by Kate Elliott
“They are beautiful, aren’t they?” he asked. He froze, almost as if he were posing for the benefit of his audience, with one hand on his saber hilt and the other resting on the hilt of his dagger. He looked dangerous.
“By the gods, Bakhtiian!” said the bearded Sergi. “Come here, you ill-favored son of the cold winds, and I’ll show you the special trick I’ve learned with the saber just for you.”
“You flatter me.” Bakhtiian did not move. Leaves brushed at his boots.
“And bring your treasure down, too, the one you’re hiding. Is it some handsome lad you’re afraid we’ll spirit off?”
Bakhtiian caught Tess’s eye and lifted his chin. She stood up and came two steps forward. Even as she halted next to Ilya, about ten men turned their horses away and rode off to one side, backs to her, heads lowered. More than half of those left averted their faces, so as not to look at her, but the rest examined her with cold, inquisitorial interest.
“Gods!” cried Sergi. “It’s a damned woman! Who would ever have thought it!”
“Shut up, Sergi,” said the one with the pronounced dialect.
“Shall I come down?” asked Bakhtiian with all the familiar pleasantry of a venomous snake.
“Please do,” said Sergi. “But keep the woman up on the ledge. Some of our men haven’t seen a woman in five years, and I can’t answer for them if they catch her scent.”
Tess straightened her shoulders, met his eye, and held it. “They wouldn’t dare touch me.” She laid one hand on her saber hilt, though she had no illusions about her ability to use it against any of these men.
Sergi let out a whoop. “A khaja with spirit, and listen how she talks. They won’t touch you. Certainly not if you’re Bakhtiian’s.”
Bakhtiian, descending with composed dignity, stopped dead. One of his feet slipped on the incline and pebbles skittered out and rattled down to the base of the rock.
Tess drew her dagger, tossed it up into the air, and caught it. “You’ve got it half right, Sergi. They won’t touch me. I don’t know what Bakhtiian has to do with it.”
Bakhtiian, regaining his balance, resumed his descent as if nothing had happened.
“Sergi, shut up,” said another man. His face bore a broad, ugly white scar that stretched from forehead to chin, puckering one side of his face into a permanent leer. “You can only keep your mouth shut for as long as it takes a horse to shit.”
On the pretext of sheathing her knife, Tess looked away. The jaran men she knew never swore in that way—or at least, not in front of her.
“So, you are Ilyakoria Bakhtiian,” said the man with the dialect, and suddenly all attention focused on him, though he had made no obvious effort to attract it. “I am Keregin. You seem a little short for a man with such a tall reputation.”
“That depends on where you’re standing,” said Bakhtiian, looking as though his greatest concern was the fit of his clothing.
“Choose your man,” said Keregin. “I want to see if you deserve your reputation. Bakhtiian.” He savored the flow of the syllables. “What kind of luck got you a name of your own?”
“Luck is only my lover, not my wife,” replied Bakhtiian easily. He drew his saber. “If ever I wed, it will be skill and intelligence.”
“Tedious bedfellows,” said Sergi.
“Shut up,” said the scarred man.
“Choose,” said Keregin.
Bakhtiian looked over the arenabekh one by one, his gaze measuring and keen but never quite insulting. Watching him, Tess realized she had clenched her hands into fists without realizing it. This was to be a real fight, a real duel. What if Keregin meant it to be to the death?
“He has too heavy a hand,” said Bakhtiian, “and that one, no instinct.”
“Got you there, Vlacov,” said Sergi.
But Bakhtiian appeared not to hear the comment and the low mutter of laughter it produced. He examined a man far to the side whose light eyes were shadowed by dark circles beneath and whose nose was broken. “He’s too angry. There, too unsteady a hand, and that one, he drinks too much khaja wine.” He paused, then pointed with his saber at a particularly unprepossessing man of middle years, a remarkably unkempt fellow whose only conspicuous features were a long nose and brilliant blue eyes. “That man.”
Keregin laughed. “We’ll concede your eye for flesh. Tobay, fight him.”
“What will we do with the woman after Tobay kills him?” asked Sergi. “None of us has any use for such a thing.”
“Sergi, if you can’t keep your mouth shut while they fight, we’ll bury your head in the ground and stuff your saber up—”
“Silence!” shouted Keregin. “Move back. Now, Bakhtiian. Make us remember you.” The lanky Tobay dismounted and came forward, holding his saber as if he did not know he had it in his hand. “Left-handed,” added Keregin. “Or I might get bored.”
With no change of expression, Bakhtiian switched hands and circled left, measuring his opponent. Tobay stared dumbly at him as if he had not a wit in the world. Bakhtiian had moved about a quarter of a circle when Tobay suddenly stepped left and cut in with a broad sweep toward Bakhtiian’s right shoulder. Bakhtiian parried, stepping in to the blow, and there was a moment of suspension, metal pressed against metal, and then both men fell back unmarked.
“A greeting in passing,” said Sergi.
Bakhtiian edged back toward the rock. He lunged forward suddenly to Tobay’s right, cutting low. There was a quick exchange: low, low, and high; then low, and Bakhtiian came out to the open space with Tobay backed against the cliff.
“An exchange of kisses,” said Sergi. “How passionate.”
Tobay’s face and demeanor changed utterly, as if, Tess thought with sudden fear, a light had been turned on inside him. He moved back until less than a meter separated him from the rough wall of rock. With his right hand he reached back to brush the rock with his fingers, and the angle of his saber changed ever so slightly. Bakhtiian circled in, trying to push Tobay completely against the rock, feinting high but striking low again. But Tobay’s saber swept the cut aside and went on sweeping for Bakhtiian’s head.
Tess gasped, breath suspended. Bakhtiian fell to his knees, saber barely catching the blow. For an instant the tableau held and then Bakhtiian twisted Tobay’s saber around, cut free from a flurry of blows, and leapt backward, regaining his feet.
“A conversation,” said Sergi. “About the weather.”
But Bakhtiian was wounded. Tess stared. Blood welled and, welling to fullness, bled off a cut on Bakhtiian’s wrist. She breathed again. Not deep enough to be fatal, or even perhaps, debilitating. And yet, what if Tobay was only playing with him?
They moved away from the rock. Their exchanges grew more complex. Tess saw only a mix of high and low, wide and close, movements begun in one place that ended in another until she could not recognize where one began and the other left off. And all the time, the slow drip of blood from Bakhtiian’s wrist tracked his movements over the ground. She could not move. They both feinted, and feinted again, their sabers never touching. Every second she expected to see Tobay kill Bakhtiian. Every second Bakhtiian escaped.
Tobay fenced him against a slab of rock and went for his face, angled the slice into an arc that would open his stomach. Somehow Bakhtiian twisted the blade and was still whole and moving. He parried and pressed, made a bid for open ground, and gained it. They backed off, eyeing each other, breathing fast and hard. Bakhtiian’s face shone with intensity. My God, she thought, watching him as he circled slowly, so concentrated that it seemed his entire being had caught fire: if he ever looks at me like that, I’ll last about as long as tinder under a glass.
And she suffered an instant of stark fear, wondering what such a blaze would do to her.
“Right hands,” said Keregin.
Tess watched the rest of the fight in a haze. Somehow, now that they were right-handed, they seemed more evenly matched, but still she knew that she ought to fear more for Bakhtiian than for Tobay. U
ntil, in a furious exchange, Tobay wrenched himself free and slapped his left hand over his right arm. Blood leaked out between his fingers. He grinned.
“Enough!” yelled Keregin, dismounting.
“The woman didn’t bolt,” said Sergi. “I’m more impressed with her than with Bakhtiian.”
Keregin strode over to Bakhtiian, who stood breathing deeply to regain his wind.
“By the gods,” Keregin squinted down at him. “Maybe there’s something to your reputation after all. Tobay, put up and go.” Tobay sheathed his saber, looking again half-witted and lifeless. Many of the men, who had looked up to watch the fight, turned their heads away again. “Tobay’s got no interest in life but saber. He prefers fighting two or three men, since one is too easy. He wasn’t going for the kill.”
“I know.” Blood still dripped from Bakhtiian’s wrist.
Keregin laughed. “And not too proud to admit it.” His expression changed. “You’ve got foreigners with you.”
Bakhtiian shrugged. Tess crouched, balancing herself with a touch of one hand on the pebbles that littered the ledge.
“I know the ruins up in these mountains. A place to inspire the gods in you if nothing else might, but I warn you, Bakhtiian, to reach them you’ve got to ride through khaja lands. There have been jahar raids into khaja towns, and your name linked to them. I won’t lift a hand against you, but there’s been mischief done. Is it yours?”
“No.”
Keregin lifted his right hand to flick a piece of grass off his beard. His little finger was missing. “I believe you. But remember, the khaja know your name now. They blame you. They are like us in one way, Bakhtiian, if not in any other: They seek revenge.”
“I’ll scarcely bend a blade of grass as I go.”
“One blade might be too many. Well, then, can you promise me one thing?”
“How can I know until you ask?”
Keregin smiled. “I admire your companion, who wears a man’s clothes with a woman’s courage, who is foreign and yet speaks our tongue. Don’t let her get into their hands. I’ve seen khaja do things to their women that made me cringe, and I’m not an easy man to sicken.”
Bakhtiian’s head moved slightly, as if he began to look back up at Tess and then chose not to. “That I can promise you, Keregin. No woman for whom I have accepted responsibility will ever fall into khaja hands. Don’t forget that I have also seen how khaja treat their women.”
“‘He who has traveled far,’” Keregin mused. “I begin to think you might even deserve it.”
Bakhtiian sketched him the merest trifle of a bow, half respectful, not quite mocking. “You honor me.”
Keregin chuckled. “Do I, indeed? I’d offer you a place with us, but I don’t think you’d accept.”
“I wouldn’t.” He smiled. “I love women too well, Keregin, to give them up now.”
“Yet you’ve made no jaran woman your wife.” Behind, the other riders began turning their horses away. Keregin angled his gaze toward the two horses standing quietly between them. “They’re beautiful horses, Bakhtiian, as well you know.” He smiled, a little mocking in return, and glanced once at Tess. “Breed strong stock if you can. I wish you luck.”
He mounted without waiting for the reply that Bakhtiian seemed unlikely to give in any case, and reined his horse away from them. The rest of the arenabekh followed, not even glancing back as they galloped off. The sound of hooves drummed away, fading into silence in the clear air.
When they were out of sight, Bakhtiian sat down and rested his head in his hands. Tess scrambled down from the rock.
“Ilya, are you hurt?”
He lifted his head to give her a wan smile. “Just regaining my composure.”
“I’ll get the horses.”
“Thank you,” he said into his hands.
She busied herself with the horses, recovering her own composure. Eventually he appeared and took the black’s reins from her.
“Thank you,” he repeated. He rubbed his horse’s nose and talked nonsense to it for a bit, slapped its neck, and mounted. Tess, who had been repelling Myshla’s attempts to chew off her ear, quickly followed suit. “A congenial group,” he said.
“Keregin offered you a place. Would you ever have gone with them?”
“I thought of it once, a long time ago. For them, it is the only life.” He shook his head. “It can’t be mine.”
“I didn’t like them.”
He smiled and brought his left wrist up to his mouth, touching partially congealed blood to his lips. “And blood is sweet, but life is sweeter.” He urged the black forward and they walked the horses parallel to the ridge. “Tobay is better than I am. Much better.”
Wind touched her throat and her eyes. She blinked. “Because fighting is his whole life?”
“He could have killed me.” He lowered his hand, turning it slowly, eyes on the cut, its slow well of blood almost stopped now. “He chose not to.”
She put a hand on her stomach. “Good Lord.” He turned his hand over; the cut no longer showed. “But Keregin was impressed.”
Bakhtiian flicked several bits of grass off the knee of his trousers. “Tobay can kill any of them, too, if I’m any judge of saber. I did well. With more experience, Vladimir would give him a fight.”
Silence followed for a moment, which Tess broke. “Keregin mentioned ruins. Are we near the shrine of Morava?”
“No. The shrine is farther south. This is another temple. I would rather pass it by, but the pilgrims have insisted on seeing every one. What Keregin said about the khaja—well, I shall have to discuss this with Ishii.”
He did discuss it with Ishii, that night at the campfire. Bakhtiian flanked by Niko and Josef and Tasha, Ishii by Garii and Rakii.
“Because the shrine of Morava lies still on the plains, some days north of the don-tepes, the great forest, no foreign towns rest nearby and no foreign people come there but the occasional pilgrims,” Bakhtiian was saying as Tess settled in next to Yuri, far enough away that she could pretend to be listening to Mikhal strum his lute, but close enough to overhear. “But this temple, the zhai’aya-tom, rests in the mountains themselves, Cha Ishii, and to reach it we must pass by a city with walls and ride up into the mountains, and thereby make ourselves vulnerable to their attack, should the war leader of this city choose to pursue us. And then we must ride back the same way. It will be very dangerous. It might mean a battle, and we are too few, and the mountains themselves too great a disadvantage to the way we jaran fight, that I can offer you with any surety what the outcome of such a battle might be.”
Ishii sat with perfect impassivity, hands clasped in front of him in that arrangement known as Lord’s Patience, and listened. When, after a moment, he accepted that Bakhtiian had said as much as he meant to say, he nodded. “We appreciate your concerns, Bakhtiian, but our god protects us. We fear no battle.”
Tess lifted her gaze from a close examination of the knives at their belts to see Bakhtiian’s face tighten in exasperation.
“Neither do I fear a battle, but it is folly to ride into a trap when the trap is there to see. It is only one temple. Cha Ishii. I promise you that the shrine of Morava is by any account the greatest temple in these northern lands. It will not disappoint you.”
Ishii inclined his head. “All the temples or none. I believe, Bakhtiian, that we made this agreement.”
Bakhtiian did not reply, merely giving Ishii a curt nod, and he turned away to walk out into the night, Niko and Josef and Tasha following him. The three Chapalii shifted as if with one thought to look at Tess, and she hurriedly evinced an overwhelming interest in Yuri’s embroidery.
In the morning, they rode across the plateau. Fields appeared, then settlements, each one a handful of cottages surrounded by stockades of varying height and strength but all showing signs of frequent and recent repair. That first day, riding wide around these hamlets, Tess saw them as ugly squares intruding on the landscape like sores on otherwise healthy skin, their in
habitants forever bound and imprisoned by the protecting walls. The idea of defending one place seemed preposterous, until her settled sensibilities took over and the idea of always fading into the brush and never making a stand suddenly seemed cowardly. It was hardly surprising that these people, settled and wandering, could not trust each other.
Bakhtiian led them through without stopping. No one harassed them. Indeed, they saw no one at all. But at every stockaded village they passed, Tess felt, knew, that they were being watched. They halted late that night, kept a triple watch—sleeping in shifts—and rose before dawn to ride on. Somehow word had passed on ahead of them. Empty fields ripe for harvest lay quiet in the sun. No one walked the trails linking the hamlets. Every stockade gate stood shut. Now and again, they glimpsed faces, peering over the walls. Another day passed.
The next morning Bakhtiian gathered them all together.
“Today we reach the mountains. The ruins are at the head of a gorge. To reach it we must pass close beneath a city.” There was little color this early. He looked mostly gray, shaded dark and light. “We’ll ride fast. Expect attack but do not provoke it. They may ignore us.”
The Chapalii waited, patient, unafraid. As they mounted, Garii hung back as if his horse was balking and hissed softly between his teeth as Tess went by.
“Lady Terese, I beg pardon for my presumption,” he said quickly, not even looking up to see if she was slowing her horse to hear him—which she was—“but I implore you to have a care for the gift which you were so magnanimous as to accept from me.” Glancing down, she saw he had a hand on his knife.
“Garii?” Ahead, Ishii had turned and was staring back at them.
“Yuri,” Tess said, riding on as if no exchange had taken place, “how long until we enter the mountains?” She kept going, not even waiting to hear Yuri’s reply.