Lady of Horses Read online

  “But the men haven’t—the king hasn’t—” Lark began.

  Mallard slapped her, abruptly and firmly. She stopped chattering for sheer white-faced shock. “The camp moves,” said Mallard. “Get to it.”

  The women had never moved camp on their own before, that Sparrow had heard of. But the horses would leave, whether the People followed or no. If the king was not quick enough to see that, then let him follow when he could.

  Maybe, if the camp had been in less disarray, more women than Lark would have protested, and the men would have understood what was happening. But one of them, staggering out of his wives’ tent to find the camp breaking about him, bellowed, “You! You women! What are you hanging about for? The king says break camp. Break camp!”

  One male voice invoking the king’s name was all the People needed. Out of confusion they fell into a sort of order. People remembered their places and their duties. Some gathered belongings, others gathered and packed foodstuffs, still others readied the fire-baskets and put out the fires that had burned since the People made camp in the spring grazing grounds.

  Tents began to fall, one by one and then in companies. Men and boys mustered themselves to gather the herds of cattle; women and girls brought together the goats. Priests who had roistered in the camp ran to catch the horse herds, some in as much disorder as White Bird had been in, but with somewhat less noise.

  Sparrow had her place and her duties, packing the women’s belongings, bringing down the shaman’s tent and unlacing its joined hides and packing them to fit on the back of an ox. She had done such things since she was small, season after season in the long rolling of the years.

  Her hands moved of themselves, free of her will. That begged to depart her body altogether and ride the wind toward the herds, and accompany the mare in spirit as she could not in flesh. But caution, deep ingrained, and no little portion of fear, kept body and soul together. She wandered far enough in dream that often she despaired of coming back. She could not let herself do it in waking. That was a shaman’s trick—and she could not be a shaman.

  oOo

  When the sun had begun its descent to the western horizon, the camp was gone and the People departing from it in a long shuffling column. Behind them lay the charred corpses of the campfires, and trampled earth, and a thin scatter of refuse. The steppe opened before them. This road they all knew, all but the babies born in the spring.

  The women trudged afoot as they had since the dawn time. Those whose husbands had rank and wealth enough led oxen burdened down with tents and belongings. The rest bore their lives on their backs, and often the youngest child on top, drowsing contentedly as his mother plodded beneath him.

  No man walked. They all rode on horses, riding alongside the column or ranging ahead of it. Those too old or infirm to ride were set on the backs of gentle geldings, with younger sons or grandsons to lead them. So were they raised above the lowliness of women and children, and permitted to travel at ease while the women labored, bound to the earth.

  Girls learned early not to lament the unfairness of it. Sparrow, who had raced the wind on the mare’s back, hated worse than she ever had, that she must plod in the dust while fools and braggarts of men knew the freedom of the air.

  The herds led. The People followed. And a mare led the herds: a mare the color of the moon, who answered to no heart but her own, and to no power but the goddess inside her.

  14

  Keen was away from the camp when the stallions fought their battle. She had roused in the dawn of that strange day with a griping in her belly and a hammering in her head that told her it was time to go to the women’s place, the hut of woven reeds where they went during their courses to purify themselves and to free the men from the pollution of their presence. It was early, or was it late? She had lost count of the days. Foolish of her who hoped so for a child, but there was so much else to think of, so many frets and worries, Walker’s odd moods of late, and her days’ duties.

  Walker had not come back from his vigil. Keen was not sorry therefore to go away, particularly when she found the hut empty and swept, and no one in it to share her solitude. She was in the mood to be alone just then.

  Some women were terribly ill in their courses. Keen never had been. She seldom needed the herbs that were stored in the hut, or the potion that soothed those who suffered most terribly. For her these few days in every moon’s cycle were rather a pleasant pause.

  This was not pleasant. By the time she came to the hut she was bent nearly double, fighting back the bile that rose and threatened to choke her. She barely had wit for the rites or prayers, even to invoke the spirit of the place and ask it to look kindly on her in her time of impurity.

  She crawled into the herb-scented dimness. The sleeping place was clean, though the grasses that bedded it were dry and a little dusty. She lay there, drawn into a knot about the red pain in her middle, and took what rest she could.

  When morning came, her pain had passed from body into heart. These were not only her courses, after all, that racked her. With the blood that flowed out of her came life, a tiny thing, barely begun, and yet in its passing she knew what it had been. She had been carrying a child. And it was gone.

  She did what was necessary. She cleansed herself, drank the bitter potion, said the words and prayers that were prescribed. She wept, and not a little. She let the hut conceal her and her grief, which was greater than ever such a thing deserved. Life was not life till it was born and named and given to the People. And yet it had been a beginning.

  When she came out at last, the People were gone. The place by the river was empty. All the herds, the tents, the tribe itself, had departed.

  She was not frightened. She knew where they had gone. It was sudden, but hardly unexpected.

  And yet it was rather terrible to be alone, without the camp to be aware of, the tribe in its place, and everyone as they had been since they came here in the first of spring. No one had come looking for her or seemed to notice her absence, though the tent she had shared with Walker was gone with the rest. He must have taken it, or seen that it was taken.

  He had not sent anyone to look for her, not even one of the children. Had he forgotten her? Or was he so angry to find her gone that he had not cared what became of her?

  She had a few things with her, a little bread, a bit of cheese, a few strips of dried antelope. The way was clear, even if she had not known something of tracking. The whole of the People left a broad and unmistakable track.

  She was numb still with the passing of the child that would have been, remote and somewhat ill. That perhaps shielded her from the shock of solitude. She went back to take down the hut and to retrieve what was in it, the herbs and the sacred things. It was nearly sundown when she finished, close enough to night that she reckoned it best to stay where she was. She took shelter in the reeds, made herself a bed there, curled and slept as best she could.

  In the morning she set out on the track of the People. There was little enough to eat except what she had with her; they had stripped the land in their passing.

  She told herself she did not mind. Fasting was not so ill a thing. It cleared the mind and purified the spirit.

  She was almost happy, walking under the vault of heaven, lonely as the eagle that soared above her. So it must be when one of the hunters went out by himself. It was—refreshing, yes. In a way, it made the soul anew.

  oOo

  For much too long a while Sparrow did not know that Keen was absent from the People. She had more than enough to occupy her on the march, and in the evenings, when they made camp, she was much called upon for this and that. She did notice that Keen’s tent was not in its accustomed place, but when she had a moment to wonder, or to think that perhaps she should look to see where it was, the moment passed too quickly. No doubt Keen was keeping to another part of the march, and camping at night with some friend or kinsman. People did that on the march from camp to camp. It was not at all uncommon.

  C
ertainly she was not with Walker. He ran with the pack of the young men these days, with Linden and the rest. It was not obvious; mostly he seemed to ride by himself. But he was always near Linden, one way and another. In camp, as she discovered, he had taken to sleeping just beyond the circle of the young men. There were no women near them, nor might there be: they were always mounted, and at night they helped to guard the herds.

  By the third day Sparrow could no longer deny it: Keen was gone. No one had seen her. Sparrow thought then to ask the children. Children knew everything and went everywhere. “Oh,” they said, “she went to the women’s place. She was sick.”

  “Her face was green,” said one of the girlchildren. “I didn’t know skin could be that color.”

  Sparrow’s heart went cold at that. Ill, and gone to the women’s place—and no one had noticed. No one had thought of her at all.

  Sparrow was used to that. She welcomed it. But Keen was valued, for a woman. She had a husband of rank and standing. She should not have been forgotten.

  Except that that husband was Walker, and Walker cared for nothing. He had no other wives or women to miss her; and her family, like Sparrow, no doubt had supposed that she was elsewhere among the People.

  There was a way to go back to her, and quickly, but it would need great care and stealth, and the cover of night. Sparrow knew where in the herds the mare was—she always knew that. But the herds on the march were guarded and kept in close, for fear of hunters both animal and human. Sparrow had already resigned herself to separation from the mare while the march lasted.

  But to find Keen again, she needed the mare.

  It was a long wait from midday till sunset, and past it to dark. Sparrow was very quiet, kept her head low, and was careful not to attract any man’s notice, least of all Walker’s. Tonight of all nights, she did not want to confront him, or be taxed with his need for a vision.

  But he seemed to have had a foreseeing of his own for once, or what he imagined to be such. He had been full of himself since the king of stallions died, not strutting or boasting as another young man would do, but he had taken a place among the elders. And they, perhaps out of astonishment, had allowed it.

  Tonight, as he had done since the march began, he settled near Linden, not watching the prince, but Sparrow could feel his awareness, how it focused, fixed on the target. Whether he meant to kill Linden or make him a king, Sparrow did not know yet. Maybe Walker himself did not.

  But that she must leave to Wolfcub. While she made camp for her father and his wives, she set aside quietly such things as she would need, hiding them in shadow. She did her duties, kept her head down, avoided drawing notice.

  At last, and none too soon, it was full dark. The children had gone to sleep, all but a few who were determined to outlast their elders. The men sat in their circles, drinking or drowsing, or else went out to stand guard. The women finished the day’s tasks and went at last and gratefully to their beds.

  When the camp was as quiet as it would be, Sparrow retrieved the bundle that she had made, and slipped away.

  oOo

  Wolfcub was out and about that night among those set on watch over the horses. He came there late, later perhaps than he should: he had delayed while the others went on ahead, first because he made sure that Linden was safely bedded down in the middle of his following, and Walker was well apart from them for once; then because his mother wanted a word with him.

  It was nothing terribly important. She wanted mostly to see him and feed him cakes made from a honeycomb that one of the lesser wives had found on the march. He was never averse to being spoiled, if there was honey in it.

  He was still licking his fingers as he walked through the camp, and there was a packet of cakes in his bag, still warm from the baking. He was not looking for Sparrow, though as he passed Drinks-the-Wind’s portion of the camp he wondered if he might see her. Everyone there was asleep, rolled up in blankets or sheltered under canopies.

  He went on quickly and quietly as a hunter should, slipping past the guards on the camp—with a small and secret smile that none of them either saw or challenged him—and circling the herds. The herdsmen stood guard at wide intervals, tall shadows afoot or seated next to their grazing horses. Wolfcub had retrieved his stallion before anyone saw him, slipped the bridle on and walked openly out to the edge where his post was.

  He passed Spearhead, who greeted him with a lift of the hand, and Hemlock, who started up as if struck and would have sprung at him if he had not stepped quickly aside. Hemlock growled as he saw who it was, not at all gracious about his own failing.

  Wolfcub shrugged. He and Hemlock were not friends, but neither were they enemies. He went on without commentary, giving Hemlock time to compose himself—and to wake enough to stand guard as he should.

  Past Hemlock no one seemed to be on guard, though here was the royal herd. The mares gleamed in the starlight; the new king stood hipshot beyond them, with his mane like a fall of white water and the rest of him a shadow on shadow. His head came up at Wolfcub’s presence, but apart from a sharp snort of warning, he made no move toward either Wolfcub or his stallion.

  Wolfcub had in mind to set himself outside the royal herd, on a low rise that he had marked on his way there. But as he made his way toward it, something made him stop.

  There was a shadow among the white shapes, too small for one of the foals, too large for a wolf. It walked upright as no lion ever did. Its gait, the way it flitted through the starlit grass . . .

  He was a hunter. He could remember a track once he had seen it, and name the deer that he had let pass a season before. His eye was keen and his mind attuned to subtleties. He knew that shape, the way it moved—though it could not be here. It should not, ever, be here.

  And yet he could not mistake it. Sparrow was in among the royal herd, slipping soft as a breeze through the sleeping or grazing mares and foals. And none of them, not one, not even the stallion, drew to the alert, or seemed to care that she was there.

  While Wolfcub stood gaping, his mind wandered off on its own. Gossip in the camp, idle talk on the march. His sister Ember, her voice as clear as if she stood beside him: “They say Sparrow has a lover.”

  “No!” said his father’s youngest wife, whose name was Swift. “Not that little brown bird. Who would want her?”

  “Someone does,” Ember said. “She creeps out every night and goes to him. Lark saw her. So did Arrow’s wife.”

  “Oh,” said Swift. “Arrow’s wife—that whey-faced thing. She’s just saying it so nobody will notice her running off to tumble in the grass with her favorite of the hour.”

  For a moment Wolfcub, listening, had thought they might wander off in pursuit of that riper scandal. But it seemed it was too ripe. Ember persisted. “It is true. Sparrow goes out all the time. Nobody knows who he is.”

  “I’m sure he’s not boasting,” Swift said with a toss of her head. “All the men would laugh at him and wonder why he couldn’t find something better.”

  Wolfcub would have been happy to sweep down upon them then and throttle them both, but they were not his wives or his women, and he was not supposed to be listening to women’s gossip. He went on about his business, but with a trouble in his heart.

  Sparrow, creeping off to lie with a lover? Wolfcub had never thought of such a thing. And not because no one could want her. It was not like her.

  But after he heard Ember and Swift at their gossiping, he had listened, and other women chattered of it, too: how Sparrow had a lover, but no one knew who he was. Certainly none of the men had admitted to it. Some thought it might be Wolfcub—but unless they were meeting in dream, that was not so.

  He was not jealous. No, of course he was not. Why should he be? He could be outraged, to be sure, that she should sully her honor so; but he hated the darkness of that, and the wrongness.

  Now he saw her among the horses, and a thought had risen in him. It was preposterous. It was much more appalling than that she was lying wit
h a man in the nights, a man who had not taken her as his wife, nor gained her father’s leave to do it. A woman’s virtue was a valuable thing. A woman among the horses was a profanation.

  And yet she was there, passing among them, aiming with purpose for one who stood on the far edge, some little distance from the stallion. It was one of the mares, a younger one, and beautiful—she was as fine a creature as Wolfcub had seen. He had noticed her before, with a horseman’s eye, and the thought that here was a fine mother of stallions; but despite her ripe and suitable age, she seemed not to have bred or borne a foal.

  As Keen had done before him, if he had known it, Wolfcub saw Sparrow meet and greet the mare. He was perhaps more shocked than Keen had been—a deep and heartfelt shock. And not, indeed, that a woman dared touch a horse, and more than touch it, mount on its back and turn it southward. No, though that was shock enough. Wolfcub had never imagined that Sparrow would keep such a secret—and more than that, that she would keep it from him.

  Of course she would. He was her friend, closer than any of her brothers. But he was a man. How could she ever trust him with this? It was a terrible thing she did, forbidden on pain of death.

  If he had been thinking clearly at all, he would have turned his back and gone to his post beyond the herd and set himself resolutely to forget what he had seen. Maybe he had dreamed it, after all. Maybe it was a trick of the starlight.

  But he was not thinking clearly. He sprang onto his stallion’s back, but quietly, crouching over the rough-maned neck, so that Sparrow would not see and take alarm. He waited so, till Sparrow was well on her way. Yes, she was headed to the south in a wide sweep round the herds and, he could suppose, the camp.

  When he was sure of her path, he slackened rein. The stallion needed no more encouragement than that to set off in pursuit, but quietly, as quietly as he could, and as swiftly. He kept the mare in sight but did not close the gap, not till the herds and the camp were well past. Then and only then did he press for speed.