The Horsemasters (31 page)

Beki said, “Perhaps we could drive Impero and the mares out of the valley.”

“Perhaps, but if we did that, then we would lose our source of new horses.”

“Not if we kept some of the mares,” Beki said.

“If we kept some of the mares, the stallions would fight over them.” Nel sighed again. “When a stallion sees a mare, he has but one thing on his mind.”

“In that they are not so different from the males of humankind,” Beki said drily, and both women laughed.

Nel’s eyes moved slowly up the cliff, then moved even higher, to where the distant peaks of the Atlas towered against the blue sky. “I wonder how they are faring,” she said.

Beki’s eyes followed Nel’s. “I do not have good feelings about what they will find, Nel.”

Nel’s uplifted face took on an expression that was strangely stern. “Nor do I, Beki.” She turned away from the snow-covered peaks. “Nor do I.”

* * * *

Fenris squinted into the sun, watching as the vast train of horses and people wound its way along the river in the direction that he had chosen. His scouts had reported that this river rose in the mountains to the south, that there were many tribes living in these mountains, and that the grazing there was excellent in the spring and summer. Plunder for his men, grazing for his horses: these were the chief conditions sought by the kain of such a tribe as Fenris’s, and so south they would go, following this river the local tribes called the River of Gold.

It took less than a day for the tribe to break camp, even a camp that had been home to them for all the winter. The women loaded the tents and household necessities onto sledges, which were harnessed to horses for pulling. The men stacked their treasure onto their packhorses and mounted their steeds. The remainder of the horse-herd was driven before them, followed by some of the mounted men, the sledges, then the rest of the mounted men, and finally the women and children on foot. It was a daunting sight, to see the Horsemasters move so large a camp so quickly.

Fenris gazed toward the mountains, and, not for the first time, he contemplated the spinelessness of these people of the south. Life had been too easy for them, the kain thought scornfully, The game here was too plentiful, too easy to hunt; these southern tribes knew nothing of the struggle for life that had toughened his people in the far north. These tribes of the Kindred did nothing but hunt the teeming herds and draw pictures in their caves. Thus far Fenris and his men had swept them away with scarcely a fight.

“Kain,” said Surtur, one of his anda, the men who made up his elite fighting circle. Fenris looked and saw that Surtur was pointing to a solitary figure that had separated itself from the slowly moving group of women and children and was standing alone and stationary by the river.

Fenris’s thick blond brows drew together.

“Shall I get her?” Surtur asked.

“Na. I will,” Fenris said shortly, clapped his heels against his horse’s sides and galloped off.

The girl stood still at the water’s edge and watched him come, nor did she flinch when he pulled up only inches before her. Instead, she bared her small white teeth at him in a grimace that was not a smile.

“Why have you left the women?” Fenris demanded. His gray eyes, with the white squint lines radiating out from the corners, were dark with temper.

The girl did not seem discomposed by the kain’s anger, which would have terrified every other woman and most of the tribe’s men. She shrugged. “I do not want to walk,” she said.

“You are one of the women, Siguna. You will walk,” he said.

She shook her head vehemently, so that the pale silvery hair fanned out around her shoulders. “I said I do not want to walk.”

They stared at each other, angry gray eyes into angry gray eyes. “I will tie you to my horse and drag you after me,” he said.

“I have been riding all the winter!” she cried passionately. Her fair young skin was flushed with emotion. “I ride as well as any man. You know that! I will not walk.”

“Then I will have to drag you.”

Her eyes did not waver. He would do it, and she knew it. His men would think well of him for disciplining one of his women in such wise. She set her teeth. “Drag me, then,” she said.

A flock of geese rose from the river, honking and calling in the clear, sun-warmed air. Their wings beat between the two humans and the sky.

Fenris’s face did not change expression, but of a sudden he reached his big, callused hand down to her. “You may ride with me for a little while,” he said. “And then you must walk.”

Her face, which had been rigid and shut, flashed open in a brilliant, joyful smile. She reached up her hand, put her foot upon his, and let him pull her onto the horse’s back—before him. She leaned comfortably against his broad chest and said contentedly, “Thank you, Father.”

* * * *

Thorn watched the big blond man on the brown stallion as he pulled the slim, even fairer young girl onto the horse’s back before him. Then the two of them galloped up the valley, with a cloud of other horsemen filling in behind them.

“They can certainly ride,” he murmured, knowing from bitter experience just how difficult it was to be so at one with a horse. The big man was holding the girl and guiding his horse with seemingly effortless ease. The girl’s hair is the color of moonbeams, he thought.

“Sa, they can ride.” It was Ronan who answered. “And, as we feared, they are moving up the River of Gold.”

“So they are,” said Kasar, his voice very grim. The Tribe of the Leopard, to which he was born, had their dwelling place not far from the intermingling of the Greatfish River with the River of Gold.

“I wish we had come horsed ourselves,” Ronan said now. “We could move so much faster!”

“You said yourself it would have been too difficult to get the horses over the Altas in the snow,” Kasar replied. “Our horses are young and untried, not like these,” and he gestured toward the tribe that was wending its purposeful way along the river.

“We will have to get them over it now,” Ronan said. He gestured to his men to retreat within the cover of the forest. “This is what we must do,” he resumed when they were once more gathered together. “Kasar, you go to the Tribe of the Leopard, Thorn to the Tribe of the Buffalo, Mitlik to the Tribe of the Red Deer, Dai to the Tribe of the Squirrel, Heno to the Tribe of the Fox, Okal to the Tribe of the Bear. You are to tell the chiefs and leading men of these tribes to come to the Great Cave at the full of the moon to meet with me there.” A nerve flickered along Ronan’s lean jaw. “We must unite if these invaders are not to destroy the tribes of the mountains the way they have destroyed the tribes of the plains!”

Grave nods came from the men who were gathered around their chief. “I will return to the Valley of the Wolf and bring the rest of the men and the horses to the Great Cave,” Ronan went on. “I am thinking the horses are important; it is they that will put heart into our people and encourage them not to give up.”

Again those solemn nods.

“If I am late getting to the Great Cave, you must make the chiefs wait for me.”

“Ronan,” Mitlik said, “you are sending me to the Tribe of the Red Deer. Do you want me to bring the Mistress?”

In the sudden, tense silence, a squirrel scrambled down the tree beside which they were standing and scurried across the forest floor. “If she wishes to come, then she should come,” Ronan replied at last. “If she does not, then you must try to bring some of the men. Speak to Neihle, the Mistress’s brother, and to Tyr. They are two who will listen to words of mine.”

Mitlik bowed his head.

“Let us go then,” Ronan said. “We have no time to waste.”

* * * *

Nel had ridden her favorite horse, a bright copper-colored colt with three white stockings she had named White Foot, toward the narrow southern end of the valley, where the river escaped through a cut in the rampart wall. There was never any ice on the river at this end of the valley, the current moved too rapidly, and here was where the valley animals watered throughout the winter.

Impero and the mares were grazing along the eastern wall when Nel and White Foot came cantering into their vicinity. The cliff wall here was forbiddingly high, its upper part dropping down for hundreds of yards as sheerly as if it had been cut by a knife; but above the floor of the valley it sloped, cracking into fissures and ravines in which were growing clumps of juniper, mountain pine, and alpen rose. There was no snow on these sunny slopes, and the mares and yearlings, intent upon finding forage, paid no attention to Nel and her mount.

Not so the white stallion, who was immediately alarmed by the presence of another male. Impero snorted, dropped his nose, and moved immediately into full gallop, gathering his mares and offspring from their foraging and rounding them up until they formed a tight little band. When they were all securely herded behind him, he trotted out to hurl his defiance at White Foot, raising his head to the heavens and bugling forth a brassy challenge to come forth and do battle.

White Foot was afraid of the stallion, the father and protector who had so inexplicably turned into his implacable enemy. But something in his blood roused at that neighing challenge, and he reared up, snorting, his front hooves pawing the air.

Nel had already twined one hand into the colt’s mane for security, and now she used the other to slap him on his shoulder to get his attention. As soon as his front hooves were on the ground, she twisted her own body around, bringing the colt with her; then she drove him with her legs away from the stallion. They galloped along the river toward the extreme southern rim of the valley, not pulling up until they had reached the wall. Then Nel looked around.

Impero was still staring after them, his scarred, muscular white neck raised high, his nostrils distended. Thorn should paint him like that, Nel thought suddenly. He looked magnificent. As she watched, he whirled and plunged straight into the closely bunched herd of mares and yearlings, scattering them and thus giving them his permission to resume their hunt for food. As they broke away and returned to the lower levels of the cliff, the white stallion stood on guard, dividing his attention between his mares and the three-year-old son he perceived as a potential rival for their favors.

Well, thought Nel resignedly, it’s pretty clear that I had better give up any ideas of keeping more than one stallion with the mares. If even White Foot wants to fight…

White Foot was immune to challenges at the moment, however, for not even Impero’s bugle could be heard above the thunder of water as it raced through the ravine in the cliff wall and poured down a sheer two-hundred-foot slide to a great pool of churning white water at the cliff’s base outside the valley.

White Foot had grown up with the sound of the waterfall, and it held no fear for him. The young stallion stood quietly under Nel’s command, and she patted his neck softly before she turned him and began to go back, this time following the western wall of the valley, where the snow still lay in patches.

Mait met her at the corral with the news that Ronan was back. She left Mait with the task of returning White Foot to the company of his fellows and raced on foot around the lake, moving as fast as she could in her winter boots.

The entire tribe appeared to be gathered in the large open space between the huts and the lake when Nel came racing up. Everyone had turned to look at her, but Nel ignored them all, running like a deer straight into Ronan’s arms. They closed around her, lifting her off of her feet.

“You’re back,” she said breathlessly.

“Sa. I am back.” His rough cold cheek was pressed against hers. “You are strangling me, Nel.”

Indeed, her arms were clasped so tightly about his neck that she thought she probably was. She never admitted to anyone, and certainly not to him, how terrified she was for him every time he left on one of these expeditions. She loosened her grip a little and leaned her head back so she could look into his face.

He was unshaven and tired-looking, but otherwise she approved of what she saw. She said, “I missed you.”

“I missed you too, minnow,” he said in her ear and bent to put her back on her feet.

Nel looked around, saw Beki standing there without Kasar, and understood at last that Ronan bad returned alone. She waited until she was sure the panic she felt would not show in her voice. Then, she asked, “They are coming south?”

“Sa,” Ronan answered her, his voice oddly gentle. “They are coming south.”

* * * *

To Ronan’s surprise, and not entirely to his pleasure, all of the tribe’s men insisted upon accompanying him to the meeting at the Great Cave.

“You cannot all come,” he said immediately, when he realized what was being proposed.

“Why not?” Crim asked.

“We cannot leave the women and children here without any men.” His carefully patient voice said that surely they should have been able to see this for themselves.

They were all crammed into Bror’s tent, women and children as well as men, and even though no fire was burning, it was hot from so many bodies. The dogs had been sent outside, but the toddlers were crawling busily under everyone’s feet. Ronan loosened the thong that tied his shirt at the throat.

“You sent to the Tribe of the Red Deer?” Bror asked.

“Sa.”

“We have discussed this while you were gone,” Bror said, “and we have decided we cannot send you alone into the hands of your enemies.”

Impatience was written clear on Ronan’s face, “You are not sending me alone. I will be taking most of the men, as well as the horses. But I cannot take all of the men because of the women and children. There must be someone here to hunt for them.”

“Who were you planning to leave in the valley?” It was Cree’s nasal voice. “The men of the Goddess?”

“It would seem the reasonable choice,” Ronan replied. “By your own admission, you do not have the stake in this fight that we of the Kindred have.”

“If you are going to meet with the Tribe of the Red Deer, then you will need your men who worship the Mother behind you,” Cree returned.

Ronan’s Face was beginning to take on what Mait always thought of as its “black look.” The chief did not like it when his men tried to overrule him. “Then who have you decided will stay with the women?” Ronan asked in the overly pleasant voice they had all learned to distrust. “You, Bror?”