the Year the Horses came

by Mary Mackey

  "It's not only heavy, it itches," Dalish complained as she scratched at her elbow by way of illustration.

  Metal refining was another skill the nomads lacked. According to Dalish, most of copper adornments they wore had been stolen from the border villages and reworked into sun signs by slave women. There was a permanent camp of these women somewhere on the steppes, but its location was a secret.

  "Sometimes I've imagined what it would be like to rescue the coppersmiths and set them free, but since I can't even free myself, it's only a dream." Dalish frowned and looked down at the copper bracelets that jangled on her wrists, and Marrah and Arang fell silent. They knew she had to wear them; she was Slehan's concubine, after all, and no chief's concubine went bare-armed. Still, it was terrible to think of the poor slaves who had been forced to pound them out of temple adornments.

  But their conversations weren't always so grim. Sometimes Dalish told them odd things that made them smile. One morning she explained that menstruating women were forbidden to touch milk because the nomads believed it would go sour. On another occasion, she claimed that warriors always urinated in the direction of the setting sun — an idea so silly that Marrah and Arang laughed and shook their heads, but later they realized she had been telling the truth.

  But it was her stories of the Hansi gods that interested them the most. They already knew the nomads worshiped a sun god called Han, but Dalish explained that Han was also known as the God of the Shining Sky. The Hansi thought of Him as a fierce warrior chief who fed on the blood of His enemies at sunrise and sunset. The stars were His horses and cattle, and He drove them into the heavenly pastures each night and out each morning. The Hansi believed they were Han's special people, His "wolves," and Han had granted them the right to rule over everything on earth. After Han, their most important gods were Choatk, god of the underworld, and Aitnok, the storm god. When Marrah asked if the nomads had any goddesses, Dalish said they did, but all of them were wives and concubines with no power except through their divine masters.

  "The most important thing you have to understand about the nomads is that they don't value women and children. They're warriors, and everything female fills them with contempt. We think of the Earth as the living body of the Goddess, but to them it's dead. The steppes are a prison Han exiled them to hundreds of generations ago when their first ancestors tried to steal the star cattle. Everything good and wonderful is male, and it's up there in the sky, invisible and out of reach."

  When she'd finished explaining the gods to them, she tried to explain how the nomad tribes were organized, but there were so many chiefs and subchiefs that Marrah and Arang got hopelessly lost. It seemed the nomads spent most of their time stealing each other's cattle and fighting over water rights. Many of the feuds went back generations, and it didn't seem at all uncommon for one chief to pledge loyalty to another and then turn around and slaughter him.

  "Let me try to make it simple for you," Dalish said one morning as they ambled through the endless grass. "You haven't been taken captive by the Hansi themselves but by a smaller group of tribes called the Chanki. Slehan is chief of the Chanki, and he and his boys are poor relations who owe the Hansi Great Chief loyalty because of some battle they lost, who knows how many generations ago." She smiled as if the thought of the Chanki losing a battle was pleasant.

  "Zuhan always sends the Chanki to do his dirty work. Slehan may look like a big man among his own people, but just watch what happens to him when we get to Zuhan's camp. He'll crawl." Her smile faded, and she grew serious. "Or maybe he won't crawl this time. After all, he's bringing back the son of Achan and his aunt, not to mention new slave girls, so he's sure of a warm reception. True, most of the cattle he stole died or were eaten on the way, but anyone could have seen they weren't fit for the steppes. Slehan will have no trouble explaining that away, especially when he tells Zuhan what he's been longing to hear."

  She stopped and gave Marrah and Arang a long, measured glance as if trying to decide whether or not to go on. Then she shrugged. "I suppose it's just a matter of time before you two figure out what's happening, so I might as well tell you now. Remember how you told me you took a warning to Shara?" They nodded. "Well, now you're taking something else to the Great Chief, something you'd probably give your lives not to take, but you don't have any choice. You see, when Zuhan's youngest son came back from the West" — she lowered her voice and looked around nervously — "he told the Great Chief that everything in the forest lands was shit. 'Not worth the trouble of raiding,' he said. 'Ugly women, stupid men, no gold,' and so forth. But unfortunately for him, Zuhan had already heard otherwise, so he ordered Slehan and his crew to head in that direction and find out who was telling the truth. Chanki war parties have been harassing the northern border villages for years, so at first Slehan just raided some villages farther south, but then he stumbled on Shambah, and you know the rest."

  She took a deep breath and looked back at the slaves plodding wearily through the grass, urged on by mounted warriors, who prodded them every time they stumbled. "Slehan's taking captives and loot back to Zuhan to prove it's worthwhile to ride west, and I'm afraid when Zuhan sees it, it's going to put his youngest son in an awkward situation. Evidently Stavan lied to his father. Ordinarily, Zuhan would give him a traitor's death — cut off his hands and feet, put him on a sledge, pile brush around him, set it on fire, and let the horses drag him until he stopped screaming — but fortunately the Great Chief already thinks he was bewitched, so maybe he'll be spared."

  Marrah had grown very pale at the mention of Stavan's name. This was the first time she'd been told they were actually heading toward the Great Chief's camp, but what joy was there in the knowledge when in the same breath she learned that Stavan might already have been murdered in ways too horrible to imagine? Arang was biting his lips, perhaps thinking the same thing.

  Dalish looked at them sharply. "Whatever happens, there are a few things both of you have to remember. First, you can't stop Slehan from laying those gold temple adornments at Zuhan's feet and telling him there's more gold to be had in the forest lands. The gate to the West is open now, and it's going to take more than a woman and a boy to close it. Second, when you ride into the Great Chief's camp, neither of you should acknowledge his youngest son by so much as the flicker of an eyelash — unless, of course, you want to make sure Zuhan ties him on a burning sledge and puts one of you on either side to keep him company." She looked from Arang to Marrah, and a cruel grin spread over her face. "Now that would make a pretty fire."

  Marrah frowned and Arang looked startled. Both of them were upset to see their friend smiling like a nomad and mocking death, but later they realized she had been brutal on purpose. She wanted to shock them and make them mad enough to remember, and she succeeded. Now when Marrah dreamed of Stavan, she often dreamed of walking toward him and then turning away. She would break into a run and he would run after her, calling her name. Suddenly an armed warrior would appear, ride her down, and grab her by the hair. Pulling her up on his horse, he would point to Stavan and demand to know how Stavan knew her.

  "I don't have any idea," she'd cry. "I've never seen him before!" Sometimes the warrior would believe her and let her go; more often, he wouldn't. Fortunately, she was never able to remember what happened next.

  Another week passed, and as they rode farther and farther east, Marrah began to understand why Dalish had never been able to escape. One day was so much like another it was hard to tell them apart. The flat land rolled on and on until you were lost without a river to follow or a single landmark worth remembering. Dalish insisted that the nomads were following ancient trails. "Only warriors are trained to see them," she said. She pointed to a labyrinth of small animal runs that snaked in and out of the tall grass. "You and I only see confusion, but they take their direction from the sun and stars and claim they can tell different bits of flatness apart. I think they have some extra sense that people born in kinder lands lack."

  She must
have been right, because one day near the end of summer they suddenly came upon a dozen leather tents pitched in a haphazard fashion along a stream so small it looked as if it would barely fill a cup. A herd of hobbled mares, long-haired sheep, and fat cattle was grazing nearby, guarded by small boys and dogs. Old men slept in the afternoon sun, and silent, brown-shawled women were bent over cooking fires.

  "Slehan's camp," Dalish said, waving at the tents. "My home for the last seven years. How do you like it? How does it compare to the temples of Shara and the cities of the River of Smoke?" She spat in the direction of the cooking fires. "In my own village, I served the Bird Goddess. Here I gather dried cow shit for the fires, carry water, and fuck Slehan, making his four wives so jealous that they once actually stopped fighting with one another long enough to put a poison adder in my bed." She looked at Marrah's empty water skin. "You're going to have a hard time of it here. Women are pitted against each other, and you're not that kind. You and your brother are both too softhearted. I don't think you'll make it." And with that, she kicked her horse and rode away, leaving Marrah behind.

  Feeling betrayed and insulted by the one person she'd come to trust, Marrah rode into the camp fuming with anger; she glared at everyone and got down off her horse like a woman who had never been afraid a day in her life, which, once again, was just what Dalish had intended.

  They stayed in Slehan's camp one night, not long enough to learn much except that when their wives were present the nomads ate their food cooked instead of raw. The slaves were herded into a corral fenced with thorns, and the nightly forced sex stopped for the first time in weeks, presumably because the warriors were busy with the women they'd left behind. Marrah and Arang were given a small tent of their own, carpeted with soft rugs that were surprisingly comfortable, but whenever they looked through the flap they saw an armed warrior standing guard over them as usual.

  At dusk two old women brought them a spit of mutton, some strange-tasting milk, and a pile of toasted bulbs that reminded Marrah of lilies. Everything was carried in baskets or laid out on pieces of leather as if they had no pottery, which, she later learned, was not the case. Despite what she had seen of the nomads, she was so used to honoring her elders that she tried to address the old women as if they were village mothers, but even her sign language alarmed them and when she made a stumbling attempt to say thank you in Hansi, they pulled their shawls over their faces and scurried away like frightened mice.

  Disappointed, she and Arang turned to the food, which was the best they'd had since they left Shambah. Unfortunately, they drank all the milk before they realized it was like wine, and both of them spent the rest of the night alternating between foolish laughter and bouts of nausea that made them run for the tent flap. In the morning they woke up with fierce headaches. Later they learned that as the guests of honor they'd been given kersek, fermented mare's milk.

  Dalish, who nearly laughed herself sick at the sight of them, explained that kersek was one of the three things Hansi warriors took before battle to make them fierce. The other two were bdash, a kind of cake made from the sticky gum of hemp flowers, and patiak, a mushroom that gave men the power to walk for days without eating or sleeping, provided they kept drinking their own urine. Of the three sacred foods, kersek was the only one women were permitted to consume, but as Marrah climbed unsteadily back on Tarka with a stomach that felt as if a host of nomads had already ridden through it, she found herself wishing the tribe had chosen to honor her and Arang in some other way.

  Of the fifty or so women who had been taken captive when Shambah was burned, the nomads had intentionally weeded out the weak. Only thirty had lived to see the end of summer, and from these thirty, Slehan had chosen ten of the strongest. After bathing the chosen ones and dressing them in leggings and long tunics, the nomad women slipped hempen cords around their necks and tied them together in a line. Jeering and mocking and even spitting on them, they pushed the slaves toward the waiting warriors, who untied them, forced them to mount horses, and then tied them together again. Most of the women were terrified of the horses, and when one fell off they all fell. The warriors and their women seemed to find this very amusing. Finally the men stopped laughing and retied the women so they couldn't fall. Akoah was put at the head of the line, and as she rode past Marrah, she gave her a quick, desperate look, but as always they had no chance to speak. The nomad women had draped a string of copper adornments around Akoah's neck, tossed a shawl over her head, and painted her eyelids with black grease and her lips with ocher, and Marrah was relieved to see she'd been given a pair of boots.

  "She's a special present for Zuhan," Dalish said. "The others are presents too, but not quite as special. You'll notice that while she has a shawl, they ride bareheaded and unadorned. That means they're just common slave girls. The nomads are very particular about dividing women up into different sorts."

  "I don't understand the differences. It seems to me all their women are forced to have sex with men they don't want."

  Dalish laughed. "You'll understand soon enough. You're a wife — or you will be, once they find you a suitable husband. Thanks to you, your friend's a concubine even though she was taken in battle. I used to be a slave, but in a weak moment Slehan made me his concubine, and believe me, I appreciate the difference. I have to wear paint so everyone knows I'm not a wife, but at least no one can fuck me without Slehan's permission."

  Just then Slehan rode by and motioned for Marrah and Dalish to stop talking to each other. He was an impressive sight, mounted on a fine black gelding and dressed in richly embroidered leggings and some of the gold adornments he'd stolen from Shambah.

  "Look at him," Dalish said contemptuously as soon as he was out of earshot. "His pride's long, but his dagger's short." And making an obscene gesture with her smallest finger, she kicked her mare into a fast trot.

  Once again they rode east through the tall grasses. There were fewer warriors now. Most of Slehan's men had returned to their own camps, but those who were left were young and strong and they set a quick pace. Still, this was no war party. Every night just after sunset they stopped, built small fires, and cooked strips of meat on the hot rocks. The result was gritty but edible, and Marrah no longer had to look away when she put food in her mouth.

  If she had been searching for Zuhan's camp on that endless, flat plain, she could have wandered until she was an old woman without finding so much as a burned-out campfire, but it was less than a week before Slehan's scouts came back with the news that they'd found the tracks of the Great Chief's herd. The season of snows was coming, and Zuhan had turned south, as expected. The scouts speculated that he was headed for the same place he'd camped last winter.

  "He used never to camp twice in the same place," Dalish told Marrah. "But they say he's grown so old and powerful he no longer fears anyone. The spring before last he called up his warriors, and they wiped out the last of the Tcvali. Since then, Zuhan sits in his tent, smoking hemp, drinking kersek, and complaining he's run out of enemies."

  The next morning they came to a great swath of flattened grass. Turning south, they followed it, and within a few days they saw the smoke of Zuhan's campfires smudging the horizon.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Although the campfires looked close at hand, they rode for most of the morning before Zuhan's sentries intercepted them. The first two came riding up bareback, bows drawn and ready to shoot. They were hardly more than boys, but they challenged Slehan as if they had a whole war party behind them.

  "If you come in peace, disarm yourselves," they commanded, and to Marrah's astonishment, Slehan and his warriors threw their spears to the ground and unbuckled their swords. The sentries rode closer and inspected the pile of weapons. Then they inspected the unarmed warriors. They seemed suspicious, as well they might since Slehan and his men still wore daggers long enough to slit their throats, but evidently some kind of custom had been satisfied. The tallest wheeled around and rode off to tell Zuhan he had visitors. As soon as
he was out of sight, the one who remained positioned his horse so any man trying to retrieve a weapon would have to fight his way to it.

  All in all, it was as unfriendly a welcome as Marrah had ever seen, but it must have been the way the Hansi usually greeted guests because no one seemed offended or surprised. When a dozen more warriors charged up on horseback and surrounded them, Slehan's men took it in stride. As for Slehan, he turned his back on the armed guards as if they were some minor annoyance, and if he was at all intimidated by the number of arrows aimed at his heart, he didn't show it.

  The same could not be said of Marrah. Zuhan's warriors radiated violence the way a fire radiated heat, and she could easily imagine them turning on Slehan. Perhaps Arang was thinking the same thing, because when she looked over at him he was staring straight ahead with a grim expression on his face. Dalish seemed at ease, which was encouraging, but when Marrah looked more closely she saw Dalish was gripping the reins of her horse so hard her knuckles were white.

  They rode on. The grass around the camp was taller than it had been in other parts of the steppes, and it grew thickly: brown, green, and lush as hair, topped with heavy heads that brushed against their wool leggings, leaving chaff and seeds behind. Soon they came to a wide, flat area where the animals had cropped it short, and then to the herd itself. The horses came first, standing in small groups, head to tail, swatting flies off one another. Each stallion was surrounded by a dozen or more mares and lanky-legged colts; they were wild-looking, short-maned, stocky beasts, and if they'd ever been broken it didn't show. Beyond the horses was a great herd of cattle, stretching out in all directions as far as the eye could see, all busy grazing. They were lean, hornless, and stubborn-looking like the horses, and some of the larger bulls looked quite dangerous, but the warriors rode past them without a second glance. Closer to the camp, within easy walking distance of the tents, the nomads had pastured their long-haired sheep, their goats, some riding horses, and a herd of hobbled milk mares.