by Judith Tarr
The second woman took the girlchild from the man’s lap and set to nursing her as she had the other. She did it without fuss, smiling and chattering with the man while Keen rocked the golden manchild to sleep.
oOo
Walker slipped away then, but not to his own tent. He was waiting in Keen’s tent when she came back, decorously clad, hair in a tidy plait, arms empty of the child. Nor was her lover with her. She was alone.
She did not see him at first. It was dim in the tent, and she was not expecting to find anyone there. She slipped off her tunic and searched in a basket for another, drawing out one fit for a festival, or for welcoming strangers to the camp.
She saw him then as she stood naked with the tunic in her hands. She lifted it quickly to cover her breasts.
Walker looked her up and down. “What, are you so modest then? And you my wife, whom the gods know I’ve seen the whole of, and more than once.”
Her face was stark white. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”
“Why,” he said, “to visit my wife. And, I rather hoped, my son. It is true, yes? I have a son?”
She gasped. “How did you—”
“I know these things,” he said. “Were you going to present him to me? It must be a difficulty for him, to have lived so long without a name.”
“He has a name,” she said, low and tight. “Mothers name their children here.”
“Do they? Do they give their children to others to nurse, as well?”
“I had no milk,” she said. “A—dear friend offered to be his milk-mother.”
“No milk? You? Why is that? Did the gods curse you? Or did you see to it that your lovely breasts would not be ruined?”
“Get out,” she said.
“I am your husband,” Walker said.
“I said get out.”
“No,” said Walker. “I need the power you can give. Even as stained as you are, you are a woman of the People, and my wife. No one else will do as well.”
Beneath the new boldness that she must have learned from southern women, she was stiff with terror. It was delicious, that mingling of bravery and fear. It aroused him even more strongly than the vision among the brambles.
He surged up. She whirled to run, but she was too slow. He caught her. She twisted, kicking, clawing at his face. He laughed. “O beautiful! What a lioness you’ve become.”
“Let her go.”
Walker looked from her to a dark figure standing in the shaft of light from the opened tentflap. In his moment of inattention, Keen tore free and flung herself into her lover’s arms.
He put her gently but firmly behind him. “Go,” he said.
She obeyed him—a marvel, and maddening.
The prince braced his legs well apart and folded his arms. He was a fine figure of a man. Walker could admit that, even in his anger. And he had seen all of this man that there was to see; even the size of him when he rose in tribute to a woman.
“It seems,” the prince said, “that you failed to understand my warning. This woman is a guest here. She is not yours to take.”
“That woman is my wife,” said Walker levelly. “Among my people, that bears with it certain rights and privileges.”
“You are among my people now,” the prince said. His voice was soft, his expression amiable.
“Indeed,” said Walker. “In this country, does the king claim any woman who comes to him without a man?”
“Not at all,” the prince said.
“In my country,” Walker said, “a man who lies with another man’s wife can be gelded or killed. Or both.”
“Truly?” said the prince with no sign of fear. “Yes, you did speak of that. You’ll pardon me for thinking it rather barbarous. Rather insulting, too, to the wife—as if she were incapable of deciding for herself whether a man was worthy to lie with her.”
“A wife lies only with her husband.”
“And a husband only with his wife?”
“Of course not.”
“How unfair,” said the prince. “Tell me. If your king claimed her, would you have to give her to him?”
Walker’s mouth opened. He shut it with a snap. “No king would dare touch my wife.”
“But if he did. Would you geld and kill him?”
“A king may claim another man’s wife. Even a shaman’s—if he has no fear of the shaman’s curse.” Walker spoke the words sharply, biting off each one.
The prince smiled with all the sweetness in the world. “I am not afraid of your curse,” he said.
He stepped aside. Men stood behind him, two tall ruddy-haired men with long stern faces.
“Come, my lord,” the elder of them said. “The king is asking for you.”
Walker gritted his teeth. “Is he really?”
“Really,” said the younger. “He wants you to help him give your father a proper welcome.”
“Tell him—” Walker broke off. His temper was slipping free again. He brought it back to hand.
One more day. Only one. He put on as calm a face as he could, smoothed his tunic and straightened his shoulders. “Take me to him,” he said.
56
Aurochs served as Walker’s escort to the king’s circle where Drinks-the-Wind was receiving his welcome. Kestrel lingered for a moment with Cloud. He had not seen that face so dark before, or so grim. Cloud was a formidable man when he chose to be.
“How bad was it?” Kestrel asked him.
“Not as bad as it might be,” said Cloud. “He hadn’t raped her yet.”
“Gods,” said Kestrel. “I suppose you have a fittingly severe punishment for rape.”
“We do,” Cloud said. “We feed the rapist to the vultures.” He drew a deep breath and flexed his shoulders. “By the gods, my lord falcon, if there were not so many plots riding on that man’s head, I would have ripped it from his neck.”
He said it calmly. It was the exact truth. Kestrel regarded him in respect. “I salute your restraint,” he said.
“Salute your beloved. She’d turn me into a toad if I took her prey away from her.”
“She can’t do that,” Kestrel said.
“Would you care to wager on it?”
“No,” Kestrel said after a moment. “After all, no.”
Cloud grinned with almost his old insouciance, and clapped him on the shoulder. “See? You’re a wise man after all. Shall we go and be princes? It should be amusing, if it’s true as I’m told, that the old man ought to be dead and the young one has been doing his best to make sure of it.”
I am not a prince. Kestrel shaped the words in his mind, but did not say them. Here, he supposed he was. After a fashion. Arm in arm with Cloud, who truly was a prince, he went to be courteous to these latest and strangest guests in the Grey Horse camp.
oOo
Cloud did not stay long: only long enough to greet Drinks-the-Wind and his strange, half-mad wife. He would go, Kestrel knew, to comfort Keen. Kestrel would have liked to do the same, but he had duties here. Walker had escaped his watchfulness once. Not again.
Aurochs had him in hand, not openly holding him prisoner, but seeing to it that he stayed in the circle, near the king but not near enough to do harm. Linden was ignoring him, fixed on Sparrow, who sat beside the Grey Horse king.
So too was Drinks-the-Wind. As Kestrel settled beside Aurochs, the old shaman said in slow wonder, “The more fool I, child, for not seeing what you were.”
Sparrow looked him in the face. She betrayed no awe of him, and little enough respect, either. “Men are blind,” she said.
“It would seem so,” he said. “And I was looking elsewhere to find the blaze of light among my children.”
“Do you regret that?”
She did not seem to care that Walker could hear. Nor did Drinks-the-Wind. “It was the gods’ will,” he said. “Even if I had seen, there was little I could have done. No one would accept a woman as a shaman.”
“You could have sent me to my own people,” she said.
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“But I never knew,” he said. He sighed. “Too late. Too late to undo it. The path I marked for myself, I follow to its end. So, too, shall you.”
Something in her changed. Her expression was the same, her body still, but her eyes were burning. “Are you—”
“Yes,” he said.
“Tomorrow?”
He nodded.
Her shoulders drooped a fraction. She looked suddenly weary. “I don’t know if—”
“You will,” he said. “You can.”
“She said that to me, too,” Sparrow said. “Nor was she any more merciful.”
“That is the way of us elder shamans,” said Drinks-the-Wind. “When your time comes, you will do the same.”
“Yes,” she said.
oOo
It was some while before Kestrel could speak to Sparrow alone. Drinks-the-Wind was with the Grey Horse king still, conversing of a multitude of things. Walker by then was shut in his tent—and how safe that was, with all the poisons he could be brewing, Kestrel was less than certain. Aurochs, wise man, had set the king’s companions on both sides of the tent, to forestall an escape from behind.
Kestrel went from there to find Keen, but met Rain on the way. She said, “Cloud is looking after her.”
“Is she—”
“She’s angry,” Rain said. “Anger makes the spirit stronger. Don’t fret, my falcon. She only looks fragile—and too often fancies that she is. My cousin has disabused her of that notion.”
Kestrel had to be satisfied with that. With a clearer conscience, he went looking for Sparrow.
oOo
She was in her tent for once, preparing for the morning. He lent a hand with her packing, raising his brows at some of the things she was taking, but asking no questions. She was deeply preoccupied; she barely glanced at him.
When the bundle was made and bound and ready to carry, Kestrel laid it aside and set about preparing one of his own. He did not expect Sparrow to help, nor did she. She sat on her heels, hands on her thighs, staring straight ahead. When he passed in front of her, her eyelids did not flicker.
He wrapped and bundled what he expected to need on a riding of indeterminate length. When he was done, he sat facing her, cross-legged, elbows on knees, chin propped on fists, waiting for her to come back from wherever she had been.
She took her time about it. He was nearly asleep, but with a flicker of hunter’s alertness, when she said, “Promise me something.”
“Yes.”
“No,” she said. “Think first. Promise that, whatever I do tomorrow, you will still love me.”
“Always.”
She glowered. “You didn’t think.”
“I don’t need to.”
“You should.”
“Some people think too much,” he said.
“Most don’t think enough.” She straightened, stretched a little, lay with her head in his lap. As he stroked her soft curling hair she said, “I’m not afraid of what will happen. Not for me. But some of it will not be easy, and some will be terrible. I can’t alter that. I can only do what’s required of me.”
“Yes,” he said.
“You don’t understand. You can’t.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But I can love you.”
“Oh, gods.” She buried her face in his lap. He could not tell if she wept. Maybe she only needed to shut out the light, and such visions as she could.
Whatever comfort he had, he gave to her. He hoped that it was of use.
oOo
The morning dawned bright and clear. It was a fine morning of midsummer, cool before sunrise but promising to be hot when the sun had risen to its zenith.
Word had gone out as Sparrow commanded. Those whom she trusted knew that they rode to meet the army. The rest were given to believe that she intended a great sacrifice in the moon’s dark, in a sacred place northward of the Grey Horse camp.
Drinks-the-Wind rode with them on his white mare, and White Bird followed. She had spent the night with Linden, everybody knew but no one chose to remark on, least of all her husband. Drinks-the-Wind himself had kept to the inner room of the king’s tent. As to what he did there, some of the warband laid wagers.
“Talked all night,” Curlew said.
“Lay with her,” countered Bullcalf.
“Both!” Brighteyes cried. He had been into the kumiss already and was waxing silly with it.
Linden, who on most occasions would have been joining in the banter, was unwontedly silent. When he looked at anything at all apart from the plain or the sky, he looked at Sparrow. His eyes did not turn toward Walker at all, though the shaman rode nearby.
Linden was not riding the king of stallions. Sparrow rode him—and it was a wonder to many that the king said nothing. He sat astride his pretty dun like a man under a spell. Kestrel hoped that Sparrow knew what she was doing, because the glances darted at her were not friendly.
Keen rode beyond her on the mare, close by the prince and the king and the shaman of the Grey Horse People, protected among them, with her son strapped to a cradleboard on her back. She never glanced at Walker or acknowledged his presence, though his eyes rested often on her and on the child she carried.
It was a strange and complicated riding in the bright sunlight. Kestrel’s belly was in knots. He untangled it carefully, breathed deep and slow, and willed himself to be calm as before a battle.
Everything was ordered as Sparrow would have it. She had not tried to prevent the Red Deer men from mingling with the White Stone men and the men and women of the Grey Horse, nor seemed to notice that they kept their weapons close to hand. The taste of treachery was bitter in Kestrel’s mouth; but Sparrow’s command had been clear. “Let his plan unfold. Move only when I bid you.”
Kestrel would do that. But when young warriors of the Red Deer insinuated themselves among Linden’s companions, they found that web of casual banter and easy revelry to be impenetrable.
One fine tall fellow on a spotted horse tried to force his way past Aurochs toward the king. His horse tripped on a stone, perhaps, and went down, sending the rider sprawling. Even his fellows laughed at that, till it dawned on them that he had not moved. His neck was broken.
Aurochs was profuse in his apologies, promising great reparations, even shedding a tear for the fallen man—and that, in Kestrel’s mind, was perhaps a trifle excessive. But it staved off bloodshed, and sent knives back into sheaths. The Red Deer warriors remained behind to tend their fallen kinsman, while the rest ordered themselves once more and rode on.
“The gods are hungry for blood and souls today,” Drinks-the-Wind said. He had ridden up beside Kestrel, as light on his white mare’s back as a young man. He turned his face to the sun and smiled. “Are you not, my lords of light and darkness?”
Beyond him Kestrel saw some of the companions make swift signs against ill fortune. But he did not think the shaman was cursing them, nor was he mad, either. Drinks-the-Wind seemed as much in the world as he ever was, and in great good humor, too. “We’ve paid our day’s passage,” he said. “As for the night . . .”
Kestrel shivered in spite of himself.
Drinks-the-Wind’s smile warmed and broadened. “There, lad. You’ve little to fear. Death is a simple thing. The gate opens. You pass through. Then you journey—far, sometimes, but that should never dismay you, great wanderer and hunter that you are. The game in that country, they say, is better than any in this one: swifter, stronger, and far sweeter to the taste.”
“You’ve hunted there,” Kestrel said.
Drinks-the-Wind shrugged. “A little. In dreams. Enough to lose my fear of the life beyond life.”
“I think I’m too young for that,” said Kestrel.
The shaman laughed. He looked and sounded uncannily like his son Walker, but Walker made Kestrel’s hackles rise. Drinks-the-Wind made him uneasy, but not as an enemy would. He was a strange creature, powerful, and perhaps beyond Kestrel’s comprehension. But he meant Kestrel no harm.
“Child,” he said, “do you think I am old? To the gods I am a child, an infant, a creature of a mere day’s span. I feel it in my spirit. I’m as young as the morning.”
“And I,” said Kestrel, “was born a heartbeat ago.”
Drinks-the-Wind applauded him. “Always remember that,” he said. “It may not help you to understand the gods, but it will help you to survive their notice.”
“Does any man survive that?”
“In the end,” said Drinks-the-Wind, “sooner or later, we all die.”
He left Kestrel to ponder that, riding off to regale Walker with his uncomfortable wisdom. Walker seemed rather less appreciative of it than Kestrel was.
Kestrel, watching, caught himself wondering again what the night would bring. Sparrow would not tell him. No one else seemed to know. That it was a matter of shamans, and a great matter, too, he had no doubt. He could only pray that the rest of them would come out of it alive and sane.
57
They stopped in the heat of the day and made a few hours’ camp by a little river. Trees overhung the bank, offering a green shade. It was a cool and sweet-scented place, and there was a thicket of brambles somewhat up the river. While the horses grazed and drank, they ate a midday feast of berries and journeycake, and rested for a while.
Not all of them were sleeping. Walker, looking for a place to relieve himself in peace, passed by no few Grey Horse women sharing their favors with men of their tribe and any other who happened by. He turned his face away from them.
He was aware that he had an escort. Aurochs the hunter seemed to have appointed himself Walker’s guardian hound—or perhaps Keen’s protector.
Walker was keeping a careful distance from his wife. She, he noticed, was clinging to her black-bearded lover, and hiding as best she could among the Grey Horse People—like a tall young mare in a flock of goats, foolish and cowardly and altogether like a woman.
He could be patient, now that it was too late to feed his power in coupling with her. By the next day’s dawning, everything would be his. All the power, all the gods’ favor.