“There is a price on your head south of here, woman,” he told her. “A Thracian, one Provaton, has talked of little but you for a year or more. His uncle, who is a wealthy horsebreeder, I understand, even financed a little expedition to the east in search of you but nothing came of it—except they encountered some Scythians who relieved them of their horses and their heads.
“But you are known, Kelti woman, and there is talk of you at every horse fair and trading center where stockmen meet. When it was rumored that you had been seen in this region, my men and I decided to go into business for ourselves, you might say. We will get a good price for you; you will be the most valuable slave auctioned this seasons, eh, men?” He glanced over his shoulder at his comrades, grinning, sharing his victory with them as he would divide the price they would get for her, and in that moment when he was distracted Epona leaped at him.
Her movement startled the two men who held her just enough to allow her to pull free of their grasp. They immediately grabbed for her again, but by this time Dasadas was waging his own small war with knife and Kelti sword, taking advantage of Epona’s diversion to break free of his own guard. No one expected a pregnant woman to move so swiftly or fight so fiercely. Epona did not strike to kill, now; she only slashed and cut to get through the men surrounding her and reach the gray stallion, who miraculously had not fled after the mares, as had the bay of Dasadas.
When the men closed around her again she whistled shrilly and the horse answered her, obedient to the command. His attack was as unexpected as her own, and the men of the Daci backed away from his rearing body and flailing hooves. Epona leaped for him, feeling one of his knees strike her unintentionally in the belly, and with a desperate heave she caught him by the mane. He whirled instantly and broke through the circle of men. Epona, half-running beside him, unable to pull herself onto his back, clutched his mane and gritted her teeth. Then Dasadas was with her, shouting something, shoving against her with his shoulder, and she was draped across the stallion’s back with the yelling Scythian behind her, covering her body with his own. The Dacians recovered quickly and ran after them, hurling their javelins, but afoot they could not hope to equal the speed of the horse.
Epona heard Dasadas grunt once, an anguished sound, and felt the thud of something strike his body, but he did not fall.
The gray lowered his head and pinned his ears flat against his head, running away from his attackers, running after the younger stallion who had taken off with his mares. He had remained, as he was taught, with his rider, held by an invisible chain, but now that chain was broken and nothing could restrain him. A rival had stolen his mares; that was his only thought.
He had run so far and so fast that the Dacians were mere specks in the distance before Epona was able to pull herself upright in the saddle and haul on the flying reins, and then she had to fight with all her strength to slow the stallion appreciably.
Dasadas was lying against her, his arms clutching her body, his head bobbling against her back as if he had no control over it. There was a dreadful lancing pain in her own belly and spots of light danced in front of her eyes, but she could not surrender; not yet, not until they were all safe.
They came to a wooded area with the dense underbrush resulting from centuries of alternate slash-and-burn cultivation and abandonment. Epona succeeded in fighting the stallion to a halt, then turned him aside into the woods. Still he whinnied incessantly, calling after his mares.
She slid from his back and tied him securely to a tree, then sank onto the earth, dizzy and sick. Dasadas still sprawled on the horse’s back, and when the stallion fidgeted and danced, fighting his tether, the Scythian slid to the ground with a sound like that of a sack of meal falling.
Epona crawled over to him. There was an ugly bleeding wound in his side and the broken point of a javelin was embedded there. When he breathed, she could hear a rattling in his chest, and see bloody bubbles form and break in his open mouth.
“Dasadas. Dasadas!”
He opened his eyes weakly and stared up, but he did not seem to see her.
The pain in her belly was getting worse; it had spread to her back, and felt like a hand squeezing. Dasadas ran his tongue over his lips and made a sound that could have been a request for water.
Epona slumped down onto the earth mother. There was nowhere else to go; nothing to do. She was suddenly very tired, her bones limp within her flesh. She pressed her face into the earth, smelling dirt and moss and dead leaves, and waited.
And strength came back to her, a little at a time.
At last she was able to get to her hands and knees, and then, shakily, to her feet, and follow the distant sound of running water. At a tiny, icy stream she knelt and bathed her face until she felt better, then soaked the bottom of her old woolen Kelti gown with water until she had enough to carry back and squeeze into Dasadas’ open mouth. When she was stronger, she would fill the one empty waterbag the stallion carried, and they would ride on in search of the other horses.
If Dasadas would be able to ride on.
You will die with blood in your mouth beside a muddy river, Kernunnos had once said.
Dasadas was badly wounded, there was no doubt of it, and the injury was not amenable to the techniques she knew. She searched for yarrow to pack his wound, but found none. She put her hands on his body and concentrated, reaching out with her spirit for help, but felt no answering flood of strength.
My gift is not for my own kind, she thought sadly. It only works with animals.
And then the pain came again, stabbing her so savagely she doubled over, forgetting everything else, and lost herself in swirling stars and hot, sticky darkness.
When she next opened her eyes it was twilight, and her head was in Dasadas’ lap. The Scythian had recovered enough to prop his back against a dead tree, and he was gazing down at her with anguish. “We are hurt, Epona,” he managed to say.
“You are wounded. I am … I think I am going to have the baby, Dasadas.”
His eyes flared open. “Here? Now? But Dasadas cannot help you. Weak …” He broke off to cough, as if to prove his statement. “Dasadas does not know how to birth a child.”
“It is not a thing men need to know,” Epona told him.
A gutuiter should have been there, to hold her hands and steady her as she squatted in the birth posture, and to sing the song of welcome for the new spirit. When the birth was concluded, the gutuiter would have helped her lie down and put the naked, bloody newborn on its mother’s belly, so the strong muscles within her could contract in acknowledgment of their completed task and be healthier for the next birth. With the aid of the drui, skilled in the arts of summoning life, the baby might have had a chance to live.
But there was no drui, no Nematona with her herbs and teas, no Uiska of the soft voice. There was only pain and dizziness, and Dasadas’ useless, frightened fumbling as he fought off his own weakness.
And when it was over, Kazhak’s dead son, born too soon to survive in this way, lay on the earth mother, and Epona wept over him as she had never wept in her life.
Dasadas went back to the tree against which he had lain, and buried his face in the crook of his arm. The gray stallion, nervous at the smell of blood, pawed the earth and thought about his missing mares.
They buried the child at the foot of an oak tree. Epona returned the small spark to the great fire with whispered words of transition; Dasadas commemorated its passing by slashing his arms and earlobes, losing precious blood he could not spare in his weakened condition, but Epona did not criticize him for it.
She knew that he blamed himself for this loss. Again and again, he muttered words of self-castigation. “Dasadas did not fight good enough; Dasadas has failed Epona.” He would not be comforted, and though she ached to spend her own grief, she had to set that aside and try to deal with his.
Then, too, there was the matter of the Dacians. “They will be here soon,” Dasadas told her. “They will track us; they mean to have yo
u, Epona. We must go.”
“You are too badly hurt to ride, Dasadas.”
“What about you? But is no choice. We must somehow get on gray horse, or stay here and be captured. We could not fight free this time.”
No, she agreed, they could not escape again. She found moss and sweet grass to pack her body and hold back the bleeding, and she bandaged Dasadas’ side as best she could with fabric torn from her clothing. They refilled the waterbag and tried to eat something for strength, but neither had the appetite for it. They were not able to travel, but they must.
And so they did.
Crawling onto the horse was a nightmare of pain, and the fainting sensation that followed was worse, but somehow the man and the woman rode the gray horse, and turned his head northward. He was only too glad to go. His instinct, and then his ears and nose, told him where the mares and the bay stallion waited, grazing peacefully in a hidden meadow, and he set off after them with only nominal guidance from the half-unconscious woman holding his reins.
Epona looked back at the grave beneath the oak tree. It was such a little mound in sun-dappled shade. She did not even have the amber necklace to leave with her son. It had gone to pay for a horse.
All the pain was not in her body.
“Find them,” she whispered to the stallion, leaning over his neck. “Find them.”
The missing mares and the bay stallion of Dasadas were responsible for the fact that the Dacians had not caught Epona, though she was unaware of it as she rode through a blur of grief and discomfort, doing the impossible because there was nothing else to be done. The Dacians were a fighting unit, returning from skirmish warfare at the edge of their territory, one of the constant battles they enjoyed with the neighboring Scordisci. They were not experienced at hunting and tracking, and the confusion of hoofprints left by the fleeing mares confused them. They never noticed when the stallion’s prints veered off to the west, toward the glade where Epona and Dasadas lay attempting to recover.
The Dacians had followed the mares until they realized the hopelessness of catching loose horses in open land, and then they reluctantly abandoned the quest. “We will catch up with that woman some other time,” the leader promised his men. “A woman that far gone—someone will see her. Someone will mention her. And those horses will be hard to hide; big horses, they were, good Thracian stock. What do you suppose she’s doing with them up here?”
The gray stallion knew where his mares were and he carried Epona and Dasadas to them unerringly. The young bay, hearing him approach, whinnied a warning to the encroaching male, but Dasadas managed to rouse himself enough from his own suffering to call a command to his horse and the bay did not attack the gray. The two animals glared at each other, necks arched and nostrils flaring, while Epona dismounted and caught Dasadas’ horse, then helped him to mount.
It was obvious he could go little farther, but she was anxious to find a more sheltered, less visible place to spend the night, now that they knew they were hunted. She did not ask Dasadas if he could make it; she did not ask herself. She rode around the mares, bunching them into a tightly packed band once more, then took hold of the rope on the headstall of the lead mare and set off, the rest of the little herd following and Dasadas, drooping in his saddle, bringing up the rear.
They were very fortunate. They soon found a tributary running back from the Duna to a deep, hidden valley that showed no sign of human habitation, or even discovery. In this season there was a thin covering of snow over the exposed grass, but beneath the trees there were patches of dry ground and plenty of deadwood for building fires. In such a place they could stay long enough to recover their strength, Epona thought.
The spirits were being good to them. Perhaps the sacrifice of her child had been enough; perhaps nothing more would be asked.
I have nothing more to give, Epona thought sadly. When she closed her eyes she did not see Kazhak’s face anymore. She saw a little mound over a grave dug with a Kelti knife, beneath an oak tree.
Dasadas was much the weaker of the two. Even though her own body ached for rest, Epona found herself hunting for him, setting snares to catch small game and patiently waiting for half a day, within sight of the grazing horses, for sight of some edible bird she could bring down with her bow.
But the wild creatures, aware of the presence of the intruders, avoided the area, and game was very hard to get. We need the art of the shapechanger, Epona thought, without even a shudder of revulsion at the thought of Kemunnos. He seemed no more than a natural part of the world, now; there were things far more unpleasant than the vulpine face of the priest.
Dasadas thought of the shapechanger, too, though differently. He dreamed at night of a huge silver wolf that tore at his flesh and sapped his strength, slowing his recovery, but when he spoke of it to Epona she brushed his words aside. “The wolf follows us no longer, Dasadas, I told you that. I give you my word on it.”
But the wolf was in Dasadas’ mind, and it did follow; would follow forever.
When they were able, they moved on, at a much slower pace now. If they encountered no more trouble, they might reach the valley of the Kelti … by sunseason.
Sunseason seemed a very long distance away.
There was trouble, of course. Dasadas’ wound did not heal well, and he was in constant pain, though he refused to admit it. Though he had never been able to link Epona’s spirit with his, he had somehow become infused with her own grim determination to reach the Blue Mountains; to take the horses home. He drove himself relentlessly, and every day he grew thinner, until his gray eyes stared out of a skull-like face. He did not try to touch her now; he had no strength left for anything but the journey. That had become his personal battle; the one left to him that he refused to lose.
When they reached the broad plain of Epona’s earlier memory, where the Duna turned sharply westward at last, one of the mares escaped them. The mares, bred by the Thracians for many generations to have exceptional qualities of both speed and endurance, had handled the trip well, losing little flesh. Epona had particularly looked forward to seeing the colt the gray stallion would sire on one powerfully built brown mare, a splendid animal that would have been the pride of any Thracian wagonmaster. But the mare wandered away, sometime in the night, and they were never able to find her.
Dasadas blamed himself. He should have been standing watch over the herd that night, and he had fallen into an exhausted, uneasy sleep, filled with frightening dreams … He beat on his head with his fists, punishing himself, until Epona ordered him to stop.
They lost the second mare when the land rose at last toward the mountains again, just as Epona’s heart was lifting. The horse, unused to rocky terrain, stepped into a fissure and snapped her foreleg below the knee, and neither Epona’s skill nor magic could save her.
Epona wept, then; long, deep sobs that wracked her body. Some of them were for the dead horse; some for the escaped mare. Most were for the grave beneath the oak tree.
Her tears frightened Dasadas. He had come to take her strength for granted, relying on her as on a brother, and now he hovered around her helplessly until she lashed out at him and drove him away.
Go to the bottom of grief alone, said the spirit within. Cry out all the pain, then mount your horse and go on.
In the distance, the Blue Mountains stood free and clear, waiting for them.
That was the hardest part of the trip. Since losing the brown mare, Epona had kept the others lashed together in a long string, using thongs and strips of hide and even rope she wove from grass, and now she rode at the head of the column, leading the first mare up the rocky road, leaving Dasadas to bring up the rear. They had traveled for so long and suffered so much, and they were both thin and short of temper. The climbing was demanding, sometimes treacherous, as rocks skittered underfoot and loose earth slid. The thinning air made human and horse tire more quickly. When the pain in his back and side was almost unbearable, Dasadas would sometimes look ahead at Epona, riding on, ridi
ng, riding, and shake his head in disbelief. A woman.
She did not look much like a woman now. Since their nearcapture by the Dacians, Epona had hacked off her tawny hair with her knife, and kept what remained hidden beneath a Scythian cap. Her body would fit in man’s trousers again, and her face and hands were burned dark by sun and wind. She could have been a lean nomad boy, with a sword at the waist and bow and arrows in the gorytus.
Riding, riding.
The terrain became familiar. The trees, the stones, the light were friends, and Epona acknowledged them with mixed feelings. Her eyes had seen so much since they last saw this place; the Blue Mountains appeared to her through memories of the Sea of Grass, and all the regions between. Perhaps nothing would ever look quite the same again.
But that pine, she knew that one—and that great boulder, bone of the mother, springing free of the earth—and the scent of the air, so sweet—
She was home, in the presence of familiar spirits. She knew them all; she felt them around her and experienced a sense of being reinstated into their world.
Water. Spirits. Trees. Spirits. Stones. Spirits. They knew she moved among them. The water saw her with its shining eye. The stones felt her presence. The trees heard her passing. She was forever bound to the great communion of spirits, of which her own was a part.
She halted the gray stallion and dismounted slowly, walking to a massive stone thrusting nakedly from the hillside, its exposed surface patterned by lichen and warmed by the sun. Dasadas watched as she stood beside it, concentrating, seeking to take part in the interchange she sensed between sun and stone. Something was being given and something taken, a timeless intercourse beyond the understanding of humankind, but as necessary to the pattern of life as earth and rain.
The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn) Page 45