White Mare's Daughter

by Judith Tarr

  That dance, she thought, was all the distraction she could ask for. His body against hers, the clean warm scent of him, the wild curling of his hair as it dried, the heat that rose in him, found a heat in her to match it.

  The child leaped in her belly. It danced as its father had danced, in joy that defied terror.

  He bore her back and down and laid her in the grass. Its sweet scent filled her nostrils. He took her gently—took her, as he never had before; as she had despaired of teaching him. He did it with a kind of astonishment, as if he had not expected it, either.

  Just as he slackened, as the enormity of it struck him, she wrapped arms and legs about him, round the blessed curve of the child, and held him tight, warm and hard inside her. She rocked gently to keep him so. “You are a wonder,” she said, “and a marvel. If you get yourself killed doing what’s necessary for this city, I’ll hunt you through all the dark lands, hunt you down and haunt you.”

  He could not answer just then. Nor, in a moment, could she.

  oOo

  When the heat had cooled, the urgency subsided, she cradled him in her arms. His hair was all a tangle. She would be half the morning unsnarling it, and with him champing at the bit to be about his duties.

  It would keep him close, which was not an ill thing. She resisted the temptation to ruffle it further. He would never thank her for that.

  “I do love you,” she said. “Believe that.”

  “I don’t simply believe. I know.” He kissed the curve of her breast.

  She shivered at the touch. “Stop that,” she said. “Listen. I want you to be sure. I’m not going to go running to the horsemen. I won’t betray any of you. This is my place now, and these are my people. You are my people.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You can’t be so sure of me,” she said. “It’s not reasonable.”

  “And yet you ask me to be sure?” He teased her breast with his tongue, a bit of wickedness that got him slapped; but he only laughed.

  “I know what you’ll say,” she said. “The heart knows. I suppose it does. But except for Catin, none of you people is wary enough, ever, or sure enough of your own mortality.”

  “We are very sure of that,” he said with fair to middling gravity. “Don’t mistake clarity for idiocy, or the Lady’s calm for a fool’s oblivion. We know what lies ahead of us. Death for some of us, maybe. Maybe not. Whichever it is, we’re ready for it. We trust ourselves to the Lady.”

  “Is that why you danced tonight?”

  He nodded. “And because I wanted you to want me.”

  “To choose you,” she said. “Again. As if I could ever fail to.”

  “I hope you never do,” he said.

  She clasped him tightly, till he gasped and protested. She eased a little. “Don’t change,” she said. “Don’t ever be other than you are.”

  67

  Mika wanted to learn to ride a horse. He was insistent on it.

  Agni was inclined to indulge him. If nothing else, Mitani would be glad to be relieved of the burden.

  Since the battle, most of the people of this country did not even try to stand and fight. Either their villages were empty, their people fled, or a few ill-schooled young persons tried to make a stand.

  They always failed. This country was Agni’s, and no one seemed to doubt it, or to be much inclined to defend it.

  And yet those who lingered professed a belief in the city to the west, the mother of cities, this place called Three Birds. Some power seemed to reside there, some force that would hold back the horsemen. People thought of it as a wall to hide behind.

  “Its Mother is wise,” Mika said when Agni asked, “and strong in the Lady’s spirit.”

  “We’re stronger,” said Agni.

  “Maybe,” Mika said with the air of one who is determined to be polite.

  Agni forbore to upbraid him for it. Mika had kept his innocence even through the red roar of battle. Fear he had none. He was a strong spirit himself, and a bright one.

  oOo

  “He’s plotting against you,” Tillu said.

  He had come to Agni’s tent in the evening, professing to carry a message that would not wait. But when he had come in and been given wine and sweet cakes and such courtesy as was due his rank and station, he had nothing more to offer than baseless fears.

  “That boy is your enemy,” he said. “He spies for his own kind. He’ll harm you if he can. He might even kill you.”

  “Maybe,” Agni said. He had been resting when Tillu came and demanded entry, closer to sleep than he had been in more days than he liked to count.

  He yawned, but Tillu was in no mood to care for subtleties. “My lord,” he said. “Think. You don’t know that he can be trusted. He’s not one of us. He wants to ride horses in order to steal one. Then he’ll go back all the more quickly to the women who rule him.”

  “I do think,” Agni said. “I think maybe you’re jealous.”

  Tillu stiffened.

  Maybe this was not wise, and maybe Agni was too tired to judge rightly, but he had trusted this man. He still did, enough to speak freely. “You are, aren’t you? You were my voice to the people of this country. You labored long at it, and lowered yourself greatly, even stooping to run messages for me. Then came this slip of a child with his ready tongue and his outrageous manners, and took it all away. I thought you would be glad to be a prince again.”

  “I am glad,” Tillu growled. “I’m angry, too. Do you think that little of me? Do you judge me so poorly? I’ve no need to be jealous of a child, no matter how close he may cling to you. I know his kind, and I know what they can do. He’ll betray you if he can. Why not? You’re no kin of his.”

  “He’s not a tribesman,” Agni said. “He doesn’t think as tribesmen think. I’m safe from him. I’m sure of it.”

  “You’re cocky,” said Tillu. “Have a care you don’t get yourself killed.”

  “I am always careful,” Agni said. He made himself smile and slap Tillu lightly on the shoulder. “Come, my friend. It warms my heart to see you fret so for me; and I’m grateful for it. But I’m in no danger.”

  “You are in great danger.” Tillu stood. “At least remember what I said. Let Patir set a guard on you.”

  “Patir always has a guard on me,” said Agni.

  “Then have him double it.”

  “I’ll speak to him,” Agni said. “Will that set your mind at rest?”

  “Not much,” said Tillu. But he seemed to understand that he would get no more from Agni. Not tonight.

  oOo

  When Tillu had gone, Agni could not compose himself to sleep. Tillu’s concern was honest, and that warmed him, but he did not believe for a moment that there was any cause for it.

  Nonetheless it jangled at him. It made him remember where he was, in what country. And while Mika was not his enemy—of that he was heart-certain—the same could never be said of the rest of Mika’s people. In all that country, only here were people who wished Agni well.

  There was still a little light in the sky. He went hunting something—he did not overmuch care what.

  Not all the women were gone from this town in which they had camped, nor was any of those unwilling. They lingered, it seemed, out of curiosity and in despite of fear. Having done nothing to harm the horsemen, they found themselves unharmed in return.

  One was tending a thing that Agni had learned to call an oven, baking bread that lured him with its fragrance. She was plump and dark-eyed as nearly all the women were here, but prettier than most. She smiled at the sight of him, with a look that he could not mistake. No enmity here, and no revulsion either.

  She offered him a loaf still warm from the baking. He bit into it.

  She watched him eat, still smiling. He was well and modestly dressed, but under those eyes he might have been naked.

  Men had looked at women so, it was said, before Earth Mother taught the women to veil themselves and live sequestered in tents. No wonder the goddess
had so protected them. Women were weak, and men excessively strong. A man who wanted a woman would take her and care nothing for her family or her honor—as Agni was said to have done to the woman of the Red Deer.

  And here was a woman regarding him just so, as if she would leap on him and have her way with him, and never ask his leave.

  It should have left him cold, or made him angry. Tonight, in the mood that possessed him, he was inclined to oblige her. These women took men of their own choosing, and had their will of them, too.

  He had not given himself up to one of them, not yet. Not entirely. Tonight maybe he would do it.

  Rudira, when he thought of her at all, now seemed a weak shadow of the women here. All her wantonness had been mostly boredom and the petulance of a spoiled child. If he had not been her husband’s brother, and the one Yama hated the most at that, Agni wondered if she would even have noticed him.

  That was a hard thought. He had never dared think it before. But with those wanton black eyes burning on him, the memory of wanton grey eyes was dim and pale.

  He ate the last of the loaf. She leaned toward him, reached out a hand, brushed the crumbs from his beard.

  He held still. Her smile changed. She stroked fingers through his hair as they all loved to do here, captivated by the color and the feel of it: so much softer than her own, and so straight.

  She took him by the hand. He let out a breath.

  She tugged. He followed her as if he had been one of the meek men of this country. It was almost alarmingly easy; as if his will lost itself somewhere, and had no life or presence apart from hers.

  oOo

  She led him inside the house that stood nearest the bread-oven. It was a small house, bare and rather mean, but it was clean.

  By the light of a lamp she undressed him, cooing over him. She loved his shoulders, his breast with its sparse red hairs, his skin that was milk-white where the sun seldom touched it. She particularly loved his manly parts, cradled them in her hands as if they had been rare stones, and stroked his tall shaft till he gasped aloud. Still smiling that perpetual smile, she mounted and rode him as capably as any horseman.

  He could lie still in shock, or he could try to give her such pleasure as she would take. It was all the same to her. She used him as a man might use a woman, as a thing for her pleasure; with no regard for his pride. She made of him a plaything, dandled him and petted him, and when he had brought her to the summit, after she had wrung every drop of pleasure from it, she rose and smoothed her gown over her hips and her heavy thighs, and left him without a glance.

  She did not come back. He had not honestly expected her to, but it was a disappointment nonetheless. Even here, he had grown accustomed to women looking on him with liking, wanting to linger, professing themselves well pleased with what he had to give.

  He dragged himself up after a while and went back toward his tent; but he passed it, went to the stream that flowed along the edge of the field. He washed himself in it over and over, scrubbing till his skin was raw. Even then he did not feel clean.

  oOo

  He slept a little, maybe. He was up before dawn, rousing his people, driving them to break camp and ride before the sun was well up.

  Mika had his own horse now, more or less: one of the remounts, an ugly-headed, thick-furred creature of indeterminate color. He called it a name in his own tongue that, he said, meant Fierce Lion, and clung to its back with more determination than skill.

  Lion was a very small horse and terribly short-legged, but he had a decent turn of speed. He could keep pace with Mitani for a while, as he did this morning.

  Mika had never yet failed to be bright-eyed and wide awake, even at ungodly hours. He met Agni’s bleared scowl with wide eyes and irrepressible grin.

  Agni looked him straight in the eye and said, “Tell me you’re not spying for the Mothers of this country.”

  Mika barely blinked. “What is spying?” he asked.

  “Watching,” Agni said. “Listening. Sending word to the enemy of all one sees, so that the enemy can destroy the people whom the spy calls friend.”

  “That is a horrible thing to do,” Mika said. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “A spy,” Agni said.

  “Then I am not one,” said Mika. “I watch and I listen, because I can hardly help it, but I’d never talk to an enemy. What would I do that for? It would hurt you.”

  “War is about hurting people,” Agni said.

  “Yes,” said Mika, unwontedly somber. “I don’t like war.”

  “Your people are all strange,” Agni muttered.

  Mika’s ears were sharp. He said, “You don’t like it, either. Everybody’s dreams said you’d come in a storm of fire. You haven’t brought much fire at all.”

  “It’s wasteful,” Agni said. “One burns, slays, sheds blood, not for pleasure, but to gain what’s necessary. Then one stops.”

  “Some of your men like the killing,” Mika said.

  “There’s glory in it,” said Agni.

  “They like it,” Mika said. “The way you like it when a woman chooses you.”

  “I choose a woman,” Agni said a little more fiercely than he intended.

  Mika graciously and visibly did not contradict him. “They like it that way. It makes their rods stiff.”

  “What do you know of that, puppy?” Agni asked him.

  Mika shrugged elaborately. “Maybe I’m not all that young.”

  “No: maybe you’re younger.”

  Mika made a rude noise, kicked his horse into a scrambling gallop, and gave Agni a taste of his dust.

  Agni spat it out and laughed. “That’s no spy,” he said.

  Patir, who had been riding behind them the whole time, came up beside Agni and watched the boy on his shaggy rug of a horse, racing their own shadow down the long open road. “He may not know he is,” he said.

  Agni shot him a glance. “Don’t tell me you believe that.”

  “Maybe I don’t,” Patir said. “But think of it a little differently. This child is an innocent. He’d see no harm in riding to a city ahead of us and telling its Mother everything we intend to do to it. He’d never understand how that might harm us—and he’d be sure the Mother wanted to know.”

  “We’ll tell him not to tell anyone,” Agni said. “He’s honorable in his way. He’ll keep his word.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” said Patir.

  oOo

  They rode on for a while. In back of them, people were singing: a song of warriors on the march, advancing from victory to victory. Agni joined in the chorus till it trailed off in favor of an uproarious drinking song.

  Then as if there had been no interruption, Patir said, “Tillu means well.” Agni nodded. “He’s a good man. I trust him. But he’s seeing betrayal where there is none.”

  “He’s fond of you,” said Patir. “He frets maybe more than he ought. All of us do.”

  Agni could hardly contest that. “All of you? Westerners too?”

  “More of them than you’d think.” Patir slapped at a fly on his horse’s neck. “Do you think this great city, this Three Birds, will fight us? Or will it lie down and open its legs?”

  “I hope it does neither,” said Agni.

  “Then what?”

  “I should like,” said Agni, “to find my sister there and ruling it, holding it for me.”

  Patir snorted, but softly. “What makes you think she’d do such a thing?”

  Agni shrugged. “It’s a pretty dream. More likely she’d fortify it and hold it against me.”

  “Or stand aside and let what will happen, happen.”

  “Probably,” Agni said. “The Mare’s servants have done it for time out of mind. They were like these people, you know, in the beginning. Women ruled by women; men sent apart as young stallions are from the herd. They fought to defend themselves, but never waged wars among their tribes. When the eastern tribes came on them, they held where they could, but they judged it wiser to bend like gra
ss in the wind.”

  “They’re all gone now,” Patir said, “except for your sister. And you.”

  Agni thought about that. He had never reckoned himself one of the Mare’s people. She was a goddess for women. And yet, after all, her blood was in his veins. He was twinborn with the last of her servants. Maybe he was part of her, the last man of her people.

  Strange thought to think, riding this path beaten by countless feet, in this country that none of his kind had seen before now. And maybe Sarama was waiting for him in the city with the odd name, or maybe she had gone on to the edge of the world. He would know when he came there.

  68

  The horsemen were coming. Herdsmen in the easternmost fields, wandering almost as far as the next city, had met with people fleeing more urgently than before. The horsemen had taken Two Rivers. They rested there, but the word was clear: they had only paused. They were coming to Three Birds.

  The defenses were as near to finished as they could be. Sarama set scouts and sentries along the borders, sharp-eyed children and herdsmen who were skilled in the use of bow and spear. The defenders in the city were ready, waiting for the word that the horsemen had passed the borders.

  Sarama rode the Mare for a while, and showed Danu how to pare and trim the colt’s feet, which had overgrown themselves. He did not seem, as others did, to find her calm unreasonable. But then Danu was a calm man himself. As calm as a Mother, she would say when she wanted to make him blush and sputter. He was never comfortable with the thought that he might be as strong or as blessed as a woman.

  The colt took lively exception to their meddling with his feet. When they had won the day and sent him bouncing and snorting off with his feet much improved, Tilia rose from the stone on which she had sat watching, and walked with them toward the borders. The colt, belying his display of temper, veered round and followed, and the Mare in his wake, calm but alert.

  Sarama kept half an eye on her. She had been restless for a day or two now, and irritable, snapping at the colt if he came too close. She knew what was in the wind.