by Judith Tarr
Muti’s eyebrows went up, but he did not argue when Agni led him in under the tent-wall, creeping in the back as Agni had been used to creep in to visit Rudira.
No, not that thought. Agni knocked it down and set his foot on it.
He emerged into the lamplit dimness of the tent. It was close quarters with Muti and the boy, but Agni was not minded just yet to show him to the elders round the fire.
The boy was as interested in the tent as in everything else, and as fearless. He sat where Agni pointed, tucked up his feet and smiled as if he were a guest in a friend’s tent.
“Now,” Agni said to Muti, “tell me where you found him.”
Muti was never as comfortable as the boy. He squatted on his heels as if ready to leap and bolt, and said, “He was herding goats on a hill half a day’s walk from here. We captured him and brought him back.”
“Without resistance?” Agni asked.
“None at all,” said Muti. “He walked right up to us. We were on foot, there. When he saw our horses he seemed taken aback, but he didn’t give us any trouble.”
“No war,” Agni murmured. “No fear.” He had never imagined that one might lead to the other. If men did not kill men, if there were no warriors, no raids, no tribe doing battle with tribe, then what would any man be afraid of?
Wolves, maybe. Lions. Winter. But not other men, even strangers.
Not to be afraid of strangers. It was like a story from the gods’ country, from a place where there was no suffering.
And Agni might be maundering, building whole worlds on a mind too simple to know fear. He brought himself back into the world, saw that the boy was fed—venison and mead he seemed to know, and find good.
He was not trying to escape, did not try to follow Muti when Muti went to fetch food and drink for him. He seemed as content as a tamed puppy or a hand-raised foal to stay where he was put.
Muti’s brother did not come back. Agni felt sleep creeping up on him. The boy was sitting on his sleeping-roll. He sighed, shrugged, wrapped his arms about himself and leaned lightly against the tent-wall and let himself drift as he did in the saddle, upright but dreaming.
oOo
When he opened his eyes again, people were whispering. He blinked, and squinted. Light dazzled him: morning light through the flap of the tent, and a shadow athwart it. Muti’s voice said, “He’s asleep. Can you wait?”
“I’m awake,” Agni said. As his eyes grew used to the light, he saw the boy curled on the bed, sound asleep, and Muti with his brother, staring, apparently struck dumb.
“Well?” Agni asked. “Did you find someone who understands this language?”
Muti’s brother nodded, but doubtfully. “Lord Tillu says he understands the trader’s argot. He’s not sure if it will do, but he’s willing to try.”
“I hope you told him to let me be the judge of that,” Agni said.
Muti’s brother rolled his eyes. “That I did, though he didn’t take it very kindly. He’s outside. Shall I send him in?”
“No,” Agni said. “I’ll come out. Bid him wait. And be polite.”
Muti’s brother looked a little affronted, but he went to do Agni’s bidding.
Most interesting, Agni thought. He had expected some tribesman or hanger-on, or maybe a stray woodman. That Tillu should offer himself for this office—he was ambitious, was Tillu. Which might not be altogether a bad thing.
Agni levered himself to his feet. He was stiff with sitting nightlong.
He stretched every muscle, groaning a little, catching the boy’s glance in the middle of it. The boy was awake and upright, and his eyes were wide.
Agni began to wonder, out of nowhere in particular, whether this was a boy at all. Moonlight softened a face, but daylight sharpened all its edges. This one seemed to have none. It was a smooth rounded face, pretty in its way, if one inclined toward blunt nose and full cheeks.
A girl alone, herding goats within reach of an army?
But if they knew no war, then maybe they knew no bands of marauders. No sudden attacks. No rape. A girl might be safe with her goats in the hillside, at least from men. Wolves and lions would not care what or who she was.
Muti and his brother were waiting. With a last glance at the boy—girl?— Agni stepped out into the full light of morning.
His campfire was ashes, all but a few embers over which Taditi crouched, coaxing them into flame. Men were out and about, but Agni saw no elders. They would all be sleeping off the mead and the kumiss.
Tillu was sitting outside by the campfire, eating a bowl of something savory. It proved, when Taditi handed Agni a bowl of it, to be a stew of dried meat and herbs. Agni settled in comfort beside the western tribesman, and they ate for a while in amity.
But the foreigner was waiting inside the tent, and he—or more likely she—weighed heavy on Agni’s mind. He said rather abruptly, “You think you speak the language of this country.”
Tillu did not appear to take offense. He licked the bowl clean and laid it politely down in front of him, and bowed to Taditi.
Taditi sniffed and took the bowl away. Still with glinting eyes as if she greatly amused him, he said to Agni, “I think I may have a few words, if the tongue the traders speak is like the one they speak here.”
“There is that,” Agni said. “Well then; you’re welcome to try. Come into the tent.”
Tillu nodded amiably and rose, and at Agni’s gesture preceded him back into the dimness.
The girl—Agni was sure of that, entering behind Tillu, seeing the face anew—was sitting where he had left her, head cocked, alert but quiet. Her eyes fixed on Tillu in a kind of panicked fascination. Agni hissed at himself for not thinking of what a woman might make of that face with its great hideous scar.
She did not shriek, at least, or cower, though her glance leaped to Agni and held, as if she took some pleasure or some comfort in his presence. If nothing else, she would find him prettier to look at.
“Tell her,” Agni said, keeping his voice gentle lest he alarm her further, “that we are men of the east, and we’ve heard of her country, and have come to see it for ourselves.”
Tillu frowned as if in concentration. Then he spoke a few words, haltingly.
The girl appeared to listen, but Agni could not tell if she understood. Nor did she answer.
Tillu spoke again. This time she must have made some sense of it: her lips twitched. She spoke briefly, with an intonation that indicated she was speaking to a child, and not an intelligent one, either.
Tillu’s brows went up. “She says,” the man said, “that now you see this country, you can go home.”
Agni laughed, more with relief than with mirth; because after all here was someone who could speak to this stranger. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Yet. Ask her if her people are near, and would they be hospitable to guests? We’ve need of food and such.”
The glance Tillu shot him asked if he had gone out of his mind. Was this not a war?
Agni met it with a bland stare. Tillu sighed but chose visibly not to argue.
He spoke, this time with more confidence and fewer hesitations. The girl answered. He said, “She says her people are where her people are, and you’re welcome to visit their markets.”
“I would like that,” Agni said. “She’ll guide us. Tell her.”
She was duly told; and she nodded, as an innocent will, wide-eyed, trusting him.
Agni smiled at her. She smiled back. She was very pretty, once one grew accustomed to round cheeks and round eyes. She was not shy, either, nor modest; she carried herself like a boy.
“Do you have a name?” Agni asked her through Tillu.
She nodded broadly, with a flicker of laughter. “Maya,” she said.
“Maya,” Agni said. She favored him with a broad smile.
“We’ll go,” he said, “to your market.”
“Now?” Tillu asked on his own account, with a touch of incredulity.
“Now,” said Agni. “When bett
er?”
Tillu shrugged as if say that it was Agni’s foolishness and he had no part of it, and spoke to the girl.
She looked not at all dismayed. Her glance at Agni was bright and bold. She slipped past him out of the tent, with a word that must have meant “Come.”
57
Led by the girl Maya, Agni set out for the gathering place of her people—the city, as he had been told it was called. Rather a mob followed them. Tillu of course, because he was Agni’s voice in this place. Patir and Rahim were not to be left behind, nor was Gauan, and they brought hangers-on of various sorts.
There must have been three dozen of them, all mounted, for what man would be caught afoot when he could ride? And of course they were all armed, for who went abroad without sword and spear, bow and shield?
They were a warlike company, then, and none too sedate. Maya was quick on her feet, but once they had left the camp behind, Agni halted and caught her eye, and beckoned.
She blanched, maybe, but she was a bold creature. She took his hand and made herself light and scrambled up behind him.
Mitani was wary but quiet. She had the wits to sit still and not cling too tightly, though Agni could feel the tension in her. It made her quiver just perceptibly, and made Mitani switch his tail and snort.
Mitani carried her nonetheless, and she relaxed slowly. She pointed the way when Agni hesitated, otherwise leaned lightly against him.
He was aware of her through the coat that she wore, and his own leather tunic: the shape of her body, the small round breasts pressing into his back. As they rode onward, her hand began to work mischief. It crept under his tunic, found the string that bound his trousers, tugged it loose and darted beneath.
He clapped his hand over hers. Her laughter bubbled against his back.
Even Rudira had never been so bold—no, not even when they were private together. And he was riding at the head of a middling large war-party, with every eye on him, and laughter enough if any knew what this impudent child was doing.
Agni extricated her hand from his clothes and pressed it firmly against his middle, where the belt made a wall between her mischief and his skin.
She sighed gustily and appeared to surrender, but Agni was twinborn with Sarama. He had learned never to trust a woman with a mind of her own.
To be sure, as they rode up a long hill, she began to nibble his ear. Little gusts of laughter tickled him between the sharp nips, a mix of pain and pleasure that made him want to howl. He must not think of what she was making him think of. He must not.
He had been long seasons without a woman. None had offered herself among the tribes, nor had he been offered any. The consolation that some took on long marches or in war, to turn to one another, was not one that Agni had ever found pleasing.
Here was a woman pressed close to him for all to see, teasing and tormenting him with hands that were far too clever for so young a child as she seemed to be. Denied the swift road to his manly parts, she took the long way round across his back and shoulders. She took it long indeed, and she took it slow, and she found the spot along his spine that made him shiver, and the one across his ribs that made him twitch and curse.
She was mad, he decided. What sane woman would do such a thing in front of three dozen men? And laugh while she did it?
When they reached the hill’s summit, high up against the sky, she had a little mercy. She slid from Mitani’s back to stand in the high grass and spread her arms to all before her.
“My country,” Tillu said for her. “My people.”
Agni had already guessed that was what she had said. If he turned and looked behind, he saw a rolling green country, empty of habitation, lapping up against the forest’s knees. But in front of him down the long slope was pure strangeness: a skein of what looked like camps, but camps grown vast and set in wood and stone. Each wore a girdle of patchwork green and brown, rings of fields where the fruits of the earth must grow at man’s will and not simply at the will of the gods.
Or so Tillu said. Agni could see no pressing reason to disbelieve him.
It was a great marvel and a strangeness, and more than strange. There were so many of these cities. They strung like beads along the river, and danced in their circles on the hilltops and in the wooded valleys.
Things moved on the river: boats, Tillu said, using a word that Maya had spoken. They were built of wood and of hollowed trees, some with tents pitched on them, and people sat or stood in them and drove them with poles and oars—another word for which Agni had had no meaning before, nor had much now; but when he came to the river he would see. And there were people on roads between the cities, too, on paths beaten down by the passage of countless feet. More people than Agni had known were in the world.
“This is only an outland country,” Maya said through Tillu. “There are more people west of here, and much greater cities.”
Agni sucked in his breath and did his best not to look amazed. She might be lying, to strike him with fear and awe. But he thought not. She was too calm about it, not furtive at all as people were when they lied.
He straightened his shoulders and said to Maya, “Come.”
She took his outstretched hand and climbed up behind him, more adeptly this time, and with less stiffening and clutching. Agni, who wanted to go stiff and clutch at something familiar himself, sent Mitani down the hill. The others followed, some slowly, some with great insouciance, refusing to be astonished by this broad new world.
oOo
The nearest of the cities was Maya’s city. There were, she said with gestures, ten tens of people in it—very few, her manner professed, but she was proud of it nonetheless. It was built in circles, though the houses were square-sided, all facing inward toward one that was higher and more ornate than the others. It seemed to be a king’s house, covered with signs that must be sacred, with carved beams and bright paint.
They rode through the fields that were plowed in curves and circles, sprouting with green, precise and ordered. People were doing things in the fields, digging or plucking or rooting in the earth beneath the young grain. They all came erect as the tribesmen rode past, wide eyes, pale faces, a murmur that followed them.
Agni had seen goats in outlying fields, and cattle and sheep. But no horses. Theirs were the only ones: the first, maybe, that had walked in this part of the world.
oOo
People were standing just past the first of the houses, at ease but alert, like guards. Yet they were unarmed. In all their rich and beautifully colored clothing, he saw not one knife or spear, no bow, no weapon of war.
Maybe their bodies were their weapons. They were all women, dark as Maya was dark, and most were plump, and one or two were grossly fat. As fat as any tribesman could dream of being in a year of impossible richness, when there was nothing to do but lie about and sip from the honeycomb.
Then Agni truly believed that the traveler’s tales were true. No one dressed so, stood so, looked so, who lived as tribesmen lived. These people were rich. They lived soft and without fear.
And women ruled them. Agni saw men in the fields, but they hung back. Women came forward, bolder than Agni had ever seen, staring openly and murmuring to one another. None quite dared come close enough to touch the horses, but while Agni gaped like a fool at the city and its people, they had closed in all about. The only way open was ahead, toward what must be the elders.
Strange to think of them so, all these women, standing monumental and calm. Something about them made Agni think of Taditi, and of the Old Woman.
One was not the tallest, but she was the most monumental, vast breasts, vast thighs, face as vastly calm as the face of the moon. She stood among the others, but something in the way she stood, in the way the others stood about her, made her their center.
Agni swung his leg over Mitani’s neck and slid lightly to the ground. The women watched in silence. He beckoned. “Tillu. Talk to them if you will. Tell them that we come to trade with them.”
Ti
llu nodded, and spoke to them. The one of great presence replied in a deep sweet voice. Tillu said, “She says that you are welcome, and that you are her guests in this city. She’s called the Mother. That’s her name and her title. You’re to call her that.”
“My mother is dead,” Agni said—and where that came from, he could not have told.
Nor had he meant Tillu to render it into that other language, but it was done before Agni could stop it. The Mother stepped forward and laid her hand on Agni’s arm.
“She says,” said Tillu, “that she is sorry, and that you should not be. All mothers are one Mother. They are all the Goddess.”
“The Old Woman said that,” Agni said. He shook himself. “Tell her we thank her, and we’ll visit the market, if she gives us leave.”
She inclined her head as if she had been a king. Then in her own person she led him into her city.
oOo
“I hope you’re being clever,” Patir said in Agni’s ear as they stood in a market that would have been a great wonder in a gathering of tribes. And this was a city reckoned no larger than a clan-gathering on the steppe.
Agni raised a brow at Patir. “You think we should fall on them with fire and slaughter?”
“I think these people know nothing of war,” Patir said.
“So I see,” Agni said. “I also see that they are very rich, and very complacent. Wouldn’t you choose to conquer without bloodshed, if you could?”
“Easy pickings,” Patir said. He sifted through a bowl of bright stones, picking out the brightest, turning them to make them sparkle. “It’s too easy.”
“These people have never known war,” Agni said. “Look at them. We’re strangers; we’re armed. We rode in on horses. And they smile at us and offer us whatever they have.”
“They’re buying us off,” said Patir. “They’re cowards.”
“They’re innocents,” Agni said.
“Is there a difference?” Patir let the stones fall back into the bowl and went on down the line of stalls to a trader in woven cloth.
