The Horsemasters

by Joan Wolf

Bror started to move forward at a steady trot, and out of the sides of his eyes, he saw the men beside him move forward with him. Behind him the rest of the men would be scrambling down the last of the hillside and falling into their places in the line.

  It was a quarter of a mile to the Horsemasters’ camp. They were halfway there when the thunder of horse hooves from farther down the valley told Bror that Thorn and Mait had made their move.

  Shouts were coming now from the Horsemasters’ camp, and the firelight showed men scrambling out of sleeping skins and grabbing their spears. Still the tribes came on at a slow and steady pace. Ronan wanted them to stay together, not to separate and go searching among the camp for victims. “Give them a chance to come to us,” he had said to the gathered men earlier in the night. “Let them throw themselves upon our line. Do not be betrayed into breaking!”

  Bror could see now that the Horsemasters were hastily forming up into a band to oppose them. From his place in the front line, he could hear a deep voice shouting what must be orders. Then the first bunch of the enemy was running forward, spears forward, straight at the advancing line of tribesmen.

  “Steady!” Bror called to his men and kept his shield in place, his spear level. He saw the man who was coming toward him and braced himself for the encounter.

  The first wave of the defending Horsemasters hit into the Federation line with a shock and went down. Bror kicked at the dead body under his foot. The man’s spear had bounced right off his shield. Bror grinned.

  Suddenly, the night was split with the screams of a stallion. Next came a cacophony of wild whinnies and thundering hooves. No need to worry about them getting to their horses, Bror thought with glee. The horses are gone.

  Another wave hit the Federation line, and then another, and the tribes held strong.

  The same deep voice made itself heard, even over the noise of the horses, and the men of the Horsemasters began to form into a more organized grouping. Again they came on, and this time each man Bror killed was followed by another. They were gaining more and more in number, and the weight of the onslaught was forcing Bror back, He looked in desperation at both of the Federation wings and saw that they were holding. It was only the undermanned center that was being pushed back.

  “Hold!” Bror shouted to the men around him. “Hold!” Two men down from him, he saw Dai manage a step forward. Then Okal was at Dai’s side. Bror surged forward himself, and the men of the Wolf came after him.

  The Horsemasters were far greater in number, but their shorter spears and lack of shields gave them a vulnerability the men of the tribes did not possess. Nor had they been trained to keep an even front and act with a regular movement, as the Federation men had been. They were incredibly brave, rushing forward again and again in desperate groups, striving to force a lane into the Federation line and break it. But the tribes were feeling their superiority, and even though the relentless attacks told upon their inferior numbers, the sight of the slaughter they had already done gave them the courage to keep on.

  The fight went on in the moonlit valley.

  Bror wasn’t sure when it happened, but all of a sudden he realized that the center was under heavier pressure. It seemed as if the enemy at last had perceived the weakness in Ronan’s disposition and was attacking it.

  Furiously, the Horsemasters hurled themselves again and again into the center. Bror’s arm and wrist and shoulder ached from the blows he was taking upon his shield. Next to him, he saw Cree go down. The man who had felled him bent swiftly and picked up Cree’s shield. Then he came after Bror.

  Bror parried the spear blows with his shield, but he could not retaliate as effectively as he had previously, for now the enemy had a shield also. Bror glanced up briefly into his enemy’s implacable face and recognized Fenris.

  “Dhu,” he muttered under his breath.

  Fenris shouted something to his men and, with a mighty blow, forced Bror to step back. Bror felt the line behind him starting to give.

  “Hold!” he cried furiously.

  But at last the weakness of the center was being exploited. Fenris shoved past Bror, and then another man followed behind the kain. The Horsemasters had breeched the line.

  “Run,” Bror heard Dai screaming at him. “Run for the hill, Bror. We can regroup there!”

  Realizing there was no longer a line for him to hold together, Bror followed Dai’s instructions and ran.

  As soon as he reached the shelter of the trees on the mountain, Bror turned. Most of the men had reached the hill before him and were waiting to see if the Horsemasters would follow. Bror hoped desperately that they would.

  It soon became clear, however, that Fenris was not going to be lured into a pursuit. He had got a wedge of his men in between Ronan’s two wings and was clearly going to try to exploit the divided ranks of the enemy.

  The outcome would depend upon how successful the tribes had been up until now, Bror thought despairingly, as he yelled for his men to form up again. Had they killed enough of Fenris’s men?

  “Should we charge again?” Matti asked eagerly.

  “Wait,” Bror said. “Wait and see first where Ronan will need us the most.”

  The men of the center waited tensely, Bror watching to see if the Horsemasters were still strong enough to attempt a flanking movement around one of the wings.

  Nothing happened. Fenris appeared to have concentrated all of his remaining forces in the center. They were fighting on two sides, but there were enough of them to hold their position. The battle raged on, neither side appearing to have enough power to strike the killing blow.

  Then, as Bror watched, the far end of the tribes’ right wing detached itself and swung around in orderly formation toward the back of the center, Ronan was outflanking the Horsemasters!

  With a broad grin splitting his dirty, bloody face, Bror roared to his men to follow and ran forward to join with his chief.

  The shock of the new attack from behind was what finally broke the Horsemasters. Many of the men, seeing the tribesmen running from the mountains, did not realize that Ronan’s center had broken and thought it was a new force entering the fight. In fear and confusion, the Horsemasters turned and ran.

  Many of the tribesmen were hot to follow, but Ronan’s voice, miraculously audible over all the tumult, ordered them to stay. Within a few minutes, quiet had fallen on the body-strewn plain. The battle was over. Bror thought with stunned incredulity: We won.

  * * * *

  As the sun slowly rose in the eastern sky, the cleanup after the battle continued. The Federation dead and wounded had already been collected, the totals being an incredible thirty-one wounded and eighteen dead. The bodies still strewn all over the plain belonged to the Horsemasters.

  It was Dai who brought Ronan the word that they had found Fenris. “He’s alive,” Dai reported. “He took a blow on the head and has a wound in his shoulder. Apparently, when one of his men saw him go down, he flung his own body over the kain’s to protect him. He was successful. At any rate, Fenris is alive and the other man is dead.”

  “How badly is he hurt?” Ronan asked.

  “I think it was the knock on the head that felled him. The shoulder wound does not look that serious.” Dai rocked back on his heels and exhaled slowly, “Shall we put him with the others?”

  Ronan had given orders that the injured Horsemasters were to be separated from the dead. This was unlike what he had done in the gorge, when the injured had been killed where they lay. His men clearly preferred the killing.

  Slowly, Ronan nodded his head. “And see that his shoulder gets some attention, Dai. I would like to speak to him before we do anything else.”

  Dai looked as if he were going to say something; then he just shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

  By dawn all of the Federation men had been accounted for, except Thorn and Mait.

  “They were on horseback to drive the stallions,” Ronan said when their absence was reported to him. “I wouldn’t be surpris
ed if they got caught in the middle of the herd’s stampede. They will make their way back here, never fear.”

  “I hope you are right,” Rilik, Thorn’s father, said with a worried frown. “I hope he wasn’t thrown and trampled.”

  “Not Thorn,” Ronan said with confidence. “That boy can ride anything.”

  Rilik smiled, but the worry still lurked in his eyes.

  The sun was a bright yellow ball in a bright blue sky when finally Ronan sought out Fenris. Siguna’s father. His enemy.

  The wounded Horsemasters had been put together under the shelter of some small trees that grew at the edge of the meadow where it met with the mountain. The number of the wounded, Ronan had been told, was forty-eight. The dead numbered over two hundred. Ronan’s plan had been effective indeed.

  As Ronan approached the prisoners, the kain was sitting up, his back against a tree and his head slumped forward. The shoulder of his buckskin shirt was stained with dried blood. He looked to be asleep. Ronan paused and considered for a moment the figure before him.

  This was the man responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of Kindred men. This was the man who had enslaved untold numbers of Kindred women. It was a strange feeling to have him like this, wounded and vulnerable and very much at Ronan’s mercy. I should hate him, Ronan told himself, as he took a few more steps forward. This is a man I should hate.

  “Fenris,” he said clearly. There was no response. He said the name again, and the disordered blond head moved. The kain lifted his head slowly, as if it hurt, and saw Ronan. He said something in a language Ronan did not know.

  “Can you understand me at all?” Ronan asked in the tongue of the Kindred.

  The other man nodded, then winced at the movement.

  He ran his tongue around his lips as if they were too dry. “I understand…a little,” he said in a deep voice that had lost but little of its strength. The kain’s eyes were dark gray in color, Ronan saw, not pale like his daughter’s. “Who…you?” Fenris asked.

  Ronan answered. “I am the leader…the kain…of these men.”

  Fenris squinted at him as if trying to get him into focus. Ronan could see that there was a great bruise on the kain’s left temple. His head must be pounding like a shaman’s drum, Ronan thought. He had taken a blow like that once, and the headache had lasted for days.

  “You want…what?” Fenris asked.

  Ronan stared into the other man’s face. In spite of pain, in spite of injury, in spite of defeat, Fenris yet managed to look authoritative. And Ronan realized that he had no answer to the kain’s question. He did not know what he wanted from Fenris. He just knew he wanted something.

  He said, because he did not know what else to say, “Your daughter is safe.”

  Fenris frowned, not understanding.

  “Siguna,” Ronan said. “Siguna is safe. She is with us.”

  Awareness slowly dawned in the kain’s eyes. “Siguna? Siguna is live?”

  Ronan nodded. “My men took her from the forest. She is safe.”

  A flash of something Ronan could have sworn was joy flickered across Fenris’s face. Then his mouth set. “She your woman?”

  “Na!” For some reason he couldn’t define, it was very important to Ronan that Fenris know Siguna was safe and untouched.

  “She is no man’s woman,” he said. “She is safe.” Then, as Fenris still looked at him uncomprehendingly, Ronan put his hands behind his back. “No man has touched her,” he said. “It is not our way.”

  “No man touch,” Fenris repeated, and his mouth softened fractionally. “Is good Siguna is live.” He moved his head to look at the men around him, and his face tightened with pain. “You kill us,” he said simply.

  “You killed my people,” Ronan returned, his voice harsh. “You killed many many men.”

  Fenris said, “Sa.”

  “Why?”

  Fenris sighed, and his gray eyes lifted to meet Ronan’s. “I do not know,” he said. He looked genuinely puzzled, but whether it was by Ronan’s question or by his own lack of an answer, Ronan did not know.

  Looking back into the kain’s eyes, Ronan recognized finally that there was a strange bond between this man and himself. He had always felt it in his heart; now for the first time, he admitted it in his mind.

  I cannot kill him, Ronan thought. I don’t know why, but I cannot kill him.

  His black brows were drawn together, as if he could feel Fenris’s pain in his own head. He said, “We will not kill you.”

  The kain looked skeptical, but then, as he continued to regard Ronan, his face slowly changed. “Is true?” he asked with wonder.

  “Is true.”

  Fenris was silent, evidently trying to make sense of this amazing news. He gazed out at the body-strewn plain, the remnant of his defeat. “Dead men,” he said, gesturing. “Burn.”

  Ronan was horrified. The tribes of the Kindred always buried their dead with reverence. “Fire?” he said, wanting to make sure he had understood correctly.

  “Sa. Too many dead. Dangerous. Burn.” The kain, Ronan realized with a mixture of amazement and unwilling respect, was giving orders. Once more Fenris ran his tongue around his cracked lips.

  “I will send a man with water,” Ronan said abruptly, turned on his heel, and departed.

  * * * *

  Fenris was right, Ronan thought as he traversed the plain. There were too many dead Horsemasters to bury. Nor could he leave them lying here much longer, or the plain would be crawling with predators. He would do as the kain suggested and burn them.

  He lifted his head as he made the decision, and it was then that he saw the boy and horse in the distance, coming slowly down the river. He raised his hand to shade his eyes from the morning glare. One boy leading one horse. Sunlight glinted off smooth dark hair. Mait.

  Ronan felt his heart plummet. Where was Thorn? His legs moved forward, and then he broke into a run.

  As the distance between him and Mait closed, Ronan saw for the first time that Mait was not walking because his horse was lame. He was walking because the horse was bearing another burden. Unconsciously, Ronan’s steps slowed. He did not want to see what he was afraid he would find upon Frost’s back.

  Mait noticed the oncoming chief for the first time and halted. As Ronan came up to him, he saw that the boy’s face was streaked with tears. He looked to the horse and saw the slender body lying across its back, legs and arms dangling on opposite sides. Saw the tangled mop of brown hair.

  He felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach.

  “What happened?” he asked Mait hoarsely. “Did he fall?”

  “Na,” Mait said, “We got caught up in the stampede, but the both of us stayed on. It happened after we had managed to separate our horses from the others and were coming back.” Mait raised a fist to scrub at his eyes, a childish gesture that was unbearably poignant. “We were coming through the forest above the river. Thorn was going first.” He swallowed audibly. “One of the fleeing Horsemasters must have seen us and lain in wait. He leaped out at Thorn, pushed him off Acorn, and mounted him. Thorn tried to grab for Acorn’s halter, and the man…the man…” Mait began to sob.

  Ronan reached an arm around Mait and pressed the boy’s face into his shoulder. “He ran Thorn through with his spear,” Mait sobbed. “He ran him through and galloped away. I jumped off Frost and ran to him, but…but…oh, Ronan, he was dead!”

  Ronan continued to hold Mait as he stared with dry and burning eyes at the limp and slender body slung over the horse. One of the reasons he had chosen Thorn to drive the horses was to keep him out of the fighting. And instead, he had sent the boy to his death.

  I am so clever, he thought with corrosive bitterness. And in my cleverness I have killed Thorn.

  Mait seemed to be getting himself under control, and Ronan dropped his arm. “If only he had let the man have Acorn,” Mait said miserably. “If only he had not grabbed for the halter!”

  Ronan nodded. Then he picked up Frost�
�s reins. “Come,” he said to Mait. “We will have to find Rilik.”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  The bulk of the Federation women waited at the Great Cave for news of the fight, but the small group who had been at the Red Deer camp when the men marched off remained there. They had been augmented by only nine young women from the Tribe of the Red Deer, whose job it was to make certain that Vili did not get free to return to his father.

  Vili was incredulous when he discovered that he was to be left in the guardianship of women, unbound, But it was so. The men actually mounted their horses and rode out of camp, leaving him the freedom of his arms and his legs. They were mad, Vili thought, but he was certainly not fool enough to express that view out loud.

  He became even more confounded by the men’s actions when he saw the women who were to guard him. They were young girls of Siguna’s age! The men had brought the girls to the cave, showed them Vili, and then left. That black-haired chief would have his men’s hearts when he discovered what they had done, Vili thought.

  The first shift on guard duty was composed of three of the girls, all of whom were carrying spears and javelins set into spearthrowers. It was afternoon. He would wait until the dark, Vili decided. He would have to chance the wolf and the dogs, but these girls would be no problem at all.

  He stood in the recess of the cave door and watched them. They were pretty girls, he thought, girls who would be much better employed at work in a man’s tent than left unsupervised to play with a man’s weapons. What fools these tribesmen must be!

  One of the girls, a long-legged, black-haired beauty, noticed him watching them. She made some comment to the other girls, who laughed.

  Their laughter did not at all upset Vili. He was too busy running his eyes up and down the black-haired girl’s body. He felt his phallus begin to rise. He would relish a chance to show that one what kind of weapon a real man could wield, he thought. He walked slowly to the cave entrance and leaned his shoulder against the rocky archway, his eyes boldly raking the girl’s body.

  The three girls had turned to face him when he moved into the archway. He realized suddenly that all three of them were holding their spears.