Some of them saw the Scythians pass by. They did not come out in greeting, offering hospitality as the Kelti would have done. They merely stood beside their snug stone-and-timber huts and watched as the horsemen moved uneasily through their territory.
Even here, in this mountain wilderness, tales were told of the Scythians, and the inhabitants of the Carptos had no desire to challenge the warriors from the east. Leave them alone and let them pass by.
But the mountain dwellers watched, and saw. And sent runners to the next settlement to spread a warning.
As the Scythians followed a twisting route deeper into the mountains the stories that accompanied them grew more lurid, though they did not know it. All they knew was the uncomfortable feeling at the back of the neck, the raising of hackles that had begun shortly after they left the plains. The horses felt it, too, and were skittish and reluctant to graze when they were unsaddled in the evening. They would only snatch a few bites of the sparse grass that had survived the early frosts, then lift their heads and stand listening, ears flickering back and forth nervously.
They were being followed again.
Kazhak sat by the campfire at night and examined the heads of his arrows, running his thumb along the killing surface again and again, trying to take comfort from the sweetly vicious shape.
But perhaps the thing that followed them was not vulnerable to the triple-edged arrows of the Scythians. Basl and Dasadas said it was not. They claimed they were not afraid of it, but they had acquired much respect for the creature.
None of the Scythians admitted to fear. It was the mountains that made them tense and jumpy; the darkly glowering Carpatos, long the source of wild tales.
Kazhak slept with one eye open, his weapons within easy reach, and listened to the night sounds, the soughing of wind in the pine trees, the little droppings and rustlings and patterings of nocturnal activity. He noted particularly when those sounds ceased and an unnatural quiet descended on the glade where they had made their latest camp. After many long, hard days in difficult terrain, trying to follow the rivers and gorges and avoid the higher peaks, they had at last reached the eastern slope of the Carptos, and Kazhak had expected to feel in a better mood with the final barrier behind them.
But he was not in a good mood. He was more anxious than ever, and the silence was nerve-wracking. He opened his eyes and looked around.
He saw Basl and Aksinya on watch, just beyond the campfire, and in the other direction he saw something move among the trees.
Kazhak sat up.
Epona was instantly awake, her hand on the hilt of her knife. She heard the silence, too. Be strong, she prayed without voice to the spirit of the iron in the knife; Goibban’s.iron. If I have enemies, fight them courageously.
But there were no enemies to be seen. The thing that had flickered among the trees had disappeared.
“Was a man,” Kazhak told her, but without conviction.
She removed her hand from the knife hilt.
The morning dawned without sunlight. A pale gray mist enshrouded the landscape and the party of horsemen moved through it like a troop of ghosts, at times scarcely visible to one another. They were mounted again, Epona behind Kazhak. The horses shied at everything that moved; even a branch stirred by the wind frightened them. Epona bent down and stroked the gray stallion’s flanks, soothing him, so he behaved better than the others, but his eyes rolled in his head and he snatched at the bit, wanting to run.
They came to a hut built of stones and clay and roofed with untrimmed logs. The small structure stood at the edge of the trail they were following, and beyond it the slope dropped sharply toward a tumbling stream. An old man bundled in furs was squatting in front of the hut, chewing a strip of leather to soften it for making thongs. He stood up as the horses approached.
Epona had grown accustomed to the way people stared at the Scythians, with hostility or fear or naked hatred, but she had never seen anyone so defeated by terror. The old man turned corpse-white and his hands trembled like poplar leaves. He stumbled backward, then bolted into the hut.
He had not been looking at the riders. He had been looking at something on the trail immediately behind them.
Kazhak whirled around in his saddle.
An enormous silvery wolf stood at the edge of dense forest, watching them. Then it was gone; it was simply not there anymore. There were the sounds of a large body crashing through the undergrowth, a heavy stand of mountain laurel: the swishing of branches and snapping of twigs, the thud of feet hitting the earth in a rhythm unknown to any running wolf. One-two, one-two, one-two. Human feet, running.
The old man peered from his hut, his old wife and a grown son crowding close to his shoulders, watching also, their frightened faces pale ovals with staring eyes.
“Was a wolf!” Dasadas cried, fighting to control his plunging, rearing horse.
“Was a man!” Kazhak yelled at him.
“Was both,” Aksinya said in a voice barely above a whisper.
They fled down the mountainside toward the cold stream below, careless, for once, of the horses’ safety. In their own terror the animals could have stumbled and fallen but they did not. Only when they reached the water did they check their wild gallop and look back, but there was nothing menacing to be seen behind them. The trail was empty except for the mist that swirled and lifted and closed down again, revealing only what it chose to reveal.
Another day’s travel, another night’s camp, and they would be in the eastern foothills, with the dark Carptos behind them.
Kazhak was tempted to ride all night, but when Basl made the suggestion first he hit him with a careless backhand across the mouth.
“Kazhak best son of Kolaxais, Prince of Horses,” he said. “Not run from anything. Not ride horses at night in rough country. So is man, or wolf. So? What harm? Man cannot hurt us. Wolf cannot hurt us. Let it follow, Kazhak not care.”
Epona recognized bravado when she saw it, and was secretly proud of the Scythian. As they rode he began talking to her again, letting his words rebuild his shaken inner confidence.
“On Sea of Grass man can look half day in any direction,” he told her. “No surprises. Mountain wolf not follow us there; mountain wolf helpless on Sea of Grass.”
Listening to himself made him feel better. “Scythians chase this wolf,” he expounded, picturing the hunt, himself riding with a large band of his brothers, many bows and arrows. They would gallop down on this creature and take its head; they would skin it and he would fasten the hide to his tent, where the women would look at it and whisper admiringly among themselves.
He drove his little band eastward at a hard pace.
Meanwhile, the old man in the stone hut by the trail was repeating to a gathering of his kinfolk the description of what he had seen at the edge of the forest. Word passed through the mountains like the piping of the birds and others came to hear, or to repeat similar tales they had already heard as the Scythians rode through their territory.
They told one another, in hushed voices, about the man who changed into a wolf, or the wolf that ran on man’s feet after the horsemen, sometimes glimpsed, always terrifying, a creature unlike any seen in the Carptos before.
When they heard wolves howling in the forest they put new bars on their doors, high up, at the level where a man might try to break the door down.
The Scythians made their last camp in the mountains. Kazhak prudently chose a site in the lee of a tumble of boulders, with only one possible approach. They camped well before dark, and all dragged deadwood to the site to build a huge fire.
Epona sat crosslegged on the earth, watching the flames and thinking of Tena, She Who Summons Fire. Was the fire animated by the same spirit when the Scythians built it? If she wanted to pray to a Scythian fire, would she need to address it in the language of the firemaker?
She realized how incomplete her knowledge was. There were so many things, now perceived to be important, she should have asked the druii when she had th
e opportunity.
The druii. She should not have been thinking of the druii, she reminded herself sharply. Those thoughts could send a signal like a bonfire built on the high ground to tell of the death of a chieftain or summon kin-tribes to war. There were those who could follow that signal. She must not …
She could not help it. She could feel the shapechanger; he lurked at the edges of her mind as the impossibly large silver wolf had skulked at the edge of the trees, watching with yellow eyes.
She had not escaped him.
They might yet escape; Kazhak seemed to think they could.
Kazhak did not understand the nature of the creature that followed them. And she would not tell him. He might decide to send her back to be rid of it, to deny her the freedom to choose her own life, to choose the galloping horse and the wind in her hair.
Let others sacrifice themselves for the tribe, she thought. I have put all that behind me. I am going to the Sea of Grass, and you will have no power there, Kernunnos. It is too far to reach, even for you.
It must be.
The campfire sputtered as it licked the pine knots and showers of sparks flew into the air, looking for their distant brothers, the stars. But the stars were hidden behind heavy clouds. The sky overhead was black and empty, as empty as the night pressing in on the campsite.
Not totally empty, however. Somewhere a wolf howled, and the gray stallion snorted.
Epona was reluctant to fall asleep, to let herself sink, vulnerable, into the dreamworlds, where Kernunnos could so easily reach her. If he were to make one final effort to force her to return to the valley of the Kelti and the priesthood, she felt certain he would make it here, in the mountains, in a landscape familiar to both of them.
The night wore on, as slowly as a night spent in pain.
Five people, none of them sleeping, waited for it to die.
The trees stood very still, keeping watch.
From the heart of the night came a formless shape, gliding over the rough terrain. It flowed like water down sheer precipices; it whispered through the trees like leaves rustling; it was part of the earth, and the dark, and the pattern. It came to reclaim its own.
Before any of the others were aware of it, Epona knew he was watching them again, yellow eyes beyond the safe circle of the campfire.
No! she thought, hurling the message at him silently. I do not belong to the tribe anymore. These are my people now.
The fire went out; suddenly, as if a waterskin had been dumped on it. Dasadas sprang to his feet with an oath and notched an arrow to his bowstring, but there was no target.
The darkness moved closer.
Aksinya fumbled in his pack for more flints, but his fingers were numb and he was too clumsy to strike a fire.
The wolf padded around the perimeter of the camp. They could all hear it. It panted hoarsely, loud in the eerie quiet that had fallen. It stepped deliberately on twigs that snapped beneath its weight. It was a very big wolf. It wanted them to know it was there.
The spirit within spoke to Epona. You are of the Kelti, it reminded her. This is not your place. Nor do you belong on the Sea of Grass with these nomads. You are of the same blood as that wolf, and your bones know the songs of his people. He summons you. He summons you home.
My home is where I make it, she answered inside herself. I will choose; I am a free person.
The Kelti are forever free, the spirit within responded. They are as free as the wind and the water, the trees and the fire. But they are also part of you. You can never escape your own blood.
The wolf moved closer, its pale coat visible in the darkness, its eyes glowing with their own light. It sat down within six paces of Epona.
Kazhak ran at it, swearing.
It was gone.
Epona clenched her fists and said nothing.
“You see that?” Kazhak shouted, all composure lost. “You all see? Kazhak kill wolf now, stop this. No more. Never no more, that wolf!”
Teeth bared and shortsword in hand he plunged off in the direction he thought the wolf had taken.
“No!” Epona cried, stretching out her hand to him, but he was already beyond her reach. The wolf had insulted him. It had frightened him more badly than he would admit even to himself, then it had walked brazenly into his camp and sat down like a tame hound. He would put a stop to its taunting for all time. Whatever it was, he did not believe it could not be killed.
As he had thought he could kill the stag on the edge of the cliff.
“Stop him!” Epona called to the others. Who could say what might happen to the Scythian in the darkness … with the giant wolf?
Basl ran without hesitation to the aid of his leader, although Dasadas shouted a warning and Aksinya urged him to wait. When he was gone, the other two men came and stood beside Epona protectively.
Kazhak scrambled over the rocky ground, breasting his way through a stand of young conifers barely shoulder high, intent on following the fading sounds of the wolf’s passage. It had come this way; it was not far ahead of him. He could not shoot it in the dark, but if he could close with it he would hack it to death with sword and knife.
He slowed to a halt, disoriented. The forest around him told no secrets; he heard no footfalls, no branches swishing back into place. The thing had eluded him. Perhaps it had already taken refuge in some rocky lair to wait until daylight and track them again for what reason no man knew.
The animal—it had to be an animal—must have the foaming-mouth disease; that was the only explanation for its behavior. Yet he had never heard of an animal acting as this one did.
He heard something behind him and then Basl’s welcome voice called out. Kazhak answered. His fury had ebbed away and he was glad of the company of the other man in this choking darkness. He was unsure which way the camp lay; there was no firelight to guide him.
“Basl, over here!” Kazhak called, starting forward to meet his comrade. But in that moment he heard a sound like the falling of a mighty tree, a tearing and crashing that reverberated throughout the forest, followed by a human yell. Basl’s voice. Could a tree fall in a windless forest?
Kazhak floundered toward him, fighting off the branches that cut at his face. He called Basl’s name but there was no answer.
There was another sound: the rush of a body through undergrowth, very close by. And then one sudden, terrible cry. “It is the wolf! Basl has … Aaaiii … !”
The cry became a shriek and then a bubbling moan, more chilling than any scream. Kazhak had heard that sound before, when a badly aimed blow failed to decapitate a man and left him with a hacked neck, strangling in his own blood.
“Basl!” he cried in anguish, but there was no answer.
The trees and bushes seemed to conspire against him, holding him back as he plunged through them. Under his breath he cursed the mountains and the starless night and the crazy silvery animal …
He almost fell over Basl’s body. The other Scythian lay doubled up on the ground, making ugly, inhuman sounds. Kazhak scooped him up in his arms and began using his elbows and shoulders to force his way free of the lush growth that entangled them both.
No stars were visible, no guides could lead them back to camp. The wolf might be anywhere in the forest, watching them with the cold amusement of the superior creature. If Kazhak called to his companions it might follow his voice and attack again.
But he had no choice. Basl was dying, or already dead, and he himself was lost. He threw back his head and yelled, the full-throated roar of a nomadic warrior. Perhaps the sound might intimidate the wolf, though that was a slim hope.
Aksinya answered, unexpectedly close by, and soon Kazhak was stumbling toward the dim but familiar outlines of the horses and his own gray stallion was nickering a greeting.
He laid Basl on the earth and tried to determine the extent of his wounds. Now Aksinya had no trouble starting a fire, and by its light they could see the ragged black hole torn in Basl’s throat. It was astonishing he had lived so long
with the blood pouring out of his body in great gushes, but even as they watched he went limp and the spirit left him. Epona moved back, to give it room to depart unhindered.
Kazhak moaned with grief. “Brother!” he cried again and again. He collapsed on Basl’s body and buried his face against the blood-soaked chest. His shoulders heaved with sobs.
Epona was surprised at these warriors, crying over another warrior’s death.
Dasadas was weeping even more loudly than Kazhak, but in spite of his tears he noticed that Basl’s dead hand clutched a scrap of something. He pried the fingers open and held the object up to the firelight, so all could see it.
In his death struggle, Basl had cut and hacked at the wolf’s head with his new Kelti knife, and had succeeded in tearing away a large flap of flesh and one complete ear.
The mutilated animal must be in agony by now, and losing quantities of blood.
Dasadas lifted the trophy high and shook it in triumph. “Wolf not bother us more!” he cried.
The remaining men crowded around him to examine the torn flesh, and assure one another that they were now free of the creature. They could sleep without fear.
But when Kazhak at last laid his head beside Epona’s on the neck of the gray stallion, he muttered, for her ears alone, “Kazhak not so sure wolf is dead. Was bad wound, but Kazhak has seen animals live with worse wounds.
“If it was an animal.”
Chapter 19
Kazhak wanted to travel as quickly as possible. He gave Epona Basl’s horse to ride; they would not waste time with a lot of walking. The horse was a brown gelding, almost black in the sunlight except for the lighter-colored hairs on its muzzle and around its eyes. Like the other Scythian horses, its tail and mane had been cut short to avoid spoiling a shot from the bow, but its hair had grown faster than theirs and the mane was already falling over to one side again.
The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn) Page 26
