White Mare's Daughter

by Judith Tarr

  It was not an ill thing, he supposed, to find both love and laughter on the eve of war.

  89

  They came with the sun, riding over the eastward hills, rank on rank of them, and their shadows marching long ahead of them. There seemed no end to them. Nor were they either weary or laden down as Agni had hoped they would be. They were flush with victory, greedy for spoils, as if there could never be enough in the world to sate their hunger.

  Everything was ready for them, everyone sent to her place. Agni had risen before dawn as he always did, dressed and broken his fast in his ordinary way. Tilia was already gone. The rulers of the women had gathered in the night to make what magic they could.

  As Agni came out of his tent, fed and ready to face the sky, the Mother’s song rang out faint and piercing clear. The sun climbed over the horizon, and the enemy with it.

  Agni did not hasten even then, even with the city struck to a kind of quiet panic and the camp humming with excitement. Battle—battle at last.

  The hum was much less than it would have been the day before. All the tents were pitched as always, the fires lit in front of them, everything from a distance as it should be. But most of the tents were empty, and the westward horse-herds, out of sight of the enemy, were much depleted or gone, earning warriors where Agni had bidden them go.

  Mitani was waiting by the horselines, bridled, saddled with his best fleece, and beads and luck-feathers woven into his mane. Patir stood near, but it was the child Mika who held the rein.

  Agni leveled a glance on him. “Why aren’t you in the temple?”

  Mika’s head tossed as if he had been a horse himself, and his eyes glittered. “I’m not a baby! I have twelve summers. That’s old enough to fight. Tillu said so.”

  “I don’t see Tillu,” said Agni: and it was well he did not, because the elder of the Stone Tree people should be leading the army that was gone out.

  “What are you going to do,” Mika demanded, “make him say he really said that? He did. I heard him.”

  “You bullied it out of him, no doubt,” Agni said. “Do you even know how to fight?”

  Mika nodded vigorously. “I can shoot. I’m a very good shot.”

  Agni sighed. He knew that look too well. If he forbade, the brat would come regardless, and get himself killed trying to prove that he really could fight.

  “Well then,” Agni said. “You come. But you stay with me. If I tell you to go elsewhere, you go. Not one word against it. Promise me.”

  “I promise,” Mika said without a tremor.

  Agni nodded shortly, turned, put the child out of his mind. He sprang onto Mitani’s back. Mitani was fresh and rather headstrong. It was a fine few moments before he would settle.

  By the time Mitani would agree to walk, if not sedately, out of the camp, it was time. The deep throbbing voice of a ram’s horn sang from the city, from the summit of its temple. The enemy had come within bowshot of the ditch.

  The camp roused behind him. The city would be waking, too, though it also was much depleted, and not only by people fleeing westward. Those who were left in it, who were not bound to look after the children or tend the houses and the holy places, took weapon and followed Agni eastward, to the ditch that had become the boundary of the city.

  He had had it widened and set with more and deadlier stakes. A wall of brush and bundled grass rose on this side of it, chin-high on the men of this country, somewhat over chest-high on Agni. Already many of the city’s fighters were there, waiting with admirable patience for word to string their bows or ready their throwing-spears.

  Agni’s horsemen rode calmly out and spread along the barrier. From beyond it would seem that only they were there; the archers were invisible. Every man wore his best battle finery, and some had painted their faces in fierce patterns, stripped off their coats and painted their bodies, too, to make them more terrible to look at.

  Agni was quite plain in comparison. He wore no paint. But he wore the coat that he had worn to the kingmaking, though it was a warm coat and the day was already sweltering, and he wore the golden torque that he always wore, that some were calling his mark of kingship.

  When Mitani had reached the barrier, he agreed at last to stand still, though it was a very active stillness: head up, neck arched, snorting gently at the wall of strangers that came toward him out of the sunrise. They seemed to fill the whole of that valley, to advance like a river in flood and spread wide as it found its passage blocked.

  Agni had ample time to discern and mark the banners. Just as Sarama had said: they were all here. All the tribes that he knew of, and more that he had never heard of. Their numbers were overwhelming; daunting. And not one of them looked either weary or cast down.

  Nevertheless, he thought, they had come a long way. They had fought, perhaps more often than they expected. They had spent their strength in sacking the towns left open for them. Some maybe had even left, gone back to the steppe or elected to stay in one of the eastward cities rather than continue the advance.

  But they looked deadly, and they seemed eager to seize this of all cities. This that had been great enough, and rich enough, to become the camp of the gathered tribes; that held the outcast himself, the nameless and kinless man who had made himself a king.

  That kinless man, whose name had refused to go away when he was exiled, sat his stallion unmoving. The archers were watching him, alert for his signal. But he was not ready yet to give it. He was looking for one banner amid the many, and one face beneath it.

  There. Not in the lead as a proper king would be, but in the middle, with a wall of other tribes before him and a wall of tribes behind.

  Prudent; cowardly. Just so would Agni expect Yama to do.

  Yama was not visible amid so many mounted men. That rather surprised Agni. He would have expected his brother to be borne above the heads of the rest, or to travel in a blaze of gold.

  There was gold in plenty, and some of it heaped to excess; surely a man so weighted down could not lift his arms to fight. But which of the gleaming princelings was Yama, Agni could not tell. They were all strutting fools.

  He drew a deep breath. His heart was beating hard. His palms were damp. He was not afraid, nothing so shameful. He was ready, that was all. Prepared for whatever would come.

  Closer and closer the enemy came. The archers held their fire. The signal, the clear horncall that they all had agreed on, was in Agni’s own hands, the horn hung from his saddle, waiting for him to lift it. But he did not, though eyes rolled at him, and horses began to champ and fret. He waited.

  A trickle of sweat ran down his back. He could not regret insisting on this coat of all that he might have worn, but he would be wonderfully glad to strip for battle.

  He had his own standard now. Patir lifted it as the enemy came to halt at last: a hoop of beaten gold set on a spearshaft. Beads and plates of gold and copper hung from it, suspended on strings of tight-plaited horsehair. They chimed as the wind caught them, and the flame of them went up to heaven.

  He felt the eyes of all that army turn and fix on him, caught by the splendor of his standard. He sat no straighter, nor did he lift his chin any higher. Let them see him at ease, unperturbed by their advance. And please the gods, let them not see him crimson and sweating and wishing he had had the sense to leave the coat behind.

  When the full weight of their attention was on him, when they were as thoroughly distracted as he could expect them to be, he lifted the horn at last and blew a long wailing note. It was, as it happened, the call one used in Three Birds to proclaim that the quarry in a hunt had been brought to bay. Patir’s snort behind him let him know that his friend had recognized it.

  As the notes of the horn died away, bowstrings sang. Arrows flew. And out of the woods to right and left, and from the hill behind, came all the forces that Agni had made ready. Men of the tribes, mounted women, people of the city on foot with bows and spears.

  They did not have to fight well. They simply had to be num
erous.

  It was hard and cold, that thought. Sarama was out there, riding with the warrior women, and Taditi no doubt beside her. Danu, whom he did not like but trusted to the bone, was somewhere among the cityfolk. And here was Agni with Patir, waiting still, watching the massed tribesmen discover that they had, at last, found a battle. He heard a whoop, a yell of pure glee.

  They were trapped and rather thoroughly surprised, but they were hundreds strong. They divided into tribes and clans, smaller knots of fighting men amid the greater mass of them, and chose each his enemy.

  That, Agni had expected, had hoped for. Many small bands were easier to strike or to disregard than one great massed wall of men. One did the same when hunting beasts in herds: divided them, the better to conquer.

  A king with any skill in hunting would have known what this was that Agni did, and seen that it did not happen. But Yama made no move to prevent his army from scattering. His own men closed in a circle about him, shielded him from arrows and turned spears outward against attack. But no one ventured within reach of them.

  In a very little time, what had been a fallow field was transformed into the field of battle. Shouts, cries, the ring of metal that was new in the world; shrieks of men and horses wounded; battle-songs from those with breath to sing. Bright scarlet of blood. Men falling. Horses dying.

  Battle. And as the knots of fighting men, women, horses spun away, there was Yama in the middle, untouched.

  Maybe he began to understand that he was singled out. If so, he did not know what to do about it.

  Now. Agni nodded to the ones who waited, strong men and women of the city. With a sound perhaps of relief, some of them drew aside the barrier. The rest lifted up the bridge and swung it down.

  It was a great thing, greater almost than they could do. At the summit of its ascent it wavered. They braced with all their strength.

  For a stretching moment it looked ready to fall back; but they prevailed. It swept around and crashed to the ground, secure on the far side of the ditch.

  It was all Agni could do to hold Mitani. The stallion danced on his hindlegs, wheeling and snorting. Agni cursed him under his breath and drove him forward.

  When his forefeet clattered on the bridge, he nigh went up again. But Agni was ready for that. He clapped heels to rigid sides and sent Mitani plunging across. A booming of hooves on wood, a blur of deep-dug ditch and deadly stakes; then Earth Mother lay underfoot once more, and the field was clear for a little way before him, and his own men, his friends and kin, were crowding at his back.

  He gave them room to come across the bridge. Just as the last horse was firm on solid ground, the people behind hauled the bridge back, leaving them with one way home: straight ahead through the enemy, till they could win to the northward road.

  oOo

  “It’s a beautiful day to die,” said Patir, reining his spotted stallion to a halt beside Agni. He had the look he always had before a fight, wild and a little glazed, with a grin that came and went irresistibly. He always said the same thing, too: for luck, he maintained.

  Agni always made the same reply: “It’s a better day to live.”

  And a grand fight, Rahim would have said, third in their chorus. But Rahim was dead. They left his part to silence.

  Agni called himself to order. Yama’s company had not moved in all this while; they stood like a walled city, bristling with spears. No doubt they thought to wait out the battle, let the rest do their fighting for them, and claim the prize when all was done.

  Agni had no intention of letting them do any such thing. He wheeled Mitani to face his men, his best, his strongest, his own; his kin who had come with him all the way from the White Horse. There was battle all about them, tribe against tribe, Lady’s children against men of the steppe. But here was a matter for family. White Horse against White Horse. King born against the one who had betrayed him into exile.

  This would do for a battle. Oh, yes. It would do indeed.

  90

  Danu went out long before dawn, hours before the Mother sang the sun into sky. The stars were out in their myriads. So were the insects that plagued the night; even an ointment of pungent herbs could not keep them altogether at bay.

  He found the rest of those he was supposed to meet, by the sounds of slapping and the occasional soft curse. They were all gathered by the ditch, ready to cross it when the last of them had come.

  Although the horsemen were camped well away to the east, no one ventured a light. Night-eyes and starlight were ample for most; those who were night-blind held close to their more fortunate kin.

  Danu could see very well. He lent his hand to a smallish woman who proved by her voice and the glimmer of her face to be Chana—not so eager now to be a tribesman’s woman, not since these new horsemen came with their fire and slaughter. He had heard that her tribesman had objected to her going, and commanded her to stay. If he had asked, she might have agreed. But since he had not, she was here, one of the company that marched to fight for Three Birds.

  It seemed a very long time before everyone was there, the bridge was lowered, and all of them had gone across. The bridge’s tenders hauled it back and restored the barrier of brush, making a wall against the enemy.

  They went quickly, in a long line, running as hunters run. They all knew what they were to do. Agni had tried to insist that one of them lead, but no one wanted the burden. If in the heat of battle it came to one of them in particular, so it would. Agni had muttered something about impossible idiots, but no one had seen fit to notice.

  In any event they were well on their way, armed and supplied as hunters turned warriors, and everyone knew where they were going.

  Danu was not a particularly fast runner, but he was steady, and he could run for as long as he needed to. He was content to run among the last of them, keeping to an easy lope. No use in wasting his strength now, or tripping or twisting an ankle in the dark.

  He meant to face this battle with his eyes wide open and his strength at its fullest. Because, no matter how reluctant he might be, he had learned to fight for precisely this. He had no intention of running away from it.

  They were all of the same mind. Late-night musings in solitude and noontide reflections in the market were all done with. There was only the truth to face. Whether any of them could do what had to be done. Whether they could bring themselves to fight; to wound. To kill.

  After the first few dozen strides, Danu had found the rhythm of his pace, easy and all but mindless. His breath came easy, his legs moved without stiffness.

  Many of the women ran naked but for their crimson skirts. The men were more modest, but there was no great need to be. He stripped off his tunic as he went, thrusting it into the pack with his provisions, his spare bowstrings, and the few odd bits that he had judged might be useful. The night air was soft on his bare skin. Biting creatures were less pleased to seize on moving prey; he had no great fear for his tender parts.

  It would have been pleasant, this running from dark into dawn, if not for what waited at the end of it. He turned his mind away from that while the night lasted, let himself be content with the surge and flex of muscles, the steady pumping of his heart, the drawing in of breath only to be let out again.

  So must a horse run, for the joy of running. So must the colt do—the young stallion that everyone insisted was his. He had left that one safe among the herds. Mounted fighting he could do, but he could not bear it if the colt was hurt.

  And so he ran with the foot-fighters, and the colt grazed and played and plagued the mares, and never knew what he was missing.

  oOo

  Dawn was greying the sky when they came to the place where they would wait upon the enemy. Some went to the northern copses, others to the grove to the south, there to hide till the horn called them out to the battle.

  Danu happened to be among those who went north, which was a little farther but the cover was better. The boar that used to make the place terrible had been killed that summe
r—by Kosti, who had been sore baffled when the horsemen offered him an outpouring of admiration for the feat.

  The beast had been ravaging farmsteads in the village beyond the wood, and had nigh killed a man who had gone to gather firewood. Kosti had happened to be hunting out that way, and the Lady had blessed him; she had allowed him to give the boar her mercy. It was only sensible that she should do so. Everyone knew that Kosti was the strongest man in Three Birds.

  The horsemen had acted as if Kosti should take credit for that strength. It embarrassed Kosti terribly, and made him the butt of a jest or two round the market.

  Danu was glad, just then, that Kosti had subjected himself to such embarrassment. The boar’s wood was dark and deep and much too tangled to admit a man on horseback. But for a hunter with good night-eyes and light feet it was penetrable enough.

  They found a clearing not far in, a place to rest and wait. Most slept under the lightening sky. A few of the women took the time to paint themselves in the Lady’s patterns, painting them thick as if for a great festival, circles and spirals round breasts and belly, and wide staring eyes on their foreheads, and a coil of serpents on legs and arms. They took great care about it, with others waking as the morning went on, and taking up the paints for themselves.

  Danu took his turn as the sun moved into the sky. Chana helped him, and his sister Mareka. They were not merciful. His beauty he lived with; it was nothing he could help. But women were not often given opportunity to comment on all of it—or to decide that while Kosti was bigger, Danu was made more to measure.

  “No wonder your outlander won’t share you,” Chana said, rubbing his rod for luck, and clapping her hands as it rose to greet her.

  And to think, thought Danu, that he had daydreamed once of her choosing him. She was lovely in her smallness, and would be delicious in his arms. At the moment she was threatening to paint his rod, which did not endear her to him at all. He slapped her hands away, rose over Mareka’s protests, and stalked off to finish in peace. Their laughter followed him.