The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn)

by Llywelyn, Morgan

  Epona had difficulty understanding that everyone and everything belonged to one man, and that the others accepted this. Once it was clear to her, she appreciated the depth of Kazhak’s resentment of the shamans. But she never thought of herself as belonging to the han.

  With the change of seasons her way of living would change, and she was eager to learn what to expect once the tribe scattered in search of summer pastures. She tried questioning Ro-An and Talia, but their answers frustrated her. They would tell her the bare facts only, uncolored by opinion or emotion. She could not tell if they preferred the winter camp or the summer wandering: she could not base her own anticipation upon any feelings they displayed, for they displayed none.

  This was still another aspect of Scythian nature that baffled the Kelt. A nomad woman’s reaction to things that happened to her personally or within the community was one of studied indifference. Nothing appeared to please or displease her; nothing excited her. If Epona asked one of the other women her feelings about some matter, the reply was always, “It makes no difference.” If asked her opinion, a Scythian woman said, “Ro-An (or Ari-Ki, or Gala) does not know.” If pressed further she elaborated by adding, “Ro-An does not care.”

  “Whatever you want,” was the nearest expression the women made of a personal preference, so Epona took them at their word and did as she pleased within the narrow limits of their shared society. But the overriding apathy irritated her. The Scythian women suffered life to happen to them; aside from their infighting for a husband’s favor, they took no active part in shaping the pattern of their own lives. They were willingly passive, allowing the restriction of their lives without protest. Like water running from the mountains, they took the easiest way.

  Epona came to hate that phrase, “Whatever you want.” It goaded her as a herder’s switch goaded the animals. “What do you want?” she demanded to know more than once, but the women merely stared at her with blank eyes.

  They are as dull as sheep, she thought. Duller, for even a sheep will select a choice tuft of grass for itself. These women pretend that nothing in life matters to them. It must be pretense, for who could really be so uncaring? Everything in this life matters.

  Her own caring burned within her like a flame.

  Before the nomads dispersed, they celebrated the great festival of the sun, the sacrifice to Tabiti, which they held each year to entreat the sun to return to northern skies.

  When Epona was reminded that all women were excluded from the ceremony, she and Kazhak had yet another quarrel.

  “Tabiti is a principal god of the Scythians; of Scythian men and of Scythian women,” she argued. “So why are women not allowed to take part in the sacrifice?”

  “Women are not needed. They have no influence.”

  “You want my influence to counteract that of the shamans,” she reminded Kazhak. “So obviously you think I have some power with the spirits. Yet I will not be allowed to attend the ritual?”

  “Is so. You are woman.”

  “But I am your wife, Kazhak! Does that not give me some status within the tribe, some special rights?”

  Kazhak scowled. This matter of words seemed very important to the people of the Kelti; each word had its own subtle meaning, and he realized he had made a mistake in letting Epona use the wrong one for so long. “You are Kazhak’s woman,” he said in a belated attempt to clarify the situation. “Not wife. Only a woman of Scythian blood can be wife to a Scythian.”

  “But I will bear your children! What about them?”

  “Kazhak’s children will be Scythian,” he assured her. It would be pleasant if this woman did not argue so much, but Kazhak knew Epona well enough by now to realize this was a futile wish. Her cheeks were already flaming with anger.

  “You were the first man to enter my body,” she said. “By the laws of my people, that makes me your wife, and part of your tribe. So I am Scythian.”

  “Is not so. Can never be. You were not born to people of the horse so you are outsider. Outsiders are different, can never be Scythian.”

  “Your word for outsider is the same as your word for enemy!” Epona pointed out.

  “Outsider is enemy. When outsider meets Scyth, there is war. Has always been. Must always be so.”

  Epona could not accept the inevitability of that statement. “Why, Kazhak? The Kelti live in peace and do business with many outsiders, those not of our own people. We do not hate them because they are different. Trees and animals are different, too, but we get along with them, so why should we consider men of other races, who are so much more like us than trees and animals, to be our enemies?”

  “Outsiders hated us first,” Kazhak replied, and there were millennia of bitter warfare in his voice. “Once, grandfathers of our grandfathers lived many days to the east, raised livestock. Then Tabiti grew angry, scorched the land. Grass became sand and blew away. Where to go, what to do? Scythians moved west, seeking new pasture, but people on new land would not let us graze. Animals were starving. We must fight or die, so learned to fight. To survive better than all others. Soon we held all new land. We had bigger, fatter, healthier herds; our defeated enemies went somewhere else.

  “Then more drought, sickness; we move again. New people resist us. We fight, win, drive them away. They become outsiders, hate us, but man must eat, is it so? Children are born, the tribe gets larger, there must be food, space. We must survive. We take what we need, what else can we do? But all others hate us, try to harm us. They are our enemies, not to be trusted. Outsiders.”

  “Then I am an outsider,” she said.

  Kazhak would not meet her eyes. “Yes. Is so.”

  “But your people and mine are not at war.”

  “Not today. But your people are wealthy, they have many things my people need. Someday, when there is no more good grass here, we will bring herds west, into valley of the Duna and beyond, even to land of your people. We will leave herds in the lowlands and bring armies into the mountains. We will take your gold, your iron, your heads.”

  “My people are mighty warriors! We will never let you into our mountains!”

  “Mighty warriors die. All men die. Like grass, like even strong horses, all men die. We know how to kill,” he reminded her.

  “You are defying the great fire of life,” she argued. “You accept no one else’s right to live; you try to extinguish sparks that are part of yourself.”

  Kazhak nodded stubbornly, refusing to understand. He was like a horse that would not be led, but planted its feet, and insisted on its own way or nothing. “We take what we need.”

  She could have wept with frustration, but she had not allowed herself to weep since she first thought of herself as Scythian. The Kelti wept easily, over the many things that touched the spirit within, but she had observed the nomads to weep only over the death of a brother. To be Scythian, she had learned to dry her well of tears.

  But she was not Scythian. She was not even a wife.

  You are Kelti, said the spirit within.

  Yes! she responded silently, with sudden fierce joy. I will be of the Kelti forever!

  She turned a cold, set face toward Kazhak. “If you ever attack my people you will regret it,” she told him through clenched teeth. “Even the smallest of our girl children is trained in the skills of combat. No one who knows us dares war on us anymore. I promise you, Scythian: If you ever try to drive us from our land the Kelti will drown you in your own blood!” She threw back her head and glared at him, defying him and all his kind, the spirit of her people fully awake within her.

  Kazhak’s eyes locked with hers. Not as brother to brother, but as warrior to warrior, over swords.

  “We will bury you,” he said at last.

  He had not meant to say those words, not to that woman. But they had shaped themselves inevitably in his mouth. It had always been so; it would always be so. Peace was an illusion, like a trick shamans performed. It was not, could not be, peace that kept the people of the Kelti so prosperous in
their steep mountains. No! Epona had said the words herself: They were skilled warriors and none dared stand against them. That was their secret; that, and the magic they could do.

  The magic … he had not meant to alienate Epona; that was the last thing he wanted. Too late, he tried to make amends, but his words were clumsy and his gestures futile. She wrapped herself in hauteur and turned her back on him, unwilling to talk further.

  “Kazhak will bring the brown gelding for you, from the herd,” the Scythian promised. “In the morning. Epona can ride. Go anywhere.” He smiled hopefully, but she would not answer or even look at him.

  Trouble, nothing but trouble; women were always trouble if you let them get close to you … how had this one gotten so close to him? Was that Kelti magic, too? Was he bewitched? Should he go to the shamans for a spell to fight off demons?

  Kazhak shook his head in baffled rage. That was how the shamans fastened on to a person like leeches in a swamp, never to let go. The cure was as bad as the sickness. Epona was meant to be a weapon against the shamans, not the other way around … everything got so confused when the Kelti were involved. But he must not make an enemy of her, that would be a dangerous mistake. She could hurt him …

  She could shut herself away from him, that spirit within could hide itself and never again smile out of her eyes at him. Then Kazhak would be alone, as truly and deeply alone as he had been before he met Epona. At one time he had not minded; he had not known he was lonely.

  But now he knew. Without her, he would be as desolate as winter twilight on the Sea of Grass.

  He tried to talk to her, to change the words somehow, but he could not. They were true words and a man could not unmake the truth. Everything he said seemed to make matters worse. At last, defeated, he left the tent.

  When he was gone, Epona turned around and looked at the place where he had stood. The Kelt will outlast the Scyth, Kazhak, she said to him in her mind. You will not bury us.

  In the morning she found the brown gelding hobbled beside her tent, a new saddle on his back, brilliant with red horsehair tassels and leather medallions depicting predator animals clawing and devouring their prey.

  Epona did not even look around to see if Kazhak was watching. She unhobbled the horse and mounted quickly, hungry for his back and the open plains.

  The dying winter had left the steppe a sea of mud. In the distance she saw the herders already busy among the sprawling mass of horses and cattle, sheep and goats, that stretched almost to the horizon. The stock must be divided into smaller, more manageable bands, and before the tribe left the winter gathering place these bands would be assigned to various men and their families.

  Each man with wives and wagons was expected to take his share of the animals and care for it throughout the spring and summer, to be returned in improved condition to Kolaxais at the winter ingathering. The herders could trade animals for better animals; they could enlarge their bands through theft and raiding; they could eat the meat of the cattle, drink the milk of the mares, weave the wool of the sheep and goats. But every animal belonged ultimately to the han and must be accounted for to him. Every newborn must be marked with the prince’s mark and brought back in the autumn for his eyes to see, so he would know the extent of his wealth.

  A man who did not bring back more animals than he took was given a reduced allotment the next season, so that poverty grew as his herd shrank. A man with few horses, or no sheep, could not support many wives, could not have many children. Could not be counted as much of a man.

  If a group of warriors set out, as Kazhak and his men had done, to scout for new pastures or seize new treasure to enrich the prince and win his favor, they appointed brothers to care for their allotment of livestock while they were gone, and to guard the women in their wagons. Some of the Scythians had been responsible for other men’s wagons for years, the owners having gone off to fight as mercenaries for the Assyrians and never returned. Those who stayed behind sent their women to feed the widows, and counted the children among their own children, and they were assigned enough animals by the prince to support all the mouths they had to feed. For them, there could be fat on the belly and meat in the pot.

  If a man betrayed his trust with his brother’s livestock or women he was outcast, sent from the sight of the prince forever, all that he was allowed being one horse and his gorytus. Such men formed small bands of their own, ranging the steppe, living by theft and stealth, dangerous to all whom they met.

  “Dasadas will ride with them someday,” Kazhak had once confided to Epona. “He watches you, watches you, all the time. Day will come when Kazhak will announce Dasadas is no longer his brother.”

  Epona had been equally aware of the eyes of Dasadas, following her around the encampment, but she had paid no attention. Kazhak was her man; as long as he satisfied her it would have been dishonorable, by the laws of the Kelti, to look at any other.

  But on this muddy morning she was not satisfied with Kazhak. Instead of temporary anger, flaring up like a spark and dying away in his arms, she felt a cold and permanent rage, like a stone in her belly. Kazhak had betrayed her, he had never intended to make her part of his tribe. She was just a useful possession.

  And she would not be possessed.

  As she rode away from the encampment, letting her body refamiliarize itself with the movements of the horse, the shifts of weight and balance necessary for riding, she caught sight of another lone rider also setting out from the huddle of wagons. She squinted her eyes against the sun.

  The solitary rider was Dasadas.

  At Epona’s signal the brown gelding broke into a trot, lifting his knees high to pull his feet out of the sticky mud. Epona remembered a fold in the land some distance from the encampment, an undulation of the earth containing a longdry streambed. A few stunted, dead trees were there, and before winter she had ridden to that place to practice with bow and arrow, out of sight of the Scythians who might have laughed at her clumsiness.

  Today she yearned to be out of sight of the Scythians again. She headed for the dry streambed, and Dasadas reined his own horse in the same general direction.

  She knew it, but she did not care.

  I do not belong to you, Kazhak, she said silently, clenching her jaw, pushing the horse to go faster.

  The streambed was not dry now; a thin trickle of melted ice lay at its bottom, and one of the trees might not be dead. Two or three tiny green leaves were struggling for life on a topmost branch.

  Epona sat on the horse, looking up at that unequal struggle, the weak leaves against the wind and the sun and the barren earth. She got off her horse and knelt at the base of the tree, fumbling with the brooch that held her bearskin cloak. She used the point of the brooch-pin to scratch her wrist, and dripped a few tiny droplets of blood onto the tree roots, whispering an invocation.

  “What you do?” a voice challenged.

  “Offering a sacrifice so this tree will live,” she answered. She did not look over her shoulder, but she was aware that Dasadas had dismounted and was standing behind her. She could smell his body, a different smell from that of Kazhak; more acid, more bitter.

  “Can you make tree live?”

  “I can help.” She completed the sacrifice and stood up, rubbing her arm. “If the spirits wish; if they accept my offering.”

  “Why you care?” Dasadas stepped in front of her so she had to look at him. He was thinner than she remembered, his flesh burned by the intensity of the spirit within until it had melted from his bones, leaving his face as sculptured as an Ionian figurine.

  “I have an obligation to life,” she told him, knowing he would not understand.

  “Would you …” Dasadas hesitated, licking his lips. Beautifully shaped lips, Epona thought to herself, looking at them for the first time. There were those who would have said Dasadas was a beautiful young man.

  “Would you … teach Dasadas your magic?” the Scythian asked hesitantly.

  Epona stared at him. “You have
to be born with the gift,” she said. “I cannot make you drui. If you have a talent, you can be taught how to use it, that is all.”

  “You will not teach?” He looked like a disappointed child. “Dasadas give you something in return, if you teach. Dasadas best archer of all Royal Scyths. Dasadas show you how make bow, arrows, kill anything. Is trade?”

  The druii could be born anywhere, among any people; so it was taught. Perhaps this Dasadas did have the gift. If the link had been broken between herself and Kazhak, perhaps this young man who stood before her, trembling with some strange passion, would be a friend to her spirit.

  Who cared for the stupid laws of Kolaxais and the shamans?

  Epona smiled at Dasadas, a wide, reckless smile, white teeth framed by chapped red lips. “Teach me to use the bow first,” she said. “Then we will see about the magic.”

  Dasadas agreed without hesitation. He would have agreed to anything to be close to the yellow-haired woman, to hear her voice, to feel the excitement that coursed through him only when he was in her presence. The magic. The magic!

  They hobbled the horses and sat on the ground together, and Dasadas explained about the bow as he would have explained to a son of his. The only way to become a great archer was to know every aspect of the bow as well as you knew the veins and hairs on the backs of your hands. Dasadas began by telling Epona how the bow was manufactured, that she might know its most intimate secrets. She. had learned the Scythian language very well, for an outsider; it was not as difficult to explain to her as he would have thought, and her mind grasped a concept as quickly as a man’s.