by Judith Tarr
“She?” Agni asked when Mika did not go on, in a kind of dizzy hope.
“Sarama,” said Mika.
Agni had been prepared for that, and still the breath rushed out of his lungs. He slipped from Mitani’s back, intending to do it, but not perhaps so bonelessly as that.
Mika stayed where he was, happily, regarding Agni with bright-eyed fascination. “She looks like you,” he said.
“She is my sister,” said Agni. He wanted to seize Mika and shake him till his teeth rattled. But he stood still. “She’s here?”
“She’s in Three Birds,” said Mika. “So is the Mother. And Catin.” Whoever or whatever that was. “They all left. They said war was coming.”
“Sarama? Sarama left? Was she a captive? Had they hurt her?”
“She went with Danu,” said Mika. “From Three Birds. Catin hates her. I don’t like Catin. I like Sarama. Did you come looking for her?”
“Yes,” Agni said, because it was simplest, and it was true enough. “The Mother is gone? Who rules here?”
“Nobody,” said Mika.
“They just left?” Agni demanded. “Just walked away?”
Mika nodded.
“I will never understand these people,” Agni muttered.
“It could be a trap,” said Patir behind him.
“It could,” Agni conceded.
He turned slowly, taking in the city, such of it as he could see. Strange to know how much more there was, and to think that he had seen only a small portion of it.
He stopped abruptly and said to Patir, “We’ll carry on as if we have no worry in the world. I’ll rest in the Mother’s house. Post guards there and bid the rest pitch camp near the river, and see that everyone’s fed. We’ll see just how docile this city wants to be.”
“We don’t want to fight,” Mika said. “The Mother is afraid to.”
“Is that why she ran away?” Agni asked him.
He shook his head, wide-eyed. “Oh, no. She went to the Mother in Three Birds. The Mother in Three Birds is the wisest in the world.”
Agni pondered that, but said nothing directly of it. “You speak my language well,” he said.
“I listen,” said Mika. “That’s all.”
“The gods have given you a gift,” Agni said. “Come with me.”
Mika was happy to oblige, though he did not like to leave Mitani. Mitani, eager to shed his gear and roll, was rather too pleased to take his leave of Agni and Mika both and follow Patir back through the circles of the city.
Agni had hoped to keep him nearby, but there was nowhere for him to graze here. The houses were too close together, the grass too sparse beneath the trees. Agni would have to hope that if anything came upon him it would come from without, and would have to pass his guards long before it came to him.
oOo
The Mother’s house was not deserted: there were people in it, servants from their look and bearing. They received Agni less than joyfully, but they did not drive him out, nor did they fail in their duties. It seemed to be a matter of pride.
This would do. He settled in the house as if it had been his tent, took the largest of the sleeping rooms for his own and left the rest for the men who rode closest to him.
There were no women in the house, he could not help but notice. All the servants were men.
He could reflect that they were being permitted to conquer this country. Or he could conquer it as he best could, and trust in the gods for the rest.
Toward evening, as the servants prepared the daymeal, he summoned the elders to him. He refused to consider that they would not come.
And indeed, well before darkness fell, they were all gathered in the Mother’s house, sharing the daymeal that the servants had made. They were no more submissive than ever, nor any more cheerful, either.
Tillu said it for them all: “Riches are very well, and so is an easy conquest. But the young men need a fight. We can only send them out hunting for so long—and with so many cities crowded together here, there’s precious little game to be had.”
“Or if we can’t give them blood,” said an elder from one of the western tribes, “women would appease them. For a while. But what good is a warrior without a war?”
“These people won’t fight,” someone else said. “They’re like sand and water. Push and they give way. Strike and they scatter.”
“They do take well to being ruled,” Tillu observed.
“Aye,” growled one of the elders, “and what good is that?”
“Plenty,” Tillu shot back, “if it gives us everything we ask for. Copper. Gold. Willing women.”
“War?”
“Maybe,” said Tillu, “if we take enough, push hard enough.”
Agni did not like the direction that was taking. “Listen to me,” he said: and it was gratifying to see how they all turned at the sound of his voice. “We have restless young men and a country that won’t fight. That’s certain. Now suppose we find a way to keep them occupied. I’m not minded to dissipate our forces by scattering them over this country. But if I send them out by clans and kin-bands and tell them to secure the cities—and bind them with oaths to provoke no killing—how busy do you think I can keep them? More than that: if I tell them to muster the men, turn them into warriors, and raise from them a force to defend this country, they’ll be months, years, in the doing of it.”
“And then?” said Tillu. “What then? If they teach these people to fight, they’ve raised a force to cast us all down and drive us out.”
“No,” said Agni. “That’s not what they’ll do. Listen now: how long do you think it will be before the tribes learn what we’ve learned? Once they know how rich this country is, they’ll all be turning westward, hoping to take a part of it for themselves. But we hold it. It’s ours. Our country.”
“Ah,” said Tillu, trailing off to a long sigh. Agni watched comprehension dawn in the rest of them: slowly in a few, but in the end it came to them all.
“We’ll have all the fighting we could ask for,” Gauan said. “But not now. Not this moment, when we’re most likely to need it. It may be years before the tribes come after us.”
“The longer the better,” Agni said, “and the more time we have to make this country strong enough to face whatever comes.”
Eyes gleamed round the circle. There were doubters in plenty, growling at his folly, but his will for the moment was stronger than theirs.
“You know what you’re doing,” Patir said, drawling the words from where he sat by the wall. “You’re turning this whole country upside down. Once you teach its men to fight, they’ll never be the same.”
“Do you think that’s an ill thing?” Agni asked him: honestly, because he wanted to know.
“I don’t think you can turn back the sun,” Patir answered, “and for a surety the gods have shown us what they want of us.”
Agni nodded. “They’ve given us this country, and its people with it. If we’re strong enough, we’ll hold it. If not . . . we die. We all die in the end. But I choose to die a king.”
“I’d rather die old,” Tillu muttered. He raked fingers through his beard. “This is a very large thing you’re thinking of. It’s not just a raid—gallop in, grab whatever you can find, gallop out again.”
“Is that all you thought it was?” Agni asked.
Tillu shrugged. “How often does a tribe take over another tribe’s lands? It happens—raid begets raid, and we’re all driven westward. But this isn’t the steppe, and these aren’t tribes. These are people unlike any we’ve ever seen. They live in cities. Their tents are made of wood and stone. They don’t follow the herds from season to season. They stay where they are, like trees. We’ll have to change, too, if we’re to live with them. We can’t turn them all into tribes of horsemen.”
“Nor should we want to,” Agni said. “Think of it, Tillu. These people live where they live, always. They make Earth Mother give them her fruits. They eat whatever they like, whenever they want it. We can travel among them as t
ribesmen should, take what they have to give, and never lack for anything. We can take what’s best of both our worlds.”
“It will make us soft,” said one of the doubters. His fellows nodded, agreeing with him.
“You can go back to the steppe,” Agni said, “and live as hard as you like. But the rest of the tribes will follow me westward, because the gods have led them. There is no turning back. We’ve done what we’ve done. This sunset country is ours now, and the lands of the east will be full of strangers. It’s always been so. Remember the tales you heard when you were a boy. Remember where your tribe’s lands were then. Haven’t we all seen our hunting runs shift, and move as the sun moves? The gods are driving us westward—driving us here.”
“I wonder,” murmured Patir, “what happens when we’ve gone as far west as we can go? Will we find ourselves looking at the sunrise, and driving the eastern tribes ahead of us, back in a long circle?”
“We’ll fall off the edge of the world,” Gauan said.
“You’re mad,” said the doubter.
“So are you,” said Gauan, “or you’d never have come with the rest of us.” He grinned, making the words light, inviting them all to laugh with him. A few even obliged.
No one said anything precise, or agreed on anything, but when the last of the wine was drunk, when the last elder had fallen asleep where he sat, Agni knew that they would acquiesce to whatever he did. There would be enough for all of them to do, even without the pleasure of a battle.
IV: WARRIORS AND WOMEN
63
Strike, feint, whirl and strike. Strike again, parry, stamp, whirl, strike.
Danu could do it in his sleep. He did it every morning with staves in the practice-field; and after that he shot arrows at targets. His dreams were full of arrows flying, horses galloping, men shouting in a language that he heard—yes, even in his sleep.
And yet there was no shadow of war on Three Birds. The summer burgeoned richly, swelling ripe to the harvest. Traders came and went. Travellers passed through on their way to other cities, or to visit this one that was the greatest in this part of the Lady’s country.
Catin, having delivered her message, had gone back to Larchwood. Then for a long while the east was silent, and no word came.
At midsummer the quiet broke. It was no one Danu knew, a runner from Widewater well to the north of Larchwood, but the message was the one that he had dreaded.
“Horsemen,” the woman said. “Riders on horses, hundreds of them, spreading like a plague over the towns to the east of us. We give them whatever they ask for, and even what they don’t ask for, but they won’t stop. They keep coming. They stayed in a village called White Oak, but one of them raped a woman there, and her baby died. He was given the Lady’s mercy. Then they went on.”
When Sarama heard that, she went white and still. She was still carrying the child, her belly just beginning to round with it: invisible under the coats or gowns that she wore like any woman of Three Birds, but well perceptible to Danu’s hand when he lay with her in the nights.
At word of the horsemen’s coming and the death of the one who had committed the only crime for which a man could die in this country, she left the Mother’s house and disappeared. Danu found her much later, after hunting everywhere that he could think of. He had not thought to look in the room they shared, within those narrow walls, with the window that looked out to the temple.
She sat with her arms folded on the windowframe, chin resting on them, staring out at nothing. He had never seen her so still.
He touched her in honest fear, lest he find her reft of substance, turned into air and mist. But she was solid and warm, with her straight silken hair the color of tarnished copper, and the flecks of sun-kisses across her nose. He wrapped his arms about her, cradled her.
She did not move into his embrace, but neither did she resist it. She lay against him with a sigh.
He kissed her hair. It smelled of herbs and sunlight, and a little, always, of horses. “No one will touch your child,” he said.
She twisted a little so that he could see her face, and the frown on it. “I’m not afraid of that. I’d kill any man who touched me unless I wanted it.”
“Then what?” asked Danu. “What scares you?”
“Imminence,” she said. And when he stared, puzzled, not quite understanding: “It’s coming. The thing I came to warn you of, the thing that maybe I brought to you—it’s here. It’s in the Lady’s country.”
“You’re afraid of war? Of dying?”
“No,” she said. “Of men on horses. Of—” She broke off. “Did you hear what the woman from Widewater said? About the chief of the horsemen—the one they’ve made their king?”
Danu nodded. “A young man. Very young—too young, one would think, to claim such authority. He rides a red horse with the new moon on its brow.”
“And he is a red man himself,” she said almost impatiently, “but a coppery red, lighter than mine, and his eyes are the color of amber, which is strange and rather frightening when he stares hard at a person. And he is tall, one of the tallest of the riders, but lean, and yet wide in the shoulders. His beard is still a young man’s beard, patchy in places, and he wears his hair in a braid, thick as a man’s wrist.”
Danu’s brows went up. “She didn’t say all that. The red hair, the yellow eyes, that’s all she said. And that he has a nose like the curve of the young moon.”
She tilted her head up, with her nose like the arch of a newborn moon, and fixed him with those leaf-green eyes. “Yes,” she said. “His name is Agni. I was born first. He came clasping my foot in his hand.”
“Your brother?” Danu had not expected that. “You’re twinborn?”
She nodded.
He drew a breath. “Among us . . . twins are sacred. They’re the Lady’s own.”
“Yes,” said Sarama. “I don’t understand. Our tribe hunts far to the east—very far. He was to be king of it. How can he have come here? I told him not to follow me. I made him promise.”
“Did he?”
“No,” she said. “He never—quite—” She shivered in his arms, caught at him and clung. “I didn’t want it to be true. I didn’t want Catin to be telling the truth. I did bring the war. I am the cause of it.”
“I think it would have come without you,” Danu said, and he did believe it. “It was coming, you told me, before you ever went westward. People were thinking of braving the wood. Someone would have led them into it, and even through it. If you hadn’t been here first, we’d never have learned how to fight.”
She shook her head, but she did not argue with him. He held her for as long as she would let him, which was a surprising while.
When she pulled away, he did not try to hold her. She drew herself to her feet. “I have to talk to the messenger. Is she still here?”
“She has to go on to the Long Bridge,” Danu said, “but she’s agreed to stay the night.”
“Good,” said Sarama a bit distractedly. “Good.”
oOo
Danu did not hear what Sarama said to the messenger. He had duties in the house, and thereafter was caught up in looking after some of the children for his brother Tanis.
When he came back to the Mother’s house, it was dusk. The lamps were lit in the doorways, the stars coming out overhead. It was a beautiful night, warm and sweet-scented, fragrant with bread baking, meat roasting, spices wafting from kitchen fires. Somewhere a woman was singing, and a child laughed, sweet and high.
Sarama was taking the daymeal with the Mother and her daughters. She seemed calm, much as she always was, smiling at something that one of the daughters said. But she did not glance at Danu when he came to sit beside her, nor did she come to his bed after. She had gone to the temple where he could not follow.
That grieved him. It should not have. Of course she would commune with the Lady. She had much grief to bear, and much guilt. But he, foolish mortal, wanted her to commune with him—to come to him for comfort.
It was a foolish thing to do, but he went to the temple, sat on the doorstep and clasped his knees and waited there, while the stars came out and the moon came up and the city went still around him. He emptied his mind of thought as the city’s circles emptied of people. He practiced an art that the Mother had taught him. He schooled himself to simply be.
Sleep came on him while he sat there. Her step woke him abruptly and completely.
She paused beside him, a tall shadow, with the moon turning her face to a white glimmer. “Danu?” she said. She sounded half asleep herself.
He unfolded stiffly and stood. She touched him, ran hands along his shoulders as if to assure herself that he was there. “Danu? What’s wrong? Is someone sick?”
“No,” he said.
“Is there a new message? Has someone come?”
“No,” he said again.
“Ah,” she said, as if suddenly she understood. “You were afraid for me.”
He did not say anything.
She stroked his cheek, brushing fingers through his beard. “It is my brother leading the horsemen. The messenger told me enough that I could be sure of it. I’m not going to run off to him.”
“I wasn’t afraid of that,” Danu said. “I was afraid it might break your spirit.”
“What, that he followed me after all? That’s as the Lady wills—or as she allowed the gods to do.”
He laced his hands behind her. She leaned into them as she loved to do of late. She said it eased her back. She was not greatly pregnant yet, but the child’s weight could drag at her, unbalancing her slightness.
The Mother said that she was broad enough to carry a child, but she seemed so slender, no wider than a boy. He fretted over that, too, though he would never let her know it.
“They’ll come this way,” she said, “before too long. Everybody comes here. It’s the greatest of the cities.”
“There are greater ones,” he said, “away west and south. But hereabouts . . . yes. We’re the Mother city. So you think there will be war.”
“He hasn’t done any fighting,” she said. “People have offered him gifts and persuaded him to go on past their cities. If he can keep his men in hand, if none of them breaks loose and raids the villages, he well may bring no war at all.”