Phoenix Unbound
Page 45

Saruke’s eyes slid from him to Gilene and back before she bent to gather a basket of onions and carry them to the wagon. “Good. She can help with the milking.” She indicated the other two women with a lift of her chin. “I have enough help here.”
“But . . .” Gilene stood by the wagon, obviously wavering.
Azarion held up one pair of reins. “It’s up to you. I’ve picked a mare with a comfortable gait and good disposition, and milking a wild mare is much like milking a tame one.” If you didn’t mind a few more kicks and bites.
Despite the interested spark in her eyes, she hesitated, until Saruke gave her a light push toward Azarion. “Go. I’ve seen how you work hard to learn our ways. This is part of who we are. Learn that too.”
With that, Gilene reached for the reins Azarion offered to her. “Thank you,” she said and swung into the saddle on the horse he’d chosen for her.
They rode out of the camp toward the open swaths of steppe where the grasses hadn’t been flattened by qaras or grazed down by livestock. The wind blew the scent of budding wildflowers on warm currents, and Azarion admired Gilene’s profile as she rode beside him, face lifted to the sunlight, strands of hair escaped from her braids fluttering across her cheeks.
They found the herd at the base of a low-sloping hill. Four other Savatar waited for him and Gilene, raising their hands in greeting as they gathered together. They’d already set up a milking line with supplies of rope, pails, and halters stacked in a nearby cart.
Bornon clutched two slender birch poles, each twice the height of a man, with a loop of rope secured at the end. He handed one to Azarion and offered a quick bow to Gilene. “Does the agacin know how to catch the mares and foals?” he asked in Savat.
Azarion repeated the question for her in trader’s tongue.
“I haven’t the first notion of how to do it,” she said, casting an uneasy eye at the herd that watched them from afar. “I thought I was here to help with the milking.”
Azarion grinned. “You are, but if you want to give the other a try, just tell me. I, or Bornon, or his sister Juna there, will show you what to do.”
Gilene glanced at the long poles the riders carried couched under their arms and said, “I’ll watch first, then we’ll see.”
He left her with a Savatar woman named Lemey, who had come to help with the milking once the mares were captured and tied to the line. The sun beat hot on his head as they drove the herd closer to the milking station and harnessed the foals, who whinnied for their dams while Gilene and Lemey tied them to the line.
The real work began with the mares themselves. Fast and skittish, they dodged the poles and loops before being cornered by the equally fleet-footed driver mares. More than once Azarion was nearly yanked from the saddle by a frantic mare fighting the loop.
By midday, they had the mares tied to the milking line. Soaked in sweat and streaked with dirt, Azarion joined Gilene where she crouched under a mare with a milk pail. The strike of a hoof against the pail made her leap back with a curse. Milk sloshed onto the ground as she set the container down to shake one hand before clutching it with the other.
Azarion skirted the annoyed mare and another well-aimed kick. “Did she get you?”
Gilene glared at the horse before holding up a hand to show red fingers and the arc of a shallow scratch across her knuckles. “This is a lot harder than milking a cow.”
Nearby, Lemey laughed. “They barely tolerate their foals stealing a sip, much less us.”
Azarion motioned to Gilene. “Let me see.”
She offered him her hand, hissing when his thumb glided over the scratch. Such a fine-boned hand, despite its calluses and scratches. He’d seen her hands hold fire, felt their weight on his injured back and their grip on his arm. Capable and strong, much like the woman herself.
“Nothing broken,” he said. “But you’ll have to be faster with the milking, or you’ll end up with a broken finger or two before we’re done. Come, I’ll show you a few tricks for keeping clear of a hoof.”
He was as good as his word, and Gilene filled the rest of her pails without mishap. When they were done, the milk was poured into tall, narrow-mouthed jugs and loaded onto the cart along with the pole lassos. After that, they set the mares and foals free.
Gilene pulled the harness off a foal that nibbled curiously at her tunic cuff. “What happens to them now?”
Azarion freed a mare and leapt out of the way as she kicked at him before bolting off, her foal’s gangly form stretched out beside her as it raced to keep up. “We’ll leave them be. These herds are numerous on the steppes. We’ll come across another one at the new pastures and do the same thing again. Until then, we’ll rely on the sheep for the unfermented milk and curds.”
Once all the horses were freed and the cart was packed, everyone rinsed away the grime of their tasks and compared the bruises they’d earned. Azarion declined the invitation to join the others in their afternoon meal. He’d brought Gilene out here for a reason.
“I want to show you a place you might be interested in, and we can eat there. I’ve brought food.” He gestured to the satchel tied to a ring on the saddle of the mare Gilene had ridden.
One eyebrow rose in a speculative expression. “It isn’t a barrow, is it?”
He laughed. “It is, though I will swear on anything you wish, there’s no wight waiting inside. And we can stay outside if you want.”
She worried her lower lip against her teeth for a moment before deciding. “Take me to this barrow.”
They said goodbye to the other drovers and headed toward a flat stretch of steppe where a single mound rested amid a field of purple and pink wildflowers.
Once they had their mounts unsaddled and left to graze nearby, Azarion laid out the horse blankets for seating not far from the mound’s perimeter and the low entrance that faced east. Gilene dug into the satchel he handed her, setting down barley cakes, dried curds, and flasks of tea and barley water.
She sat cross-legged on one of the blankets and passed Azarion a cake when he reclined beside her, his legs stretched out so that his feet disappeared in the thick carpet of early-summer grass. He closed his eyes and nibbled at the cake while savoring the silence, the sunlight, and the company of the woman beside him.
“You’re a good rider,” she said. “More so than I realized until today.”
He cracked open one eyelid to gaze at her. “I used to be better and was unmatched by any who fought in the Pit, but we were rarely on horseback during those fights. I’m still remembering the feel of a horse.”
She pointed to a spot at his side. “What happened there? Hoof nick you?”
Azarion glanced down and saw that the small amount of blood inflicted by Karsas’s knife had seeped through his tunic’s heavy layers and left a stain. “Nothing so noble as a horse’s hoof. Karsas and I had a . . . talk this morning. It went well enough.” Gilene’s worried look made him smile.
“Good conversations don’t usually end in bloodstains.”
“We’re both still alive. It was friendly.”
She flicked a crumb of barley cake at him. “I didn’t think he was capable of ‘friendly.’ Your sister hates him.”
Azarion stiffened. “Has he threatened you?” His cousin was lazy, double-dealing, and murderous. He wasn’t stupid. To threaten a woman who might well be an agacin bordered on madness. Ataman or not, his entire clan would turn on him if he dared such a thing.