The Plains of Passage (Earth's Children 4)

Not only her Wolf Women, but all the women of the Camp were expected to bear witness to the man's ordeal. Most of them hated to watch, but they feared Attaroa, even her hunters. They stood as far back as they dared. It made some of them sick, but if they did not appear, then any man they had spoken up for in the past was the next one chosen. Some women had tried to run away, and a few had managed it, but most were caught and brought back. If there were men in the Holding they cared about—mates, brothers, sons—as punishment, the women were made to watch them suffer days in the cage without food or water. And occasionally, though rarely, they were put in the cage themselves.

The women with boys were particularly fearful, not knowing what would become of their sons, especially after what she had done to Odevan and Ardoban, but the women who feared the most were the two with infants and the one who was pregnant. Attaroa was delighted with them, gave them special treats and asked after their welfare, but they each harbored a guilty secret and were afraid that if she ever found out, they would end up hanging from the target posts.

The headwoman stepped in front of her hunters and picked up a spear. Jondalar noticed it was rather heavy and clumsy and, in spite of himself, he thought about how he could make them a better one. But the poorly made thick point was nonetheless sharp and effective. He watched the woman take careful aim and noticed she was aiming low. She did not mean to kill, but to maim. He was conscious of his naked exposure to whatever pain she chose to inflict on him, and he fought an urge to lift his legs to try to protect himself. But then he'd be dangling, too, and he felt that would make him even more vulnerable, and would expose his fear.

Attaroa watched him through narrowed eyes, knowing that he feared her and enjoying it. Some of them begged. This one she knew would not, at least not immediately. She pulled her arm back as she prepared to make her throw. He closed his eyes and thought of Ayla, wondering if she was alive or dead, her body crushed and broken below a herd of horses at the bottom of the cliff. With a pain sharper than any spear could inflict, he knew that if she were dead, life had no meaning for him anyway.

He heard a thunk as a spear landed on the target, but above him, not low and painful. Suddenly he dropped to his heels as his arms were freed. He looked at his hands and saw that the short length of slack in the rope, which had been hung over the peg, was severed. Attaroa still held her spear in her hand. The spear he heard had not come from her. Jondalar looked up at the target pole and saw a neat, somewhat small, flint-tipped spear embedded beside the peg, its feathered end still quivering. The thin, finely made point had cut the cord. He knew that spear!

He turned back to look in the direction from which it had come. Directly behind Attaroa he saw movement. His vision became blurry as his eyes filled with tears of relief. He could hardly believe it. Could it really be her? Was she really alive? He glanced down to blink several times so he could see more clearly. Looking up, he saw four nearly black horse legs attached to a yellow horse with a woman on her back.

"Ayla!" he cried, "you're alive!"

29

Attaroa spun around to see who had thrown the spear. From the far edge of the field that was just outside the Camp, she saw a woman coming toward her riding on the back of a horse. The hood of the woman's fur parka was thrown back, and her dark blond hair and the horse's dun-yellow coat were so nearly the same color that the fearful apparition seemed truly of one flesh. Could the spear have come from the woman-horse? she wondered. But how could anyone throw a spear from that distance? Then she saw that the woman had another spear close at hand.

A chilling wash of fear crawled up Attaroa's scalp, the sensation of her hair rising, but the cold tingling terror that she felt at that moment had little to do with anything so material as spears. The apparition she saw was not a woman; of that she was certain. In a moment of sudden lucidity, she knew the full and unspeakable atrocity of her heinous acts, and she saw the figure coming across the field as one of the spirit forms of the Mother, a munai, this one an avenging spirit sent to exact retribution. In her heart, Attaroa almost welcomed Her; it would be a relief to have the nightmare of this life ended.

The headwoman was not alone in fearing the strange woman-horse. Jondalar had tried to tell them, but no one had believed him. No one had ever conceived of a human riding a horse; even seeing it, it was hard to believe. Ayla's sudden appearance struck each person individually. For some she was only intimidating because of the strangeness of a woman on horseback and their fear of the unknown; others looked upon her uncanny entrance as a sign of otherworldly power

and were filled with foreboding. Many of them saw her as Attaroa did: their own personal nemesis, a reflection of their own consciences about their wrongdoings. Encouraged or forced by Attaroa, more than one had committed appalling brutalities, or allowed and abetted them, for which, in the quiet moments of the night, they felt deep shame or fear of retribution.

Even Jondalar wondered, for a moment, if Ayla had come back from the next world to save his life, convinced at that moment that if she had wanted to, she could. He watched her unhurried approach, studying every detail of her, carefully and lovingly, wanting to fill up his vision with a sight he had thought he would never see again: the woman he loved, riding the familiar mare. Her face was ruddy with cold and streamers of hair that had escaped the restraining thong at the nape of her neck whipped in the wind. Wispy clouds of warmed air streamed forth with each breath exhaled by both the woman and the horse, making Jondalar suddenly conscious of his exposed flesh and chattering teeth.

She was wearing her carrying belt over her fur parka and, in a loop of it, the dagger made from the tusk of a mammoth that had been a present from Talut. The ivory-handled flint knife he had made for her also dangled in its sheath, and he saw his hatchet in her belt, too. The worn otter skin of her medicine bag hung down her other side.

Riding the horse with easy grace, Ayla seemed dauntingly sure and confident, but Jondalar could see her tense readiness. She held her sling in her right hand, and he knew how swiftly she could let fly from that position. With her left hand, which he was sure held a couple of stones, she supported a spear, set in place on her spear-thrower and balanced diagonally across Whinney's withers from Ayla's right leg to the mare's left shoulder. More spears stuck up from a woven grass holder just behind her leg.

On her approach, Ayla had watched the tall headwoman's face reflecting her inner reactions, showing shock and fear, and the despair of her moment of clarity, but as the woman on horseback drew closer, dark and deranged shadows clouded the leader's mind again. Attaroa narrowed her eyes to watch the blond woman, then slowly smiled, a smile of twisted, calculating malice.

Ayla had never seen madness, but she interpreted Attaroa's unconscious expressions, and she understood that this woman who threatened Jondalar was someone to be wary of; she was a hyena. The woman on horseback had killed many carnivores and knew how unpredictable they could be, but it was only hyenas that she despised. They were her metaphor for the very worst that people could be, and Attaroa was a hyena, a dangerously malignant manifestation of evil who could never be trusted.

Ayla's angry glare was focused on the tall headwoman, though she was careful to keep an eye on the entire group, including the stunned Wolf Women, and it was fortunate that she did. When Whinney was within a few feet of Attaroa, in the periphery of her vision Ayla caught a stealthy movement off to the side. With motions so swift they were hard to follow, a stone was in her sling, whipped around, and flung.

Epadoa squawked with pain and grabbed her arm as her spear clattered to the frozen ground. Ayla could have broken a bone if she had tried, but she had deliberately aimed for the woman's upper arm and checked her force. Even so, the leader of the Wolf Women would have a very painful bruise for some time.

"Tell spear-women stop, Attaroa!" Ayla demanded.

It took Jondalar a moment to comprehend that she was speaking in a strange language because he found that he had understood her meaning. Then he was stunned when he realized that the words she spoke were in S'Armunai! How could Ayla possibly know how to speak S'Armunai? She had never heard it before, had she?

It surprised the headwoman, too, to hear a complete stranger address her by name, but she was more shocked to hear the peculiarity of Ayla's speech that was like the accent of another language, yet not. The voice aroused feelings Attaroa had all but forgotten; a buried memory of a complex of emotions, including fear, which filled her with a disquieting unease. It reinforced her inner conviction that the approaching figure was not simply a woman on a horse.

It had been many years since she'd had those feelings. Attaroa hadn't liked the conditions that first provoked them, and she liked even less being reminded of them now. It made her nervous, agitated, and angry. She wanted to push the memory away. She had to get rid of it, destroy it completely, so it would never come back. But how? She looked up at Ayla sitting on the horse, and at that instant she decided it was the blond woman's fault. She was the one who had brought it all back, the memory, the feelings. If the woman was gone—destroyed —it would all go away and everything would be fine again. With her quick, if twisted, intelligence, Attaroa began to consider how she could destroy the woman. A sly, crafty smile spread across her face.

"Well, it seems the Zelandonii was telling the truth after all," she said. "You came just in time. We thought he was trying to steal meat, and we have barely enough for ourselves. Among the S'Armunai, the penalty for stealing is death. He told us some story about riding on horses, but you can understand why we found it so unbelievable..." Attaroa noticed her words were not being translated and stopped. "S'Armuna! You are not speaking my words," she snapped.

S'Armuna had been staring at Ayla. She recalled that one of the first hunters who had returned with the group carrying the man had revealed a frightening vision she'd had during the hunt, wanting her to interpret it. She told of a woman sitting on the back of one of the horses they were driving over the cliff, struggling to gain control of it, and finally making it turn back. When the hunters carrying the second load of meat talked about seeing a woman riding away on a horse, S'Armuna wondered at the meaning of the strange visions.

Many things had been bothering the One Who Served the Mother for some time, but when the man they brought in turned out to be a young man who seemed to have materialized out of her own past, and he told a story of a woman on horseback, it distressed her. It had to be a sign, but she had not been able to discern the meaning. The idea had preyed on S'Armuna's mind while she considered various interpretations of the recurring vision. A woman actually riding into their Camp on the back of a horse gave the sign unprecedented power. It was the manifestation of a vision, and the impact of it put her in a turmoil. She hadn't been giving her full attention to Attaroa, but a part of her had heard and she quickly translated the headwoman's words into Zelandonii.

"Death to a hunter as a punishment for hunting is not the way of the Great Mother of All," Ayla said in Zelandonii when she heard the translation, though she had understood the gist of Attaroa's statement. S'Armunai was so close to Mamutoi that she could understand much of it, and she had learned a few words, but Zelandonii was easier, and she could express herself better. "The Mother charges Her children to share food and offer hospitality to visitors."

It was when she was speaking in Zelandonii that S'Armuna noticed Ayla's speech peculiarity. Though she spoke the language perfectly, there was something ... but there was no time to think about it now. Attaroa was waiting.

"That is why we have the penalty," Attaroa smoothly explained, though the anger she was fighting to control was evident to both S'Armuna and Ayla. "It discourages stealing so there will be enough to share. But a woman like you, so good with weapons, how could you understand the way it was for us when no woman could hunt. Food was scarce. We all suffered."

"But the Great Earth Mother provides more than meat for Her children. Certainly the women here know the foods that grow and can be gathered," Ayla said.