by Judith Tarr
Agni shrugged. “I hope I’ll be the strongest,” he said.
“You likely will,” said Patir. He tied off the braid with a bit of leather. “But I wager I’ll be married first.”
Agni snorted. “That’s no wager. Everybody knows your father agreed with Korosh that you’d have one of his daughters once you won your stallion. You’ll even get to choose which one.”
Agni glanced over his shoulder in time to see Patir’s face flush crimson. But he mustered a proper portion of bravado. “Maybe I’ll choose them all.”
“What, all six? Even the baby?”
Rahim twitched out of Agni’s grip. “Here now, if you’re going to talk instead of do something useful, at least let me finish before the night’s over.”
Agni pulled him down again and went back to work. “Though why you want to look like a blooming daisy I don’t know,” he muttered. And after a pause in which Rahim steadfastly refused to speak, he said to Patir, “Don’t take the prettiest one. Take the one who meets your eye when you look at her.”
“What if that is the prettiest one?” Patir inquired.
“Then you’re fortunate,” said Agni.
“You would know,” Patir said.
Agni held himself still. Made himself say lightly, “What would I know? I’m not promised from birth to one or all of Korosh’s daughters.”
“No, but you’re no innocent in the ways of women, either,” said Patir with an arch of brow that made Agni want to slap his head off his shoulders.
“I heard on the wind,” said Rahim, “that there’s one in the White Horse camp who’ll be looking for you to come back.”
“Or maybe she’s in Red Deer tribe,” said Agni through the humming in his ears, “or Dun Cow, or—”
“Maybe,” said Patir.
There they left it, nor did Agni detect any veiled glances. And yet his heart would not stop its hammering.
It had been a perfect secret, what he did with his brother’s wife. No one had ever seen his coming or her going. There had been no rumor, and no betrayal.
She would not do it. No more had Agni.
How then?
Not at all, he answered himself. Young men liked to talk. Women were an endless preoccupation. Patir was chaffing, that was all; plying Agni with mockery.
Agni determined to be comforted. He was in no danger. Not now; not ever, if the gods were kind. And when he was back among the tribe, when he was truly a man and accepted among the priests, and certain to be king when at last his father went among the gods, then he would make a law for himself. He would take the woman who was meant for him, who made his body sing.
It was an oath of sorts, that he swore to himself. He would have Rudira. He burned to think of her.
Tonight he would walk among the tribe. And maybe, if the rites allowed—or if not, then tomorrow—he would see her again.
He leaped up, scattering his friends. “Come! Why are we dallying? We’ve a ride ahead of us.”
oOo
It was not so far, but not so near, either; nigh half a day, and a struggle in the wind and on horseback, to preserve one’s beauty for the tribe. They paused just over the last hill to restore their paint and their plaits, and to brush the dust from their horses’ coats. Then at last they rode up over the crest, paused there to be seen, and galloped whooping down on the camp.
The camp was waiting for them. The men in their finery, mounted on their own stallions; women thick-shrouded in veils but allowed for this instance to see their young kin come home; children leaping, running, galloping on their ponies, dogs barking, cattle lowing, and from the herds the calls of stallions at the scent and sound and sight of strangers.
Agni found himself at the head of the riding, borne along on the back of his red stallion. People stared and pointed. He heard Horse Goddess’ name, and the name of the moon, and words of wonder and envy. “Of course he would bring home such a horse,” they said.
He laughed at that, because after all he was a prince. Mitani danced and tossed his head and shrilled deafeningly at all the horses. I am king! he cried. I, and no other.
oOo
The king of the White Horse people waited for his son in the camp’s center, sitting on the royal horsehide that was—Agni saw with vivid clarity—the precise color of Mitani’s coat. He looked no older, if no younger, than he had when Agni left.
The thing that Agni had dreaded, that the man on the horsehide would be another, and worst of all his brother Yama, had proved unfounded. His father was still king. He was still, as far as Agni could see, both strong and in possession of his wits.
He rose to welcome his son, and held out his strong thin arms. Agni sprang from Mitani’s back into that embrace. It was fierce; it squeezed the breath from him. And yet he laughed, no more than a gasp. “Father,” he said.
“My son,” said the king. He let Agni go. His eyes had moved past his son to the stallion who waited with well-schooled patience. “You did well,” he said.
“Horse Goddess was kind,” said Agni.
“She does love her children,” the king said. He held Agni at arm’s length, peering into his face. Whatever he saw there seemed to content him. He nodded and said, “Come now to the dancing. When that’s done, and the gods’ rites too, we’ll speak together, you and I.”
Agni bent his head. It was only proper, but he meant it. He was glad to see the old man again—gladder than he had imagined he could be.
He wanted to be king, oh yes. But not yet. Not for a long while yet.
oOo
They danced the sun out of the sky and sang the moon into it, deep voices of men and beating of drums and the trumpeting of stallions. Each young man was presented to the tribe, given all his names and the names of his forefathers, and honored for the victory that he had won, the stallion who would be his mount hereafter.
Agni had yet to see his brother Yama, though others of his brothers were much in evidence. Some even seemed glad to see him, and pleased that he had won such a prince of horses. Some of the new-won stallions grew fractious as the rite wore on, but Mitani stood still, head up, as a king should do; watching it all with calm interest, his only infraction an occasional call to the mares. His mares were safe among the rest by now, and well he knew it, as horses know.
Agni’s heart was full. It was all as he had dreamed it since he was old enough to know how a man became a man. The moon shining down. The fire leaping up. The faces of the people, fixed on him, and his father intoning the names that he had been given and the names from which he sprang, back to the morning of the world. And beside him, warm and breathing and utterly alive, his stallion whom the gods had meant for him.
He was man among the men of the tribe. In the morning he could enter the circle about the king, and sit where a young man sat, and be a part of the councils of the people.
He could present himself for one of the priesthoods. He could be the leader of a warband. He could, and before too long should, take a wife. All for the winning of a stallion, and for standing before the people to be confirmed in his name and his place, and made a part of them till death should take him.
43
The night wore away in dancing and feasting, in singing and in laughter. Agni sat at his father’s side when he was not dancing among the men. The king was stronger and more hale to look at than he had been since Agni could remember. He looked almost young again. He even danced the Stallion Dance with the rest of the men, whirling and stamping and shouting, shaking his long white mane and laughing, light as a boy.
Some of the new-made men were gone long before the sun rose, Agni could well imagine where. But although many a pair of eyes smiled at him over a veil, none was the color of water below a brow as white as bone.
Rudira was not among the women. He searched for her as best he could with so many eyes on him, so many people watching. Neither she nor Yama was anywhere to be seen.
No one spoke of Yama as absent. Agni saw his tent in the rounds of the dance, se
t where it always was, somewhat west of the king’s. And yet he had not shown his face at this great rite, nor had his wife slipped away to see if her lover had returned.
That was the only stain on Agni’s joy, that she could not see it. But she would know. How could she not?
Though if Rudira and Yama were in that tent together . . .
He shut away the thought. Tonight should be only splendid. He danced it into the dawn, and saw the sunrise from the king’s side, leaning drunkenly on his friend Rahim. Patir, it seemed, had chosen one of Korosh’s daughters after all; or had chosen to forget that he was promised to one of them, and let himself be lured away by a woman of another kindred.
It did not matter, Agni told himself. He was happy. He was back among his kin; and he would be king.
oOo
After all the dancing and feasting, drinking and laughter, the light of day was harsh and bitterly bright. The tribe’s new-made men were allowed that day’s indulgence. Thereafter they had places to fill, as sons, brothers, husbands; as hunters and warriors for the tribe.
Today they could lie about, drink kumiss, and tell the tales of their stallion-hunts, each vying to outdo the last. Agni saw Yama after all, strutting among the men of his own age as if he had been among them all the while, taking no apparent notice of the brother who had come back with a prince of stallions.
Yama was no lovelier than ever, and no more gracious. He had managed to keep about him a surprising number of men, and not all younger sons or weaklings, either. Too many reckoned his bulk authority, and listened to his bluster and called it sense.
Agni suffered no great anxiety in taking the count of Yama’s following. He had expected it—had known that people would follow Yama while Agni was away. But while the king was strong, Agni’s strength could only increase again; and when at last and at length the king was gone, Agni would stand higher than he had before.
Not that he intended to wait passively for people to come back. When the morning was well advanced and his head had recovered sufficiently from the effects of his night’s indulgence, he sought the horselines. He found Mitani with what might have been dismaying ease, by the sound of a stallion’s challenge.
The war had not yet begun. Mitani was penned alone as each of the new stallions was, but someone—by accident or intent—had failed to fasten the gate securely. Mitani had broken out and gone in search of his mares. And when he had found them, he found another stallion about to claim them.
Agni suppressed a groan. Of course it would be Yama’s horse—not the yearling he had brought back from his own summer’s hunt, but the one who had succeeded that one; a heavy-boned creature very like its master, and known to be of uncertain temperament. Mitani beside him seemed slender and gangling-tall, and somewhat awkward in his youth. But not weak. No, never that. Even as Agni came running, he lunged for his rival’s throat.
There were people about, but no one was bold enough to come between warring stallions. Agni, who should have known better, could only think of death and maiming, of his beautiful gift of the gods torn and bleeding on the morning after he came to the tribe. With no thought but that, he bided his moment; and when the stallions in their battling came round to where he stood, he launched himself toward Mitani’s back.
Mitani barely noticed. The stallions had drawn apart, circling, necks snaking, bracing for a new and deadlier lunge. The first had dealt no more than bruises. This one would draw blood.
Agni slipped the belt from about his middle and held it by one end, letting it fall along his thigh, balancing on Mitani’s back. The bunching of muscles brought him to the alert.
Yama’s stallion sprang first. Agni tightened his grip on sides and mane, whirled the belt up and round, and caught the charging stallion full across his tender nose.
He recoiled, staggering, half-falling. Agni kicked Mitani about, utterly against the stallion’s will—but his training held; thank the gods, he had not forgotten. He wheeled, snorting and snapping at Agni’s leg, but obedient in his fashion.
It did not last long; but it lasted long enough. When he spun back, his rival was gone. Fled; which, had the beast been a man, he would have declared loudly to be only prudence.
Mitani trumpeted his victory. Once Agni had been so kind as to slip from his back, he circled his mares as a proper stallion should, and herded them apart, and kept them so. No stallion challenged him, even the king. The mares were, after all, his daughters.
oOo
“He’ll be king when the old one goes,” someone opined. Agni did not see who it was, and it was not to his advantage to crane and peer. He had to pretend that he had not heard. To walk away with a light step, as if he had no doubts of himself or of anything else in the world.
After so long alone with no human creature about him, he felt strange, as if his skin had worn away; and now the close quarters of the tribe rubbed painfully on it. But he could not escape onto the steppe, even to hunt; not so soon. People would take it ill. And that above all he must not permit.
He was convivial therefore. He walked through the camp. He visited friends. He was cordial to his kin.
He found Patir in front of Korosh’s tent with a pair of that man’s sons, playing knucklebones. Patir looked as haggard as one might expect, but he grinned at Agni and tossed him the cup. “Win a round for me,” he said.
Agni won one for him and another for himself, and took Patir away, not greatly to Patir’s distress.
“Have you chosen a daughter yet?” Agni asked him.
He nodded, none too eagerly. “It’s decided. I’m to have the eldest. She’s not the prettiest, but she’ll do.”
“Does she have sense?”
“I can’t tell,” Patir said. “All I’ve seen of her is a pair of eyes above a veil. She never says a word.”
“Then how do you know if she’s pretty?”
“I asked my sisters,” Patir said. He did his best not to look embarrassed.
“Ah,” said Agni. “That was wise. What did they say?”
“That the second eldest is beautiful but vapid, the third has a voice like an eagle shrieking, and the rest are too young to trouble with. But the eldest is good enough to look at, has a pleasant voice, and says she’s ready to be a wife.”
“Do you ever wonder,” Agni mused, “if it’s really the women who rule? We have to ask them everything, and when we choose wives, who else knows which one we should take?”
Patir shrugged. “It doesn’t make a great deal of difference, does it? They’re in the tents. We’re outside. We don’t have to go in unless it pleases us.”
“Or unless we want to eat,” Agni said, “or sleep, or wear clothes.”
“We can do all of that ourselves,” said Patir, “if we have to.” He slanted a glance at Agni. “Are they talking wives for you, too?”
“Not yet,” Agni said.
“They will,” said Patir.
But not too soon, Agni thought. There had been talk, of course. There was always talk. This man’s daughter or that, this one’s niece, that one’s granddaughter, would make a useful alliance for the king’s son. No one ever spoke of beauty or wit, or of the gift of driving a man wild.
oOo
Evening came none too soon. Agni took his daymeal with others of the new-made men, in a circle round a fire tended by Rahim’s mother. She was a widow and therefore permitted to walk abroad, though she must cover her face.
It was said she had been a great beauty in her day; and there were men, elders, who would have been glad to relieve her of her widowhood. But she never saw fit to accept them, and her male kin were not so bold as to compel her. She kept her own rent therefore, and looked after her daughters and her only son, and was adept at feeding hungry young men.
Everyone knew that if Rahim married, it would be outside of the tribe. His mother had long since discarded every girl in it as unworthy.
He was in comfort. Agni and the rest, waited on by Rahim’s veiled and studiously demure sisters, were wo
ndrous well aware of their new manhood.
They could command and be obeyed. They could meet a girl’s eyes—even if she were only Rahim’s sister—and not look away, though it was as much as any’s life was worth to venture more.
oOo
Agni slipped away as the night grew dark, when the mead had gone round enough to blur the keenest-sighted. He had only pretended to drink, taking a sip to warm him, no more. In the full dark he made himself a shadow, ghosting round to the tent that stood to the west of his father’s.
No fire burned in front of it, but the horsetail hung limply from its peak, signifying that its master was in the camp. Agni had seen Yama earlier, sitting in a place of honor at a campfire tended by a minor clansman with a great number of brothers and cousins. All of them that Agni could see had been waiting eagerly on him.
When Agni looked for him, peering out of the shadows, he was still there. He looked well advanced in kumiss, and well settled in his place. He would stay there nightlong, as a man might do if he chose. Some of the new-made men had professed their intention of doing just that round Rahim’s fire, because they could; because they were no longer expected to go obediently to bed in their fathers’ tents.
Agni had been asking no leave but Rudira’s for a long while now. Tonight he did not mean to ask it. He did not expect that he would need to.
He knew well where she slept in Yama’s tent, which was nigh as large as the king’s—larger in fact than it should be, as young as Yama was, and as little respected for his skill in the hunt or in war. It was like Yama, like Yama’s stallion: oversized, overbearing, and hollow at the heart.
The slit in the tent’s wall that Agni had made some seasons since was still there, unmended, and it seemed undiscovered. He listened outside of it as he had many a time before. The camp’s sounds separated themselves, near and far, from the barking of a dog to the laughter of a woman to the lowing of a bull. But within he heard nothing, till he was ready to stoop and slip beneath the wall.
Then he heard voices, too low almost to perceive. His breath caught, but they were women’s voices, and low only because they were somewhat distant. One was Rudira’s. The other, it came to him after a while, belonged to Yama’s mother.