Daughter of Lir (64 page)

There was something about them that made even the wildest of
the young men forget his courage. Some remembered, then, the woman and the
mare. “The goddess. The western goddess. She came with the traders. She—”

Dias had recognized her before any other. He was on
horseback, galloping headlong toward the grey herd and the woman who led it.

Aera had only her feet, but those were swift enough when
they had to be. She ran as he rode, with as little conscious thought.

Whether she would kill Rhian or embrace her, she did not
know. The child who rode with Rhian was dark like a child of this country, but
her face was of the People: Minas’ face, the very lines and shape of it, and
his eyes in it, clear green, looking gravely at Aera as she halted in front of
the mare.

The child held out her arms. With no more thought than had
brought her here, Aera reached for her.

Rhian made no effort to stop her. Rhian knew who Aera was;
in a country where women wore armor and fought in battle, clothes alone were
not enough to hide behind. And Rhian had seen Aera’s face before.

Dias pounded to a halt. Aera turned. He did not see her at
all, only the child in her arms and the woman on the white mare. “Don’t tell me
he’s dead,” he said. “Don’t you dare tell me that.”

“He’s not dead,” Rhian said.

There was a stillness in her, an enormous silence beneath
the simplicity of her words. She was beyond anger, Aera thought; beyond
anything so feeble.

“The White Mare has come to the People of the Wind,” Rhian
said in their language, clear enough for everyone to hear. “I am her servant.
Will you receive me, king of chariots?”

This was a very great thing. How great, Aera did not yet
know. Nor Dias, she thought, but he too understood that something profound had
changed. “I will receive you, lady of horses,” he said.

A horse had come up beside the mare: still young, still
dappled, with the high crest and strong jaw of a stallion. His nostrils
fluttered, but he offered the mare no other impertinence.

Rhian’s glance was unmistakable. Dias was to mount and ride.

No bridle. No saddle. If the stallion had in mind to run
away with him or kill him, there would be little he could do.

He laughed and sprang onto the broad moon-colored back. The
stallion danced a little and tossed his elegant head. Then, calmly, he stood
still.

As if that had been a signal, the herd scattered over the
hillside. Mares settled to graze, foals to nurse. The grey herd had come where
it wished to go.

Rhian rode with Dias to his tent through the rising
excitement of the camp. Word was spreading. “The Goddess has come to us. She
gave the king a horse. The Goddess has claimed us!”

o0o

“Is it true?” Dias asked.

They were in his tent, with its front wall rolled up to let
in the sun and to let the People see them, but except for a chieftain or two
and a handful of men from the warband, no one could hear what they said. Aera
was there because the child insisted on it, and still apparently invisible: she
was a pair of arms around the child with Minas’ face.

People were spreading rumors that this was the lost prince’s
son, but Aera knew a girlchild when she saw one. Most of the men likely would
not: how often after all did they see a female of any age, except in veils or
in the shadow of a tent?

Dias asked his question again. “Is it true? Has your Goddess
come to us?”

“Horse Goddess has,” Rhian said. “This is her doing, not
mine.”

“You came to me,” Dias said. “Why? If you are a trap, and
this is meant to destroy me, you will die before you leave my presence.”

She regarded him without visible fear. “Etena rules in Lir,”
she said. “The king of Lir is dead. The king’s heir of Lir is bound and
confined and no doubt will die when it suits her pleasure. Your brother lies
broken in the king’s house. The Goddess has withdrawn her blessing.”

“My brother,” said Dias with a swift intake of breath.
“Broken?”

“He’ll not run again,” Rhian said. “He may never walk,
either, or ride. But she keeps him alive. He can, after all, build chariots.”

Aera watched the same stillness fall across Dias that lay on
Rhian. It was the same absolute rage, the same perfect hate. “So that is why
you came,” he said. To one who did not know him, it might have seemed that he
was calm. “You want me to kill her.”

“I want Lir to be free of her,” Rhian said. “I brought you
our daughter. She’s heir to the Mother of Lir, and royal blood of the People.
She needs your protection.”

“You’re going to kill that one whom we do not name.” Aera
did not know she was going to speak until she did it. Her voice was rough with
grief and soul-deep anger.

Rhian kept her eyes on Dias, but answered Aera. “Who else
can do it? She’s no kin of mine. She killed my father. I have blood-right.”

A low growl ran round the circle. The People understood
blood-right, oh, well indeed.

“And when she is dead,” said Aera, “what will you do? Arm
your people against us?”

“Conquerors have come before,” Rhian said, “and become kin.
One such is in your arms. Are there not more in safety beyond the river?”

Aera’s throat closed. “So. He did come home.”

“His father died in his arms,” Rhian said. “He has no more
cause to love her than any of the rest of us.”

Did he love any of the People? Even Aera?

That was an unworthy thought. He had lied; he had hidden a
truth that would have healed her heart. But that he believed he loved her—yes,
she could admit that.

“I propose an alliance,” Rhian said, “between the White Mare
and the People. Do you take Lir, overcome those who defend it at her orders,
and clear the way to her. I will do what kin-bond bars you from doing, and do
it gladly, for all our sake.”

“We’ll need your knowledge of the city and its defenses,”
Dias said, “and of the country between. How hard must we fight even to come
there? How many traps are laid for us? Tell us everything. Do that, and you
have my word: she is yours to do with as you will.”

Rhian smiled. It was a sweet smile, and terrible. “I will
tell you,” she said.

o0o

Aera caught the rest of the council in snatches. The child
Ariana was hungry and thirsty and needed the privies. She was tired, too,
though she was fierce in her insistence that she was not.

When she had eaten and drunk and had her needs tended, Aera
made a bed for her in the inner room of Dias’ tent. There were no women there:
Dias had left the last of them behind when he took to the boats. The servant, a
yellow-haired boy, refused to burden himself with a child. It was a simple
matter to put him to flight.

Ariana had taken in everything about the camp with open
curiosity, and the king’s tent no less than the rest. She did not like to lie
down, “like a baby” as she put it, but when Aera lay down with her, she
consented grudgingly to do as she was told.

It was pleasant to lie in the dimness beside that small warm
body, and to hear the light voice speaking with determined alertness. “Why does
everybody think you’re a man?”

“Because I’m wearing a man’s clothes,” Aera answered her,
“and I’m in the men’s camp, and there’s no veil over my face.”

“They think I’m a boy, too. Is that why? They’re silly.
Anybody can see we’re not men.”

“Anybody who knows what a woman looks like in the daylight
and on a horse,” Aera said.

“You’re my grandmother, aren’t you? Father told me about
you. And Emry—he told me everything. He said you’re beautiful, and you look
like Father.”

“I do look like your father,” Aera said.

“And you’re beautiful. Father is, too. Even if he’s broken
now. He’s going to mend. I asked the Goddess. I made her promise. He won’t
always be broken.”

Aera’s eyes stung. She never wept; it was a moment before
she recognized tears. “Does the Goddess talk to you?” she asked.

“All the time,” said Ariana. “She talks to Mother, too, but
Mother calls it the wind.”

Aera smoothed black curls away from the eyes that were so
like Minas’. Sleep was making them heavy, for all her efforts to keep them
open. “Tell your Goddess,” Aera said, “that if she heals my son, I will give
myself to her as a servant.”

“You can tell her yourself,” Ariana said sleepily. “She’s
always listening.”

“Will she listen to the likes of me?”

A soft deep breath was her only answer.

Aera lay listening to the child’s breathing. She was wide
awake. The council was all but done: men were stirring without, rising, going
to do the things that they had agreed upon. Most of that was to prepare their
men to march in the morning. Dias no longer had to wait for his scouts. Rhian
had brought him everything he needed.

If she could be trusted.

Aera cast down the thought and set her foot on it. Rhian had
given her child to Dias as a hostage. She would do nothing to harm her. If Aera
knew anything of these people, she knew how sacred a child was—and a girlchild
most of all.

The People began their march in a clear warm morning. They
formed their ranks by tribe and clan. Mounted men led and followed. Chariots
took the center. Baggage and herds followed behind, and among them, but set subtly
apart, the grey herd—all but the mare who was a goddess, and the young stallion
who had been given, or had given himself, to Dias.

Dias rode in the van, leaving Aias alone in his chariot.
Aera would have taken her place with Vatis, for Ariana was riding again with
her mother, but Rhian had met her on her way to the chariots. Rhian was riding
the living goddess. A second mare followed, bridled, with a saddle-fleece on
her back. It was a handsome mare, silver-white but dark of mane and tail, with
a bright imperious eye and a haughty air. Clearly, if Aera refused her, she
would be royally insulted.

Aera was of the People, woman or no. She could no more
resist a horse of such quality than she could forgive Etena for the things she
had done to Minas. She bowed to the mare as if she had been a prince of the
People, and mounted by her gracious leave.

It was a seduction: tempting the high ones of the People
with these children of gods. But it was a wonderful temptation, well worth
whatever danger it might bring.

o0o

Past Long Ford the cities came closer together. Every one
was shut behind walls. They saw no human creature on the road or in the fields
or copses, nor were there men in boats upon the river.

“This was planned,” Rhian said when the king rode back,
troubled by this stillness, and made restless by it. “It leaves the way clear
to Lir, where the trap will close.”

“We have our own trap,” said Dias. “But I don’t like this.
It’s too quiet.”

“You’ll have a battle,” Rhian said. “Have no doubt of that.”

His eyes rolled like a skittish stallion’s. He rode away
down the line, taking refuge in comforting his people.

“He knows who you are,” Rhian observed when he was well away
from them.

“How can you tell?” Aera asked her.

“He’s too careful about ignoring you. If he notices you, I
suppose he has to send you away.”

“It would be the most honorable thing,” said Aera.

“I should hate to be a woman in the tribes,” Rhian said.

“If we win this war, that is what you’ll be.”

Rhian slid a glance at her. “Oh, no. Not I. The mare has no
use for a veiled woman in a tent.”

“Yet you condemn your people to this.”

“Only those who have earned it.” Rhian shut her mouth with a
snap.

She was on a thin edge. They all were. Aera had dreamed of
Minas in the night, seen him lying broken on a cot, his face blank, his spirit
crushed and dying. Her beautiful son, her young king. Rhian had claimed the
life of the one who did this to him, but Aera wanted part of her. The black
heart. The liver full of hate.

Where the river’s valley narrowed and its banks rose again
in steep crags, a party of the scouts met them. The army had paused to water
the horses; those who could rest were doing it, as wise soldiers learned to do.

The scouts had a stranger with them, guest or captive: a
woman in armor with a white oxtail on a staff. That was the sign of truce, and
of an embassy.

Dias received her on the field. “She has an escort,” said
the captain of scouts. “It’s waiting for us past the wood yonder. She came
alone to prove her trust in you, and to offer herself as a hostage.”

Dias bent his eyes on the messenger. She was pale with fear,
but her gaze was steady. “Lord king,” she said in the traders’ speech, “I come
bearing word from the lady of Lir.”

Dias’ growl was clearly audible. “I will hear no word from
that one. If you would please me, you would bring me her head.”

“Hers,” said the messenger, “I do not have. But I do come
bearing a gift.” She lifted a bag from her horse’s shoulder, unbinding it,
casting its contents at the feet of Dias’ lordly grey. The stallion snorted and
struck at it.

Aera gasped and clutched the mare’s mane. It was a head,
long sundered from its body, and somewhat worn with travel.

It was not Emry. This had been an older man, grey-bearded,
his black hair shot with grey. But the likeness was striking.

“The king of Lir,” said the messenger. “She offers him as a
token of her good faith, and proposes a bargain.”

“Does she take me for a merchant?” Dias demanded. “I do not
bargain with that one.”

The messenger swallowed visibly, but went on as she must
have been instructed. “She holds your brother, lord king. She will give him
back to you, and the whole of this country with it, if only you will give her
Lir and the lands about it. One city, lord king, in return for all you desire.”

Dias sat motionless on the grey stallion’s back. He had been
struck dumb, Aera thought. The men nearest him seemed no more able to speak.