by Judith Tarr
“We have to be strong,” she said. “We can’t stumble in as we are now. They’ll cut us down and reckon it good riddance. We should ride among the tribes as people of consequence, rested and fed and as clean as we may be. As a king and his escort, not a band of wild raiders.”
oOo
Linden acceded to that, after a while: perhaps because he was as tired as she, as much as that he was allured by the vision of himself as king. When he went at last to sleep, Sparrow sought her own rough bed, with Kestrel in it.
She did not slip at once into a dream. Kestrel was awake, with such a look about him that she wanted to hit him. “What?” she demanded crossly. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why are you staring?”
“Because I love to look at your face,” he said.
She fixed him with her fiercest glare. “You’re thinking I’ll leave you all here, creep out, and get myself killed. Aren’t you?”
“I . . . had thought of it,” he admitted.
“Don’t.”
“I thought that, too.” He brushed his finger across her set lips, and followed it with a kiss. “I think I’ll trust you.”
“Good,” she said, biting off the word.
He grinned, which truly made her want to hit him; then he took her in his arms. Her body, the fool, did not struggle at all. It melted against him and sighed.
“Sometimes I hate you,” she said.
“No matter,” he said, “if most times you love me.”
oOo
They rested, then, and gathered strength. As they did that, a rider came in on a hard-ridden horse, one of the king’s warband who had stayed to ride in the morning after the new moon. Grey Horse was indeed riding with them, with Cloud at their head, and Storm remaining behind to look after her people. This day’s pause would bring the slower riders close, though not quite together.
Sparrow nodded at that, and sent another of the king’s men back with messages which she made him repeat over and over till he had them perfect. Then she was a little more at ease, and a little less confused in her mind.
That night they ate the flesh of two fat stags that Aurochs had brought down, and drank the last of the kumiss. The next fresh meat or strong drink they would have would be in the camp of the gathering—or among the warrior dead.
Then they slept as the just sleep, deep and dreamless—even Sparrow for once freed of the burden of visions. Dawn woke them with dark and starlight and a keen wind blowing, as if it would carry them across the river.
Sparrow heard voices in it, faint cries, the murmurings of spirits. They were close then, all of them, to the land of the dead. When another morning came, some of them, and maybe all, would walk or ride there.
Sparrow, too. Sparrow perhaps most of all. She was to have lived long and died old, with her successor ready to take her life and carve a cup out of her skull. But in the world that Drinks-the-Wind’s sacrifice and Walker’s escape had made, it was more likely that she would fall before evening with her brother’s knife in her heart.
Even the gods were divided, tumbling in confusion. She shut her mind to them all and fixed herself on the world of the living: dawn wind, scent and sound of horses, men rising and groaning and readying to ride. They remembered what they had sworn when they paused to rest, that they would approach the gathering with pride. They had all cleaned and mended their garments yesterday, brushed their horses, plaited one another’s hair.
Now they dressed and made themselves seemly, undid the damage the night’s sleep had done to the hide or hair of man and horse, and made certain that their weapons were ready and close to hand. Some of them sang softly as they did it, war-songs, and here and there a death-song. Someone had a drum, someone else a bone flute. To that skirling and drumming, they mounted and rode. Their hearts were strangely light.
oOo
Linden rode beside Sparrow on the king of stallions. They were both as beautiful as Sparrow had ever seen them. Linden smiled at her, the warm smile he kept for women he fancied. “It’s a fair morning,” he said.
“And a fair day coming,” she agreed. “We’ll find the gathering somewhat after noon, if we ride neither too fast nor too slow.”
“Is he already in it?” asked Linden, with a flicker of shadow across his bright face.
Sparrow nodded. “He’ll have come there a day or two ago.”
“Then,” Linden said, “anything we could say or do, now he’s had time to brew his poison—”
“You are the king,” she said firmly. “Remember that.”
She watched him remember it: sitting taller, smoothing the frown from his brow. If fear still troubled him, he had buried it deep. He would be as strong as she needed him to be, if Horse Goddess was kind.
oOo
A new messenger came as they rode on in the rising morning. The others were not far behind now; they had ridden for part of the night, were resting, would ride on at full morning. That was later than Sparrow would have liked, but they would reach the gathering soon enough after she would—well before sunset, certainly.
Which left nothing but the riding, and a scout or two sent ahead to watch for spies and ambushes; but there was none. If Walker knew that they followed, he was waiting in camp for them, secure among his allies.
oOo
They came to the river somewhat after noon on a fine hot day of summer. The river was still a little swollen from the spring rains, even so late in the year, but the ford looked passable.
The gathering camped beyond, spreading up and down the bank and straggling away onto the plain. A pall of smoke hung over it, a reek of cooking fires, dust from the hooves of horses and cattle, and massed humanity.
They had been seen: movement stirred in the camp, surging of figures afoot and figures on horseback toward the riverbank and the ford. Kestrel eyed the way they must take, and shivered. They would be open targets for arrows and thrown spears, trapped like a herd of antelope in a ravine.
There was no other way. Bravely then, heads high, they rode as Sparrow had bidden them ride: king’s companions foremost in an arc like a bow, warriors behind, king between them like the arrow set to the string.
Sparrow rode beside the king, white mare beside grey stallion. She was not armed. The king had not strung his bow or taken spear in hand. The others rode with bows strung but arrows in quivers, shoulders stiff, eyes alert.
They went down the bank into the water. It was knee-deep on the horses, swift but not so much that it would carry them off if they went slowly. And slowly they had to go, while the tribes waited on the far bank, a long line now of men and horses. Kestrel marked the sigils of the tribes: Cliff Lion, Tall Grass, Dun Cow, Red Deer, White Stone, and other, lesser people among them. They, like Linden’s warriors, carried strung bows, but none nocked arrow to string.
The king’s companions reached the middle of the river. It was deeper here, the current stronger, waves lapping the riders’ knees. Their horses braced, slipping a little but holding. The riders kept their eyes on the men who waited.
They passed midstream. Still no arrow flew. The foremost man reached shallow water, started up the bank.
The men atop the bank seemed disinclined to let him by, but at the last instant they drew back, horses jostling, leaving a space wide enough for one rider to pass.
Linden set heels to the grey stallion’s sides, so suddenly that he took Sparrow by surprise. The stallion leaped forward, spraying water, surging up the bank behind that first bold man. Linden was shouting with laughter, whooping like a mad thing, whirling a spear about his head.
Men scattered. The silvermaned stallion danced, curvetting, tossing his head.
Linden’s warriors rode up through the space he had opened, into the midst of a wary army. They spread behind him as they could.
The stallion stood still, motionless, neck arched, snorting softly. Linden smoothe
d his water-dampened mane and smiled sunnily at the gathered tribesmen. “Well met, my people,” he said. “And such a welcome! Are you glad, then, to see your king again?”
They seemed notably more amazed than glad. Linden rode forward. Men gave way before him.
And, Kestrel noticed, closed in behind. There was no escape now. They could only go on toward the camp’s center, where the king’s tent of the White Stone stood tall among the rest.
oOo
Walker was waiting for them there, with the kings of Cliff Lion and Dun Cow and Red Deer, and the Tall Grass king standing at his right hand. He was dressed as a shaman, but he stood on the royal horsehide. If any memory remained of his defeat on the gods’ hill, he had buried it deep.
“Take them,” he said to the men behind Linden’s warriors.
They closed in. The king’s men nocked arrows at last, bending the shorter, stronger bows of the Grey Horse People, which could shoot far and hard.
“Now then,” Linden said easily, addressing the kings as brother to brothers, “isn’t this a bit ridiculous? Brothers, brothers, if it’s my kingship you’re wanting, there’s a way to get it, and with little enough bloodshed, too.”
Cliff Lion’s king rumbled laughter. “What, you’d fight us all?”
Linden spread his hands in deprecation. “Oh, I’m not that great a hero. One at a time—or two if you like. Whoever’s still standing at the end, he takes this beauty of mine, and the kingship, too. Not,” he said with his sweet, maddening smile, “that I expect anyone else to take him, but you can dream.”
“We can take him,” said Cliff Lion’s king.
“You can try,” said Linden. “Here, I’ve been riding a while and I’m thirsty. Shall we share a skin of kumiss before we fight, and a bite or two with it?”
“Hungry for a last meal, boy?” sneered the Red Deer king.
“Starved,” Linden said brightly.
He had them, whether they knew it or no. They all dismounted, but each man kept his horse near to hand, and his weapons, as women brought food and drink. It was a strange feast for a battlefield, there in the middle of the great camp.
Linden ate with relish, nor would he go when Sparrow tried to draw him aside. Kestrel would have liked to do it himself. Linden had been advised to offer combat with a single champion—not with every one of the kings, still less one after the other. One man he could defeat; he was a great fighter. But a dozen, or more if the lesser kings took it into their heads to try for the prize—that was wholly unreasonable.
Kestrel managed to say so under cover of offering Linden a cut of roast ox. Linden grinned at him, unrepentant. “I know, I know. But I couldn’t fight just one—it wouldn’t be enough. It’s got to be all of them.”
“To the death?”
Linden shrugged. “I’m married to a sister or daughter of each. My wives are all with child. I’ll name the offspring heirs and myself regent for them—and appoint good men to play king while the babies grow up.”
That was breathtakingly ambitious and rather brilliant. But it had a signal flaw. “All or most of those children could be daughters,” Kestrel said.
“Then I’ll find husbands for them, yes?” Linden patted his arm. “There, there. Would you like to be king in all but name of, say, Cliff Lion? Or Tall Grass—I know you have friends there.”
“I don’t want to be king of anything,” Kestrel said. “I want you to be alive and king of the People.”
“The gods will make sure of it,” said that gleeful madman, biting into the haunch of antelope, and grinning as the red juices ran down his beard.
Kestrel sighed deeply and withdrew.
oOo
Just before Linden could be accused of avoiding the inevitable by prolonging the feast, he rose and drained the last of a skin of kumiss. He belched enormously, laughed, and stretched. “Well now. Who’ll begin?”
Men moved hastily to mark out a circle before the king’s tent, where the people could see the battle clearly, and the combatants could see what prize they stood first to win: the king’s wealth and all his women, bright eyes and shy faces peering out from the tent’s flap.
Linden stepped into the circle even as it was complete, stripped and tossed his garments wherever they happened to fall, wound his yellow plaits about his head and bound them, and stood waiting, smiling, gleaming in the sun. He could not but know how splendid he looked, with his broad muscled shoulders and his strong rider’s thighs, and his rod, even at rest, as long and nigh as thick as many a man’s at full stretch.
He rolled those shoulders, flexed his muscled arms. He smiled his infuriating smile. “What, no one wants to fight me after all? Am I so terrifying? Is it so obvious that I can’t but win?”
Cliff Lion’s king snarled and sprang into the circle. He was a bull to Linden’s young lion, taller, broader, and notably heavier. His strength was famous, likewise his ruthlessness. He loved to seize his enemies in such a circle as this, and break them over his knee.
Linden beside him seemed a stripling, a golden child with too little sense to know when he was overmatched. But Kestrel, studying the larger man, noted that he was no longer young, and that for all his massive strength, he had grown soft about the middle. If Linden could withstand the first mighty charges, he could wear that bull of a man down.
But there were other, younger, fitter men waiting, and Linden had agreed, in his folly, to fight them all. He could not play out the game too long. He had to fell each opponent quickly, and hope to keep his strength for the next.
He eluded the Bull’s charges, light on his feet, laughing, which enraged the Bull. Then his foot slipped, and his rival caught him, grappled him and flung them both bruisingly to the ground.
Linden twisted, so that the Cliff Lion king was beneath him when they struck. While the Bull lay winded, he paused as if hesitating—with his own men screaming at him to make the kill now, do it now, and get it over. When he did strike, it was too late; a heavy arm swung up to turn the blow aside, and a massive hand reached for his throat.
He flung himself backward, staggering, rolling, scrambling to his feet. The Bull charged again. He might have had long curving horns and great hooves, he was so like the beast of his name.
Linden let him thunder past, but caught him just before he passed out of reach, whirling with the force of his speed, letting it carry him down again. He was already turning in midair. Linden struck wildly. The Bull ran full into that flailing fist, and dropped without a sound.
He was not dead. His breast heaved, though he was unconscious. All about the circle, men roared, bellowing for his blood.
Kestrel bit the insides of his cheeks. The pain helped him to focus, to keep his distance from that surge of sound. Linden could not let the Cliff Lion king live—not that one of them all.
Whether he understood it or simply did as he was told, Linden sank to one knee and took that massive head in his arms. His jaw set. The muscles rippled across his back. He broke the man’s neck.
61
Linden was given no time to recover from the battle or the killing. Red Deer’s king leaped into the circle.
This was a much younger man than the Bull, hot-tempered, lean and quick. He had a flint knife in his hand.
Linden was unarmed. Kestrel caught his eye and tossed his own knife into the waiting hand. Linden grinned at its balance. It was a fine knife—Aurochs had made it.
The Red Deer king circled, stepping as light as a stag. Linden was heavier, slower, and still breathing hard from the earlier fight. But this circling let him get his breath back. When his rival darted in for a stab, he was ready, beating the blow aside, thrusting underhand. The Red Deer king twisted out of reach.
Linden pressed after him. Wise, Kestrel thought. The smaller man was much faster, but if Linden could catch him, he would fall to greater weight and strength.
But he was so very fast. The second dart of the knife found flesh, slashed Linden’s shoulder. The third caught his arm. The fourth he
eluded, but barely: it was aimed at his throat. He was like a lion beset by a small and determined hound, too slow to turn, to run, to leap. The Red Deer king was everywhere at once.
Linden stopped in the circle’s center, not far from the fallen Bull. He was breathing hard, bleeding from numerous small cuts and slashes. He had never even touched his enemy. He crouched down as he could, and set himself to parry each thrust as it came. He did not try to strike, simply to defend.
The Red Deer king laughed in scorn. He made a dance of it, leaping, whirling, stamping, striking. Linden for his part stood as heavy as a stone, moving only to protect himself.
Kestrel nodded slowly. A truly wise man would have lured Linden back around the circle, harrying him until he fell. But the Red Deer king exerted himself mightily while Linden, for all purposes, rested. And waited. And watched.
Kestrel’s eye was quick. He saw it as soon as Linden did: a slight hesitation, the hint of a stumble. The Red Deer king was tiring. Linden smiled faintly. He did not look a pretty fool then, but a man in his element: a warrior fighting for his life.
A blow, slipping slightly wild, bounced off his blade and raked down his arm, aimed for the heart.
He caught the knife-hand in his free hand. At the last possible instant, he leaned away from the blade that almost—but only almost—had pierced his breast.
The Red Deer king struggled. But he was tired, and Linden was strong. Linden pulled him in, clasping him in a bear’s embrace, turning the knife inexorably, inescapably, toward his rival’s own heart.
The Red Deer king was, after all, a king. He did not beg for mercy. He met Linden’s eyes as he died, and held them without flinching.
Linden lowered him to the ground beside Cliff Lion’s king. He closed the wide eyes, arranged the slackened limbs. He straightened slowly.
Dun Cow’s king entered the circle without haste. He had two spears in his hands. He tossed one. Linden caught it.
This was a great warrior, one of the great ones of the plains. His name was Spear; and that was his weapon. He balanced it in his hand as if it had been as light as a stem of grass. Then he began to work his magic with it: whirling it, spinning it on his palm, letting it dance humming up his arm and over his shoulders and down to his free hand.