Daughter of Lir by Judith Tarr

swifter, leaping higher, shouting louder than any. It
was pure mindless bodily pleasure. He lost himself in it.
    o0o
    The council began at full dark. The king still had not
come out. Minas was dizzy with drink and dancing, but not so dazed that he
could fail to see who was and was not sitting in the council circle. The
wardance had moved to another and lesser fire. It would wind through the whole
camp before it ended, drawing in new dancers, shedding old ones, till all the
tribe was sealed to the king’s war.
    Minas had danced enough for a while. He squatted on the
circle’s edge and got his breath back. The sweat dried on his body. He was
shivering, but he hardly felt the night air’s chill.
    Dias dropped down beside him. As usual, he had thought of
practical things: he had Minas’ bearskin mantle and a wolfskin for himself.
Minas wrapped himself in the mantle, breathing its wild musky scent.
    The war-council was growing restless. There was kumiss
enough, and some had drunk deep of it, but that only made them surly. These lords
and commanders were not accustomed to waiting on any man, even a king.
    Minas was breathing comfortably again. His heart had stopped
hammering. He rose, holding the mantle about him, and walked into the
firelight.
    Eyes flashed to him. For a moment some seemed to see the one
they waited for: quick flares of anger or expectation, even more quickly dulled
as they recognized the son and not the father. He smiled brilliantly at them
all and took the place to which he was entitled, just outside the canopy that
should have sheltered the king.
    They ignored him, and his brother behind him. Whatever the
princes might be entitled to, they were still little more than boys. This was a
council of elders and seasoned warleaders.
    Minas’ bones were uneasy. His father should have come out
for the dancing. As strange and haughty as he had grown, he had never been
known to keep his council waiting so very long or in such great ill-humor.
    The dancing was far away now. The fire burned steadily. The
king’s women moved among the council with platters of roast meats, bread fresh
from the baking, and skins of kumiss and honey mead. A strangled squeal marked
the daring of one man greatly gone in kumiss, laying hand on the woman who bent
to fill his drinking horn.
    Minas half-rose. He did not know precisely what he would do,
whether he would speak to them all or run in search of his father. Still
someone must do something, or this council would shatter into squabbling
factions.
    Just as he began to straighten, the fire flared. In the sudden
light, the king came out of his tent. He loomed tall and terrible, like a bull
in full rut: great head uplifted, broad horns spearing the stars.
    He was wearing the bull’s-head crown of the People, and the
cloak of the spotted bull’s hide. His face was shadowed beneath the sweep of
the horns.
    Silence fell as he came. Even the dancers, at the camp’s far
edge, chose just then to pause. Nothing stirred. No one seemed to breathe.
    He paced through the circle to the royal canopy. Just in
front of it, he turned. The fire blazed on the gold he wore on his arms and
about his neck.
    When he spoke, his voice was deep, echoing in the silence.
“The gods have spoken,” he said. “When the moon wanes to dark, we ride, we and
all the tribes who look to us as king. Westward, into the setting sun.
Westward, to the lands of gold and copper, soft men and willing women, to the
lands the gods have given us.”
    “The gods have given us the world,” said the warleader of
the Northwind clan.
    The others growled assent. It was a chilling sound, soft and
deadly. It put Minas in mind of a council of wolves.
    “Chariots,” said the king. “We shall build chariots—tens,
hundreds of them—and train horses, and train warriors. We shall be a storm in
the tall grass, a wind across the steppe. All lesser men shall fall before us.”
    The growl deepened. It no longer sounded like the voices