Daughter of Lir (57 page)

“The beast and the man become one,” said the shaman whose
name once had been Phaiston.

“You crossed the river,” said Minas.

“She opened the way,” Phaiston said. “When she came, the
souls fled.”

“Or she ate them.”

“Only the kings.”

Minas’ lips stretched back from his teeth. “Not here. Not in
this country.”

“She must be starving,” Phaiston said.

“Not she,” said Minas. “She dines on priestesses and their
acolytes.”

“Thin fare, if she needs so much of it.”

“But steady, and always more to be had.”

Phaiston did not seem to move, but all at once he was by the
dun stallion’s shoulder. The dun snorted and cocked a wary ear, but did not shy
away.

“It’s time,” Phaiston said.

At first Minas did not dare to believe he understood. It had
been so long, his captivity so complete. He had a woman here, or she had him. He
had a child. He had standing—not as a slave but as a prince. A captive prince,
but a prince nonetheless, and a lord of charioteers.

And yet, after all, he was still of the People.

“They’re at the river,” the shaman said. “All the People—all
the tribes and clans, the allies, the vassals, the whole world; and a thousand
chariots.”

“A thousand . . .” Minas laughed. “You’re
joking.”

“By the gods, I am not. All the makers your grandfather was
training, he sent to the tribes. There they took apprentices, just as you did
here. And they made chariots. Hundreds of them.”

“But with what?” Minas demanded. “There’s not enough wood on
the steppe to—”

“There are forests to the north and the east. With men
enough, wagons enough, courage enough, anything is possible. And once the king
knew where she had gone—”

“The king? Dias?”

“The great king, the king of kings, the conqueror of worlds,
Dias son of Adas son of Kronos of the People.”

Minas son of Adas son of Kronos, who should have been king,
discovered that his fists were knotted tight in the stallion’s mane. With care
he worked them free. “Dias,” he said. “Dias whom his mother despised, calling
him a feeble shadow of a man. How it must gnaw at her liver!”

“And at yours?”

Minas looked down into those wicked yellow eyes. He could
break the man’s neck, he thought coldly. No one would know, nor would anyone
care.

Maybe Phaiston knew how close he was to death. It did not
seem to trouble him.

“I am a dead man,” Minas said. “I have no liver to gnaw.”

“The dead have great power,” Phaiston said.

“But they cannot be kings.” Minas drew a shuddering breath.
“Enough. I am what fate has made me—what she has made me. Are not we all? And
now he comes to take vengeance.”

“You know,” said Phaiston, “that if you went back, he would
give up his kingship for you.”

“Would he?”

Phaiston did not hesitate. “He has grown into it, and some
say into greatness, but he never wanted it. It was always yours.”

Minas laughed harshly. “Oh, it was mine! But no longer.
Leave off tormenting me, and tell me. Have they crossed the river?”

“Not yet,” said Phaiston, “but soon. The defenses have given
them pause, but will never stop them.”

“They’re not meant to. They’re meant to bring the enemy into
a trap, to surround and crush them.”

“A chain of forts,” Phaiston said. “But the cities and towns
are seldom walled, and they’re full of innocents. What will they all do, run
and hide? Where will they go? The forts can’t hold them all.”

Minas shrugged. “I’m not privy to those councils.”

“No. You only make chariots to fight chariots.”

“Ten score against a thousand,” Minas said. “And I reckoned
that it would be an even match.”

“Did you hope for that?”

“What is hope to the dead?”

“So young, and yet so bitter.” Phaiston eluded a
half-hearted blow, dancing his mockery. “You can wager that the temple knows of
this, and therefore she does. What do you think she’ll do, now she knows the
reckoning has come?”

“Panic,” said Minas.

Phaiston whooped and yipped. “Oho! Ohai! Oh, won’t she! What
will she do when she panics, O prince of slaves? Whom will she seize as a
hostage, on pretext that after all there might be danger of betrayal?”

“There I danger of—” Minas broke off. “She can’t. She does
nothing outside the temple. The king’s power protects me.”

“For once, the king will agree with her,” Phaiston said.
“You are a threat. You know everything that matters, of the defenses, of the
people who man them—councils or no councils. The chariots are your chariots.
The horses you trained, or you saw to their training. Take all that to your
brother in the east, and you give him the gift of this country.”

Minas’ heart swelled till it was like to burst. To see his
people again, his brother, his kin—to be alive and no longer dead—

Rhian. Ariana. He gasped with the shock of memory, the pain
he had known would come, and he thought prepared for. But nothing could prepare
him for this.

A man should not be so bound to a woman, still less to a
daughter. The tribe was his heart and soul. He lived for the tribe, died for
the tribe.

They would be safe. The king protected them here. When the
People came, Minas would protect them.

“The dead have great power,” he said aloud. He glanced about
quickly. The herdsmen seemed to have forgotten him. They had the herd together
and were driving it down the road to Lir.

He had no food with him, and only the clothes on his back.
He had a bottle of water, a sword and a dagger, his bow and a quiver of arrows.
He had a good horse, born on the steppe and bred to travel far on short
commons.

He needed no more thought than that. There was a way through
the thicket—he had found it once, searching for a strayed colt. He turned the
dun toward what seemed to be the thorniest part of the wall, found the all but
invisible gap, and slipped within. Thorns clawed at him, but he made himself
small, and kept the dun on the straight track. Eastward. Away from Lir. Toward
the river and the horde of the People.

Minas did not come back with the herd from the far
pasture. That was not uncommon; sometimes he went hunting, sometimes he
lingered among the horses. But today Rhian’s nerves were strung tight. If he
had had the news—if he had heard that his people were coming—she knew beyond
doubt what he would have done. He was a tribesman; it was bred in him. He would
have no choice but to escape.

She knew his honor, as peculiar as it was. He had stayed
while his people were still on the steppe, had served as he reckoned a slave
should. But their coming set him free.

Ariana insisted that she must spend the night with the king.
That suited Rhian splendidly. There was no safer place to be than in those
strong arms, deeply and obliviously asleep while he held his war-council far
into the night.

Rhian slipped away not long after dark. She would not be
missed for a while; there were numerous others coming and going, and the king’s
house was in tumult. Lir was no more subdued, though like the king’s house it
had forborne to give way to panic. Rhian was proud of her people then, of their
courage in the face of war.

The mare was waiting for her. The stable was dim, with only
moonlight to illumine it. The mare’s coat glowed, white as the moon. Rhian
wrapped arms about the silken neck and leaned there for a while, simply
breathing. She was not brave, not like the people of this city. She was stark
with terror—not of war or death, no. Of losing him.

She had taken Minas to use and cast away. But since she
first lay with him, she had not wanted any other man. Nor it seemed did he want
another woman, though many had asked. He was not a man to open his heart
easily, and more so now than when he was free among the tribe. And yet she had
seen how he was when she bore Ariana, the fear in him, the crazy courage as he
held her through the two days’ battle. He went to the gates of death with her,
and never left her until she was firm again among the living.

He was the other half of her. Whether she was the same to
him, she did not know. It was not a thing he would speak of.

She mounted the mare in the moonlight and rode her out of
Lir. There were guards and walls, but Rhian knew other ways, and the mare could
melt into the night when she chose.

The mare tracked Minas. When daylight came, Rhian recognized
the print of his horse: narrower, more oval than horses’ feet here. He would be
riding one of his duns, she thought, and most likely the stallion whom the mare
favored.

He was keeping to the uplands, to the woods and the edges of
fields, staying as far away from the towns as he could. He had begun half a day
ahead of her, but she had brought provisions, and she could see that he had
not: he had to stop to hunt, and to graze his horse.

She caught him in the evening of that first day, camped in a
clearing deep in a copse. He had hidden his traces well, but the mare was not a
mortal creature, to be so easily deceived.

He was roasting a brace of rabbits over a fire, its smoke
shielded by the branches of a tree. He started a little as the mare came out of
the trees, but his eyes when he lifted them to Rhian held no surprise. No
hatred, either. She remembered to breathe then, swinging her leg over the white
neck, sliding to the ground.

“I’m not going back,” he said.

“I didn’t think you would.” She opened her traveling-pack
and brought out fruit, cheese, cakes from the king’s kitchen in Lir.

“Ariana?”

“With the king.”

He sighed softly, and the tautness in his shoulders eased.
“She’ll be safe there.”

Rhian nodded.

“So will you.”

“I’m going with you.”

“You are not.”

She was silent.

The rabbits were cooked, spitting savory grease into the
fire, making it flare. Minas lifted the spits and handed one to Rhian. They ate
without speaking. He was hungry: he had devoured his share before she was half
done with hers.

She wanted to touch him, but she knew better than to try. He
lay back while she finished eating, sprawled in the grass. She thought he would
insist that she speak first, but he surprised her. He said, “If you go with me,
you are a traitor to your people.”

“If you’re caught without me, you could be killed.”

“I don’t intend to be caught.”

“Can you be sure of that?”

“Will you betray me?”

“No,” said Rhian. “I will not.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you.”

That word had never been spoken between them. It slipped out
of its own accord.

“I will not stay for love of you,” he said.

“Aye,” she said, “but you are a tribesman, and I belong to
the mare. I go where she goes. She brought me here.”

“Against your will?”

“Hardly.”

He frowned. “I don’t understand you.”

“Did you ever?”

“No!”

That was pure temper. She laughed at it. He snarled, but his
lips began to twitch. He never had been able to stay angry for long, not when
she smiled as she did now.

o0o

Minas tried to slip away in the night. Rhian had expected
that. She was close behind him as he rode out.

The moon caught the flash of his glance. She thought he
might turn back, but he was as stubborn as she was. Once he had begun, he would
go on.

In any event it was better that they travel by night. The
king’s messengers had gone out. The fortresses were armed, and all roads
guarded. It did not seem that anyone should be searching for a lone rider or
two—the enemy would come in a wall like a storm, without need of stealth—and
yet there were armed parties traveling the roads and roving the hills.

Rhian knew the country well for two days’ journey around
Lir, but past that she knew only the roads. Minas knew less than she: he had
been kept close to the city, and when he left it, he had gone by river or with
chariots. If they followed the river, they would meet guards; but if they took
to the country, they must go blind, aim as nearly in the direction of the river
as they could, and hope that the land would protect them.

It failed them on the fourth day. They had taken a narrow
pass over a steep ridge to avoid a cluster of villages, and found the going terribly
slow: the valley was thickly wooded in parts, and in parts slippery with stones
and scree. Worse, it narrowed as it went up, until it ended in a meeting of
steep walls; and no way up unless they had wings.

They camped there, as it was nearly dawn. When night came
again would turn back, and hope that they could find a way around the
villages—or through them, as Minas proposed.

“You’re mad,” Rhian said to him.

“Am I? I’ll cover my hair. We’re armed, mounted. If we ride
boldly in the open and look suitably grim, they’ll take us for soldiers, and
hardly give us a second glance.”

“And the mare?” Rhian asked. “Do you think she’ll go
unrecognized?”

“Turn her loose. She’ll find her own way. We’ll go
together.”

“On a single horse?”

“I’ll walk,” he said—and that was a princely sacrifice, for
a tribesman to surrender his horse to a woman.

They argued for some little time longer, but there was no
other way that either of them could see. They slept then in the grey morning,
first she and then he. When her watch ended, the rain that had threatened began
to fall. Mist closed in. It would be a black night.

She called Minas’ name, softly. He woke all at once as he
always did, upright even as his eyes opened, flashing a glance that recalled
where he was and why.

“I think we should go now,” she said. “Come nightfall, we’ll
be blind. If you cover your head and face, it won’t be as suspicious in the
rain as it would be on a starlit night.”

He nodded. They broke camp quickly, in amity that belied the
heat of their dissension before. The mare was already gone, vanished in the
mist. Rhian had not even heard her go. The dun was uneasy, ears flicking,
nostrils flaring. He disliked to be alone, apart from his mare.