White Mare's Daughter (18 page)

She would not be caught as she had been by Gauan’s people.
She rode as a hunter on the track of watchful prey. She pitched camp in
carefully hidden places. She concealed her tracks as she might, passing like a
wind through the grass.

oOo

The clans and the tribes came together perhaps a day’s
ride from the wood, where they must gather in the spring: a wide well-watered
place marked by a circle of stunted trees like an outrider of the wood that,
now, filled the horizon. It was a holy place. Its earth had drunk deep of the
blood of sacrifice.

Sarama walked there boldly, concealing herself in plain
sight. People saw what they expected to see. A broad-striding figure in trousers,
bow and quiver at back, knife at side, could be no woman.

Their dialect was odd, with words in it that she had not
heard before, and cadences that made even the words she knew seem strange. And
yet, listening on the edges of camps, just past the circles of men or boys,
even, from a tree’s shadow, within the grove where the elders met, she
understood enough.

They spoke of the west. Of tribes pressing on them from east
and south. Of clans growing, herds waxing, lands diminishing. “North,” said one
of the elders in the circle of trees. “Why not north?”

“North is Skyfather’s country,” the king said. He was a man
of middle years, soft and thick about the belly, but the hands that gripped the
haft of a spear were long-fingered and strong. The spear was his mark of
office: its haft was painted red, its head of bone bound to the haft with an
intricate weaving of cords. A black horsetail hung from it.

A small wind played in the circle, stirring the hairs of the
horsetail. “North promises us nothing,” said the king.

“West promises less,” the elder said. “North are the tribes
of the north wind, and the home of the winter snows. West is—that.”

He lifted his hand and flicked a gesture that Sarama had not
known before, but its import was plain. He averted evil from himself and his
people.

The king sat still, though other hands flicked round the
circle. His own were motionless on the spearhaft. “What fools are we, that we
remember old fears and forget what every trader and youth on walkabout knows?
West is rich country, tents that never move, people born to serve the lords of
creation, and no horses. They make wine. They make the pots for which we pay so
dearly in furs and hides and cattle. And they make copper, which is the
greatest wonder of them all. All ripe for us to take, waiting for our coming.”

Just so had people spoken in the gathering of the White
Horse, far away in the east of the world. But these tribes were closest. These
tribes could, if they mustered their courage, pierce the wood like a sword, and
take the soft country beyond.

Their king clearly had thought long on this, and prepared
himself against the elders’ fears. “The wood is full of demons—granted. Death
walks there on its bony feet. Madness flits among the trees. But”—and that one
word was like crack of thunder, snapping them all erect, even Sarama—“have we
not Skyfather? Have we not our courage, and our horses? Are we not men? Men
fear nothing while they work Skyfather’s will.”

“If it is his will,” said the elder who seemed to speak for
the rest. “What say the priests? Have they read the omens?”

The king’s eyes flickered, perhaps. “The priests are as
blind with fear as any of the rest of you. Skyfather has opened my eyes. I can
see—and what I see is splendor.”

“So is the gods’ country splendid,” said the elder, “but
before a man may go there, that man must die. The wood is death, my king. Would
you kill us all?”

“When,” the king demanded, “has any one of us died in the
wood? The traders never have, nor any of the young men who dared to wander.”

“They were few, or alone,” the elder said doggedly. “They
were no temptation to demons. Our whole tribe and nation, leaving the lands
that we have held since the dawn time—us they will not only see but lust
after.”

“They lived,” said the king, as dogged as he, and as
unwearied in repetition. “So shall we.”

Sarama could see that he was determined to have his way, but
she could see with equal clarity that his elders would not hear him. A king was
king, but without the elders his power was a shadow.

Among the lesser tribesmen it was much the same. A few of
the younger hotheads were ready to take horse and charge into the wood. Most of
the men were as the elders were, set in fear and unswayed by accusations of
cowardice. It was not cowardice, as Sarama heard one say, to refuse a certain
death for no useful cause.

She should have been comforted. The king had called this
gathering to rouse his people to an advance on the west. But his people were
not to be roused. It was a rich year. Their flocks and herds had pasture enough,
though not as wide as in the days that their fathers remembered. They were glad
of a gathering out of season, pleased to visit with kin and distant friends.
They were not of a mind to venture a place of ancient horror, even for the hope
of riches.

Nonetheless their king had heard Skyfather’s will. On that
he was adamant. Let the winter be harsh, the summer lean and poor of grass and
hunting, and these tribes would forget their resistance; would turn toward the
king’s will.

Perhaps after all Horse Goddess had sent Sarama here and set
this gathering in her path as both lesson and warning. If the tribes did not
brave the west in this season, they would do it before too many seasons had
passed. It was as inevitable as the breaking of a riverbank in a flood.

Sarama slipped out of the gathering as unnoticed as she
had slipped into it. She had been guided, and was being guided still, held safe
in the goddess’ hand.

The Mare waited impatiently for her, and the packhorse whose
burden now was barely enough to notice. They were eager to be away. She had
been thinking that the sun was closer to the horizon than to the zenith; that
she might camp here, even as close to the gathering as it was. But the horses
tugged at their leads, yearning westward.

If she had been a man, perhaps, she would have set herself
against their will. But a wise woman knew to heed her horses.

When the Mare glanced over her shoulder toward the direction
from which Sarama had come, and snorted, Sarama wasted no more time. She sprang
onto the Mare’s back. The packhorse, for once, was happy to move at speed,
moving swiftly under his much diminished burden.

The wood was a wall of darkness before her. As the Mare
settled to a steady pace, she heard behind her the sound of hooves, and the
yelp of a hound.

Hunters went out often from such gatherings as that of the
tribes, and often in companies, the better to hunt down and bring back game for
the pot. They would not pursue two horses, one ridden, one led, who might
themselves be on the hunt.

And yet they rode on her trail; and the Mare had no desire
to linger, even to greet the stallions.

oOo

Skyfather and Horse Goddess had not often been allies, nor
had they ever been friends. Sarama, running as prey, hunted by men who should
not have seen or known of her, felt keenly her own smallness and her solitude,
and their strength and numbers. All her army was one grey Mare and a packhorse
who could not, with the best of his will, keep for long to the pace that the
Mare was setting.

She could feel him laboring through the line that held them
together, straining for speed that he had never thought was in him. The Mare
would not slow, though he dragged at her.

With a sound like a cry, he stumbled. The rope burned
Sarama’s hand, slipped and broke free. She nigh fell with it, but the Mare
shifted as she slipped. She caught mane, gasping at the pain of her torn hand.
The packhorse had staggered up, was struggling to follow. But he could not
catch the Mare.

Once free of him, she stretched her stride. She was not
running to her fullest, not she. And yet even at what was still, for her, a
none too pressing pace, she made the wind her rival.

Sarama had lost even pretense of mastering the Mare. She
crouched low over the outstretched neck. Mane the color of smoke whipped her cheeks.

She ventured a glance backward. The packhorse had dropped to
a stumbling trot. A mob of yelling riders swept upon him. As if in surrender,
he halted. They swirled about him, whooping and brandishing spears.

He did not even delay them. They had seen the greater prize:
the lone rider, the fine horse. A god rode them, or gods: the gods of the hunt,
of war, of the storm. Skyfather ruled them.

There was war in heaven. The thought was very clear. Sarama
was astonished at its clarity. She had no wits to pray, still less to think
past the next rapid heartbeat, but that one thing held fast within her. She
must not let it go. Whatever she did, she must not lose it as she had lost the
packhorse.

All her purpose now was to cling to the Mare’s back, to let
her run as the goddess guided her. There were no horses like her in this part
of the world, none as strong or as swift, but she had traveled far and on short
commons, and these horses were fresh from the camp.

They were gaining on her. Sarama crouched lower on the
Mare’s neck and prayed.

The Mare darted sidewise. Sarama’s deathgrip held her on.
She sucked in a startled breath, just as the earth dropped beneath the Mare’s
feet.

They fell for the count of eternity. And yet it was not even
a breath’s span. The Mare landed lightly, her stride barely interrupted, and
ran along a steep wall of earth and stones. A little river ran on Sarama’s left
hand. The Mare ran on what must be its bed in the flood season, clear and solid
sand.

The river bent sharply, and the cutting with it. The mare
swerved round the bend, then slowed a fraction; and sprang into the water.

It was breast-deep, its current slow. The shock of cold
water on hot skin made them both grunt. The Mare pressed doggedly onward.

The bank on the far side thrust outward somewhat, as Sarama
saw when she came near it. Roots of trees hung in a tangle. A tree had fallen
across the stream. It was not too much for a horse to cross, but the Mare had
no intention of doing such a thing. She plunged into the tangle of roots and
weeds and dead leaves.

Sarama wrapped arms about the Mare’s neck and made herself
as small as human form could be. Roots clawed at her back and her hair. The air
was heavy with the reek of earth and mold and rotting wood.

Just as she knew she would be caught forever, and the Mare
with her, the roots retreated. The Mare stopped. Her sides were heaving, wet
with sweat. It had soaked through the saddle-fleece and through Sarama’s
leather trousers. Her buttocks and the backs of her thighs stung with the shock
of salt on chafed skin.

Slowly, stiffly, Sarama unlocked her arms from about the
Mare’s neck, and straightened. No roof of branches stopped her.

She looked about in astonishment. This was no mere hollow
made by the roots of a tree against a flood-carved riverbank. It was a cave.

Light shone dimly through the tangle of roots, some distance
ahead of her. She stood in a chamber in the earth. Its walls were earth and
stone. Its floor was stone beneath a carpet of leafmold.

Sarama slid from the Mare’s back. Her knees buckled, but she
braced them. She cared nothing for that. The Mare’s neck and flanks were
crusted with foam; she was all dark as she had been when she was a foal, her
grey coat darkened with sweat to uncover the black skin beneath.

Praise the goddess: there was room in the cave to walk the
Mare till her breathing quieted, to pull saddle and saddlebags from her and
leave them, and walk her cool and even dry. Her footfalls were silent on the
leafmold.

When the Mare’s gasping had ceased but before her skin had
cooled, and well before she was dry, Sarama’s straining ears caught what she
had dreaded. Men’s voices calling. But no hounds’ baying. No sound of their
having found the scent.

She walked the Mare round and round as they drew closer and
closer. Her own breath had grown quick and shallow. She caught herself trying
to hold it.

They were on her, voices as clear as if they stood in the
cave, conversations mingling and tumbling over one another.

“Cursed sand won’t hold a track.”

“Bet your best arrowhead he went in the river.”

“What do you think he was? Spy for the Winter Hawk?”

“
Na, na
; they
never hunt this far north.”

“They would if there was something worth hunting for.”

“Horse like that, that’s a prince’s prize. What if he’s a
decoy?”

“They’d raid in broad daylight?”

“Why not? All the better to strut at home, how they lured
off all the best hunters and fighting men with a grey horse and a lone rider,
and walked in as free as you please, and took whatever they could get their
hands on.”

“Curse this sand! There’s been a whole herd of horses
through here, and that one without the sense to drop a pile and show us the
way.”

As if that had been a reminder, the Mare lifted her tail and
deposited an odorous heap near the back of the cave. Sarama suppressed a spurt
of laughter. The hunters had ridden past, but if she could hear them still so
distinctly, then they well might be able to hear her.

“Hoi!”
one of them
called from well ahead. “Fresh sign!”

The hoofbeats quickened, the last of them passing at the
gallop. Whatever the one in the lead had found, it lured the lot of them
onward, away from Sarama’s hiding place.

The Mare was cool, her coat dry, her breathing at ease.
Sarama brushed away the stiff salt sweat with a knot of roots, taking her time
about it. It calmed her, too, let her rest a little, and suffered her to think.

She could not go on, not without danger of the hunt’s
return. She had no desire to go back. She could climb the bank and so escape,
but the Mare was not so fortunate.