by Judith Tarr
Today however was a feast-day. People of the city and men of the camp had joined forces to welcome the Mothers to Three Birds. It was rather wonderful to see them together, managing to understand one another, and working in amity as far as Agni could see.
His black horsehide, new with the spring, was spread in the shade of a tall tree. He would go to it in time, but for a little while he was minded to wander about while the guests found their places and settled in comfort.
The Mothers took little enough notice of him when he was not sitting in front of them. He did not think they meant any rudeness. He was a man. He was of little account beyond his narrow sphere.
Time was when that would have angered him terribly. Now he was merely amused. They need only notice him when it served his purpose. If they chose to keep their arrogance else, then so they might.
It was a peculiar kind of kingship, but it had made him lord of this country. He held the reins of it even as he wandered with seeming idleness, listening, speaking if he was spoken to, testing the temper of this gathering.
Traders, seeing an opportunity for rich trade, had left their stalls in the market and their boats on the river, and set up shop in a corner near the Mothers’ gathering. They would never have dared do such a thing in a festival of the Lady, but there was nothing sacred here; only the saving of the people from the war that was coming.
Agni circled round them toward the eastward end of the camp. A stranger had caught his eye, a face he had not seen before. This was neither a trader nor the member of a Mother’s following. She had the look of one who had traveled far, much worn and somewhat strained about the eyes.
Agni saw nothing extraordinary about her, dark-haired and dark-eyed creature that she was, except that she was thin, as women here took great pains not to be, and except for her eyes. They lifted to him as he approached, and he nearly missed his step.
There were gods in her. Great powers stared out of her eyes, piercing him where he stood. She was so full of them that there was nothing of the simple self left; till she blinked and swayed and looked at him as a woman might, especially in this country. She liked what she saw—before she remembered to think of him as an enemy.
“You,” she said. “Who are you?”
“Agni,” he answered. It was the first thing that came into his head.
“So you understand me,” she said.
“A little,” he said.
People came and went around them. They all recognized Agni, or seemed to, but none was minded to call on him as one calls on a king.
It was a reprieve of sorts. He was not often given this gift, to be a man like any other.
This woman honestly did not know who he was. After all, how could she? He boasted no more splendor than many a tribesman, except for the gold about his neck.
As if the thought had touched her, she stretched out her hand and brushed the torque with a finger. “This is fine work. Did you steal it? Or conquer it?”
“It was given to me,” he said.
“In payment for what?”
“I think you know,” he said.
Her lips tightened. “It all comes to that. We trade gold for our cities’ safety. You take what your whim bids you take, and nothing stops you.”
“That is changing,” Agni said.
“Yes,” she said. “The conqueror must hold what he’s conquered. He’ll defend it against the ones who come after. But still it was ours before it was his.”
“You do hate us,” he said, “don’t you?”
“No,” she said, and she did not say it altogether willingly. “You are the burden the Lady has laid on us. We suffer you. We don’t love you.”
“I suppose,” he said, “that is reasonable.”
“Catin!”
She stiffened at the sound of the name. Agni half spun. He had never been so glad to see Danu before.
Danu greeted Agni with a glance and a tilt of the head, but his eyes were on the woman called Catin. “What brings you back?” he asked her.
She shrugged, lifted her hand, managed with the gesture to take in the whole of it, city and camp and the festival between. “One hears,” she said, “of what is happening in the eastern cities.”
“Such as yours?”
Agni had never heard Danu sound quite so cold before. Danu was a warm man, even with Agni, whom he had no reason to like.
Catin kept her head up, but to Agni’s eye she seemed to shrink a little. “We do what we must. Larchwood is safe. Isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Danu said. “Because the horsemen protect it.”
“So I’ve heard.” She flicked a glance at Agni. “Its Mother is dead.”
Danu bent his head. “May the Lady keep her,” he said.
“She was not supposed to die,” Catin said fiercely. “She was supposed to stand fast, to be patient, till the horsemen had tired of their game and gone away.”
“The horsemen are not going to tire of their game,” Danu said. He paused. Catin said nothing. He said, “Then you are—”
“No,” she said.
“No? But—”
“There is no Mother in Larchwood,” she said, “nor will be hereafter. Larchwood belongs to the horsemen.”
“You gave it up,” Danu said.
“We were afraid,” said Catin.
Danu greeted that with silence. It was a perfectly expressionless silence, and yet it said everything that it needed to say.
“It’s not your place to judge,” she said.
“No,” he said. “It’s not.”
She laughed, a sound utterly without mirth, and turned and walked away.
Agni stood with Danu where she had left them. After a suitable while he said, “She’s mad.”
Danu nodded. He was as calm as ever, but Agni thought he saw a flicker of pain.
“Your sister says,” said Danu, “that gods speak through her. Too many gods, all clamoring at once. They eat away at her spirit.”
“Yes,” said Agni. “I saw.”
“You—” Danu shook his head. “I always forget. You’re of that blood, too.”
“What, I see too far? Or not far enough?”
“You see what Sarama sees,” Danu said. “You hear the Lady—and your gods, too. But it hasn’t broken your spirit.”
Agni shrugged uncomfortably. “They speak to me. Not through me.”
“Yes,” said Danu as if Agni had spoken a revelation. “Yes, that’s the way of it. You are like a Mother. She—she wasn’t strong enough. She was always so much afraid.”
“Of what? The gods?”
“The dreams,” Danu said. “We all dreamed, you see. Blood and fire. Dreams that we learned to call war.”
Agni looked at him. The dreams he knew of, and the portents of war. But he had not understood, not quite, what they might mean to one who had never known that men could kill men, or find glory in it. A person—a woman—might break under the force of it.
All about them people laughed, danced, sang. If any of them was afraid, if any of them dreamed terror, there was no memory of it now, or none that any would admit. They saw the sunlight, and turned their minds away from the dark.
Agni could will to do that. And so he would, in a little while. But as he stood with Danu, with the man who in the way of the tribes was to be thought of as his brother, he looked the dark full in the face.
It held no fear for him. War was glory; blood was sacrifice. If he died in war, the gods took him to themselves and raised him up, and made him a great lord among the dead.
He did not think that Danu would understand any of this. Yet Danu was not afraid, either.
No one in Three Birds seemed to be. For most it was innocence. For Danu, the only word that came easily to Agni’s mind was courage.
“Should I let her wander loose?” Agni asked, speaking of Catin. “She’ll spread fear.”
“A little fear is not an ill thing,” Danu said.
Particularly, Agni thought, among these rampant innocents.
He bent his head to Danu’s wisdom.
Danu smiled, saluted Agni as a tribesman might—with insouciance that could only be deliberate—and left Agni to make his way back to the circle of elders.
83
One early morning near the end of summer, Sarama went hunting with some of the women who had learned to ride and shoot. She left her bed a little reluctantly, with Danu in it, and Rani well sated with nursing.
Sarama’s breasts would ache again before she came back, but Rani would do well enough. One of the women would feed her with her own, Danu’s sister Mareka perhaps. Mareka had milk enough for six.
The Mare, fortunate creature, had weaned her twins some time ago. She had not forgotten them, but they were her charge no longer. They ran with the other young ones, the half-dozen who had been born in the camp that spring—improvident men, not to bring a herd of mares with all their vaunting stallions.
The Mare was free of herself and her charge, restless, eager to run. Sarama held her in for the moment.
Even so, the others had fallen behind, all but Taditi, who could ride as well as any tribesman. Practice, she had said when Sarama asked, and defiance. She had been an infamous hoyden in her youth.
“Was that why no one married you?” Sarama had asked her—months ago now.
Taditi had laughed with honest mirth. “Oh, no! You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you? But they were all after me. I was the king’s daughter, after all. And I was interesting. I turned them all away. I had no desire to belong to a man.”
“I . . . am sorry I never took the trouble to know you,” Sarama had said.
“Ah,” said Taditi, waving away guilt. “You couldn’t have known. I was of no account, an elderly aunt in the king’s tent.”
“You raised my brother.”
“But not you.” Taditi slapped her lightly. “Stop that. It’s no good wallowing in it.”
Nor was it, Sarama thought as they rode side by side in the rising morning. She had not known Taditi then, but she knew her now, and had come to admire her. She was like Old Woman; like the Mother of Three Birds. Strong.
oOo
They hunted eastward, where the best game was, in the hunting runs near the new-walled town called Thorn. Here in a tumbled country of hill and wood, too rough and stony for farming, deer and boar and wild cattle roamed the copses and coverts, and birds flocked thick about a marshy lake. They were hunting birds, as the best practice for the archers, and bringing down a fair number, too.
At noon they paused to rest. Some had brought somewhat to eat, bread and fruit and cheese, or hard-baked cakes that people made for long journeys. A few seized the time to snatch a little sleep.
Taditi had set guards because in war such would be needed. Nothing more dangerous than a boar was likely to come on them here; but it was wise, she said, to make a habit of being wary.
Sarama was not one of those set on guard, but she was restless. She had been pent up in the city for much too long.
Her breasts were aching. The Mother had shown her how to press out the milk, and she had done that once already since the morning. She would do it again before they went on with the hunt.
For the moment the ache was tolerable. It reminded her of her daughter, the warm milky scent of her, the way she caught at the nipple when it was given her, tugging hard, a pleasure that was just short of pain.
Sarama wanted her suddenly, fiercely, with an intensity that took her aback. Yes, a mother loved her child—but Sarama had never known how powerful that love was.
She walked the edges of the circle that they had made. It was not a camp, it was too brief, but it had shape and purpose. The women set on guard were out of sight: practicing their scouting, Sarama supposed.
She hoped that they were not practicing their sleeping. Even after so long and under Taditi’s firm hand, the young women of Three Birds did not take easily to the arts of war. They were inclined to forget such minor things as staying awake while on guard.
Sarama was tired, a little, but not enough to trouble her. It was a fine day, cool for the season, sweet still with scents from the rain that had fallen the day before. The sky was clear, with a scud of clouds; a light wind blew, just enough to cool her cheeks.
If she climbed to the top of the hill to the northward, she would see the town in its raw new palisade. But from here the world seemed empty of cities.
She sat on a stone and turned her face eastward. She could not see the wood; the land was too tumbled and rose too steep between. But she knew it was there.
She did not think about it often. Nothing about it had pleased her more than leaving it.
And yet if the tribes would come, they would come through the wood. By now they would hardly need guides; the path through it was a beaten road.
It would be a road in truth before they were done. Trees would fall, the sky open overhead, and tribes come through in a long relentless stream.
As if her half-dream had shaped itself into flesh, a mounted company rode over the eastward hill. Sarama watched without alarm. So: had Agni sent some of his men hunting, too? That would be like him, to guard his sister by means of a training exercise.
They must have left earlier than Sarama’s company had, to be coming back westward already. Or maybe they had overshot their charges.
They halted on the hillside as if they had just seen the gathering of women and horses. She did not recognize any of them, or their horses, either; but they were rather far away still.
Habit older than her time in the Lady’s country had brought her feet under her and tensed her body as if for a fight. Her hands had sought her bow and strung it.
No, she did not recognize these men who, having surveyed the camp, had begun to ride forward again. They had the look of a raiding party, young rakehells with an air of ragged insouciance. Their clothes were much worn, their horses lean and ribby.
They were, she realized with a shock, in quite ordinary condition for riders on the steppe. She had grown used to fine coats, woven cloth, and horses fat with rich fodder.
Had she been as ragtag and filthy as these men were? The wind was blowing from the east, bringing with it a powerful reek of unwashed bodies.
Gods; she had grown soft.
It had not dawned on these strangers yet, perhaps, that these were women. As they came within earshot, the man in the lead raised a shout, a cry of welcome. Sarama rose in response and waved her arms. Then she called the Mare, and called to the women behind her: “Strangers! On guard!”
It was gratifying to see how quickly the circle of idlers became an armed company. No one wasted time fetching the horses. Bows strung, spears at the ready, they faced the strangers from behind a wall of weapons.
Sarama stayed where she was. Her bow was strung, an arrow in her hand, but she had not yet nocked it to the string.
She was not afraid. On the steppe, alone, she would have been. But with a company of armed women behind her and the Mare at her side, she had no fear of anything that these men could do.
They came on carefully, as strangers would on the steppe, riding with hands well away from weapons. She watched it dawn on them that she and all her companions were women.
It spoke well for them that no one broke ranks to try a little rapine. They were sensible, it seemed. Or the sight of so many weapons made them so.
“It’s true, then,” she heard one of them say, the one just behind the leader. “This is a country of women.”
“Women who fight,” said a man nearby him. “That’s not in any tale we heard.”
“Ah,” said the first. “Well. Tales can twist the truth.”
Sarama smiled. “A fair day and a fine welcome,” she said, “and what brings you to this part of the world?”
The riders halted well within bowshot but out of reach of a thrown spear. Their leader came on, alone but for the two who had spoken. They reminded Sarama rather poignantly of Agni as he had been in the tribe, with Patir and Rahim always at his back.
These were not such princely men as that; in fact they seemed rather callow. But they had courage. They stopped in front of her.
Their stallions were greatly interested in the Mare, but she pinned her ears and warned them off. She was in foal again and taking no nonsense from any male.
“My name is Buran,” the leader said, “and I come from the Tall Grass people.”
“I am Sarama,” she said, “and I am Horse Goddess’ servant.”
Ah: they had heard of her. Jaws dropped. Heads bent. Buran the leader sprang from his horse and knelt at her feet as if she had been a king or a goddess. “Lady! The gods are kind. Can you tell us where we may find the king of the sunset country?”
“What, Agni?” She had not heard that name given him before, but for a certainty there was only one man in this country who called himself a king.
“Yes,” Buran said. “The sunset king.”
She considered the hunt, the hour, her freedom. She sighed a little. She said, “I can take you to him.”
Such innocents they were, and so easily delighted. They cheered as if they had won a battle.
Which maybe they had. The wood was behind them, this country before them, and not one among them could know the language of the Lady’s people—and they had ridden straight to Sarama.
Not everyone was minded to return to the hunt, now that there were strangers to look warlike in front of. Sarama returned to Three Birds with ample escort of women as well as men—because, said Kina, who was as fierce as anyone ever was among the Lady’s people, raw boys fresh off the steppe might forget themselves. They had no discipline, after all, and Sarama was too evidently a woman.
Sarama could see no profit in correcting the child. She was glad enough of the company, and pleased, too, because it showed the beginnings of warlike caution.
Not that these boys were likely to venture anything impertinent. They were too utterly in awe of everything and everyone they saw. They had ridden into a legend, and they were nigh overcome by the wonder of it.
“So they’re telling stories about us on the steppe?” Sarama asked Buran. He nodded, eyes wide. “Oh, yes, lady. Wonderful stories. Is it true that the women all want men, all the time? And that bread grows on trees?”