by Judith Tarr
But there was none more handsome than Linden, and few less truly wise. Linden wanted to chatter of the stallions’ battle, which Wolfcub doubted he had seen: it had played itself out far from the camp, in the heart of the herds. Even the priests had come too late to defend the king; they had seen only the ending, and the king’s fall.
That did not silence Linden. “Can you imagine? A young stallion out of the roving band, challenging the king—and winning. They say he tore out the king’s throat, cast him down and crushed his skull. Is that the work of mere luck, I ask you? Is that the act of a weakling or a half-grown colt?”
“Ah well,” said Curlew, who sometimes followed Linden, but sometimes not, “you know who it is, don’t you? It’s one of the grey herd. An outlander. Who knows what gods live in them, or what powers even the young ones hold?”
Linden nodded. “Have you ever seen him? He’s beautiful: all black, with silver dapples. His mane is white. He looks like the moon in a field of stars.”
“Ah! A song!” hiccupped the drinker in the shadows.
“Well, and I’m no singer,” Linden said, too modestly: he had a pleasant enough voice when he troubled to use it. “But you know what the priests say. The grey herd came on the wings of storm, from the gods’ own country. This stallion is one of them. Maybe a god sired him. Maybe he was meant to be king.”
“Maybe he’s a jest of the gods,” said Spearhead, but the rest were falling under Linden’s spell. He did have a way about him, with that pretty face. Rather like the new king of stallions, Wolfcub thought.
He had seen the one they spoke of. It was a pretty creature, and full of itself, but he would not have wagered that it would do what it had done. In that much he could agree with Linden. The gods played a part in this somehow, for whatever purpose. Or Walker had made certain that they did.
oOo
Aurochs heard Wolfcub out patiently, considering the head he must have had after a nightlong debauch with kumiss. He sat in his tent, waited on by the youngest and loveliest of his wives, but they had retreated when Wolfcub came. His mother came out instead from behind the women’s curtain and sat demurely as a woman should, but he caught the sidelong flash of her smile. She would speak with Wolfcub afterward, that smile said, but let the proprieties be observed.
If Aurochs noticed, he did not acknowledge it—and that too was proper. While Wolfcub told him what the young men had been saying, he drank the potion that Wolfcub’s mother brewed from herbs and willowbark, grimacing at its bitterness, but draining it manfully.
Wolfcub had his own cup, but he had put it aside after a sip. His head was not as bad as that, and he was intent on what he was saying. “I think Walker had something to do with this. And I think Linden is getting a thought into his head. He likes pretty things. The new king of stallions is very pretty indeed. Might not Linden begin to think that he would look most handsome on that back?”
“He may think it,” Aurochs said, “but there’s no talk of a new kingmaking among the People.”
“There has to be,” said Wolfcub. “The king rides the king stallion. If he won’t, then—”
“Did anyone say he would not?”
Wolfcub frowned at the grass mat in front of his folded legs. “People heard what the king said. There’s no time for a taming before we leave for the gathering.”
“But,” said Aurochs, “there will be ample time for one once we come to gathering.”
Wolfcub looked up sharply. He did not need to be told what that meant. The king would tame the new king of stallions in front of all the gathered tribes. That would be a kingmaking indeed—affirming his own power and proving to the world that he was still, in the autumn of his years, both a man and a king.
Aurochs nodded at the comprehension in Wolfcub’s eyes. “What, you didn’t think of it yourself? It’s the wise thing. Of course the young men don’t see it. They’re too impatient. They want it done now, in haste, to much lesser purpose.”
“Yes,” said Wolfcub slowly. “And suppose the shaman foresaw that—planned for it. Made sure it would happen. Then if there’s an accident, or if the king fails in strength, he does it before all the tribes. And the one who steps to the fore soonest will be everything that the old king hoped to be.”
“I think you impute far more evil to the young shaman than is actually in him,” Aurochs said mildly, but it was a reprimand. “You’ve always disliked him. Don’t let that color your thoughts of him now.”
Wolfcub set his lips together. He could argue further, and he would have liked to, but his mother’s glance stilled him. Willow, though no longer the lissome creature who had earned that name, had both the astringent wit and the strength of the willowbark that she brewed into her potions.
oOo
His father left not long after, seeking out the men’s council, where they would no doubt consider and reconsider and consider again all that had happened on the day before. Wolfcub lingered as his mother wished. She served him bread and stewed antelope and a delicacy that she knew he loved: the gut of a pig stuffed almost to bursting with meat and herbs and wild grain, roasted on the fire. He savored its pungent sweetness, which she knew best how to make of all the women of the People.
When he lay back and belched nobly, she set a cup beside his hand. It held herbs steeped in water, much more pleasant than her potion, and mildly invigorating. As he sipped it, she sat on her heels nearby and said, “You’ll not get the older men to believe Walker is conniving at anything more than the choosing of his next wife.”
Wolfcub’s brows went up. “Is he doing that?”
Willow shrugged. “He might be. It’s been a year since he brought Keen into his tent. She’s given him no son, nor showed signs of conceiving any. But that one . . . who knows? He’s always been odd. He well might think that one wife is enough trouble, and leave it at that.”
“Unless he can gain some advantage by taking a second. He might cast his eye on the daughter of another tribe. A king’s daughter, maybe. If there is a kingmaking at the gathering, and he’s seen to stand behind the new king, who knows what wealth he might win?”
“You,” said Willow, “are surprisingly subtle for a young male. Who taught you to think like that?”
Wolfcub grinned at her. “Why, Mother! You did.”
“Yes, it’s very improper,” she said, from her very proper and demure position, sitting on her heels, knees close together, hands folded in her lap.
She had been pretty enough when she was young, people said, but had grown plain with age, a plump comfortable figure with hair dulled to plain earth-brown that had once been as ruddy as his own. But her eyes were lovely still, clear grey, and warm as they rested on him. He was her only son who had lived to manhood, and the last of her children to be among the People: the two daughters who had survived were both married to men of other tribes, marriages that brought honor and alliance to the family, but gave her no comfort of a daughter to share the tent.
Wolfcub supposed she doted on him more than was suitable. But somehow he could not think of her as a doting mother. She was too sharp in her wit, and too little inclined to indulge him when he was being a fool. She was a great deal like Sparrow.
“Do you believe me?” Wolfcub asked her. “Can you credit that he might be doing what I think he’s doing? He’s young, but he’s always been clever. He has far more power than a man of his age is expected to have. If it’s gone to his head, might he not think that he can make and break kings?”
“He might,” Willow said.
“Yes,” said Wolfcub. “And this is a ninth year. If he waits, it may be nine years again before he can gain so much power from a kingmaking. What young man ever could wait so long to take a thing he wants?”
“He could as easily do it in a year,” said Willow. “Or two or three.”
“But a ninth year, Mother. A year when the gods demand human flesh and human blood in their sacrifices; when the blood of bull or hound or stallion is not enough. What greater sacr
ifice than a king? And our king is no longer young.”
Willow sighed. “You never liked him. No one ever likes shamans, even before the dreams come to them, or the spirits speak and claim them for their own. I remember Drinks-the-Wind before he was a shaman: what an arrogant young monster he was. His son is remarkably like him.”
“But when Drinks-the-Wind became a shaman,” Wolfcub said, “he learned to be wise, and to soften his tongue.”
“He was older then than Walker is now,” said Willow. “I always thought it was ill-advised to give that boy the rank and the power when he took his manhood. No matter how strong he was or how sure in his power, he should have been made to wait. Shamans are best made with the second coming of age, when a man’s eldest child is grown. Not while he is still a child himself.”
“Then you must see,” Wolfcub said, “that Walker is capable of this—of making and breaking kings.”
“Or trying to.” She shook her head. “Who am I to judge? I’m a mere woman.”
Wolfcub knew better than to laugh at the thought of his mother as a mere anything. She paid lip-service to every propriety. It was her weapon and her protection. Sparrow should learn it, he often thought, and maybe would, if she lived to his mother’s age.
“And I,” he said, “am a mere boy. The men won’t hear me when I warn them. Even Father barely listens.”
“He came back with you,” said Willow. “He gave you that much credence. And he’ll be watchful, which is what you need of him. If he thinks that others of the men should know, he’ll see that they do. You’ve done all you should, and most of what you can.”
“But it’s not enough!”
“Nothing is ever enough, when one is young and male and knows no patience.” Willow filled his empty cup again, this time with new milk sweetened with honey, and said, “Now drink, and get you gone. You’ve paced and snarled long enough. The sun’s up and the wind’s freshening. We’ll be breaking camp within the day, if I’m not mistaken. Did you hear the Old Mare calling in the dawn?”
Wolfcub had heard nothing before sunup but the hammering in his own skull, but he did not say so. He drank his sweet milk and let himself be chased out into the sunlight, where he was one of the few men on his feet and almost clearheaded.
The rest would lie groaning abed till nightfall if they could, but his mother had heard true. The horses were calling to one another, shrill voices of stallions, deeper ones of mares. Whether the making of the new king had roused them, or it was simply time, the herds were beginning to move.
13
It was not the Old Mare who woke the women with her pealing in the night, though the voice was very like hers: strong and deep and royally peremptory. It was the young mare, the one whom Sparrow knew better than to think of as her own. She was declaring to the world that she had, at last, found a stallion worthy of her.
That he had been hanging about since he was a yearling, and that he had hitherto been less than the least of the foals in her estimation, mattered little to the mare. He had conquered the king whom she had never suffered to breed her. He could, in his turn, presume to court and then to mount her.
Their mating was a wild and triumphant thing. The stallion, who had taken remarkably few wounds in his battle for the kingship, came out of that union streaming blood.
The mare was somewhat torn about the neck and shoulders, but never enough to concern her. She danced in the dawn, to the stallion’s torment: she had drained him dry, so that he would not breed a mare again that day, nor for a while, Sparrow suspected.
oOo
She was there. She watched. In the confusion of the king stallion’s passing and his funeral feast, she had managed to escape her duties and run away to the herds. She had to hide: the priests were on watch, such of them as lacked the rank or the boldness to officiate at the feast. They were waiting to see if one of the other stallions challenged the new king. But none had.
They had a skin of kumiss for the vigil, and a feast of their own, a young calf that they claimed as their portion. It was, she observed, one of the king’s calves. She wondered if he would notice, or if he would care. The priests could take whatever they pleased, within reason, but mostly they left the king’s belongings alone.
Walker had had nothing to do with the old stallion’s fall. Sparrow hated to admit it—she would have been more than glad to blame him for it—but the gods had their own intentions. And the mares chose as they would, however subtly they might do it. They had decided, for reasons best known to themselves, that this young and rather callow if very pretty stallion was fit to be their king.
Still, it served Walker’s purpose, and that she liked not at all. She had seen him come back from his days on the steppe, naked and painted and hung with amulets, handsome and knowing it, and not minding in the least if the women happened to notice and admire. It had been he and not Drinks-the-Wind who affirmed what the priests had come running to announce: that there was a new king among the herds. And it was he and not the elder shaman who stood with the priests while they roasted and divided the old stallion’s carcass. Drinks-the-Wind came late from Lark’s bed, where he had been joyfully making another child, and found himself relegated to the second place.
Sparrow could not tell even now what her father had thought of that. He wore his face as a mask at the best of times, and veiled his thoughts behind his heavy eyelids. He seemed to accept this usurpation of his authority.
Maybe the shaman, like the king, grew old. Maybe Walker had meddled somehow with his spirit. Dreams and true visions were not all a shaman knew. He learned the ways of magic, too, spells and poisons that needed little enough power for the working. Even as a child, Walker had sought out the wisewomen and the healers and the priests, flattering them till they told him their secrets: herbs and potions, workings and wishings both well and ill. Whatever he lacked as a true shaman, as a witch he was greatly gifted.
Sparrow did not like where that thought led her. She would have been glad of the mare’s warm strength, but if she left the hollow in which she hid, the priests would see her. A woman in the herds now of all times would not be taken back to the camp for judgment. She would be cut down where she stood, for sacrilege.
And that was maddening. A woman could know what the mares knew, that the herds would move soon—perhaps as early as daybreak. The mare had called the new king to her to seal a pact of sorts, to bind him and command him. Already as she tormented him with his own exhaustion, the elder mares had begun to call their children together. The eldest of the grey herd, who would lead, grazed placidly beside her sleeping foal, but Sparrow could see the purpose growing in her. Her grazing had a pattern to it, a slow drift northward.
The mare, having had her fill of vexing the stallion, dropped her head and began to graze. Unlike the eldest, she cropped the grass quickly, sharply, with many liftings of the head, and a squeal as one of the lesser mares wandered too close. Her drifting too was northward, ahead of the eldest, till she had passed the rest of her herd and taken the place of guard. Then for a while she seemed to grow calmer, but her grazing was almost fierce, as if she must eat as much as she could, as quickly as she could, for strength on the journey.
By then the priests began to see what Sparrow had seen since before sunup: that the herds had begun, if slowly and subtly, to move. The grey herd’s drift had borne it through the lesser herds. It was almost in the lead, and the others beginning, in casual fashion, to take the places they took on the march from grazing ground to grazing ground.
oOo
Sparrow escaped while the priests were intent on their discovery, slipping soft and swift through the grass. Not till she was nearly to the camp did she rise and compose herself and enter as if from the river, trusting to the confusion of breaking camp to conceal her.
The tumult was worse than usual, what with so many men still barely able to move, and everyone in such dismay over the old stallion’s fall. Some of the women were indulging in shrieking and carrying on, which
served no purpose whatever except to win them a beating from the nearest snarling male.
White Bird, of course, carried on in grand and splendid fashion, secure in the knowledge that her husband was in council with the king, and no other man would dare touch the elder shaman’s wife. Even Mallard could not quell her. It seemed some idiot had tried to coax her yet again to accept her daughter, who was, for her age, quite a pretty thing.
White Bird had come back to herself in most respects, except for that one. She was still thoroughly convinced that the child was a changeling, and someone was hiding her son somewhere, keeping him away from her.
As Sparrow approached her father’s tent, White Bird burst out of it, half-naked and shrieking. A handful of women ran in pursuit, but White Bird was very quick on her feet. She was aiming, as far as Sparrow could see, for the king’s circle. Her white breasts and streaming hair, and her ear-splitting shriek, cast everyone into confusion. Such of the men as could bear the sound of her voice stared hungrily at her body.
Sparrow brought her down quite simply, by catching her as she hurtled past and flinging them both to the ground. White Bird fell beneath her, the shriek cut off with the air that had abandoned her lungs. Sparrow was much the smaller in height, but compact and sturdy and stronger than she looked. White Bird was slender and tall, and like all the favorite wives who spent their days lying about and cherishing their beauty, had no strength worth the name.
Before White Bird could find breath to renew her clamor, Sparrow scrambled up and pulled her to her feet. Nothing happened to hand, to cover those exuberant breasts. Sparrow set her lips tight and dragged White Bird back through the briefly silent tents, and flung her through the flap of the one that belonged to her father. Who caught her, or whether anyone caught her at all, Sparrow did not care. Something in her had snapped, quite without warning. “The herds are moving,” she said sharply. “Get ready to break camp.”
People who had never heard her raise her voice before—perhaps who had never heard her speak at all—gaped at her with the same astonishment with which they had regarded White Bird. Before she lost patience and repeated herself, Mallard emerged from the tent and said in her dry calm voice, “Do as she says.”