White Mare's Daughter Read online

  17

  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.
<
br />   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.

  She grieved to lose the packhorse, but she would die before she lost the Mare.

  The packhorse had carried most of what she owned, but she had a little with her: her bow and arrows, the spare bowstrings, her waterskin, a little dried meat and a few roots and herbs. She offered the Mare to drink from the waterskin. The Mare, accustomed to such courtesy, drank as much as Sarama would allow her: nearly all of it, with a swallow or two for Sarama.

  That was no cause to fret; there was a whole river to drink and to fill the skin from, once she dared venture out. The meat and herbs were enough to keep her fed till morning. Fodder for the Mare was a greater anxiety. There was nothing here, not even leaves; it was all rotted to mold.

  Goddess in flesh the Mare might be, but that flesh was a horse, and horses must eat. Sarama moved with sudden decision. “Stay here,” she said to the Mare. The Mare regarded her blandly, as a horse could when it had not decided whether to listen. “Stay,” Sarama commanded her. “I will come back. My oath on that.”

  Oaths meant little to a mare. But she did not try to follow when Sarama slipped out the way they had come. When Sarama looked back, she was hipshot, head low, dozing as a wise mare might when she reckoned herself safe.

  Sarama sighed faintly. It would do—it would have to do.

  oOo

  The hunt had run far ahead. Sarama kept to the shadow of the bank, alert for hiding places if it should come roaring back upon her; but it seemed well gone. Perhaps it had found another hapless quarry: a deer, or a spy indeed from the tribe that seemed to be their rival.

  The river bent several times more. It was flowing, she began to perceive, out of the wood. Its banks grew less steep as she went on. In time she could see where a horse might scramble up.

  The light was growing long. The shadows down by the river were deep: night had already settled there. She could, perhaps, fetch the Mare and bring her back to this place, and ascend to the steppe; but then she would be caught in the open, fair prey for any hunter who passed.

  After dark, she thought. There would be a moon tonight; the sky was clear, no threat of clouds or rain. Demons walked after the sun had set, but Sarama had less fear of them than of men under Skyfather’s power.

  Travel by night or travel at dawn and pray the hunt did not come back or find her, travel she must, and soon. The wood was close. She felt it on her skin, a darkness and a coldness beyond what grew in the river’s bed as night came on.

  She would travel by night, and trust the goddess to defend her. An urgency was on her, apart from simple fear. She must go westward. She must hang back no longer.

  18

  The Mare came willingly out of the cave. Sarama did not try to ride her, but let her follow unled while the shadows deepened, though the sky was bright above.

  The hunt did not come back. She found the fallen place, the slope less steep though still punishing for woman and Mare alike.

  The Mare’s haunches bunched as she sprang up it. Sarama, caught behind, scrambled after. The Mare did not slip or falter, but Sarama saw how those haunches trembled, how her breath came hard. She was touching the edge of her strength.

  So were they both. And yet they must go on. Up out of the river’s deep bed, on under a waning moon and the fields of stars, walking slowly through the tall whispering grass. Neither led the other. They simply walked toward the darkness ahead, darker than the night about them.

  No hunter of this country would follow them into that place. But first they must come there. As close as it seemed, still it was a long stretch of steppe to walk, and demons and night-creatures between, and hunters perhaps, if they had laid an ambush.

  Sarama did not know what Skyfather might do. The west did not worship him, from all she had heard. He would covet it, its tribes of people, their riches, their sacrifices. And his people would be his instrument.

  But where a goddess could move a lone woman to do her will at once and in unquestioning obedience, even a god could not sway whole tribes together; not swiftly, and not easily. He could set a pack of young men on the track of the goddess’ servant, but none of them had had the power to pierce her subterfuge, to find Sarama where the Mare had hidden her.

  Skyfather would not be pleased this night, to have lost his quarry. Without the sun that was his all-seeing eye, he was blind; but some of his servants walked the darkness, too, and they could see as clear as if it had been day. Sarama heard them hunting at some little distance: wolves squabbling, it seemed, over prey.

  If they caught her scent they would harry her. Wolves in this country were scavengers, hunters of carrion, followers after the lion’s dinner, but a pack of them could pursue a weakened woman and a weary mare. And where wolves were, the lion was seldom tar away.

  She could walk no faster. Her strength was nearly gone. And still she had the forest to face.

  The forest was not Skyfather’s place. No, not his of the open sky. If she could pass under the trees, shut out the sky, she would be safe from him. His creatures would not pursue her. Not yet. They were not brave enough.

  She did not know that she was, either; but like a rabbit running ahead of a fire on the steppe, she would leap into the wolves’ den rather than burn.

  Only a little farther. The Mare stopped suddenly. Sarama stumbled into her.

  She turned, ears flattened. On my back, the sharp gesture said.

  Sarama drew breath to protest. The Mare’s teeth snapped in her face. It was not so very far—and the Mare, even so wearied, could move far faster under Sarama than could Sarama on foot. With a mutter that might have been a curse, or might have been a prayer, Sarama pulled herself onto the Mare’s back.

  The Mare wasted no time in satisfaction. She moved into a canter, slower than her wont but swift enough to wake the wind in Sarama’s face. Sarama strained her senses; but there was no sign of uncertainty in the Mare’s gait. Her footfalls were steady, unwavering, though the ground rose and fell, the endless roll of the steppe.

  oOo

  The wolves caught them under the first eaves of the trees: a manifold ripple in the last of the grass, a gleam of eyes in the moonlight. The lion would be behind them, if he had followed. Lions were lazy; they waited for their lionesses, or even for wolves to make the kill for them. But if they lost patience, their strength was deadly.

  Sarama’s bow was strung, an arrow nocked. She would have given much for fire, for certain terror to her attackers. But there was no time to muddle about with the firestick. Her arrows would have to be enough, and her knife if they came so close.

  The Mare carried her with no evidence of fear, straight toward the darkness and the cool breath of the trees. Sarama had twisted back, seeking a target. The wolves, as if sensing her purpose, had hidden themselves and their eyes in the grass. But they were close on her track.

  Tree-branches wove together, shutting out the starlight. The moon shone fitfully through, dappling the forest floor. Sarama, faced still toward the steppe, nonetheless felt the dark wrap about her.

  Perhaps Skyfather drove them; perhaps the lion behind grew short of patience. Dark bodies burst out of the grass, running under the trees. Fangs caught a fleck of moonlight. An eye gleamed red.

  A wind swept past the Mare, a torrent of motion. And yet Sarama felt nothing on her cheeks. It was all below, skimming the ground: dark bodies, soft feet, the mutter of a growl. A wolf yelped, piercingly sharp.

  Wolves again, but of a different kind: bigger, darker, fiercer. The wood defended itself.

  It let Sarama pass. But the wolves it drove back, hunting them into the grass; putting even the lion to flight. No lion was a fool, or inclined to fight unless he must.

  oOo

  The Mare carried Sarama some distance into the wood. Without moon or stars she could not tell how far, or in what direction she went; only that it was away fro
m the steppe and its dangers.

  It was dark, dark and still, no wind blowing. Yet it was not silent. Whispers, rustles, the distant howl of a wolf; the murmur of leaves high overhead, and the hooting call of a bird, and a brief, blood-curdling shriek as something died for a hunter’s dinner.

  The Mare moved among the trees, treading softly on the mold of years. As she walked she snatched at leaves and bits of things growing along the ground: feeding herself as she had not been able to do in her run from river to wood.

  Sarama reflected on the bit of dried meat in her bag, but hunger had shut itself away. Far more urgent was the need to sleep.

  As if it had known her desperation, the forest opened suddenly into a broad clearing. It seemed a memory of steppe: a roll of grass under the moon, a scattering of flowers. A stream ran through it from wood’s edge to wood’s edge.

  Sarama pulled saddle-fleece and bridle from the Mare and dropped them in the grass. The Mare grunted with pleasure, snatched great mouthfuls of grass, went down suddenly and rolled till every itch and ache was gone. Sarama loosed a breath of laughter and let her knees buckle at last, and fell headlong into sleep.

  oOo

  She woke with a start. Guard—she should watch—

  Sunlight dazzled her. She shaded her eyes against it, sitting up and peering about. The Mare grazed not far from her, peaceful, unafraid. Nothing had touched or harmed her.

  Dimly Sarama remembered being hunted: men in daylight, wolves under the moon—and wolves hunting wolves, forest guardians driving the strangers away. There was no sign of wolf here. Only sun and grass and flowers, the stream that sang over its stones, and ripe sweet berries hiding in the grass. She ate till she was sated, then drank deep from the stream.

  The water was icy cold. Nonetheless, after a moment’s thought, she stripped and bathed in it, head to foot, scrubbing away the memory of hunting and hiding, running and fear. Sweet herbs that grew on the bank both cleansed and scented her, till she tingled all over, beautifully and blissfully clean.