White Mare's Daughter (85 page)

Sarama was not one of those set on guard, but she was
restless. She had been pent up in the city for much too long.

Her breasts were aching. The Mother had shown her how to
press out the milk, and she had done that once already since the morning. She
would do it again before they went on with the hunt.

For the moment the ache was tolerable. It reminded her of
her daughter, the warm milky scent of her, the way she caught at the nipple
when it was given her, tugging hard, a pleasure that was just short of pain.

Sarama wanted her suddenly, fiercely, with an intensity that
took her aback. Yes, a mother loved her child—but Sarama had never known how
powerful that love was.

She walked the edges of the circle that they had made. It
was not a camp, it was too brief, but it had shape and purpose. The women set
on guard were out of sight: practicing their scouting, Sarama supposed.

She hoped that they were not practicing their sleeping. Even
after so long and under Taditi’s firm hand, the young women of Three Birds did
not take easily to the arts of war. They were inclined to forget such minor
things as staying awake while on guard.

Sarama was tired, a little, but not enough to trouble her.
It was a fine day, cool for the season, sweet still with scents from the rain
that had fallen the day before. The sky was clear, with a scud of clouds; a
light wind blew, just enough to cool her cheeks.

If she climbed to the top of the hill to the northward, she
would see the town in its raw new palisade. But from here the world seemed
empty of cities.

She sat on a stone and turned her face eastward. She could
not see the wood; the land was too tumbled and rose too steep between. But she
knew it was there.

She did not think about it often. Nothing about it had
pleased her more than leaving it.

And yet if the tribes would come, they would come through
the wood. By now they would hardly need guides; the path through it was a
beaten road.

It would be a road in truth before they were done. Trees
would fall, the sky open overhead, and tribes come through in a long relentless
stream.

As if her half-dream had shaped itself into flesh, a mounted
company rode over the eastward hill. Sarama watched without alarm. So: had Agni
sent some of his men hunting, too? That would be like him, to guard his sister
by means of a training exercise.

They must have left earlier than Sarama’s company had, to be
coming back westward already. Or maybe they had overshot their charges.

They halted on the hillside as if they had just seen the
gathering of women and horses. She did not recognize any of them, or their
horses, either; but they were rather far away still.

Habit older than her time in the Lady’s country had brought
her feet under her and tensed her body as if for a fight. Her hands had sought
her bow and strung it.

No, she did not recognize these men who, having surveyed the
camp, had begun to ride forward again. They had the look of a raiding party,
young rakehells with an air of ragged insouciance. Their clothes were much
worn, their horses lean and ribby.

They were, she realized with a shock, in quite ordinary
condition for riders on the steppe. She had grown used to fine coats, woven
cloth, and horses fat with rich fodder.

Had she been as ragtag and filthy as these men were? The
wind was blowing from the east, bringing with it a powerful reek of unwashed
bodies.

Gods; she had grown soft.

It had not dawned on these strangers yet, perhaps, that
these were women. As they came within earshot, the man in the lead raised a
shout, a cry of welcome. Sarama rose in response and waved her arms. Then she
called the Mare, and called to the women behind her: “Strangers! On guard!”

It was gratifying to see how quickly the circle of idlers
became an armed company. No one wasted time fetching the horses. Bows strung,
spears at the ready, they faced the strangers from behind a wall of weapons.

Sarama stayed where she was. Her bow was strung, an arrow in
her hand, but she had not yet nocked it to the string.

She was not afraid. On the steppe, alone, she would have
been. But with a company of armed women behind her and the Mare at her side,
she had no fear of anything that these men could do.

They came on carefully, as strangers would on the steppe,
riding with hands well away from weapons. She watched it dawn on them that she
and all her companions were women.

It spoke well for them that no one broke ranks to try a
little rapine. They were sensible, it seemed. Or the sight of so many weapons
made them so.

“It’s true, then,” she heard one of them say, the one just
behind the leader. “This is a country of women.”

“Women who fight,” said a man nearby him. “That’s not in any
tale we heard.”

“Ah,” said the first. “Well. Tales can twist the truth.”

Sarama smiled. “A fair day and a fine welcome,” she said,
“and what brings you to this part of the world?”

The riders halted well within bowshot but out of reach of a
thrown spear. Their leader came on, alone but for the two who had spoken. They
reminded Sarama rather poignantly of Agni as he had been in the tribe, with
Patir and Rahim always at his back.

These were not such princely men as that; in fact they
seemed rather callow. But they had courage. They stopped in front of her.

Their stallions were greatly interested in the Mare, but she
pinned her ears and warned them off. She was in foal again and taking no
nonsense from any male.

“My name is Buran,” the leader said, “and I come from the
Tall Grass people.”

“I am Sarama,” she said, “and I am Horse Goddess’ servant.”

Ah: they had heard of her. Jaws dropped. Heads bent. Buran
the leader sprang from his horse and knelt at her feet as if she had been a
king or a goddess. “Lady! The gods are kind. Can you tell us where we may find
the king of the sunset country?”

“What, Agni?” She had not heard that name given him before,
but for a certainty there was only one man in this country who called himself a
king.

“Yes,” Buran said. “The sunset king.”

She considered the hunt, the hour, her freedom. She sighed a
little. She said, “I can take you to him.”

Such innocents they were, and so easily delighted. They
cheered as if they had won a battle.

Which maybe they had. The wood was behind them, this country
before them, and not one among them could know the language of the Lady’s
people—and they had ridden straight to Sarama.

Not everyone was minded to return to the hunt, now that
there were strangers to look warlike in front of. Sarama returned to Three
Birds with ample escort of women as well as men—because, said Kina, who was as
fierce as anyone ever was among the Lady’s people, raw boys fresh off the
steppe might forget themselves. They had no discipline, after all, and Sarama
was too evidently a woman.

Sarama could see no profit in correcting the child. She was
glad enough of the company, and pleased, too, because it showed the beginnings
of warlike caution.

Not that these boys were likely to venture anything
impertinent. They were too utterly in awe of everything and everyone they saw.
They had ridden into a legend, and they were nigh overcome by the wonder of it.

“So they’re telling stories about us on the steppe?” Sarama
asked Buran. He nodded, eyes wide. “Oh, yes, lady. Wonderful stories. Is it
true that the women all want men, all the time? And that bread grows on trees?”

“They know how to make the grain grow,” Sarama said, “so
that they have bread whenever they want it. As for the women . . .
warn your men. The women are willing, yes, but if a woman says no, no is what
she means. And the penalty for rape is death.”

Buran swallowed visibly. “We . . . heard that
the king killed his own brother for taking a woman that he’d won in battle. So
that’s true?”

“True enough,” Sarama said. “Watch well. And bid your men
take care. This is a land of riches, but it has its laws. Any who breaks them
must pay the penalty.”

Not only Buran had heard. The others were listening. She
hoped they were heeding it. Agni would not thank her for bringing in trouble.
And trouble it would be, if these strangers did not keep discipline.

They were only the beginning. “More will come,” Buran said,
“some from far away. The winter was hard, and there’s been little rain this
summer. The rivers run low. There was wildfire in Stormwolf country, and a
plague among the cattle of the Golden Aurochs. The gods have cursed the steppe,
it’s said. They’re driving the people westward.”

“It’s something in the sunrise country,” one of the others
said. “Something’s driving tribes into the west. Drought, it’s said. Plague. It
gets worse the farther eastward you go.”

“The gods want us to come here,” said Buran. “This is the
country that they’ve made for us.”

Sarama refrained from comment. She could not help reflecting
that if tribe after tribe came westward, there would be no room for all of
them. They would heap like waves, rise up and crash down and shatter everything
in their path.

She had seen the floods in the spring, when the rivers broke
their bonds of ice: great walls of water and flotsam, roaring with terrible
force. As often as not they overflowed their banks and spread out onto the
steppe. The unwary could drown, their tents and camps swept away.

That was the gods’ power, too. And far too much like what
she saw in this one young man with his wide eyes and his head full of legends.

One did what one could. If one could. One moved away from
the water, raised a wall against it if there was time, fought it as one could,
and prayed that that would be enough.

It had been a rich summer, not the richest that anyone
could remember, but rich enough that no one had any great fears of feeding
herself through the winter. Even with the trickle of tribesmen coming in search
of the sunset king, there was grain enough in the storehouses. The cattle were
fat, the goats and sheep plentiful, and a great store of fodder laid in with
the harvest.

Nevertheless the omens were bad. Birds flocked early,
gathered and flew—fled, some thought—into the south. The people brought in the
harvest just ahead of a great storm.

Even the tribesmen were pressed into service, grumbling and
snarling about grubbing in the dirt, but Agni flogged them on with words and
mockery—the same words and the same mockery with which Sarama, and then Taditi,
had prevailed on him to command his proud horsemen to turn farmer. The last
baskets of threshed emmer wheat went into the storehouse amid a spatter of cold
rain.

The harvest festival was a wet and foreshortened thing. The
women held the full rite in the temple, but the dancing and feasting were all
washed away in the rain.

Agni had threatened to do his sulking in his tent, and nurse
the blisters, too, from wielding a sickle day and night. Tilia was hardly
surprised to find him in their room in the Mother’s house, the room behind the
kitchen that though tiny, airless, and ghastly hot in the summer, was
undisputably their own.

It was pleasant tonight, with the lamps lit and fresh
coverlets on the bed, and warmth from the kitchen fire driving away the rain’s
damp. Agni had even managed to wash himself somehow, probably by standing in
the rain. He would have been terribly angry if she had remarked on it, but he
had become a fastidious man.

She had shaken rain from her mantle already when she entered
the house, but still it dripped on the floor. She spread it over the chest that
took up all of the room that was not filled with bed, and laughed at his
expression.

He never grew accustomed to the Lady’s garment, the skirt
that marked a woman—and marked her very well, too. Sometimes she liked to take
him while she wore it, and laugh at his mingled shock and excitement. He was very
shy when it came to women.

Tonight she unwound the skirt, which was as wet as her
mantle, and spread it to dry, and leaped into the bed’s warmth.

He yowled. “
Ai!
Woman, you’re
freezing
!”

Brilliant observation; she was shivering convulsively, and
her teeth were chattering.

She clung tightly. After his first yelp of outrage, he
remembered what a bold brave tribesman he was, and clasped her close, rubbing
warmth into her body.

In a little while, not only his hands performed the office.
She rocked with him, not too slowly, not too quickly; an easy rhythm, like one
of his horses in the gait that he called canter.

Someday maybe she would ride one. Others of the women were
making a great fashion of it. It was better, Tilia allowed, than that other
fashion, to play at being women of the tribes, complete with meek submission
and confinement to the tents.

Though not much better. Riding was part of fighting; of
learning the ways of war.

She shut her mind away from that, and let her body be her
world. The Lady’s gift swelled slowly. She prolonged it as much as she might,
because while it went on she need not think.

But he was only a man, and his strength had its limits. She
took the last of the gift just as his breath caught.

Her whoop of glee covered any sound he might have made, but
he was never a noisy lover. He had learned to be silent. It was a necessity in
a tent, she supposed, with the walls so thin and everyone living on top of one
another.

He slept soon after, which to his credit he did not often
do. Tilia was content to lie warm beside him, with her body thrumming still,
and his breathing soft in her ear.

Her hand had come to rest over her belly. The Mother had
said—a woman could know. Tilia never had, though she had conceived before, and
lost the child before it was real enough to do more than interrupt her courses.