White Mare's Daughter

by Judith Tarr

  It was the horse’s pride, perhaps, working in him. They all looked on him with respect. Even the elders. Even—and that was more remarkable—the acolytes who brought the wine.

  They all finished at once, and parted as if by agreement. He, too. He went where he had learned to go the night before, to the room farthest back, with its window on the kitchen garden.

  Catin had duties still to perform. Danu well knew; in Three Birds that would have been his to do. Still with the horse’s pride, he did not go in search of her, nor offer his help. She would not have accepted it.

  He undressed and washed in the basin that was set for them both, slowly, all over; a luxury of time that he was seldom given. In the morning, he decided, he would go to the river and wash his hair. Tonight he only combed it out, plaited and bound it, or by morning it would be one great knot and tangle.

  Clean, warm, and naked, he lay on the bed. It was a broader bed than he had had in Three Birds, a woman’s bed, with room for the man she chose and for her own comfort. Its coverlet was richly woven but worn, as it had come to Catin from an elder sister. Or perhaps, he thought, her Mother.

  He had meant to keep himself awake until she came, but his body betrayed him. He roused, perhaps, as she slid into the bed beside him, but the memory did not linger. Another thing drove it out.

  Blood and fire. A roaring as of wind, and a sound like thunder, that broke into shards, and those shards were the sounds of hooves on earth. Horses, horses in multitudes, tossing manes, pounding hooves, bodies jostling as they swept onward. The light on them was blood-red: sunset light. Already the east was dark. And still they came, horses beyond number, streaming out of the night.

  Yet he was not afraid. The fear that had ridden his dreams before was gone. In this one he stood on a high place, and the young horse stood beside him. Its presence made him strong.

  That was the secret. That was the thing for which he had come to this place. Not only the horse. The strength that the horse carried. If his mind could encompass it, if he could understand it—he could mount a defense against this thing that came upon them. He, and every one of the Lady’s people who could learn not to fear the horse.

  Even in his dream he knew the difficulty of that. Catin was the proof: stubborn in her terror, persistent in her refusal to cast it down. If he could make her strong, the rest would follow.

  The Lady never asked for easy things. He laughed in his sleep, since if he did not laugh he would cry; and that would do him no good at all.

  III: THE SUNSET ROAD

  15

  Sarama rode away from her brother and his companions, toward the sun’s setting. It was morning still; her shadow rode ahead of her, laying down the path. She did not look back. The Mare was fresh and eager. Even the packhorse danced a little under his burden.

  She was no stranger to long journeys. She had traveled the steppe since she was a child, in service to the Old Woman and to Horse Goddess. She set a pace that would not tax the packhorse unduly, but swift enough that by sunset of that first day she was far out of sight of the place where her brother had met her.

  She camped in a place that she knew, a hollow rich with new grass. A circle of stones marked a firepit, for the place was well known to hunters and walkers abroad.

  Such camping places traced a web of roads and hunting-runs across the steppe. They marked the nearness of water, or a place of truce between two tribes, or a resting place on the path of the wild herds.

  In this one was a spring welling up from beneath a rock, and a warren of rabbits that yielded a sacrifice for Sarama’s pot. She ate to repletion and slept well under a vault of stars. Far away she heard the calling of wolves, but none came near. She lay safe in the goddess’ hand.

  oOo

  This was White Horse country in a year when no wars raged. She had cause to hope that none would begin, not after a mild winter. The grass was thick and green, the streams and rivers running high yet no longer in flood. The hunting was good: herds of deer and antelope with fine crops of young, rabbits springing underfoot, birds flocking till they darkened the sky. She hardly needed pause to hunt for the pot. The gods’ blessing lay on the earth.

  While that was so, the tribes would share the steppe in peace. There was grazing for all their herds, and hunting enough to occupy their young men who might otherwise begin to think of raiding.

  Nonetheless a woman alone was prey. Sarama did not creep and hide like a rabbit making its way through a wolfpack. Neither did she ride the ridges, or pursue the tracks of hunters or herdsmen. She cherished her solitude. The wind’s song bore her company. Sun by day, stars and moon at night kept watch over her.

  Thrice she slipped round camps of the tribes. Red Stallion and Dun Cow looked for kingship to the White Horse. Black River tribe had long been a rival of the White Horse; its young men raided White Horse country in fiercer seasons. They were much given to stealing women and mares.

  Even in this rich spring they would look on Sarama and the Mare as ripe fruit fallen into their laps. She took great care to conceal her traces, slipping through their lands like a wind through the grass.

  She gave due thanks to the goddess for keeping her safe, and so again each morning and evening, as she passed unmarked into the west. The steppe rolled under the Mare’s feet, changeless and yet endlessly, subtly different. The color and flavor of the grass, the flowers that hid in it, the earth and stones beneath it, changed in ways that she had learned to see. Thus she knew when she had come to Red Sand country, and when she left it for the Tall Grass: grass that waved and rustled above her knees as she rode the Mare, and nigh engulfed the smaller pack-pony.

  This was country she had not traveled in, that she knew only from tales that she had heard. She had to hunt now for water and for camping places, trusting in her craft and in the noses of her horses. They could always find water. It was her part to keep them more or less on the westward way.

  oOo

  For all her craft and art and her trust in the goddess, still one day her vigilance failed her. She had known that she was on the track of a hunting party, but had seen where the herd it pursued had veered aside from an outcropping of stone. The hunters had followed it, hot on the chase. It was still some distance ahead of them; therefore when she came to the remnants of the hunters’ camp, she had no fear that they would come back to it.

  It was well before sunset still, but late enough in the day that she chose to stop rather than go on. There was grazing in plenty—the hunters had not paused overlong, nor suffered their horses to strip the hillside of grass. Sarama hobbled the pony and turned the Mare loose and bade them take their ease, and built a fire of dried dung that she found near the firepit.

  Earlier in the day she had shot an antelope, cleaned it and skinned it and wrapped it in its hide to roast for her dinner. All of it that she did not eat tonight would dry and smoke over the fire, and feed her for days thereafter. With herbs and cresses that she had found by a little river, it made a feast, the best that she had had since she left her brother’s camp.

  She had the habit of watchfulness, but this day she was at ease. It was, she calculated, another half-moon’s journey to the wood that rimmed the world. She had traveled swiftly, without hindrance even from the weather; when it had rained, she had gone on, undaunted by a little wet.

  She lay by the fire while her dinner cooked, contemplating the sky. Rain again tomorrow, she thought. Maybe she would linger here, rest, let the packhorse graze and restore its strength. It was looking a little ribby.

  Rather to her surprise, she fell asleep. Some last remnant of sense pricked at her to rouse, to mount a better guard—at least to call in the Mare and bid her stand watch. But sleep came on too swift.

  oOo

  Sarama woke abruptly. It was still daylight; still some time indeed from sunset. The place in which she lay was quiet—too quiet. No wind blew. Nothing stirred the grasses.

  The sound when it came was thunderous after the silence, and yet the
part of her that measured such things knew it was soft, barely to be heard: the shift of a foot on cleared ground.

  Her skin counted them before the rest of her woke to awareness. There were a dozen, perhaps more. A dozen young men afoot, standing in a circle, staring at her as she lay like a child in its mother’s tent.

  As if her awareness gave them leave to move, to breathe, to be audibly and visibly present, they roused to the myriad small sounds of men gathered together. Feet shifted, weapons clattered, someone coughed. Farther off, a horse snorted. She should have heard those coming—must have, in her sleep; but she had been too great a fool to rouse for it.

  She had not, yet, opened her eyes or stirred. She ventured a slit of sight under her lashes. A pair of legs rose next to her, booted and leather-trousered. By the embroidered loin-covering and the broad tooled belt she knew it for a man, though of a tribe she had not seen before—unless the devices on covering and belt were his alone.

  No: they all had some form of the same symbols, a burgeoning of cloud, a slash of rain, a creature that must be either wolf or dog. Not all were as rich or as elaborate as that which she had seen first. He had splendid embroideries on his loincloth and leggings, much tooling on boots and belt, and a shirt so fine he might have worn it to a festival.

  He was a handsome creature, too, even without the pretty clothes: a big man even if he had not been looming against the sky, broad-shouldered, with hair as yellow as sunlight, and a thick, curling red beard. If his beauty had a flaw, it was that his hair had thinned somewhat at the temples. But that was little to the whole of him.

  She pretended to wake slowly, with much blinking and yawning, as much like a child or a harmless creature as she could manage. That was not as easy as it might have been, what with the knives she wore at her belt, and the bow in its case near the fire. But maybe these strangers had not seen that. It was hidden, somewhat, by the bulk of her pack.

  The stranger-chieftain watched her with the dawn of a grin. Any hope she might have had that he would think her a boy on stallion-hunt vanished as he said, “Good evening, beautiful lady. Your man has gone away and left you. That’s a poor protector he is, and it so close to sundown, too.”

  Sarama bit back the first retort that came into her head. They were poor trackers indeed, if they could not see that she had come here alone.

  She was an idiot if she let them know that. Let them think her man had gone off hunting—then they would be wary of his return, and be less inclined to trouble her.

  She sat up therefore and stretched, which was perhaps a mistake: eyes widened, tongues licked lips. She had never thought herself particularly good to look at. Certainly she had little by way of breast and hip, and no softness; she was all bones and angles.

  She was still a woman, and that, so far out on the steppe, was a great rarity. She rose carefully. No one moved to hinder her. Two of the strangers, she saw with a flare of temper, had crouched by the fire and were hacking off a collop from her antelope. “Good!” one said with a grin and a leer.

  As if that had been a signal, the rest sauntered over to share the feast. Their chieftain made no effort to stop them.

  Sarama’s anger carried her straight through them, elbowing them aside, kicking the laggards, making a weapon of their openmouthed surprise. The last one, the one who had tasted first, she heaved up by the scruff of the neck and dispatched with a swift kick to the seat of his trousers.

  She planted her feet in the space that he had left, set fists on hips, and glared at the lot of them. “This is my dinner. If you hunger for a share of it, ask. Were you raised in a wolves’ den? Where are your manners?”

  She had taken them completely off guard. The lesser ones shuffled and muttered. Their chieftain wavered transparently between wrath and laughter. By good fortune and the goddess’ will, he settled on the latter. He threw back his great golden-maned head and roared.

  The others followed suit, some hesitantly, some faintly—but they were all their prince’s men. He strode through them still laughing, swept a bow as if she had been a king or a king’s son, and said with elaborate courtesy, “Lady of the hearth, great queen of the steppe, if your generosity can spare a traveller’s portion, we would be glad of it.”

  “Your hunt fared ill?” she asked him. That was not courteous, but she was in no mood to indulge his fancy.

  His eyes flickered. She was put in mind again of the horses hidden away out of sight—and, no doubt, the quarry that they carried. He had seen that this place was occupied, had marked the lone woman, and come to prey on her.

  Wisdom would have put her to flight while he was still off guard. She would lose provisions, bow and arrows, blanket—but she would have the Mare and the pack-pony, and she could hunt for what else she needed.

  Unless the horses had been captured.

  She would have known. And he would not have thought that she had a companion.

  But she was not wise. She was angry. This was her camp, her antelope, her rest that these strangers had disrupted. Let them find their own camp and cook their own dinner.

  Her smile made the chieftain flinch. She did not pause to wonder why. “That was a fine herd of deer you were tracking. Did they escape? My brother would have brought home half a dozen, enough to feed the tribe. He’s a great hunter, my brother is. He killed a lion once, because he’d tired of lesser sport.”

  The chieftain flushed. Sarama had told no lies. Agni was indeed as she had said; though he would have growled at her for saying it so baldly. Sarama had never learned the fine art of the vaunt.

  Still it was enough, perhaps, to shame this yellow-haired prince. If he thought that it was her brother out on the steppe, hunting new prey while his sister roasted the old, then so much the better.

  “Suppose,” Sarama said, “that you bring one of those fat bucks, and such bread and sweetness as you may have, and we feast together. Have you kumiss? Or honey mead? My brother loves the honey mead—though he’s grown somewhat fonder of that thing called wine. You know wine, yes?”

  “Wine comes from the west,” one of the lesser strangers said. “She talks like an easterner. What do easterners know of wine?”

  Sarama forbore to upbraid him for speaking of her as if she had not been there. Men did that in the tribes. These did not know who or what she was—nor, quite yet, did she intend to tell them. If they could not see Horse Goddess’ hand on her, so much the worse for them.

  She answered him therefore, as sweetly as she knew how. “We know what wanderers and traders bring, and what our king takes in tribute in the gathering of tribes. My brother is very fond of western wine.”

  “We have none of that,” the chieftain said, and perhaps his regret was genuine; perhaps he told the truth. “Mead we have. Rodri! Maelgan! Go, fetch the horses. We’ll feast here with this stranger, and with her brother when he comes back.”

  The two whom he had commanded wheeled and leaped into a run. The tightness in Sarama’s back relaxed the merest fraction. She was not at ease—not in the least. But she had passed a test of sorts. They had declared a truce. For a little while. Until the horses were brought, and indeed they were laden with fruits of the hunt.

  Men set to work skinning and cleaning the kill. Others tended the horses, built a fire, made camp as the sun sank low.

  Sarama sat beside her own fire, close by her pack and the shadow-hidden bow. The chieftain settled near her with an air of one who never thinks to ask another’s leave. She wondered if he was indeed a king, or a chieftain of this Stormwolf tribe; or whether, at home among the tents, he bent his head to another, older chieftain. He did not look like one who had ever bent his head to any man.

  He was protection, of a sort. None of the others would trouble her while he sat near her. She settled herself more comfortably, back against her pack, hand resting on the grass near the hidden bow.

  oOo

  The chieftain’s name was Gauan. It was an odd name in his western burr, of which she heard a great deal as t
he camp took shape around them. Gauan was a talking man. He loved the sound of his own voice.

  It spared her the effort of entertaining him. Every question that he asked of her, he answered for himself, without pause to let her speak. She had no need to lie, then, or turn her words in ways that concealed the truth.

  She was traveling with her brother, he had decided, on some errand of dubious significance—hunting wine, he said laughing, or chasing the horizon. Or they were exiled from their tribe; sinners against the king, condemned for some infraction that would seem small in the eyes of a stranger. “Did you step in his shadow? Laugh at the wart on his nose? Offend him by being children of an elder wife?”

  That last was close enough to the truth, if the king had been Yama, that Sarama let her eyes widen a fraction. He took it as she had hoped, for the ghost of a nod.

  “So!” he said in satisfaction. “Children of an elder wife are a great inconvenience if one would be king. So your brother is still a boy, then? Still too young to contest his right?”

  Again Sarama implied without speaking.

  “Ah! Not so young then. But young enough. Not won his stallion yet? That’s a pity. He’ll not likely find one here. All the herds run northward, this time of year. There’s one—it grazes in Raindance lands—its colts are strong and not too willful. But they go up around the Lake of Reeds and stay there summerlong.”

  “Is that a long way from here?” Sarama asked in what was, for once, space to speak.

  He blinked at her, as if the sound of her voice had startled him. Nonetheless he answered her willingly enough. “Nine days’ journey,” he said, “if the weather holds fair. Longer if it rains. The Lake of Reeds grows then.”

  “Maybe,” said Sarama, “we should go there.”