Lady of Horses by Judith Tarr Read Free Book Online Page A

air, a scream of pure rage. Walker whipped
about with hammering heart.
    There was nothing there. The eddy was quiet, the sun
unsullied.
    A horse, he thought, now that he could think again. A mare,
driving off an importunate stallion. One of the herds must have come down to
the river, out of sight round the bend of the eddy.
    His heart slowed. His mind cleared. He turned back to his
sister.
    She was gone. The eddy was empty of her. Nor was she to be
found anywhere among the People, though he looked hard and long. She had
vanished from the camp, or hidden so deep in it that she escaped him utterly.
    oOo
    On the morning when the shamans from the east consented at
last to leave the warmth and the good hunting of the People’s camp and return
to their cold and distant country, Walker pondered his need and his sister’s
intransigence. Drinks-the-Wind had given the easterners what they seemed to
reckon wisdom, but Walker barely saw even sense in it. The elder shaman bade
them fast and pray, and perform a ritual of cleansing over the herds, and make
certain that all the hunters performed the proper rites both before and after a
hunt. That would appease the gods, the old man said, and bring back the game.
Then they would be strong again.
    Which might be true, but any man of sense could have advised
such a thing. They had not needed a full moon’s journey to be told of it.
    Drinks-the-Wind had grown old. And the king himself was no
longer young. Walker saw him as he set the strangers on their way. His stallion
had grown thin in the winter, and the back that had been so strong was
beginning to sway. The man on that back had the same look to him of age
beginning to conquer his strength.
    And this was a ninth year.
    Walker left the camp without speaking to anyone. He needed
solitude to hear the gods’ voices most clearly. But as he climbed the long hill
above the river, a whooping crowd of young fools thundered past on half-wild
horses, with a pack of hunting-dogs baying before them. Linden the prince rode
hunting with his friends and followers. Some had great hopes: they carried
boar-spears.
    Most of them veered wide round Walker. They were afraid of
him, though they might have chosen to call it hearty respect for the shaman’s
power.
    But Linden paused. His stallion was very beautiful, deep
red, but its mane and tail were the same winter gold as Linden’s own long
plaits; and it made a great show of fire and fierceness, though Walker, who had
seen it in the herds, knew that it was not the best regarded of the stallions.
It was too inclined to defer to the mares.
    Deference need not be an ill thing, if it was properly
judged. Walker reflected on that as he smiled up at the man on the horse’s back.
Linden smiled down a little uncertainly, but with a lift of the chin that spoke
of proper princely pride.
    “Good morning, prince of the White Stone People,” Walker
said civilly.
    “Good morning,” Linden said, without granting Walker a
title. “We’re going hunting. Shall we bring you back a fat deer?”
    “Bring me back a tender piglet,” Walker said, “fresh from
its mother’s teat.”
    Linden looked as if he did not quite dare to laugh. “That’s
tender meat indeed,” he said, “and not easy to get hold of.”
    “Yes,” Walker said.
    “Would you like the sow’s milk to cook it in?”
    “That would be a dangerous thing,” Walker said, “to milk a
wild sow.”
    “So it would,” said Linden. He laughed then, light and a
little wild. “You’ll dine on piglet tonight, seer. My word on it.”
    Walker inclined his head. Linden wheeled his showy beast
about, laughed again and sent him thundering after the others.
    oOo
    Walker stood on the hilltop. His eyes followed the young
men as they galloped off northward, but his mind flew far above them, looking
down on them with cold falcon-eyes. They were little men, every one, and their
prince was hardly greater than they.
    And yet that was a very pretty creature, sitting