Lady of Horses (4 page)

She had grown up strong, and she had grown up beautiful. On
this night she came to Sparrow under the rising moon, a white shining creature
like the dream of a god.

And yet she was a living creature. She was warm; she
breathed. She smelled of sweet grass and sun-warmed earth and a pungency that
was horse.

She came and laid her head in Sparrow’s arms, and coaxed her
to rub the spots that itched: along the cheeks, under the jaw, down the neck to
the big square shoulders.

She sighed. Sparrow sighed. They rested against one another.

The moon crept up the sky. The horses grazed or drowsed or
stood guard against the raiders of the steppe.

After a while Sparrow curled in a nest of grass at the white
mare’s feet. She slept there, more deeply than she ever did in her father’s
tent. And in her sleep she dreamed, but it was only the dream of the white
mare.

She had lived it that night. What it meant beyond itself,
she did not know, nor did she care.

oOo

She woke in the dawn, shivering, damp with dew. The moon
had set. The mare stood above her like a white hill, head low, hipshot, asleep.
Her mane was knotted and her tail tangled with burrs. She had never looked more
mortal.

Sparrow knew then what the dream meant. Here in living
flesh, breathing the air that mortals breathed, was one of the gods.

A goddess. Horse Goddess. She had taken the form and
semblance of one of her children.

There was great power in the knowing, but no fear. Not here
in the grey light of morning. Sparrow was safe, warded and protected. No ill
thing could come upon her here, and nothing touch her, unless the mare willed
it.

Sparrow sat up. The mare snorted gently, but otherwise did
not interrupt her sleep. Sparrow reached to touch the sturdy leg that stood
closest. It was dark still to the knee, though dappled with silver. And it was
quite solid.

Gods, the priests said, were things of air and naked power.
They lived in the wind and the storm, and rode the sun. Sometimes they spoke
through chosen vessels. Often they took on the fur and flesh of an animal, or
flew as a bird, bearing messages from Skyfather to his lesser creation.

But to be born in flesh, to live in it, to be both mortal
and god—that, Sparrow had never heard of. It was a new thing, a great thing. It
was a mystery.

Was this the vision that Walker hungered for?

Her lips stretched in a mirthless smile. No; this was
nothing that Walker would think to ask for. When Walker demanded visions, he
had in mind those that furthered his cause and fed his power. She had no doubt
at all that he could use this as he used everything.

She was not going to give it to him. This was hers. The mare
had been born at her feet, had grown in her presence. The truth had come to
her, not to the Walker Between the Worlds. Let him find his own vision. This
one she kept for herself.

She rose stiffly. The mare woke with a small start, shook
herself, rubbed her face on her knee. Then she turned her head and looked at
Sparrow.

It was a command, as clear as if she had spoken it in words.
Get on my back. Mount and ride.

Sparrow almost laughed. It was just as the Grandmother had
said of that long-ago and older mare. Just such a command, just such an
irresistible compulsion to obey. There was the mare, there was her broad pale
back; and she was standing conveniently close to a low jut of stone.

Sparrow hesitated. When the Grandmother had done it, it was
nothing that anyone had ever done before. Now it was a thing that only men did.

That had been so since the prince took both vision and power
away from his sister and made it his own. Boys learned to ride on gentle and
much-scorned geldings. Men earned the right to master stallions.

Women did not ride. They were forbidden the herds; forbidden
to defile them with female impurity.

Indeed; and Sparrow had defied that prohibition since she
was a child just barely big enough to slip away from her nurses and hide among
the horses. Mares had raised her rather more attentively than her father’s
women had.

But she had never tried to ride. She had never been asked.

Sparrow gathered her courage in both hands. She clambered up
on the rock. The mare stood still beside it. Gingerly, trying not to breathe
too hard, she laid a leg across the mare’s back. The mare flicked an ear at it,
but did not buck or bolt as Sparrow had seen the colts do. With a sudden,
almost fierce movement, Sparrow pulled herself astride.

The mare staggered a little, finding her balance. Sparrow
clutched mane. The mare steadied. Sparrow clung to her, unable to move and
barely able to think.

What had Linden said once in her hearing? “The world is a different
place from the back of a horse.”

Yes. It was. She had sat higher above the world, on the
summit of a hill, in the branch of a tree that grew near one of their winter
camps. And yet, to sit on the back of a living creature, to feel its warmth,
how it breathed, the way it shifted to carry her weight: she had never known a
thing like it.

She leaned forward a little, meaning to stroke the mare’s
neck. The mare advanced a step, as if surprised; then found herself walking.

Sparrow had to remind herself to breathe. That was what the
men said when they taught the boys to ride. “Breathe. Don’t clench. Let the
horse carry you.”

She tried to do that. It was harder than it had looked from
a hiding place in the grass. A horse’s back was round, and it rolled. At the
same time it surged forward, then back. It was too much to do all at once.

It’s worse if you
think about it.
Wolfcub’s voice, clear as if he stood beside her.
You have to just do it.

And that was the hardest thing. Not to think. Simply to do.

The mare circled the herd, walking more steadily as she grew
accustomed to carrying Sparrow—and no credit to Sparrow, either; for all that
she could do, she still clutched and clung. And yet she clutched less, the
longer the mare walked.

The sun came up as Sparrow sat on the back of the mare. She
was facing east, as it happened. The clear light fell full on her face, bathed
her and the horse she rode.

It blessed her. She was sure of that, as sure as she had
been of anything, even to the mare’s divinity. The sun smiled on her, and on
what she did. She had pleased the gods.

White Bird labored long and hard to deliver the child that
was, she insisted, another son for her husband. It was a long enough labor that
most of the women in the tribe had out of courtesy to find occasion to visit
the birthing-lodge.

Keen would have avoided it if she could. White Bird was as
arrogant as she was beautiful, and she had been insufferable since she began to
bear children to Drinks-the-Wind. She always seemed to take particular care to
remark on Keen—how they were of the same age, and Keen had yet to bear a child
at all, whereas White Bird was bearing her third; the others having been
daughters, and never counted except when White Bird wanted to vaunt herself
over Keen.

That White Bird had caught Drinks-the-Wind’s fancy when her
breasts were barely budded, and Keen’s father had waited till her courses came
before he found her a husband, mattered little to White Bird. She only cared
that she be better than anyone else, and especially Keen.

“It’s because you’re more beautiful than she is,” Sparrow
liked to observe. “She’s jealous.”

Keen did not think she was more beautiful than White Bird,
but that White Bird was jealous, she could well believe. White Bird was jealous
of anyone who had anything that she wanted, or might expect to want. And Keen
had seen how she looked at Walker.

Walker was young, strong, beautiful. Drinks-the-Wind was
strong but he was old, and his teeth were bad. He smelled like an old man. Not
like Walker, who was fastidious, and even bathed in winter.

Keen took her time in paying her respects to White Bird in
the birthing-lodge, though it might cost her in courtesy: if she waited too
long, White Bird would bear the child, and Keen would be known to have stayed
away. That was not a wise thing for the wife of a shaman to do to the wife of a
greater shaman.

On the second day therefore, which was as late as she dared,
Keen gathered her courage and her store of calm, and went to the birthing-lodge.

Drinks-the-Wind’s women had built it by the river in a place
sacred to the women’s gods, shaping it of woven reeds and making it soft inside
with heaped grasses. Herbs were strewn among the grasses and hung at the
entrance to the lodge. The fire that burned in front of it was pungent. Its
smoke curled toward the blue vault of heaven. The gods would find it sweet, and
the earth would cherish it; and ill spirits would fly far away.

Some of the women sat outside the lodge. They had been
telling tales of horror, birthings that went on for days, women rent asunder,
children stillborn or ill-born or cursed by the spirits. These were the tales
they always told; and they were always driven out of the lodge, sometimes
sooner, sometimes later.

Those who stayed within were wiser, maybe, and better able
to hold their tongues. White Bird sat on the birthing-stool, swollen,
sweat-streaming, exhausted. Her hair was lank about her face. Her body was gone
all shapeless, great mass of belly, milk-heavy breasts, thighs parted as she
strained to bear this child.

Warriors came back from battle less worn than this woman
was, and her battle was not yet over. Keen almost admired her. When the pains
struck, she did not scream. She grunted, that was all, and set herself to
endure.

They were coming close together. It would not be long now.
Old Mallard squatted down in the midwife’s place and thrust a hand between
White Bird’s legs. The other elders leaned close. Mallard nodded. “It’s
coming.”

Keen, spared the necessity of speaking polite words to White
Bird, found herself catching the infant as it came. She was close, she was
quick, and it came so fast that it caught even wise old Mallard by surprise.

They all stared at the wet and wriggling thing in Keen’s
hands. It gasped and choked and let out a thin wail.

“Yes,” White Bird said faintly. Then more strongly: “Yes.
Let me see him!”

The women glanced at one another. Keen, still holding the
child, knew a moment’s satisfaction as she laid the child in its mother’s arms.

White Bird was so sure it was a son, that for a long moment
she did not see what all the rest of them had seen. When she did, she stared.
Her face went slack. So too her arms.

Once more Keen caught the child—the daughter whom White Bird
had not allowed herself to foresee. It was a strong child, well formed, and
large for one so young: small wonder then that it had taken so long in coming.

Keen tried to give the child back to its mother. But White
Bird turned away. “That’s not my baby,” she said. “I have a son. Where is my
son?”

Keen stood holding the child. No words came to her.

It was Mallard who said, “There, young one. There. Lie down
now, and rest.”

“Give me my son,” White Bird said. “Where is my son?”

“Rest,” Mallard said. “Rest.”

Keen carried this youngest of the shaman’s daughters into
the light. Female that she was, she had no name, no existence till her father
granted her both; and if he did not, then she belonged to the wolves and the
birds of the air. What her mother wanted did not matter.

The women by the fire, seeing the girlchild in Keen’s arms,
sighed and rolled their eyes. White Bird was not greatly beloved. “Pity,” one
said for them all.

It was only a girl, but there was still somewhat they could
do for her: wash her and lay her in the swaddling that had been waiting. It was
a fine swaddling, of the best doeskin, ornamented with quills and beads, a
swaddling for a prince. They left it open for the father to see, and because,
if he chose not to grant her life, she must be laid naked on the plain for the
wolves to take.

Keen had caught this child as she fell into the world. It
was her place, by the gods’ will if not her own, to serve as messenger to the
shaman. The next time, she thought, she would be the first to visit White Bird
in the birthing-lodge, and the first to leave, even before the fire was lit and
the herbs scattered on it to drive the demons away.

But on this day she carried her small squalling burden from
the sacred place into the camp. None of the men would be caught staring at a
baby. The children, who had no need to be so proud, ran after her for a while,
but babies were dull. And Keen was taking this one to the old men’s circle,
dullest of all the circles, and least inclined to welcome a pack of children.

Drinks-the-Wind was not like a young father awaiting a first
son, so eager or so desperate that he either paced the camp till the people in
it were ready to cast him out, or else snatched weapons and horse and fled till
he could bear to come back again. Drinks-the-Wind was an elder, a shaman,
father of many children. He might not even be aware that one of his wives had
gone to the birthing-lodge—men of such stature as his could take little notice
of such things.

Somehow Keen did not think White Bird would have allowed her
husband to forget what she was doing. She would have made sure that he knew,
and that he waited for the son she meant, herself, to place in his arms—for she
had declared in everyone’s hearing that she would do just that.

Keen’s coming therefore would tell him all that he needed to
know. That made her even less willing than she might have been, to do what had
been laid on her. But she was a proper daughter of the People. She did not walk
away from duty.

The elders sat in the circle as they did every morning and
every noon, and every evening, too, as often as not. It was always the best
place in the camp, wherever that camp might be. Here, it was a low hill that
looked out toward the river. The king’s tent was pitched there, beside a
gnarled and ancient tree that was sacred to the spirits of earth and air. The
white horsetail of the People hung from it, swaying gently in a bit of breeze.