by Judith Tarr
She had not seen him anywhere. Not in the camp, not among the people who had followed the Mother to the grove. There were companies abroad on the battlefield, gathering and tending the wounded and looking after the dead. He must be among those companies. Not among the dead.
She would know if he had died. Surely, by the Lady, she would know.
She left the dance and the grove before the moon was well risen. She had honored the Mother as much as she could. The Mother would not mind too terribly that she had left so early. The Mother had loved all her children, but Danu had been closest of all to her heart, except for Tilia.
The Mare would have been happy to crop grass on the edge of the Lady’s field, but she offered no more than a token protest when Sarama asked her to bear bridle and saddle-fleece again. Sarama was none too delighted to be back in the saddle, either; she was tired, and her bones ached. But she would sleep in no bed unless it had Danu in it.
Impulse and a kind of crazy hope led her to the Mother’s house. People were in it, sleeping or awake, but not Danu. Only Rani was asleep in the arms of Danu’s brother Tanis.
Sarama did not try to wake either of them. Rani would only want her mother to stay, and cry when Sarama left. Or worse—she would call for her father, and Sarama could not provide him.
Danu was not in the city. No one had seen him leave the battlefield. The last anyone knew, he had been among the fighters sent to lay an ambush.
Some of those had come back, wounded or whole, but none recalled seeing the Mother’s son past the first disposal of forces. He had gone north to the old boar-coverts. That much appeared to be certain.
Sarama returned to the field. It was a strange bleak place under the moon, a field of the dead and dying, and shadow-shapes moving among them. The dead of the tribes would burn on a pyre, come sunrise, and their ashes be buried thereafter. The dead of the city would lie unburned in the earth. Now, in the night, people labored to find and separate them, and give the mercy-stroke to such of the wounded as they found.
None of the black-bearded men was Danu, nor had he been found among the dead. Sarama rode slowly over that field, peering in the moonlight. Some of the searchers had torches, but she did not wish to be encumbered with one. The moon was bright enough.
The farther from the city she went, the more of the dead were yet unclaimed. Wounded there were none. That was a mercy, perhaps. And yet, if no one lived, then Danu—
He was alive. She would not let him be dead. She searched for him with a kind of desperate care, pausing beside each body and making certain that it was not his.
She found Beki who had been Danu’s second in the Mother’s house, and Chana who had amused herself for a while with Agni’s yearbrother Patir. They had taken ample escort with them into the gods’ country: men and horses, even a warhound that had died with its teeth sunk in Beki’s throat. Sarama had not known that any of the tribesmen had brought warhounds. They were an eastern affectation, and little known on the western steppe.
She slipped from the Mare’s back and left her to follow or to stay, as she chose. The soft sound of her footfalls trailed after Sarama.
These were people whom Sarama knew, these dark-haired dead. The horsemen were all strangers, their banner unfamiliar. They had all fought hard, died hard.
She found him in the thick of it. There was a horse down, and a knot of tribesmen. And beneath them a hand that she knew, and a golden armlet gleaming pallid in the moonlight. She would remember later the thought that came to her, the dull wonder. No one had taken the gold from him.
She reached to touch it. It was cool. But the hand—
Warm. It was warm. Not very; not as if it surged with life. But it was not as cold as death, either.
With sudden fury she attacked the heaped bodies, lifting them, hurling them away. In her right mind she could never have done it. Now, the moon filled her. It made her strong.
The last dead tribesman fell bonelessly to the side. Danu lay sprawled on the trampled grass. He was naked but for belt and baldric, and his body was wound about with livid scars.
He had painted himself richly, as if this war were a dance. Only a few of the marks on him were blood. That was darker than the paint, and thicker, and its patterns had no order in them. She could not see what was fresh and what was dried.
Her hand lay trembling on his breast. It was cool, unmoving. She stroked fingers through the curly fleece of it. He never stirred. Her fingers clawed; raked hard, almost hard enough to draw blood.
Nothing.
A great wail rose up in her. He was not dead. He was not. He did not dare be dead.
His lips were as cool as the rest of him. Cool, not cold. He tasted of blood and earth.
In a kind of madness, she stripped off her garments, her coat, her trousers, and all her weapons. The night air was chill on her skin.
She covered him with her body, all of him that she could. She gave him her warmth. She stroked him, rubbed the cold out of him. She took his soft cool rod in her hand and struggled to wake it. She cursed him, raged at him, hated him for refusing to stir.
He was refusing. She knew it. “Wake up, damn you!” she railed at him. “Wake up and look at me!”
She was being unreasonable. A distant part of her was aware of it, but she was not inclined to care. He had not died. She would not let him.
At first, when something about him changed, she hardly noticed it. She was too preoccupied. And yet in a little while there could be no mistaking it. The thing that had lain limp in her hand was coming alive. It was warming, growing. Rising up as a man might rise from the dead.
A breath shuddered as he drew it in. Another followed it, racking his body. He arched against Sarama’s hand.
She took him inside herself. Blindly, without mind or will, he took the rhythm of that dance, the oldest of them all.
He stiffened and shuddered. Dying—damn him—
No. Not unless the Lady’s gift was a kind of death.
His eyes snapped open. He gasped.
She caught his breath before it escaped, and gave it back to him. All the life, all the strength that she had to spare, she poured into him. He was warm, warm to burning.
His arms closed about her with blessed, bruising strength. He rolled, flinging her onto her back, rising above her.
His eyes were clouded, yet as she met them, slowly they cleared. He saw her; knew her. Knew what she had done. He blushed darkly in the moonlight.
She laughed for joy, and because he was so terribly shocked. “I couldn’t think of any other way,” she said.
“I’m sure you couldn’t.” His voice was deep and sweet. It was the most wonderful sound in the world.
“I wouldn’t let you die,” she said. “I wouldn’t let you dare.”
He frowned. The shadow had come back to his eyes, but there was no confusion there. Not any longer. “I—wanted—” His frown deepened. “I killed. I killed men. I killed—many—”
“You fought in a war,” she said.
“But I wasn’t supposed to be good at it!”
She let the echoes die. None of the dead started awake. The moon stared down, cold and serene.
Softly after his great roar of anguish she said, “Get up.”
He stared at her.
She sharpened her voice a little. “Up. Get up. Now.”
His habit of obedience had not left him. He staggered to his feet.
A hiss escaped him. He was wounded. Not to death, but not lightly, either. He must be dizzy with loss of blood, and the sudden and manifold stabbings of pain.
She could not be merciful. Not until he was strong in his spirit again. She rose as he had risen, and braced him as he swayed. He needed to eat, drink. He needed to sleep somewhere apart from a heap of the dead.
He did not want to do any of those things. He wanted to stay on the field, to bury the dead, to wallow in his self-disgust.
She would not let him. “Don’t you go away from me,” she said fiercely. “I n
eed you. Rani needs you. Your sister needs you. The whole world needs you.”
“Then let the world take care of itself.”
That was so utterly unlike him that she froze. He nearly escaped her; but she was not as easily dismayed as that. She pulled him back to face her. “I won’t let you go.”
“Maybe I don’t want to stay.”
“I don’t care.”
His eyes blazed on her. She was glad. Heat was life. Heat of temper would bring him back to himself.
She tugged at him. He staggered after.
The Mare was grazing close by. Sarama got him onto her back, cursing him when he resisted, striking him as if he had been a recalcitrant child.
He was acting like a tribesman. “And you know better,” she snapped at him.
That quelled him. He sagged on the Mare’s back, clutched mane before he fell. “I don’t—I can’t—”
“Be quiet,” she said. And for a wonder he obeyed.
oOo
Of all the places that she could take him, the enemy’s former camp was closest. It was safe, she reckoned, and she had seen Taditi in the king’s tent before she went in search of Danu. He might lose his wits again in a camp of the horsemen, but she had to hope that that was past.
He seemed calm enough, and unshaken when he saw where she was taking him. The camp was quiet, most of its people away seeing Yama to his grave. But Taditi was in the king’s tent as Sarama had hoped, and she knew at a glance what was needed of her.
She brought wine, food, water to wash Danu and a blanket to wrap him, and a calm presence that brooked no nonsense. Between the two of them they saw him cleaned and fed and settled in a quiet corner. He had sworn that he would not sleep, but sleep took him almost as soon as he lay down.
Sarama stayed with him. There was much that she could have been doing, but nothing that mattered as much as this. No one who mattered as this one man did. Not her brother, not her kin. Not even her daughter.
She would never make a king, nor ever a Mother. A king could not leave all his people for one man alone, or a Mother cast aside duty to watch over her beloved.
Sarama, who had done both, sat on her heels in the tent’s dimness and watched him sleep. When he stirred uneasily or murmured, she spoke softly to him. And when the black dreams struck, she lay beside him and held him till they passed, through the long hours from deep night into morning.
oOo
She slept herself then, a little. She woke to find him open-eyed, regarding her with a dark and unreadable stare. “Good morning,” she said.
His brow lifted. “Is it morning?”
She nodded.
“It’s still night here,” he said.
“We’re in the king’s tent of the White Horse,” Sarama said. “I brought you here because it was closest.”
“No,” he said. “No. Here.” His fist struck his breast over the heart. “I didn’t dream it, did I? I fought. I killed people.”
“You helped to save your city.”
“Yes.” It was a sigh. “I don’t want to be proud of what I did.”
“Are you?”
His eyelids lowered. His lips set. “I don’t . . . want to.”
She touched him softly, brushing fingers over brow and cheeks. “Beloved,” she said.
He shivered. His eyes closed tight. “None of us who fought there will ever be the same again. We’ve lost something, Sarama. We’ll never get it back.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I know.”
“And,” he said, and his eyes opened, and they were darker even than before, “do you know the other thing? The thing that eats my spirit? I would do it again. Every bit of it. Every drop of blood. Because if I, if we, had not done it, our city might have fallen.”
“It would have fallen,” Sarama said. “Agni couldn’t have held them off. His men were too few. He’d have fallen himself, and maybe died. And Yama would be king in Three Birds.”
“It does matter,” said Danu. “Doesn’t it? Which horseman calls himself king. I would rather Agni, who made the Great Marriage with Tilia, than the man who made a path of slaughter to our eastward door.”
“Yes,” said Sarama.
“But I am not glad of it,” he said fiercely. “I can’t be glad of it. No one can ask me to be.”
“No one will,” she said. She raised herself up. “Come, enough. The sun’s up. Yama is in his grave. We’ve a world to put together again. Will you lie here and mourn the breaking, or help me mend it?”
He glared at her in quite unwonted resentment—signs of a temper that she had hardly known he had. But he had not changed as much as that. He mastered himself; he rose to his feet. He looked down at his nakedness and blushed a little, but he was not one to stop for a bit of modesty.
Sarama was pleased to offer him garments that Taditi had found and laid out the night before: coat and trousers of fine-tanned leather, and a shirt woven in this country.
Danu looked at them, measured them against his body. They were a fair fit. “Yama’s?” he asked.
“Does that bother you?”
“No,” he said. “No.” He took them, put them on. He looked well in them—better than Yama would have done. There were boots, too, a little large but passable, and a belt, and a knife that he quietly but firmly put aside.
He was still Danu. It would be a while before he realized it; but Sarama, seeing the knife laid on the chest beside the bed, knew it for a surety. Nothing, not even war, could corrupt the spirit that was in him.
95
With day would come the judgment. But in the time between dawn and full morning, Agni looked for refuge in sleep. He made his way to the king’s tent in the camp of the White Horse, found a corner that had no one in it, and let the darkness take him.
A fleeting thought, that he was outcast from this place, that he could be killed for trespassing here, touched him and flickered away. If anyone wanted to slit his throat while he slept, then so be it. He was far too tired to care.
A soft touch roused him. Fingers stroking him; the feather-brush of kisses. He smiled, still in great part asleep, and reached to fill his arms with Tilia’s warm ample body.
What stirred in his embrace was a slighter figure by far. He snapped awake, already in motion, recoiling against the wall of the tent.
Rudira lay where he had left her, in a tumble of pale hair, pale skin, pale impudent breasts. She laughed at his expression. “What, my love! Weren’t you expecting me?”
“Get out,” said Agni. His voice was thick.
She moved only to prop herself on her elbow and fix him with a steady regard. “Do you know, the boys Catin showed me—they were only boys. None of them was you.”
“Get out,” Agni said again. “I don’t want you here.”
“Of course you don’t,” she said. “You’re angry with me. You think I’m all kinds of monstrosity.”
“Aren’t you? By the gods, woman! You betrayed me, exiled me, murdered my ally. Do you think I’d ever want you near me again?”
“Some part of you does,” she said with an arch glance downward.
He took no notice of that, or the ache in his loins, either. “You have no heart,” he said. “Your spirit is an empty thing. All you know, all you see, is that you want to be a king’s wife.”
“And won’t I be?”
“I have a wife,” he said.
“Certainly,” she said. “She’s a king now, too. I saw her. She won’t have time to spare for you. She’ll be much too busy being king.”
Agni’s heart constricted. Rudira had a tongue like a snake, both subtle and poisonous. That she spoke the truth, after her fashion, only made her the more deadly.
He had let her live when he should have killed her. He could fall on her now, seize her, snap that slender neck in his hands. But his blood was not so cold, nor his strength of will so great. He would only fail.
And she knew it. Her smile was sweetly mocking. “Come, my love. Surrender. I’ll share you with
her. You don’t love her, after all. How can you? Fat cow. But she’s made you a king. That’s a fine thing for a woman to do.”
Agni drew breath to tell her how very wrong she was. But he thought better of it. She would only call him deluded; and she might do something rash. She had killed one Mother of Three Birds. She would think nothing of killing another.
He shifted, moving toward her. Her smile turned gleeful. He made as if to take her in his arms; veered and rolled and came to his feet well beyond her. As it dawned on her what he had done, he snatched up such garments as came to hand, and made his escape.
It was the coward’s way, but no other was of any use with Rudira. The daylight offered refuge, morning light over a camp so familiar it struck him with pain. Camp of the White Horse in the gathering of tribes, and each clan-standard where it had always been, and Taditi tending the king’s fire as she had done since he could remember. The only difference was the standard next to the white horsetail, the flame of gold that marked the first king of the Lady’s country, the first lord of horsemen to rule where only women had ruled before.
Taditi greeted him with the rake of a glance, and gave him a cup that proved to be filled with much-watered wine. There was bread to go with it, and cheese. “It’s not much,” she said, “but it’s all you’re getting till you send people out to forage.”
“The city can provide,” he said, “and we’ll cull the cattle. How hungry is everyone?”
“Not at all,” she said, “yet. They’ve been seen to.”
With a faint sigh he drank his wine, ate his bread and cheese. The camp had come to life as he sat there. Men came out of tents, yawning and stretching. Women went about their shadowy business.
No one looked particularly cast down, and no one came to fling him out. People who passed offered him respect as one did to a king, an inclination of the head, sometimes a greeting, a soft “My lord.” Just as if he had never been exiled. As if he had been king here since the old king died.
So did people school themselves in war, to accept what its fortunes might bring. Conquest; defeat. Return of a man whose name had been taken away, who had been made as nothing, yet who had won them all in battle.