Godbond by Nancy Springer Page B

and he almost toppled, trying to whirl and lunge at the same time. I cursed him and forced him into an unsteady charge. A whip whistled toward my face—Alar cut it off in midair, so that the severed section fell like a snake, writhing. I saw the frightened face of the not-yet-man as he struck at me with the butt, and Alar found her swift way to his heart. Fanged Horse fools, they scorned those who fought with their women at their sides, valiant and well-grown relentless women, yet did not scorn to send their half-grown children into danger! I turned Muku to face another one, aware of the beating of their whips on my back and sides, but not yet feeling pain or weakness—my wrath had taken me out of such feelings. I was crazed with battle fever.
    Three more died before Muku slowly sank away under me, his knees folding as he lowered me gently to the ground.
    Tough little mount, he had gamely done all I had told him as the fanged mares cut him through his thick fur, so that his neck and chest and flanks ran red with blood, his curly sand-colored hair lay flattened into an ugly fen of blood, until at last a slashing fang had found the large veins of his throat. But he had not fought back by so much as striking with his forehooves.
    There he lay on the Steppes, dying, the little stallion my brother had entrusted to me. One enemy yet left to deal with.… Why had Sakeema let Fanged Horse Folk be in the world?
    It was as Tyee had said, I decided bitterly. The god was dead. No, worse, as that aching other had recently said: the god was our betrayer.
    The thought chilled me worse than the whips had. Standing beside Muku’s body, my wrath running out of me like my blood, suddenly feeling all the pain of my wounds, I let Alar sag to my side. I no longer cared if I died there on the spot. If Sakeema was so cruel, it did not matter.
    One more Fanged Horse stripling yet faced me.
    I stared up at him stupidly, not moving, and he stared down at me from the back of his fanged mare. By all my forebears, but he was ugly, he with his low forehead and the black hair hanging down in oily strings, his sharp nose, his sharpened teeth between lips that never seemed to meet. He still carried his long whip coiled in his right hand, and his mare stamped and pawed in her eagerness to run me down. But he held her on tight rein, and he had not moved, no more than I had, though I could not comprehend the look in his too-small eyes.
    â€œGo away,” I told him thickly. “I no longer feel like killing you.”
    He said in his harsh Fanged Horse speech, he who had not spoken to me before, “Who are you?”
    Why did they always ask that? And what, for the god’s sake, was the right answer? And what did it matter? I laughed, I stood there laughing, for all my life seemed like a joke big as the world. “I am a fool,” I told him, still laughing. “I am Sakeema’s fool.”
    If he had charged me at that moment I think I would not have raised Alar to cut him down. He could have had my head for his trophy. The world is ending, I seemed to hear Tyee’s sardonic voice say, Dannoc no longer eats meat or kills Fanged Horse shitbottoms. The scum.
    The youngster swung his mare around and loped her away. Until he was very small on the distant Steppes I watched after him.
    Finally I turned and wobbled away, afoot in a vast, arid plain.
    There were fanged mares running loose. No use trying to catch one, I could tell merely by a look at their tossing heads and rolling eyes. I had no strength left to subdue one, and they wanted only to tear at the bodies of their former masters with their yellowbrown tusks, eat the sweet red meat and the sweeter guts. I staggered away and did not look back at them. All powers be willing, when they were done, and finished eating Muku as well, they would be too gorged to come looking for me to rend me and eat me in my turn. Yet they might come and stand around me, waiting like vultures