The Horsemasters

by Joan Wolf

  “Look,” Ronan said softly over his shoulder to Nel. The deer blended into rock and hill so well that it was not easy to distinguish.

  “He has picked a perfect lookout place,” Nel said, and Ronan could tell from her voice that she was smiling.

  They had been walking for perhaps five hours when Ronan heard the grunting sound of animals foraging nearby among the trees. He halted and turned to Nel, scanning her face for signs of weariness. “Boar,” he said, “Are you ready to stop for the night? Shall I get us one for supper?”

  She put down her spear and shifted her backpack. “Are we near the cave you told me of?”

  “It is yet another two hours ahead.”

  “I can go for another two hours,” Nel said.

  “Are you sure?” He had felt guilty when he had seen her exhaustion at their first stopping place. “We are safely ahead of a messenger, if there is one.”

  “I am sure,” Nel said firmly, and motioned him onward.

  An hour later, Ronan saw the leopard spoor. Leopard and bear were what he had principally watched out for all afternoon, as leopards were known to inhabit the territory around the Red Deer summer camp. The tribe had lost more than one man to leopard in Ronan’s lifetime. Ronan stopped, bent, and looked closely at the droppings on the track. They were warm.

  Nel came up beside him. Ronan looked up. “Leopard,” he said.

  Instinctively, Nel looked up into the trees.

  Ronan shook his head. “It is going along the track.” He looked at his spear as if to check it. “We had better proceed carefully.” He whistled for Nigak, but there was no response. They walked on.

  It was five minutes before they came upon the leopard, crouched in the undergrowth to the right of the track, watching a single young antelope as it grazed in a small forest glade beyond. Ronan and Nel halted, stood in perfect silence, and watched.

  The leopard was lying very low to the ground, almost upon its belly. Its lowness and its spotted hide made it virtually invisible to the antelope, which was grazing peacefully. As Ronan and Nel watched, the leopard got to its feet and began to creep slowly forward. Suddenly the antelope looked up. The leopard froze, one paw still suspended. The antelope looked all around the glade, its gaze passing right over the leopard, then once again it lowered its head to graze. The leopard waited, then slowly it crept forward again.

  Once more, the antelope looked up. Once more the leopard froze. This time, however, Ronan was sure that the antelope had spotted the predator, for it stared directly at it. The leopard never moved. The antelope continued to stare. Slowly, half-inch by half-inch, the leopard lowered its body toward the ground. Still the antelope looked. The leopard sank downward until its body was flat against the ground. The antelope began to graze once more.

  After a short time, the leopard slowly began to creep forward again.

  For ten minutes Ronan and Nel stood in fascinated silence and watched the scene being enacted by the leopard and the antelope. Again and again the antelope would look up. Again and again the leopard would freeze and the antelope would apparently see nothing. Finally the leopard was within sure striking distance of the antelope. Ronan felt his own muscles tense as he watched the leopard collect itself. He held his breath.

  Nigak’s blood-curdling howl ripped through the air. The leopard and the antelope reacted instantly, the antelope running for its life into the forest, the leopard streaking in pursuit. At first the antelope ran straight, but then it started to zigzag among the trees. In so doing it gained ground on the leopard. Within seconds the two animals had passed out of Ronan’s sight.

  “You certainly spoiled that leopard’s afternoon, Nigak,” he heard Nel saying beside him.

  The wolf was panting, his tongue lolling out, his ears flopping sideways. He looked very pleased with himself. Nel laughed. “Lucky antelope,” she said.

  “Unlucky us,” Ronan returned. “I’m sure that leopard has cubs somewhere to feed. The antelope would have kept them busy until we were out of their territory. Now she will be hunting again.”

  “How much farther do we have to go?” Nel asked.

  “The cave is but an hour ahead,” he said. “We will be safer there than we will be camping in the forest with a hungry leopard.”

  Nel nodded again, shifted her pack to a more comfortable position on her back, and prepared to move.

  The cave was one Ronan had found during the second summer he had spent at the Red Deer summer camp. He had taken Cala there once, but as far as he was aware no one else knew of it. It was sufficiently removed from camp, and sufficiently hidden, for him to think that, even if Arika ordered a search, he and Nel would be safe.

  They reached it an hour before darkfall.

  “I have some fruit and some dried meat in my pack,” Nel said as they climbed the last part of the hill that led to the cave. “We can have that for supper. It is too near dark for you to go out hunting.”

  “All right,” he said.

  The cave did not go deep into the hill, but the single chamber was of quite a decent size. The first thing Nel saw when she came in was the remains of the fire he and Cala had built. “Ronan,” she said. “Someone else has been here.”

  For some reason he did not understand, Ronan did not want to tell her that he had brought Cala here. “Na,” he answered carelessly, “that is just the remains of the fire I built myself when I was here years ago.”

  Nel was still staring at the hearthstones and the ash. “I had better get some wood for a new fire before it grows too dark,” he said to distract her attention. “Can you fetch us some fresh water? There is a stream just yonder,” and he pointed.

  “All right,” Nel said, and turned away from the hearthstones to collect the bladders they used for carrying water.

  By the time the dark came, Ronan had a good fire going. They ate, and Nigak left to go hunting for his own supper. Nel began to spread her sleeping skins, and Ronan sat at his place by the fire and watched her as she bent and straightened, bent and straightened.

  Her waist was so slim and supple, he thought. He wanted to put his hands around it. He could see the sweet curve of her breasts beneath her buckskin shirt. He wanted to put his hands on them as well.

  Dhu, this was torture! She finished with the skins and came to join him at the fire, stretching out her long, slim legs to the warmth. Still without speaking, she untied the leather thong that fastened her braid and began to undo her hair.

  Ronan had not lain with a girl in a long, long time. It seemed the men who followed Sky God had different attitudes about women from the tribes who followed the Mother. In fact, the last girl he had lain with had been a girl from one of the Goddess-worshiping tribes of the plain. They had met by chance on one of Ronan’s periodic scouting trips, had taken great pleasure in each other, and had said good-bye with smiling goodwill.

  That had been last fall. A long time ago. He looked again at Nel, devouring her with his eyes.

  She had unwoven her braid and was running a comb made from bone through all the shining length of her hair. He watched her, the tension growing inside of him. Her fawn-colored hair reached to her waist and looked as soft and silky as the inside of an acorn. One strand fell like a streamer across the swell of her breast. Ronan had to restrain himself from reaching out to touch it.

  In any other girl, he would have seen the hair combing as an invitation. But this was Nel. Incredibly, this soft and beautiful woman, sitting at his side and rousing his blood with such perfect and inviolable innocence, was Nel.

  He had never wondered what Nel would look like when she became a woman. He knew he could never have imagined this.

  Nel raised her head and shook back her hair, sending the fragrance of herbs drifting to his nostrils. She saw him watching her and grinned. A little girl’s grin in her beautiful woman’s face, “See, you did not even have to tell me to comb my hair!” she said.

  Ronan concentrated grimly on controlling his arousal. It was not easy. Her narrow nos
e was a smaller, less arched version of his own. Her high cheekbones were rosy with the firelight. The teeth exposed by that urchin’s grin were white and even.

  “Nel,” he heard himself asking, “if you had stayed to make the Sacred Marriage at Winter Fires, whom would you have chosen as your mate?”

  The grin faded. Her face grew almost wary. “I do not know,” she said.

  He did not like that wary look. She was hiding something. “There was no one boy you particularly liked?” he pressed.

  “Of course not.” She was looking even warier.

  “It is not so foolish a question,” he said. Even to himself his voice sounded harsh. He struggled to lighten it. “By the time most girls reach the age of initiation, they have one particular boy that they like.”

  “You say that because the girls always liked you!” she retorted.

  “Not at all,” he said.

  “It is true, and you know it.” She swung all her hair to one side of her shoulder so she could rebraid it.

  “We were not talking about me but about you,” he said.

  “There is nothing to say about me. On the other hand, there is always something interesting to say about you. Half the women of the tribe went into mourning when you left.”

  “To hear you talk, one would think I never did anything but spend my time with girls,” he snapped.

  “You certainly spent a lot of your time with girls,” she replied teasingly. “There was Borba and Iva and Cala…”

  He was glaring at her now. She had almost finished her braid. He felt savage. “Well, I am telling you now that I have had no time for girls these last three years. I have been too busy trying to keep a tribe together.”

  She was tying the thong that held the end of her braid, and her head was bent so that he could not see her face. For a moment her fingers stilled. “You are not married, then?” she asked.

  Silence. Nel raised her head and looked at him out of shadowed eyes. “Did you think I might be married?” he asked carefully.

  “The thought had occurred to me,” she admitted.

  He stood up. “Well, I am not.” And he stalked to the cave door and went outside to look for Nigak.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Nel was in her sleeping skins pretending to be asleep when Ronan returned. She was not asleep, however, but awake and hugging to herself the news that, after all, Ronan did not have a wife. He might still regard her as a child, but at least now she would have a chance to change his perception.

  She kept her eyes closed as he put more wood on the fire, then got into his own sleeping skins. He was annoyed with her for teasing him about all his girls. Strange, she thought sleepily, he had never grown annoyed at that before. She drifted off to sleep.

  Shortly after midnight it began to rain. Nel awoke and heard the drops drumming steadily on the limestone rock of the hillside. She had always hated the rain, which was forever associated in her mind with the day her mother had died. She could remember still how wet her father had been when he came into the but where she was staying while her mother gave birth to the new baby. She could remember still the smell of his wet buckskins. She would remember always the sound of the rain beating steady as a shaman’s drum against the skins of the hut. She could not recall what her father’s words to her had been, but she would never forget the sound and smell of the rain.

  It had been raining on the day she and Ronan had sworn blood kinship. He had found her huddled in the forest crying, and it was then that he had proposed the bond.

  A gust of wind blew a spray of rain into the mouth of the cave, dampening the watch fire Ronan had built. There was no sound of any animals outside, only the sound of the rain.

  As if the dousing of the fire had sounded a silent warning, Ronan sat up.

  “I’ll get it going again,” he said when he saw that Nel was awake also. She crawled out of her sleeping skins, knelt shivering on top of them, and watched as Ronan put on fresh wood and fed what was left of the embers with dry leaves. The leaves caught, and the flaring flame illuminated and bronzed the skin of his face and throat. The thong at the neck of his buckskin shirt had come loose in his sleep, and the shirt hung open, baring his throat and chest. He had taken off his headband earlier, and his black hair was slipping over his forehead. He pushed his fingers through it and looked at Nel. “Are you all right?” he said softly.

  Her eyes moved beyond the fire to the arch of the cave’s entrance, the darkness, and the rain. “It’s raining,” she said stupidly. There was the faintest of tremors in her voice.

  He grasped his sleeping skins with one hand and dragged them over to where hers were spread. Then he dropped down beside her and reached for her with his left hand as his right hand pulled his skins over the two of them for warmth. He drew her to lie beside him, his arms gathering her close. “It’s all right, minnow,” he said. His breath was feather soft on her temple. “Nothing bad is going to happen. You’re with me now.”

  The air smelled of smoke and of rain. Nel turned her face into the smooth, bare skin of his throat and breathed deeply the scent that was Ronan. His arms held her fast, secure, safe. She snuggled closer to him, closed her eyes, and went back to sleep.

  * * * *

  When Nel awoke the next morning, she was alone. She put her hand on the skins next to her where Ronan had lain, but they were no longer warm from his body. She felt oddly desolate.

  It was gloomy outside, but the rain had stopped, and water in a skull container was hung over the fire, heating for morning tea. Ronan had probably gone to check the bird snares he had set last night. Nel sat up slowly, sighed, and set about brewing the tea.

  Ronan returned a short time later, pausing for a moment in the frame of the cave opening, two willow grouse in his hands. Nel’s head jerked around instantly, and their eyes met. He smiled, but it was not a smile that Nel recognized. It was the sort of smile he would give to a stranger. “Breakfast,” he said lightly and came into the cave.

  Nel plucked the feathers from the birds in bewildered silence while Ronan collected rocks and arranged them on the fire to heat. When the birds were plucked, she braised them on the hot stones. They were delicious, but the food stuck in her throat.

  What was wrong? she wondered, watching Ronan’s aloof face from under lowered lashes. He had been so good to her last night, so comforting, and this morning he was behaving as if she were someone he had just met.

  “Douse the fire,” he said in the cool, efficient voice she was coming to hate. He had not called her “minnow” once all morning, she thought in dismay. Obediently, she doused the fire, shouldered her pack, and trudged behind him down the game track.

  The second day of their journey was much like the first. They kept to forest game trails and made camp in the late afternoon in a cave. Ronan got a boar for supper in much less time than he had anticipated, and consequently there were still several hours of daylight left once they had finished their meal.

  They sat together around the fire, and for the first time in her life, Nel wondered what she and Ronan could find to talk about. She chewed on her lower lip and watched him out of the corner of her eyes. He was staring into the smoking fire, a thin sharp line between his black brows. He was deeply burned from the sun, and she could see the shadow of a beard under his skin. Like most of the Red Deer men, he shaved his beard with a flint razor every morning, but by nightfall it began to come back.

  What was wrong? Nel wondered desperately. Why was he treating her with this distant courtesy? What had she done? Was he sorry that he had come for her? Was he angry because she had been such a baby last night?

  The measure of her uneasiness was that she was afraid to ask him what was wrong.

  “Tell me about this tribe of yours,” she said abruptly. “I know only the little that I have heard from Tyr.”

  He narrowed his eyes against the smoke and looked at her with surprise, as if he had forgotten she was there. “All right,” he said. “But first let’s find someplac
e else to sit.”

  The cave they were occupying was set midway up a hillside, affording it a good view of the surrounding country. Ronan propped his back against the rocky face of the hill and gestured Nel to sit at a little distance from him. There had been no sign at all of a pursuit, but Ronan’s vigilance was for more than the merely human. They had seen more leopard tracks during the course of the day.

  Nel sat in the place he had indicated, hurt that it was so far away from him, and drew up her knees. “Tell me first how you found the valley,” she said.

  Evidently he was as happy to have a topic of conversation as she, for he answered readily. “I found it shortly after I left the Tribe of the Buffalo.” As he spoke, his eyes were moving over the scene before them in a hunter’s endless vigilance. “The men of the Buffalo told me about the tribes of the Mother that inhabit the plain beyond the Atlas,” he said, “and I decided I would try to find them. None of the tribes of the Kindred would risk incurring the Mistress’s curse, and I thought it would be wisest to go to a place where the Tribe of the Red Deer was unknown. So Nigak and I set off to cross the Altas.”

  There was a movement among the trees a little way down the hillside, and Ronan stopped talking to watch. When he was certain it was only a deer, he picked up his tale. “I followed the Atata, as the men of the Buffalo had told me to, and, after a two-day climb, we reached the summit.”

  He paused again, as if reliving in his mind that particular moment. Once he had started speaking the tension between them had disappeared, and he said, now naturally, “It is amazing, Nel, how different the land is on the afternoon side of the mountains. Our side is narrow and steep, with only small pastures for grazing, but the far side is wide and sloping, with great wide valleys that in summer are thick with grass.”

  “Are there tribes dwelling in the mountains there?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “There are summer camps, but no permanent dwelling places. There is snow for seven moons out of the year, and the animals descend into the lower levels once the snow begins to fall. As with us, the men follow the herds.”