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Authors: Morgan Llywelyn

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S
hoving and elbowing each other, the men and women of the Kelti ran toward the palisade and the road beyond. The fleet-footed young, Epona and Mahka among them, were among the first to arrive at the trail’s edge, where they halted in astonishment.
Four creatures were coming up the road: sinewy, longlegged beasts with very low withers and finely shaped hindquarters, nothing like the blocky little ponies used for draft animals or the asses and onagers the traders sometimes brought. Their stride was different, too. Instead of a choppy, short gait, suitable for pulling weight, they moved with long and fluid strides that gave an impression of effortlessness, like red deer trotting. “How beautiful,” Epona murmured to herself.
Then she looked at the human figures rising from their backs.
The creatures approaching were not
kentaurs
at all; they were horses straddled by separate human beings, with separate
legs and feet, who nevertheless moved with their mounts as one.
“Imagine sitting on
top
a horse and floating along like that,” Mahka commented. “How much better that must be than jolting around in a cart!”
As the horses drew nearer, it was easier to make out the details of their riders, towering above the earthbound Kelti. The horsemen were heavily bearded, with deep-set eyes and unkempt long hair beneath snug peaked helmets made of felt. They wore felt tunics, loose across the chest but narrow in the sleeves, and below that a peculiar form of split skirt that wrapped around each leg individually and was then gathered into soft leather boots.
How sensible for a man who straddles a horse, the Kelti commented to one another admiringly.
The clothing of the strangers was dyed in intense shades of blue and red and yellow, faded and worn but still gaudy. The apparent leader of the band wore a short cape of an unfamiliar spotted fur, and all of them sported massive gold necklets half-hidden by their tangled beards. The horses’ bridles gleamed with intricately worked ornaments of silver and bronze.
The men of the Kelti began pointing out to one another the weapons the horsemen carried. Each rider had an unusual case strapped to his hip on the cup hand side, obviously designed to hold both a curved bow and a supply of arrows with deadly three-edged heads. A leather sheath tied to the knife hand thigh contained a bronze-hilted shortsword, and a lethal assortment of knives was thrust through the belt. In addition, three of the four had large packs tied on behind them that could surely contain other weapons.
The fourth, the leader, rode a prancing gray horse with a bristling upright mane that swayed in rhythm to its gait. As they neared the staring crowd, this man kicked his mount and galloped forward boldly, one hand hovering above his sword hilt.
“Demand travelers’ rights!” he cried. He spoke their language
with a guttural accent, difficult to understand, but his words followed the traditional formula for requesting hospitality that no member of the people could refuse. Old Dunatis responded with “Come and be fed!” and the four horsemen rode down on the village of the Kelti like thunder from the mountains.
Vallanos was sent at the run to summon the miners home. This was obviously not a familiar trading delegation; Taranis wanted all the able-bodied men of warrior status in the village, just in case.
Meanwhile, the villagers crowded around the horsemen, who remained seated on their animals. A few hands reached out hesitantly to pat a steaming haunch or examine a bobbed tail. The spectators, eyeing the bows in their cases, quickly decided among themselves that these horse riders had cut off their horses’ tails and manes to avoid interference with their shooting. They must be very serious archers, very fine hunters.
Or warriors.
“Who is chief here?” the man on the gray wanted to know. His eyes swept over the crowd but he looked directly at no one.
Such dark, dark eyes,
Epona thought.
He has the face of a hawk that cannot be tamed.
Taranis stepped forward. “I am lord of this tribe.” He carried his unsheathed sword in his hand.
The horsemen did not seem to feel threatened. “Good. We come to talk trade.”
Nothing about the four horsemen resembled the stream of merchantmen familiar in the Blue Mountains. “You want salt?” Taranis inquired, not bothering to conceal his surprise.
With an easy gesture the horseman swung one leg across his mount’s neck and slid to the ground. His eyes glanced at the sword the chief held. Within his heavy brown beard a line of white teeth flashed.
Strong teeth, without gaps,
something said at the back of Epona’s mind.
“Not salt,” the stranger told Taranis. “You have iron, is
it so? You have special good smith? People talk, east, of your smith, your iron. We want swords, we give gold. Is it so?”
There was an exchange of meaningful looks among the elders. At the edge of the crowd the soot-smeared face of Goibban himself appeared, marking this occasion as one momentous enough to draw even the smith from his work.
The stranger was standing directly in front of Taranis now holding out his knife hand to show that it was empty of weapons. After a moment’s hesitation, Taranis sheathed his own sword. The horseman gave a slight nod of his head, as if prepared to bow in greeting, but when Taranis did not respond in kind he quickly abandoned the gesture.
“This is Kazhak, son of Kolaxais, Prince of Horses,” he announced in a strong voice. Taranis responded with his own name, and the two men handclasped their weaponless knife hands.
Epona was standing close enough to them to be aware of a strong male odor emanating from Kazhak’s body. It was not acrid and musky like the shapechanger’s; merely the powerful smell of sweat and horses. But in the mountains where water was plentiful the Kelti had become addicted to frequent bathing; they had come to find the smell of unwashed flesh offensive, and routinely greeted all guests with bathing water. Yet Kazhak’s odor did not seem unpleasant to Epona. It was more that of a horse than a human.
Kazhak was surveying the crowd with a haughty stare, as if he still towered above them on his horse. The men of the Kelti were generally much taller than he, but he looked at them as though from a vast distance, with eyes used to seeing across endless expanses.
Now that names had been exchanged, it was proper for Taranis to ask the stranger his tribe. The horseman’s answer stunned the listeners into momentary silence.
“Kazhak is Scyth,” the newcomer announced with ringing pride.
A Scythian! The wild nomads of the distant steppes, the fearsome warriors who had rolled, windblown, across so many lands to the east, driving out the legitimate landholders
with a callous disregard for the traditions of generations of settlements and cultivation. The Scythians had even dispossessed the Cimmerians, doughty warriors themselves, forcing them from their homelands and scattering them through the mountains and river valleys formerly occupied only by various tribes of the people.
Even in the heart of the Blue Mountains the reputation of the Scythians was known, and men talked around their lodgefires of the marauders from the Black Sea region, the savages who had introduced a new style of warfare to Galicia and Thrace and even Anatolia. The Scythians were reputed to be sometime allies to the Assyrians, having taught them their skills with horse and bow, and occasionally sending detachments of mercenaries to the Assyrian armies. These nomads had come galloping from the birthplace of the sun to terrorize much of the known world with random violence.
Now a Scythian was standing calmly beside his horse in an alpine village, requesting iron.
The Kelti gaped at him in astonishment.
Epona was one of the first to recover. She had grown up in the lodge of the chief; she knew how to behave toward strangers, no matter how odd they might seem. Besides, she just had to get a closer look at that gray horse. It appeared to be a stallion; the other three were gelded, like oxen. She edged past Taranis and put her hand on the gray’s neck, feeling the silky texture of the hair. How different it was from the coarse hides of the ponies!
The saddle, also, was worthy of investigation. It consisted of two small pillows she would later learn were stuffed with deer hair and then sewn together, to cushion the rider’s thighs. In addition there was a saddlecloth, a woolen girth, and a leather strap passing under the horse’s tail and helping to hold the saddle in place. The entire rig was decorated with cutouts of colored felt depicting wild animals fighting, the details highlighted in colored thread and pieces of precious metals. From the saddle itself hung leather pendants similarly decorated and edged by bands of fur, and woolen tassels swung against the stallion’s flanks.
Nothing like it had ever been seen in the Blue Mountains.
Epona stroked the stallion’s neck again, and as she did so, Kazhak turned around and looked at her. His brown eyes unwittingly met and locked with hers, then he scowled and turned away.
Those are not the eyes of a savage,
she thought.
Becoming aware of Epona’s convenient presence, Taranis said, “Epona, perhaps you would show these strangers to the guest house? You and your men are welcome to the best we have to offer, Scythian, poor though that may be, as long as you care to stay in peace and trade with us. This woman will see that you have everything you need to make you comfortable while we prepare a feast in your honor. Then we will talk trade.”
Taranis was relieved that Epona was available for this traditional duty of a chief’s daughter. Mahka would have probably refused outright, embarrassing him in front of the Scythians, as she had already refused to be instructed in the other traditional duties of her new station. Fortunately, Epona seemed happy to oblige.
While she took the strangers to the lodge set aside for guests, Taranis wanted to meet with the tribal council and discuss this new development. The way he handled these Scythians would be the first major test of his new chiefdom, and he intended to make no mistakes.
Kazhak had been listening to his words intently, his curving dark brows drawn together as he strove to follow the language of the Kelti, his eyes watching the chief’s lips. When Taranis abruptly concluded the conversation by bringing forward the yellow-haired woman Kazhak was startled, but he did not allow himself to show it. Then the woman spoke to him—
spoke
to him! What sort of people were these Kelti, who let their women come in contact with strangers and actually say words to them?
She indicated that he was to follow her. He glanced around but saw no overt menace, aside from the rows of staring and fascinated Kelti. Many of them carried weapons—even the
women
, as he now noticed—but they had made no effort to
use them for intimidation. He signaled to his men to dismount and follow him. No one must question the courage of the Scyth.
The guest house was a spacious lodge, permanently fitted out with the best the tribe had to offer. The four Scythians followed Epona, leading their horses, and a great number of Kelti trooped at their heels. Epona walked with her head high and her step light, hoping the spirit of Toutorix was watching. He had trained her well.
At the door of the lodge she turned to her guests and smiled, puzzled that none of them would meet her eyes. Eye contact was a ritual among the people, for it was often said, “Eyes that meet yours cannot keep the secrets of the spirit from you.” Yet these Scythians looked at one’s nose or mouth or hair. It made her feel awkward.
“Please make this your home for as long as you stay with us, o Kazhak,” she said solemnly. “I will see that you are immediately served red wine, and heated water for bathing.”
“Bathing? You mean wash? In
water
?” He recoiled, appalled by the suggestion.
“But of course. We will have a cauldron heated for you at once, and after you are purified the …”
“No wash!” Kazhak announced with finality. “Kazhak is Scyth. Not pollute water with body.”
It was a delicate moment. The people of the Kelti looked at one another with bafflement. It was important not to offend the prohibitions of others, but what sort of folk did not wash?
Kazhak was not insensitive; his ability to detect nuances was part of his survival equipment. He shot a quick glance at his men, warning them to be silent, then addressed the yellow-haired woman, enunciating very carefully so there would be no misunderstanding.
“Steam make man clean,” he explained to her. “Clay make woman smooth. Keep water clean for drinking only, is it so?” Fixing his eyes on her forehead, he offered a pleasant smile.
His nostrils curved like the lines of Rigantona’s favorite brooch. His hair was a very dark brown and his skin was
tanned to leather by sun and wind, though around the eyelids, in the furrows of squint lines, it was as white as Epona’s. Kazhak’s eyes were as warm and dark as those of his horse, and a keen intelligence burned in them.
At that moment Kernunnos joined them, his presence creating a distraction that rescued Epona from an awkward situation. The chief priest had dressed himself to impress the strangers. A mantle of wolfskins enveloped his lean body, the heads and tails dangling, the empty eye sockets outlined with red paint. Bracelets of shells from the distant sea of King Aegeus testified to the reach of his arm. From his temples branched the antlers of a great stag.

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