Lady of Horses (38 page)

The center of the dance, the lord of hunters, came last into
her sight as she sat by the tentflap. She had been expecting some great
black-bearded bear of a man. But the one who strode long-legged among the
shorter, darker, thicker tribesmen and—yes—women, was as lean as a yearling
wolf. His hair was ruddy brown, his beard sparse, nothing like the thick black
beards of even the young men.

He was so familiar that at first she did not know him at
all. He belonged in another world, that had nothing to do with this one.

And yet even her shock could not long evade the truth. Her
lips moved, shaping his name.
Wolfcub
.

He had not seen her. He was in the sunlight, she in the
tent’s dimness. People crowded about him, as she remembered they had been doing
among the People: solitary Wolfcub, as he grew into a man, had become a man
whom people yearned to follow.

He was more comfortable with it here than he had been in
that other place. He was older, too, and thin as a sharpened blade. Pain had
etched his face, so that if she had not known how young he was, she might have
thought him a man full grown.

People were calling to him, and he was answering. They did
not call him Wolfcub. They called him something—Kestrel?

Yes, they had named him after the sparrowhawk. Her heart
paused a beat at that, and knew a small, cold stab of something like fear.

It did not have to mean anything. And yet, what was he doing
here? How had he come here, and why, if he was not hunting Sparrow and the
silvermaned stallion?

He must be alone. She had seen no others of the People
anywhere.

Then maybe he had come because he could not bear to be
parted from Sparrow. Sparrow did not know, or even guess, what she was to this
man; but he loved her with all his heart.

Keen had always known it. She had been jealous of it when
she was younger, because Wolfcub loved her, but not as he loved Sparrow. She
was his dear friend and his heart’s sister. Sparrow was his heart and soul.

Yes, that was why he was here. Keen was sure of it. He was a
great tracker. He had followed Sparrow, but had elected not to show himself to
her. Probably he was wise. Sparrow would be very angry if she knew that he had
left Linden, and his honor among the People, to run in her wake.

But it was utterly like him. Wolfcub was so named because he
went where he would, and often alone.

Keen sat quietly in the king’s tent. He was coming toward
it, or trying to; people kept stopping him. They wanted to talk to him, smile
at him, touch him. She saw how he was about it: a little uncomfortable, and not
greatly inclined to seek it, but gracious enough if there was no escaping it.
He would, she thought, have made a rather presentable king. Kings were
solitary, too, after all; set apart from their people.

He would have been appalled to hear her say that. She smiled
at the thought.

It was her smile that he must have seen first as he stooped
to come into the tent. For an instant she wondered if she had indeed said what
she was thinking: for he regarded her in pure horror. But she had not said a word.

When she did speak, it was warmly, in some hope of
reassuring him. “Wolfcub,” she said. “Oh, I’m glad to see you well!”

“Keen,” he said with no warmth at all. But that he knew her
name, he might have been a stranger. “How did you come here?”

“I was sent,” she said—biting her tongue on the first answer
that came to her:
I rode.
A woman did
not, must not ride. Not if she would remain among the People.

“And—the other?”

“You don’t know?”

He went stark white. “She’s dead.” She thought his knees
might buckle, he looked so suddenly feeble; but though he swayed, he stayed on
his feet.

“Not dead,” Keen hastened to assure him. “No, she’s very
much alive. But—”

He wheeled. Keen had seen the woman coming: the young
shaman, whose name, she recalled, was Rain. He must have heard her. He flung
his words in her face. “You knew!”

Rain did not seem dismayed, even before the blaze of his
anger. “Knew what?” she asked, reasonably enough in Keen’s estimation.

“You knew about this!” He stabbed his hand toward Keen.

Rain lifted a brow. “What, that Old Woman had guests?
Everybody’s known that since summer. I thought you knew.”

“You never told me who those guests were.”

“Should I have?”

He sucked in breath as if to bellow at her.

She spoke calmly through that sharp, furious hiss. “Kestrel,
my dear and headlong beloved, while I can gather that this woman is someone you
know, I can hardly have been expected to have foreknowledge of that. I’m a
shaman, not a god.”

“You knew,” he said, “that there were two women from north
of the river in this country. Surely, if you had been thinking—”

“When I troubled to think about it at all,” she said, “I
thought that you knew already, and it was no matter to you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

She shrugged. She was calmer than Keen would have been in
the face of such breathtaking rudeness. “Then don’t believe it. Don’t tell me,
either, why you’re so completely out of your head over this. I don’t think I
care to know.”

Keen watched her turn and stalk away. Wolfcub, or Kestrel as
he seemed to be now, refused. He glared at Keen instead.

“I think,” she said mildly, “that you have a story to tell.
Why not sit here and drink some of this goat’s milk—the honey in it is very
good—and tell me how you came to this country.”

He was not listening. Nor, clearly, was he in any mood to be
reasonable. “She’s not dead? Then where is she?”

Keen had to pause for a moment, to remember what they had
been speaking of before Rain appeared. “Sparrow is with Old Woman.”

Kestrel stared blindly at her. “With the shaman? Tonight? That
must mean—”

“Kestrel!” That caught his attention, at least. “You can’t
go running after her. Not now.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Keen said, “you are not a shaman, and she is.”

“But she can’t be—”

“In this country she can.”

For some reason that stopped him, and brought him somewhat
to himself. “This country . . .” He rubbed hands over his face,
raking them down his cheeks. “Oh, gods. O unmerciful gods.”

He was gone before she could call him back, whirling,
running away from her. She could not think what to do, except that it would not
be wise to follow him. She stayed therefore, with her stitching forgotten in
her lap, and thoughts waking in her that she did not want, no, not at all.

Kestrel had not been kind to Keen, or even polite. Nor
should it have mattered, after what she had done; but he was all in a roil. He
ran blindly through the camp, ignoring people who called after him, and
children and dogs who followed till their elders called them back. He had no
goal in mind, but his feet bore him toward the horse-herd.

And there he was, that black-and-silver beauty, tethered at
the end of a line of young stallions, well apart from the king stallion and his
mares. As many greys as there were in this herd, he was not strikingly unusual,
but his silver-dappled black coat and his bright mane were difficult to
mistake.

Keen must have ridden him to the Grey Horse camp. A woman,
and neither royal nor shaman, riding that of all horses. He looked and acted
like any other young male of his kind, grazing in his portion of the line,
glaring down the bay on his left and flinching before the elder grey on his
right. He was no king here, nor did he presume to be.

Kestrel did not approach him or touch him. There was a stone
near the stallions’ line, swept clean of snow. Kestrel sat on it with his knees
drawn up, knotted tight within himself.

Here he sat in the dark of the year. His hunt had ended: the
quarry had come to him, easily, unwarily, and all unlooked for. He could take
the stallion now, simply lead him away, and make his long way back to the
People.

He could do that. The Grey Horse People had given him a
horse, a tall speckled grey with a dark mane. He could take that horse and lead
the stallion and go. He doubted that anyone would pursue him.

As for the command that had been laid on him, to bring back
the thieves alive, he would hope that Linden had forgotten. Or he would tell
the truth, that the women were in exile and would not come back. It should be
enough, even for Linden.

So simple an ending; so tidy. Who but a god could have
arranged it?

And yet he could not move. The stone was chill under him,
the sun’s warmth fading as it sank into night. His scars ached, straining over
his ribs.

The stallion paid no heed to him at all. Horses, like gods,
cared little for men’s frets and follies. Kestrel wondered a little wildly if
he remembered that he had been a king, or regretted that he had left it. Most
likely he did not. He seemed happy enough here.

Kestrel would wait. He would endure the night and the day of
festival. Then if Sparrow did not come, he would go to her. He would see her
before he left—if only to assure his king that he had found her; she had been
alive. Then he would go.

Maybe the gods were laughing at the delusions of a simple
mortal. Maybe this was as they willed. He was not a shaman. He did not know. He
could only do what he reckoned best, however poor a best that was.

oOo

Kestrel did not go seeking Sparrow after the rite and the
feast. He did not even see the rite. He stayed with the horses through the long
chill night; and come morning, he paid the price he should have expected: a
fever that lodged itself in his misused ribs.

It was a sharp fever, but short. And it was Keen who nursed
him through it, because the Grey Horse People were preoccupied with their
festival.

Cloud would have left the feasting to look after him, but
Keen convinced him that she could manage. Kestrel, slipping in and out of
dream, saw how they looked at one another, they two, and thought that he should
say something, or do something. But his head hurt too much, and his ribs were
not happy at all.

He was only abed for two days—long enough to drive him wild
with boredom, but not long enough to destroy all his strength. By the second
day, Keen had discovered his scars, and come close to weeping over them. “Oh!
You poor thing. No wonder you’re all bones. What was it? Lion?”

He nodded. “More of my foolishness. I really should be
wiser.” She laughed a little as she bathed him in warm water scented with herbs.
It was a healer’s potion: it made Kestrel’s skin tingle. “You always say that.
You’re proud of yourself, admit it. These scars are as noble as any man could
hope to live with.”

“And not die of?” He shifted slightly on the heaped furs. It
dawned on him dimly that he was naked and alone in a tent with a woman of
remarkable beauty. But this was Keen, whom he loved as a sister. She seemed
oblivious to him, except as an object to be cleaned and tended.

She was also and rather obviously with child. Walker’s, he
supposed. It could hardly have been anyone else’s. She bore the burden well, in
a deep contentment that he had seen more often in mares than in women. It
strengthened her beauty, made it both richer and softer. Small wonder that
Cloud looked on her as he did; any man would, who was not her all-but-brother.

“You don’t want to tell me, do you?” she said. “How you came
here. You always did hate to tell stories.”

Yes, he did; and this story was not one he wanted to think
of. But he was weak with fever, and he was tired; he could not lie to her. “I
came to find the stallion,” he said, “and take him back.”

She was not shocked or afraid. She nodded. “I thought that
might be it. Will you do it?”

“The king commanded me.”

“Then I suppose you should,” she said. “If you can.”

His brows drew together. “If I can? Will these people stop
me?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “But Horse Goddess might.”

“Horse Goddess? Why would she do that?”

“He belongs to her,” said Keen. “She brought him here. She
wants him for something—I don’t know what. Certainly not the thing that stallions
do: she was in foal already when we left. But I don’t think she’ll let him go.”

“She has to,” Kestrel said. “If I don’t take him back, the
king will come for him.”

“You think so?”

“I know so,” Kestrel said.

“Then why didn’t he come before? He had most of the summer,
and the autumn. He never came.”

That was a question Kestrel had asked himself. But he
thought he had an answer. “He would have had to be king, more than ever with
his stallion gone, and settle the tribes. By the time he could have done that,
it would have been too late. But come spring, if I don’t bring the stallion
back, he’ll come here. The shamans will show him the way.”

Keen regarded him gravely. Her expression put him in mind of
men’s estimation of women’s intelligence, or the lack thereof. But Keen was by
no means weak in the wits. Behind that lovely face and those blue and dreaming
eyes was a sharp mind and a clear perception. “Maybe Horse Goddess wants that,”
she said. “Maybe he’s supposed to come here.”

“And bring war?”

She shivered, but she nodded. “I don’t know why the gods do
anything. But I don’t think Horse Goddess will let you take her stallion away.”

“I have to try,” he said. “These people are brave enough,
and fight well when they have to, but they’re a small tribe, and not rich. They
can’t hope to stand against all the gathered peoples. Even if the People come
alone—they’ll be hideously outnumbered.”

“Maybe Horse Goddess will protect them,” Keen said.

“Or maybe not.” Kestrel tried to rise. “Now do you see why I
have to go?”

“You’ll go nowhere now,” she said, pushing him gently back
down again. “And yes, I see. I saw it to begin with. But I don’t think Horse
Goddess will.”