by Judith Tarr
A land where a woman could be king. A land that knew no war. It would be rich, and ripe for the taking.
It was all but in his hand. He could see it from Mitani’s back, limned in the snow: a vision of light, warmth, greenery. Winter would never be so harsh there, or its privations as terrible.
He was almost warm, thinking of it, looking out across the camp of what would be his army, as the snow closed in and covered it all. In the spring, he thought, they would go. They would sweep the western tribes before them. They would fall on the sunset countries and take them. And Agni would, after all, be a king.
II: THE LADY’S OWN
50
Sarama had thought herself with child in the autumn, but just as she was sure of it, her courses came and swept away whatever life had begun in her.
That was the Lady’s will and her doing. Sarama could accept that. But she could not stop grieving for the child who would never be.
She did not speak of it to anyone. Danu might have grieved with her; and she did not want him to do that. He was too well content to be in Three Birds again. He was happy, even in the thing that she made him do, the instruction in fighting and in the ways of war.
For his sake she kept her sorrow to herself. He was greatly preoccupied between the ruling of his Mother’s house and the barest raw beginning of a fighting force.
It was bare indeed, and as raw as Sarama had ever seen. These people looked on fighting as a thing that only animals did. Men—human creatures—settled their differences without blows or bloodshed. They could only with difficulty bring themselves to strike, and then without force; and if by chance a blow fell hard enough to sway an opponent, the one who had struck the blow was tearfully apologetic.
Yet as hunters they were admirably skilled. They might mourn the prey after it was dead, but they pursued it with implacable purpose and slew it both swiftly and cleanly. If they could learn to think as hunters, hunters of men, they might begin to have some defense against the war that was coming.
That winter was the gentlest Sarama had ever known. Except when she was traveling from Larchwood to Three Birds, she was warm, out of the wind, in comfort unless she chose otherwise. There was enough to eat, and a great plenty in the feasts of the dark of the year and of midwinter and, most wonderful of all, in the very early spring, when the snow began to melt and the rivers to run free again. They had their flocks and herds and a great store of the grain that they planted and encouraged to grow. Hunger was a thing that few of them knew.
In the spring her courses paused again. She did not hope or even think much on it, as if the thinking itself might cause the child to slip away. It almost frightened her, how much she wanted this child to live. Better not to turn her mind to it at all; to let the Lady work her will.
Every morning unless it rained or snowed, Sarama went to an open field just outside of the city. There gathered the ones whom Danu had chosen, who might make warriors. They were the hunters, the runners and messengers, the tenders of herds who had defended them well against wolves. Most knew the bow and had some skill with the spear. They would happily shoot arrows and cast spears from sunrise to sunset, but when it came to fighting hand to hand, they took to it badly.
Danu was no better at it than the rest. Sarama tried not to be angry with him, or to lose patience.
That was difficult. He could madden her with his stubbornness, hunch those big shoulders and lower those black brows and look more like a bull than ever.
He and the one they actually called the Bull—Kosti-the-Bull, his name was—would have been mighty warriors in the tribes. In the Lady’s country they were known for their prowess with women, or for their skill in keeping a Mother’s house in order. They were fast on their feet, powerful with the spear, could bend a longer, stronger bow than anyone else. And yet when set face to face with wooden swords, they turned into simpering idiots.
“I’ll hurt him,” Kosti said when Sarama urged him to strike harder.
“Not if he blocks the stroke,” she said for the hundredth time. “Now strike. Strike hard.”
He lifted his sword—lovely grip, beautiful balance—and delivered a love-pat that would have done justice to a slip of a girl. Sarama growled and snatched the sword out of Danu’s hand and leaped on Kosti, whirling the wooden blade, raining blows.
He dropped his own sword and covered his head with his hands and backed away, pure coward; except that cowards whimpered and wept, and he was simply defending himself and refusing, flatly refusing, to fight back.
“The horsemen will kill you!” she raged at him. “They’ll cut you to pieces. They won’t care if you won’t hit back. They’ll laugh, that’s all, and hew your head from your neck.”
Kosti lowered his head and said nothing.
She whirled on Danu. “Hold up your sword. Defend yourself. Now!”
He used his sword to protect his head, at least, though he would not strike, only parry.
Sarama flung down her blade in disgust. “Let’s only hope that you can fight them off with bows and spears; because if they come in any closer, you’ve lost the war.”
Danu, like Kosti, did not argue with her. Men never did here. She flung herself onto the Mare’s back and left them all to their practicing and to their complete inability to strike a blow in anger.
No one even slapped a child here. As far as she could tell, the children did as they pleased, but what they pleased to do was never anything reprehensible. People simply were not people in this place. They were something subtly and infuriatingly different.
oOo
Danu came to bed earlier than usual that night. Sarama was still undressing when he came in.
Even when she was utterly out of patience with him, the sight of him could make her heart beat hard. He could not seem to learn to strike back when someone struck at him, but he had learned easily and quickly to take her when she wanted to be taken. To come to her as he did now, take her in his arms, kiss her till she gasped.
He bent his head and teased her nipples with his tongue. She shivered and caught her breath. They were tender, a tenderness that was new, that made his touch almost too much to bear.
Just when she must cry out or push him away, he had mercy. He left her breasts and worked his way slowly down the curve of her belly, coaxing her to open her thighs. She arched her back against his bracing hands.
He lowered her to the bed with effortless strength, all quivering as she was, ready to shout or to rage at him if he did not finish it.
He raised himself over her. She locked legs about his middle and impaled herself on him. The size, the shape of him were exactly as they should be. Were made for her. Were hers, as she was his.
He tried always to stay awake for a while after, a courtesy of his people, and one that she had learned to value. She cradled his head on her breast, tangling fingers in his thick curling hair.
His own fingers wandered wickedly between her thighs, stroking just enough to keep the warmth alive. She gave herself up to it for a while, rocking with pleasure on pleasure.
But her mind was gnawing on a thing, and even his loving could not persuade it to let go. “It’s nearly spring,” she said. “By summer they’ll be here, if we’re seeing true, and if they really are coming.”
“They are coming,” he said.
“And none of you can fight,” she said. “You must be lacking something, some gift, something in the spirit.”
“Ill spirit,” he said. “That’s what we call a person who strikes another person with intent to harm. Ill spirit, demon, one whose face is turned away from the Lady.”
“It’s going to kill you,” she said.
“Maybe,” he said, “when the horsemen come, when they ride at us, we’ll forget. We’ll be as we are with wolves or the wild boar. We’ll be able to strike.”
“You had better pray for that,” said Sarama. “There’s no hope for you else.”
He sighed. “We do try, Sarama.”
“Surely,”
she said. “And you fail.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Never be sorry,” she said. “Just learn to fight.”
oOo
Danu might never be of any use as a swordsman, but one thing Sarama was determined that he should know.
She waited till a warm day of honest spring, just before the planting time. The snow was gone except from shaded hollows, and the rivers ran high and free. The first green had begun to spring on the hillsides.
Then when he had gone to the practice-field, with the colt following as he always did, Sarama rode the Mare to the field. No one remarked on that. She often did it; it would have been more worth noting if she had not.
But this time, instead of watching from the field’s edge for a while and then setting the Mare free to do as she pleased, Sarama rode the Mare to the part of the field in which the archers practiced their craft. Danu was stringing his heavy bow, making light work of it, with a glance at Sarama as she came between him and the sun.
“Leave that,” she said, “and come here.”
He was obedient as she had expected. But when she slid from the Mare’s back and said, “Mount,” he would not move.
“Mount,” she said again.
“No,” he said.
“Maybe you won’t fight,” she said, “but you will learn to ride. Now mount. Like so.” She showed him: clasp mane, leap, swing leg, and so astride. The Mare was patient, which was not always her way.
Danu glowered at them both. “What earthly use is there for me in learning to ride?”
“Every use in the world,” said Sarama from beside the Mare. She pointed with her chin toward the colt, who grazed nearby. He had grown in the winter, a little taller, much broader and deeper. He was as tall as the Mare now, and would be a larger horse altogether.
“Come another spring,” she said, “you’ll be riding him.”
“Oh, no,” said Danu. “No, I am not—”
“Among the tribes,” she said, “when a youth wishes to become a man, he goes out for a whole summer and seeks his stallion. When he finds the one who will be his, he captures it and tames it and rides it back in the full moon of autumn. And so is he reckoned a man among the horsemen.”
“I don’t want to be a man among the horsemen,” Danu said.
“Ah,” she said, “but some would say you already are—or will be once you ride this colt. He is your stallion. He looks to no one else, nor has any desire to. When he’s older and stronger, he’ll grieve if you won’t ride him. It’s what he was born to do.”
“You can ride him,” Danu said.
“No,” said Sarama. “I belong to the Mare. That is your colt.”
His face set. He was going to be stubborn. Sarama met his glare with one fully as baleful. “You’re afraid,” she said.
“I am not,” he said too quickly.
All, she thought: so he did have that kind of pride, after all. “You don’t want to look like a fool,” she said, “because I’ve been riding since before I could walk, and you’ve never done it. You don’t want the others to see how you fumble.”
“I do not!” he declared. And, wonder of wonders, he stepped up to the Mare and got a grip on her mane and managed, one way and another, to get a leg over her.
It was not graceful and it did not delight her, but she stood for it, by the Lady’s blessing.
He sat on her back with an expression almost of shock, as if he had done it without thinking at all, and could not imagine what to do next. Sarama let him think about it for a while, and grow accustomed to the feel of it: to be sitting so high, with a living body under him.
The Mare stamped at a fly. Danu gasped and clutched her mane.
“Relax,” Sarama said. “When she moves, flow with her. Now touch her with your leg, so. Yes. Don’t clutch! Flow. Let her walk. Let her carry you.”
She had never seen a grown man before who was not born to the saddle. It was faintly absurd, but she knew better than to smile.
He had a little talent for it, and more willingness than she might have expected, once he had been shamed into trying it. It was not like fighting. Fighting was altogether against his nature.
But riding the Mare—that, as she had seen and he seemed startled to discover, was a great joy and pleasure. To be carried by a willing creature, to consider that creature’s comfort, to flow with it, to be a part of it, to feel the wind in one’s hair, was a thing he could not have conceived of until he did it. She watched the smile break out, the grin of incredulous delight.
“Oh,” he said as the Mare walked sedately across the field. “Oh, this is wonderful.”
“Isn’t it?” said Sarama. “Now turn her. Touch her with your leg: yes, so. Ask with the rein. Think of turning.”
He did as she bade, and the Mare turned. And again; and again. And halted, too, when Sarama showed him how to ask, and started again. Over and over, till Sarama ended it—capriciously, he must have thought, for he frowned at her. But he was obedient.
He gasped as he slid to the ground. His knees buckled. He clutched at the Mare.
His look of astonishment was so pure and so profound that Sarama bit hard on laughter. “I never knew I had muscles there,” he said.
“It gets easier,” she said. “Walk, now. Stretch. Don’t stand still. You’ll stiffen.”
“You make it look so easy,” he said.
“I could ride before I could walk,” said Sarama. “Now walk.”
He walked. “What did you do, then, if you were too young to walk?”
“I crawled,” she said. She walked beside him as he limped back down the field, and the Mare on his other side, concerned for him. She had not meant him to hurt.
The archers and the spear-fighters, male and female, and even the few who tried to fight with the sword, all watched him in awe that must have gratified him. He had ridden the Mare. He had done a thing that none of their kind had ever done.
He would do it again and again, until he was master of it. Then, Sarama thought, if there was time before the war came, she would teach him to shoot that bow of his from horseback. And then, maybe, he would be a warrior after all.
51
Spring grew green and rich in the Lady’s country. Danu danced in the planting festival, and sowed his own seed in the furrow, with every other man whom the Lady called to the task.
Sarama had never seen fields tilled and sown; her people took what their gods gave, from the steppe and from the hunt, nor knew either planting or harvesting. She helped as she might, but she was as clumsy in that as Danu had been and still was on the Mare’s back.
He could not confess that he was glad. It was one thing he could do that she could not, one thing in which he had the advantage. It was not a thought that he would ever boast of, or be proud of, either.
She had, one way and another, become a power in the city. People reckoned that she must be a Mother. The Lady spoke to her through the moon-colored Mare; and she carried herself, conducted herself, as a Mother might. She was not aware of it, that Danu could tell. It was simply what she was.
She had not taught anyone else to ride the Mare. No one else asked, either. People were not terrified of the two horses here as they had been in Larchwood, but they stood in awe of them. Horses belonged to the Lady. Anyone who rode them must be hers, too.
Now when Danu went to the market, the men sitting in their alleyway between the stalls greeted him warmly enough, but with a hint of distance. He had grown away from them. He belonged to the woman from the east, and to the Lady.
That hurt, a little, even knowing that his closest friends from the days before had as little time to sit about and talk as Danu did. They were in the practice-field or waiting on the Mother, learning new duties for when the war came.
“If it ever comes,” said one of the grey uncles in the market, on the day when the boats came down the river. The traders had come back at last with all their wonderful things, shells and colored stones, painted pots, furs, dye- stuff
s for the weavers, nuggets of gold and bits of copper, all to trade for the fine weavings and the intricately painted pots of Three Birds.
The traders, who came from the south and the west, knew no rumor of horsemen or of a terrible thing called war. All was well in the world, they said, the cities rich, the people content. The omens were for a blessed summer and a good harvest.
Sarama had told Danu of a thing that people could do in war, the building of a wall to protect a shrine or a sacred place. Three Birds and the cities to the east of it were the wall of the Lady’s country, its protection against the horsemen. If they fell, that fair summer would open the road for the conquerors, and the harvest would feed them.
It hurt his head to think of people who would take and keep, and never share. But the ache grew less as time went on. He was hardening to the truth, to the harshness of Sarama’s world. Some might say that he was being corrupted.
Danu traded a bolt of his best weaving, the intricate and many-colored cloth for which Three Birds was famous, for an arm-ring of hammered gold. It was richer and more intricate than the one he always wore, incised with the Lady’s spirals, gleaming and beautiful.
As he ended the bargaining and handed over the bolt of cloth, Tilia appeared next to him, linked arms with him and smiled at the trader, and said to Danu, “How lovely! Is it for me?”
Danu gave her a look. He tucked the armlet into his pouch, thanked the trader courteously, and left her booth. Tilia followed perforce.
“She’ll like it,” his sister said when his silence showed no sign of breaking. “Is there an occasion? Are you celebrating?”
“Isn’t it enough that she is, and that she chose me?” Danu asked.
Tilia raised a brow. “Ah! Such wisdom. She should give you a gift. I’ll tell her how it is here.”
“You will not,” Danu said. “In her tribe, men give the gifts. She says I’d be reckoned a man there, because of the colt. Even if I do have no aptitude for fighting hand to hand.”
