The Horsemasters (42 page)

Siguna’s voice seemed to come from a place deep inside her, a place she had never before plumbed. “Do you think that any living thing could be touched by Nel and not learn to be gentle?”

The softest sound, as of a breath being slowly released, floated in the air. Was it Ronan? Or was it something else? Siguna looked around and was caught by a pair of dark eyes.

“You have a wisdom that is beyond your years, Siguna,” he said.

She gave him a beautiful smile.

His expression altered, and Siguna abruptly found herself confronting the hard, intent, hunting look of the sexual male. It was a look Siguna was all too familiar with. It was a look she both feared and hated. Usually.

“How old are you?” Ronan asked.

She tried to answer, reminded herself to breathe, and managed to stutter, “Th-three-handsful of years.”

That dark gaze flicked lightly, speculatively, along the swell of her breasts, Siguna’s pulses began to beat faster, but she was not afraid.

“That is old to be yet a maiden.”

She raised her chin. “How do you know I am yet a maiden?”

He smiled, as if he found her question amusing. “Were you promised to a man of your tribe?”

She shook her head in violent denial.

Both the hunting look and the amusement were in his eyes now, and Siguna realized with astonishment that she wanted him to touch her.

He reached to pick up his spear. “Come,” he said. “I will walk with you back to the Great Cave.”

She stood up from her rock and found her eyes looking directly at the pulse that beat in the strong brown column of his throat. She was breathing rapidly and her legs felt unsteady.

What is the matter with me? she thought.

He said in a soft, dark voice, “I find it hard to believe that there was no man in your tribe who was special to you.”

She answered, stupidly, betrayingly, “The men of my tribe are not like you.”

There was a catastrophic silence, and then he grinned. “They most certainly are not. Heno says the men of your tribe need an introduction to Berta.”

She realized, with dizzying relief, that he had misunderstood her. She stared at that intoxicating smile and managed to croak, “I am thinking Heno is right.”

“A man who does not value a woman is a fool,” Ronan said, and the hunting look was back in his eyes. His voice deepened. “I promise you, little one, that if you choose to make your home with us, there will be many men more than happy to value you.”

But they will not be you.

As soon as the words formed in Siguna’s mind, she panicked. What was she thinking?

Ronan called to Nigak and turned his steps toward home. As she fell in beside him, he said in his usual voice, “I am glad I met you today, Siguna, but don’t come out alone again. I don’t say this because I don’t trust you, I say it because it is not safe.”

“Nel goes about alone,” Siguna said defensively.

“Nel is never alone,” Ronan replied. “If she doesn’t have Nigak, she has the dogs. Lately even White Foot has taken to following her around like a lost puppy.” He was trying to sound aggrieved, but Siguna’s sharp ears caught the unmistakable note of tenderness beneath the surface exasperation.

Siguna realized with a mixture of sorrow and relief that she would always be safe from Ronan. He might look with appreciation at an attractive woman, but it was Nel who held his heart.

Siguna had never met a man like Ronan before. He could be as ruthless as Fenris ever was; she had seen that when she had waded through the stinking corpses in the Volp gorge. He was a leader who exacted the same obedience from his men that her father did. Yet he was not really like her father at all.

A man who does not value a woman is a fool.

Siguna had not been thinking of Nigak alone when she had told Ronan that nothing could be touched by Nel and not learn to be gentle.

Chapter Twenty-nine

The baby slept, and when he woke Eken fed him. Nel had left the Great Cave shortly after her conversation with Arika, and as the daylight slowly waned, she still had not returned. The women of the tribe put their children down to sleep and gathered around the hearth in the cave chamber they had taken for their own.

“It will be a cruelty if Ronan won’t let her keep the babe,” Beki said defiantly.

The women of the Wolf looked at each other, and it was Fara who finally responded. “More than anyone, I have reason to know how tolerant Ronan can be in regard to children.” Her sweet face was deeply troubled. “But, Beki, I do not think it is fair to expect him to accept Morna’s child at his hearth.”

Berta said heavily, “He is the child’s mother’s brother.”

Tora said, “It is hard for me to believe that such a one as Morna was once considered the Chosen One of the Mother.” Her level brown gaze turned to her sister. “Morna has done this to break Ronan’s marriage.”

Berta sighed.

“That will not happen!” said Yoli. “You heard what Nel said to the Mistress, Tora. She said that if Ronan could not bring himself to accept the child, she would send the baby back to Arika. Nel will not let Morna destroy her marriage.”

Beki said flatly, “I do not care what Nel may have said. I do know this: if Ronan makes her give up the child, she will never forgive him.”

Heavy silence blanketed the chamber.

“I am afraid that Beki is right,” Berta said at last. “There is nothing in the world more powerful than a woman’s yearning for a child. It is put into her heart by the Mother, and no man can stand in its way.”

“It does not help that in the Tribe of the Red Deer there are a number of children who look exactly like Ronan,” Fara said sadly.

Yoli sighed.

“No one would make a better mother than Nel!” Beki said passionately. “It is so unfair that she has not had a child.”

Eken, who had nursed the orphan along with her own daughter, said now, “He is a beautiful baby. Perhaps once Ronan sees him…”

Tora was shaking her head. “Men do not feel the same about these things as women do.”

No one contradicted her.

In the sudden silence, a step could be heard outside the chamber opening. Then the shadow of a man was in the doorway, ducking his head to keep from hitting it on the stone arch. He straightened and looked at the group of women staring back at him. It was Ronan.

“Where is Nel?” he asked, when once he had ascertained that she was not present.

“We don’t know,” Berta replied. “She talked to Arika shortly after…” She waved her hand in lieu of finishing the sentence, then added, “We have not seen her since.”

Ronan’s face looked tired and bleak. “Where is the baby?” He asked next.

“Next door, sleeping with the other children,” Eken answered. “I nursed him after I nursed my Melie.”

“Will you get him for me?” Ronan asked her.

“Sa.” Eken scrambled to her feet. “Of course, Ronan, Of course I will get him for you.” She shot a quick glance at Fara before disappearing into the adjoining chamber, where all the children were sleeping.

Fara asked gently, “Would you like us to leave you alone, Ronan?”

He stared at her as if he had not understood. But then he nodded. “Sa. That would be…good.”

The women quietly got to their feet and melted toward the door as Ronan came further into the chamber. He was standing by the hearth, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bent, when Eken came back into the room, the baby in her arms. She hesitated a moment and then walked up to him. “Here he is,” she said, extending her arms a little so that he could see.

Ronan looked down.

He was indeed a beautiful baby. His small face was perfectly formed, the skin pink, not the angry red of most newborns. His fuzzy hair was brown, and the eyes that blinked sleepily up at Ronan were a soft and misty gray.

“He does not look like Morna,” Ronan said. His face was an unreadable mask.

“Na.” Eken was having a hard time talking around the lump in her throat. “He looks like himself.”

Ronan continued to stare at the baby with that masklike look on his face. Eken continued to hold the baby out to him as if it were an offering. The lightest of sounds came from the arched door opening, and then Nel was with them in the room.

* * * *

Nel had just spent what were perhaps the most emotionally exhausting hours of her life, and she looked it. When at last she walked into the room and saw Ronan and the baby, she still did not know what she was going to say. She had spent hours and hours trying to resolve the conflict, and her thoughts were still going around in circles.

Fine words she had said to Arika earlier, words that had wounded, words that had been meant to wound. “Ronan and I know what it is to grow up in a place where you are not wanted,” she had said, and Arika had been vanquished.

Fine words, but Nel knew that this baby was not unwanted. No baby in the world was more wanted than this one was.

Part of her said that eventually Ronan would come to accept the child as his own. Surely, she told herself over and over, surely she would be able to make him understand that this child had been given to them by the Mother. It was what she herself felt. Strongly. Surely she would be able to convey this conviction to Ronan.

But the objective, rational part of her said that she was being unfair, that she was laying too great a burden on her husband in asking him to take this child of his sister’s. She feared that if she forced Ronan to keep the child against his own instincts, she was risking the poisoning of the most precious thing in the world to her, her marriage.

Nothing, she thought, was worth that risk.

And then she came into the cave and saw Ronan and the baby. Without uttering a single word, Eken walked up to her, deposited the baby in her arms, and went out the door. Ronan and Nel were left alone, staring at each other across the bundle in Nel’s arms.

* * * *

Ronan spoke first. “He does not look like Morna.”

Nel looked down into the drowsy baby face. She drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Ronan,” she said. “Ronan…”

Slowly Ronan crossed the space that lay between them, stopped, and then he too looked down. The baby yawned, showing an impressive expanse of pink gums.

“Morna told me a week ago that she was going to do this,” he said.

Nel tore her eyes away from the baby. “You never told me that!”

He shook his head. “It was an ugly scene.”

“Ronan.” She was holding on to the baby as if she were drowning and he was her only chance to keep afloat. “I will not try to tell you anything good about Morna. She did this for revenge, I can see that well enough. But…sometimes…sometimes good can come out of evil, Ronan. I have been thinking, you and I made the sacred marriage together in the Mother’s holy place, and I begged her for a baby. And now…so soon after…this baby has been placed in my arms.” She drew in a deep, ragged breath. “Do you not think that perhaps it is the Mother’s wish that we take him?”

Ronan looked at Nel’s face, looked at the stain of bluish shadow under her eyes. She seemed to him now just as small and as defenseless as the baby in her arms. His eyes went once more to the baby. It did not look at all like Morna.

I do not believe that babies can be evil. He had said that, and it was true.

He heard himself saying firmly, “I think you are right, minnow.”

Nel gazed up at him, not daring to believe what she had just heard. He was suddenly angry that this should mean so much to her. It made him feel that he had been pushed out of the center of her life. “I am not a monster,” he said. “Did you think I was going to rip him out of your arms?”

She shook her head vehemently. He could see her fighting back tears. That made him feel like a monster in truth, and he reached forward to put his arms around her. To do that, he had to put his arms around the baby as well.

Nel leaned against him and began to sob, deep, wracking, wrenching sobs. She cried so hard he was afraid she was going to drop the baby, so Ronan took him from her. Then the baby began to cry.

“Dhu,” said Ronan. “If you keep this up, Nel, I warn you I will change my mind.”

At that she laughed. It was a husky, quivery, watery sound, but definitely a laugh, “Give him to me,” she said. As soon as she took him, the baby stopped crying.

“You seem to have the same touch with babies that you have with horses and wolves,” Ronan said.

Nel’s smile was wet but radiant. She lifted her face and pressed a kiss along his jawbone. “I love you so much,” she said. “There is not another man in the world like you.”

Ronan looked at his tiny rival. “Just see that you remember that,” he said, and he was only partly joking.

* * * *

The day after their devastating defeat in the gorge, Fenris gathered his anda around his hearth. These were his captains, the warriors whom he had given command over the other horsemen of the tribe. The day before yesterday they had numbered eight. Today their number was six.

As the somber-faced men took their places around the hearth in the kain’s tent, they were joined by two new faces: Vili, the kain’s eldest son, and Bragi, his friend. The boys seated themselves in the places left empty by those who had died in the gorge, lowered their eyes deferentially, and waited.

Fenris rested his big hands on his knees. “So,” he said, “it seems we have an enemy.”

Growls came from six throats.

“Cowards,” Surtur spat out. “They are afraid to come out and fight like men.”

“That is so,” grunted another man.

The kain disagreed. “It was a clever trap,” he said coldly. “Cleverly thought out and cleverly executed.” His wintry gray eyes circled the faces of the men before him. “It has been many years since we have been opposed by force, but these mountainmen are obviously ready to fight to keep us out of their hunting grounds.”

“They surprised us once,” Surtur growled. “They will not surprise us like that again.”

The rest of the men began to talk all together. Only Fenris and the boys were silent. At last the voices ran down, and faces turned once more toward the kain.

In the silence, Fenris took up his spear and stabbed it deeply into the bare earth beside him. The men looked with fierce anticipation at the quivering shaft. This was what they had been waiting for. The spear was the sign that the kain was about to speak words of war.