The Horsemasters

by Joan Wolf

* * * *

  As soon as the men returned to the Great Cave, Siguna sought out Thorn. She wanted to go to the gorge to search for her father. “I cannot leave him there,” she insisted. “If he is dead, I must bury him.”

  “I did not see him fall, Siguna,” Thorn kept repeating patiently. “Nor did Mait see him among the dead. Mait was one of those sent to retrieve our weapons, and he did not see the kain. I asked him specifically because I knew you would want to know.”

  “I must be certain,” Siguna said. “He is my father.”

  She was neither wild nor hysterical. She was perfectly calm and perfectly determined. Thorn, who was equally determined that she not go, did not know what to do with her.

  “The scavengers will have been at the corpses for a day and a night,” he finally said bluntly, “You do not want to see what is in that gorge, Siguna.”

  No trace of horror crossed her beautiful face. “It does not matter,” she replied. “All that matters is that I assure myself that my father is not there.”

  Thorn gritted his teeth against his own horror. “Then I will go for you,” he said. “I know what the kain looks like. If he is there, and if he is still recognizable, I promise you I will bring him out so you can bury him.”

  Siguna did not flinch. “You do not understand. I must go myself, Thorn.” She repeated, “He is my father.”

  Thorn glared. “I know he is your father!” They eyed each other. “You are right,” Thorn said. “I do not understand. Do you not trust me?”

  Siguna made an impatient gesture. “Let us go to see the Mistress,” she said.

  At those words, Thorn became wary. He had not been overly pleased by the amount of time that his charge was spending in Arika’s company of late. Siguna was different after she had been talking to Arika. Thorn had noticed it, and he did not like it. In truth, Thorn was somewhat jealous of the bond that appeared to be forming between Siguna and the Mistress of the Red Deer.

  “Why?” he asked now. “What can Arika have to say about this?”

  “She will understand why I must go.”

  “Siguna.” Thorn was beginning to get really angry. “Will you please be sensible? There is no reason for you to go to that gorge!”

  “No reason that you understand, Thorn,” she replied calmly. “I am going to see the Mistress.”

  “Very well,” he snapped. “I will come with you.” And the two young people moved off together toward the Red Deer section of the cave.

  Arika was giving a voice blessing to one of the tribe’s babes, but when she had finished her chant she listened to Siguna’s request with no sign of horror or disgust.

  “This will be an ugly sight for you” was all she said when Siguna had finished.

  “I know that,” Siguna replied. Her face was pale and set, her gray eyes wide and dark and dedicated. “But I must see for myself that my father is not lying there, food for the ravens and scavengers of the earth.” She lifted her head. “To you he is simply the enemy, but to me he is my father.”

  Thorn had been silent thus far, but now he said, “Mistress, I have said that I will go to the gorge and search for the kain. It is not necessary for Siguna to undertake this terrible task.”

  Arika’s eyes went back to Siguna. “Do your gods demand this of you?” she asked.

  “I do not know overmuch of the gods,” Siguna replied honestly. “The women of my tribe do not have a sacred world of their own as do the women of the Red Deer. This is a duty that I have laid upon myself.”

  “You love your father?”

  “I love my father,” Siguna said. “But that is not the point.”

  “You are right,” Arika replied. The Mistress’s face was very grave. “It is not the point at all.” She said to Thorn, “The girl must be allowed to search for her father.”

  Thorn bit back the rash words that were on his tongue.

  Siguna bowed her silvery head. “I thank you, Mistress, for understanding and for granting me this wish.”

  There was nothing Thorn could do. Arika’s word in this matter would not be gainsaid, not even by Ronan. Trying to make the best of it, Thorn said, “She cannot go alone.”

  The Mistress surveyed him from his head to his toes. Thorn set his teeth and refused to be intimidated. Arika finally said, “Then you may accompany her.”

  “But I must look myself!” Siguna said sharply. “I cannot give this task to any eyes but my own.”

  “You shall be the one to look,” Arika promised. “Go now, my daughter. There is no more time for you to waste.”

  After the two young people had disappeared around the curve in the tunnel, Arika turned to one of the matriarchs who had heard the exchange. “There is a girl who understands the sacredness of duty,” the Mistress said thoughtfully.

  “So I was thinking,” the matriarch replied.

  “Such a girl will find no room to breathe in the tribes that follow Sky God.”

  “The boy seems very interested,” the matriarch commented. “If he seeks to marry her, she will have to go to his tribe.”

  “He is more interested in her than she is in him,” Arika responded dismissively.

  The matriarch sighed. “It is unfortunate that the same could not have been said about Nel and Ronan.”

  Arika’s face closed. “Come,” she said sharply. “It is time to check the wounded.”

  * * * *

  Cloud picked his own surefooted way down the rocky path between the hills while the man on his back reviewed in his mind the sequence of his action against the Horsemasters.

  I need to determine what was successful for us and how I can use that success for the next time, Ronan thought.

  He recognized with regret that surprise would never again be the same devastating factor it had been in the gorge. The chief of the Horsemasters would never let them be caught in a trap like that again.

  He was clever, this Fenris. He had almost succeeded in luring Ronan’s men into breaking ranks. If he had done that… Ronan’s mouth set grimly as he thought about what might have happened if his men had left their nearly invincible formation and begun to pour down into the gorge.

  The marksmen on the cliffs would have been immobilized. The enemy horsemen would have had a good chance of breaking through the strung-out defenders and gaining the pass. If Ronan had not kept his men out of that gorge, the ravens would be feasting on more than the Horsemasters this day.

  Fenris had understood all of this. Ronan had seen the expression of bitter disappointment on the kain’s face when he had realized that the spearmen were going to hold. It had been the strangest feeling, but for the briefest of moments, Ronan had felt an affinity with the chief of the enemy forces. He had known exactly what Fenris was feeling.

  Cloud had reached the bottom of the mountain path, and Ronan turned him in the direction of the men’s camp. It was very quiet in the hills today, he thought, glancing around. All of the scavengers were occupied elsewhere.

  That shoulder-to-shoulder, spear-forward formation had worked extremely well, Ronan decided, shifting his own spear from his right hand to his left. It had turned back the horses. What he had to do now was figure out how he could continue to make such a formation work when he did not have the narrow chasm of a gorge to contain the enemy.

  Cloud suddenly snorted and threw up his head, Ronan roused himself from his preoccupation, looked ahead, and saw the solitary woman waiting for him on the edge of the track. Instinctively, he braced his back, and Cloud’s stride checked. It was Morna.

  The two of them had dwelled within sight of each other for over a moon now, but never had they been in the same company. Ronan had yet to speak one word to his sister, nor had she spoken to him. They had both comported themselves as if the other were invisible, a tactic that had been aided and abetted by the rest of the men and women of their tribes. All knew what a weight of accusation and bitterness lay between Morna and Ronan, and all preferred to pretend that they did not.

  For one brief and terri
ble moment, it seemed to Ronan as if time had rolled back. He was a young boy again, and Morna had come to lure him into an unspeakable sin. Cloud, reacting to the sudden rigidity of his rider, pawed the ground and began to sidle.

  Then time rolled forward once more, and Ronan saw the swollen, child-heavy body of his sister. He touched Cloud with his heels and went forward to meet her.

  “You,” he said, in unconscious echo of his words five years before. “What are you doing here?”

  She smiled at him mockingly. “I have not come for what you may think, Ronan.” She placed a thin, white hand upon her great belly, “This is somewhat in my way these days.”

  He kept his seat on Cloud and watched her warily. “You should not have ventured so far alone. You are too near your time.”

  “I know I am near my time,” she said. “I have felt death on the wind these last two days.”

  His brows drew together. “The only death on the wind has been the deaths of the Horsemasters. You are weary, Morna. That is all it is.”

  “Na.” She shook her head and her loose red-gold hair floated around her shoulders. Even now, with fatigue imprinted in every line of her face, with shadows staining her eyes and thinness hollowing her cheeks, even now, she was beautiful. “I have known I was doomed since first I began to carry this child,” she said. She shrugged. “It is the Mother’s punishment on me. I know that as well.”

  She frightened him. She frightened him because he found himself believing her.

  “Punishment for what you did to me?” he asked, his voice sounding like a croak.

  Her eyes flashed in their old way. “You deserved what I did to you,” she said. “Na, this is for something else.”

  He had no intention of asking her what that something else might be.

  “I will die,” she continued with eerie matter-of-factness, “but my child will live. It will be a boy and my mother will not want him. So, Ronan, I am going to leave him to you and Nel.”

  Ronan went absolutely rigid.

  Morna’s face lit with an enchanting smile. “I should not have told you, I know. I should have left it until there was nothing you could do about it. But I so much wanted to see your face.”

  Ronan found his voice. “Nel cannot nurse a child,” he said harshly.

  “Someone else can nurse him for her. But I will name Nel to be his mother.” She put her hand on her side and leaned a little forward. “Once she takes my child in her arms, you will never get him away from her, Ronan.”

  He stared at her and saw Morna recoil from what she read in his eyes. Then she recovered herself, and once again she smiled mockingly. “Won’t you like that, Ronan? Seeing my son at your hearthfire every night? Watching your beloved Nel holding him close to her heart?”

  He felt frozen. His limbs wouldn’t move. He did not think he would ever be able to get off of Cloud again. He said stiffly, “The child’s father may have somewhat to say about your plans.”

  “Ronan.” Her face brimmed with malicious joy. “Do you think anyone knows who this child’s father is?”

  He closed his fist upon Cloud’s mane, to keep from lifting his spear against her.

  “You hate me,” Morna said. “Good. Because I hate you.”

  “Why?” It was the one thing he had never understood, why she should hate him so. “Why? Morna. Why do you hate me?”

  She answered simply, “Because I wanted you and you did not want me.”

  There was nothing he could answer. He drew a long, shuddering breath and pressed Cloud forward, past the pollution that was his sister and his sister’s unborn child.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  One week after Ronan’s meeting with Morna, she gave birth to her son, Ronan had said nothing to Nel about his conversation with his sister. He had been sickened and appalled by it, but for the first time in his life, he was afraid that Nel would not see things the same way he did. Morna had found a weapon that would strike at the very heart of his life, his relationship with Nel, and he did not know what he was going to do.

  All during that week of waiting, Ronan told himself that Morna had been wrong. All women so near to giving birth feared they would die, he thought. He was a fool to so upset himself over the words of a sick, malevolent woman. There was certainly enough for him to worry about without borrowing trouble from Morna!

  There had been a baby horn shortly after the tribes had gathered at the Great Cave, and Morna’s was the second. The women took her out to the moon hut for privacy, and after a full night and day of hard labor, it was clear that this childbirth was not going as smoothly as it should.

  Arika stayed with her daughter, saying prayers to the Mother and making all the ceremonials that were supposed to ease the baby’s way out of its mother’s body and into the world. But hour after hour went by, and still the baby would not come.

  Morna was suffering terribly. Her screams did not reach very far beyond the moon hut, but there was a pall over the whole encampment as they waited for news. Everyone knew it was going on too long.

  As the day dragged by, Ronan’s heart grew heavier and heavier. Morna had foreseen the truth, he thought bleakly. She would die and leave behind a child for him to rear.

  Won’t you like that, Ronan? Seeing my son at your hearthfire every night? Watching your beloved Nel holding him close to her heart?

  It was very late in the afternoon when at last Berta came out to the men’s encampment to tell him the news: Morna was dead and had left her son to the care of Nel and Ronan.

  * * * *

  Every atom of Nel’s being yearned toward that baby. When Arika had placed Morna’s child in her arms, joy had leaped like wildfire in Nel’s heart. She had been ashamed of that joy, but she could not contain it. Her arms had curled around the tiny, warm bundle, and she had looked down into the small, perfect face of Morna’s son.

  “One of the women of the Red Deer has nursed him already,” Arika said. “You will have to find one of the women of your tribe to nurse him as you obviously cannot do it yourself.”

  Nel looked into Arika’s ravaged face, and pity nudged at the joy in her heart. She said, “Will you sit and have some tea, Mistress? You look exhausted.”

  Arika let out a long shuddering sigh. “Sa,” she said. “I will have some tea with you, Nel.”

  Beki said softly to Nel, “Let me take the babe for you, Nel, while you speak to the Mistress. I will put him to sleep beside Eken’s little one.”

  Nel did not want to part with the baby, but she looked at Arika’s face, then turned to transfer carefully the precious bundle into Beki’s arms. The rest of the women melted away, leaving the two alone by the fire. “She knew she was going to die,” Arika said. “She told me when the pains were first beginning that she would not live to see her son.” Arika bowed her head. She looked beaten. She looked old. “It is the only time I have ever seen the Goddess in Morna, when she told me she was going to die.”

  Nel’s sensitive mouth curved downward with reflected pain.

  Arika lifted her head. “She told me she was going to die and that she wanted you to have her child.”

  Nel nodded gravely. “I am the only woman left of her Mother’s Line, and Ronan is her only brother. Of course she would name us to take her child.”

  Arika looked steadily into Nel’s eyes. “That may be true, but that is not why Morna named you. Don’t you understand, Nel?” There was a pause as Arika’s eyes bored into Nel’s. “She did it to punish Ronan,” Arika said.

  Now the pain in Nel’s heart was not a mere reflection of Arika’s. “Ah…,” Nel’s hand went to her throat, “I had not thought…”

  In truth, all she had been thinking, all she had been feeling, was the baby.

  “I brought the child to you because I promised Morna I would do so,” Arika said. “But it is up to you and Ronan, whether or not you will keep him.”

  “Ronan will not mind,” Nel managed to stammer.

  “On the contrary”—Arika’s voice was h
arsh—”I am thinking that he will mind very much.”

  Nel bent her head.

  “I can find someone else in the tribe who will take him,” Arika said. “I will not expose him, Nel. You need have no fear of that.”

  Nel shuddered.

  When Arika next spoke her tone was more gentle. “You have never conceived?”

  Nel shook her head. With downcast eyes, she told Arika of her own belief that she had offended the Mother. Then she repeated what Ronan had told her.

  “Ronan said that?” Arika asked in a strange voice.

  “Sa,” Nel said.

  “He surprises me,” his mother said. “He continually surprises me.” She looked at Nel’s half-hidden face. “Perhaps he will surprise me again and say that you may keep the child.”

  At that, Nel threw up her head. “It is not enough that he says the child may stay for my sake. He must accept it also.” Nel’s eyes glittered. “Both Ronan and I know what it is to grow up in a place where you are not wanted, and it is no good. I would never do that to a child. Never!”

  Arika was very pale. She put down her half-drunk tea. “You must discuss it with him, then, and let me know.”

  Moving slowly, like an old woman, she lumbered to her feet. “I must go now and see about burying my daughter,” she said, turned, and walked wearily away.

  * * * *

  Ronan sent his men to their supper, but he himself did not remain in camp to eat. He felt the men watching him as he walked out of the valley, Nigak at his heels. Berta’s news had reached every ear by now, and he knew the men were wondering what he was going to do about Morna’s child.

  He had taken the track that led to the Great Cave, but once he was out of view of the valley he veered off of it and cut south toward the cliffs. He was not yet ready to face Nel.

  What am I going to do?

  Berta had told him that Nel had taken the baby. Well, that was no surprise. He had known all along that Nel would take the baby. She had tried valiantly to hide from him her disappointment when her moon blood had begun to flow a few days after they had been together in the sacred cave, but he had seen the pain in her eyes.