Lady of Horses (40 page)

She almost fled the shock of it. But he held her fast. He
took her as, just now, she had taken him. He was strong, and skilled enough
that she widened her eyes. He seemed, now it was much too late to escape, to
have given himself up to it; to have let the joy overcome all his misgivings.

No wonder they called it a dance. When it was danced so, as
equal and equal, it was like the dance of warriors about the royal fire: bound
and yet apart, vying in strength and skill, but matched, so that neither could
be victor, and neither be vanquished. They hung poised on the piercing edge of
pleasure, until, with a swift, sure stroke, he lifted them up and ever up.

She had thought she knew. She had imagined. But to
know
. . .

And to know all of it. What she was. What he was. What they had
done, they two, in a place of power, under the eyes of mare and stallion.

Old Woman had not told her. Old Woman had never told her
anything that she was to learn for herself. It was not only the learning in the
heart, the signs drawn on the body, the sacrifice made and consumed as the
goddess required, that made the shaman; that completed the rite. It was this.

She laughed as she lay exhausted, with him a heavy, limp
weight in her arms. She could feel him slipping free of her, shrinking and
softening. Her laughter roused him, and offended him more than a little—he
half-pulled away, relieving her at least of his weight. But she held him before
he could escape entirely.

“Was I that bad?” he demanded.

That only made her laugh the harder, and made him all the
more ridiculously offended. It was a long while before she could master her
voice enough to say, “Stop that! I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at me.”

He did not believe her: he glowered through a tangle of
loosened hair. She smoothed it out of his face. “You men,” she said.
“Everything is always to do with you. Can’t you imagine for a moment that I
might be laughing because I am a raging fool?”

“Why? For this?” There was a growl in it, but he was
listening.

“For thinking that, without this, I knew everything there
was to know.”

“Why, didn’t you?”

She slapped him lightly, but without anger. Then she kissed
him, because she could not help herself. That might have led to other things,
but he was only a man; he could not go on and on as a woman could.

She forgave him. She was dizzy, as she had been when she
first rode the mare: as if all her life had been leading to this, and she had
never known it or begun to imagine it.

He was coming out of his sullenness, a little. And more, as
she traced his body in kisses, until, all unwillingly, he began to laugh. Then
it was well. It was very well indeed.

They lived in the camp of the Grey Horse that winter, at
the king’s urging and by Old Woman’s own wish. Sparrow had inherited Old
Woman’s belongings, her goats, and her shelter, too, though that lay empty
through the winter. She was rather surprised on taking stock, to discover that
by the measure of the Grey Horse People she was a woman of substance.

She owned a tent of respectable size, she discovered on
exploring the shelter, and a remarkable number of comforts to fill it, even
such treasures as a nest of clay bowls and a lidded pot painted with spirals
like those limned on her skin. There were baskets of fine weaving, stores of
herbs and potions, cured hides and furs, knives of flint and hardened bone and,
folded well away, that strange black stone which took so deadly an edge.

There was a great store of beads and shells, some strung
into necklaces and armlets, most laid away in small baskets or scraps of hide. She
even found things that she had no names for: odd gleaming stones, sun-colored
or moon-colored, strangely heavy and cold in the hand. Sun’s tears and moon’s
tears, she reckoned those; and the small dark stone, heavy and potent, that
made her arm ache to hold it, must be the heart of the night.

Those she put away as she had found them, wrapped tight and
hidden in a basket of more ordinary stones. What they were, what powers they
had, she did not know; but someday perhaps she would.

She traded a pair of she-goats, each with twin kids, for an
ox to carry it all back to the Grey Horse camp. The ox was well laden. She had
wealth to share, hides and furs enough to give away, and ample herbs and
simples for the work of healer and shaman. She would not be a useless burden on
these people, any more than Kestrel would with his hunter’s skills, and Keen
with her needle and her gift for calming fretful children.

Sparrow had never dreamed that she would be either rich or a
shaman. And here she was both.

At first she fretted. With her presence, this small and none
too powerful tribe boasted three shamans. North of the river, that would have
been as difficult as asking a herd to accept three stallions, or three queen
mares.

But Storm said when she murmured of retreating to Old
Woman’s camp, “My spirit is not so weak that it needs to fear a rival. Only
grant that in matters pertaining to the tribe, my word rules yours. In all
other things, you may rule me if you choose. Or we will consult, and settle
matters between us.”

Sparrow could agree to that. But there was still Rain to
consider. Rain was younger and famously headstrong, and it was clear that she
had been enjoying Kestrel’s attentions before Sparrow came to displace her.

She kept well apart, was not among the curious and the
welcoming when Sparrow raised her tent on the camp’s eastern edge, and did not
share the daymeal with her mother and her brother and the guests. First she had
gone off hunting, then she had disappeared with a man well known for his
prowess with the women.

oOo

But after the long mild spell ended and the cold and
storms of winter closed in once more, Rain could not wander so far afield.
Sparrow ran her to ground one chill grey morning, found her in her mother’s
tent drinking warm goat’s milk and playing a game of bones with Cloud. Keen was
there, and one or two children; she was teaching them to string beads on a hair
from a horse’s tail and embroider them on a scrap of doeskin.

Sparrow sat on her heels to watch the game of bones. Rain
played like a man, with a fierce edge of temper. Cloud was calmer, wiser. He
had won a handsome handful of shells and beads, and was proceeding to win
another.

He was doing it for Keen, Sparrow thought. When he cast a
good hand, he glanced at her. She seemed oblivious to him, but when he was not
looking at her, she darted her own brief glances.

Sparrow wondered if they even knew what they were doing, or
how strong the bond between them had become. It was like a rope of braided
hide. She could see it if she shifted her eyes, see how it grew stronger the
less notice they seemed to take of one another.

But she had not come to watch those two grow together in
spirit while their bodies remained decorously and perpetually apart. She turned
her attention on Rain.

Rain was a shaman. There was no mistaking it. She had the
gift. But she was lacking in discipline. She was not calm and focused within
herself as Storm was, or as Sparrow had learned to be. She tried to shift the
cast of the bones to favor her cause, but she only succeeded in casting the
figure called the Oxtail, which lost to every figure but itself. He in response
cast War, and so won the round.

When the bones came back to her, she flung them down in a
temper, leaped up and stalked out of the tent. Sparrow rose quietly and
followed her.

oOo

She did not run away as Sparrow had half thought she
might. Sparrow caught her near the tent in which, Sparrow recalled, her lover
of the season lived with his mother and sisters.

“He’s not there,” Sparrow said. “He went riding with some of
his cousins. They were going to meet a hunting party from—was it the Boar?”

“Yes,” Rain said more politely than Sparrow might have
expected. “I left my bow here. I’m going to find them.”

That was true, Sparrow supposed. “They went east, toward the
beech-wood.”

Rain stopped in front of the tent and turned to face her. “I
suppose you just know that.”

“Don’t you?” Sparrow asked, not trying to be provoking, but
not forbearing from it, either.

“I’m not the shaman you are,” Rain said. “Nor will I be. Old
Woman told me that. I’m strong, and I’ll do well for my people. But you were
made for this whole country.”

“Does that trouble you?”

Rain frowned. She did not seem troubled. Thoughtful, yes.
Jealous? A little, maybe.

“I think,” she said, “that you’ll have greater glory, but
I’ll have much greater peace of mind. I used to dream of being the one—I won’t
deny it. But now I know I’m not, I’m rather glad.”

“Then you’re going to be able to endure my being here?”

“I’m glad you’re not living in my mother’s tent,” Rain said.
“As for your being in the camp, no, that doesn’t matter to me. There’s room for
both of us.”

“Is there?”

“Why, are you going to challenge me?” Rain shook her head.
“You’re not that foolish.”

“Maybe. But you might challenge me.”

“What for? To see myself beaten soundly and put in my place?
I think not. Although,” Rain said with a flash of dark eyes, “if you’re
speaking of the Sparrowhawk, that’s a different thing.”

Sparrow eyed Rain’s belly, which was visibly rounded with
the baby, and eyed the tent, in which she spent rather riotous nights with the
handsome Horn.

Rain tossed her head. “What, you’ve never heard of two men
sharing a woman? But you wouldn’t, would you? North of the river, women share a
man, but never the opposite.”

“Maybe Horn would consent to that,” Sparrow said, “but I
doubt that Kestrel will.”

“And if he would, would you let him?”

“He can go where he pleases,” Sparrow said. “He’s not my
prisoner.”

“So generous,” sighed Rain. She sobered suddenly however,
looked Sparrow in the eyes and said, “I won’t squeal and kick at you like a
rival mare. I’m content with what I am here, and with what I have. Maybe I want
that lovely man—but if I do, I’ll win him fairly. That much I promise you.”

Sparrow decided to accept it. It was not what she had been
looking for, but it would do.

oOo

It was a long winter, and hard. The Grey Horse People did
not suffer too badly. Only three children died, and two of them had been sickly
in the autumn. None of the elders died; no one starved, though by the first thaw
of spring, the hunting was as thin as the hunters.

Sparrow did not care at all for cold or hunger. She had all
the warmth she needed, and all the sustenance. Kestrel kept his tent and she
kept hers, but neither slept alone. Sometimes they slept in her tent, sometimes
in his.

The first time, the night after they first came together, it
was Sparrow who went to him, creeping out in the firelit dark and the frosty
stars, and slipping into his tent, and finding him awake.

She did not speak. His arms were as eager as hers, his body
as urgent. This time there was no pain when he entered her, no hindrance; she
was open and ready, as a woman is, taking him deep and holding him. Without
pain, the pleasure was even greater—so much so that she cried out in astonishment,
then buried her face in his shoulder, mortified.

He laughed at that, stroked her and held her until she would
lift her head again. “Now everyone will know what a great bull of the plains I
am,” he said.

He did not blush when he said it, either. Something had
opened inside of him, some gate of the heart that had been locked shut. In
coming to him as she had, she had done much better than she knew. She had made
him happy. She had made him hers.

oOo

They were lovely, those long icy nights, wrapped in each
other’s arms, whispering of anything and everything, laughing as often as they
spoke, and taking one another with fierce delight. He loved to trace the
shaman-signs drawn in her skin, to feel the tingle of power as it woke and grew
strong. She let free a little of it to soothe the terrible deep scars in his
side and back, the marks of the lion’s claws.

He lost himself in the thick dark curls of her hair. She
freed his ruddy mane from its plaits, smoothing it and combing it till it hung
waist-long, then binding it up again, as only a lover could do.

She was beautiful to him. He was beautiful, but she who to
most eyes was rather ordinary, in his sight was as splendid as Keen. “You
shine,” he said to her, “like sun on clear water.”

“That’s the magic,” she said. And, in wonder: “You can see
it?”

He nodded.

“Wonderful,” she said, brushing his brow with her hand,
feeling the soft flutter of eyelids under her palm. “So few can see. Even some
who call themselves shamans—they’re blind to the light.”

“It’s so clear,” he said. “How can they not see it?”

“They don’t have the eyes. But you,” she said, “do.” And
such beautiful clear grey eyes, in so very handsome a face. She could never get
enough of it. Many nights, long after he had fallen asleep, she would lie awake
by whatever light there was—moonlight, firelight, starlight—and simply gaze at
him. He was so very familiar, and yet he was all new, all wonderful, as if he
had been a stranger.

oOo

By the deep heart of winter, she knew what their loving
had made. It was very early; she had barely missed her courses. And yet she was
a shaman. She felt it inside her, the tiny spark, growing as the days
lengthened.

She did not tell him as soon as she knew. It was so early,
and he was a man of the People; he might be odd about it, or be terribly silly
and solicitous as some of the young men of the Grey Horse were inclined to be.

Here, the office of father mattered less than the office of
clan-brother—as Cloud was to Rain. But they did know how babies began, and
mostly the women took care to note which of their lovers was likely to have
fathered the child. It was a gift, from man to woman and from woman to man. And
if he was of such a mind, the man might be rather a fool about it.