by Judith Tarr
They flung themselves from their horses, covering with their bodies whatever they could, and weapons most of all. The skies opened. Thunder pealed. Lightning smote the earth again and again. The gods’ wrath buffeted them. The rain nigh drowned them. Hail battered them, stinging unprotected skin.
At last the lightning strode away, and the thunder rolled with it. Rain fell still, but more gently, soaking the parched earth.
Wolfcub rose to his knees. He was shivering—his tunic was dry underneath him, but his back and shoulders were bare. He pulled on the tunic and looked about.
The horses stood close by, drenched, heads hanging, waiting out the rain. Spearhead lay as he had, arms over head. Wolfcub reached over and shook him lightly. “Here,” he said, “it’s over. Let’s go on while we’ve got the cool to travel in.”
Spearhead did not move. His shoulder was cold, but so was Wolfcub’s—wet with rain. With still heart, Wolfcub turned him onto his back.
The lightning must have struck him even as he went down from his horse’s back. His breast was black over the heart, his face set in a rictus of astonishment.
Wolfcub could not close the staring eyes, any more than he could lower the lifted arms. The whole body was locked, rigid.
He drew back carefully and wiped his hands on his leggings, over and over. His mind was empty of thought. His belly felt hollow and yet oddly tight.
He spoke in a clear voice, not loud but meant to carry. “Whichever of the gods you are that struck him, and whatever he did to earn your spite, he did not deserve this.”
No reply came from earth or sky. Even the thunder was quiet, though it had been rumbling just before. The sky was clear overhead, pale and rain-washed blue. It promised serenity that he had not known since he left the place of the gathering. Now, maybe, he would never know it again.
oOo
He buried Spearhead where he had fallen, taking the rest of the day and much of the night to dig the grave and raise the cairn—for he had to go back to the stream in the wood to find stones, and come and go many times before he had enough to cover the grave. Then in wan moonlight he spoke and sang the words that granted rest to the spirit so abruptly ripped from its body. A shaman would have known a dance, too, that would bind it surely, but Wolfcub was only a hunter.
He did what he could. He hoped it would be enough. As morning came again, though he was hollow-eyed with exhaustion, he mounted his dun and led the bay, and left the dead to his long sleep.
oOo
All the way through the plains, Sparrow and Keen had met no one. The tribes were gathered in the sacred place. Any exiles or wanderers kept well away from them as they kept away from any possible camps. But beyond the river, where the tribes looked to a different gathering, they began to see signs of people’s passing: ashes of campfires, dung and trampled grass where herds had grazed, and more than once, a thread of smoke on the horizon that marked the camp of a tribe.
Keen wanted to find a camp and trade such little as they had for things that people in tribes were likely to have: cheese, bread, tanned leather to mend her tunic which by now was very worn. But Sparrow, whose tunic had been worn to begin with, had become as wary and skittish as a wild creature. She looked like one, too, with her face thinned with long travel and short commons, and her tunic worn through in places, baring glimpses of warm cream-brown skin. Her eyes were darker than ever, wide and maybe a little mad.
Keen tried to reason with her. “We’ve outrun anyone who might have pursued us. I doubt people here would know what horse you’re riding. Your mother came from this country, didn’t she? Maybe they’ll think you’re one of them.”
“When I speak,” Sparrow said, “they’ll know I’m not. I talk like a blond horseman.”
“And I am one,” Keen said. “Come, you know what people say—the tribes here are anything but warlike. They welcome guests, and they’re generous to strangers. You told me that yourself. Maybe one of the tribes will offer us a refuge.”
Sparrow shook her head. Her face was set, her will locked tight. “We can’t trust anyone. Not anyone.”
“Then where are we going?” Keen demanded. She was not losing her temper, no, not that, but she was somewhat less patient than she might have been. “What will we do? Go on and on till we fall down and die? Or come to the edge of the world and fling ourselves off? What are we traveling to?”
“Safety,” Sparrow said.
“But where is safety, if not with these tribes?”
“Out there,” said Sparrow, sweeping her hand toward the south. “Far away from here. Too far for anyone to follow.”
“That may never be far enough,” Keen said, “as long as we have the king with us.”
Sparrow shook her head. And that was that, for a while—days of burning heat, nights of breathless stillness, broken by storms of awesome ferocity. The first one nigh drowned them both, but they emerged none the worse for wear. After that they knew to find such shelter as they could when the sky grew dark and the wind began to blow, and wait and pray while the lightning marched about them.
It never touched them or harmed them, nor did it come close enough to be a danger. The gods were angry, but not, it seemed, with them.
That was preposterous after what they had done; but Keen, though no shaman, could feel it. Horse Goddess protected them. The mare wanted them alive and in her company, for whatever purpose, just as she wanted the stallion.
Keen had had a great deal of time to think while she learned to ride the mare. At first it took her mind off the pain in her legs and buttocks, the tormented muscles, the skin rubbed raw in her tenderest places. Then as the pain faded and the rawness turned to calluses, she whiled the long hours in thought.
Here she was, riding on the back of a horse—and not any horse; Horse Goddess herself, as Sparrow declared and she believed. She was a woman, and Horse Goddess not only did not care; she was not profaned by Keen’s presence. She wanted it, or at least tolerated it.
What if the men were wrong about other things, too? If women could ride without danger to horses’ spirits, what else could they do that the men insisted were against the gods’ laws? Maybe those were not the laws of gods but the laws of men.
And why would that be? Why would men do such things? Because—maybe because they were afraid of women’s power?
That was a frightening thought, and yet oddly exhilarating. It made her heart beat hard and her hands go cold. A woman could have power, real power, shaman’s power. Sparrow did. Sparrow said the Grandmother had, too; and Keen had heard from other women, though in whispers, that the Grandmother had been stronger than any shaman.
What if she had been?
oOo
One night as they waited for their dinner of roast rabbit to be done, Sparrow told her again the story of Horse Goddess’ first gift—the story that was true, not the one that men told. Of the girl, not the prince, who first sat on the back of a horse.
After so many days of riding and learning and thinking, Keen knew deep in her bones that it was the truth. A man had not been the first to take the gift. It had been a woman, and a very young one at that.
“Why?” she asked Sparrow. “Why did the men do that?”
Sparrow shrugged. “Why do men do anything? Because they want it all, all the power, all the glory.”
“Do you think,” Keen asked, “that they do it because they’re afraid?”
“What, of women?”
Keen nodded.
Sparrow did not laugh at her. “I suppose they might be. We’re smaller and weaker, and we don’t like to fight. But we do one thing that no man can ever do: we give them sons. Without us, there would be no men.”
“I think they resent us for that,” Keen said. She realized as she said it that her hand was resting on her belly. It was no rounder than it had ever been. And yet, as she paused, she tried to reckon days and nights and phases of the moon. How long had it been? Surely—
Surely not. But Sparrow had had her courses on
ce already, and she had just been finishing them when they ran away from the gathering. Keen had not had hers since spring camp. When she lay with Walker—when had that been?
Long enough. More than that, as she counted days. Angry though she had been and still was, and as little pleasure as she had taken, if it had given her what she hoped, she did not care in the slightest.
She was still angry with Walker. Her anger had set deep, as much a part of her now as the breath in her lungs or the heart in her breast.
Did he even remember her? He must have married his strident Blossom—even the shock of the king stallion’s vanishment would hardly be likely to turn him aside from a course once he had chosen it. He might elect to expunge Keen from his memory and the memory of the People, such a crime as she had committed, not only to steal the king stallion but to run away from Walker the shaman.
Still she missed him. The husband he had been before he went all cold, the lover who had come so willingly to her bed, was still bright in her memory. His touch, his kiss, the smell and taste of him, kept catching her unawares. Sometimes she found herself weeping, as if to mourn the dead.
But she did not turn back, even if she could have hoped to be accepted into the People again. This country was calling her: its green rolling hills, its many rivers, above all its trees.
She loved trees. She had always found them magical somehow, the ones on the steppe that she was not allowed to touch, and tales of forests had captivated her since she was small. When she saw them growing together in their green stillness, touched the cool smooth boles and smelled the smell of earth and leaves, her heart had sighed and for a while forgotten its sorrows.
Sparrow would not stop for every copse and thicket, but as often as Keen could persuade her, they paused to rest where there were trees, or camped there for a night.
oOo
It was near one such thicket that they first met an inhabitant of this country. They were intending to camp, for it was close to sunset. As they approached the trees, the stallion snorted and shied, casting Sparrow ignominiously on the ground.
Sparrow was up at once, before Keen could even stop the mare and fling herself down, but she was taking no notice of either the horse or her companion. She reached for what Keen had taken for an old broken tree-stump, and pulled it to gnarled and ancient but incontestably human feet.
Whether it was man or woman, Keen at first could not tell. It had thin wisps of white hair on chin and lip, but not enough to call a beard; and its body beneath colorless tatters was so old that all suggestion of shape was pared away. The eyes were the youngest thing about it: dark eyes only faintly clouded with age, fixing Sparrow with a glare as keen as her own.
“You,” it said in a voice too light maybe for a man’s, but rather deep for a woman’s, “are an exceedingly rude child.”
It spoke the language of the traders who came and went across the plains and the green lands, a mingling of words from many tribes and places. Nearly everyone knew a little of it, for convenience, and because sometimes it was difficult to understand the dialect of a tribe from far away.
Sparrow bristled at the stranger’s words. “And are you polite, to have startled my horse so that he threw me?”
“I think you were lazy and unwatchful, and he took advantage of it.” The stranger peered at the stallion, who had got over his startlement and lowered his head to graze. “He’s a pretty one. You should ride him better.”
“I would, if it weren’t for lurkers in the grass.”
“Lions lurk in the grass,” said the odd stranger. She—Keen decided to call it she, whether it was or no; she was oddly like Wolfcub’s mother Willow—slipped free of Sparrow’s grip and straightened her garb of tatters. “I’ll be your guest tonight, so that you can make up for your rudeness. I have a fondness for rabbit stewed in herbs from this thicket. Make sure you cook it till it’s tender, and—”
“We have no pot for stewing rabbit in,” Sparrow said, “and no rabbit to cook, either. If you want one, catch it for yourself.”
The old woman shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Shame, child, shame. Where’s your respect for your elders?”
Sparrow opened her mouth. Keen intervened before she said anything more unfortunate than she already had. “We should be pleased to share our camp with you,” she said, “and our dinner, too. Do you have a pot that we may borrow? We’ve snares, if there are rabbits to be had.”
The stranger clapped her gnarled old hands with glee. “Now there’s a child with manners! Yes, yes, I have a pot, and snares, too. You’ll find them under the trees; and if I know my craft, they’ve caught a brace or three of fine plump rabbits.”
Keen smiled and bowed as she would have done to an elder of the People. “Then I’ll go and look, since you’ve been so generous. With the loan of your pot and a few fine herbs, we’ll have as good a dinner as we’ve had on this journey.”
oOo
It was a fine dinner indeed, even with Sparrow sulking on the edge of it. Half a dozen plump rabbits hung in snares among the trees. The greenery on which they had been feeding was sweet and wonderful to the taste, and flavored their flesh even before Keen cut it up and filled the pot which waited in a pleasant clearing.
That was more than a night’s camp: there was a shelter of laced branches, a firepit lined with stones, and a small flock of goats penned near the shelter. The goats gave them milk to drink and cheese to nibble on while the pot simmered.
The stranger did not offer them her name. Keen did not ask, and Sparrow had relegated herself to sullen silence. As to why she lived alone, far from any tribe—she made no secret of that. “I was shaman of a clan down by the river. Horsemen came and killed them all or carried them away. I was spirit-walking far from the people, or I would have died with them. I was a strong shaman, but young, and the horsemen were terrible.”
“Horsemen like me?” Keen asked. She was not afraid; there was no hostility in the old woman’s eyes. Only sadness.
The old woman shrugged a little. “Not as tall as you, or as fair. But close enough. As soon as they learned that one can ride a horse as well as eat it, they were hot to conquer the world.”
“But they didn’t.”
“Winter came,” the old shaman said, “and come spring they were too busy fighting one another to trouble this side of the river. Not that they failed to come back, but by then our tribes were wary. It was harder for them to slaughter and pillage and ride away.”
“And your people learned to ride horses, too?”
The shaman laughed, not the dry cackle one would expect, but a warm ripple of sound. “My child, we’ve been riding horses since the dawn time. We just never made a great rite of it, and we certainly never used it to make war. Horse Goddess is pleased to carry us where feet are too slow or tire too soon.”
“I don’t believe you,” Sparrow said from the other side of the fire. “We were given the gift first. No one else had it before us.”
“No one on your side of the river,” said the shaman. “This is a different world, child. Is that why you’re so angry? Because it won’t shape itself exactly as you want it?”
“I am not angry,” Sparrow snapped.
“Of course you’re not. You’ve done a terrible thing and expect to die for it, and you don’t know what to do about it. Except run—but running is wearing. Eventually you have to stop.”
“How do you know what I’ve done?”
“How does a shaman know anything?” The old woman bent toward the stewpot and dipped a fingerful—without flinching, either, though the stew was bubbling heartily. She tasted, frowned, added a handful of herbs and stirred the pot.
When she sat back, they were both watching her, and neither was inclined to speak. She laughed at them. “Children! You look so guilty. Yes, I know what you did, or think you did. I’m sure your people think so, too. They’ve twisted the world so completely, seeing it all through men’s eyes. But in the end they’ll understand. It’s not the stal
lion who matters, however pretty he may be. It’s the mare.”
“They’ll kill us first,” Sparrow said.
“Not if you’re wise,” said the shaman. “You’ll stay here a while and learn what I have to teach you. Then I’ll send you elsewhere.”
“And if I won’t go?”
“You’ll go,” the old woman said, “because the mare will go in spite of you, and you’re bound to her. You think you know what that is, but you’ve barely begun to understand. That’s what I’ll teach you.”
“I don’t want to be taught.”
“So you think,” the old woman said.
30
Alone in that strange country, riding his dun and leading Spearhead’s bay, Wolfcub knew that he had lost the trail. The storm had swept it away. He could only continue in the direction in which he had been going before, somewhat slowly, much delayed by storms and their aftermath: flooded rivers, falls of mud or stone, lightning that seemed aimed at him like spears in battle.
Maybe it was doing exactly that. Maybe the gods had had enough of his hunt and were determined to drive him back. They had killed his companion. He did not intend to be killed likewise; but he had to go on. His king had bound him to it.
His mother, and Sparrow certainly, would have observed that he was being bullheaded. He supposed he was. A day or two after Spearhead died, he acknowledged to himself what had been evident for a while: the wounds of the lion’s claws were not healing as they should.
The effort of digging Spearhead’s grave and heaping the cairn had burst Spearhead’s careful stitching. The deeper wounds had opened and bled anew, bled clean as he had thought, but now they had begun to fester.
He did what he could. It was not much, alone, with the worst of them raking round to his back where he could not reach without opening the wounds further. If he had had kumiss he could have made a poultice with it, but the last of that was long gone.
Down by one of the myriad little rivers he found willows, stripped their bark and steeped it for a gaggingly bitter tea, which helped somewhat. But he had no wherewithal to brew a stronger potion.