the Year the Horses came

by Mary Mackey

  Over and over she kept coming back to the simple fact that if he wanted her he would have said so. Relationships between the sexes were very direct. You always knew where you stood, and the idea that a grown man might not only keep his feelings to himself but willingly suffer, when all he had to do was ask, was almost incomprehensible.

  But the conversation with Zastra made her look at Stavan with new eyes, and the more she looked, the more she became convinced that he was, in fact, unhappy about something. Perhaps it was nothing more than the boredom of waiting for a boat that never came, or perhaps it was homesickness, or perhaps he did indeed have a secret that he didn't feel he could share with anyone, but whatever it was, it made him get up at night to sit by himself on the beach staring at the sea. Even during the day he seemed increasingly withdrawn, only coming to life when Arang ran up to ask him to mend an arrow or take him fishing.

  It was clear he needed to confide in someone, and equally clear that, since no one but she and Arang spoke Shambah, it would have to be her. And so it happened that on a mild night a few weeks later she found herself walking on the beach with Stavan, listening to some of the strangest words she had ever heard a man speak.

  At first he simply protested there was nothing wrong, but finally he admitted something was bothering him. At least Marrah thought that was what he was admitting. He spoke in riddles like a priestess who had breathed too much sacred smoke, and nothing he told her quite made sense.

  "I'm happy," he said, "because you're my chief, and unhappy because you're my chief. The same sense of honor that makes me stay here with you and your brother closes my mouth and stills my tongue. I can't tell you what I'm thinking because what I'm thinking is not what a man should think in the presence of his chief." He turned to her, his face pale and strained. "Don't ask me to tell you why I sit staring at the waves. The temptation's too great. I'm not a strong man; it's hard for me to be silent." He pointed to the sky. "A warrior should be like the stars — fixed, constant, never changing — but I'm more like the moon — inconstant: full one day, shadowed the next."

  Marrah found all this very poetic and rather beautiful, but mostly unintelligible. What did you do when you asked a man what was bothering him and he told you he was like the moon? Did you say, "Ah, yes, the moon," and leave it at that, pretending to understand, or did you push on? Once again she felt as if she and Stavan were two tiny figures standing on opposite sides of a wide river trying to talk to each other across the distance that separated them. She took a deep breath, reminded herself that his native language wasn't Shambah, and tried to figure out if there was any part of what he'd just said that made sense. Finally she came up with something.

  "You say you're unhappy that I'm your chief and honor keeps you from speaking. Well, what if I weren't your chief? Then could you tell me what's bothering you?"

  He nodded reluctantly. "Yes, but then it wouldn't be necessary because — " He closed his mouth abruptly as if he'd said too much, but Marrah finished the sentence for him.

  "Because then there'd be no reason for you to be sad, right?" If that was the answer, he wasn't willing to tell her. He stood so still he looked as if he had been transformed into a block of salt.

  Well, at last I get it, she thought. Zastra was wrong, he hasn't been thinking about me at all; he's been brooding over that ridiculous promise he made and wishing he'd never made it. I should have known it would have something to do with that thing he calls his "honor." Great Goddess, this man's ways are strange, but at least now that I understand what's bothering him, I can try to do something about it.

  They walked a few more paces in silence. "Listen, Stavan." She decided it was best to be as direct as possible. "I can't think of any particular reason for you to go on keeping that promise you made to me. I appreciate it, of course, and I know how seriously you took it, but now that we're out of lion country, I can't see that Arang and I are going to need you to protect us. What I'm trying to say is that the most dangerous part of the trip is over, so there's really no need for you to go on thinking of me as your chief. To tell the truth, I'm not even sure what a chief is. All I know is that when you think of me as one, it makes you unhappy. So why don't we just forget about it?"

  "Are you saying you release me from my vow?"

  "Yes, from now on you don't owe me and Arang anything. Frankly, I'd like you to come to Shara with us, but if you don't want to, I'll understand."

  "But that's impossible."

  Marrah sighed. With Stavan nothing was ever easy. "What's impossible?"

  Speaking quickly and with mounting agitation, Stavan explained that no one could release a warrior from his vow but a priest of Lord Han. She was his chief and she would stay his chief until he either won back his life by saving hers or died in the attempt, and there was nothing they could do about it. He was hers to command; he would obey her in everything but this.

  "Great Goddess!" Marrah exclaimed. "What a mess!" She sat down on a rock and Stavan sat down beside her and both of them stared glumly at the waves. Suddenly Marrah had a revelation. "You say you'll obey me in everything else?" Stavan nodded. "Well, then, as your chief — a title I'm apparently stuck with — I hereby order you to stop treating me like your chief and start treating me like... well, like myself. You can go around protecting me and Arang if you want, provided it ever becomes necessary again, but on a day-to-day basis I want you to act like you never made that promise."

  Stavan got very quiet, so quiet she wondered if she had managed to offend him again. "Do you know what you're saying?" he asked at last.

  "Probably not, but that's what I'm ordering you to do so you have to do it, correct?" She paused, expecting him to say something, but the only sound was the hiss of the waves hitting the beach. The silence began to get on her nerves. "How does a Hansi warrior treat his ex-chief anyway? Just out of curiosity?"

  "If she's a woman," Stavan said, "he treats her like a woman; he treats her like this." Suddenly, before she knew what was happening, he took her in his arms and kissed her. She was so surprised she didn't have the presence of mind to pull away. Kissing him was like being hit by a wave of raw emotions: wild, abrupt, passionate, and a little frightening. He kissed like a man who was used to taking what he wanted, and yet at the same time he held her tenderly as if she might break apart in his hands.

  Finally he stopped. Pulling away, Marrah stared at him in disbelief. It wasn't the kiss itself that was such a shock; the conversation with Zastra had prepared her for the possibility that he might want to kiss her. But he hadn't asked! People always asked for permission before they started to share joy. Suppose she hadn't wanted to be kissed, how would he have known? It was rude; it was...unthinkable. She should be furious with him. Only maybe he hadn't meant to be rude. Maybe Zastra was right. Maybe he didn't know how you were supposed to ask; maybe this was the way Hansi men always acted around women.

  Stavan didn't seem to notice her confusion. Cradling her in his arms, he began to stroke her hair. "I've wanted to kiss you for so long," he said. "Ever since the day we sat together on that rock on the way back from Hoza. I almost did it that very evening, but then you told me that you'd saved my life, and from then on I wouldn't even let myself think of you as a woman. But I couldn't help it. I'd hear you laugh or see you bend down to pick up a stick of firewood, and I'd grow sick with longing."

  He took her hand and began to kiss her fingers one at a time. "If I were in my own land, I'd buy you from your father and take you into my tent and never have another wife. I'd pay fifty fine cattle for you and — "

  Marrah's anger dissolved at the thought of being bought for fifty head of cattle. Breaking into giggles, she snatched back her hand.

  Stavan looked mortally offended. "So you think I'm a fool, do you? You think I'm not worthy of you?" Later, he would laugh with her; later, in the months to come, after they made love, she would put her head on his shoulder and ask him how many cattle he thought she was worth now, and he would say hundreds, thousands,
as many as the stars, but that first time he was in dead earnest. Releasing her, he rose to his feet. "I shouldn't have kissed you. No doubt you found it unpleasant."

  Marrah stopped laughing. "No," she said frankly. "I liked it. It was a little wilder than I'm used to, but it was exciting. But you should have — "

  Stavan never let her say what she thought he should have done. Swooping down on her again, he took her in his arms and began to kiss her so hard he knocked her over backward. Fortunately they were sitting near the edge of the beach, so she fell on soft ground instead of stones. Clinging to her, he pulled her dress up, nearly ripping it. When he saw her body, he gave a cry of joy and began to touch her breasts and run his hands over her belly.

  "Wait!" she tried to say between kisses. Since she had never heard of a man forcing sex on a woman, she wasn't afraid but she was bewildered. "Slow down, we need to talk." But Stavan was lost in his own passion, making love to her and at the same time leaving her behind. In a way it was moving the way being caught in a sudden storm can be moving, but if this was the Hansi way of sharing joy, it left a lot to be desired, and as she tussled with him in the grass, she began to think she'd made a serious mistake. He had enough energy for any two men, but his idea of giving a woman pleasure seemed to involve throwing himself on top of her and knocking the air out of her lungs. She felt him spread her legs, but instead of kissing the of her thighs slowly the way Bere or any man of the Shore People would have, he pinned her down and actually tried to enter her.

  "Stop that!" she yelled, pushing him away so hard that he fell off her. She sat up, pulled down her dress, and glared at him. "What do you think you were doing just then?"

  He looked bewildered. "Making love to you, my darling," he stuttered.

  She was not to be placated with pet names. "You never asked if I wanted to share joy with you, and I never gave you the signal," she snapped.

  "What signal?"

  "The tap." She pointed to his thigh. "I never tapped you. What makes you think I want to start a child? And how dare you assume that you could just pounce on me like that without being invited? Don't you have any self-control? Don't you know how to make love without smashing a person?"

  Stavan looked astonished. "You didn't like it?"

  She picked the dry grass out of her hair and glared at him some more, wishing he'd just vanish so this whole embarrassing incident would be over.

  "That's an understatement. I not only didn't enjoy it, I felt like you hardly knew I was there. If that's the way your people share joy, I don't see how you Hansi manage to start children. Why, if I was one of your women, I wouldn't ever let a man near me."

  "Marrah," he said softly, "I didn't know. I thought you wanted me; I thought I was making you happy. I love you. I want to touch you the way you want to be touched, but I don't know how to do it." He touched her face delicately with the tips of his fingers, brushing the hair out of her eyes. "Teach me, please."

  If he had said anything else, if he had so much as uttered a word to defend himself, she would have walked away without looking back, but he was so clearly upset over offending her that it was impossible to doubt he was telling the truth: he loved her but he had no more idea than a child of how to express that love. No, that wasn't accurate; even a child would have had more sense. Even a six-year-old would have known grown-ups never tried to share joy without asking.

  Her anger died out and she felt something close to pity. Poor Stavan. What had it been like to be raised in a world where all the sweetness of love was reduced to a quick struggle that gave men little pleasure and women none at all? He was stroking her hair now, very tenderly, as if afraid he might hurt her, and as he touched her she realized again that he was a good man, decent and loyal, driven to do rude things by customs he had never questioned.

  They taught him to be stupid and inconsiderate, she thought, but he could be taught to give women joy as our men do, and as he gave joy, he'd get it back multiplied many times, and then he'd know what love really is. How sad it would be if he went through his whole life not knowing.

  She took his hand and held it for a moment and then began to talk to him, explaining the simple things he should have known: that you always asked, that you never imposed yourself on another person, that you followed pleasure slowly until it grew strong enough to sweep both partners away. She didn't consciously decide to become his teacher; she did it instinctively, speaking to him the way she would have spoken to a child, and as she spoke she began to feel warmer toward him. It was flattering to see how attentively he listened.

  Stavan was a fast learner. She had only meant to talk to him, but it's dangerous to talk of love on a dark beach when you're young and the waves are whispering. Soon he was kissing her again and she was letting him because he had asked like a man of her own people and she had said yes without knowing beforehand that she was going to say any such thing. This time his lips were warm and slow and he held her carefully.

  The kiss lasted a long time, much longer than any single kiss in Marrah's memory. He kissed her until she was dizzy. Then slowly — so slowly that she could hardly believe his fingers were moving — he began to touch her breasts, teasing her nipples up through the thin leather of her dress, caressing each one until it came to a point, letting it fall back and then caressing it until it rose again.

  Excited, she reached for him, but he pushed her hands away. "No, please," he whispered. "Let me give you pleasure."

  Closing her eyes, she dropped her hands to her sides and let him go on arousing her. Everywhere he touched, he lingered until her flesh began to burn under his fingers. She moaned and arched her back and pressed against him, but he went on and on as if the world had disappeared and only his hands and her breasts existed. The tension built, sweet and unbearable, and still his fingers swept over her nipples, teasing and encouraging. Then, all at once, she came, suddenly and violently, throwing her arms around his neck with a loud cry.

  He caught her and held her until the spasm was over, pressing his lips against her forehead. She rested for a moment in his arms, then opened her eyes to find him looking at her with a worried expression.

  "Did I hurt you?" he whispered anxiously.

  She was too content to be surprised even by such an odd question. "Hurt me?" She yawned and stretched, utterly relaxed and comfortable. "Of course not."

  "But you yelled."

  Marrah suddenly understood. Laughing, she took him in her arms and kissed him tenderly. "Oh, Stavan, you dear silly man," she cried. "Don't you know what happened? Haven't you ever seen a woman come before?"

  Lezentka was no longer the dull little town where you sat on a beach waiting for a boat that never came. In the weeks that followed, Stavan began to feel he belonged to the village, and for the first time he understood what Marrah's people meant when they said they loved the land. He had never loved any particular piece of earth. His home had always been a tent, pitched in various places, and there had been no time to love anything but the sky and the great Sea of Grass, which always looked the same no matter how far you wandered. But now when he walked down the beach, he saw the place where he and Marrah had first made love, and when he climbed the hills and gazed down at the village, he saw the small house where they slept together covered by a single blanket, and sometimes, if he let his eyes wander over the fields, he could pick Marrah out from the others, leading the goats down to be milked or hunting for shells at the edge of the waves.

  Sometimes after they made love, he would laugh and kiss her and try to tell her how she had given him a home at last. "I used to be a nomad," he would say, tickling her eyelids with his tongue until she laughed and pushed him away, "but you've turned me into a savage. Marrah of Xori, you've converted me with your body."

  It was only a joke, but there was a lot of truth in it: he was being converted by her, not just by her body — although it was a beautiful body, smooth as a dove's breast, so round and sweet that a man could die of joy just looking at it — but by the thi
ngs he was learning from her now that they were lovers. Sometimes it was nothing more than a few words of Old Language she insisted on teaching him so he could talk to Rhom, Zastra, and Shema, but coming from her lips the words had a sweetness that made him learn faster than he had ever learned before.

  Often it was something more complicated. After they made love, they were sometimes reluctant to go to sleep, and they frequently lay side by side talking to each other until the sky began to lighten. Marrah would tell him how her people saw the world, how when they walked or sat or stood on the Earth they felt as if they were touching the body of a Mother who loved them. Or she would tell him the old story of the Great Spring when the Goddess Earth took pity on her children and sent the Divine Sisters to teach them how to weave and make pottery, tame animals, and plant gram.

  Sometimes he would tell stories of his own: how when he traveled with Achan they had been driven west by the little savages of the north country after Achan and two of the other men tried to abduct some of their women, and how the savages — who could have easily killed them — had killed their horses instead and inexplicably spared their lives. Or he would reach into his pouch and take out the strangely shaped white pebble he had found on the shore of the first and coldest sea he had ever seen, and while she examined it, he would tell her of the colored lights that danced in the northern skies. In exchange for lessons in Old Language, he taught her a few words of Hansi and told her the legends of his people: of Choatk, who lived underground where the souls of cowards went, and Han, who took the bravest warriors to paradise and gave them stars for horses; and one night, as she sat horrified, staring at him with wide, unbelieving eyes, he even told her how when a warrior dies his wives and slaves are sent after him to keep him company, and horses are slaughtered over his grave, and he is buried with his ornaments around his neck and his spear in his hand.