by Judith Tarr
In this rich country, vexed by little more than the cold, Agni had begun to consider the dangers of soft living. He had his men out in all weathers, riding, shooting, mock-fighting; and the Lady’s people, too, though most of those did their fighting on foot.
He had spared Sarama a score of horses with which she had, until she grew too big with the child, been teaching the pick of her troops to ride. When Sarama found herself confined to gentler pursuits, Taditi had surprised everyone by announcing that she would take the Lady’s riders in hand. She had done it, too, and was teaching the best of those the beginnings of mounted archery—an art that Agni had not even known she knew.
She was in the camp just now, tending the fire in front of the tent that was Agni’s when he stayed among the tribesmen. She had a brace of fat rabbits and a yearling deer turning on spits, and a pot of something fragrant with herbs.
Agni squatted beside her, watching her. She greeted him with a nod and a grunt, but kept most of her attention for the pot, to which she was adding pieces of this and bits of that. She looked content—as much as Taditi ever could. The sourness that had been in her for a while, the sense that she endured her days here rather than enjoyed them, was gone. Had been gone, now he thought of it, since she took to training the riders.
Why, he thought: Taditi needed somewhat to do. She had been living with Agni in the Mother’s former house, but there was nothing for her to do there. First the menservants and then, after the Great Marriage, Tilia, had done what needed to be done. There was only so much that she could do in a king’s tent that was seldom if ever occupied by the king. But to make riders out of lifelong walkers, and to teach them to shoot from horseback as well—that was a challenge. It brought her alive again.
That was a new thought for a tribesman, that a woman could be as eager to be up and doing as a man. Sarama had always been like that, but that was Sarama. Taditi was of the tribes, born and bred, and though blunt-spoken and undeniably formidable, was still, after all, a woman.
Agni’s head ached a great deal these days, as it struggled to think thoughts that were alien to it. Tilia had a way of contradicting everything that he thought he knew, just by being herself. Sometimes he thought he could not bear any more; he would snap, he would break. But he never did.
Still without speaking to him, Taditi filled a bowl and set it in his hands. Its warmth was greatly welcome, the scent and taste of it delectable, herbs and roots and meat and a bit of fruit all stewed together. They filled his belly and warmed him from the inside out.
When he had finished the bowl and received another, Taditi spoke at last. “Aren’t you going to tell us?”
“What?” said Agni.
“Sarama,” she said with a snap of impatience.
“But don’t you know—”
“We know she had a daughter,” Patir said, appearing behind Taditi, and Tillu’s terrible scarred face behind him, and a crowd of others, faces of kin and of western strangers, all fixed on him. Patir went on speaking for them. “All we know is the bare fact. Give us a story.”
Agni looked at them all. With a sound that was half sigh, half laughter, he said, “It is a daughter, she looks like her father, and Sarama is resting well. I didn’t linger overlong. She’ll be brought out and presented to Earth Mother on the third day, it’s said. Then you’ll all see her.”
“The baby will be the Mare’s servant in her time,” Taditi observed. “That’s a fine thing, to see the line go on.”
“Imagine,” said Tukri of the White Horse. “A daughter, and she matters in the world.”
“Daughters do, here,” Agni said. He shifted a little, making room for Patir to dip from the pot, and some of the others with him. They sat or knelt or squatted together, eating Taditi’s excellent stew and after it the rabbits and the deer, and washing it down with honeyed wine.
As Agni finished a cup, someone touched his shoulder. He recognized one of the westerners: a man of the Golden Aurochs, notable for the white streak in his hair and the bear’s claws that he wore as a necklace.
He had a pleading look about him now, and a wheedle in his tone. “My lord, not to trouble you, but Modron and I, we had a wager, and he says he won, and I say I won, and—”
Agni levered himself to his feet. That was the king’s part: to judge even petty things, because they mattered to the people. He went to settle the wager between Modron and the Bearcub, and after that was the beginning of a blood feud between cousins from the Stormwolf people, and a rash of contentions both greater and smaller, as if the resolving of one only bred a dozen more.
When at last he came back to Taditi’s circle, he was seeing the camp in a different light—and not only because the sun had set in ice and fire. Its quiet was deceptive; the peace that had lain on it, that he had thought ran deep, was as shallow as a flicker of light on water.
It was nothing as obvious as a war. The tribes were not feuding. No one had killed anyone, or quarreled badly enough to endanger a life. And yet the little conflicts, the arguments, the wagers won and lost, the restless feet and twitching hands and the tempers too easily frayed, came together into a single, greater thing.
Agni was not at all surprised when he had settled beside the fire to find himself face to face with yet another gathering of men. These were elders of the tribes, men of rank and substance, though Agni noticed that Tillu, while present, was not joined with them. Nor were others who held themselves closest to Agni. These were lesser men, or men who had kept their own counsels.
Agni did not move, nor did he allow his expression to change. But inside he had drawn taut, as one does before battle.
oOo
There were preliminaries. More wine. A confection of honeyed fruit, a gift from one of the Lady’s cities. The last of the sunset died from the sky. Clouds veiled the stars. Beyond the fire’s warmth, the air was bitter.
Those on the circle’s edge must be numbed with cold. But no one wandered off. Agni, wrapped in his bearskin and close by the fire, was in as much comfort as he ever needed to be.
One of the elders, a man of the White Bear whose name, as Agni recalled, was Hagen, spoke at last and evidently for them all. “Lord king, it’s winter yet, and deep in it. But spring comes soon enough.”
Agni lifted brows at that. “Indeed,” he said.
“Surely,” said Hagen with no appearance of discomfort. This was the counsel of elders, meandering, indirect, skirting round and round the point. “Warm days will be welcome, and nights that don’t freeze us to the bone.”
His fellows nodded as if he had uttered great wisdom.
Hagen sighed. “No, it’s not long at all before the grass grows green again, and the soft winds blow across the steppe. Then the spring fawns will come, and the calves, and the foals in the horse-herds.”
“And the young men will grow restless,” said another of the elders, “and dream of raiding, of cattle and horses and fine strapping women fit to bear them strong sons.”
“Not,” said Hagen, “that they don’t have much of that here. But the wind on the grass, the sky free above one, and room to gallop—those things are the more precious the longer one lives away from them.”
That was as direct as an elder was likely to be, this early in a council. Which, Agni thought, proved the seriousness of it, and the strength of the concern that had brought them here.
He read it well enough. “You want to go home,” he said.
The elders regarded him in silence. They could not reprove him: it was a king’s privilege to be abrupt. But they could make it clear that they were not ready yet to be so direct.
He sighed and warmed his hands at the fire, and determined to be patient.
At length Hagen said, “We would be content to live in this land of plenty forever. But our young men . . .”
His companions nodded, a waggling of beards round the circle, a gleam of eyes as they watched Agni. Agni held still. This was a test. He had expected it long before now, but the strangeness of the
wood and then of the Lady’s country, and the confusion of a conquest that had had little to do with war, had diverted them. Now it seemed they had leisure to challenge him.
He let them drag it out as they pleased, now that he knew what they were doing. He could be as patient as a hunter needed to be. He turned his eyes to the fire, resting his spirit in the dance of the flames.
At length Hagen said what he had come to say. “Our young men are asking to end this war that never began. They want to take the booty that they’ve won, the gold and copper and such women as will go, and go home, back to their own lands and their own people.”
“All of them?” Agni inquired.
“A good number of them,” Hagen said.
Agni nodded. “Yes. Yes, I can see that some would be homesick. It’s very different here.”
“Too different,” Hagen said.
“You do understand,” said Agni, “that all the tribes will come westward in the end. They’ll have to. Already they’re pressed close against the wood. If they don’t break through, they’ll have nowhere to go.”
“They can fight back,” said one of the other elders.
“For a while,” said Agni. “But the east presses hard upon us. It’s like the wind and the storm. It blows as it blows, and there’s no defense against it.”
“There’s nothing for us here,” Hagen said. “We’ve taken everything we can carry. If we ride back eastward as soon as the spring breaks, we’ll be in our own lands by the Great Sacrifice.”
“Indeed,” said Agni. “Have you heard that it’s been a bitter winter? It will be a lean sacrifice. Your people will be hard put to feed the lot of you.”
“We’ll take all the provisions we can take,” Hagen said. “We’ll come bearing great gifts. They’ll make us kings.”
“I am already a king,” Agni said, “and I say they’re coming here. They’ll have to. The steppe won’t feed them. They’ll hear of this country, how rich, how easy to live in. They’ll come, and we’ll all have our war.”
“Yes,” said Hagen, “but when? This year? Ten years from now? Our young men have been away from their people for a year. If it’s the will of the tribes to come back—so be it. But until that happens, they want to go home.”
“I can’t stop them,” Agni said.
Hagen looked at him with something close to hope. “You’ll go? You’ll lead us back?”
“I didn’t say that,” he said. “If they want to go, let them go. I am staying here. This is the country that I won, that gave itself to me. It’s mine. I’m not leaving it for the next man to take as he pleases.”
“And if we all go away?”
“I’ll not be left alone,” Agni said. “My own kin will stay. The rest may go or stay, as they choose.”
“You don’t care?” That was a hanger-on, a man much younger than the elders, and somewhat gone in wine from the sound of him.
“I care greatly,” Agni answered him. “I will not provoke a war among our people, or force any man to stay who would rather go.”
The elders glanced at one another. Agni wondered if any of them had had a wager. “You think you can hold this country without us?” one demanded.
“I can try,” said Agni.
“Idiot,” said yet another, and not to Agni. “He can’t go back. He’s cast out. He knew when he came that he was here to stay. Hasn’t he even taken the she-king’s daughter to wife?”
Agni spoke before they could murmur of betrayal. “I could be king on the steppe. I choose to be king here. Those who are loyal will stay. Those who are not will go. What more need any of us do?”
He caught and held each pair of eyes, and made each fall. He was king. While they sat in front of him, drinking his wine and enjoying the warmth of his fire, they were subject to his will. What they chose to do or think elsewhere was between them and their gods, and the oaths that they had sworn to Agni as king.
When the last of them had yielded, even Hagen, Agni nodded and allowed himself a thin new moon of a smile. “Tell your men,” he said, “that I set them free. To go where the winter is far more bitter than here, or to stay in warmth and in comfort. And come the summer . . . a war to delight any warrior’s heart.”
“You can’t promise a war that soon,” Hagen said, startled out of his submission.
“Why not?” said Agni. “Your men will go back. They’re fat, sleek, loaded with riches. Their people will look, see how well they’ve prospered, and determine to go in search of such riches for themselves. They’ll bring the war straight to me—in haste, and without long preparation. I’ll give those who stay enough fighting to content even the fiercest.”
There was a silence. Agni could not tell what they were thinking. None would raise his eyes, even Hagen who spoke for them all. Who said, at length, “You are both clever and farsighted.”
That was praise. Agni did not acknowledge it. A king did not. He expected it; he took it as tribute. He rose, wrapping himself more tightly in his mantle. “I give you goodnight, sirs.”
oOo
No one tried to hold him back. He walked erect and haughty long after they could have seen him in the dark, lest one of them had followed him. Only when he was well away, and well within the circles of the city, did he let himself relax.
He reeled against a house-wall, caught it and let it hold him up. He had not meant his knees to let go quite so completely. It was exhaustion: the long fret while Sarama was brought to bed of her daughter, and a long day’s hunting before that, and kingship pressing in close when he had looked to find—what?
Kingship. If he had wanted to rest in peace, he would not have gone to the camp. People were always at him there, demanding that he do their thinking for them.
He had meant to spend the night in his tent. But by the time he remembered that, he was far away from the camp, and it would cost his pride too much to go back. He went on as he had begun. The gods were guiding him, maybe. Or Earth Mother, whose country this was; who, for whatever unfathomable purpose, had chosen to make him king in this place.
It was never wise to try to understand the gods.
78
Tilia woke when Agni came in. She had been sleeping, but lightly, uneasy in his absence. And that was a thing that she had never expected: that when he was not in her bed, she should feel cold and distressingly alone.
He was not the lover that Kosti was, or even that Beki had been, who was so ordinary to look at but who was a wonder and a marvel in a woman’s arms. He was not too ill to the eye, though one could wish for a little less nose, a little more flesh about the cheeks and jaw. His eyes were no proper color for a man’s, although they would have looked admirable in a goat.
And for all of that, when he stood in the light of the one lamp that she had left burning, he was exactly as beautiful as he needed to be. She watched him through her lashes, feigning sleep, while he paused to bask in the room’s warmth—for it was in back of the kitchen, and the hearth heated its small space in wondrous fashion. In summer it would be intolerable. Now, in winter, it was bliss.
He shed his heavy mantle, and everything beneath it, too. He was narrower than a man of her people, except in the shoulders; leaner, rangier, with long ropes of muscle, and legs bowed from a long life on a horse’s back. His skin was as white as milk, freckled where the sun had touched it. He did not grow the pelt that men of her people tended to grow; his was sparse, like a woman’s. But there was nothing female about his body.
She liked to watch him when he did not know she was doing it. He put aside constraint then, and forgot to hold himself as his people believed a man should, particularly a man who was a king. Then he looked younger, less royally sure of himself. She could see the boy he must have been, awkward and gangling but with a peculiar grace. He put her in mind of one of his horses, with his long face and his long legs and his loose-jointed gait.
Once he was naked, he stretched and yawned and shook his hair out of its braid. His hair was wonderful, much brighter than
his sister’s, the color of somewhat tarnished copper. It was thick and straight, like a horse’s mane, but much softer. He took no great notice of it except to rake it out of his face. He was frowning at the air, pondering something that troubled him.
Whatever it was, he put it aside to slip into the bed beside her. His body was warm, fire-warm. He smelled of wine and smoke and frosty air, horses and wool and man—not too terribly much of that last. He had taken well to the cleanliness that the Lady enjoined on her people; a little to Tilia’s surprise, at first, until she came to know him. He was not a savage by nature. He was, in fact, quite a civilized creature.
She slipped arms about him. It was gratifying how quickly he roused to her touch. She took him inside her, rocking slowly, without urgency; warmth without heat and pleasure without—for the moment—passion.
This was a thing that she had had to teach him. He had only known the stallion’s way: seize, thrust, have done.
He did not speak of it, but she saw what she could not mistake. There had been a woman in his tribe—more than one, as how not, but this one in particular had marked him deep enough to scar. She had ridden him as Tilia had seen some of the tribesmen ride their horses, too fast and hard and with too little regard for his spirit. She had had no patience for the gentler ways of a woman with a man.
Tilia had a great deal of patience, when it suited her—little as her brother, for one, might have believed it. Agni had found in himself a talent for restraint. One could, with such an art, prolong one’s pleasure for most of a night if one were so inclined.
Neither of them was so minded tonight. Her pace quickened just as he began to thrust deeper, long strokes, slow still but growing swifter, and strong. Neither had yet said a word.
His breath caught first. Hers followed soon after.
