by Judith Tarr
“Does that matter? Just do it.”
oOo
Taditi had always been much too wise to endure. Agni lay awake longer than he meant to, chewing over the things she had said. Ridiculous to expect a raw boy to set himself above seasoned warleaders. Worse than ridiculous to castigate him for acting as a youth of his age should do.
Yet how proper was anything that he did? He was exiled. He should be nameless, friendless, hunted wherever he dared to show his face. Not lying in comfort in a tent, with a woman to tend him and a whole army to do his bidding. He the outcast lived as well as he ever had when he was a prince; and had a greater following, too.
It was all skewed about at the gods’ whim. If he had misheard them, or never heard them at all, and the whole of this riding was a delusion—
That path he dared not walk. He had not asked any of the youth of the White Horse to follow him when he fled the tribe. They had done it of their own accord. He must trust that what he did, he did by the gods’ will.
If he did that, then he must do as Taditi urged him to do. He must carry himself like a king. Even if it ended as it had at the kingmaking, he could not fail to do it.
These people knew what he was and why he had left his tribe. He had made no secret of it. No more had they dwelt on it. It was not their tribe nor their dishonor. If he made enemies they would crush him with this thing, but while they remained his friends, they chose to ignore it.
The world was not a simple place. By some jest of the gods, Agni had been set high in it. They gave him no choice in the end but to do as they willed.
Walk like a king, Taditi had said. Think like one. Expect that people would do as Agni bade them, and never doubt that they would obey.
It was no more or less than he had been taught to do, as his father’s son. Here where he had not been born to rule, where he must earn it, he walked into the circle of elders as the sun rose on a fair morning.
He had seen as he came there how no one seemed inclined to move. They might be camped in this place for the summer, for all that he could tell.
He had learned that the dark warleader’s name was Tillu and the fair one’s was Anshan. Agni spoke to Tillu, who sat as a leader sits, despite what Taditi had said of him. “Tell me, man of the Stone Tree people. Can the people of the wood be persuaded to guide us through it?”
There was murmuring, as he had expected, against the upstart who would not take his proper place on the edge of the circle and listen meekly to the words of his elders. But Tillu answered him straightly enough, with no apparent reluctance. “Some may. Are you asking me to see to it?”
“I am asking,” Agni said, “that we prepare to ride as soon as may be, but that we not ride blind. If there is a way through the wood, if we may come through it safely and in good time, can we find it?”
“We may try,” Tillu said.
oOo
Agni left the elders to their leisure. He had no doubt that once he was gone, they were not merciful. But if Tillu did as Agni asked, and if in doing it speeded their departure, Agni did not care what the rest said or thought.
Aside from the warleaders, this was an army of young men. So were all armies. Men who did not fight well died before their beards went grey. The greatest numbers were always the boys and the new-made men.
These were Agni’s own agemates, agemates in the hundreds that he had brought to this gathering. With them he was at ease. If they were hostile, he could face them down.
Mostly they were not. He walked through the camp with Rahim and Patir, Gauan and a handful of the others who had come here with him, and as he walked he gathered a band of young men.
They followed him here as their fellows had on the steppe. He did not think he did anything or said anything apart from greeting this one, smiling at that one, watching as another practiced hurling his spear through a ring no larger than a man’s hand, and cheering when he succeeded.
It was nothing he made himself do. His father had taught him the way of it when he was small, how to be welcomed among the people, till it was as natural to him as the breath he drew.
If it would bring these people together and persuade them to begin the ride into the west, then Agni would do it till the sun went down, and into the night; and rise at dawn and carry on with it, till he knew the name of every tribe here, and the names of many of its men, too.
Names were part of a man’s soul. If one had a man’s name, one had his attention. Then one could become his master—or his friend.
oOo
On the second day since Agni came into the camp, the elder Tillu paid him the honor of seeking him out. Agni was inspecting the horses, seeing to their feet, marking those that were looking a little worn and those that had taken this wound or that on the road or in the herd. Mitani was taking an interest, following just behind him, thrusting an inquisitive nose between Agni and the bruised hoof that he was tending.
He laughed and thrust it away. As it retreated, he met Tillu’s dark stare.
Agni kept the smile. Maybe Tillu warmed to it a little. On that terrible scarred face it was hard to tell.
Agni finished tending the hoof, left the horse to his rider, straightened and said, “A fair morning to you, man of the Stone Tree.”
“And to you, man of the eastern tribes,” Tillu said. He tilted a brow at Mitani. “That one thinks the world of you.”
“And I of him,” Agni said, stroking the sleek red neck. Mitani lipped his hand, found nothing there, nipped and wheeled and fled in mock terror at the blow that never even began.
Agni grinned to see him go. Even Tillu proved himself capable of a wintry smile. “If your king of horses will give you leave,” he said, “there’s somewhat that you should see.”
Agni nodded to Rahim, who moved on to the next of the waiting horses, and began the inspection that Agni had set aside.
Rahim would do well. Agni followed Tillu, and Patir followed them both, and a handful of young men who might simply have been curious, but who were conveniently well armed.
Tillu marked that, too, with a glance and a raise of the brows. Agni met the glance with a bland expression. He had not asked to be guarded. They did it because they chose to—as Mitani followed him. That was unusual in that the stallion did not wander off as they left the horselines, but continued in Agni’s wake.
Tillu led them all through the camp toward the looming shadow of the wood. Agni had found that his eye tended to slip away from it, to see it but not to see it, as if it were a shape of living darkness. Yet from so close it was only a wall of trees, with outriders straggling along the hillside and clustering by the stream.
In the shade of such a copse, men were sitting. Agni did not at first see what was strange about them, except that they were all dark-haired men. They were dressed in tanned hides, and not a great deal of those in the warmth of the morning.
Most of what he had taken for rough-tanned leather, he saw as he came closer, was their own skin, weatherworn and thick with black hair. One was even naked, though that was not immediately obvious: he wore belt and baldric, long bone-hafted knife and slung bow, and his burly chest was hung about with ornaments of feather and stone and bone.
His head was crowned with the skull and ears and branching antlers of a stag. Its hide, hooves and all, hung down like a cloak. He looked as if he had been embraced by the shell of the deer.
His body was thick-carved with scars, knotted and roped with them. Whorls of blue and black made a mask of his face.
It was, beneath the patternings, a face like Tillu’s, but heavier, stonier. Tillu, Agni could see then, was a halfling of these people, his features fined and—if one could believe it—softened by the crossing of eastern blood. This was the pure breed, one of Earth Mother’s own, like a man carved out of stone.
As Agni took in the sight of him, so he took in the sight of Agni. Agni could not tell what he was thinking. His face was empty of expression, his eyes black stones. Whether he saw a king or a callow boy, a m
an like himself or a creature of another kind than his own, Agni did not know.
Tillu beside this one was as familiar as any tribesman. “These men will guide us,” he said.
“Do they ask anything in return?” Agni inquired.
Tillu regarded him blankly. “Ask? They? They do it because we ask it.”
The man in the deer’s hide spoke. His words were alien, scattered with gurglings and clicks, like water muttering to itself in its sleep. Tillu heard him out with an expression that told Agni he understood.
When the speech was ended, Tillu said a little slowly, “This is a priest. He sees farther than other men see, and understands the speech of birds. He says to you: ‘We guide you through the wood to serve ourselves. Promise to harm nothing, touch nothing, conquer nothing. Your gods have conceived a lust for the White Goddess’ country, but our country is no part of it. We will not be conquered. Promise.’ ”
Agni frowned. “And if I won’t promise?”
Tillu spoke in that language like water running over stones. The priest answered briefly. Tillu said, “No promise, no guide.”
“That is reasonable,” Agni said. “But they must guide us well and safely and by the shortest way, and promise no harm after.”
The priest could promise that. Agni gave his own word in return.
The priest listened intently to Agni’s words; by which Agni knew that he understood the speech of the tribes, though he might not choose to speak it. He answered even as Tillu opened his mouth, but in his own tongue. Tillu said, “We follow you. Not the others. You. If the others go another way or try to break the word you’ve given, they have no guides. Only you.”
“Why?” Agni asked.
Was that the glimmer of a smile? “Because,” said the priest through Tillu, “we wish it so.”
That was simple enough. Taditi would be pleased, Agni thought. She might even give him a few moments’ peace.
55
Whether the elders would or no, on the fourth day since Agni came to the camp by the wood, all the young men struck their tents and readied to ride.
Their guides were waiting. Agni’s own following champed at the bit. When he came out to the horselines, he found Patir at Mitani’s bridle and the chief of the guides standing with the patience of a stone.
The priest was dressed, or not dressed, just as he had been before, man’s body emerging from the hide of a stag. Agni’s men looked askance at him. He was a strange, wild figure, a spirit of the wood.
Agni grasped mane and swung onto Mitani’s back. The stallion was in motion even as Agni settled, fresh and eager and none too unwilling to venture the shadows of the trees. He would not suffer another horse to go before him, unless it were a mare; and men of the tribes did not ride mares.
They were bound to foot-pace, since their guides either would not or could not ride. But Earth Mother’s children were swift on their feet and tireless, and could run as fast as a horse might comfortably go, there amid the trees and the tangled undergrowth.
The paths were narrow and twisted. The branches closed in overhead, shutting out the sky.
Agni, looking back, could see no more than the first dozen of his following. He could hear farther than that, but sounds were strangely muffled here, lost in the whispering of leaves. This might be a trap, might be treachery too perfect to escape: catch the horsemen in the wood, cut them off from one another, cut them down before they could move to defend themselves.
They could not always ride, either. Where trees grew close or branches hung low, they must perforce dismount and lead their horses.
Agni on the march liked to ride back and forth along the line, keep count of his men, see that the baggage was safe, share a song or a story. Here he was bound to the lead, with only the priest ahead of him. For all he knew, the dozen men he could see and the dozen more that he could hear were all that had followed him. The rest might have remained in the open country under the blessed vault of the sky.
He had bought this with his word and with his conviction that the gods had led him into the west. He did not know if he even traveled westward. All directions were the same under the trees.
He must trust in the gods and in his guide. When a clearing opened with startling suddenness, wide and sunlit and sweet with grass and flowers, he could draw aside and count the men who rode or walked through it. Their beginning he knew; he had been in it. Their end was lost in the dimness of the trees.
As Agni sat Mitani and Mitani grazed, well content with the respite, Tillu rode out of the trees and curved round to his side. The warleader of the Stone Tree was mounted on a horse as thick and massive as himself, a heavy-headed black with feathered hooves, such as one sometimes found wandering away to the northward. It was taller than Mitani and far more strongly built, but seemed remarkably placid for a stallion. Tillu sat at ease on the broad back, watching the army ride past.
“You’ve been in the wood before,” Agni said without taking his eyes from them.
“Once or twice,” Tillu said. “My mother was a captive from one of the forest clans. My father took her not for her beauty—she had none—but for her power in the clan. Women rule here. You may widen your eyes at it, but it is so.”
“I widen my eyes,” Agni said, “because I’ve heard the same of the western people. Do they exist after all? Or are these the ones the travellers tell of?”
“Oh, no,” said Tillu. “The forest people are another people altogether. It’s said they were made before the dawn of the world, even before the gods; when Earth Mother was alone, and hungered for company. So she made the people out of clay and stone, taught them to speak, gave them the gifts that she had then to give. The grey light of dawn was theirs, and the chill of morning. But when she made the sun, she took it into her head to refine her creation. Then she made a new race of men, and made them beautiful. She put fire in them; but it was too strong for them, burned and consumed them. So she made them again, but set a core of clay in them, a vessel for the fire; and what was pure fire, she shaped into the gods.”
Agni heard him out in wonder. “You know great and secret things,” he said.
“My mother was a clan-mother,” Tillu said. “And yes, as you asked, there are people beyond the wood, between the trees and the sunset. It’s called the Lady’s country. The Lady is Earth Mother. They know no other gods. That, the forest people say, is because they were made between the dawn and the daylight. They remember the time before there were gods. They worship none but Earth Mother, because the gods came late and were made of the leavings of their own creation.”
“And women rule them,” Agni said.
“Oh, yes,” said Tillu. “They’ll find you appalling. The forest people do. They’re gentle people, too gentle for the likes of us. But for the terror of the wood, they’d all be dead long ago. The tribes would have overrun and killed them.”
“Or made pacts with them,” Agni said, “to leave them unharmed, and overrun and kill someone else.”
“Can you blame them for that?” Tillu asked.
Agni shrugged. “It’s war. One does what one must.”
“Precisely,” said Tillu.
oOo
When night closed in, the men of the steppe found themselves in a world they had never imagined. There were no stars beneath that canopy of branches, no moonlight; only a black and whispering dark. It was full of rustlings and murmurings, far-off howls, the shriek of something dying.
So many men could not camp within sight of each other. Their guides led them to a chain of clearings and showed them where there was wood to burn, water to drink. For the horses’ sake they pitched tents under the trees, leaving the grass clear. Even that was little enough.
By pausing in clearings, Agni had worked his way well back along the army’s length. Now as dusk grew dim beneath the branches he looked for his own people again. He found them just short of full dark, camped on a fire-seared hillside where the grass grew green and rich amid the charred stumps of trees. They
were in greater comfort than some, with more space and therefore more sky, and better grass for the horses.
He squatted beside the fire, next to Taditi, who tended a fine haunch of venison on a spit. The rest of the deer roasted nearby, over Gauan’s fire.
“Lucky shot,” he called across the darkening space.
“Wasn’t luck,” Taditi muttered. “Was sharp wits and a sharp eye. We’ll need a strong share of that if we’re to come out of this place.”
“I hate it,” said Patir. He was lying on the grass staring up at the stars. “It makes my skin creep.”
“People are laying wagers whether the whole world is forest,” Rahim said from across the fire, “and whether the sunset country is clear of trees.”
“It had better be,” Patir said darkly. “If I see a tree there, by the gods, I’ll cut it down and burn it.”
“Earth Mother might object to that,” Tillu said, taking shape out of the darkness and sitting on his heels by the fire.
An antlered figure loomed behind him. Agni saw fingers flick in a gesture against ill spirits, but it was only the priest in the stag’s hide.
He was watching Agni. Agni smiled brightly at him and turned his glance on Tillu. “How long will we be in the wood?” he asked.
Tillu shrugged. “As long as it takes. Five days? Eight?”
“Eight days?” Patir howled like a dog. “Ai! We’ll all run mad.”
“Pray,” said a voice like stones shifting.
They all stared at the priest. He stood unmoving, his face shadowed by the stag’s crown.
“Pray to the gods,” Tillu said, “and think of sunlight. It’s open country where we’re going, though you,” he said to Patir, “may find a tree or six to burn.”
“Let it come soon,” said Patir.
oOo
No one went mad, though tempers frayed and men were sore tempted to quarrel with one another. Agni rode tirelessly up and down the army, in and out of its camps, soothing and stroking and coaxing people to be sensible.
He slept, he supposed, though not happily. There were dreams, and they were dark, hill of murmurings and whisperings like the forest he slept in. If he came through it, he would wait long before he went near it again.