by Judith Tarr
“Of course it’s not,” Rahim said. “She’s not one of us. I’m sorry she died, but she shouldn’t have tempted me.”
“She did nothing,” said Agni. “You raped her. She is dead because of it.”
“I said I was sorry,” Rahim said.
“Of course you are sorry!” Agni flared at him. “You couldn’t control yourself, and you’ll die for it.”
“You won’t kill me,” said Rahim. “You’ll send me somewhere else till it all blows over. It will, you know. Everything does.”
“Not this,” Agni said.
“Yes, this,” said Rahim. “Come, we’ll play a game. You’ll pretend to put me to death, and I’ll fall down convincingly, and you’ll smuggle me away, and—”
“No,” Agni said.
“What do you mean, no? You can’t kill me. What have I done to you?”
“Angered the gods,” Agni said. “Betrayed the trust I had in you. I might have expected it of another man, some young idiot from a western tribe, with more balls than sense. But you, Rahim. You I trusted.”
“I won’t do it again,” Rahim said. “On that you have my word.”
He did mean it. If Agni could have softened, he would have softened then. But the wind of the gods blew through him, shrill and cold. He said, “No. You won’t do it again. You’ll be dead.”
Rahim laughed as if at a jest, but his laughter faded before it was well begun. At last, thought Agni, through the haze of wine and cocksurety, he caught a glimmer of the truth.
He did not want to see it. Agni watched him try again to laugh, and fail; watched his eyes widen, then narrow. “You can do this? After what the tribe did to you?”
“I was innocent,” Agni said. He stepped back.
At the signal, young men of the western tribes crowded into the room, took Rahim by the arms while he stood amazed, and half-dragged, half-carried him out. He was too stunned to struggle.
oOo
They brought him into the sunlight, blinking, ruffled, unkempt from his night of captivity. There would be no dignity for him, no more than there had been for the woman who was dead.
The people of the city had gathered in front of the Mother’s house. They made no sound as they saw Rahim. That in its way was more terrible than any snarl of anger.
He put on a swagger for them, a reckless bravado. He did not believe it even yet, Agni thought. Maybe he never would.
People came out behind them: the Mother and her daughters, bearing the body of their sister. The silence grew deeper still, and more ominous.
There would be a rite, Agni supposed. Words. Anger fed to fever-pitch. And then, in whatever way their law decreed, they would kill him. Bare hands, he supposed, or flung stones.
He could not bear it. He whirled, snatched the spear from Gauan’s hand, whirled back and about.
The moment was blindingly swift and yet eerily slow. In it he met Rahim’s eyes; saw the astonishment there, and the disbelief. And at the last, as the spearhead bit flesh and bone, nothing at all. Only the empty dark.
61
Rahim was dead before he struck the ground. Agni set his foot on the body with a kind of numb horror, and pulled the spear free.
It did not come easily. Its head had lodged in bone.
That was a petty thing, and ugly, and slower than Agni could easily endure. But he could not leave the spear in the body. This was his friend, the brother of his heart, the blessed fool who had gone too far.
At last the spear was free. He laid it down carefully and straightened Rahim’s limbs, as if he could wake and find himself all twisted.
When Rahim was as tidy as he could be, Agni straightened. “Bring me his horse,” he said.
It was Gauan who obeyed, Gauan who was not of Agni’s tribe or people. Agni could not meet the eyes of Patir who had stood beyond him. There was no altering this, and no softening it. It must all be done as the gods willed.
It seemed a long while before Gauan came back leading Rahim’s fine bay stallion, and yet the sun had hardly moved. The stallion was nervous, snorting at the people gathered about the Mother’s house, and shying at the scent of blood.
Agni took his rein from Gauan, soothed and gentled him until he would stand, if wild-eyed. Agni stroked him, murmured to him. Slowly he eased; little by little he lowered his nose into Agni’s hand.
“Brother,” Agni said. “Go with my brother. Bear him company among the gods as you bore him company here below. Let him walk with pride, though an error bought him his death.”
The stallion sighed and leaned lightly on Agni’s shoulder. Agni set his teeth; firmed his heart and mind, and thrust with the spear that had killed Rahim.
It was a clean death, a pure sacrifice. The stallion sank down slowly and without panic, as if into sleep.
When the life was gone from him, Agni completed the rite as it was done among the tribes: took the head to set on watch over Rahim’s grave, and flayed the body, and stripped it of its hide.
No one moved to help or to interfere, which was right and proper. This was Agni’s doing, all of it; his right and his fault. His the praise for it, if any was to be had. His the blame. No one else would bear the burden.
Agni’s people took away the flayed carcass, emptied as it was of life and potency. They would dine on it tonight. Then they would complete the rite, as if it had been a great sacrifice.
Now, in the hard light of morning, Agni spread the hide in front of the Mother’s house and sat on it as a king sits. He called to Tillu, careful always not to treat the chieftain as an errand-boy or a servant, and waited as Tillu found it in himself to oblige.
This could not go on, Agni thought remotely. Either these people would learn his language, or he would learn theirs.
Whatever he intended to do, for this moment he had to trust to Tillu’s tongue and his considerable wits. “Tell the Mother,” Agni said, “that this is my city, and that I have paid for it in the blood of my friend. She will consider all debts paid and all justice done.”
Tillu’s brows rose at that, but he refrained from comment. He spoke to the Mother.
She sat by her daughter’s body as if she had lost the will to move. She did not answer in words. She spread her hands. As you will, the gesture said.
oOo
Agni sat on the new-flayed horsehide and spoke, and when he spoke, people obeyed. Just so simple was it to be a king.
He saw Rahim taken away for the burial. He saw the Mother’s daughter taken likewise, though he did not know if they would bury her, burn her, or lay her out for the birds of the air. She vanished into the temple, and the elders of the women with her, and the Mother walking heavy and slow. He sent then for the rest of his people, and bade them come to him in this place.
Somewhere in the midst of it he was brought food, drink, clothing for his body. It was not his well-worn and comfortably redolent leather but garments made all new, woven of the beautiful cloth that was so common here. From naked wild man he found himself transformed into the image of a king.
It was a cold and splendid thing, to be at last what he had waited for so long to be. Though people crowded about, pressing in close, he was alone. The blood of his friend stained his hands. His heart was heavy with grief, walled away and consciously forgotten until he could stop to think of it.
The other of his dearest friends, Patir, who had been even more beloved than Rahim, was nowhere that Agni could see. If he had gone away, if he had turned his back on Agni for what he had done to Rahim, Agni would not fault him in the slightest.
At evening, under the waning moon, they sent Rahim to his long sleep. They built a barrow for him on a hill beside the river and laid his weapons in it, his belongings that he had loved, and provisions for the journey into the gods’ country. Then when they had closed the earth’s gate upon him, they set his stallion’s head on a spear and left it to watch over the grave.
Some of the people from the city lingered to watch them. Men mostly, and children, silent and still.
What they thought, Agni could not imagine. They did not seem glad that Rahim was dead. They did not seem to feel anything at all.
He did not discover what the women did with the dead woman’s body. Once it had disappeared into the temple, it did not reappear again. That was a women’s rite, he could well see, and forbidden to men.
He was not minded to set foot in the temple. Let the women keep their secrets for yet a while.
He had no sleep that night, though he stumbled into the Mother’s house near dawn and fell onto the bed that he had left—was it the full round of the day and night past? There was no willing woman to share it with him. They were all in the temple still.
He lay aching in his bones, his eyes burning dry, and watched the morning brighten slowly beyond the window. There was an empty place inside him where Rahim had been. He caught himself wondering how many such places there would be before he went to the knife, when he was old and could be king no longer.
oOo
At full morning he rose stiffly, stifling a groan, and made himself as presentable as he could. Breakfast was laid out for him, the bread fresh and warm, the wine cool in an earthen jar. He ate a little, drank a little. So strengthened, he went out to face the sunlight.
The rest of his people were coming, and would be in the city before the sun touched the zenith. The women of the city were still nowhere in evidence. Patir was waiting for him, sitting in the shade of the Mother’s house, beside but carefully not on the bay horsehide that had, the morning before, belonged to Rahim’s stallion.
Agni sat on the horsehide. It would need to be taken soon, cured and tanned, or it would rot where it lay. But for the moment it sufficed.
“I thought you had gone,” he said.
Patir shrugged. He had a knife and a bit of bone that he was carving into a shape that might be horse or deer or maybe, if one squinted just so, a man. It was careful work, and it absorbed much of his attention. But Agni did not commit the error of thinking him distracted.
Agni did not press him. People came, seeing Agni there, and wanted this and that. Some of it was silliness, men indulging in the luxury of a king to do their thinking for them, but Agni was patient. Much of what a king did was silliness. People needed it, and him. In its way it made them stronger.
All the while he did what a king does, he kept half an eye on Patir. Patir finished what looked to be a dagger-handle: a man, yes, crowned with horns like a stag, rampantly and exuberantly male. He leaned out over the horsehide and dropped the carving into Agni’s lap.
It was a gift. Agni did not reckon that it was tribute. It fit his palm with lovely exactness. He would have a blade made for it, a wonderful blade, a blade of copper, such as no lord of the tribes had ever had.
He slanted a glance at Patir. Patir was watching him. “How much do you hate me?” Agni asked him.
Patir scowled. “Why not ask me how much I hate him?”
“Do you?”
“No,” said Patir. He stabbed at the earth with his knife, over and over, as if it had been living flesh. “Sometimes he could be the—worst—idiot.”
Agni bent his head.
“Do you know what he did to you?” Patir demanded. “Look at you! He made you a king.”
A snort of laughter escaped before Agni could stop it.
Patir stabbed at the earth, stabbed and stabbed at it. “For all I know he meant to do that. Rahim was the gods’ own fool. But he loved you. He would have done anything for you.”
“Except keep his hands off a woman.”
Patir’s glance burned. “What do you know of that? They always want you.”
“Not if you ask the Red Deer people,” Agni said. He turned Patir’s carving in his hands, smoothing his thumb along the curve of it. “I’m going to find the greatest city in these parts, the mother city. I’m going to take it and rule in it.”
“That would be Larchwood,” Patir said. And as Agni stared at him: “Tillu’s been talking to people. They say that Larchwood is the greatest city in these parts, and its Mother is the wisest. They also say . . .” He paused. Agni waited. He said, “They say that the word for war came from Larchwood.”
“It came from the steppe,” Agni said. His eyes narrowed. “Do you suppose . . .”
“It’s near the wood, they say: nearer than this place, but farther to the south. If travelers came through there, they might have brought their words with them.”
“Yes,” said Agni. “It’s Larchwood we need, then. And I wonder—”
“If she was there? Or is still?”
“Sarama,” Agni said. “Yes. There’s been no word of her. I won’t believe she died in the wood, or is trapped there and can’t come out.”
Patir did not respond to that. Agni let it slip into the silence. After a while he said, “We’ll ride in the morning.”
“Yes,” Patir said.
It was not as it had been when Rahim was alive, when their friendship ran clear and bright between them. But it was better than hate.
62
Almost as soon as Agni’s tribesmen had come to the city, they rode out of it again. Agni had conceived an urgency, a need to see this place called Larchwood—where he might find, or find word of, his sister.
They said no farewells. They simply left. They took with them whatever they could carry. Copper and gold, and lesser treasures too. But no women.
That lesson, for however a brief a time, they had learned. It was sealed in stone and crowned with a stallion’s head, Rahim’s grave where he would sleep until the world ended.
They rode south and somewhat east, through the cities and their attendant towns and villages. People watched them but did not approach. The cities were quiet, the way open, the message clear.
Whatever they took, they took freely. No one offered protest. But they were not made welcome as they had been before. They were allowed to ride through, but not invited to linger. Nothing came to them as a gift. It was left for them to take.
In this way the tribes lured prides of lions away from their hunting runs, or diverted a stampede of wild oxen from their camps. Agni chose not to challenge it. It suited his purpose to drive direct for his goal, and it pleased him well enough to find no obstacle in his way.
He was careful not to relax his guard. These people did not fight; they yielded. They gave way rather than contest for mastery. But even they might rebel at last, stand fast against him, even move to defend themselves. Then he must be ready for war.
His people were growing cocky, and more so the farther they rode from Rahim’s barrow and his death. If Agni did not find a fight to give them, and soon, they might rear up and bolt. But he was not ready yet to slip the rein. He held them in tight, led them onward, pressed toward Larchwood at speed that left them too breathless to rebel.
oOo
They came to it at last on a day of mist and rain, a soft grey day that muted even the highest of spirits. The world closed in; distances shrank. Hills vanished beneath a veil of cloud. They felt rather than saw the wood draw in close again, the cold green breath of trees wafting out at them, bringing memories of the long ride westward.
Agni shivered in his splendid new coat. Larchwood, he had been warned, was a woodland city, built in and about groves of trees. At that, when he came to it, it was not so closely hemmed in as he had expected.
There was open land in plenty, and more so toward the river. There as elsewhere, boats should have crowded along the banks, and people should have been coming and going in the bustle and hum of a western city in the summer. But there were only a few boats. The city was quiet, winter-quiet, muted and still.
He rode in without asking leave, led his people as straight as the curving ways would allow, to the city’s center and the temple that marked it. Indeed this was the greatest of the cities that he had seen, circle upon circle. It had not seemed so large when he rode into it, masked as it was in trees; but like the forest itself, it went on and on.
Still the forest
had ended at last, and this city yielded up its center. Its people made no move to hold him back. They stood in doorways and beside walls, watching, saying nothing.
Here for the first time Agni saw a glimmer of fear. It was subtle, but he did not think he mistook it. They were afraid of the horses.
No one else had betrayed such a thing. Only these people. Only here.
The city’s heart was empty and quiet. No one waited there, except for a small figure sitting outside the temple. It was a child; male, Agni rather thought, though it was hard to tell. As Agni halted, with the others drawing up as they could behind and the ranks to the rear spreading cautiously outward toward the city’s edges, the child rose from whatever game it had been playing and stood staring.
Here was no fear. Here was the kind of naked yearning that Agni had seen in boys of the tribe watching the men on their stallions. He had known it himself, and not so long ago, either.
It was striking in this place, among these people. Without thinking, without calculation, Agni held out his hand.
The child grinned, as bold and brash a manchild as Agni had seen, and leaped happily up behind Agni.
He had sat a horse before. There could be no doubt of it.
And then he said in words that Agni could understand, “My name is Mika. What is yours?”
Agni swallowed his first response, which was to demand where in all the world this child had learned to speak the language of the tribes.
Time enough for that. First he answered, “My name is Agni. You’re not afraid of me.”
Mika laughed as a child could, with a kind of bubbling glee. “I’m not afraid of anything. Are you bringing war?”
“Only if people bring war to me,” Agni said.
“We don’t do that,” said Mika.
“I see you don’t,” Agni said. And then he asked it: “Where did you learn to speak my language?”
“A man came,” said Mika, “and he had a horse. He talked a lot. I listened. Then he went away. And she came, and I listened some more. It was easy.”