Epona involuntarily looked westward. The rays of the setting sun reached out toward her: imploring hands, made of golden light.
“You will help,” Kazhak said. “Come.”
He led the way to the edge of the herd, where the pregnant mare lay on the earth. The other horses had drawn back to give her space, though the gray stallion paced back and forth where he could keep an eye on her, establishing that this was his place and his mare. A mare due to foal often tried to leave the herd and give birth in some hidden spot, but the herders had been careful to avoid having that happen with this mare, whose deliverance of the first healthy, living foal of the season was considered a very necessary example for the other pregnant mares.
The mare made no effort to resist as they knelt beside her and examined her. It was evident from her sunken eyes and heaving flanks that she had been in labor a long time, and now her strength was gone but the foal was still unborn.
The men looked at Epona expectantly. She put her arms around the mare’s neck and waited to feel something, but nothing happened. Nothing at all. In constant pain, the mare sweated within the woman’s embrace but got no closer to giving birth. Epona closed her eyes and concentrated, reaching out, and still nothing happened.
The mare groaned softly. Dasadas swore under his breath.
Epona looked up at Kazhak. “I don’t know what to do to help her,” she said.
“Help her like you helped Thracian mare.”
“That was different. I can’t explain how, but I can feel; it is very different now. What I did then will not work for this horse. I cannot draw the foal out of her body with my body, or my magic.”
Her own eyes were filled with pain at having to say those words. In addition to feeling the mare’s suffering, she was suffering from her inability to help. It wrung her heart to crouch there in the twilight, feeling two lives slip away.
She tried again, with all the strength she possessed, her lips shaping the prayers, her whole spirit reaching out with desperate urgency.
The mare grunted and found a little additional strength, somewhere.
“Aksinya, put cloths over her to keep her warm,” Epona ordered, and Aksinya hurried to do her bidding. Meanwhile, Kazhak and Dasadas squatted on their heels behind the mare, holding her tail out of the way and trying to reach the foal.
“Is turned around,” Kazhak said at last. “Is very bad; rump is large; is stuck. Horses should not be born this way. It tears the mares; foals often come dead. If we cannot get it free …” He grunted and struggled, trying to insert an arm beside the breech-positioned foal in order to turn it. The mare heaved again.
Fight, Epona told her in silence. Fight for life. I will help you.
We will help you, said the spirit within.
Time passed. Aksinya brought torches for light, and still the mare clung to life as the foal remained jammed in the birth canal. Both Kazhak and Dasadas were bloody to their elbows, but neither would give up.
“Foal must be dead by now,” Dasadas said, but Kazhak merely changed his own position anti made another effort, biting his lip as he did so. Suddenly he sat up. “Epona! Your arm is smaller than any man’s. You are strong. Come here.”
She joined him quickly, and he explained what she must do; how she must reach inside the mare and feel for a little hind leg; how to position and guide the body of the unborn horse so that it could move down the birth canal and be delivered at last.
She had never done it, but Kazhak’s strong voice told her he believed she could. He patiently instructed her and she did as he said, groping in darkness, reaching for life.
Dasadas could take no more. He stood up and walked away, his back turned to them, his head sunk low between his shoulders. If his best mare died, as well as the first foal of the year, it would be a sign to all that he and his herd were cursed. The silver wolf, perhaps. Demons. Kazhak would surely drive him away before the contagion could spread to the other pregnant mares.
Epona felt a tiny ankle within her grasp and uttered an exclamation of relief. Kazhak was leaning against her shoulder now, helping her brace herself, talking her through every step as she worked with the unborn horse, shifting it by imperceptible degrees inside its mother. And then both hind legs were free, and extended; a controlled pull and the mare’s long labor would be over. If the mare could survive any more.
Kazhak locked his arms around Epona’s waist and they pulled together. The mare moaned, and then the foal, wrapped like a present in its glistening sac, slipped into the world as if being born were the easiest of accomplishments.
Epona quickly tore the membrane from around the little creature’s muzzle. Whispering a prayer to the spirits of the air, she began forcing her own living breath into the small, unresponsive nostrils. Meanwhile, Kazhak went to the mare’s head to ascertain her condition. She was alive, though very weak. He turned back to Epona.
“How is foal?”
Hearing Kazhak’s words, Dasadas spun around. “Foal is bom?” he asked, hardly daring to hope.
Epona did not have time or breath to answer him. All her energies were going into the small wet creature lying half in her lap. She breathed into its nostrils, she pressed its fragile ribs, trying to feel the beat of a living heart; she prayed for it as she would have prayed for her own infant.
And then it drew a long, quavering breath, and she felt the hot tears of joy running down her own face. “It is alive,” she sobbed, looking at Kazhak.
Light came into the Scythian’s face. “Alive,” he repeated softly. In a moment he was kneeling beside her, helping her finish cleaning the birth sac from the foal—a lovely filly foal—and rub it dry.
Dasadas crowded close to see the newest member of his allotted herd, but they were oblivious to him. Epona and Kazhak looked first at the newborn horse, then at each other, then at the foal again.
Dasadas, feeling shut out, went to his mare, and was at least comforted to see that she, too, was alive, and gradually regaining some strength. As he watched, she raised her head and turned her neck so she could see her newborn. Her nostrils shaped a tender nicker.
“Mare will live,” Dasadas said, overjoyed. “And colt, too?”
“Filly,” Epona corrected him. “Yes, she will live.”
“Was your magic,” Dasadas said with certainty. “Very strong; too strong even for the silver wolf. That demon put a bad curse on horse, but you have saved. Epona has saved the horses of Dasadas!” His face was radiant with excitement, but Epona was embarrassed. She had performed no magic; she had not felt the power singing through her. She and Kazhak together, fighting, refusing to give up, had physically delivered the foal and kept the spark alive in it and its mother.
Yet Dasadas would never believe that. His belief in Epona’s abilities was stronger than ever; it filled his eyes with a fanatic light. The light made Epona uncomfortable and suddenly she longed to be inside her wagon, hidden away behind the felt and leather.
Dasadas and Aksinya would stay with the mare for the rest of the night, and if the foal did not strengthen quickly they would bring it goats’ milk and honey and perform those tasks they had performed before, as servitors to the horse. But Epona was satisfied that all would go well, now; the atmosphere around mare and foal was benign.
She trudged back toward her wagon, so deep in thought she did not hear footsteps behind her until Kazhak’s voice said, right at her shoulder, “Kazhak does not want to sleep alone tonight. Is man with bloody hands welcome in wagon of Epona?”
She turned and looked at him. The stars were bright overhead and there was a sliver of a moon providing enough light to reveal his features. Not savage features, but kind, with eyes she knew. The Scythian, who had always subscribed to the philosophy of take and go, would not force himself on her. He was asking as one free person asks another.
She stood still, not knowing how to answer. And then the words came to her lips unbidden, as if the spirit within had said them of its own accord.
“Blood is
life, Kazhak. Life is always welcome in my wagon.”
Chapter 27
The anger and resentment were still in her, just beneath the surface, festering like a wood tick under the skin. But they were hurting Epona beyond bearing by denying her the pleasure of his embrace and the warmth of his body, plus the bond between them that existed nowhere else. Her skin cried aloud for that warmth; her spirit thirsted for that bond. When Kazhak’s voice came rumbling up from deep in his chest, and his eyes sought and held hers as if nothing else on earth was worth looking at, she could not refuse him. The embrace of anger was a poor substitute for Kazhak’s arms.
I am not your wife. I have not been made one of your tribe. I have no real place in the world. She said the words in her head, the bitter words, but they did not reach her lips. They were too bitter; they would ruin the taste of this moment, when the magic of new life was strong in both of them and the tender memory of the little filly drew them together in a sort of worship. Worship for the great fire; that was the important thing.
And this was the way to celebrate it.
Epona closed her eyes and willingly lost herself in Kazhak’s strong arms.
He felt a residue of stiffness in her spine, but he hugged her until even that melted away. He would not be stopped, not tonight. He had seen the irresistible beauty in her face as she cuddled the newborn horse against her own body.
He unfastened the Kelti brooch holding Epona’s bearskin robe, and his fingers were unusually clumsy freeing the pin from the catch. Such complicated fasteners were not used on the Sea of Grass. The style of the pin, unique to the Kelti, had always seemed to Kazhak to be yet another example of the way those people made simple things complex.
Yet there was no denying, the brooches fastened and held cloth better than any other device the Scythian had ever encountered.
The bearskin cloak lay at Epona’s feet, and Kazhak gently pressed her down upon it. It was dark in the wagon, but he could see her face so clearly in his mind that he was not aware of the darkness. He moved his hands down her body and every part of that was familiar to him, too, yet always new and exciting. He fitted her hips against his, letting her feel the male hunger awaiting her, and was gratified by the way her breathing quickened and she pressed eagerly against him.
Epona had never assumed the Scythian style of passivity with a man. There would have been no enjoyment for her in such a lack of participation. It was enthusiasm, and the mutual giving and taking of pleasure, that made bedsports so delicious. Once committed, she held nothing back, guiding Kazhak with her hands and her words, touching him … here, there, all the sensitive places she had learned … until he moaned with pleasure, and reciprocated gladly, taking her with him into that otherworld only the two of them had ever shared
Later, as they lay together in the darkness, their breathing matched to one rhythm like a good team of wagon horses, Kazhak thought to himself, This woman is more wife to me than any of those other women in my wagons.
Yet he could never say such words aloud to Epona. It would be unthinkable.
Many things that had previously seemed unthinkable worked their way to the surface of the Scythian’s mind when he was near Epona. He realized she was furious because their relationship had not made her Scyth; yet when he was with her, Kazhak was not aware of himself as a Scythian, either. He and she together were something new, almost like a new tribe. Though they appeared to have little in common, Kazhak could see that their differences were the result of things beyond themselves and outside their control, indifferent forces that did not take individual beings into account. Customs, beliefs, attitudes—these were the external pressures that shaped them, but he and Epona contained something else that refused to be so shaped.
The essence Epona called the spirit within seemed to be the same in both of them. When their eyes met, they understood each other without words. When he was inside her body, it was as if they had only one body between them.
Kazhak lay beside Epona and thought about these things as he had never forced himself to think before. It was difficult to contemplate such abstractions—Kelti thinking—but practice made it easier, and it gave him access to a new freedom inside his own head.
Freedom. That concept meant so much to Epona; yet until she challenged his thinking Kazhak had never considered himself to be lacking in freedom. He rode the horse, which gave him unlimited mobility. He had all the gold he wanted, the gift of Kolaxais—as long as it pleased Kolaxais to let him keep it. But after listening to Epona and remembering the way of life he had observed in her village, he realized his horizons had limits he had never acknowledged.
The horse he rode, the herds he used for food and raw materials; these belonged, in the final accounting, to Kolaxais. Kazhak could live as he pleased—as long as it pleased the han. His freedom did not belong to him; it was only allowed him at the prince’s pleasure: the prince who was not a chosen representative of his people but who ruled them by divine right as a kinsman of Tabiti, and who could threaten them with ostracism or execution if they displeased him.
And now Kolaxais himself was owned by the shamans, who threatened him—and his tribe—with demons if they refused to submit. To whom did the shamans belong? Were they in turn captives of the same fear they used to intimidate the nomads?
Epona’s race did not appear overly fearful of the spirits. They respected them, interacting with them in much the same way one Scythian tribe interacted with another, for mutual benefit. But the Kelti were not enslaved by demons.
They belonged to themselves, the Kelti. Only to themselves, and to the spark of life each cherished within. That was what Epona said. Kazhak lay sleepless, thinking these troubling thoughts long after Epona’s breath had slowed into sleep beside him.
Epona awakened as the stars were dissolving in the first milky light of dawn. To her surprise she found Kazhak still beside her, fast asleep now, one heavy arm thrown across her body.
Trying not to disturb him, she slipped from beneath it and went out into the morning to tend the fire and prepare a small and private sacrifice to the spirits. She was not the Scythian’s wife, but she would bear his child if the great fire was willing to send her a spark to nourish within her body.
She crouched alone over the tiny ceremonial blaze, her soft voice chanting the ancient invocations of her people.
Foaling season was soon upon them in earnest, and there were sleepless nights when Epona was summoned again and again to lend her strength, her energy, her … magic … to the mares bringing new life into the world. Usually the horses gave birth without difficulty, but when they did not, Epona sometimes felt there was difficulty even before one of the men with the herd came for her. She would grow uneasy, even physically uncomfortable, and eventually emerge from her wagon, looking for Kazhak. “Is everything all right?” she would ask, and he would tell her. A dun mare, really too young to be bred, was down and could not get up. A black horse colt had been born to one of Aksinya’s mares but had not started breathing. One of the oldest mares had wandered away from the herd and they were certain she was in labor but could not find her …
“Can you feel her, Epona? Can you lead us to her?”
She found the mare. She made preparations from weeds and herbs according to half-remembered recipes from her own childhood, and applied them to horses with legs swollen by snakebite or sprained by falling into holes. She sat without sleep for three nights and three days, massaging the twisted body of a young foal that had suffered some injury while running with its mother, throwing all its limbs into disharmony, and in the fourth dawn she watched with a lump in her throat as the little creature struggled to its feet and stood to nurse, and live.
Spring became summer, the brief, lush beauty of the steppe in one of its rare good moods unfolding like a giant flower. Snowmelt gave way to intensely green moss, and that in its turn was replaced by tiny white flowers called sheeplick, then larger blossoms of sunface and skyblue and nightpurple. The last wild hyacinths surr
endered to the silver-green plumes of feathergrass, the ocean foam of the Sea of Grass, billowing above an undertow of sage. For a short time, Tabiti was gentle and merciful. The prairie bloomed and life was filled with promise.
Word of Epona’s gift spread across the steppe like ripples on a pond, and within one long summer nomads were traveling considerable distances to ask her help; a help Kazhak gladly offered, knowing word would get back to Kolaxais and the shamans. Epona asked one thing in return—to be taught how to break and train the young horses for riding.
Kazhak’s immediate reaction was predictable, but she persevered, and at last he grunted an assenting syllable, heavy with reluctance. “Kazhak will show you, a few things only. But if you get hurt, is your own fault, Epona. Kazhak will not take blame.”
He took her out onto the summer-brilliant plain, silvery with drying grass, gilded with boundless sunlight. He taught her how to approach the wary young colts selected for breaking, and was pleased to see that she mastered the art quickly. Soon she could put her hand on a horse’s neck before any of the men could get near it.
The next step was to learn the use of the rope, a long woven strand to be slipped over a horse’s neck and skillfully tossed so that an additional loop encircled his nose, cutting off his wind before he could break away. This was rough work, and men were often dragged or kicked trying to subdue the colts, but Epona never shrank from the task. She was agile and sure of eye; only her light weight kept her from being as effective as the men.
Colts were then snubbed to older, calmer saddle horses, so they might accustom themselves to the sight and proximity of saddle and rider. Kazhak explained the importance of these older horses to Epona by saying, “Is like your druii, these old ones. They teach the young, is it so? Show them they have nothing to fear?”
Each step of the training was planned in advance and designed to convince the unbroken animal of man’s supremacy, without destroying the horse’s own spirit. The Scythians had only contempt for docile animals who never showed fight; they spoke of such horses, no matter what their sex, as “she,” a point not lost on Epona. The passivity the nomads demanded from their women they found contemptible in their horses.
The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn) Page 39