by Joan Wolf
Ronan was leading his stallion in their direction, and he heard Siguna’s comment. “I hope that he is,” Ronan said, and then added, “Whoa, Cloud. Whoa, fellow,” as his gray stallion suddenly began to plunge and rear. The people near the horse’s lashing feet moved back quickly. Ronan jerked once, sharply, on the noseband of the halter and said again, very sternly, “Whoa.” The gray rolled his large, brilliant dark eyes and snorted, but his feet remained on the ground. “He is excited by the mares,” Ronan said to Siguna, keeping a close hold on the stallion’s halter.
Thorn was looking at the gray stallion’s splendid, strongly arched face. He had drawn Cloud several times, and he considered one picture in particular, a large one he had painted in the valley cave, among his very best. It was a picture of Ronan and his horse together, standing side by side much as they were now. Thorn had tried to convey the similar lordly look of pride and command that marked both those aquiline faces. He looked now at the stallion face and the man face before him, remembered his picture, and saw a small change he could make.
“They are all excited by the mares,” Mait was saying, “but Cloud is reacting more like a stallion than a colt. I saw him driving them, Ronan.” Mait gazed at his leader with unfeigned admiration. “I do not know how you stayed on!”
Ronan grinned. “All of those thundering hooves coming behind me, Mait, gave me great encouragement to stay on.”
Cloud tried to rear again, but Ronan’s iron hand held him. “I am going to get him out of here,” Ronan said to the trio before him and, clicking his tongue, he began to walk briskly away. Cloud arched his thick muscular neck and followed on prancing feet.
* * * *
Ronan had estimated it would be at least a day before Fenris would be able to collect his horses and come after the thieves, but the chief of the Wolf was taking no chances. At noon on the day of the raid, he moved his forces out of the Great Cave and westward, toward the valley of the Volp.
The place Ronan had chosen for his ambush was a deep gorge that had been cut by the river between two cave-pierced limestone cliffs. The floor of the gorge was dark with shadows, and the river raced through it as if anxious to leave, roaring loudly up and down the echoing valley.
One of the things Ronan had been doing over the last weeks was separating out the best archers from among the tribes. These were the marksmen that he sent now to climb the steep hillsides on either side of the gorge and hide themselves within the caves that honeycombed the cliffs. With the marksmen went the huge number of arrows the women of the tribes had been so busy making, as well as most of the spears the tribes possessed.
The rest of the men of the Federation would rely solely on their heavy spears. These men Ronan had massed at the head of the pass that led out of the gorge, standing them shoulder to shoulder, their spears pointing forward to form an impenetrable wall of death.
Ronan’s advice to his marksmen had been succinct. “Go for the horses first. Once the first animals start to fall, I am thinking panic will set in amongst the rest. Dead horses will clog the gorge, too, and make it more difficult for the rest of them to get out. Then you can aim for the men.”
“Sa, sa,” the marksmen had replied, and they had gone happily off to their appointed hiding places.
The two other chiefs had been uneasy about the formation in the pass. “It is all very well to say they will not attempt to get through our spear wall, Ronan,” Unwar had growled, “but what if they do? They will be on horseback. They can ride us down.”
“They cannot ride us down if we stand firm,” Ronan had replied patiently. He raised his voice, so he would be sure to be heard by the men around him. “I could hold that pass with just the men of the Wolf if I had to.” His voice rang with confidence. “If we hold strong, there is no way that the Horsemasters will be able to break through. We will defeat them.” He grinned and turned to address the men. “I wonder how they will like that?”
A roar of voices had been his answer.
And so the tribes took up their positions and waited. The day passed, and the men and girls in the caves settled down for the night, lighting no fires, eating only the dried meat and pieces of fruit they had brought to sustain themselves. The men in the pass did likewise.
Back at the sacred cave of the Red Deer, a morning’s walk away, Nel, Arika, and the shamans of the Buffalo and the Leopard waited also, the necessities for tending the wounded close by their hands.
Night passed and the sun began to rise in the sky. The men of the tribes once more took up their positions. An hour passed, and then another. Then, at long last, the first horsemen appeared on the heights at the northern end of the gorge.
* * * *
Fenris halted at the sight of the deep and shadowy gorge stretching before him. He held up his hand, and the men behind him halted as well. Fenris narrowed his eyes and scanned the cliffs. No sign of anything living showed anywhere. The river raged in the bottom of the gorge, churning with white. Fenris could hear its roar from here. There was room in the gorge for only three horses to go abreast, Fenris calculated, evaluating the space from the river to the cliff. He raised his eyes. So far as he could see, the exit from the gorge on the far side looked clear.
“Everything looks all right to me,” Surtur said from his right side.
“Yes,” Fenris said slowly.
“Is anything the matter, Kain?”
Nothing, Fenris thought, except that the hair on the back of his neck was standing on end. He did not trust this gorge. His stallion was quiet, however; nor did any of the mares appear to be objecting to the path in front of them. Fenris turned and looked at the men in line behind him.
He had brought a quarter of his men, a cadre of his finest warriors, on this pursuit of the thieves of his horses. The women and children and extra horses were back at the camp, guarded by enough men to protect them should an attack come in his absence. The kain was not accustomed to thinking about defense, but the raid of two days before had shaken him out of his usual complacency.
“Is anything the matter?” Surtur repeated.
There was nothing he could put his finger on. He could not go back simply because of a feeling… “No,” he said to Surtur. “Let us go on.” He pressed his stallion forward, and the rest of his men followed. The Horsemasters entered the gorge.
Ronan had impressed upon his archers the necessity of waiting until the invaders were three quarters of the way through the gorge before they opened fire. At precisely the three-quarter point, the first arrows began to rain down upon the unprotected heads of the Horsemasters and the vulnerable flanks of their mounts.
Horses screamed. Men shouted.
I knew it! Fenris thought before he began to gallop his stallion forward toward the pass ahead of him. I knew it was a trap!
Surtur was riding on one side of him, and Hugin on the other. The three of them raced forward, their heads low against their horses’ necks. The screams of wounded horses rent the air.
There was a movement in front of them, and Fenris looked up to see a phalanx of men moving into the pass. Instinctively, Fenris checked his mount. The men in the pass halted and pointed their spears directly forward.
Fenris stared at the tightly massed men. If he galloped Thunder into that wall of spears, he would kill him. There was only room for the horses to hit the men three at a time, and the spearmen were too deep for the weight of three horses to break.
Fenris cursed and slowed his horse even more. He could feel the horses behind him crowding upon Thunder’s tail. The stallion lashed out with his heels. Fenris turned to look at the scene behind him.
Many horses were down, clogging the narrow gorge and the way out. Panic, sharp and palpable, was in the air. Fenris wrenched Thunder around. “Go back!” he shouted, waving his fist at the men behind him. “It’s a trap! Go back!”
If the men in the pass saw them retreating, Fenris thought desperately, they might charge. That was his only chance, to draw them out of that tight formation an
d into the gorge. Then he would have a chance of breaking through. His own men began to turn and surge slowly back in the other direction. Swearing and cursing, Fenris looked over his shoulder, to see if the men in the pass had taken the bait.
For one brief, wildly hopeful second, it seemed to the kain that the line of men swayed and began to move forward to give chase. Then a black-haired man stepped forward, faced them, and stretched his spear across the pass, as if he would hold back his men with that alone. The forward movement ceased, the men steadied and held.
Fenris cursed viciously. Whoever their leader was, he was too clever to be lured out of his position of power.
The only thing left for the kain to do was to try to extricate himself and as many of his men as he could from this gorge and the death that was raining down on them. Name of the Thunderer, how many arrows did they have?
“Dismount!” he yelled to the men around him. “Dismount, and let the horses shield you,” Then, grim-faced, he took his own advice.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Nel, Arika, and the shamans had only two twisted ankles and one cut leg to treat. The shamans couldn’t believe it, particularly when they went up to the gorge and saw the shambles lying within.
Nel didn’t go. Ronan had told her not to, and she had followed his advice. It was bad enough listening to the descriptions of those who had been there.
The Horsemasters had left six handfuls of men in the gorge, either dead or too badly wounded to get themselves out. They had left even more horses.
A grim-faced Ronan had given orders that the wounded men and horses were to be dispatched, and all of the bodies were to be stripped of their weapons. The tribes also retrieved as many of their own arrows and spears as they could find, in many cases pulling them out of the dead flesh of their targets. Then the men of the Federation turned their backs on the gorge and left the corpses to the attention of the hyenas.
* * * *
The approximately one hundred and fifty victorious tribesmen and women did not make the journey back to their camp at the Great Cave that night, but stayed instead near the cave where the Red Deer men traditionally held their initiation rites. Ronan had already sent messengers to relay the news of victory to the waiting women at the Great Cave, and he had previously posted watchers at the Horsemasters’ camp, so there was no reason for him not to relax and join wholeheartedly in the victory celebration. But he could not.
He kept looking at the cave and remembering the day of his own initiation. It seemed so long ago. A lifetime ago. He fingered the initiation scars on his upper arm. It was impossible to feel them under the buckskin of his shirt, but he knew they were there.
When he was not looking at the cave, he was looking at the place near the fire where Arika sat. Neihle was on one side of her, but the other side was empty. The heavily pregnant Morna, who for so many years had occupied that place of honor beside her mother, was back at the Great Cave with the other women.
Ronan stared at that empty space. For the whole of his childhood, he had longed to be the one who sat there, had longed to take his place as the Mistress’s son. And now, after so many years, after so much bitterness, she seemed disposed to accept him. She had backed his leadership, She had said he was blessed by the Goddess. He did not understand her at all.
He shook his head, as if to clear from it fumes that were clouding his thoughts. A hand touched his shoulder briefly, and he knew, before ever he turned his head, who was there.
“Let us go for a walk,” Nel said softly into his ear.
He nodded and got to his feet. The men of the Wolf sitting around him looked up, saw Nel, smiled, and went back to their eating and their stories of the day’s adventure. Ronan and Nel slipped away into the forest.
“You looked so serious,” Nel said.
“I was thinking that I should be feeling as if I were back at home,” he explained. “That cave is the cave where I was initiated. All of my old agemates were sitting around the fires there, and Neihle, who was my mentor. But it seemed as if the boy who grew up in the Tribe of the Red Deer was one person, and I am another.”
“You are the same person,” Nel said. “But you have journeyed far.”
He sighed. “Sa. I suppose that is true.”
They walked for a few moments in silence, wrapped in their own thoughts. Then Nel said, “Ronan…”
He raised his head alertly, roused from his own reverie by the edgy urgency of her tone. “Sa?”
“Let us go to the sacred cave,” she said.
He frowned. “Now?”
“Sa. We are not that far away. We can go there and be back before the morning. No one need know where we have gone.”
He halted in a pool of moonlight and looked down. “Why, Nel?”
She would not meet his eyes. He studied her tense, averted face, and abruptly he understood.
He ached for her. He knew how much she wanted a child. If she wanted to lie with him in the sacred cave, he would go with her. But in his heart he did not think it would do any good.
“Do you want to ask the Mother’s blessing for a child?” he asked her, his voice very gentle. “Is that it?”
“Sa.” Her lovely mouth looked so unhappy. “I think she is angry with me, Ronan. She feels I have deserted her. That is why she will not bless me with a child. I must find a way to placate her, and I thought, perhaps, if you and I went to her sacred place…” She lifted her long, beautiful eyes. “Do you see?”
He smoothed his thumbs along her cheekbones. “Sa. I see. But I do not think the Mother is angry with you, minnow. I think the Mother loves you well.”
Despairingly she cried, “If that is so, then why will she not give me a child?”
He tilled her face so she would have to look at him, and said soberly, “Hear me, Nel. I do not think you understand how great is the gift the Mother has blessed you with. She has given you the gift of calling animals. Don’t you know that if it were not for you, we would never have been able to tame our horses?”
“You would have,” she said. “Look at how well all the tribe is doing with them.”
“Na,” His voice was sharp. “Now we can handle them, but we would not have gotten near them in the first place if it were not for you. I might have been able to take a foal and rear it and tame it as you reared Nigak. But never could I have tamed a herd of yearlings that had been running free. Never. When it comes to handling animals, you are a very great shaman.”
She was gazing up at him, trying to understand. “Nel,” he said gently, “it is in my heart that for the giving of such a gift, the Mother will require some sacrifice.”
Silence. He watched her eyes dilate until they were almost black.
“That is too great a sacrifice,” she whispered at last.
“Why?”
She pulled her face away from his grasp and turned away from him. “Because it is a sacrifice for you, also,” she said over her shoulder.
He shook his head. “I have you. I do not need children.”
She hunched her shoulders. “You are just saying that to make me feel better.”
“I am not. Look at me, Nel, I mean it. I do not care if we never have children.”
Slowly, reluctantly, she turned around. She looked up into his face, and he gazed steadily back. Tears began to well in her eyes when she saw that he was telling her the truth.
“Don’t cry, minnow,” he said softly. “Please don’t cry. You know I can’t bear to see you cry.” And he held out his arms.
She seemed so small and light-boned as she pressed against him. He smelled the herbs with which she washed her hair. No one else’s hair smelled like Nel’s. For no one else had he ever felt the gut-wrenching tenderness that he always felt for her. Perhaps he should not have spoken, but he could not bear to see her wearing herself out with longing.
“If you want, I will go to the sacred cave with you,” he said. “We will make the sacred marriage in the Mother’s own place. But I do not want you to be
disappointed if you do not have a child, Nel.”
He felt her shudder and try to get herself under control. She slid her arms around his waist and held him tightly. His heart was breaking for her, but he knew that he had spoken the truth. Ronan had long understood that the Goddess gave nothing without exacting some payment in return.
What he had kept hidden from Nel was the fact that, deep down, he was glad she had borne no children. He would keep that secret, he decided, lest she suspect that perhaps his gladness was the very cause of the Mother’s anger.
The women of his blood had ever had ill luck with childbearing. Nel’s own mother had died, Arika had almost died with Morna and had been able to bear no more. Morna herself was not looking well. Ronan would be very happy to keep Nel safe.
And he was happy, also, to keep her his. He had heard too much of men’s grumbling about their enforced continence during the moons of childbearing and early nursing. If he had to do it, he would, but to himself he acknowledged the truth. He liked having his wife to himself. He had the tribe to guide and to rule; he did not need children also.
He touched his mouth to her hair. “You are enough for me, minnow.” He added, a little plaintively, “Aren’t I enough for you?”
At that, she loosened her grip on him, sniffled twice, and tipped back her head. Her face in the moonlight was silvered all over with tears. “Sa,” she said in a husky voice. “You have always been enough for me.”
They gazed into each other’s eyes, Ronan said, “Do you still want to go to the sacred cave?”
“Sa.” The huskiness of Nel’s voice was subtly different.
Ronan’s face was intent. “I’ll tell Bror, so that no one gets nervous and starts to look for us.”
Nel nodded.
He lifted a finger and lightly touched her mouth. “I won’t be long,” he promised and ran back toward the firelight on feet as fleet as wings.
