by Kate Elliott
“Well enough.” He glanced to his right. A moment later Bakhtiian appeared around the low swell of a rise. Here the plains still rose and fell like waves, slopes that hid the near ground but revealed what was in the distance.
“Nothing,” said Bakhtiian in Rhuian, sounding disgusted. “So you studied at the University in Jeds?”
The sudden question took Tess by surprise. “Why, ah, no, I never did. I was too young, and then my brother sent me overseas to study. He wanted me to learn languages that would benefit him in his trading. So he couldn’t be cheated, or sold bad goods.” It was close enough. Charles had never possessed a knack for the Chapalii language. That his sister proved adept at languages had been an unlooked-for advantage to his plans. All the more reason that her loss would hurt him badly. Where was Charles now? Did he think she was lost? Kidnapped? Dead? She pressed her lips together, feeling ashamed that she had brought this problem upon Charles, with everything else he had to worry about. Sibirin and Bakhtiian were watching her, Sibirin with interest, Bakhtiian with—? She could not be sure.
“Still, perhaps you came across the works of Iban Khaldun?” Bakhtiian concealed his thoughts with these innocuous words. “The great historian? His works came to Jeds from overseas.”
Tess choked back an exclamation. It turned into a cough. “Yes,” she said cautiously. “I’ve heard of him. Didn’t he write about cycles of conquest and civilization?”
To her surprise, Bakhtiian launched into an explication of Iban Khaldun’s work leavened by frequent questions to her and to Niko—for it quickly became apparent that Niko had somehow or other also been introduced to these writings—about their opinions and arguments. They talked in this vein until midday, when they joined up with the jahar. For the first time, Bakhtiian ordered both Tess and Yuri to ride with the main group.
“Is he protecting me?” Tess asked as Bakhtiian left again with Niko, back out to scout.
“Not really. You’re a—a burden, Tess. If he’s caught in the open with you, and Doroskayev and his riders appear, he’ll have to defend you rather than get away.” He sighed. “It will be easier when you’ve learned khush.”
“What? For me to scout?”
“No, for me to talk with you. I don’t speak Rhuian well.”
“You speak it well enough. Although your pronunciation isn’t very good.”
“Tess, you speak khush better already after six hands of days than I did Rhuian after a year in Jeds. And Ilya and Sonia had taught me some ahead of time. Ilya still makes me speak it when he wants to talk to us so that others can’t understand what we’re saying. It’s the only reason I remember any, except now, of course, because I speak it with you.”
“Why is Doroskayev trying to find us?”
“To kill Ilya.” Yuri grinned. “Can you blame him?”
“And if he kills Ilya?”
“Then all the tribes go back to warring among themselves like they did when Ilya was a child. And the khaja move farther out onto the plains each spring. You see, in the long ago days, before the rhan—the tribes—had horses, the khaja took tribute from us. Then a girl was taken from the tribes as a portion of the tribute, but with the help of He-Who-Runs-With-The-Wind, she stole horses from the khaja and gave them to her people, and He took her to His Mother’s Tent in exchange and granted us freedom. That is why we are jaran, the people of the wind.”
“So the jaran are one people?”
“One people, many tribes, if that is what you mean. Josef Raevsky, there, the older rider, came from a different tribe to ride with Ilya.”
“But he is also jaran.”
“Yes. Look, Tess, whistlers.” He pointed up. A dark patch of birds skittered and flew far above them. “That is an auspicious sign, to see them this far north so early in the year.” He began to count. Tess could scarcely see them except as a blot against the deep blue bowl of the sky, much less discern any individual birds.
“How much do you travel? Each year?”
Yuri shrugged as if he did not understand her question. “We always travel. North in the spring, south in the fall.”
“Isn’t it hard, moving so much?”
He laughed. “But I love to ride, just as—as fire loves to burn. I love to see the mountains in the winter, the sea and the northern hills in the summer. Would you live forever in one place, never seeing another?”
Tess laughed, echoing him. “No, I wouldn’t.” She glanced around and caught Kirill, who was riding point, looking back at her. He waved. To her left, Vladimir stared sullenly forward, looking at no one. His necklaces jostled as he rode, slapping his chest, and the tassels on his boots swayed with the movement of his horse. None of the other men wore such finery, not now, at any rate.
To her right, the Chapalii rode in their stiff, stubborn fashion. Cha Ishii’s gaze seemed fixed on his horse, but one of the other Chapalii looked across at Tess. She was sure this was the same one who had bowed to her before. What did he want of her? What did he know? She met his gaze, and he inclined his head, as much of a bow as he could manage on horseback. She did not acknowledge him.
Chapter Seven
“If you seek something wise, reflect during the night.”
—EPICHARMUS OF SYRACUSE
AT THE LATE AFTERNOON when they halted for the night, Fedya rode in from scouting with an antelopelike creature sprawled across the neck of his horse. He had shot it, and now took a good deal of teasing from the other men because of his prowess with a woman’s weapon. Bakhtiian let the young men build a fire and agreed that those who wished to could pitch their tents as well. Tess and Yuri put up her tent and then returned to the fire. They watched while Nikita and Konstans disemboweled and skinned the dead animal, peeling the pelt whole from the pink flesh. The scent of bowels and blood flooded the air and blended with the must of grass. Pavel took the fat away to feed the horses. Tess left when they cracked open the skull. Yuri followed her, and a moment later, Kirill joined them.
“Tess. If Doroskayev’s riders are coming, we’d better teach you some more about saber.” Kirill grinned at her. What little diffidence he possessed had vanished after they had left the tribe. Tess sighed. Kirill lifted a hand to his chest, mocking her sigh. “The saber will keep you alive. You can’t enjoy lovers if you’re dead.”
“Kirill!” Yuri exclaimed.
Tess flushed, and was glad of the opportune appearance of Fedya. “We’re practicing over by the horses,” Fedya said, as if answering a question. “Konstans and Mitenka are waiting.”
“Thank you, Fedya,” said Tess, and he smiled at her, as if knowing full well that she was thanking him for his intervention not the invitation. His smile had a wraithlike quality, shadowed by some unknown sorrow.
They were camped in a spring-fed hollow in the low hills through which they rode. They came now into sight of the scatter of tents pitched outside a grove of scrub trees and beyond that the huddle of horses. Bakhtiian stood talking to Konstans and Mitenka. He looked up as the others arrived and moved to intercept Tess. Kirill paused deliberately as Bakhtiian approached them, but Yuri nudged him from behind and Fedya brushed his elbow and led him on over to Konstans.
“I was wondering,” said Bakhtiian to Tess when the others were out of earshot, “about something you said today, when we were discussing the view held by the Gallio school that words can give no true account of the past.”
“Bakhtiian, could we discuss this after dark?”
“Of course. ‘The day for action; the night for contemplation.’” He nodded to her and left.
“The Gallio school?” Yuri asked. “It must be something he learned at Jeds. I thought you scouted.”
“Niko was with us. We talked about history.”
“History?”
“Niko is very knowledgeable.”
“Niko reads books when he can get them. Ilya and Sonia brought books back with them from Jeds. Well, I did, too, but only because they wrote me a list.”
“Ah. That explains Niko. H
e and I agreed, but Bakhtiian didn’t.” She chuckled. “We almost got into an argument.”
“Who won?”
“Yuri, no one wins that kind of argument.”
Yuri rubbed one hand over his eyes. Smoke and the sweet scent of meat cooking carried to them on the breeze. “I never understood what they taught at University. Hah!” He whirled, saber out and up before he had completely turned to meet Konstans’ charge. The two sabers met and sounded, a crisp ring. Tess drew her saber.
Laughing, Kirill walked over to her. “That’s right. Don’t retreat. But you’re too close to Yuri.” He put one hand lightly on her hip and gently pushed her two steps over. And grinned, near enough that she could see how very very blue his eyes were.
“Thank you,” she said dryly, and shifted so that his hand slipped off her hip.
“This much room,” he continued, unrepentant. “And cover—Fedya! Now if Fedya was to come in from this direction, you’d have to cover two angles.” Fedya, coming in from that direction, showed her how to parry a side-sweep. Beyond him, outside the ring formed by their little group, a lonely figure adorned with elaborate embroidered sleeves and draped with ornate necklaces watched the practice but did not join in.
When the light faded, they went back to the fire. Dusk made shadows of the tents. The fire outlined groups of sitting and standing men. Sibirin waved to Tess, and she sat down beside him and rested her arms on her bent knees. Yuri brought her meat hot from the fire. She savored it, licking the juice from her fingers when she was done.
“Sibirin, I believe that you promised today to tell me something of your youth, what life was like when you were a boy.”
“Do you expect a man of my years to remember that far back?”
“Yes, Sibirin, I do.”
“Come now, girl. If I’m going to reveal my youth to you, you had better call me by my youthful name.”
“Did you have a different name when you were young? Or did they speak a different language then, if it was so long ago?”
He laughed, revealing deep lines at the corners of his eyes. “No. I’m not so old that I recall the time before we had horses. But you call the young men by their given names. If I tell you of the times when I was that age, then you must call me Niko.”
“So if I was to tell you of how it might be for me when I’m older, could you call me Tess?”
“Most things are possible if one decides they are.”
“Please, no more philosophy. Tell me a story of adventure.”
The smell of burning leather hung in the air and, above it, the faint, sweet odor of flowers. “Shall I tell you how I won my wife? She was niece of the etsana and sister to the dyan of another tribe. In those days the jaran were divided.”
“Yes. Before—”
“May I join you?” Bakhtiian stood before them, lit by the glow of the fire behind him. Somewhere, a horse whickered.
“Niko is telling me how he won his wife. Now, Bakhtiian, we’ll see if his words give a true account of the past.”
“But neither you nor I can judge that. We weren’t there.”
Niko laughed. “Has the argument moved to a new discipline?”
“It was not an argument, Niko. It was a discussion.” Bakhtiian settled into the usual seat of the jaran men: one leg bent and flat on the ground, the other perpendicular to the first and also bent, so that the arm could rest on the knee. He smiled at Sibirin. His smile was a rare thing, like the moon on a cloudy night. Tess had seen that he favored Niko alone with it with any regularity, but even with Niko he smiled infrequently. The smile faded slowly and Bakhtiian glanced at Tess. She looked quickly away.
Niko smiled. “Yes, Juli was willful. By the gods, she still is. She was the youngest child in her family, which accounts for it.”
Across the fire Mikhal picked out a tune on his lute. Bakhtiian laid a hand on Niko’s arm. “Fedya is singing.”
Fedya’s high, sweet voice rose with the melody. The song matched his looks: sorrowing, mournful, arcane. No one spoke while he sang. After he finished, the lute kept up with cheerful tunes, and talk resumed.
“Fedya always seems so sad,” said Tess in a quiet voice.
“His wife died of a fever, two years ago—as did Kirill’s—but Fedya still mourns.” Niko glanced at Bakhtiian, who gazed, unmoving, toward Fedya.
“So he hasn’t married again? Kirill has, hasn’t he?”
“Not exactly. He tried to mark Maryeshka Kolenin.”
Tess giggled. “Was he the one she—?”
“Yes,” said Niko quickly. “But I expect Kirill will mark her next spring. She’ll want children soon. But Fedya, no. Women aren’t interested in a man who is sad.”
“Why not?” Tess glanced to where Fedya sat with the younger men, part of the group but not of the conversation. His air of sadness made him somehow more attractive to her, just as, she thought, she trusted Yuri because he had been shy at first.
“There’s no profit in being sad. Life is hard enough. Why lessen its joys by dwelling on its sorrows?”
“The jaran fight against everything,” said Bakhtiian, surprising Tess because she had not thought he was listening. “Against each other, against the khaja, against the land, and their final fight is against death. Battle against death, but if the black wind blows up inside and one can no longer fight, then die honorably. Honor alone is worth winning. That alone denies death Her final victory.”
“I wouldn’t want my entire life to rest solely on the way I died,” said Tess.
“How else can you measure it?” Bakhtiian stared into the fire, his face illuminated by its light. “A man’s life has no sum until he is dead. He must make what he can while he lives, and he must live every moment as if he were to die the next.”
“But isn’t it in how you live that you measure your life?” Tess said. “By doing everything as well as it can be done? By striving to find—to find excellence? Then life derives its own worth apart from death. Then you can transcend the routine of existence by living superbly.”
Niko stroked his silvering beard and shook his head. “Both of you ride the same path. Seeking honor is no different from striving for excellence. You are looking for something you can never quite find.” He held out his hands to catch the warmth of the fire. “What would you say if I told you that of all things given to us, love alone is worth having?”
“That makes you dependent on others,” said Tess.
“Each of us must struggle alone,” said Bakhtiian.
Niko drew his hands back. “Should all people live as hermits, then?”
“Niko, don’t misunderstand me,” said Bakhtiian. “Affection for others is a part of life, just as riding and breathing are a part of life.”
“But no greater or lesser than these? That is cold, Ilyakoria.”
“It’s too inconstant.” Tess wrapped her arms around her bent knees and gazed into the fire. “Duty is constant, not love.”
“I did not claim that love is constant, or free of pain,” said Niko with a smile. “That is the risk you take.”
“I no longer gamble,” said Bakhtiian, almost inaudibly.
“If you believe that, Ilya, then you do not know yourself. You need only look at what you’ve done. Do you gamble, Tess?”
“It depends on the game.”
“All games are the same.”
“No, they’re not.”
“Hmph.” Sibirin rubbed a knee with one palm. Across the fire, Kirill and Mikhal and Fedya stood and left. “I was twenty when I met Juli. There was a gathering of tribes that year, but as usual, instead of binding ourselves together, the tribes only sought new feuds.”
Bakhtiian looked up sharply. “I ended that. What a waste. It was an affront to the gods who gave us freedom.”
“Well, I can’t disagree with that. Juli was seventeen. She had more bracelets on her ankles than any other girl in all the tribes, and she made sure everyone knew it. She was vain.”
“Then why did you marry her?”
Tess asked.
“She was a beautiful girl.”
“She is a beautiful woman,” said Bakhtiian.
Niko brushed a strand of grass from one boot, but he smiled. “There was a dance. Of course, I was simply one face out of many, but she was, perhaps, bored with the lovers she had and she saw me: a new face, a face, I flatter myself, not altogether unappealing.”
Tess laughed. “I expect you were quite handsome, Niko.”
“Be careful, young woman. I’ll think you’re making up to me.”
“I could never be so presumptuous. And anyway, I like your wife.”
“What does that have to do with it?” asked Bakhtiian.
“Oh, why, nothing.” The heat of the fire scalded her face. “In my country, a man and a woman who marry, marry with the understanding that they’ll be for each other—that they will never—that they’ll remain faithful—”
“Faithful? What is that?”
“That they will never lie with anyone else.”
Niko and Bakhtiian exchanged glances. “How barbaric,” said Niko.
Tess flushed and looked down at her feet.
Niko coughed. “Yes. The dance. Juli came up to me, and we danced, and she took me aside. She assumed that I would become her lover. Who could refuse her? It angered me to be just one more man counted on her bracelets. Well, I was almost as proud as Ilya in those days.” Bakhtiian frowned, studying the fire. “Of course I wanted her. I had to choose, to walk away or to go with her, and I became so infuriated because each moment I desired her more and each moment I felt more humiliated that I drew my saber—without thinking—and marked her. We were both so surprised that at first we just stared. Then she beat me.”
Tess gasped, half in laughter, her fingers touching her lips. “She did what?”
“She beat me. Gave me two black eyes, cut my upper lip, and almost broke my arm.”
“You can’t mean it. She can’t have been stronger than you?”
“You don’t think I would raise my hand against a woman, do you?” He looked affronted, but at her shamefaced expression, he settled down. “But the mark can never be removed from a woman’s face. Ten days later they set the bans over us. She could have broken it then.”