Free The Horsemasters by Joan Wolf

“Why?”
    “You know why,” Neihle replied. “This is not a tribe for a male chief, Ronan, and you will be happier in a tribe that is.”
    Ronan did not look up. “I would have no claims to be chief in a different tribe, Neihle. Here…here I have claims.”
    There was a startled silence. Then Neihle spoke: “You have no claims here. You are a man and this is a tribe that follows the Goddess. You have grown up here, Ronan. Surely this is something you understand.”
    Ronan slowly flexed his bloodstained hands. “If this is so, Neihle, then why do you say the Mistress fears me?”
    “She does not fear you for herself,” Neihle said. “It is for Morna that she fears.”
    “Sa. She fears for Morna. The Chosen One.” At last Ronan turned to look at Neihle. His mouth was thin. “Wouldn’t you rather be led by me, Neihle, than by Morna?”
    “Dhu,” said Neihle out of a suddenly dry throat.
    “You see. Arika is right to be fearful of me,” Ronan said.
    Silence fell. The day was unusually warm for so late in the year, and Ronan had removed his shirt to save it from the hare’s blood. His torso was still tanned a deep summer brown, and Neihle found himself staring at that wide, well-muscled chest and shoulders. Ronan had long since lost his boyish slenderness, though his waist and hips were slim as ever.
    His face…when he had said, “Arika is right to be fearful of me,” there had been such a look on Ronan’s face. Ruthless…almost cruel.
    “I am young,” Ronan was saying now, the ruthlessness even more pronounced. “And the Mistress is old.” His dark eyes were cold. “I can wait.”
    Neihle felt a shiver run up his spine. He had always thought that Arika’s fear of her son was unreasonable. Never had he imagined that the Mistress might be right, that there might be something in Ronan to fear.
    Until now.
    “Have you spoken to anyone but me about this?” he asked Ronan sharply.
    “Na.” Ronan lowered himself to his heels and once more picked up the sharp flint knife.
    Well, at least that was something. Neihle watched his nephew working on the hare and thought about what he might say to make Ronan understand the impossibility of his illicit desire.
    “It is true you were the bear slayer,” he began. “It is true that you killed the biggest great stag anyone in the tribe has ever seen. But in this tribe, Ronan, it is not hunting that makes the chief.”
    “I know,” Ronan said. “The Mistress’s man is the chief in this tribe.” Neihle stared as if mesmerized at Ronan’s skillful fingers wielding the bloody knife. “But what if the Mistress should choose just one man, Neihle? What if the Mistress should wed?”
    “You cannot wed Morna,” Neihle said in bewilderment.
    “Not Morna,” Ronan said. “Nel.”
    Neihle looked stunned. Ronan looked up from the bloody pile of fur in front of him. “Wouldn’t you rather see Nel as Mistress than Morna, Uncle?” he asked.
    Neihle began urgently, “You must not say…”
    He was interrupted by a soft feminine voice. “Ronan, I have been waiting for you.” Iva came the rest of the way up the steep path that led to the upper cave and gave Neihle a reproachful look. She put a hand on Ronan’s bare brown shoulder and said to him, “I thought we were going to go fishing together.”
    “I have almost finished here,” he answered, his hands busy with the hare. “Be a good girl and wait for me by the river.”
    She nodded, ran her fingertips caressingly over the skin of his shoulder, and departed, scrambling down the path to the valley floor.
    Neihle watched Iva progress toward the river, his somber face in odd contrast to the enticing sight made by her swinging hips. “You cannot marry Nel, Ronan,” he said at last. “You are too closely related.”
    “The Old Woman says not,” Ronan replied.
    “Nel and you.” Neihle was very pale.
    Ronan smiled, and suddenly all the ruthless arrogance, all the cruelty, was gone, swallowed up in that