White Mare's Daughter (94 page)

“
I
decide what I
will think,” Yama said with a haughty lift of the head.

“After your mother has told you what it should be,” said
Agni. He bared his teeth. It was not a smile. “Or is it someone else who rules
you? Is it one of your sisters? A wife? Which of your women teaches you to play
the king?”

Yama growled in his throat. “My women stay safe in my tent.
Where are yours, little brother? Or do you even have any?”

“At least,” said Agni with poisonous sweetness, “I can get
them for the asking. They come willingly, and stay willingly. I’ve never had
need to force a one of them.”

“And for that you were exiled,” Yama mocked him.

“That was a lie,” Agni said. “And well you know it. It was
you who raped that girl, wasn’t it? The oath she swore was the truth. She was
forced by a prince of the White Horse. The rest was lies and distortions and
misdirection—but its core was true.”

Yama laughed. He had no remorse, no more than Rahim had had.
“So you guessed it, little brother. I’d not have thought you had it in you.”

“I know your mother,” Agni said.

“And my youngest wife,” said Yama. “You know her very well
indeed. Don’t you?”

Here on the field of battle, outcast and condemned, Agni
could laugh aloud, freer than Yama had, and with more genuine mirth. But he
sobered quickly, and tilted his head, and regarded his brother with half a
frown.

“You know,” he said, “I never did understand why you didn’t
denounce me for that and have done. It would have finished me just as
completely, and a great deal more simply.”

“Oh, no,” Yama said. “That would have brought me down, too.
This way I got my revenge, or as much as the tribes would allow. And you knew
the real reason. Did it hurt, little brother? Did it burn your heart?”

Agni did not dignify that with a response. All at once, and
quite completely, he had had enough of chatter. It was time to end it—one way
or the other.

He freed his knife from its sheath. He dropped his spear.
Madness, yes; but it was too long. He wanted to press in close, to feel the
life ebb from that body. To know that this one of all his brothers, this one
who had betrayed him most grievously, was dead.

Yama suffered from no such yearning. He shortened his spear
and stabbed.

Agni just barely evaded it. Yama stabbed again. Agni ducked
behind Mitani’s neck and sent him sidling away, slipping from his back when the
stallion was apart and safe, and leaping upon Yama.

They crashed to the ground together, Yama beneath, Agni
atop. Yama lashed like a snake, flailing blindly.

His fist caught Agni above the ear and nigh stunned him. But
Agni’s weight was enough to hold him. Agni drove it downward. Yama grunted.

He looked down at a face that he had known since he could
remember. There was nothing familiar about it at all.

This man had taken everything that he was, or allowed it to
be taken. He was sweating, scarlet, but there was a pallor beneath. He was
afraid.

Agni was sweating, too. He had forgotten that he still wore
the kingly coat that he had meant for defiance, and for a reminder.

Yama heaved upward. Agni lurched and nearly fell. But he
held on. Yama began to fight in earnest.

It was an ugly, dusty, bruising fight. Yama dived for his
knife. Agni hammered it out of his hand and kicked it far away.

He scrambled for it. Agni lunged after him. They rolled on
the bloodied earth, hammering at one another, pure blind animosity. It was
years broad, years deep.

Yama clawed at Agni’s eyes. Agni struck him half senseless.
And hauled him up and held him, shaking him furiously till he stood on his
feet: not steadily, not with dignity, but when Agni let him go, he did not
fall.

“Now fight!” Agni raged at him. “Fight like a king, damn
you. Fight like a man!”

Yama growled and lunged. He had a knife, smaller than the
other, which had no doubt been hidden in his coat.

Agni ducked aside. He felt it pass, so close it hissed in
the leather of his coat; but it never touched skin.

He groped at his belt. Sheath—no knife. His knife gleamed on
the ground, close and yet impossibly far, with Yama between. Yama saw him
empty-handed, and laughed, and taunted him—words that blew away on the wind of
battle, but Agni saw the mockery in his face.

Yama stabbed. Agni stumbled back. The blow to his head had
struck harder than he knew. It slowed him. It made his mind wander.

While Agni wavered, a shadow leaped out of the sun. It was
small and very quick. It might not have been there at all, except that it had
Agni’s knife in its hand.

A name spoke itself in Agni’s mind.
Mika
. He had forgotten the child completely; had, if he thought at
all, trusted Mika to stay out of the thick of the fight.

Never trust a boychild who fancied himself a man. The
thought was wry, edging toward appalled. Agni had no power to move, and no
strength, either.

Not so Yama. Yama laughed and batted the boy aside. It was
an easy gesture, effortless, and utterly contemptuous.

The soft snap that followed on it did not strike Agni at
first with its meaning. But as he saw the body fall, saw how bonelessly it
fell, he knew. He did not believe it, or want to believe it. But there was no
mistaking it. Yama had broken the child’s neck.

A great howl welled up, but it never escaped. Agni would not
give Yama the satisfaction.

His sight had cleared a little. Enough that he saw the knife
glinting beside Mika’s body.

The knife—he must have the knife. He danced clumsily aside
as Yama leaped yet again.

Yama was playing. Drawing out the kill. He was sure that he
had it. Oh, indeed. Most certainly sure.

Fool.

Agni ducked, rolled, dived—missed. But his hand, groping
desperately, felt the bite of a blade. He set his teeth and twitched it to him,
found the hilt, came up in a graceless surge.

He met Yama turning to strike the killing blow. Bore him
back. Thrust deep—and, for Mika, twisted.

Such surprise on that face. Such sudden lack of malice.

Agni looked down. The hilt was in his hand, clapped close to
Yama’s side. And no blade—no blade at all to see.

Yama slipped out of Agni’s grasp. He dragged the knife down
with him, sunk deep in his breast, piercing his heart.

Agni stood swaying. This unsteadiness should be passing. Yet
it seemed to be growing worse. He was not wounded. Was he? Just—tired. Yes.

And there was Mika. Agni wanted to carry him into the city,
but this was a battle, and he was deep in it. He laid the body out as comfortably
as he might, and covered it with his coat, the coat that he had thought so
splendid before he saw the weavings of the Lady’s country.

It was still beautiful. It wrapped all of Mika, covered him
well. It would keep him warm even in death.

oOo

With the broad blade of a broken spear, with both of
Yama’s knives, Agni dug a grave for him. It was not deep, but deep enough. Nor
was it large, nor need it be.

Mika had always slept curled in a knot with his head
pillowed on his hands. Agni laid him so, nestled in earth, and turf laid over
him for a coverlet.

“Sleep well,” Agni said to him. “Sleep in your Lady’s arms.”

He staggered up. His face was wet. He was filthy, smeared
with earth. He scrubbed it off as best he could, slipping in and out of
clarity. Sometimes he saw very clearly. Sometimes he saw nothing at all.

He was in the middle of a battle. He could not sleep now, or
fall into a stupor. There was not even time to mourn for Mika.

He found a spear somewhere—white horsetail hung from it,
lifting in the wind. It was Yama’s spear. The royal spear. The spear that only
the king could bear, that was the battle-standard of the White Horse people.

It held Agni up. And there was Mitani, looking as if he had
been waiting for a long time, and fretting unregarded: eyes fixed on him, ears
up.

His nostrils flared, fluttering with a soft inquiring sound.
Agni was on his back, no memory of getting there, but Mitani was much steadier
on his feet than Agni had been on his own.

Agni lifted the spear, because he did not want to drag the
horsetail in the dust. There was a strap on the saddle-fleece to hold the
spearbutt in place. It slipped in easily, and the spear was suddenly much less
unwieldy.

Mitani had never had a spear hanging thus above his head
before. He snorted and danced sidewise.

Agni could not see very well and could not seem to think at
all, but he could ride in his sleep. He took Mitani in hand.

The stallion was unwontedly headstrong. He wanted to dance;
to circle snorting, tossing his head.

It was remarkably quiet. There was still clamor away
somewhere, but not close in. And yet there were people. Many and many of them.
Eyes staring at him: dark eyes and light, people of this country and men of the
tribes. No one was fighting.

A face swam toward him out of a dazzle of sunlight. Agni
smiled in great relief. “Patir,” he said.

“My lord,” said Patir, who only talked so when he wanted to
be exasperating. But there was no lightness in his voice, or in his face,
either.

Agni peered at him. “Patir. Have we lost the battle?”

Patir looked startled. “My lord! Don’t you—” He stopped,
peered closer, and said in a tone much more like his own, “Agni, are you hurt?”

Agni shrugged a little. “I’m dizzy. I keep wanting to fall
asleep. It’s just a headache. We have lost, haven’t we?”

“You
are
hurt,” Patir said.

He came in close, calling out to others of the White Horse
exiles, but Agni slapped them off. “Stop it! Get back to the fight. It’s still
hours to sundown. We’ll win it yet.”

“We have won it,” Patir said sharply. “Or you have. Who hit
you? Yama? You hit him back, it seems. He’s dead.”

“Mika’s dead,” Agni said. “He died. Yama killed him.”

“And you killed Yama,” Patir said. “You killed the king.”

Oh, Agni’s wits were slow indeed. He had only thought of
killing Yama—of taking vengeance for Mika; ending the fight that had been
between him and his brother since they were children. He had never stopped to
think of what it meant.

A king who killed a king won all that was in that king’s
possession. Which, since it was Yama, was the whole of that army. All the
tribes and clans. All the horses and the herds. The women, the children. The
spoils that they had won. Everything.

Agni had known this. He had hoped, prayed for it. But when
it had come upon him, he had been too fuddled to notice.

Agni’s head was clearing a little, with Patir’s eyes on him
and the others crowding behind. The noise of battle had receded even further,
as word traveled outward. People had only to look up to see Agni on his red
stallion with the white horsetail floating over him.

He looked out over a field of slaughter. Grass stained red
with blood. Cries of the wounded, and keening of women over the dead.

This was glory. This was kingship. Blood bought it. Blood
paid for it.

The gods of war were sated, and their servants the gore-crows
thronged to the sacrifice.

A fierce white heat flared up in Agni. It was the war-gods’
fire, the burning of their joy. He swept up the spear and whirled it about his
head and sang, a song of triumph.

The king of the horsemen rode into the camp in the first
dimming of evening. The sun was high, but the shadows had shifted and begun to
grow long. The heat was breathless, the wind gone, the sun’s hand heavy with
sleep. But no one slept, not on this day, unless it were the dead.

Agni had stood beside Yama’s body as the men of the king’s
warband lifted it up and carried it off the field. He was calm, empty of either
hate or grief. Even anger was gone.

He had won. He had what his father had meant him to have,
the name and office of the king.

The camp was waiting for its king to come back. Agni had
forbidden any to bring word. He would bring it himself, give Yama’s body into
its mother’s hands, and take her surrender as he had taken that of all the
kings and chieftains who had followed Yama to the battle.

How many of those were regretting their choice of king, Agni
could well see. If they had not chosen Agni’s own brother and enemy, they might
still be fighting, and victory close to hand.

There was a great sweetness in that knowledge. Agni entered
the camp in the cloud of it, and found a terrible silence.

There were dark faces amid the fair. Women of Three Birds
stood among the women of the tribes.

There was no mistaking what had happened here. While Agni
was winning the battle, Sarama’s archers had taken the camp.

There was no gladness in them, no light of joy. Agni had
rather expected that of these unwarlike people set face to face with war. But
such somber faces, such heavy silence, made the skin between his shoulders
tighten.

The cause was deeper in, where he was riding in any case. As
he speeded his pace, he heard the whispers behind him. The women had recognized
the body on its bier of cloaks and spearshafts. None of them raised her voice
in a keen.

That was a notable thing. One learned much of a king’s
standing in a tribe by such tribute as the women of his tribe gave or failed to
give him.

oOo

Agni passed through the camp’s center to the king-place.
There was the camp of the White Horse, a sight as piercing as memory, and yet
oddly remote. It was not Agni’s camp, not any longer. His own was west of here,
on the other side of the hill, in a field outside of Three Birds.

Women of Three Birds were waiting for him there as they had
been on the camp’s edge. He saw archers with their bows, Taditi and Sarama,
and—which he had not expected—elders and acolytes of the city and the temple.