“All fight. Little birds fight, for food, for territory. You watch. Rabbit, small rabbit, soft, gentle, is it so? Rabbits fight, kick, tear each other over female. Strong one gets her, has strong babies. Is good. Is good way. Strong live, weak die.”
He is right, said the spirit within.
“In herds of horse, we let young stallions fight. Keep winners to breed, geld losers,” Kazhak went on. “Horses get stronger. You will see.”
“You were telling me about the funny customs of the tribes in Thrace,” she reminded him, anxious to hear more.
“Yes, is so. Some tribes—smarter tribes, tribes with warriors and weapons—they want send message to one of their gods. Take some nobleman and toss onto points of spears. If man die, they say god liked him, listened to him. If man live, they say he failure, bad person, is no longer nobleman. Loses face. Man no win either way. Too much warm weather make people think funny like that.”
Epona bit her lip and did not laugh.
The Scythian said, “One man has many wives, good custom. Among Scyth, too; good custom. But when Thracian man die, wives fight. What woman did dead man like best? Relatives take sides. Big fights; war, almost. Very funny. One woman win, she most honored, pleased with self. Her relatives kill her, bury her with dead husband. All other wives jealous. They cry, hoo-hoo-hoo!” Kazhak broke spontaneously into an excellent mimicry of a woman crying, screwing up his face and rubbing one fist into his eyes, making a noise that caused the horses to flatten their ears against their heads. The other Scythians roared with laughter.
Epona laughed too; she could no longer help it. The spectacle was irresistible: the merciless warrior, turning himself into a wailing woman and then back again to Kazhak, smiling broadly, pleased with his performance.
Having laughed, Epona could not revert to sulking. Toutorix had been famed for carrying a grudge tucked into his beard until the hair fell out, but that had never been Epona’s way. Bad feelings could sour inside like milk, and she preferred to set them aside when their first heat had passed.
They traveled on. Having discussed the Thracians at great length, for a Scyth, Kazhak fell silent. Epona walked and trotted at the stallion’s side, keeping pace.
A person afoot could not hope to match the walking strides of the Scythian horses indefinitely, though it had been easy to keep up with the short paces of the draft ponies of the Kelti. Epona was now thankful for the fleetness of foot all children of her tribe learned early and practiced often.
Her tribe. Her tribe.
Something burned behind her eyelids and her throat felt thick.
The Scythians rode, saying little to one another, their eyes fixed on the eastern horizon. Kazhak, the most voluble of the horsemen, seemed to have exhausted his fund of conversation and gradually sank into a dark and darker mood, with a scowl on his face and a set to his shoulders that warned the others to leave him alone. At such times his temper could flare up like a spark from one of Tena’s fires.
Epona wondered what was bothering him, but she did not ask. She thought she would never understand him. He was like the climate of the plains, sunny and good-humored one moment, dark and foreboding the next. Epona, shaped by the Blue Mountains, was used to ongoing conversation like the wind in the pine trees, or tranquil periods of contemplation fostered by the lingering twilight of sunseason. The Scythian’s moods did not match hers.
That night they camped on the banks of the Duna and Epona fell asleep listening to the river singing to itself, wishing that she, like Uiska, understood the language of the waters. Kazhak stood the first watch and then slept soundly beside her without touching her.
In the dawn light of nextday she could see that the land east of the river was an inviting plain, thickly covered with low bushes that turned it a rich shade of lavender. Nematona would have been very excited by the discovery.
Occasionally they saw people in the distance as they rode, large settlements or long, well-guarded wagon trains carrying merchants to the prosperous southlands. Kazhak went out of his way to avoid such concentrations of people. It appeared the horsemen were quick to slaughter helpless villagers bringing in their first fruits, but were less eager to confront those who had them outnumbered and possessed adequate weaponry.
Epona felt the sting of contempt. A member of the people, outnumbered or not, would have gone up to the strangers he encountered, holding out an empty knife hand and demonstrating fearlessness. What could harm one of the people anyway? The sky could fall and crush the body, the earth could swallow it, but for an immortal spirit there was really nothing to fear.
A spirit … a mental image of Kernunnos flashed before her eyes, and for one heartbeat she had the awful sense of being invaded. He was more than a thought, he was a tangible presence inside her mind during that brief space of time, traveling with her, threatening her … she had not escaped him. He was here, somehow. She could feel it. Thinking about him had opened a gate and he had come through; he knew where she was now.
The horses began to grow nervous for no discernible reason. The gray stallion tossed his head again and again, snatching at the bit, and damp patches of sweat appeared on his neck. The others began to shy at nothing, snorting.
Kazhak glanced over his shoulder toward the northwest. His men noticed this and looked back as well; so did Epona. High white clouds with tattered edges were moving swiftly across the sky as if to avoid a darker cloud pursuing them, a cloud of mist and amorphous shape. As Epona watched, the sky took on a green color, dark, menacing, and the rising wind began to hurl leaves and even fragments of soil through the air.
Kazhak said something urgent to his men. They jumped from their horses and began leading the animals into a narrow ravine running back from the river. The sides would provide some protection from the wind and there were no large trees to fall and crush them.
The Scythians took care of their animals first, hobbling them securely in the best shelter they could find. “Is said wind here sometimes blow down ox,” Kazhak explained to Epona. “Big storms here, much power, stronger than man. What your hornheaded priest call sacred, is it so? Stronger than man?”
Epona was helping him unpack the nervous stallion. “Storms are the moods of the earth mother,” she answered. “They are not to be feared; there are those of my people who know how to control and make use of them.”
Kazhak’s brows lifted. “Is joke?”
“I speak the truth.”
“You can do this thing?” For the first time she heard respect in his voice. She was tempted to tell him she could, indeed, influence the weather. She was born drui, was she not? Or so they said?
“No,” she answered. “I can’t control the weather. Only the druii do that, and even they cannot make the weather do whatever they want. They can change it a little, sometimes.”
The bards sang of an era many generations ago when the druii understood how to use the power of the great stones and had much more influence over many things, including weather, but there was no time to tell this to Kazhak. The storm was upon them now and they were very busy.
“Kazhak not change weather,” he told Epona as he pulled a bundle from one of the packs, “but Kazhak can stop rain!” He held up an oiled hide that had been stretched and pounded so thin it folded like fabric. With this and broken branches lying on the ground he quickly constructed a crude tent and urged Epona to go inside. Around them the other Scythians were constructing similar shelters for themselves.
“You go in,” Kazhak told the girl. “Dry in there.”
She crawled in on her hands and knees and he pushed in after her. Their two bodies crowded the little tent, but he was right; after a struggle to arrange the bearskin cloak to augment the hide covering, the improvised shelter did keep off the rain. Large drops drummed unsuccessfully on the tent above them, seeking admittance.
Kazhak heaved an expansive sigh. “Is good, is it so?”
Their bodies were jammed together in the cramped space. His body heat had already d
riven out the damp chill. Lying cuddled against him was like lying next to a banked fire.
Epona’s wet clothes clung to her skin; their dampness went through to her bones. She pressed more tightly against the Scythian. The rain fell harder. The wind howled, but Kazhak’s clever arrangement of branches held the tent firm.
Epona was acutely aware of the man; he seemed now to fill her world to its edges. She did not know how she felt about him. He had, indeed, spared her the life of a drui, but what sort of life would she have instead?
Kazhak was like no one she knew. Underneath his superficially jovial attitude, he was capable of a brooding melancholy and a swift, savage temper. She had seen him sit without moving on his horse for half a day at a time, his face closed and cold, his dark eyes lurking deep in their sockets like cunning predators. He could shut his spirit away and keep it selfishly hidden, giving nothing, so that even as she rode behind him with her hands on his body he felt wooden to the touch.
But now, in the little tent, he was neither wooden nor remote. He was big—bigger than she had realized—and warm; flesh and blood. He asked her, “You warm now?” in a tone of genuine concern.
“Yes, your spirit is generous.”
He did not understand her thanks. “Spirit? Is no spirit. Is body. Your body warm, Kazhak’s body warm. Man needs brother to make warm when rain is cold.”
Brother? she thought, surprised.
“I am not your brother,” she said.
Kazhak replied, in a voice so low she could hardly hear it above the storm, though his mouth was close to her ear, “You look in Kazhak’s eyes, Kazhak look in your eyes. Feel something. Only brothers share eye-bond. Brothers. Friends. Is what you call sacred.” He shifted his weight uneasily. “You … Kazhak no understand,” he said, and she could hear the bewilderment in his voice.
Epona felt sorry for this plainly baffled man who seemed so upset by the very normal occurrence of having his spirit make contact with another spirit. “Among my people,” she told him, “men and women often meet eyes and feel something.”
“But woman cannot be brother,” he said, stubbornly repeating the one thing of which he was certain.
“I am a woman in thislife,” she answered, “but I can also be your friend if you will let me. I left all my friends in the Blue Mountains.”
Kazhak wanted to get back to areas he understood. Let this person be a woman only; the emotional requirements of women were simple, almost beneath consideration. “You not need friends,” he told her abruptly, bringing the conversation to a close. “You will have other women if you want talk.”
Without further discussion he rolled over on top of her.
Chapter 16
Epona had thought she knew what to expect. All her life she had seen people coupling, animals coupling. It was a simple act with variations of position and duration but no more complicated than eating or drinking.
Or so she believed.
Kazhak was heavy and insistent, but he was not rough. He did not attempt to cause pain. His hands moved over her body with the confidence of a man used to women, and at the same time he employed a certain spirit of exploration, the excitement of an adventurer into unfamiliar territory. This was a woman of the Kelti, long legged, milky skinned, with firm muscles where women of his own race were soft as overripe fruit. When he put his hand between her legs to spread them apart he felt the strong thighs and paused, enjoying their strangeness.
His fingers were rough and calloused, but Epona discovered it was exciting to feel them moving so delicately, so close to her inner self. Kazhak was gentler than the priest had been at her woman-making. He handled her as a stockman handles a calf still wobbly and fragile with newness.
His body pinned hers to the earth, but he was not forcibly holding her down, merely cushioning himself on her softness. His breathing grew heavier. The limited space within the tent grew hotter.
Epona had never realized the pressure of another human body on her own could feel so good. She wanted to get even closer to him but there was no way to get closer, their bodies were already touching throughout their length.
No, there was one way to be closer. And Kazhak was ready.
He entered her suddenly, a deft plunge that startled her because his penis was so much larger than she had anticipated. There was a moment of discomfort as her body adjusted itself to the unfamiliar sensation, but as the gutuiters had promised, there was no pain. Instead there was an aching that became increasingly pleasurable, an ache that mounted in intensity as Kazhak’s hips moved against hers, an ache like a hungry belly demanding to be fed and tantalized by the approaching feast.
She began to move with him.
Bedsports.
Kazhak, accustomed to the passive response of his women on the Sea of Grass, almost stopped moving. “You all right?” he whispered, fearing she might be having some sort of seizure.
“Yes,” she answered, thrusting harder against him. Do not stop now, she begged him in her mind. Not now!
He did not stop. Together they moved closer and closer to …
And there it was. She felt it convulse him and she could almost share the sensation sweeping through his body, flooding residually into hers with warmth and pleasure. Aaahhh …
The second time would be better. That was the wisdom the matrons shared around the lodgefires. The first time might be awkward, but the second time would definitely be better.
Rigantona had been right; there was no way of understanding without personal experience.
Epona smiled to herself in the darkness, thinking forward to the second time.
The storm blew over them and was gone. Kazhak squirmed out of the shelter, adjusting his clothing as he went. Epona lay in a tumble of incompletion, her body longing for his return, but then she heard his sharp command and a moment later he began dismantling the tent.
“Storm gone, we ride,” he said brusquely. Whatever had happened between them was over as far as the Scythian was concerned. Motion was the imperative; they must continue eastward.
Motion was also the way to handle the troubling feelings Kazhak had not experienced before. This woman, this Kelti, was not like women he knew; she was trouble, as he had halfway suspected from the beginning. He had only intended to take a quick pleasure from her while they outwaited the storm, but the unexpected tenderness that welled up in him left him confused and annoyed with himself. Feelings like that could make a man weak. It really might be wise to sell her as a slave, if they met traders along the way who expressed an interest.
That night Epona looked up to find Kazhak staring at her across the campfire. He said nothing to her, nor did he drop his eyes. They were filled with the light of the fire.
He did not stand first watch that night. Aksinya paced the perimeter of the encampment, his hand close to his sword hilt when the distant howling of wolves drifted to him on the wind, and Kazhak lay with Epona, their heads pillowed together on the neck of the gray stallion.
They lay together but nothing more happened. She enjoyed his warmth and the strength of his arms around her, but it was his body inside hers she craved, and he seemed to be thinking of something else. Disappointed, she squirmed against him, and he responded by whispering in her ear, “You see him?”
“Who?” She glanced around, seeing only the bulk of the gray horse and the tiny red eyes of the dying fire beyond which Basl and Dasadas lay sleeping with their mounts.
“Someone watches us,” Kazhak answered in a hushed voice.
“I don’t see anybody.”
“Is there. Kazhak feel. Skin on neck tell Kazhak. Touch, here.” He took her hand and held her fingers against the back of his neck, under the hair. She could feel the rising hackles of the skin.
“Someone watches,” the Scythian repeated.
His tone made Epona apprehensive. Aksinya paced by them, looking out into the night, and Kazhak said something to him and got up. Both men took the watch together, and when they tired Basl and Dasadas were awakene
d to take their places.
But they saw no one; heard nothing but a wolf howling, far off.
In the morning they rode again across the broad plain.
The mountains were behind them now, though in response to a question of Epona’s Kazhak explained they would eventually have to cross another mountain range, the last that separated them from the Sea of Grass. They had turned away from the Duna, which flowed due south in this region, and were approaching another river, which Kazhak called the Tisa.
The land was dotted with farmsteads, but the Scythians staged no raids on them. Some of these places looked as if they had suffered too many raids already; others, though prosperous, were too well equipped with men of fighting age to tempt a band of only four warriors. The Scythians rode by peaceably and the inhabitants watched them with wary eyes.
Epona looked with interest at these new folk. They were not wealthy by the standards of the Kelti; they usually wore undyed wool and seemed to have little jewelry. The men did sport brightly colored sashes, and many of the women wore shawls of the same material pulled over their heads.
They were a well-nourished people; the land around them, the good farmland the Scythians held in contempt, was generous. In addition to their varied crops, Epona noticed that they built wooden hurdles to pen their sheep; small sheep, lacking the deep wool of mountain stock. They had cattle as well, leggier than Kelti oxen, and shaggy dark dogs that ran out to bark furious challenges at the Scythian horses. Epona saw one woman tending a flock of fat and flightless birds who bobbed around her feet, pecking at the grain she threw them. Such birds would not require a spear to capture them for the pot; such birds would be welcomed in the village of the Kelti, Epona thought to herself.
Several times she noticed huge haystacks, like thatched lodges, and speculated about the amount of fodder this land produced. It would feed many animals, animals that could be raised close to home instead of hunted. Kernunnos would resist such an idea.
Do not think of Kernunnos, warned the spirit within.
The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn) Page 23