White Mare's Daughter

by Judith Tarr

  They could laugh all they liked at that distance. He painted himself as for the dance, and passed the pots to his brother Tanis, who always woke latest and surly, and was no different this morning. His weapons were ready, he had seen to that before. Nothing was left but to wait.

  The ram’s horn blew both sooner and later than Danu had expected. Sooner, because no one had thought the enemy would come so early in the morning. Later, because they had all known long since that the horsemen were coming. It was a rumble in the earth, the sound and sense of a great herd of horses. But a herd alone, unridden, never came on so straight, with such evident purpose.

  They were not to move until the second signal. The first waiting had been difficult. The second was excruciating. It was not so terribly long by the sun. By the spirit’s time it was half of eternity.

  Danu was one of those inclined to slip out to the wood’s edge, to see what could be seen, so that the rest could be ready when the call came. The horsemen were just riding past, rank on rank of them, gleaming with stolen gold, draped in fine weavings. They looked like nothing that Danu had seen before.

  He had seen Agni’s riders, and they had been a wild enough sight when first they came. But these were wilder.

  It was death, he thought. Death in their eyes, and blood on their souls.

  Agni had come to conquer. These had come to kill.

  Something inside Danu went cold. He was not aware of it at first, except as a silence of the spirit: as if a voice that had spoken to him lifelong had gone mute.

  It was not the Lady’s voice. She was there still, her wind breathing in his ear, her breast against his as he lay in hiding and watched the horsemen ride by. For a moment he felt her arms about him, warm and strong.

  He folded his arms and rested his chin on them. The horsemen rode on by, down to the dark line of defenses. They could see all that he could see, and they spoke of it, heedlessly, as if none of them cared that they might be spied on.

  They were arrogant, Sarama had said. They had heard of Agni’s easy conquest. They expected just the same—and never a thought that the people might have learned, not just to fight, but to wage war.

  Agni was gods-gifted, Sarama said. He could see the pattern of a war as a weaver could see the pattern in a loom half-threaded: with an eye that saw past the moment to the moments that could be. Danu had not found a way to tell her that he saw nothing remarkable in that. He hunted so, and danced so. And even, on occasion, persuaded a woman to court him.

  Well then: Agni had a gift for war. Danu did not, nor wanted one, but all the plan as Agni had unfolded it seemed simple in its essence. Other people called it deadly complicated.

  He sighed, but softly lest after all there be scouts or spies within earshot. Down below, the army had halted. Agni had come out of the city: Danu saw the flame of his standard like a second sun. Soon, thought Danu.

  Now.

  The horn’s song was piercing, and won a snort from Danu. Brought to bay, was it? Yes; one could say that of the city, with so many horsemen fighting over it.

  He rose up out of his hiding place. Already the first of his fellows emerged from the wood.

  He ran this time for life and breath, but with care still, because he must fight when he was done. He saw how those to the north had kept together, but those to the south ran more raggedly.

  Of the riders who should have come round from the east, for too long a while he saw no sign. Then the first of them rode over the hill; but before he could see who it was, he had to watch where he was running, or fall and break his neck.

  The horsemen had scattered as Agni had said they would, dividing into smaller companies. There were still an ungodly number of them, and every one raised from infancy with a weapon in his hand.

  You’ve hunted from a child. Taditi’s voice, both harsh and sweet, with no slightest hint of softness in it. You’ve killed in order to live. That’s what war is. Only you’re not killing the boar or the defenseless deer. You’re killing men who have a burning desire to kill you.

  He had not wanted to listen when she told him that. Now he could not get the words out of his head. They pursued him straight down the hill into a knot of men on horses.

  Horses. Aim for the horses if your nerve fails you. Think of the wolf culling the herd.

  Danu aimed for the horses. Tanis was close by, and Mareka and Chana and Beki, and threescore more of his friends and kin. That was a tribe.

  Friends, kin. And there was the enemy, thickset dun horse shying at Danu, Danu shying from the stroke that would sever its hamstring, knowing something, learning something that he had never wanted to learn. He could not aim for a horse. But a man—a man with death in his eyes and a bone knife in his hand—a man he could leap upon. Could strike with a copper blade that he had hoped never to use. Could—kill.

  A stag died no differently. Killing was killing. And yet, to kill a man—

  A shadow flickered in the corner of his eye. His body spun all by itself, knife stabbing at air that, somehow, thickened into flesh. A spear thrust where a moment before his head had been. He clawed his way up it to the man who clutched at it, too shocked to let go.

  And these called themselves fierce warriors.

  Danu backed away from that thought, from the contempt in it, the dark hard thing that was not himself. Was not Danu. Was—the Lady knew what. But it was not Danu.

  The knife that had been pointed to thrust, he reversed and thrust into its sheath instead. He seized the spearhaft and heaved, flinging the rider from the horse. With a rather sublime lack of good sense, he hauled himself onto the animal’s back.

  It was a smaller beast than he was used to, and thin enough that its backbone clove upward even through the heaped fleeces of its saddle. But it was a horse, and it agreed to do as he asked it, once it had got over its startlement at being relieved of its more familiar rider.

  From a horse he could fight as he had been trained to, as he had expected to: as an archer. He could hardly be mistaken for a tribesman, wild naked man with dizzying patterns painted on his breast and face and arms. But he could ride, and that took them aback; and somehow he was riding round the lot of them, calling his kinsfolk together.

  Some of them came limping; some did not come. Chana, Tanis—the fighting must have carried them away. Yes, it must have.

  This was battle. Heat, dust. Stink of sweat, blood, entrails ripped and trampled. Smell of death, death above all.

  And yet much of it was a surprising stillness. People resting, people licking their wounds. People gathering to reckon losses, and to settle on targets. Danu looked into faces that must mirror his own. There was death in them now, death in their eyes.

  The stillness shattered. A horde of yelling horsemen thundered down on them. With a strange and potent clarity, Danu saw their banner, a wolf’s head fixed in a snarl, and the men beneath it much the same, all in wolfskin mantles and reeking to high heaven.

  They had no more mercy than winter wolves. They fell on that company, all of them on foot but Danu. He saw Beki fall; saw the stone axe cleave his skull. Saw how the spirit left him, wailing its shock, and the man who had killed him laughed and wheeled his horse and sprang upon another.

  But Danu was there, mounted as the tribesman was mounted, with a spear and a copper-bladed knife and no intention at all of letting him kill another of the Lady’s children.

  It was nothing Danu decided. It was deeper than teaching. One stood one’s ground. One looked death in the face. Then when it struck, one struck back. Spear straight to the heart.

  The other veered, but he was not fast enough, never fast enough. Danu thrust the spearpoint home.

  The dead man’s weight pulled Danu from his stolen horse. He fell as best he could, bruised and a little winded, but had no time to lie there, no time to indulge himself. Hooves pounded deathly near. He rolled, knotted, snatched the spear and staggered to his feet.

  Edged stone whistled past his ear. He spun, stabbing, whirling in a terrib
le dance, the dance of the dark god on the burning ground, the dance that was death.

  91

  The sun ascended in a smoke and reek of battle. Sarama’s archers, having done their part to show the enemy that he was surrounded, had drawn back over the crest of the eastward hill. They would fight again when there was need; but Agni had been insistent that they hold themselves in reserve.

  Agni was being a wise lord of warriors, but he was also protecting a company of women. He had never been so careful with the foot-fighters, who were nigh as many men as women. And one of whom was Danu, because like a fool he did not trust his seat on a horse, and he would not risk his colt in battle.

  Sarama would never have tried to prevent a man from going to a fight. In that much, she was of the tribes. And yet, waiting, lurking out of sight, creeping out to see how the battle fared, she wished devoutly that she had ordered Danu to stay at home. He might even have obeyed her.

  That was why she had not done it. For pride, because a man who would not fight was not, after all, a man.

  He was down there somewhere, fighting for his life, while she lay about in the rising heat of the day. The horses cropped grass in peace. Most of the archers seized the chance to rest.

  At last Sarama could not bear it. The sun had risen toward noon, and the heat had risen with it. But the battle had abated not at all.

  Nor would it, that she could see. The enemy was not in the least daunted. It was a young warrior’s delight, a grand fight, and the prize hovering in front of them: the city within its defenses, as beautiful as a woman, and to these men perhaps more alluring.

  Sarama had to move. To do something. The Mare was not excessively willing to leave the sweet grass of the meadow, but she yielded to persuasion.

  As Sarama swung onto her back, one or two of the others roused to curiosity. “Where are you going?” Taditi demanded, direct as always.

  Sarama shrugged. “We’re not doing any good here. I thought . . . we might find their camp. I’ll wager it’s ill defended. If we can take it, we’ll strike a harder blow than maybe they expect.”

  “They expect nothing of us,” Taditi said, not bitterly; it was the truth. “Agni wanted us at the enemy’s back.”

  “And won’t we be, if we’re holding the camp?”

  It was not particularly clever persuasion, but not only Sarama had perceived Agni’s purpose. Taditi looked around at the circle of eager faces, frowned, shrugged, sighed. “Very well. Pray our luck holds, and we don’t fail him by being elsewhere when he needs us here.”

  “He needs us on the path of the enemy’s retreat,” Sarama said. “The camp is the first place they’ll go. And they’ll find us in it, holding it against them.”

  That made sense even to Taditi. They were up, mounted, and ready to ride in remarkably little time; and glad, too, after all, to be doing something.

  Rather too late, Sarama hoped that it was not madness; that she had chosen rightly. That the force driving her was the Lady, and not some prankster among the gods.

  oOo

  The horsemen had made little effort to hide their camp, no more than they had when Sarama found it before. It was a little better defended: a few boys with spears, and warriors who had been wounded but still could ride and wield a spear.

  Sarama had little fear of them. The women with her, still new to battle, she did not trust completely; not yet. But they would do what they could.

  They fell on the camp as the enemy had tried to fall on the city, in a headlong charge.

  It did not resist. The defenders drew back, would not strike. There was nothing to fight.

  By the time Sarama realized what was happening, they were deep in the camp and the defenders had closed in behind them. She berated herself for a fool, for a blazing and arrogant idiot.

  Just as she wheeled the Mare about and opened her mouth to call the rest together, a familiar voice said, “Sarama! What are you doing here?”

  For an instant she was not surprised at all. It was very much the sort of thing that Tilia would say.

  Tilia.

  Sarama stared into that of all faces, standing in front of her in the midst of the enemy’s camp. And not as a prisoner, either. There were others behind her: elders of Three Birds, Mothers of the towns nearby, and the Mother of Three Birds herself, as serene as ever.

  “What are you doing here?” Sarama demanded of them all.

  Tilia answered, as Sarama had expected. “Somebody had to do something about the camp,” she said.

  “But you were safe in the city.”

  “We wanted your brother to think so.” Tilia shook her head. “That man. You’d think a woman was as weak as a baby, the way he carries on.”

  Sarama’s thoughts exactly, when she had taken it into her head to capture the camp.

  She sat mute on the Mare’s back. Slowly the rest of it came clear. The people standing about, tribesmen and veiled women, with no look in them of defeat, but none of victory, either. The men were armed. None made a move to threaten the women.

  They did not believe it. That was the root of their quiet. They could not credit the truth, that they had been conquered by a handful of women, and only a few of those even carried a knife, let alone bow or spear.

  Sarama could well imagine how it had gone. The Mother and the rest had walked serenely in, stared down the defenders, and informed the camp that it was become a stronghold of the Lady’s people.

  The Mother had done much the same when Agni came to Three Birds. Sarama wondered if the birds had come this time, too, to strike people mute with wonder.

  Maybe Agni should have let the Mother face the whole army herself, instead of resorting to battle. It would have cost him all his pride, but it might have succeeded.

  No, Sarama thought. The gods of war would not have allowed it. But here, where were only women and the young and the wounded, the Lady’s voice could be more clearly heard.

  “Come,” said the Mother.

  She was speaking to Sarama. Taditi followed because she chose. The others, Sarama sent to the camp’s edges, to hold it if the army should come back.

  The camp was quiet. Unearthly quiet, now that Sarama stopped to notice. People stood about, but no one spoke. They watched the Mother as the rabbit watches the hawk.

  They were terrified of her. Goddess knew what tales people had told of her, what powers ascribed to her. That she had come here so calmly, so utterly without fear, must only have proved that the stories were true.

  The center, the king-place, belonged to the White Horse. It was piercing, the familiarity of that tent and the tents about it. They had stood in every camp that she remembered, in just this order, each according to the rank and standing of the men who owned it.

  There were only women here. None uncovered her face, though there was no man to see. They stood outside of tents or peered through the flaps: wary eyes, furtive postures, trained from childhood to creep about in shadows. These bold barefaced women, many of them bare-breasted, would be shocking, even appalling.

  The Mother stopped in front of the king’s tent. “I should like to go in,” she said.

  Sarama blinked, startled. “You haven’t—” She broke off. “Why are you asking me?”

  “This was yours once,” the Mother said.

  “No,” said Sarama. “Never. It’s the king’s tent. I belong to the Mare.”

  The Mother smiled at the Mare and stroked the sleek grey neck. But she spoke to Sarama. “You never lived here?”

  “Only when I was in camp,” Sarama said, “and never for longer than I could help.”

  “So,” said the Mother. “Give me leave to go in.”

  “Can I prevent you?”

  “Yes,” the Mother said.

  Sarama sighed a little. For days—months—she could convince herself that she understood the people whom she had chosen for her own. Then one of them said something, did something, that was utterly incomprehensible; and she knew that she was an outlander. Would always be a
n outlander. Would never be anything else.

  The thought passed like a gust of chill wind. Sarama lifted the tentflap and held it aside. “Be welcome in my father’s tent,” she said. Which was courtesy of the tribes, and pleasing to the Mother: she smiled as she bent her head and entered.

  oOo

  The moment went by with blinding swiftness, and yet in memory it was crawlingly slow. The Mother smiling, stooping. The blade—grey flint, gleaming as it caught a shaft of sun, plunging down. The hand that gripped the blade, slender fingers, very white, heavy with rings, and massive golden armlet. So much weight of gold drove the knife into the lowered neck, drove it deep, and half clove it asunder.

  All in the space between two breaths, between two beats of the heart. The Mother’s body fell, lifeless long before it struck the ground.

  Nobody else saw, at first. Only Sarama who was closest. The Mother had vanished into the dimness of the tent.

  Sarama stood stone-still. All her vaunt of being a warrior, all her swiftness and her strength, and she was powerless to move.

  A shadow crossed her: Tilia, walking blindly in the Mother’s wake. Sarama had moved before she thought, wrapped arms about that solid body and flung it reeling back.

  Taditi grunted as Tilia careened into her, but braced and held her ground. She was not hopelessly shocked as Sarama had been. Her wits were about her, her eyes sharp. She steadied Tilia, who was sputtering with anger, and shook her till she fell silent.

  Sarama slipped her knife from its sheath, her lovely new copper knife with its blade so wonderfully keen, and crouched, every sense alert. No sound came from within the tent. She drew a sudden breath and feinted.

  The pale hand flicked out again. Sarama caught it, striking swift as a snake, and twisted it. The flint knife dropped. Sarama hauled the murderous creature into the light.

  It was a woman, of course: a wan pale slip of a thing with eyes as colorless as water. She snarled at Sarama and spat words that Sarama did not trouble herself to listen to. She had no doubt that they were curses.