The Horsemasters Read Free Page A

looking for her. “Are you sure it is dead, Ronan?”
    “I am sure.”
    She let out her breath in a long, uneven sigh.
    “You can’t rescue all the outcasts of the world like you rescued Nigak, you know,” he said.
    The wolf, who had lain down before Nel’s feet, lifted his head when he heard his name. He was a magnificent animal, silver gray except for four white legs, a white chest and white muzzle. His clear yellow-brown eyes looked from Nel to Ronan, his ears folded back in friendliness, and his tail wagged.
    “Nigak was able to eat meat when I found him,” Nel said. “I was going to look for the baby this afternoon, but then Rena said I wouldn’t be able to feed him and I knew she was right.”
    Ronan closed his hand gently around her braid. “You need to toughen up that soft heart of yours, Nel.”
    “I am tough,” Nel said indignantly.
    “About yourself you are,” he agreed. “I don’t ever remember seeing you cry for yourself.”
    “Once I did,” she said. Her voice was low. “Don’t you remember?”
    He gave a tug to the long fawn-colored braid. “Sa,” he said. “I remember.”
    Silence fell between them. Then Nel said, “I didn’t think you cared about me anymore. Ever since you moved into the men’s cave, I have scarcely seen you.”
    “Of course I care about you.” He sounded surprised. Then he quirked one slim black eyebrow. “We are bound together by blood. Don’t you remember?”
    In answer she stretched out her right arm, with the white skin of the inner side exposed. They both regarded it with interest. On the fine skin near the wrist there was a small half-moon-shaped scar, a memento of the ceremony Ronan had performed when he was ten and she was five. He stretched out his own arm, which showed a similar mark.
    Ronan laughed. “You were so brave,” he said, “letting me slice away at your wrist like that. Brave or stupid. I was never certain which.”
    “Both, I am thinking,” she retorted, and they laughed together.
    “So this is where you are, Ronan. I have been looking for you.” Nel turned to see Borba making her way toward them from the cluster of pines behind. The setting sun haloed the girl’s hair with gold, and she was smiling at Ronan.
    “Run along now, minnow,” Ronan said into her ear.
    I was here first. Nel almost said it, looked into Ronan’s face, and then did not.
     

Chapter Two
     
    The following day, as if to atone for the lie to her stepmother, Nel brought some berries to the Old Woman.
    The day was warm, and Fali was sitting in the sun in front of her hut, scraping a deerskin and basking in the welcome summer warmth.
    “Good afternoon, my Mother,” Nel said politely. “I have brought you some of the hawthorn berries I picked.”
    The Old Woman squinted a little to see who it was. “Nel?”
    “Sa. It is Nel.”
    “Sit down, child.”
    Nel sat and looked with a child’s unwinking stare into the Old Woman’s massively wrinkled face. Fali’s white hair was scraped back into a short, thin braid, and her smile showed more gums than teeth, but her brown eyes were still bright and alert. She looked back at Nel with the fearlessness of the very old to the very young and said, “Nel, daughter of Tana, granddaughter of Meli, great-granddaughter of Elen.”
    “Sa.” Nel showed no surprise at the extensive naming. It was one of the Old Woman’s responsibilities to keep the family lines of all the tribe. “That is who I am.”
    Fali’s next words did surprise her, however. “After Morna,” the Old Woman stated, “it is you who would be our next Mistress.”
    Nel blinked. “I suppose so,” she said.
    The Old Woman sighed. “Morna looks like her grandmother,” she told Nel, “but I fear she is not like Elen in other ways.”
    Since Elen had died long before Nel was born, she had no reply to this observation.
    The Old Woman was going on softly. “It has not been the same in the tribe since Alin left.”
    This delving into the past was