White Mare's Daughter (88 page)

He had fed himself; now he fed her. She was still nursing
from whichever of her aunts was convenient, but she had begun to demand richer
meat. She took bread and fruit and cheese in such bites as her few teeth would
allow, and made a great mess of it, too; then laughed uproariously as her
father swooped down to sponge her clean.

Agni was hard pressed to keep a grip on the damp wriggle of
her. As she came nigh to leaping out of his arms, he looked up at the shift of
a shadow, into Tilia’s face.

She leaped to catch Rani. Their hands touched. A spark
leaped, starting Agni but not, it seemed, Tilia. She swung Rani deftly into her
arms.

With the child between them, there was no seizing her as he
sorely wanted to do, and kissing her till they both were dizzy. Agni discovered
that he was smiling, blinking like an idiot in the sun, warmed through by her
simple presence.

Part of him wanted to rise up and bolt, run far away from
such a sickness. The rest was too deeply content to move. She had come back.
She was safe. And tonight . . .

oOo

The night came none too soon. Agni left the camp rather
more quickly than some of his men would have liked, but still too late to share
the dinner in the Mother’s house. Nonetheless they were all still gathered in
the common room, with the shutters open to let in the sweet air of a summer’s
evening, and twists of herbs burning in the windows to keep the biting insects
at bay.

Tilia and the Mother were sitting side by side. Agni had not
seen them look so very like before. The child had deepened Tilia’s presence as
well as her body. She was coming to the serenity that the Mother wore as easily
as her own skin.

A place opened for him near but not beside them, between
Sarama and Danu. Rani, half asleep in her father’s lap, crawled into Agni’s.

It was a strange council of war. And yet that was
indubitably what it was. Tilia had come back with word from farther east.
Messengers had brought news from the forest people.

The horsemen were coming. They had gathered on the forest’s
westward edge; their kin among the secret people had done as kin could not but
do, and made pact to guide them. Just so had the westward kin, the kin who
shared blood with the Lady’s people, brought word where it could best be
heeded.

“They’ll be guided toward Larchwood,” Tilia said. “It has
the best defenses, and is the most ready.”

She had learned to think like a warrior. So had they all,
however much against their will.

“We could,” said Agni, “discard this waiting. If I gathered
all my forces from the cities as well as the camps, and sent them into the
east, caught the tribes unguarded, and waged our war there—”

“If you did,” Tilia said, “you’d fall. It’s all the tribes,
the messages say. Remember what you told us: that when numbers are small, the
best course is to build a wall and stand behind it.”

“This many horsemen will break down the wall and trample it
flat.”

“But,” said Tilia, “think. How many cities, how many towns
there are in this country. How many of us there are. The first city may fall,
and the second. Even the tenth. But each one will wear the invaders thinner,
weary them more. By the eleventh, they may be weak enough to overcome.”

Those were Agni’s own words, his own counsel turned around
and held up like a shield. He had thought it wise when he first taught it. Now,
so close to the war, he was not so certain.

“Don’t waver,” Tilia said. “It’s here the battle will be.
We’ve directed everything to that end. The road is marked, the cities chosen
for sacrifice, and everything made ready. We’ll stand or fall here. Didn’t we
agree on that long ago?”

“We might change our plan,” he said. “If any part of it fails—”

“It won’t,” she said.

Her confidence was sublime. Someday, Agni thought, he would
see her shaken; would find her baffled by some ordinary human thing.

None of these people appeared to have the least doubt that
they should stand and wait. They were city people, people of the settled
places. Of course they knew how to stand still.

He had thought he did; he had conceived the plan in a great
surety that it was best for this country and for these people. But his instinct
in the end was to take horse and ride, to attack rather than defend.

Instinct was no use here. This was a different country; a
different world. That difference would be its salvation.

This time. And after . . .

No need to think of that. Not now. He had been their
nightmare, their dream of blood and fire. Now he was preparing to defend them
against a true threat of blood, and certain fire.

oOo

Tilia was eager for him that night, all but snatching him
out of the gathering and carrying him off to their bed. He was delighted to
give as he was given, body to body, with an urgency that made the world vanish
away.

There was only she, her flesh on his flesh, her arms
enfolding him, her eyes gazing dark into his. Her scent, her warmth, the taste
of her lips, snatched away memory and silenced fear.

But even they could not go on forever. They lay as close as
they could lie, and their child between. Agni felt it then, the bird-flutter,
the movement within that promised life. His breath caught.

She laughed in his ear, rich and deeply pleased with
herself. “What, horseman! Haven’t you ever felt a baby kick before?”

“Not one of mine,” he said.

“Ah,” she said, “yes. You’ll want a share in this.”

“And shouldn’t I have one?”

“A few moments’ loving,” she said: “you had that.”

“And will have it again,” he said, “and yet again, if you
and the Lady are kind. Are you going to ask your brother to raise this child?”

“Why, should I?”

“I know,” said Agni, “that your men raise the children. He’s
in this house, he’s raising one of his own. Why not a second?”

She raised her head from his breast to look into his face.
“Are you asking to choose who will raise my baby?”

The words were harmless enough, but there was something
dangerous in the way she said them.

Agni trod as if on the hunt, on leaves that might rustle and
put the game to flight. “I am asking,” he said, “whom you will choose.”

“What if I chose you?”

He blinked. “You’d never do that.”

“Why?”

Simple. Devastating. “Because,” he said, “I have no gift or
training for it.”

“No man does,” she said.

“Your brother—”

“My brother is remarkable,” she said. “I don’t know if I
want him raising my child.”

“Isn’t it the mother’s brother who often does it?”

“I have seven brothers,” she said.

“But—”

“If I chose you,” she said, “would you be horrified?”

“I’d be surprised. One can’t be a king with a baby in one’s
lap.”

“It seems to me that you were doing just that this evening.”

“That was here,” he said, “not among the horsemen.”

“Then you don’t want to raise my child. You only want to be
its father.”

“A father raises—” He broke off. “It’s different.”

“Yes, it is,” she said.

Agni sat up. He breathed deep. He mustered such calm as he
could find. “Are we quarreling?” he asked her.

“Are we?” she asked in return.

“You are infuriating.”

“So are you.”

He could not tell if she was laughing at him. He rather
suspected that she was. “I . . . would like it very much if your
brother Danu raised our—your child.”

“I’ll remember that,” she said, “when the time comes.” And
then: “You don’t even like him.”

“One doesn’t need to like one’s brother,” said Agni: “only
to trust him.”

She nodded. Either that made sense to her, or she understood
it well enough. “I used to torment him, you know. He was always so quiet, and
so painfully shy. I’d set the other girls to teasing him. They’d tell him he
was the one they’d choose for their first man. Then they’d laugh when he
blushed.”

“Was he? Did any of them choose him?”

“Most did,” she admitted. “It’s a great honor. And of
course, the more chose him, the more wanted to choose him. It became rather a
fashion. Kosti was stronger and could go on longer, and Beki was better
skilled, but Danu was a little of both. And he’s so pretty. He was beautiful
then, before his beard hid most of his face. Much as you must have been,” she
said, “when you first became a man.”

He was blushing: his cheeks were fiery hot. She laughed as
the women had laughed at Danu. “You see? It was the same for you. No wonder you
don’t like him—and no wonder you trust him.”

Agni did not even want to understand all the meanings of
that. “So this brother of yours is a man of . . . great
experience.”

“He’s been chosen often,” she said. “Though not since your
sister came. One knows, you see, when a man doesn’t want to be chosen.”

“I’m glad,” he said.

“Was that a growl?” she asked. “I thought your men were supposed
to—
take
many women.”

She had used the word that the tribesmen used, because there
was no exact mate of it in her own language.

“When it’s one’s sister,” Agni said, “one wants her man to
treat her well.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“That depends. One might upbraid him. Or one might kill
him.”

“I won’t have you killing my brother,” said Tilia. Her voice
was light, but there was stone beneath, both dark and hard.

“Fortunately he doesn’t need killing,” Agni said.

“Good,” said Tilia.

“Do you know,” he said, “I think you could kill, if you had
to. I’m not sure he could.”

“Oh, he could. Any of us could.” Tilia looked no happier
than he would expect, to tell that particular truth.

He took her in his arms, not for any particular reason, and
certainly for no sign of weakness on her part. It seemed right, that was all.

She sighed and rested against him. Neither slept, not for a
long while; but there was peace enough in their silence.

The horsemen came out of the wood on the day of midsummer,
when the Lady’s power was at its strongest; when the fires of her festival
burned on the hilltops, and the people danced in rings about them.

The festival that was in Larchwood was a festival of fire,
fire and blood. For these horsemen did not come cautiously, none knowing what he
would find until he found it. They had guides who had ridden here before. They
knew where to go.

Nor did they show any such softness as Agni had been subject
to. They came in war, and they came in search of blood.

They had the look of starving wolves, the messengers said.
They seized, they took, they slew. Larchwood’s walls barely deterred them. They
simply went around, and raided the lesser towns, those with weaker walls or
none, but ample stores and plentiful herds.

Agni would not leave Three Birds. He had determined to lure
the enemy there, and fight on his own ground. But he could not prevent Sarama
and Taditi and the archers from riding to see for themselves what the
messengers had spoken of.

oOo

Long before they came to Larchwood, they began to meet the
people fleeing. The last retreat had been orderly compared to this; people
afraid but not desperate, simply removing themselves to safer cities. These
were the flotsam of war. Some had been burned with fire, others wounded by
arrow or spear. They had left their dead.

The tales they told were terrible. Sarama and Taditi had
heard such tales before, but the women from Three Birds were white with shock.

They had insisted that they knew war, because they had seen
the coming of Agni’s horsemen. Now at last they understood how mild that
conquest had been. One town taken by force. One woman raped, and her attacker
punished with death.

This truly was war, in fire and slaughter. Any who fought
was dead or taken. Of that, Sarama had not the slightest doubt.

Agni had withdrawn all his men to Three Birds and the towns
immediately about it. The cities and towns to the east had been cast on their
own devices. They were a sacrifice, a blood offering on behalf of the greater
cities beyond.

Those who fled would find welcome in the westward cities.
The dead would be mourned, the first great slaughter that had been in this part
of the world; the first war that these people had ever known.

oOo

Grim Taditi grew grimmer as they rode toward the rising
sun. They rode with all caution, as warriors should in the enemy’s lands.

Probably they had no need to be so careful. The enemy were
finding this country a blessedly easy conquest; not dull, as Agni’s men had
found it, for there was fighting enough, and killing, but no great challenge,
either. They were not looking for spies or raiders. They were taking what they
pleased to take, and killing where it pleased them to kill.

They were passing by the walled cities, ignoring them. If
the people of the lesser towns had sense, they would take refuge in the cities;
but most had no desire to huddle behind walls while the enemy raged without.
When they ran, they ran far away.

The horsemen had ridden round Greenfields between Larchwood
and Two Rivers, and taken the ring of towns just beyond, and there paused to
rest and tend such wounds as they had. They had taken with them everything they
could carry, from every town that they took. Great mounds of booty lay out in
the open, that must have strained the back of every ox and every remount that they
had brought or been able to steal. And every man had a new cup, a skull-cup,
that marked his prowess as a warrior.

oOo

Sarama left the bulk of the company well concealed in a
copse of trees, and crept up a hill from which she could spy on the camp. It was
a great camp. How great, she had not known until she saw it.

Beside this, all Agni’s gathered tribesmen were but a scant
handful. His had been the castoffs of their people, the restless young men, the
warriors in search of a war. These were the tribes themselves.