by Judith Tarr
At the last garment, the thin brief tunic of fine-tanned hide, she paused. Agni knelt unmoving. Too late he saw what she had wanted: for him to rip the tunic from her, to prove his passion.
Passion he had. His rod was stiff under his own tunic. Yet he was not quite reft of his wits. He was remembering a body far more slender, far whiter of skin, white as milk, as snow; but hot as the gods’ own fire. This beside her was an ember among ashes. He began to think perhaps—after all—
Before he could finish the thought, she had caught the lacings at her throat and tugged them free, and skinned the tunic over her head. She stood naked before him. Her breasts were full double handfuls, the nipples as wide as a child’s hand, and dark. Her hips were full as broad and deep as he had expected, centered with the triangle of her sex, thick hair and crisp like a horse’s mane, strong with the scent of musk and woman.
A heat came off her, as if she were an open fire. The scent of her was dizzying. She lifted her breasts in her hands, weighed them as if they had been twin kids. “Am I not beautiful?” she demanded of him. “Is there a goddess who is as fair as I?”
A shiver ran down his spine. Even Rudira had never dared to speak so—though she had mocked her mortal husband often enough. His rod was as stiff as ever, as if a spell lay on it, the spell of those heavy breasts and that potent scent. Ill might a woman speak so of the immortals.
Maybe there was a goddess in her, possessing her. She advanced upon him. He did not move. No spell lay on him: he was sure of that. He liked to play before he mated; to laugh, to kiss, to tease, till they were both half blind with wanting one another.
She seemed to know nothing of play. For her this was as grim as duty.
She did not wait for him to undress as she had done, as he might have liked to do. She caught at his belt, fumbling the clasp. It slipped free. She tugged down his trousers. Her breath came hard, as if she ran a race. “Come, my lord. Why do you dally? Am I ugly after all?”
“Not ugly in the least,” he said, and that was true enough.
She bore him backward. He fell hard, hard enough to jar the breath from him. “You are beautiful,” she said. “I’ve seen you, wanted you—oh, how I’ve wanted you! Have you wanted me?”
He did not answer. His voice was not back yet, though his rod had barely softened. She clasped it in her hand. Her grip was firm.
There was no way to tell her how he liked to do it. She would not listen. She bent over him, those big breasts swaying, veiling him in the curtain of her hair. Her breath was strong with kumiss. She had been drinking deep of it, perhaps to gather courage.
He wanted to laugh, but laughter would have offended her terribly. It did not do to offend a woman with one’s manly staff in her hand. She rubbed and squeezed, squeezed and rubbed. What she roused was rather too much like pain.
His breath had come back, though it was caught in his throat. He used what there was of it to lift himself up, bearing her with him, till she lay beneath, he atop her. Her legs had locked about his middle. His shaft found what it had wanted, armed itself, plunged through a wall that tore, shredded, was gone.
She cried out. He nearly fell backward, but her arms were about him, too, arms and legs pinning him, holding him fast. He was deep in her, the first that had ever done such a thing.
No wonder she had been so maladroit. She had been a maiden.
He was appalled. Of course every girl went virgin to her wedding, though the blood on the coverlet might be calves’ blood, and even her husband might know where she had been before. But he had never danced this dance with a true maiden, a woman who had never known a man. That she was as old as she was, his own age surely or near to it, and so new to the dance—either she had father and brothers of exceptional ferocity, or she had kept herself for some useful purpose.
To snare a prince, perhaps?
She would not let him go. And all the while his thoughts raced on, frantic as a startled colt, he rode her as a man rides a woman. His body knew well what it should do, though the soul within it was all scattered and gone.
Ah well, he thought with what wits he had left: a shrug of the mind, accepting what he could not help. Let this first ride be as pleasurable as it could be, since she had forced it on him. He smiled down at her and stroked her hair, and was almost dismayed at the light in her eyes. He did not want her to love him; only to remember him with fondness. “There,” he said, crooning it. “There now. Steady, steady.”
So he would have spoken to a filly whom he was taming. She responded as the filly might, calming, easing into the dance, which was the oldest of all.
She was well made for this, deep and strong, not small and tight as maidens were said to be. She had pleasure, he thought, or feigned it well: breath that quickened as his stroke quickened, and broke into soft cries, and of a sudden, as she arched beneath him, a muted shout.
His own breath caught just after, and he stilled, locked body to body.
She was, he realized without surprise, sobbing into his neck. Women did that, he had heard. Never women he chose—but then he had not chosen this one.
He freed himself carefully. She clung with desperate strength, but he was stronger. “You should have told me,” he said as gently as he could.
It was not gentle enough. “Now you hate me!”
“I do not.” But, he thought, he well could, if she kept on. He softened his voice as he might with a particularly aggravating filly whom he had in mind to train. “Come, sit up, wipe your face. You chose this. Are you truly sorry that you did it?”
“No!” she wailed. But she did sit up, and she did wipe her face—with her hair, which was nearest to hand.
He smiled at her. “You see? It only takes courage.”
“I am a woman,” she said. “I have no courage to find.”
He snorted. “Oh come! It takes all the bravery in the world to face what women face, bearing and bringing forth children. They are the honor of their tribe, the good name of their family. They are a great thing, a strong thing, and let no man tell you otherwise.”
“You are very strange,” she said.
Yes; and she had stopped blubbering, which was a great relief. He shrugged. “I’m who I am. My mother wasn’t . . . like other women. Nor is my sister.”
“Ah,” she said. “Yes. The Mare’s servant. She rides about like a man, and has no modesty. All the girls are jealous of her.”
“She would be amazed to hear that,” Agni said.
“No, really! They are.”
“Are you?”
She smiled a slow smile that reminded him of the girl who had so allured him, back among the tents. Then indeed she was beautiful. “I might be. But could she be here, where I am?”
Not naked, no, and not still warm with his loving. Agni conceded her the point.
He helped her up, helped her dress. She had recovered some of her bold spirit, he was pleased to see.
They could not go back together; that would betray too much. He left first, walking quickly. He did not look back.
Only when he was long gone did it strike him. He had never asked her name.
oOo
Rudira could not have known what Agni had been doing. Nor did he think it wise to tell her. He went from the place of the lovers all the way to the river, and scrubbed himself clean before he went to her.
She was waiting where they had agreed, out beyond the tents, but far away from the place where Agni had gone with the woman of the Red Deer. She was wrapped in a mantle, a shadow in starlight.
When he went to fold arms about her, she slipped away. “You’re late,” she said. Her voice was petulant.
“I came as soon as I could,” Agni said.
“That was not soon enough,” said Rudira. “There’s no time to do anything now. I have to be back in the tent when he comes back. He asked for me tonight. He told me to wear the amber that he gave me.”
“I thought,” said Agni, “that we agreed: you’ll not be going to him.”
/> “I never agreed to that,” she said. “He’s my husband. When he asks, I have to obey.”
He seized her shoulders before she could escape, and held her tight, though she made no effort to resist him. “You don’t have to let him ask you!”
Somewhere in the flurry of movement, the mantle had slipped from her hair. Her face was a pale glimmer, her eyes paler still. She looked like nothing mortal. But her voice was altogether of earth. “He is my husband.”
“That never mattered to you before.”
“And did it matter that I was waiting, when you went into the night with that slut from the Dun Cow?”
“She was never from the Dun Cow,” Agni had said before he thought. He bit his tongue, but the words were out.
She hissed and sprang. He caught her before her clawed nails could rake his face; caught her and fastened his lips on hers. She twisted, but he was stronger. With a sound like a moan, deep in her throat, she set about eating him alive.
This—oh, gods, this was fire. With the woman of the Red Deer he had known but a glimmer of warmth. This was a white heat. The touch of her lips, of her hands, roused him as none other ever had. Or, he thought— wished, vowed—ever would.
They tumbled in the grass, reckless of any who might hear. She was naked under the mantle; wonderful, wanton creature. Her white body glimmered in the starlight. His own, darker, heavier, joined with it. Her eyes gleamed silver. “You,” he said, or gasped. “You are—”
“I am all that is,” she said, calm as one may be at a truth that is inarguable.
“Gods,” he said. “Oh, gods.”
“Goddess,” she said. And when he would have said more, she swooped and seized him and drowned him again, and yet again, in her kiss.
6
Sarama lived in the camp as one who both belongs and does not belong. She had a place to sleep, she was fed, more often than not she knew the names of the people who greeted her when she went here or there. That she knew more of the horses than of the people did not concern her greatly. Horses were more interesting by far than the run of human folk.
Those who were her kin, or rather her father’s kin, his wives and children, had little to do with her. Except for Yama her brothers did not trouble her; the sisters and the wives mostly let her be. The children followed her about, but children always did that; and them she would speak to. They were eager to learn, pelting her with questions, which she was glad to answer.
Of the king her father she saw as little as any woman did who was not one of his wives. Even they, unless they were favorites, saw him only when he called for them, and then only to wait on him of a day or to please him of a night. His daughters were never regarded. She doubted if he even knew how many he had.
He was reckoned merciful, perhaps too much so, for that he suffered them all to live, nor had commanded that they be drowned in the river or set out on the steppe for the wolves to dispose of. Sarama did not know if it was mercy or simple absentmindedness. She did not know him, not well. He had always had eyes only for her brother.
Men and their sons, she used to think. Then she had seen other fathers doting over their daughters, and decided that her father was odder than most. Maybe it was that he was a king; a king must be unlike other men.
After she knew in her heart that she must go to find the sunset people, she knew another thing, a thing that pleased her rather less. She could not simply ride away. She must stand face to face with the king, and understand . . . something. What it was, she did not know; only that she must do it.
oOo
In the end she went to him not as a petitioner while he sat in the circle on his royal horsehide, nor as a feaster among feasters in the firelit evening, but as a daughter to her father. She approached him as was permitted a woman, in the morning after he had risen and been dressed but before he went out among the men. Then he would summon this or that wife or daughter to keep him company, and would break his fast, sometimes with a friend, sometimes alone.
Today he had with him his eldest wife and a handful of her daughters—all sisters of Yama, daughters of his mother, and one strikingly pale creature whom she remembered, vaguely, as one of Yama’s wives.
Yama’s sisters and his mother were as large as he and as good to look at, but none of them had his half-finished look. They eyed Sarama narrowly as she approached the king’s dining place. There was no friendship in their gaze, but no enmity either. They were reserving judgment.
The wife was slender and icily lovely. She might have seemed a pretty fool, vapid with her white skin and her wide colorless eyes, and yet Sarama thought that there might be more to her than met the eye.
Here, thought Sarama, was the strength that she had not seen in Yama. She would have been willing to wager that these women had set Yama on her, and told him what to say.
This was not the wisest or best time, perhaps, to speak to the king. But nothing would free her from the intrigues of the women’s side; and while she had these in front of her, she could know precisely what they knew.
She inclined her head therefore, first to the king and then to his wife and daughters, and last, but not least, to Yama’s wife. They inclined theirs in return. It was simple courtesy, nor could they properly refuse it.
The king smiled at her. In the tent’s dimness, without the high horned headdress to lift him up above simpler men, she could see how old he was, how grey and worn he had become. The long braids of his hair were thin and dulled to ash. Deep lines were carved in his cheeks, cleaving into the grey-shot beard. His eyes under the heavy brows were clouded.
Perhaps, she thought, and that thought was cold and still, Yama had had the right of it. This was a Ninth Year. A king who faded, whose strength was failing, should mount the Stallion and ride him into the gods’ country. He should not linger, should not weaken the tribes with his weakness.
No. The man was aging, no one could doubt it. But his shoulders were straight. His eyes though dimmed saw clear enough. His voice was strong, his mind unblurred. “Sarama,” he said. “Daughter. Are you well?”
“I am well,” she said.
He smiled. “Good,” he said. “Good.”
Sarama fought the urge to wriggle as she had done when she was small, when her father had summoned her for this reason or that. Their conversation then as now had proceeded in fits and starts, in twitches of discomfort. They had never known what to say to one another.
She wished that she had brought Agni with her, though he might well have chosen to hinder her. Agni was his father’s favorite. Anything that he asked, the old man would grant.
But Agni was off doing whatever a young man did in the morning. Sarama had only herself to look to. She drew a deep breath. “Sir,” she said, “I’m going away.”
He blinked at her. Whatever he had expected her to say, clearly it had not been that. She fancied that she could see Agni in him then, in the startled expression, perhaps somewhat in the line of cheek and jaw under the grizzled beard. “And where will you go?” he asked, much as Agni had before him.
“West,” she answered, “where the goddess leads me.”
“West? To the sunset countries?”
Sarama half-smiled. So he did listen when people talked around him, though he never seemed to. “To the sunset countries,” she agreed, “where they know nothing of Horse Goddess. She calls me there.”
“We had thought you would stay here,” he said.
“I go where the goddess bids,” said Sarama.
He nodded. He looked senile then, falling asleep where he sat, with his gimlet-eyed wife and too-silent daughters about him, staring. But beneath the thicket of grey brows, Sarama saw the gleam of his eyes. He was watching her.
Old fox, she would have said had they been alone, you watch us all, don’t you? And what do you think of your sons who would be king?
But she could not say such a thing in this company. She said instead, “Your blessing would set me well upon my way.”
He stirred as
if she had roused him from a doze, but it was as she had suspected: his eyes were bright, no sleep in them. “What would you do with my blessing, goddess-child?”
“Be glad of it,” she answered, “O my father.”
“You look,” he mused, “like your mother. Oh, indeed, very like her. You think as she thought, too. She was a most interesting woman, was my beautiful Surti.”
“She was the last of her people,” Sarama said. “Now there will be no others.”
“There is you,” said the king.
“And is there none of your blood in me?”
“Some said,” said the king, “that she conceived of the dawn wind, as mares are said to do—as if the stallions had no part in it. But the boy is mine. There was never any doubt of that.”
“So too am I,” Sarama said. “The goddess made me, but your seed was her instrument. Of that she has assured me.”
He regarded her in silence for a moment. “You believe that you speak truth,” he said. “Perhaps it is so.” He lifted his hand, she thought to bless her—she bowed her head for it—but he waved her away, irritably. “Go. Go! Do as you must. I was never given authority over you, not even as a father. Horse Goddess took all of you from the moment you were born.”
But she would not go, not without what she had asked. “And your blessing?”
“You have it,” he said. “Now and always. Now go.”
Then she went, not for obedience, but because she had what she had come for. Not only a blessing. An acknowledgment.
oOo
The king did not walk out and about, not in these days. Therefore it was a profound shock to Agni to be minding his business near his father’s tent, fletching a quiverful of arrows, and to look up as a shadow fell over him, and to see his father’s face bent down.
The king regarded his work with interest. He took up an arrow that Agni had finished, weighed and balanced it, nodded. “Good work,” he said.
