by Judith Tarr
oOo
He rode straight through the camp to the king’s tent. The king had come out of it, drawn by the alteration in the camp’s accustomed rhythms. Linden had his full complement of royal women now, Kestrel had noted the day before, and he had been enjoying them as a man should enjoy a woman. His hair was unbraided and tangled on his shoulders, his face rumpled with sleep; he had pulled on a pair of leggings, hastily, and was still fastening them as Kestrel halted and slid from the stallion’s back.
Linden, too, failed to recognize the man he had sent out hunting for a thief. He managed something like royal courtesy, and a greeting in trader-tongue: “Welcome, stranger, to the White Stone People. Have you come searching for the king?”
“My lord,” Kestrel said in the People’s own language, “I have come back to you.”
Linden frowned, puzzled. It was Curlew, from among the companions, who cried out, “Wolfcub! By the gods, you came back.”
“Wolfcub?” Linden peered. “Wolfcub! Gods, it is you!”
The others were all shouting at once, word running through the camp, a quite astonishing tumult.
For Kestrel, none of it mattered but the man in front of him. The sound of his old name was like a voice heard from far away, a drum beating across the hilltops: remote, familiar, but of little concern to the self that he was now.
Linden seized his arms in a bruising grip and shook him; then embraced him so tight he could not breathe. “Wolfcub. Wolfcub! We all thought you were dead.”
He stood back, still gripping Kestrel’s arms. His eyes flicked up and down, taking in the fashion of his clothing; marking the horses he had brought with him, and fixing with a kind of desperate hope on the second, younger and darker of the stallions. But although it was a very handsome stallion, it was not the one whom he had lost.
Kestrel could have waited, and probably should have, until he was alone with the king, but he could see no profit in delaying the inevitable. “I found him,” he said. “But I couldn’t bring him back. I was forbidden.”
“Forbidden!” Linden bridled. “Who in the gods’ name would dare forbid you to bring back my king?”
“Horse Goddess,” Kestrel said baldly.
That roused an even greater tumult than the fact of who he was. Linden gaped at him. “How could she do that? He is my king!”
“He is her consort,” Kestrel said. “My lord, if I could have done it, I would.”
“Would you?”
That was not Linden’s, that smoothly beautiful voice. Walker had come—not from the tent near the king’s, but from elsewhere in the camp. He was little changed if at all, with his ice-white beauty and his cold pale eyes. He looked remarkably like his father, and yet utterly unlike.
Drinks-the-Wind was a shaman. This was the shadow of one, an image painted on a tentwall. Kestrel had not known he could see so clearly, but it was as distinct as a track in snow.
Kestrel regarded him coolly, a stare that—to his surprise—made the shaman flinch and look away. But Walker’s voice was strong enough, and his arrogance unshaken. “I find it difficult to believe,” he said, “that you were unable to fulfill the king’s command. Obviously you found help on the way, and horses of remarkable quality—royal horses, if my eye is not mistaken. I think that you come to mock us, and to betray us. Is there an army behind you? Or will it wait until you’ve lulled us with soft words, then fall on us in the night?”
“I am alone,” Kestrel said. “These horses were given me, yes, by Horse Goddess’ people. None of them followed me. They have no care for war, nor do they trouble themselves with the concerns of tribes so far away. I came because I owed it to my king, for honor and for nothing else.”
“You’re mad, then,” Walker said, “because you came here only to die.”
“Odd,” said Kestrel. “She told me that, too.”
He was not prepared for the violence of Walker’s response. The shaman fell on him, all but striking aside the king. “She? She is there? Why did you not bring her back?”
Kestrel maintained his calm by sheer effort of will in the face of that blazing anger. It was edged, he noticed, with desperation. And no wonder, if it was true what she had told him, that Walker had taken all his visions from her. “Horse Goddess forbade,” he said, as he had said of the stallion.
Walker struck him. It was a weak blow, a woman’s blow, not even worth evading. “You are lying,” Walker spat at him.
“I don’t lie,” Kestrel said.
It was fortunate for Walker’s reputation that he remembered where he was, and did not throttle Kestrel in front of the gathered People. Kestrel was oddly unafraid of him—and foolishly, too, for however negligible his powers as a shaman might be, he was a very dangerous man.
Kestrel had walked between the lion and the lightning, and had taken to his bed Horse Goddess’ chosen servant. He had no fear to spare for a mere man, however venomous his hatred.
Maybe Walker saw it. Maybe he simply chose to bide his time. He drew back, leaving Kestrel to Linden.
“You really are alone?” the king asked him.
Kestrel nodded.
“He’s right,” said Linden. “You’re mad. You know I can’t just let you back into the tribe. You found the king and left him there.”
Kestrel bowed his head.
“But,” said Linden with the air of one who has made a great discovery, “if he wouldn’t come to us, we can go to him. You will lead us. He is in this world, yes? He’s not somewhere in the gods’ country?”
“He is in the world,” Kestrel said through a closing throat.
“Thank the gods!” Linden had lit like a fire in the dark. He threw an arm about Kestrel’s shoulders and pulled him in, holding him tight in an embrace of brothers. “We’ll take the warband. We’ll win him back again. But now,” he said expansively, “we feast. Our boarslayer, our wolfling, our loved companion, has come home.”
45
Kestrel was trapped—and there was no one to blame for it but himself. If he had thought at all, he had thought that Linden would kill him with his own hand. Then of course the warband would go to take the stallion, but Kestrel would not be part of it. He would be safely and honorably dead.
Linden was not angry with him at all. “If Horse Goddess forbade,” he said as the women hastened to prepare a feast, “of course you couldn’t take him. But I’m the king, the one meant to ride him. She’ll let me take him.”
“And if she won’t?” Kestrel asked.
Linden’s clear brow darkened. For an instant he looked as he had the day before, harder and colder, with a faint, cruel edge. Then he was himself again, grinning and thumping Kestrel on the shoulder. “Of course she will! If she resists, I’ll woo her. She’ll let me have my stallion.”
Kestrel sighed and let be. Preparations went on while he sat by the king. No one had asked after Spearhead. At last he said it, because if this was to be a funeral feast or a day of mourning, the People would have to know. “The one who went with me,” he said, “Spearhead. He—”
Brief sorrow crossed Linden’s face. “He died. We know. Walker told us. We thought you’d died, too. He saw it in a vision: a terrible storm, and lightning. Then everything was dark, and you both had vanished.”
“Walker told you?” Kestrel bit his tongue. “And Drinks-the-Wind? Did he say anything of it?”
“Drinks-the-Wind was old,” Linden said, “and had grown feeble. He’s gone now. We’ve mourned him as is proper. As we mourned Spearhead. And you.” His eyes glinted. “We mourned you very splendidly. Some people are maybe disappointed that you came back—it was such a waste of grief.”
Kestrel smiled thinly. “I may give you something to grieve for yet,” he said.
It was not a jest, but Linden laughed at it, far more uproariously than it deserved. He was happy, Kestrel thought. He had a war ahead of him and his stallion to win back. A long grim winter had lifted from his spirit. He could let himself be a creature of the sunlight again.
/> Kestrel’s winter of the heart had only begun. He feasted as joyously as he could. To be reunited with the People—that was not the pleasure it should have been. He kept remembering a different tribe, dark eyes and round faces, and strangers who had, in so short a time, become as dear as kin.
If his father had been there, he might have felt somewhat differently. But he had always been alone, walked alone, hunted alone. The place he had fallen into by slaying the boar had never been altogether his. Now, with what he had been and done, he felt no part of this tribe.
None of them understood. Of course Linden had to know of the lion’s claws and skin, and he had to see the scars and marvel over them. The rest of the companions professed gladness to have him back, with none too carefully concealed jealousy of all that he had done, or that they fancied he had done. Boarslayer and lionkiller: he was a great hero, and he had no desire to be any such thing. He wanted to be lying in his tent in the Grey Horse camp, with Sparrow in his arms and Rain singing one of her songs nearby.
Inevitably Linden offered him a woman. “I’m rich in them now,” he said. “I’ve a dozen wives from all the greater tribes, and concubines innumerable. Choose yourself one. Or two or three, if you’ve a mind. I’m sure they’ll be delighted.”
Kestrel was not the child he had been, to take what any man bade him take, even his king. He bowed and thanked Linden politely, but said, “Tonight I’m weary, and I’ve yet to visit my blood kin. Tomorrow, if you’re still minded to give the gift . . .”
Linden waved his hand. “Oh, go, go! They’ll still be there tomorrow, certainly. Go, do your duty—and beg your kinsmen’s pardon for me, for keeping you away from them.”
oOo
Kestrel escaped while he could. He cared little for most of his kin, and most of those were at the feast, basking in the light of his glory.
But his mother, who as a woman could not join the revels, was waiting in his father’s tent, and the rest of the wives seemed glad to see him.
Willow dismissed them after a blessedly short while, but stayed in the men’s portion, regarding him with eyes that were too proud to weep, even for joy. “We did believe,” she said, “that you had died.”
“I think maybe I did,” he said.
She waited in the way she had, that commanded him to speak again, and speak well.
He smiled at that, a broader smile than he had offered Linden. “I can’t seem to find opportunity, and they keep calling me by the name I left behind, but it’s not mine any longer. The goddess’ people—they call me Kestrel.”
Her brows rose. “Sparrowhawk? Because you hunted a Sparrow?”
“They didn’t know that. I’m not sure they do even yet. But their shaman insisted that I’m no wolf, I’m a small swift falcon with a ruddy tail.”
His mother tugged at one of his plaits. “Small you are not, but swift and ruddy? Yes, I see that. It was a good naming.”
Kestrel sighed. He had been clenched tight for so long that it felt strange to unclench, to be at ease again. He lay propped on his elbow, banked in furs that he or his father had brought back from hunting.
“Is she well?” Willow asked.
“Sparrow?” He was flushing—and why he should do that, he could not imagine. “Yes, very well—very well indeed. The people there, they let women be shamans. She’s a shaman. They say she’s very powerful, the most powerful that they’ve known.”
“Indeed,” said Willow without surprise. “So you were in her mother’s country. That’s where the stallion is.”
“Yes,” said Kestrel.
“You could have stayed there.”
“I promised the king,” he said with a resurgence of misery. “Damn that stubborn honor of mine! I couldn’t stay where I was happy. I had to come back here.”
He had not meant to strike her to the heart, nor had he thought he would: she was made of sterner stuff. But her face had gone stark. “You found kin there—kin of your spirit.”
“I found Sparrow,” he said. He took her hand and held it to his breast. “Mother, except for you I have no joy at all in this homecoming. But you, and Father when he comes back—you make it bearable. If I could take you—if there is a way—”
She shook her head slightly. “I belong here. So does he.”
“No,” he said. Then more strongly: “No! There is a place worthy of you. Their king is a woman, Mother. Their shaman is a woman. The king’s heir is a man—they walk side by side, women and men: rule alike, hunt alike, live alike. Nothing is forbidden to a woman that is permitted to a man.”
“Then Sparrow must be profoundly happy,” Willow said. “A woman who is a king. Imagine that. Is she beautiful?”
“In her way she is,” said Kestrel. “She rides as well as a man.”
“And does she fight?”
Kestrel’s teeth clicked together.
“She is going to have to fight,” Willow said, “when our men come raiding. When you lead them to her.”
The knot was back in Kestrel’s middle, tighter and harder and more painful than ever. “What am I supposed to do? Run away? I can do that. Maybe if they’re busy chasing me, they’ll forget about the stallion.”
“You know that won’t happen,” Willow said.
“Then what do I do?”
“You should have stayed there,” she said. “Since you wouldn’t, then you pay whatever price your foolishness demands. Who knows? Maybe the warband will have no better luck than it did the first time it tried to find the stallion. The gods drove it back. Maybe they will again.”
“Maybe they will,” Kestrel said. It was a poor hope, but it was better than any he had had before.
46
Keen bore a son in the midmost moon of spring, delivered him at moonrise after a long and exhausting labor; but when Cloud laid him in her arms, she forgot all her pain and exhaustion in the enchantment of that face. Even as small and red and wrinkled as it was, she saw the beauty it would have, the hair like sunlight in summer and the eyes as blue as flax-flowers. “Summer,” she called him, defiant, in this place where the mother named the child and not the father.
He was year-brother and milk-kin to Rain’s daughter Spring; for to Keen’s grief, she had too little milk for a child so robust and strong. But Rain had enough for three.
She cried over that, weak with the birth, and Cloud held her as he had held the baby, with gentle strength. She had been appalled to come to her time and find him acting as midwife, and no one found it strange or outrageous that a man should do such a thing. Storm was there, too, and Rain, and others of the women who had borne children, but it was Cloud who supported her through the long ordeal, and into whose hands, at last, the child seemed to leap, yelling lustily at the world.
Summer had taken all her strength. It was slow to come back, so slow that she wondered if it ever would. But Cloud would not let her despair. “You’ll nurse your baby as you can,” he said, “so that he knows who his mother is; and you’ll eat what I tell you and when I tell you, and do as I bid you, and you’ll be strong again.”
“I’m weak,” she said. “I could barely even do what—any woman—”
“Stop that,” he said, so sharp that she stared. He who was always so gentle was not gentle now. “You did as well as any woman. Better than most—that’s a big, strong, healthy little monster, and he’ll run us ragged before he properly learns to walk.”
“But I—” she began.
“He tore you when he came, because he was so big. You bled more than you should. But you haven’t taken a fever and you’re gaining strength. You’re going to live and be strong, and bear other children, too.”
She blushed at that, for no reason at all. Cloud took no notice. One of the children had brought a cup of something hot and savory. She was not hungry, but Cloud made her drink it, every drop. Then he brought her her baby, warm and replete with Rain’s ample milk, and let her hold him till she fell asleep.
oOo
Keen regained strength as Clou
d had promised. It seemed slow, but he said not; he was pleased. He fed her like a prized heifer, saw that she had her baby by her except when he had to eat, and often Spring was there, too, sleeping or babbling or being delightful. Summer, at so young an age, mostly slept; but when he was awake he was as lively as a newborn could be, and noisy, too.
“He’ll be a warrior,” Sparrow said. She had kept away from the birthing by custom of this tribe: they believed that a bearing woman should not see what was before her, lest it frighten her out of all due measure.
For she was bearing. It had become evident in the early spring, and was obvious now. No one asked who had fathered it. They all knew, as they knew that he had gone out hunting and had not come back.
Sparrow had not grieved where anyone could know of it, nor raged, either. “He did what his heart bade him do,” she said when Keen ventured to ask.
She was much too calm. Keen watched her carefully, but she seemed as she always had, rather quiet, rather reserved, and inclined to wander off by herself. But unlike Kestrel, she always came back.
She was not a woman for children. Even with a child in her belly, she had little interest in babies. But she could hardly ignore Summer when she visited Keen; he was either asleep in her arms or yelling in his cradle. “This is a warrior king,” Sparrow said.
Keen shivered. “Not—not a shaman?”
Sparrow frowned and looked closer. Keen held her breath. Sparrow straightened and shook her head. “That gift the gods have kept from him. It’s as well. He’ll be happier as he is.”
Keen could not disagree. “His father really isn’t a shaman, is he? He’s all a lie.”
“His father is a shaman’s son of a line of shamans. It was his misfortune that when the magic passed, it passed elsewhere.” Sparrow left the cradle to sit by Keen. Keen was stitching again, making a covering for the baby. “He’s coming, you know.”
Keen went still. “He—”
“Walker. He’s coming. They’re coming, Linden and the warband, to take back the stallion.”
“And you’ll give the stallion to them,” Keen said, “and let them go away.”
