“No matter if you are starving; if you die. You must not let other man touch you. Is word of Kolaxais.”
“Why should Dasadas be punished for a generous gesture just because of the word of a sick old man? Kolaxais cannot enforce such rules. I was in his tent, remember? The only strength I felt there was not his, but the strength of the shamans.”
Kazhak bowed his head in sadness. “Is so, what you say,” he told her in a subdued voice. “When Kazhak was young, Kolaxais was very strong, a mighty han, made many good rules for the welfare of the tribe. Rules like one which forbids man to lay hands on woman who lives in another man’s tent. But now Kolaxais is sick and weak; the rules he makes now are shamans’ rules. There is saying on Sea of Grass: ‘If horses get sick, dogs get fat. If man gets sick, shamans get fat.’ Is so. Shamans get fat and Kolaxais fades away. The heart is dying in our tribe. Shamans make all rules now. There has been no magic to fight them.”
“Is that the only reason you brought me here?” Epona asked, horrified at the implications. “You think I can fight the shamans for you?”
“Is not only reason,” Kazhak answered, truthfully. “But your people, you, can do very strong magic. Kazhak has seen.”
Once more her talents were being demanded for the tribe, and not even the Kelti, this time, but these nomads on their windswept alien plain. She had fled to avoid devoting her life to the spirits. It did not seem fair that Kazhak ask that of her now. If she gave him what he wanted—and she did not believe she could, she was not equipped to duel with shamans! —there would be no end to it. On and on, for all of this life, she would crouch over fires and mutter incantations and exhaust her spirit in the service of others, with no life of her own.
“You have made a mistake, Kazhak,” she told him. “If you mean to pit my powers against the shamans you will be disappointed, for I can do nothing.”
“You cured horse. Dasadas said right; horse would have been dead.”
“Perhaps, but that is the only gift I have, and I did not even know I had that one until the spirit within the horse cried out to me. I am drui, but I am not trained, I have not learned the …”
“Tell Kazhak again, what is drui?” he interrupted.
“People who you would say work magic, but I think it is not the kind of magic your shamans practice. The druii have learned to understand how things are kept in balance in thisworld through our dealings with the otherworlds, and they tell us how to live in harmony with the earth mother so we are benefited and not deprived in thislife. Everything the druii do is for a purpose and fits into the pattern.” She listened to herself defending the pattern and was keenly aware of the irony.
“And you are drui,” Kazhak insisted.
“Yes, I seem to be, but I left the Blue Mountains before I could be trained.”
“You ran away,” he reminded her with dawning understanding. “You did not want training.”
“That is true,” she admitted. “I have no desire to work magic.”
“You would fight, die for Kazhak, but not work magic for Kazhak?” He sounded puzzled. He could find no way to coerce the woman into agreeing to the plan that had revealed itself so dazzlingly to him the day she cured the Thracian horse. He had seen it with all the clarity of a dream just before dawn: Epona doing magic that would put the shamans to shame, and Kolaxais coming out of his stupor, thanking Kazhak for bringing this magic person to the tribe, becoming once more the strong leader he had been in his prime.
And there would have been rewards for Kazhak, someday. The other sons of Kolaxais would have torn their hair and gnashed their teeth, but the wagons and women and horses of the great prince would have eventually belonged to his favorite son, Kazhak, who rode west.
Why would Epona not cooperate? How could he force a magic person to do magic?
“The shamans plan to question you,” he told her. “They ask many questions of Kazhak: What can you do, what do you know? You must show them something to convince them Kazhak told truth, brought back treasure in you. Otherwise, Kazhak is disgraced.”
“You brought back the swords,” Epona reminded him.
“Wonderful swords,” he agreed, “but not enough to replace what Kazhak lost—horses, brothers. Trip was not successful enough, then Kazhak made matters worse by angering shamans. They may decide to punish Kazhak; may issue order through mouth of Kolaxais.”
“What kind of punishment?”
Kazhak’s voice sunk low in his chest, a deep rumbling like that of a bear rubbing itself against a pine tree, grumbling. “For a prince’s son? Kazhak would be buried in earth up to his neck, other horse men would ride toward him, galloping. Lean down out of saddle, swing leather thongs. Tear off Kazhak’s head.” He gazed morosely into the shadows.
Epona swallowed, hard. The spirits seemed to be maneuvering her into a trap from which there was no escape. Yet she knew of nothing within her abilities that would impress the shamans sufficiently to prove the truth behind Kazhak’s claims. She could not materialize a dying horse out of the air and then save it on order. This man—this gruff, maddening, sometimes tender man, her husband, her responsibility—might die because of her failure. “When will the shamans question me?” she asked.
“Who can say? Shamans always want to smoke hemp, roll bones, dance. Everything they do requires much muttering, waving of hands, long time before anything happens. Probably long time before they send for you.”
Kazhak’s words and tone told her he did not believe all of the shamans’ ritual was necessary; at some point he had begun to suspect it was mainly for show, to impress and intimidate. Epona, familiar with druii magic where everything was done for a purpose, tended to agree with him. In the tent of Kolaxais she had not felt that the shamans were accomplishing anything other than continually emphasizing their presence.
But then, she was untrained; what did she truly know of magic? What questions might they ask her, and how could she answer?
Be quiet and listen, commanded the spirit within. I will tell you how to live thislife.
Kazhak saw a slight smile tug at the corners of her mouth and felt reassured. He had done a wise thing in bringing her here; she would not let him down.
“My brothers hunt often; Kazhak will see that you have much food, best food, not get hungry again, is it so?” he promised. “Kazhak’s wives cook every day for you, from now on.”
“Why can’t I cook for myself? And why can’t I stay in your tent, if you have a larger one than this?”
Kazhak’s pleasant expression faded. Epona might help him, but it was obvious she would also continue to complicate things.
“No woman stays in man’s personal tent,” he said brusquely. “Is never done. Besides, even Kazhak does not always sleep there. Kazhak thinks man should sleep in open, under stars, unless weather is too cold, too much wind and ice. Sleeping inside felt walls makes man weak; it has weakened Kolaxais. Kazhak puts his women in nice tents, very good, then Kazhak sleeps with horse. Or in tent by himself if weather is bad. Is best way, is it so?”
“That is a very bad way to live, with men and women kept apart,” Epona protested.
“No no, is right. Men and women cannot live together without trouble.”
“In the Blue Mountains …” she began.
“This is Sea of Grass,” he interrupted, and she bit off her words and regarded him silently, but without capitulation. “As for cooking,” Kazhak continued, “you are person of power, should not be seen cooking. Shamans have no respect for ordinary woman, must see from start that you are not ordinary.” He flashed his sudden grin. “Is true, Epona. You are not like other women.”
“If I am not to be treated like other women then why can’t I live in your tent?”
“Aaannh!” Kazhak threw up his hands. This was why men and women must live apart: to avoid such questions, such arguments. How could he take this female into his tent, his private place, for himself to rest in and entertain his brothers, and open himself up to her way of thinking
and her questions?
“Because is not possible!” he thundered, turning on his heel and striding from the tent, anxious to get outside, to his horse. Epona watched through the entrance flap as he saddled the gray stallion and vaulted gracefully onto its back. He was Kazhak; he preferred being on top a fine, fast horse to being anyplace else. Secure in his saddle at last, he rode around the camp, issuing orders at the wagons of his women, and soon Ro-An hurried toward Kazhak’s tent to collect the leavings of his dawn meal and bring them to Epona.
At her insistence, Ro-An stayed to keep her company while she ate, and Epona questioned her about Kazhak’s other women, and his children. Ro-An’s answers were punctuated with giggles, and sometimes the two women could not understand one another at all, when some word eluded them or some concept familiar to one was beyond the grasp of the other. But Epona listened, and learned.
She learned that the children had no training, and ran wild like animals, free to imitate their elders or not as they saw fit. They were given whatever they wanted and otherwise ignored, once they were old enough to leave their mothers’ tents. No bard taught them history, no skilled young woman with fast reflexes taught them to use knife and javelin. Kazhak’s four women had nine children among them—nine, a good symmetrical number—and five more had died. Ro-An as yet had not conceived, and now that Epona had joined the Scythians, she did not expect to bear a child for quite some time.
“Kazhak will use you most,” she told Epona. “He is like that, very odd. When he gets new woman he goes to her only for long time, does not share himself like some other men.”
“Have you had other men?”
Ro-An emitted a little shriek of horror. “No! Would be strangled and body thrown out for vultures, not even buried. Woman must look at no man but husband, ever.”
“Yet the men have more than one woman,” Epona pointed out.
“They are men.” Ro-An seemed to think this was a sufficient reason, but Epona did not. She saw it as yet another example of the asymmetric quality of nomadic life.
When Ro-An left her to go about her own duties, Epona tried to find some way to fill the day that yawned as wide and empty as the Sea of Grass. At last she saddled the brown gelding and rode out alone, aware of eyes watching her from behind tent flaps. She took Basl’s gorytus containing his bow and arrows and amused herself for a long time by experimenting with the weapon, shooting at clumps of grass, dismounting to reclaim her arrows and try another shot. She quickly discovered that the curved bow required a skill she did not possess.
But it was something to do. In the days to come it became almost her only occupation, for want of any other.
Ro-An brought her food and tended to her domestic needs. Kazhak came to her at night, but after lying with her he invariably left the tent and slept alone nearby, under the stars, until bad weather drove him inside his own shelter. Though she expected it every day, the shamans did not send for her. They left her alone to worry and wait.
Epona tried to establish communication with some of the other women, because she was starved for conversation. She soon realized they resented her, not because she was a foreign woman, as the men often brought back foreign women, but because she was a woman so outside their own experience. And also because she had unwittingly dispossessed Kazhak’s senior wife, Talia, a plump, graceful person who must have been beautiful in the brief youth of the steppes.
Feeling the currents that swirled around her, Epona questioned Ro-An about making friends with the other women. She longed for the friendships she had left in the Blue Mountains. But Ro-An did not seem to understand what she was talking about.
“Women cannot be friends with other women,” the Scythian said. “Each one wants to be husband’s favorite, competes with the others, plots to win favor for her sons, tries to make other women look bad. If a woman is not a senior wife, or a favorite, she is nothing. Woman cannot afford to make friends who will learn her secrets, her weaknesses, use them against her.”
So it was that Epona learned that life in the Scythian tents was a sort of warfare by itself, with intrigue and skirmishes, uncelebrated victories and unadmitted defeats. Rigantona and Sirona might have understood and even enjoyed it. Epona did not.
She tried stubbornly to befriend the other women, starting with Kazhak’s senior wife. From her own small collection of belongings she took the copper bracelet that had marked her entrance to womanhood and sent it to Talia. For several days there was no response, then one morning Ro-An came to her carrying a fur cap with ear flaps, the gift of Talia.
She was occasionally invited to the cooking fires after that, though no one actually allowed her to prepare food, and she was aware of an unremitting reserve on the part of the women around her. However, they did talk to her, and she was able to work at enlarging her vocabulary. Talia’s grudging recognition of her did not extend so far as an invitation to join the gossiping senior wives in their beaded boots, but Epona did not mind. She suspected they had little to say that she would care to hear.
She was more interested in learning about the everyday lives of her new people, and in hearing the whispered stories about the savages who lived at the fringes of their world.
Her grasp of the language improved daily. She knew arima to mean one; spou, eye; pata, to kill; and so she easily understood when one of the women spoke of her forefathers having killed many men of the one-eyed race, the Arimaspi. From oior, meaning man, and pata, she recognized the Scythian name for a race of Mankillers, a race purportedly of women, incredible though that sounded, female warriors who lived somewhere at the fringes of the Sea of Grass and captured men for procreation and slavery.
Some of the Scythian wives admitted to having suspected Epona to be one of these Mankillers, at first. She laughed with delight and assured them that she was not.
The Scythian word for the shortsword was akinakes, spoken with affection, and the bronze battle axe, one of the earliest weapons of the horse people, was known as the balta. Man. Death. Weapon. These were primary words in the Scythian language.
Epona listened and learned. Much of what she encountered was difficult to understand and harder still to accept, but she tried. These were her people, now; she must find a way to fit in.
You cannot fit into a way of life you will never accept, commented the voice within.
And there was much she could not yet accept.
The man of each family advertised his prowess in battle by arranging his trophy heads on poles around his tent, or hanging their scalps on his horse’s bridle. Epona watched one day as a young Scythian calmly peeled the flesh from a human head he had brought into the encampment, using a rib bone as a scraper, then rubbed the scalp back and forth between his hands until it was as clean and hairless as a piece of bleached linen. When he was satisfied with its condition, he tucked the scalp into his belt for utility use, like a napkin.
Men of a neighbor tribe rode into camp sporting cloaks of similar material; many human scalps patiently stitched together. The men seemed very proud of these and stroked them as they sat on their horses, conversing.
Frequent driving rains had begun to force men to seek their tents at night, and many, Kazhak among them, invited their favorite horses into the tent with them. But their women were given no similar invitation. Once Epona saw a man lash out with his foot and kick his wife for no reason as the woman staggered past him, laboring under a massive load of felt rugs and wood strips she meant to bind together for his tent. When the woman fell, her burdens scattering widely around her, her husband turned away without offering to help. He had already lost interest in the momentary amusement.
Yet Epona saw much that she admired about the nomads. Their dedication to their livestock was unstinting and their own tenacious hold on survival demanded respect. They had developed ingenious techniques for dealing with their harsh climate: nearly impenetrable layers of clothing, woven windscreens to break the force of the gale, evolved abilities to go for long periods with little suste
nance.
The women created a feast for the eyes from simple scraps of felt and threads of eastern silk, embroidering a fanciful variety of real and imaginary animals with which to color the dull monotony of their lives. The curving dynamic lines of the style appealed to the Kelt in Epona; the representations of animals, so different from the abstractions favored by her own people, touched the spirit within.
Scythian music unlike any she had heard, lanced through the body and gripped the inner being. It sang with joy and sobbed with sorrow, and when the men danced to it, as they often did, their dance was energetic enough to race the spectators hearts.
This was a people equally capable of warmth and of cruelty and scarcely differentiating between the two. The men alternated between displays of warriorlike aggressiveness and intense brotherly affection for one another. The women appeared, superficially, to be much more placid; yet from the beginning Epona suspected this was a mold they had been forced into long ago by the circumstances of their lives—a mold that did not reflect the true shape of the spirit within.
This was a proud people, meeting the challenges of life bravely, loving beauty … and not so different from the Kelti, Epona decided, as she got to know them. Language and customs separated them, and their natures had been twisted into different shapes by the lands that bred them, but the spirits within were akin.
The last thunderstorms of the year marked the peak of autumn on the steppe with a savage attack of hail and starfire; days following days beneath rolling black clouds and wild weather. When the season passed, the air seemed unnaturally still, as if the earth mother held her breath in anticipation of something worse.
There were no druii on the Sea of Grass to keep count of the nights for Epona, or remind her of the dying of the year. Even if she had not seen the light change or felt the cold gathering, she would have known. Her bones, and something older than her bones, kept track of Kelti time.
The feast of Samhain was almost upon them. The Scythians were unfamiliar with the great festivals with which Epona’s people marked the change of seasons, and the nomads did not observe the onset of winter as the beginning of a new year. They also seemed unaware that on the pivotal night of Samhain eve the barriers between thisworld and the otherworlds were at their lowest. Spirits could walk freely through the land of the living at the end of each cycle of seasons.
The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn) Page 32