The Horsemasters (37 page)

Siguna felt a sudden urge to defend the fawn who had kidnapped her. “I had ridden quite deep into the forest to gather herbs,” she heard herself saying.

A pair of cold dark eyes surveyed her skeptically, and their coldness did not lift at the sight of her beautiful face and hair. This Ronan might be younger than her father, Siguna thought, but he was every bit as intimidating.

“Don’t glare so at the poor girl,” Nel said mildly to her husband. “She is going to have more trouble over this than we are.”

Ronan shot his wife an impatient glance. “I do not need the additional worry of a prisoner just now, Nel.”

A gray shape came streaking up the path, and Siguna stifled a cry of terror as she recognized a wolf. Her horse, sensing her fear, threw up his head and backed.

“Nigak,” Nel said, and the wolf went immediately to stand beside her horse.

Siguna’s hands were shaking. Nel gave her a lovely smile. “He can be a little intimidating, I know, but it is only Nigak. He belongs to us and is perfectly safe.”

Siguna stared at the wolf out of huge eyes.

“Well, Thorn,” she heard the chief saying, “you brought her here, so I am making her your responsibility. Yours and Mait’s. You two can nurse her; I do not have either the time or the inclination.” Siguna lifted her eyes in time to see him turning his arrogant nose in the direction of his wife. “Nor do you, Nel,” he said warningly.

“She cannot sleep in Thorn’s tent, Ronan,” Nel pointed out.

“She can sleep in the women’s camp,” Ronan replied. “But Thorn is in charge of her. Thorn and Mait.”

“I hear you, Ronan,” Thorn said, and Siguna found herself also nodding her head in agreement.

“Nel tells me you left before the Horsemasters moved their camp?” Ronan asked Thorn next.

“Sa,” Thorn said in a subdued voice.

“We cannot take a chance of them slipping away. I will send Dai and Tyr to keep watch. Perhaps they will have enough sense to keep themselves out of sight.”

Thorn hung his head, and Siguna felt a ridiculous pang of sympathy for him.

“Turn the horses loose here, and go on back to the Great Cave,” Ronan ordered the boy. “Berta or Fara or someone will feed you.”

Thorn nodded.

Ronan wheeled his horse and galloped back to his men. To Siguna’s immense relief, the wolf followed him. The dogs, which had effaced themselves as soon as Nigak appeared, came forward again to Nel’s side. Siguna gingerly followed the example of the other two and dismounted. She relaxed slightly when the dogs ignored her.

Nel waited while Thorn took the halters from Frost and Acorn. Her own colt rested his chin comfortably on her shoulder, and when Frost and Acorn galloped off to join their fellows, White Foot made no attempt to follow. Siguna found this extraordinary.

As they turned to leave, Siguna noticed something decidedly odd among the formations of men in the valley. She stopped dead. “Are those women I see?” she demanded.

Nel and Thorn followed the direction of her pointing finger. “Sa,” Thorn said. “Those are women.”

“But they are shooting arrows!”

Silence fell as the three watched a fleet-footed, black-haired girl aim her arrow at a hide that had been stretched upon a pole for a target. The shot went into the dead center of the hide. The girl slowed her steps, stopped, and flung back her head. Siguna was sure she was laughing.

“I do not understand,” Siguna said. “Do you have women warriors as well as men?”

“Some of the women who are not mothers of young children are doing weapon training with the men,” Thorn answered.

Siguna’s eyes sparkled. “But that is wonderful!”

Nel laughed, and Siguna realized how foolish a remark that was for the enemy chief’s daughter to be making. To her great relief, the other two let it pass without further comment.

They walked on, and Nel said to Thorn, “I suggest you lodge Siguna with Fara. Now that Eken is busy with her own babe, Fara could use someone to help her look after the twins.”

Once again Siguna stopped in her tracks and stared at Nel. “Do your people keep twins?”

Nel’s delicate face momentarily appeared to harden. “We do in the Tribe of the Wolf,” she said, then continued on, White Foot and the dogs obediently following.

Siguna began to walk also, glancing curiously at Nel’s profile. From her other side, Thorn said, “Most of the tribes of the Kindred do not keep twins, but our tribe does. Will you be afraid to stay in the same living space with twins?”

Since early childhood, Siguna had had a policy never to admit she was afraid. She raised her chin. “Of course not.”

“Good,” Nel said and gave her an approving look.

They were passing two huts that looked as if they had been newly erected against the slope of the hill. A handful of women were sitting in front of one of them, sewing. As she had on the way out, Nel raised a hand in greeting, and the women waved back.

“Surely that is an odd place to build a hut,” Siguna remarked.

“Those are the moon huts,” Thorn replied.

Siguna looked at him blankly. “Moon huts?”

Nel explained what a moon hut was used for. “You do not have such a custom in your tribe?”

Siguna shook her head.

“Nor do we in my tribe,” Nel replied. “Many of our people do, however.” She quirked her delicate brows humorously. “At first I thought such a custom was disgraceful, demeaning to the Mother’s blood that carries the life of the tribe. However, I soon discovered that the women from the tribes that worship Sky God like the custom. Once a moon it gives them a week away from their husbands and their work, you see.”

Privately, Siguna thought the custom sounded wonderful.

They walked for a while in silence. Then Siguna remarked carefully, “It is not just one tribe you have gathered here, then?”

Nel gave her a long green look and did not answer.

“If she is going to live with us, she is certain to find out,” Thorn said reasonably.

Nel turned her unnerving gaze on Thorn. Then she sighed. “That is probably true.”

Thus given tacit permission, Thorn turned to Siguna. “We are a federation of tribes from all over the mountains,” he explained. “We have been following the progress of your people, and we have united to keep them from destroying us, the way they have destroyed the Kindred tribes to our north.”

“Name of the Thunderer,” Siguna muttered, using her father’s favorite oath.

Both of her captors glanced at her, but refrained from asking for a translation.

Siguna was beginning to think that perhaps it was a good thing that she had been captured. She would find out what she could about these adversaries and then try to escape and return to Fenris with the information. If she could do that, she thought, if she could return to her people with such important information, then would her life be different. Then would her father look upon her with pride. He would value her as he did her brothers. A small smile played around the corners of Siguna’s lips as she fantasized happy pictures of life in the future.

* * * *

Siguna settled into the life of the camp with an ease that astonished even herself. Fara was kind, and the chores she asked Siguna to perform were not onerous. The women in the Great Cave worked hard, taking care of children, gathering roots and berries and edible grasses and grains, cooking, keeping their family’s clothing in good condition and making new clothes—all things that the women among Siguna’s people did. One major difference between Siguna’s tribe and this one was that the men of the Kindred took care of the meat. Not only did they bring it in, but they skinned and butchered it. Relieved of this backbreaking job, the women had more time and energy for their other work.

Fara and her friends had been horrified when Siguna told them that the women of her tribe did the butchering.

“Well, what do the men do then?” Beki demanded.

“They are warriors,” Siguna answered. “They take care of their horses and their weapons. They hunt.”

Berta looked up from the arrowhead she was working on and commented, “The women of your tribe must be fools.”

Siguna thought, The women of my tribe are not fools. It is just that they have never learned another way.

Siguna’s jobs were to mind the twins, who were lively, charming children, and help with the cooking and the sewing. The women did not ask her to help with the task that was taking up the bulk of their time these days, the making of arrows.

In normal times, Fara said, the tribe’s toolmaker would make the arrows. But Ronan had had the toolmakers show the women the skill of arrow making, and that is the chore to which the vast majority of them were now turning their hands.

Some of them worked on arrowheads, which they fashioned with flint tools from the bones of the animals they ate. Others made the arrow shafts, first shaving the wood clean, then passing it over a fire to make it supple, and finally sliding it through the hole of a shaft straightener to make it straight. Finally came the binding of the arrowhead to the shaft with sinew, and the arrow was finished.

Fara had told Siguna that the women had decided it would be ill-done of them to make her work on something that was aimed at the defeat of her own people. How odd, Siguna found herself thinking time and again, that in the camp of my enemies I should be treated with more consideration and courtesy than I ever knew at home.

Either Thorn or Mait was usually at hand, but Siguna soon found herself regarding them as companions rather than as guards. She particularly liked to watch Thorn draw. She had seen such drawings in the caves of some of the tribes her father had conquered, and she found it fascinating to see how a horse could appear on a stone with just a few strokes of Thorn’s clever fingers.

It was Thorn who one afternoon told her about the Tribe of the Red Deer, whose girls were the ones Siguna had seen practicing with arrows out at the men’s camp. After that, Siguna could not rest until she had a chance to speak to Arika. The women of the Red Deer had chosen to camp at the farthest end of the tunnel, a little distance from the rest of the women of the Kindred, and it took Siguna a few days before she could find an excuse to approach the Mistress.

She spent a mind-shattering afternoon at Arika’s feet, hearing things she had never dreamed could be thought, let alone said.

That night, Siguna left her sleeping skins by Fara and the twins, giving the excuse that she had to seek the latrine area. Instead she walked outside the cave, just to be alone and to look at the stars. Her mind had been so stimulated by her conversation with Arika that she knew sleep was impossible, and she found the distant beauty of the stars immensely restful. It was chilly, and she wrapped her fur tunic around herself, leaned against the wall of the cliff, and gazed up at the sky. She had no idea how long she had been there when she heard the low murmur of voices coming nearer. Siguna, who did not want to be disturbed, moved silently to her left, deeper into the shadow of the cliff.

The moonlight picked out the figures of Nel and Ronan. Siguna had not seen the chief since their first meeting, as he and the men largely kept to the valley where their camp was pitched. Tonight, however, he was walking with his wife, his spear in his left hand, his right arm draped across her shoulders, his dark head bent close to hers in absorbed conversation. They were so intent upon each other that Siguna did not think they would notice her.

It was Nigak who gave her away. Siguna froze in terror when she saw the wolf coming straight for her. He stopped when he was but six feet away, his lips drew back, and he growled low in his throat.

“Who is there?” Ronan called sharply.

Siguna was so frightened she could not make a sound.

The wolf growled again, and Siguna managed to choke out her name.

“Siguna?” she heard Nel say. “What can she be doing here?”

“Come out,” Ronan called. “Nigak won’t hurt you.”

Siguna was petrified to move closer to the wolf, but she was also petrified that Nigak would attack if she did not do as she was told. Shaking all over, she stepped out into the moonlight.

Ronan had taken his arm away from his wife’s shoulder and changed his grip on his spear. When he saw the slim girlish figure of Siguna, his fingers relaxed. “What are you doing skulking around here?” he asked her irritably, signaling for Nigak to return to him.

Siguna was so shaken, both by Nigak and by the danger she had read on Ronan’s face, that she told him the truth. “I came out to see the stars.”

“The stars?” he repeated blankly.

“Stars,” his wife said with amusement. “Those tiny bright fires in the night sky.”

“I know what stars are, Nel,” he snapped. “What I don’t know is why this girl is out in the night, unwatched by anyone. Dhu, she could be heading straight back to her father and we wouldn’t know about it until the morning!”

“She wouldn’t be so stupid as to try that,” Nel said, unruffled by her husband’s bad temper.

“I am glad you are so certain of that.”

“I am. And Fara is too, or she wouldn’t have let Siguna leave her sight.”

Ronan looked around. “And where, I would like to know, are Thorn and Mait? I thought I told them they were to be responsible for this girl.”

Nel ignored him, looking at Siguna instead and asking sympathetically, “Did something in particular happen today, Siguna, that you felt the need to look at the stars?”

Siguna said, “I spoke today to the Mistress of the Red Deer.”

Ronan groaned. Nel punched him lightly on his shoulder and said with mock authority, “Behave.”

If one of Fenris’s women had dared to speak in such a saucy fashion to him, they would have felt the weight of his hand. Ronan’s hand simply moved to rest lightly on the nape of his wife’s neck.

“Is it true,” Siguna asked Nel slowly, “that you would have been the next Mistress of the Red Deer if you had not married?”

“Who told you that?” Ronan asked sharply. “Arika?”

Siguna shook her head, not wanting to say Thorn’s name and perhaps get him into trouble.

Nel answered Siguna with serenity, “Such talk is nothing but speculation.”

Nigak yawned, showing all his teeth. Siguna shivered.