by Judith Tarr
Men did not strut like warriors here, nor did women creep softly in veils. Children were much the same as they were in the tribes, naked most of them, playing noisily in packs and running hither and yon.
The girlchildren were noisier, here where no one warned them to be modest. The boys were not permitted such freedom.
Agni heard one bold manchild let out a blood-curdling whoop. It cut off abruptly at the snap of a word from a man who sat on a doorstep.
He was a great bull of a man with a wonderful curly beard and a deep drumroll of a voice. Among the tribes he would have been a notable warrior. Here it seemed he was relegated to the care of children.
He greeted the Mother with an inclination of the head, and Agni with a flat stare. The Mother took little notice of him. Agni followed suit, as a king should. He felt the dark eyes on him for as long as he was in sight.
oOo
They went a little farther, to a house shaded by the spreading branches of a tree. Tilia was in it, and Sarama, sitting with a handful of young women, making arrows as women in the tribes would make coats for their men.
Agni’s coming wrought a great silence. The Mother strode through it as if it had been a field of tall grass, bore Agni with her and sat in a place that opened before her. King’s art, that, and splendidly done.
She made no particular move, but Sarama came and sat at her feet, a little clumsy with the weight of the child. The Mother spoke to her, words that again Agni almost understood. Sarama set them in his own language—in hers, if she would remember it. “Tell us what you came to tell.”
Agni kept his eyes on the Mother, but he was keenly aware of the other eyes on him, and one pair in particular, regarding him steadily. He did not flatter himself that she took any pleasure in the sight of him.
He would have much preferred to speak to the Mother alone. But if she wished it to be as it was, then so be it. He said what he had to say, without the flourishes of words that would have softened it for a tribesman. “I’ve come to ask for your daughter.”
Sarama’s brows went up at that, but she spoke words that, as near as Agni could tell, were the right ones. The Mother responded only a lithe less briefly. “Really? Which daughter? And why?”
“Your eldest daughter,” Agni answered, “to be my wife.”
“Wife,” said the Mother, using the word Agni had used, as Sarama had also. There was no such word in her language, it seemed. “That is—a kind of servant, yes?”
Sarama was choosing not to explain. She left that burden on Agni. “It is a woman who shares a man’s bed, bears his sons, looks after his tent.”
“Ah,” said the Mother. “Here, a man does those things, except for the bearing of children; but he may raise such of those as a woman has. Is that what you would call him, then? A wife?”
“A wife is a woman,” Agni said. “A man is her lord—her husband. He protects her and shelters her from harm. She honors and obeys him.”
“I think,” said the Mother, “that a wife would be a rather distressing thing to be. And you are asking me to give you my heir for such an office?”
Here, thought Agni. Here was the heart of it. “Among my people,” he said carefully, “when a tribe is conquered by another, the conquering king takes the highest-ranked daughter of the fallen king, and makes her his wife. That seals the conquest and marks the joining of tribes.”
“He chooses the fallen king’s heir.” The Mother pondered that. “A man choosing a woman. That is against nature.”
“Not among my people,” Agni said. “Have you no such custom here?”
“We don’t conquer.” That was Tilia, breaking in in words that Agni could understand. The rest were in her own language, too fast almost for Sarama to follow, but follow Sarama did. She seemed to be taking a grim pleasure in it. “What makes you think I could possibly want to be your house-servant? I am the heir of Three Birds. I will be Mother here when my time comes. How do you dare to dream that you can choose me?"
“Because,” Agni answered sweetly, “I conquered you.”
“You were given what you thought to take.” Tilia had risen from her seat and come to face him, bristling. “I say no,” she said, again in the language of the tribes. “I say no, and no again. I will not choose you.”
“But I choose you,” Agni said. He turned again toward the Mother. “I am thinking,” he said, “that for whatever reason, and by your Lady’s will, you gave this city to me. I take it as the gift it is, but it has no love for me, and no inclination to do as I bid it. Your daughter now, your heir, is all that I am not. She can preserve the peace, speak to the people, guide me in ruling them as a wise king rules. Without her I’ll do what I must, but if that is to subdue this city by force, then that I’ll do. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” the Mother said. “You ask me to give a thing that is not mine to give, for a purpose that few will see.”
“And yet,” said Agni, “you do have a thing called marriage. The Great Marriage. Yes?”
He heard a sharp intake of breath. Tilia’s, perhaps. The Mother was very still. “That is for gods,” she said, “and the children of gods.”
“Kings among the tribes,” he said, “are reckoned children of the gods.”
“But not by us,” said the Mother.
“Now that I am here,” Agni said gently, “you will have to change your reckoning. There are new gods in your country. New men. New ways of seeing the world.”
She was silent. It was Tilia who said, “I don’t want to see the world differently. Why do you want me? What do you hope to gain by it?”
“Kingship in truth,” he answered promptly, once Sarama had given the words to him.
“It would serve us well to refuse,” Tilia said.
“No,” said Agni. “You don’t know what conquest is. Not really. You don’t want to know. If you do this, you’ll be safe from it.”
“We are already conquered,” Tilia said bitterly. “I don’t wish to be any more vanquished than I am.”
“And yet you will be, if you aren’t wise.”
“I don’t want to be wise,” said Tilia. “I don’t want to be a wife.” She put such a twist in the word that Agni could taste the sourness of it.
“It needn’t be so ill,” he said. “After all, what becomes of a woman in the Great Marriage?”
“The woman is Mother of mothers,” the Mother said before Tilia could answer.
“And the man?” Agni asked.
“He’s reckoned greatly wise, and the Lady favors him.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s great honor,” Tilia said. “He’s looked up to as if he were a woman.”
Sarama was enjoying this much too much. Agni leveled a glare on her. He said, “You mean he becomes an elder. He gains presence in the city.”
Tilia nodded—not gladly, but she did not appear to be one who savored a lie.
“So you see,” Agni said. “This gives me rank that I lacked before, and a voice among your people.”
“It profits you,” she said. “It does nothing for me.”
“It protects you from whatever comes after. More horsemen,” said Agni. “There’s no escaping that. The westward gate is open. They will come.”
“If they’re all like you, what does it matter? They’ll come, we’ll give in to them, they’ll fancy themselves great conquerors, and we’ll go on as we have before.”
“And every one who comes here,” said Agni, “supposing that the war doesn’t run right over you as it undertakes to destroy me, will come looking for you. It’s the custom. The conquering king takes the conquered king’s daughter. Not all or even most will stop to ask. They’ll simply take.”
“They can’t do that,” said Tilia.
“They can do whatever they have in mind to do. They are warriors. You are not.”
None of these people seemed able to understand such a thing, even though Sarama seemed in sympathy with her brother for once. She spoke on her own be
half, clear enough and simple enough for him to understand. “He’s telling the truth. I don’t like it, either, but that doesn’t change it.”
Tilia was set against them both. Nor would the Mother speak to her, to command her as a father would have done among the tribes. That seemed not to be the way here.
Agni rose. He had said as much as he could say. He bent his head to the Mother, and bent it somewhat less deeply toward Tilia. Then he left them.
71
Agni could be patient. He was a hunter. As he had hunted the antelope and the aurochs and the wild birds of the steppe, so he hunted Tilia.
He watched. He waited. He intruded on her consciousness only as much as it served his purpose.
He could not hunt her every moment of every day. He had his men to look after, furred and feathered game to hunt, and a country to learn the ruling of. It was different, ruling cities—particularly cities that had no desire to be ruled. But rule he must.
It was an urgency in him, greater as the summer waned. They must be made strong, must learn to face the truth, that he was only the beginning. Those who followed would be far less gentle than he had been.
It was difficult going. He rode round about the towns and cities near Three Birds, made himself known to their Mothers, showed his face in their streets and in their markets. As he had been elsewhere, he was given whatever he cast his eye on, as if that alone would make him go away.
He had no such intention. The Mother’s house of Three Birds, that at first had seemed so strange and so constricted within its rigid walls, grew familiar, and then almost pleasant. He was learning to hear the wind in the eaves, and to accept the silence of it in the walls.
His men in tents were less happy than he, constricted by the closeness of the cities here. Much riding about and much hunting, and the warming of the women toward them, kept them somewhat in hand.
oOo
“You could give them something to do.”
Agni had come back from settling a quarrel in the camp, something petty that had grown out of all bounds and stopped just short of bloodshed. He was looking for a little quiet, and maybe something pleasant to eat.
The one who brought it to him was Tilia herself, speaking words that he could understand.
He seized on that first. “You’ve been studying my language.”
She shrugged. “It amused me,” she said. The words were oddly formed, and sometimes she stumbled, but her meaning was clear enough. “Your people are not amused. They want to fight.”
“Fighting is what they do,” said Agni.
“All the time? They never stop?”
“Sometimes,” he said, “one would think so.” He did not know if she caught the subtleties of that. She seemed to be waiting for him to say more. “They have to be kept busy,” he said.
“I said that,” she said.
She had caught him as he was about to fling himself onto a heap of rugs and furs. He did it with a kind of recklessness, because she was watching him.
She sat more decorously, tucking up her feet, which was not a thing that a woman should do in the presence of a king; but she would not think of such a thing. Maybe a man did not do it here in the presence of a Mother’s heir.
“Tell me what you would have these men do,” he said.
She shrugged a little, not coyly, but not sullenly, either. “I would teach them things. Teach them to speak our language. Teach them to build a house, make a pot, weave on a loom.”
“Women’s work,” Agni said.
Her brows arched. She had an admirable way with them. “Certainly. And so much the more honorable than men’s work. Yes?”
No.
Agni did not say the word. Her glance stopped him.
“Think,” she said. “How people will think of them. If they act like—like people. Not like conquerors.”
“A little fear is a good thing,” Agni said.
“You are afraid of what they will do if they don’t—if—” She stopped, searching for the words.
He offered such of them as he could think of. “If they don’t have a fight to keep them busy?”
She nodded. “You are afraid. They kill then. Don’t they?”
“And other things,” Agni said.
“So,” she said. “Teach them to be busy.”
“And send them elsewhere?” Agni half said, half asked. “Send them to the towns to learn—and to be present, to hold or to defend as need commands. Yes. Yes, they’ve been pleased to do that. But don’t ask them to look after the children.”
“Oh, no,” she said with no irony that he could detect. “I would never ask them to do a thing as hard as that.”
Agni wondered if he should be insulted. Probably; but he did not think that she would care.
There was a silence. It stretched. She seemed comfortable in it. He was reminded, without her saying a word or making a move, that this had been her house before it was his. Maybe he was sitting in her accustomed place.
It was a magic of sorts, he supposed. A wishing laid on him, a subtlety of stillness.
He refused to be caught in it. The jar was where he remembered, half full of wine, and there was a loaf wrapped in a cloth, left from the morning. He brought them both to where he had been sitting; and because he had been raised to courtesy, he offered her a share of each.
She accepted them, which rather surprised him. None of these people had a gift for enmity.
Maybe they did not need one. This too-perfect comfort, this ease in his presence, began to gall him. She had no awe of him, and no fear either. Her glance was bold. She carried her head high. She was as forthright as a man, with a man’s confidence, and his certainty that the world would yield to his will.
And yet she was as womanly a woman as had ever sat across from him, sharing bread and strong sweet wine. The shape of her was as rich as this land she lived in. The woven fabric of her gown stretched tight across her full breasts and showed clearly the broad swell of her hips. She would bear strong sons and beautiful, with her great doe-eyes and her ripe red lips.
She had no coyness, no arts of allurement, yet she was utterly alluring. His hands twitched, yearning for the sweet curves of her body. Her skin would be as soft as sleep, her hair as sleek as water running over stones. She would meet him as he came to her, open herself to him, take him inside her . . .
He came to himself with a snap. Dream though he might, truth was a colder thing. She had come here, which might be encouraging, and might not. But she was far from asking him into her bed, still less agreeing to be his wife.
Still. She was here. They finished the bread together, and the last of the wine.
He had to go out again, and soon. There were people waiting, a quarrel to settle in the camp. But he lingered.
She showed no sign of leaving. It was he who had to rise, stretch, consider what to say.
In the end he said nothing, only nodded. She nodded back. Whatever that might mean.
oOo
Sarama refused to join in the hunt. “I will not force any woman to be a wife,” she said.
He had caught her well afield, both of them mounted, and the Mare in season: she teased Mitani shamelessly, and tried his patience with it.
Agni kept him in hand. To Sarama, who was making no such effort, he said, “I said nothing of force. I’ll win her, and win her fairly.”
“Then you’ll win her without me.”
“Why?” he demanded.
“Because,” she said, “I’ll not be party to the subjection of a friend.”
“Subjection? What makes you think I would ever—”
“Oh come,” she said. “You want to bend her to your will. She’ll never let you. Nor will I help you conquer her.”
Agni might have hit her if they had not been mounted, and if the Mare had not just then chosen to squeal and strike at Mitani for the great crime of walking beside her.
When they had untangled that, Agni’s temper had cooled not at all, but his urge to strike
had vanished somewhere amid the Mare’s eruption of temper. He spoke through gritted teeth. “Once you knew me. When did you forget what I am?”
“When you called yourself king of this country.”
“I’m still your brother.”
She nodded with no reluctance that he could see. “And I still won’t help you snare Tilia.”
“Then I’ll do it myself,” he said in a fine flare of temper. He wheeled his stallion about and sent him plunging back toward the city.
She let him go for a little distance. But when he had slowed, she was there, and the Mare flattening her ears and snaking her neck at Mitani. “Brother,” said Sarama, “give it up. You’ll find wives enough among the tribes, once they recognize you as a king among kings. You don’t need one of these women who know nothing of submission.”
“Women like you?” he asked. “Women like that?”
“Women who won’t be wives.”
“Then what are you to the Mother’s son?” Agni demanded of her.
“I chose him,” said Sarama.
“Ah,” said Agni, and let her make of that what she would.
She had given him something. Maybe she knew it; maybe she did not. There was a thing he had needed, that maybe now he had.
A man could not be a wife, and a king could not submit to a woman. Particularly if that king was Agni, with the memory of a night when he had tried to be like the men of this country. It soiled him still, that recollection.
Nevertheless a hunter could let the prey come to him. A horseman could convince the untried colt that he obeyed by his own will.
oOo
Agni set out to seduce this woman as he had seduced Mitani. He was there where she was, as much as he might be: fletching arrows or weaving cloth with the young women, dancing in front of the temple on a festival day, dining with the Mother of an evening.
He would happen past. He might pause, or he might not. He would let her see him.
He had heard that she liked a tall man and a man with a fine free stride. He had heard too that she fancied a sweet voice. He could sing when he was minded to; and maybe when she was nearby to listen.
