The Horsemasters Read online

  Abruptly, the hazy peace of the afternoon was ripped apart by an angry bellow. Then came crashing noises that sounded alarmingly close. Through the screen of thin birch and oak and pine, Morna suddenly saw a massive black shape…saw great curving horns…and the smell of buffalo overpowered the fragrant scent of the pines.

  “Ronan,” Morna said urgently, and bumped into him. He had stopped, turned toward the buffalo, and was lifting his spear. He did not look at her, but said calmly, “Get up a tree, Morna. That bull is too close.”

  Morna stared toward the bull, who was striding along aggressively at a much faster gait than the normal lazy amble of the buffalo. As she watched, he hooked a small tree with one of his horns, easily breaking its fragile trunk.

  Morna’s breath caught. Ronan still had his spear in his hand, and she could see that the screen of trees made getting off a clear throw impossible.

  “Get up a tree,” Ronan repeated.

  “Na,” Morna said. “I will back you up.” She stood by his side and raised her own spear to her shoulder.

  As the two hunters watched through the impeding screen of trees, the great bull halted, lowered his head to the ground, and sniffed intently. Then, with great deliberation, he urinated on the spot he had been sniffing. Next he knelt and rubbed his head and horns in the area he had just dampened. Standing upright, he let out a loud bellow and looked in the direction of Ronan and Morna. His tail went up, a certain sign of danger.

  There was but one open line in the trees between the buffalo and where the boy and girl stood, and now the bull moved into that opening.

  Without hesitation, Ronan stepped in front of Morna and brought back his left arm. The throw was perfect, straight and true. Unfortunately, however, as the spear left Ronan’s spearthrower, the bull stepped sideways with frightening quickness to hook a small birch.

  Ronan’s spear buried itself harmlessly in the trunk of a tree.

  The bull looked at them again.

  “He is going to charge,” Ronan said. He sounded perfectly calm.

  “Take my spear,” Morna said from behind him, and put her weapon into her brother’s hand.

  But it seemed that the buffalo had changed his mind. Before Ronan could make another throw, he had turned away from them and plunged off into the woods.

  The boy and girl stood for a moment in silence, holding their breaths. They let them out at almost the same moment; then Ronan turned to Morna and said furiously, “I told you to get up a tree. You could have been killed!”

  “You didn’t get up a tree,” Morna pointed out. “I am your hunting partner. If you were going to try for the bull, it was my job to stand with you.”

  Ronan continued to stare into her face. Slowly his fury was replaced by a look of reluctant admiration. At last he nodded. “I’ll get my spear and we can go after it again,” he said. He began to turn away.

  Morna reached out and put a restraining hand on his arm. “Let it go.”

  He swung back toward her, a line between his slim black brows.

  “Ronan,” Morna said softly. She smiled into his uncomprehending face.

  “We can still get the bull,” he said impatiently. “Let’s go.”

  “I can think of something better to do than chasing bulls.” Morna stepped very close to him. “Can’t you?”

  He still did not understand. His dark eyes were wary…and bewildered. Her own eyes were wide and dilated. She reached up, swinging her arm, and struck him lightly across the cheek with the back of her hand. “Stupid,” she said mockingly.

  He recoiled from the blow. His face went very pale under its tan. His eyes began to glitter.

  “Let’s go,” he said. Now his voice was hard.

  Morna stared at that tall strong young male body before her. Her voluptuous apprehension of him was so acute that she felt dizzy with it. The hazy autumn heat had brought out perspiration on her upper lip, and she licked the salty beads. “Ronan,” she said. “Lie with me.”

  She heard the harsh intake of his breath. She felt his body begin to vibrate. Once more she stepped close.

  “You are my sister!” His voice was scarcely more than a whisper.

  “No one will ever know.” She reached up to slide her hands around his neck. She leaned against him. “We were not reared as brother and sister, you and I,” she said into his ear. She rose up on her toes and, none too gently, took the lobe of his right ear into her mouth and bit it. “No one will ever know,” she said again.

  He shuddered. She was close enough to him to feel the immediacy of his other reaction too. Her lips parted in a faint smile, her eyes half closed. She rubbed against him.

  He shoved her away. Shoved her so roughly that she almost fell. She scrambled for her balance, then looked up at him. The expression in his dark eyes frightened her far more than the buffalo had.

  “It is taboo, Morna,” he said. His voice was shaking. “Whether anyone knows or not, it is taboo.”

  He strode to where his spear was stuck in the tree and pulled it out violently. Gripping it tightly, he said to her, “Do not ever touch me like that again.” And he plunged off into the forest alone.

  Morna stared after him. After a little, the angry line smoothed from between her brows.

  He was afraid of the taboo, she thought. She had not thought Ronan would be afraid of anything.

  She thought of the way he had looked at her, she remembered the arousal of his body against hers, and once more she smiled.

  It would just take a little more time.

  * * * *

  A little later in the day, Adun and Tosa sighted the buffalo that had eluded Ronan and Morna earlier and sounded the hunting call of the tribe. Morna and Ronan arrived on the scene just in time to hear the bull’s long-drawn-out dying bellow.

  Once they were certain it was safely dead, the hunters moved to examine the animal’s pelt. Buffalo would not be wearing their full winter’s coat for yet another moon, but the heavier, longer, denser hair had begun to grow in and the pelt was well worth the taking. The boys drew their sharp flint knives from their belts and prepared to go to work.

  To Adun, who had thrown the killing spear, fell the honor of making the first slash across the belly. This he did, with the appropriate prayer of thanks to the Mother, and as he withdrew his knife, a huge steaming greasy paunch spilled out of the incision onto the forest floor. Then, reciting yet another prayer to Buffalo God, Adun made the second cut, and a dark green stream of half-digested grass and leaves poured out as well.

  The girls had made a fire, and as the boys worked at skinning the pelt, they cooked the delicacies of liver, tongue, and tail. Then they all sat down to eat before returning to the butchering of the buffalo, which job they finished before starting on the trail back.

  During the whole of the afternoon, Ronan and Morna were noticeably silent.

  “We spotted the bull once,” Ronan said in answer to a question of Tyr’s, “but I couldn’t get a decent throw off through the trees.” And he fell silent again. After one or two other attempts to draw him into conversation, the others left him to his own thoughts.

  They reached home near the time of sunset, and Ronan immediately looked for Nel. He was feeling both shocked and revolted by Morna’s proposal, as well as by his own unexpected reaction to it, and he craved the innocence of his small cousin. Nel was not in her father’s hut, and Ronan finally came upon her in one of her favorite hideaways, a small clearing in the woods not far from the river. She was playing with her cat.

  Ronan watched the two of them for a moment, remembering the time Nel had first showed him the pitiful little starved scimitar cub. He had been certain it could not live.

  “You see babies killed every day,” he had said to her sternly, trying to prepare her for the inevitable. “Lions and hyenas and wolves and wild dogs…they are always preying upon the deer fawns and the newborn antelope calves. The owl will always kill the mouse. You cannot stop that, minnow. In order for some to live, others must die
. It is the Way of the Mother. Why must you break your heart trying to save what cannot be saved?”

  “I can save this cub,” she had said to him fiercely. “I know I can.”

  She had saved it. The starved little orphan had grown into a sleek and beautiful adult, its curved fangs delicately serrated and deadly sharp, The cat, too, must kill to live.

  Just now it was playing with Nel’s fingers. She would drum them lightly upon the ground, and the cat would pounce. Ronan could see that the cat had its claws retracted. It was being careful not to hurt Nel; it understood they were playing.

  The cat’s coat was pale brown and glossy, almost the exact same shade as the child’s hair. They had the same color eyes too, Ronan thought, and smiled.

  “Ronan!” Nel had seen him.

  He moved to join her. The cat stopped playing and watched him cautiously. “Greetings, Nel,” he said. And to the cat, he added, “Greetings, Sharan.” He dropped down to sit beside them.

  “Did you get the buffalo?” Nel asked.

  “Sa. We got the buffalo.”

  “Who? You?”

  He shook his head. “Adun.”

  “Oh.” Her wide gaze was very grave. “Who was your hunting partner?” she wanted to know next.

  “Morna,” he answered, his voice flat.

  “Oh,” she said again. She sounded surprised.

  Sharan began to tap gently at Nel’s fingers. She drummed them lightly on the ground, and the cat pounced. Nel said to Ronan, “I washed my hair today.”

  He nodded approvingly. “It looks as sleek as Sharan’s coat.”

  “You didn’t even have to tell me. I did it all by myself.”

  He smiled. “You are growing up, minnow.”

  She did not smile back. “I am.”

  “I saved you some of the liver.” He took a hunk of meat out of the pouch at his waist.

  “Oh…Ronan!” Eagerly, she took the preferred morsel. He watched with faint amusement as she ate it greedily. When she had finished, she licked her lips and gave him a grateful grin. “Delicious.”

  He reached over and wiped a drip of juice from the corner of her mouth with his index finger.

  She scanned his face. “What is wrong?” she asked.

  He raised his brows. “Wrong? Nothing is wrong.”

  “Sa, something is wrong. I can always tell when something is wrong with you. What is it?”

  He had not sought Nel out with the intention of confiding in her. He smiled faintly and shook his head, “It is not something I can tell you, minnow. You are too young.”

  “You just said that I was growing up,” she pointed out. She rested her fingers lightly yet commandingly on his forearm. “Besides, there is nothing you cannot tell me, Ronan, just as there is nothing I cannot tell you.”

  He looked at the small hand resting so assuredly on his sleeve. It was rough and chapped and the fingers bore numerous small half-healed cuts. The innocent hand of a child, he thought. Not at all like the hand that had struck him across the face this afternoon.

  The mere thought of what had happened this afternoon made him feel contaminated.

  “Ronan?” Nel said softly. “Was it something to do with Morna?”

  He gazed into her eyes; then he looked away. In a tight, expressionless voice, he began to tell her what had happened between him and Morna on the hunt.

  When he had finished, Nel let out a long soft breath. Ronan looked at her. “I am afraid,” he said, “that she will try it again.”

  Nel said, “I am thinking that she probably will.”

  “Dhu, Nel!”—there was panic now in his voice—”what am I going to do?”

  “You cannot give in to her,” said Nel.

  “I know that!” he responded wildly. “I don’t want to give in to her. We came from the same womb, Nel! How could she even think…” His whole body shuddered.

  “You can know something is wrong and still want it,” Nel said. “Is that not true?”

  There was a vibrating silence.

  Nel began to pet her cat. “She wouldn’t climb the tree?” she asked after a few moments.

  Ronan rubbed his hand across his eyes. “I wish she had.” His voice was deeply bitter.

  Nel was scratching Sharan’s head between the small pointed ears. The cat closed her eyes in blissful pleasure. Ronan watched the motion of that childish hand and felt oddly soothed. “Sa,” Nel said somberly, “it would be easier not to think well of Morna in any way.”

  “But what can have possessed her, Nel?” he asked in genuine bewilderment. “Morna could have any man she wants. I do not understand her at all.”

  There was the rustle of something small scurrying among the trees, and Sharan opened her eyes. Both youngsters watched as the cat got to her feet and arched her back, which sloped in distinctive scimitar fashion, downward from the high front legs to the shorter legs behind. Sharan trotted off into the trees to investigate. Nel drew up her knees and propped her small pointed chin on them. Ronan noticed a ragged tear in the deerskin trouser that covered her right knee. Nel would be in trouble with Olma again.

  “Perhaps Morna has been watching how all the other girls want to lie with you,” Nel said slowly. “Morna has never been one to let someone else have what she cannot have.”

  Ronan stared into his cousin’s small sharp-boned face. “She is corrupt,” he said, his voice hard.

  “It is not corrupt to feel desire for someone who is taboo,” Nel said. “It is the giving in to the desire that is corrupt.”

  “That is so,” Ronan said. He let out his breath and realized that the ugly feeling that had been eating away at him all the afternoon was gone. He smiled at Nel. “You are always good medicine for me, minnow.” He stretched his arms over his head, then got to his feet and held out his hand. “Come along, there’s buffalo meat for supper tonight.”

  Chapter Seven

  Morna sat in the shelter of the cave’s opening and watched the ibex resting on the hillside above her. It was Leaf Fall Moon, and the males and females had come together into one herd, as they did for only a few moons out of the entire year.

  The sun was very bright; the air was thin and cold. The young ibex, feeling the itch of the rutting season, were playing at butting and sparring with each other. Most of the females were lying down, chewing their cud in the early afternoon sunshine. Three big rams stood at a little distance from the rest. Most of the herd was facing Morna, but she was downwind of them and they betrayed no alarm.

  Morna looked away down the valley to the south, which was the direction from which Ronan would be coming. She could see no sign of him as yet. She got to her feet and moved out from the shadow of the cave opening. The ibex watched her. The females got to their feet; the youngsters stopped playing. Slowly the herd began to move higher up the hillside. Morna watched them until they had disappeared over the top of the hill; then she turned once more to look to the south.

  She was certain he would come. He had been avoiding her for the whole of the last moon, but this morning Morna had sent him a message saying that the Mistress wished to meet him here, at this small cave which the tribe used for shelter when it was hunting the hills in the area.

  Arika was not at home to give the lie to Morna’s message. At sunup she had gone with some of the women to the sacred cave to perform a curing ceremony. That was women’s business, however, and Ronan would not know about it. He would have no reason to doubt the message; he would come.

  He had been avoiding her, but Morna knew what she had seen in his eyes and felt in his body when last they had been together. He wanted her, as she wanted him. She had only to get him alone again, she thought, and then, whether he willed it or no, she would have from him what she wanted.

  Morna shivered with voluptuous anticipation and turned to look at the sleeping skins she had spread so invitingly on the floor of the cave. Then she ran her fingers through her loosened red-gold hair.

  Would he never come? She sat on a sun-warmed rock a
nd resigned herself to waiting.

  It was an hour before he came around the side of the hill and into her sight. She watched him leap with powerful grace over a boulder that stood in his path, and the blood sang dizzily in her veins. What would he do, she wondered, when he realized who was really waiting for him here?

  At that moment, Ronan looked up from the path and squinted into the sun in the direction of the cave. He hesitated, as if unsure of his welcome, and then he came on.

  Morna stood, the glorious hair she had inherited from her mother floating around her shoulders, and watched him with wide and dilated eyes. She could tell the exact moment at which he realized who she was. He stopped dead. The entire valley was eerily silent as they looked at each other across the distance.

  “You!” he said, his voice loud in the quiet afternoon air. “What are you doing here?”

  Morna did not answer. At last Ronan began to walk toward her again, scrambling up the small slide of rocks to the flat apron of ground that fronted the cave. When he was standing within a few feet of her, he said, “You sent that message.”

  From somewhere on the other side of the hill came the bone-chilling howl of a wolf. Morna smiled. “Sa,” Her voice was very soft. “I sent that message.”

  “Where is the Mistress, then?”

  “Performing a curing ceremony for Nara at the sacred cave.”

  “I should have known,” he said. “I should have known she would never have sent to me like that.”

  Morna did not hear, as Nel would have, the ineffable bitterness that underlay those words. She only knew that he was infinitely desirable as he stood there before her, black-haired and tall, with his arrogant, hawklike face. “Come closer,” she said.

  He did not move. “What do you want?” he asked.

  “You know what I want,” she answered with a smile.

  He took a single step backward. “What you want is taboo.” He backed up another step. “I have nothing to give you that you cannot get from any other man in the tribe,” he said.

  Morna shook her head from side to side, so that her hair floated around her shoulders. “You know you want to, Ronan,” she said. “I felt that the last time we were together.” She gestured toward the cave behind her. “I have brought sleeping skins for us.” She advanced toward him. “No one but us will ever know.”