s anger, which would have terrified every other woman and most of the tribe’s men. She shrugged. “I do not want to walk,” she said.

  “You are one of the women, Siguna. You will walk,” he said.

  She shook her head vehemently, so that the pale silvery hair fanned out around her shoulders. “I said I do not want to walk.”

  They stared at each other, angry gray eyes into angry gray eyes. “I will tie you to my horse and drag you after me,” he said.

  “I have been riding all the winter!” she cried passionately. Her fair young skin was flushed with emotion. “I ride as well as any man. You know that! I will not walk.”

  “Then I will have to drag you.”

  Her eyes did not waver. He would do it, and she knew it. His men would think well of him for disciplining one of his women in such wise. She set her teeth. “Drag me, then,” she said.

  A flock of geese rose from the river, honking and calling in the clear, sun-warmed air. Their wings beat between the two humans and the sky.

  Fenris’s face did not change expression, but of a sudden he reached his big, callused hand down to her. “You may ride with me for a little while,” he said. “And then you must walk.”

  Her face, which had been rigid and shut, flashed open in a brilliant, joyful smile. She reached up her hand, put her foot upon his, and let him pull her onto the horse’s back—before him. She leaned comfortably against his broad chest and said contentedly, “Thank you, Father.”

  * * * *

  Thorn watched the big blond man on the brown stallion as he pulled the slim, even fairer young girl onto the horse’s back before him. Then the two of them galloped up the valley, with a cloud of other horsemen filling in behind them.