White Mare's Daughter (42 page)

Agni half sat, half lay on the sunset side of the circle,
warm with the dance and the welcome. Someone passed him a horn of mead. It was
strong and fiery-sweet. Rahim on his right hand and Patir on his left dropped
arms about his neck and shared the horn.

Nevertheless, amid all this brightness, he had to know. He
had counted the number of those who were here. “Sekhar? Dushiri? Natan?” he
asked.

Rahim drank deep from the horn and did not answer. Patir
leaned against Agni and sighed. “Sekhar died. The stallion he was trying for
kicked him in the head. Dushiri’s stallion broke out of the pen he’d made for
it and couldn’t be caught again. Natan nobody’s seen or heard from.”

“He may come back,” Rahim said, emerging from the depths of
the drinking horn.

“The gods willing,” said Patir.

Agni granted that a few moments of silence. Sekhar had been
a bit of a fool, but charming in it. Dushiri’s luck—ill and worse than
ill—struck him as if it had been a blow. Dushiri he had been fond of. Dushiri
he had ridden with, hunted with, danced with in the festivals.

And now Dushiri was gone. He could not come back to the
tribe. He had failed to win his stallion. To the people of the White Horse, and
therefore to the man who would be their king, he was as dead as Sekhar.

Everyone knew what happened to young men who failed to win a
stallion. No tribe would receive them. They went away. They died alone.

He shivered, though the sun was still in the sky and the air
was mild.

He too could have failed. His stallion could have hurt or
maimed him. His pen could have broken. Anything at all could have happened, if
the gods had willed it.

Yet they had not. He sat here between his two dear friends,
because the gods had chosen to favor them all. Two of ten—three perhaps—was not
as ill an omen as it seemed. The gods exacted a price for every gift they gave.
For this one, for the joy of the man who had found his stallion, they took
their share; took some of the young men in sacrifice.

It was a hard thing, but so was the world. A man learned
this young, or he never learned it at all. Agni would grieve for the dead and
remember them as they had been, but they were gone. No word or act of his could
bring them back.

He plucked the horn from Rahim’s hand and found it still
half-full of mead. He drank the lot of it, though it dizzied his head and
cloyed in his throat. In the warm sweet haze he fell to the rest of the feast.

oOo

Natan did not come back. The moon waxed to the full. On
the day when it would rise round and white and whole from the eastern horizon,
the new-made men of the White Horse made ready to enter the tribe.

They bathed and groomed their stallions—with much
uproariousness as some of the less thoroughly tamed, objecting to indignity, flung
their masters in the mud—and made them beautiful with plaited manes and daubs
of paint and fine new caparisons. Then they did the same for themselves.

It was a noisy thing, yet there was a hush in the heart of
it, a breathless stillness. Agni plaited Rahim’s thin pale hair in the many
braids he insisted on, while Patir plaited Agni’s own ruddy mane into a single
thick braid.

“You’ll be the prettiest of us,” Patir said without envy. He
was pleasant enough to look at, and knew it, but it had never mattered greatly
to him that others were handsomer than he.

Agni shrugged. “I hope I’ll be the strongest,” he said.

“You likely will,” said Patir. He tied off the braid with a
bit of leather. “But I wager I’ll be married first.”

Agni snorted. “That’s no wager. Everybody knows your father
agreed with Korosh that you’d have one of his daughters once you won your
stallion. You’ll even get to choose which one.”

Agni glanced over his shoulder in time to see Patir’s face
flush crimson. But he mustered a proper portion of bravado. “Maybe I’ll choose
them all.”

“What, all six? Even the baby?”

Rahim twitched out of Agni’s grip. “Here now, if you’re
going to talk instead of do something useful, at least let me finish before the
night’s over.”

Agni pulled him down again and went back to work. “Though
why you want to look like a blooming daisy I don’t know,” he muttered. And
after a pause in which Rahim steadfastly refused to speak, he said to Patir,
“Don’t take the prettiest one. Take the one who meets your eye when you look at
her.”

“What if that is the prettiest one?” Patir inquired.

“Then you’re fortunate,” said Agni.

“You would know,” Patir said.

Agni held himself still. Made himself say lightly, “What
would I know? I’m not promised from birth to one or all of Korosh’s daughters.”

“No, but you’re no innocent in the ways of women, either,”
said Patir with an arch of brow that made Agni want to slap his head off his
shoulders.

“I heard on the wind,” said Rahim, “that there’s one in the
White Horse camp who’ll be looking for you to come back.”

“Or maybe she’s in Red Deer tribe,” said Agni through the
humming in his ears, “or Dun Cow, or—”

“Maybe,” said Patir.

There they left it, nor did Agni detect any veiled glances.
And yet his heart would not stop its hammering.

It had been a perfect secret, what he did with his brother’s
wife. No one had ever seen his coming or her going. There had been no rumor,
and no betrayal.

She would not do it. No more had Agni.

How then?

Not at all, he answered himself. Young men liked to talk.
Women were an endless preoccupation. Patir was chaffing, that was all; plying
Agni with mockery.

Agni determined to be comforted. He was in no danger. Not
now; not ever, if the gods were kind. And when he was back among the tribe,
when he was truly a man and accepted among the priests, and certain to be king
when at last his father went among the gods, then he would make a law for
himself. He would take the woman who was meant for him, who made his body sing.

It was an oath of sorts, that he swore to himself. He would
have Rudira. He burned to think of her.

Tonight he would walk among the tribe. And maybe, if the
rites allowed—or if not, then tomorrow—he would see her again.

He leaped up, scattering his friends. “Come! Why are we
dallying? We’ve a ride ahead of us.”

oOo

It was not so far, but not so near, either; nigh half a
day, and a struggle in the wind and on horseback, to preserve one’s beauty for
the tribe. They paused just over the last hill to restore their paint and their
plaits, and to brush the dust from their horses’ coats. Then at last they rode
up over the crest, paused there to be seen, and galloped whooping down on the
camp.

The camp was waiting for them. The men in their finery,
mounted on their own stallions; women thick-shrouded in veils but allowed for
this instance to see their young kin come home; children leaping, running,
galloping on their ponies, dogs barking, cattle lowing, and from the herds the
calls of stallions at the scent and sound and sight of strangers.

Agni found himself at the head of the riding, borne along on
the back of his red stallion. People stared and pointed. He heard Horse
Goddess’ name, and the name of the moon, and words of wonder and envy. “Of
course he would bring home such a horse,” they said.

He laughed at that, because after all he was a prince.
Mitani danced and tossed his head and shrilled deafeningly at all the horses.
I am king!
he cried.
I, and no other.

oOo

The king of the White Horse people waited for his son in
the camp’s center, sitting on the royal horsehide that was—Agni saw with vivid
clarity—the precise color of Mitani’s coat. He looked no older, if no younger,
than he had when Agni left.

The thing that Agni had dreaded, that the man on the
horsehide would be another, and worst of all his brother Yama, had proved
unfounded. His father was still king. He was still, as far as Agni could see,
both strong and in possession of his wits.

He rose to welcome his son, and held out his strong thin arms.
Agni sprang from Mitani’s back into that embrace. It was fierce; it squeezed
the breath from him. And yet he laughed, no more than a gasp. “Father,” he
said.

“My son,” said the king. He let Agni go. His eyes had moved
past his son to the stallion who waited with well-schooled patience. “You did
well,” he said.

“Horse Goddess was kind,” said Agni.

“She does love her children,” the king said. He held Agni at
arm’s length, peering into his face. Whatever he saw there seemed to content
him. He nodded and said, “Come now to the dancing. When that’s done, and the
gods’ rites too, we’ll speak together, you and I.”

Agni bent his head. It was only proper, but he meant it. He
was glad to see the old man again—gladder than he had imagined he could be.

He wanted to be king, oh yes. But not yet. Not for a long
while yet.

oOo

They danced the sun out of the sky and sang the moon into
it, deep voices of men and beating of drums and the trumpeting of stallions.
Each young man was presented to the tribe, given all his names and the names of
his forefathers, and honored for the victory that he had won, the stallion who
would be his mount hereafter.

Agni had yet to see his brother Yama, though others of his
brothers were much in evidence. Some even seemed glad to see him, and pleased
that he had won such a prince of horses. Some of the new-won stallions grew
fractious as the rite wore on, but Mitani stood still, head up, as a king
should do; watching it all with calm interest, his only infraction an
occasional call to the mares. His mares were safe among the rest by now, and
well he knew it, as horses know.

Agni’s heart was full. It was all as he had dreamed it since
he was old enough to know how a man became a man. The moon shining down. The
fire leaping up. The faces of the people, fixed on him, and his father intoning
the names that he had been given and the names from which he sprang, back to
the morning of the world. And beside him, warm and breathing and utterly alive,
his stallion whom the gods had meant for him.

He was man among the men of the tribe. In the morning he
could enter the circle about the king, and sit where a young man sat, and be a
part of the councils of the people.

He could present himself for one of the priesthoods. He
could be the leader of a warband. He could, and before too long should, take a
wife. All for the winning of a stallion, and for standing before the people to
be confirmed in his name and his place, and made a part of them till death
should take him.

The night wore away in dancing and feasting, in singing
and in laughter. Agni sat at his father’s side when he was not dancing among
the men. The king was stronger and more hale to look at than he had been since
Agni could remember. He looked almost young again. He even danced the Stallion Dance
with the rest of the men, whirling and stamping and shouting, shaking his long
white mane and laughing, light as a boy.

Some of the new-made men were gone long before the sun rose,
Agni could well imagine where. But although many a pair of eyes smiled at him
over a veil, none was the color of water below a brow as white as bone.

Rudira was not among the women. He searched for her as best
he could with so many eyes on him, so many people watching. Neither she nor
Yama was anywhere to be seen.

No one spoke of Yama as absent. Agni saw his tent in the
rounds of the dance, set where it always was, somewhat west of the king’s. And
yet he had not shown his face at this great rite, nor had his wife slipped away
to see if her lover had returned.

That was the only stain on Agni’s joy, that she could not
see it. But she would know. How could she not?

Though if Rudira and Yama were in that tent together . . .

He shut away the thought. Tonight should be only splendid.
He danced it into the dawn, and saw the sunrise from the king’s side, leaning
drunkenly on his friend Rahim. Patir, it seemed, had chosen one of Korosh’s
daughters after all; or had chosen to forget that he was promised to one of
them, and let himself be lured away by a woman of another kindred.

It did not matter, Agni told himself. He was happy. He was
back among his kin; and he would be king.

oOo

After all the dancing and feasting, drinking and laughter,
the light of day was harsh and bitterly bright. The tribe’s new-made men were
allowed that day’s indulgence. Thereafter they had places to fill, as sons,
brothers, husbands; as hunters and warriors for the tribe.

Today they could lie about, drink kumiss, and tell the tales
of their stallion-hunts, each vying to outdo the last. Agni saw Yama after all,
strutting among the men of his own age as if he had been among them all the
while, taking no apparent notice of the brother who had come back with a prince
of stallions.

Yama was no lovelier than ever, and no more gracious. He had
managed to keep about him a surprising number of men, and not all younger sons
or weaklings, either. Too many reckoned his bulk authority, and listened to his
bluster and called it sense.

Agni suffered no great anxiety in taking the count of Yama’s
following. He had expected it—had known that people would follow Yama while
Agni was away. But while the king was strong, Agni’s strength could only
increase again; and when at last and at length the king was gone, Agni would
stand higher than he had before.

Not that he intended to wait passively for people to come
back. When the morning was well advanced and his head had recovered
sufficiently from the effects of his night’s indulgence, he sought the
horselines. He found Mitani with what might have been dismaying ease, by the
sound of a stallion’s challenge.

The war had not yet begun. Mitani was penned alone as each
of the new stallions was, but someone—by accident or intent—had failed to
fasten the gate securely. Mitani had broken out and gone in search of his
mares. And when he had found them, he found another stallion about to claim
them.