by Judith Tarr
“If you did,” Tilia said, “you’d fall. It’s all the tribes, the messages say. Remember what you told us: that when numbers are small, the best course is to build a wall and stand behind it.”
“This many horsemen will break down the wall and trample it flat.”
“But,” said Tilia, “think. How many cities, how many towns there are in this country. How many of us there are. The first city may fall, and the second. Even the tenth. But each one will wear the invaders thinner, weary them more. By the eleventh, they may be weak enough to overcome.”
Those were Agni’s own words, his own counsel turned around and held up like a shield. He had thought it wise when he first taught it. Now, so close to the war, he was not so certain.
“Don’t waver,” Tilia said. “It’s here the battle will be. We’ve directed everything to that end. The road is marked, the cities chosen for sacrifice, and everything made ready. We’ll stand or fall here. Didn’t we agree on that long ago?”
“We might change our plan,” he said. “If any part of it fails—”
“It won’t,” she said.
Her confidence was sublime. Someday, Agni thought, he would see her shaken; would find her baffled by some ordinary human thing.
None of these people appeared to have the least doubt that they should stand and wait. They were city people, people of the settled places. Of course they knew how to stand still.
He had thought he did; he had conceived the plan in a great surety that it was best for this country and for these people. But his instinct in the end was to take horse and ride, to attack rather than defend.
Instinct was no use here. This was a different country; a different world. That difference would be its salvation.
This time. And after . . .
No need to think of that. Not now. He had been their nightmare, their dream of blood and fire. Now he was preparing to defend them against a true threat of blood, and certain fire.
oOo
Tilia was eager for him that night, all but snatching him out of the gathering and carrying him off to their bed. He was delighted to give as he was given, body to body, with an urgency that made the world vanish away.
There was only she, her flesh on his flesh, her arms enfolding him, her eyes gazing dark into his. Her scent, her warmth, the taste of her lips, snatched away memory and silenced fear.
But even they could not go on forever. They lay as close as they could lie, and their child between. Agni felt it then, the bird-flutter, the movement within that promised life. His breath caught.
She laughed in his ear, rich and deeply pleased with herself. “What, horseman! Haven’t you ever felt a baby kick before?”
“Not one of mine,” he said.
“Ah,” she said, “yes. You’ll want a share in this.”
“And shouldn’t I have one?”
“A few moments’ loving,” she said: “you had that.”
“And will have it again,” he said, “and yet again, if you and the Lady are kind. Are you going to ask your brother to raise this child?”
“Why, should I?”
“I know,” said Agni, “that your men raise the children. He’s in this house, he’s raising one of his own. Why not a second?”
She raised her head from his breast to look into his face. “Are you asking to choose who will raise my baby?”
The words were harmless enough, but there was something dangerous in the way she said them.
Agni trod as if on the hunt, on leaves that might rustle and put the game to flight. “I am asking,” he said, “whom you will choose.”
“What if I chose you?”
He blinked. “You’d never do that.”
“Why?”
Simple. Devastating. “Because,” he said, “I have no gift or training for it.”
“No man does,” she said.
“Your brother—”
“My brother is remarkable,” she said. “I don’t know if I want him raising my child.”
“Isn’t it the mother’s brother who often does it?”
“I have seven brothers,” she said.
“But—”
“If I chose you,” she said, “would you be horrified?”
“I’d be surprised. One can’t be a king with a baby in one’s lap.”
“It seems to me that you were doing just that this evening.”
“That was here,” he said, “not among the horsemen.”
“Then you don’t want to raise my child. You only want to be its father.”
“A father raises—” He broke off. “It’s different.”
“Yes, it is,” she said.
Agni sat up. He breathed deep. He mustered such calm as he could find. “Are we quarreling?” he asked her.
“Are we?” she asked in return.
“You are infuriating.”
“So are you.”
He could not tell if she was laughing at him. He rather suspected that she was. “I . . . would like it very much if your brother Danu raised our—your child.”
“I’ll remember that,” she said, “when the time comes.” And then: “You don’t even like him.”
“One doesn’t need to like one’s brother,” said Agni: “only to trust him.”
She nodded. Either that made sense to her, or she understood it well enough. “I used to torment him, you know. He was always so quiet, and so painfully shy. I’d set the other girls to teasing him. They’d tell him he was the one they’d choose for their first man. Then they’d laugh when he blushed.”
“Was he? Did any of them choose him?”
“Most did,” she admitted. “It’s a great honor. And of course, the more chose him, the more wanted to choose him. It became rather a fashion. Kosti was stronger and could go on longer, and Beki was better skilled, but Danu was a little of both. And he’s so pretty. He was beautiful then, before his beard hid most of his face. Much as you must have been,” she said, “when you first became a man.”
He was blushing: his cheeks were fiery hot. She laughed as the women had laughed at Danu. “You see? It was the same for you. No wonder you don’t like him—and no wonder you trust him.”
Agni did not even want to understand all the meanings of that. “So this brother of yours is a man of . . . great experience.”
“He’s been chosen often,” she said. “Though not since your sister came. One knows, you see, when a man doesn’t want to be chosen.”
“I’m glad,” he said.
“Was that a growl?” she asked. “I thought your men were supposed to—take many women.”
She had used the word that the tribesmen used, because there was no exact mate of it in her own language.
“When it’s one’s sister,” Agni said, “one wants her man to treat her well.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“That depends. One might upbraid him. Or one might kill him.”
“I won’t have you killing my brother,” said Tilia. Her voice was light, but there was stone beneath, both dark and hard.
“Fortunately he doesn’t need killing,” Agni said.
“Good,” said Tilia.
“Do you know,” he said, “I think you could kill, if you had to. I’m not sure he could.”
“Oh, he could. Any of us could.” Tilia looked no happier than he would expect, to tell that particular truth.
He took her in his arms, not for any particular reason, and certainly for no sign of weakness on her part. It seemed right, that was all.
She sighed and rested against him. Neither slept, not for a long while; but there was peace enough in their silence.
87
The horsemen came out of the wood on the day of midsummer, when the Lady’s power was at its strongest; when the fires of her festival burned on the hilltops, and the people danced in rings about them.
The festival that was in Larchwood was a festival of fire, fire and blood. For these horsemen did not come cautiously, none knowing what he would f
ind until he found it. They had guides who had ridden here before. They knew where to go.
Nor did they show any such softness as Agni had been subject to. They came in war, and they came in search of blood.
They had the look of starving wolves, the messengers said. They seized, they took, they slew. Larchwood’s walls barely deterred them. They simply went around, and raided the lesser towns, those with weaker walls or none, but ample stores and plentiful herds.
Agni would not leave Three Birds. He had determined to lure the enemy there, and fight on his own ground. But he could not prevent Sarama and Taditi and the archers from riding to see for themselves what the messengers had spoken of.
oOo
Long before they came to Larchwood, they began to meet the people fleeing. The last retreat had been orderly compared to this; people afraid but not desperate, simply removing themselves to safer cities. These were the flotsam of war. Some had been burned with fire, others wounded by arrow or spear. They had left their dead.
The tales they told were terrible. Sarama and Taditi had heard such tales before, but the women from Three Birds were white with shock.
They had insisted that they knew war, because they had seen the coming of Agni’s horsemen. Now at last they understood how mild that conquest had been. One town taken by force. One woman raped, and her attacker punished with death.
This truly was war, in fire and slaughter. Any who fought was dead or taken. Of that, Sarama had not the slightest doubt.
Agni had withdrawn all his men to Three Birds and the towns immediately about it. The cities and towns to the east had been cast on their own devices. They were a sacrifice, a blood offering on behalf of the greater cities beyond.
Those who fled would find welcome in the westward cities. The dead would be mourned, the first great slaughter that had been in this part of the world; the first war that these people had ever known.
oOo
Grim Taditi grew grimmer as they rode toward the rising sun. They rode with all caution, as warriors should in the enemy’s lands.
Probably they had no need to be so careful. The enemy were finding this country a blessedly easy conquest; not dull, as Agni’s men had found it, for there was fighting enough, and killing, but no great challenge, either. They were not looking for spies or raiders. They were taking what they pleased to take, and killing where it pleased them to kill.
They were passing by the walled cities, ignoring them. If the people of the lesser towns had sense, they would take refuge in the cities; but most had no desire to huddle behind walls while the enemy raged without. When they ran, they ran far away.
The horsemen had ridden round Greenfields between Larchwood and Two Rivers, and taken the ring of towns just beyond, and there paused to rest and tend such wounds as they had. They had taken with them everything they could carry, from every town that they took. Great mounds of booty lay out in the open, that must have strained the back of every ox and every remount that they had brought or been able to steal. And every man had a new cup, a skull-cup, that marked his prowess as a warrior.
oOo
Sarama left the bulk of the company well concealed in a copse of trees, and crept up a hill from which she could spy on the camp. It was a great camp. How great, she had not known until she saw it.
Beside this, all Agni’s gathered tribesmen were but a scant handful. His had been the castoffs of their people, the restless young men, the warriors in search of a war. These were the tribes themselves.
There were even women: veiled figures in the shadows of tents, though she saw no children. She recognized standards and banners. Stormwolf, White Bear, Golden Aurochs. Raindance, Red Deer, Black River, and a dozen others. And, unmistakably in the center, the White Horse.
Her throat tightened as she stared at that moon-pale horsetail streaming out on the wind. They were not her people, not any longer, but she had grown up on the edges of them. She could not see them here and remain unmoved.
Taditi stirred beside her. “I’m going down,” she said.
Sarama rounded on her. She did not flinch. She was dressed as Sarama had never yet seen her in this country, in a woman’s gown, with both head and face covered. Sarama had forgotten how like a shadow a woman could look, who showed nothing of herself but her eyes.
Still Sarama said, “You can’t. What if you’re caught?”
Taditi laughed in her veil. “Who’ll see me? I’m a woman. Don’t you want to know exactly what these people are up to?”
“Not if it kills you,” said Sarama.
Taditi shrugged. She crept along the edge of the crest, quiet as any hunter, and vanished into a hollow. When Sarama saw her again, she was a shadow ghosting through the outermost herds, working her way inward.
There was nothing Sarama could do, nor if Taditi was properly cautious would Sarama see anything in the camp; and yet she stayed where she was. She watched the warriors come and go. She saw a stallion breed a mare—these conquerors had thought to bring the means to make new horses. And she saw the circle of men near the White Horse banner, men who even at this distance seemed older, heavier than the young warriors round about.
They were holding a council. She strained to hear, but she was too far away.
She could not see particularly well, either, but she had little doubt of the man who seemed to be sitting where the king would sit. There was no mistaking that bulk or that bluster.
Yama seemed to have made himself king of more than his single tribe. Sarama peered under her hand, willing it to be another man, some one of the elders who happened to be thickset and fair-haired and given to a certain broadness of gesture; or some king of another tribe than the White Horse. But her eyes persisted in informing her that that was indeed her father’s son, the man whom she supposed she must call her brother.
Either Yama had outgrown his tendency to be a fool, or the rest of the tribes were idiots. Even if he had not been what he was, he was young; he was new to his office. He should have deferred to one of his elders among the kings.
For there were other kings there. Each had his mark of rank: headdress, mantle, ornamented spear. But only one sat where all the others must face him, on a horsehide, with a gleam of gold about his neck and arms and brow.
Sarama could not help but remember Agni in his torque of gold and amber, sitting cross-legged on his black horsehide. He never kept much state apart from the torque and the hide, or put on airs beyond what people expected of him as king. She had heard some of the more callow horsemen complain that their king was too modest; he was not kingly enough.
They would have loved Yama. Even sitting down, he strutted. She watched him hold forth, inaudible at this distance, but his gestures told her all she needed to know. He was boasting. Yama had always loved to boast.
She watched till she could bear it no longer, and until she was sure that she would not see where Taditi had gone. Then she left the hilltop, returned to the rest of the company, and set herself grimly to wait. If Taditi had not come back by morning, she would venture the camp herself. She could creep and lurk and be a worthless woman as easily as Taditi could, if she was forced to it.
oOo
Taditi came back long before morning. Sarama woke with a start from an uneasy doze, to find a shadow looming over her. It stooped, and lowered itself with a faint creaking of bones, and said in Taditi’s rough familiar voice, “You’ve done well. I almost couldn’t find you.”
“Then maybe the enemy’s scouts won’t, either,” said Sarama.
“No worry of that. There aren’t any.”
“They’re that arrogant?”
“They’re that sure of where your brother is. They mean to strip the country of its wealth, then take him in his lair.”
“Just as we thought they’d do.”
“Yes,” Taditi said. She dipped from the pot over the tiny shielded fire, and sipped and nibbled at herbs and stewed rabbit. “This is better than anything they had.”
“There aren
’t any women to do their cooking for them?”
Taditi’s eyes gleamed in the flicker of firelight. “There are women. But most of them are more suited to keeping a man warm in bed than keeping his belly filled.”
“So,” said Sarama.
“So,” said Taditi. “I don’t suppose you saw who was sitting as king.”
“Yama.”
“Yama,” Taditi said.
“Have they all gone mad? Or have the gods wrought a miracle? Have they transformed Yama into a king?”
“Yama is just as he always was.”
“Then why?”
Taditi sighed. “When tribes gather together, they seldom choose the king who can rule them with a strong hand. They choose the one who will give them the freest rein, and interfere the least with their own kings’ whims.”
Sarama knew that. She had learned it as a lesson, as lore from long ago. It had been—how many lifetimes since the tribes gathered in such numbers?
“Then they don’t have a leader,” she said. “They’ll go wherever they take it into their heads to go.”
“For the moment, they’re all agreed to conquer these cities and end with Three Birds. And Agni, of course. They’re calling him the Outcast, and telling one another he’s no true king.”
“They would,” said Sarama. She drew her knees up and clasped them. It was a mild night, quite lovely in fact, neither too warm nor too cold. Yet she felt a chill, a shiver beneath the skin. “Yama will want his skull for a cup.”
“Set in gold,” said Taditi. “He was singing it out for everyone to hear. Did you know he brought his mother and sisters? And one of his wives?”
“So that they can gloat over Agni’s downfall?”
“So that they can do his thinking for him,” Taditi said. She paused. She had never in her life spoken diffidently, nor did she do so now, but her words came a little slowly, and seemed a little more carefully chosen than they were wont to be. “You do know why he was cast out.”
“Of course,” said Sarama. “The woman from the Red Deer. The lies she swore to before she died.”
“Do you know to whom she swore them?”
“Her father and brothers, I should think,” Sarama said, “and the priest who attended her dying.”
