by Judith Tarr
“What did he say?”
“Nothing that you’ve not heard before, I’m sure. He’s very troubled. He feels the loss of the stallion keenly. His spirit is bound to the stallion. But the stallion is bound to the mare, who is Horse Goddess.”
Walker was not concerned with that. He focused on the heart of the matter, which was Linden’s obsession and his folly. “You told him to find another horse.”
“I told him to distract himself as best he could. A new mount would be useful, I said. He agreed. I take it he’s taken my advice?”
“You know he has.” Walker fixed his eyes on his father. “Tell me what else you told him.”
“Nothing,” said Drinks-the-Wind. His gaze was unwavering.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you like.”
Walker held tight to his temper. “I’ll find it out. You may be sure of that.”
“There’s nothing to discover,” Drinks-the-Wind said. And that was all he would say. Until, as Walker was leaving in disgust, he said, “You might consider that no one can find the thieves. No one will—not before winter. The tribes should go when the time comes to go, and keep to their own runs. In the spring, the world will begin to change.”
Walker stopped, turned on his heel. Drinks-the-Wind was not looking at him. The pale eyes were remote, lost in visions.
“Tell me how the world will change,” Walker said.
“In the spring,” Drinks-the-Wind said, “it will begin. Look for the one who left on four feet but comes back winged.”
That was all Walker could get out of him. If he knew more, if he saw more, he would not speak of it.
It was maddening. It was the price the gods had laid on him for his power: that all his visions should come blurred and darkened through the eyes of another.
oOo
As vague as the vision had been, Walker made full use of it. He held the gathering together with his tireless passing from camp to camp and tribe to tribe, soothing kings, pacifying elders. That his efforts also kept him away from the tent that was nominally his, and gave him manifold excuse to sleep wherever he happened to be when exhaustion took him, he regarded as a blessing.
After the time of weddings and alliances and feasting was done, the tribes parted as they had since the dawn time, going each to its own fields and hunting runs. White Stone was first to go, roused by the peal of a horse’s call. The old mare, the queen of the royal herd, had wearied of these grazed-out pastures. She called her kin and the lesser herds together and led them away northward.
They had always gone east before in summer. But north she went, and north they must go. That a mare led them was an omen Walker liked little and the priests liked less, but it was as the gods decreed.
Linden did not want to go. “My stallion went south!” he cried as his people broke camp around him. “I know he went south—I saw him. Why are we going north?”
“Because the gods will it,” Walker said with studied patience.
Linden shook his yellow braids and stamped his foot like a child. “I will not go! Let the women go, and the old men. I’ll take the warband. We’ll go south. We’ll find my stallion.”
There was a certain strong logic in that. But it was not the first time Linden had proposed it, and the visions—as Drinks-the-Wind saw them—were clear. The People would go north.
“I am going south,” Linden said. Nor would he be moved. When the People set off on the northward way, Linden and the warband galloped south.
oOo
Walker went with the People. He had debated it long, but without great doubt as to his course. Kings came and went. The People endured. And he was shaman of the People.
While Linden pursued his revenge, Walker ruled in his place. He sat in the royal circle, though not on the royal horsehide. He wielded the royal justice. He kept the People on their path, following the white mare to a new grazing-ground altogether, a rich and well-watered region which seemed empty of tribes.
It was a gift of the gods, that place, and the hunting and the fishing were splendid. Even bereft of their kings, both man and stallion, they were manifestly content.
All that summer the People reveled in their new camp and their splendid good fortune. Come autumn the old mare led them to a more familiar camp, south and east toward the joining of two rivers.
oOo
There Linden found them. He had lost a dozen of his men and thrice that number of horses. The rest were gaunt and wild-eyed. They brought no booty, no fruits of their raiding. All the enemies they had fought were beasts of the earth and forces of the air: storm, flood, fire on the plain. They had never reached the great river of the south at all.
“When we were closest,” said one of the king’s companions in dull wonder, “the earth opened up and swallowed five men.”
“The gods were against us,” another said. “At night when I tried to sleep, I could feel their eyes staring down.”
“Nonsense!” Linden cried.
He alone of all of them seemed almost his wonted self. He had gone straight to his tent when they first returned, and emerged much later, much cleaner, and much happier than he had been before.
His wives, it was said, had mourned his absence and were delighted to have him back again. But the one he had taken to his bed was not his wife. It was the elder shaman’s wayward wife, White Bird.
He was full of himself now by firelight, and full of kumiss, too. “The gods weren’t against us,” he said. “How could they be? Those thieves broke the gods’ own law. It was a bad storm season, that’s all. We’ll go back in the spring. We’ll find my stallion.”
“Maybe lions got him,” someone muttered. “Or a tribe in search of meat.”
“He lives,” Linden said. “He’s in the south. I feel him. Come spring I’ll go to him. And no god or storm will stop me.”
People did not argue with that. Linden was a king robbed of his stallion. If he had been less than obsessed, they would have been less than pleased.
Walker would have been happier if Linden had stayed away through the winter. But while it was a nuisance to have the king back and getting in his way, it was useful, too. Decrees that had been difficult to uphold in the king’s absence were now, with a compliant king, much simpler. Walker had only to see that Linden was well occupied with his women and his pleasures. The rest was Walker’s to order as he pleased.
In the winter, he decided, Drinks-the-Wind would give way at last to the weakness of age. It would leave Walker without eyes to see visions, but surely the gods would provide. Or they would send Sparrow back, for him to use as he had before.
Then in the spring, yes, the world would change. Walker would change it.
Already he had chosen the means. One of the young men was even more biddable than Linden, but also slightly more intelligent. Walker was watching him, and occasionally offering him signs of favor: a lesson in herb-lore, the offer of a choice portion at the daymeal.
Ash was of the royal clan, of course, Linden’s brother of a wellborn mother. He would do well for the purpose Walker had in mind.
Walker was, all in all, content. Even when, at the gate of winter, he discovered that Drinks-the-Wind was gone.
The elder shaman had vanished. His women did not mourn him, nor would any admit to knowing where he had gone. If the gods were kind, the old man had gone away to die. If not, then maybe his own age and frailty would settle it.
Walker decided to let it pass. Whatever the old man thought he was doing, he could not harm Walker or weaken his power over the People. He was more than king now. He ruled them in body and in spirit. And he would continue in that. That was his vision. He needed no more.
44
Kestrel left the Grey Horse with a cold heart. His eyes were burning dry. His spirit wept.
But he had to go. He was bound. He could not bring back either Sparrow or the stallion, but he could bring back word of where they had gone.
It was betrayal. It was also hi
s duty. Maybe, he tried to tell himself, the People had recovered. There must be a new king of stallions, a new lord of horses to make Linden forget his silvermaned darling.
Kestrel went for a hunt of some days’ length, mounted on his dark-maned grey and leading a second, likewise a grey, but still bearing the dapples of youth. It would have been a lovely ride if it had been the hunt it pretended to be: clear sky, warm sun, burgeoning spring. But there was deep winter in his heart.
He had thought—and indeed hoped rather than feared—that he might be prevented, either by men or by gods. But the ways were open. The floods of spring had passed. There were no storms. No wild beasts threatened him. Earth’s blessing lay on him, when he would have given heart’s blood to suffer her curse.
No one pursued him. Sparrow did not come after him. He could not believe that she did not know. She must. But she let him go.
She must hate him. He hated himself—but his word was given.
oOo
The north was still somewhat in winter’s grip, snow in the hollows, spats of cold rain over the steppe. He found that he missed the shadows of trees—strange, for he had thought little of them while he had them.
He passed by the Tall Grass camp and the Red Deer camp, but he did not stop in either. It was uncivil of him. He could not care. He was a solitary creature, a hawk in the blue heaven. He had no desire to share travelers’ tales, even with such friends as he had in those tribes.
Not far from the spring camp, Kestrel’s solitude was broken. A rider met him on the plain, rising up out of a fold in the hillside and setting himself athwart Kestrel’s path. He was a strange, wild figure, white hair and long beard streaming in the wind, clad in a long tunic of white doeskin, and mounted on an elderly white mare.
At first Kestrel did not know him. Apart from the tribe, without the flock of people about him, he seemed a stranger. But when he spoke, Kestrel knew his voice. “A fine morning to you, hunter,” said Drinks-the-Wind.
Kestrel peered into the shaman’s eyes, searching for a sign of recognition. He might almost have said that Drinks-the-Wind was blind, so pale were those eyes, and so full of light. But they met his stare keenly enough. “A fine morning to you, O speaker to gods,” Kestrel said. “Are the People nearby, then? Will I find them soon?”
“Soon enough,” Drinks-the-Wind said. “They’ve wandered somewhat astray this season. Everyone is off his reckoning, one way and another.”
“Yes,” said Kestrel. “Yes—I, too. The People are not in camp?”
“They wander,” the shaman said, “where the horses lead them.”
Kestrel paused. Something in the old man’s manner was strange. “They—didn’t—send you out, did they?”
Drinks-the-Wind laughed, sweet and empty of either bitterness or guile. “No, young hunter, I sent myself. It was time to go.” He sighed a little. “Past time, maybe. This is a new world we’ve entered into, however little some may understand it.”
“You’ve had visions,” Kestrel said.
“I always have visions.” Drinks-the-Wind reached down to the sere grass, last year’s remnant, that brushed his knee. A few seeds clung to the head. He stripped them, scattered them to the wind. “You go,” he said, “and wait for the People. They’ll come to the spring camp late, but they will come. Then do what your heart bids you do.”
“I am not fond of my heart now,” Kestrel said.
The shaman patted him on the shoulder. “There, boy. Be brave. You’re wiser than you know, and you have more power than you imagine. Trust to it.”
Then Drinks-the-Wind turned, or his mare turned, and rode away across the plain. Kestrel’s stallions would not follow. Like his late and lamented dun, they were bound by the will of a white mare, and by the gods’ command.
So for that matter was Kestrel. He could exhaust himself in fighting it, or he could let it carry him where it would.
oOo
As the shaman had said, White Stone was not yet in spring camp when he came there. He made his own camp up the bend of the river. The hunting had been poor in much of this country, and was no better here. When the People came, it would be a lean season.
The grass at least was good, if less plentiful than it could be. The horses set about fattening their lean flanks, while Kestrel made shift with rabbits and a lone deer. He could hunt down the People, he supposed, against the shaman’s advice, and come to them in another camp or on the march. But he elected to stay where he was. He was putting off the reckoning, to be sure.
When it was ready, it would come. He waited in a strange kind of contentment, with a hunter’s studied patience. In that brief meeting, Drinks-the-Wind had soothed his spirit—not altogether, but enough to sustain him in his waiting.
It was a gift, and he was grateful for it. Someday he hoped that he could tell the shaman so. Though he feared the old man had simply ridden away to die.
oOo
The People came to the spring camp on a day of mist and rain, nearly a moon’s cycle later than they were wonted to. The lowing of cattle, the squeals of horses, drifted ahead of them. Kestrel watched from the hillside above the river, well hidden in the wet grass.
The horses led them as always. His eyes searched the royal herd that held the van, but found only mares, and an old white mare leading, who could have been sister to the mare who had carried Drinks-the-Wind into the south. They were all heavy with foal, some seeming close to their time.
They had no stallion. The lesser herds, trailing behind, were suitably graced with stallions, and the herd of the young stallions and the men’s remounts jostled and squabbled in the rear. There was no lack of princes to be king, but none had claimed that eminence.
The People followed the horses as they had for time out of mind: women afoot, laden down or leading oxen; children perched atop packs or running alongside; men and boys mounted and ranging the edges. Linden the king led the warband, the gathering of young warriors in their fine tunics—wet and bedraggled now with rain—and their bristling array of spears.
Linden was mounted on a very pretty stallion indeed, but the horse was no king. Kestrel could see that clearly.
At first he thought Linden had not changed at all. But as the People passed by his hill and began to make camp where they had done so every spring since the dawn time, he saw that the fair and open face had grown a little hard, and the honest eyes were narrower than he remembered. When he had ridden to the center of the camping-ground and halted and sprung from his horse’s back, he moved with a sharpness that had not been there before. Easygoing Linden had discovered a temper—though somehow Kestrel did not think that it had sharpened his wits as well as his gestures.
No king of stallions, and a king who had not grown well into his office. Kestrel lost somewhat of the calm that Drinks-the-Wind had laid on him.
To gain it back if he could, he searched among the People for faces he knew. The king’s companions were there, all but Spearhead who had died in front of Kestrel. His father’s tent was going up, his father’s women bustling about it—and he recognized his mother among them, ruling them as she always had. Of his father he saw nothing, but that was as it should be: Aurochs would be out hunting.
Walker was there, whom Kestrel least wished to see. His tent was larger now, nearly as large as the king’s. A round dozen women raised and prepared it, so that one who sat idle while they worked could be led in.
That must be his new wife, the Tall Grass shaman’s daughter. Kestrel glimpsed fire-red hair and white skin, but at this distance little else.
Walker did not go in once the tent and the wife were established. He was keeping company with the elders. When the camp was complete, the fires set to blazing, and women preparing the daymeal, Walker entered the king’s tent, where Linden had gone some while since.
oOo
Kestrel retreated from his hill. He told himself that he should wait a day or two, or even three, for camp to be fully settled before he rode in. The truth, as he knew too well, w
as that he was a coward. He could not muster his courage to face what he knew he must face. It well might be his death.
He returned to his camp up the river, concealed as it was from casual eyes, and made a wan supper, and lay awake nightlong, except for brief dreams. Sparrow was in them, in his arms or being a shaman to the Grey Horse People.
Dawn brought him no greater courage, but his heart knew that he could not evade his fate. He prepared himself carefully. He washed in the river. He put on the clean tunic that he had carried from the south, and fine white leggings, and boots of good leather. He wore his boar’s tusks and his lion’s teeth, and the lionskin waited to be spread on the back of his dark-maned grey. He combed his hair, which was wet still from washing, and plaited it tidily.
He was as seemly then as he could ever be. He mounted his stallion, leaving the other loose; but that one elected to follow. He rode down the river into the camp of the People.
They did not know him. His garments were made in Grey Horse fashion, and his horses were strangers. And, it seemed, he had changed more than he knew.
Dogs barked. Children ran after him. Men called greetings in trader-tongue as they would to a stranger. Women watched him sidelong, heads bowed—and that startled him, not for what it was, but for what it did to him. He wanted to make them look up, to shout at them to stand tall, be proud, look him in the face.
Yes, he had changed. People were remarking on his looks, admiring them mostly, and reckoning his wealth and rank. The extreme plainness of his clothing might mark a man of low standing, but the fine stitching, the carving of his knife-hilt, the bow and bundled spears that he carried, and the lionskin on his horse’s back, with the tusks and the teeth that he wore as ornaments, led them to conclude that he was a man of rank, perhaps even a prince traveling on some errand of the gods. His horses were very fine, royal horses—and what was more, they were greys.
Some were even wondering if he was a shaman, or—and these were the greatest fools of all—a god’s messenger. Or a god himself. At which he would have laughed, but his throat was too tight.
