by Kate Elliott
At noon the scouts, hardly more than a shout away, came back from all sides. The mountains loomed before them, huge and impenetrable. But there, like a scar, a great valley slashed through the wall. Where the valley opened onto the plateau, a city rose, hard against the eastern heights of the mountain. A fortress, heavy with stone; high, castellated walls weighted it to the earth. Fields and hovels sprawled out from it like so much debris. A narrow river pushed past, curving east. The valley opened before them and then they rode up between the high sides of the mountains.
They galloped past the town, Bakhtiian leading them as far against the western heights as he could. Small figures gestured atop the stone walls, but they were too far away to attack. The jahar rode on, up the broad valley, and soon enough they left the fortress behind. The last traces of fields merged into the wild scrub of the narrowing gorge. Bakhtiian signaled a halt, and everyone dismounted, walking their horses to cool them.
It was a brief halt. They mounted again and went on. Tess stared at the sheer dark cliff faces, veined with white, that rose like an iron stockade to her left, at the rocky defiles that climbed up and up to her right. Ahead, the gorge ascended toward the white-topped peaks in a gentle but narrowing incline, colored in greens and grays and dry golds. Tess urged Myshla up to ride next to Bakhtiian. He had a slight smile on his face that disturbed her.
“What if they do pursue us?” she asked.
He laughed. “They can’t catch us, not on foot. Certainly not on horses. Khaja don’t know how to ride.”
Tess began to make a comment about how she was a khaja, and then thought better of it. “But Ilya, even if they don’t catch us, we’re going to run into the peaks eventually. And then we’ll have to ride out this way again. They can simply wait for us.”
“They can wait,” he agreed. He did not glance back. “But I have heard there is another path out of this gorge, a rough trail, but better, I think, than returning the way we came.”
Tess chuckled. “Yes. Nature is so much safer than men are.”
“Is she?” A cold wind stirred her sleeves, chilling her fingers. “I wonder.”
“How far to the ruins?”
“Two days.”
“But look how close the mountains are. We’ll run into them before then.”
His mount shied. A small rodent ran chittering off the trail to disappear under rock and moss. He pulled the black in, undisturbed. “The mountains have as many twists and turns as a devious man.”
“As many as you, Bakhtiian?”
“Oh, far more.”
She smiled, and then sobered, glancing back. “But what if they follow us? What happens then? I don’t think these khaja like the jaran.”
“Neither do I.” He did not answer her question.
Chapter Fifteen
“I thought in a dream that I was dead.”
—EPICHARMUS OF SYRACUSE
YURI TOLD HER THAT it was autumn, by their reckoning, and she looked for signs of the change of season. It was bitter cold at night, but that could have been the altitude. Streams spilling down from the heights fed the gorge, feeding green to the thickets and the meadows of thin grass. Smaller plants that neither she nor any of the jaran had a name for grew abundantly. Colors she never saw on the plains, crimson and olive and mustard, dappled the rocks, growing sparser the higher they rode. And yet the eye quickly grew accustomed to the variety. How monotonous the plains were in comparison.
The first night they rode until the moon set, changing mounts as the horses tired, slept in shifts, tentless, tireless. Not even the Chapalii demurred. Even the thermals in her Earth clothing barely kept Tess warm. The gorge angled right, a narrow scar that cut up into the mountains as though some long-dead giant had left this furrow in the wake of his planting. It was cool and damp between the high walls of stone, moss and orange-gray lichens everywhere. They did not see the sun until mid-morning. A stream rushed down one side of the defile, more white than water. It was shockingly cold to the touch.
They followed a road littered with rocks, but a road for all that. Paving stones showed here and there under lichens; tufts of grass sprouted in lines too straight to be natural. The gorge narrowed until they could ride only three abreast, then two, then single file. The hooves of the horses echoed strangely in the enclosed spaces. Just when Tess knew they could not possibly ride any farther, the gorge opened out abruptly into a secret glen. They had reached the ruins.
“That was never a temple.” Tess moved her mount up beside Bakhtiian as she gazed out and up at the little valley, a large, open area of grass and ruins, sprinkled through with a profusion of tiny white flowers. “That was a fortress.”
“That’s what I’m counting on,” said Bakhtiian.
Except for the defile through which they had ridden, they were surrounded on all sides by the mountains. An avalanche had obliterated the leftmost portion of the ruins. The back of the vale ended in a sheer cliff face that rose cleanly into the mountains for about twenty meters before beginning to climb in stair steps to the huge, snow-capped peak towering behind.
The glen itself rose in three broad stair steps to the cliff face: directly in front of them, a bluff—not quite the height of two men—ran the entire length of the shallow meadow that the neck of the gorge emptied into. A stone wall rose flush from its edge, so that from where Tess and Bakhtiian sat below, they could see only the suggestion of another wall, above and beyond, that marked a higher level. Here and there the bluff had eroded away and a stone tumbled down into the meadow. The remains of the road continued along the base of the bluff to its lowest point, where it snaked up through a stone gate that had once, perhaps, borne a lintel over the two pillars that flanked it.
They guided their horses around stray rocks, along the road to the gate, but in the end they had to lead their horses up the bluff where the last slice of road, badly fallen away, gave access to the next level.
Here, in front and to the left, the ground was littered with the remains of old buildings. To the right the land rose again in an escarpment, ending in that other wall: the second line of defense. Behind it the ground seemed level and empty for a space, and behind that Tess saw the line of escape: a trail twisting upward into the heights, disappearing behind a huge outcropping of veined rock.
Dusk came sooner here, hedged in as they were by rock. Bakhtiian sent them all up to the level area behind the second wall, and put four men on watch below. He even allowed fires. The Chapalii stood huddled beyond the horses, conversing earnestly among themselves. Tess walked to the wall and stared down at the ruins below, and the long line of wall that edged the bluff below them.
Had men or nature destroyed these? On the one side, certainly, the avalanche had been the culprit. But as she studied the ground below, she could not imagine how any army could take this ground; if the defenders had enough people and missile weapons, their position would be virtually unassailable. Surely no human attack could have ruined these buildings—or was it just one huge rambling building?—so thoroughly. Only time, working with storms and harsh winters, could wreak so much havoc. How many thousands of years old must these ruins be to be so extensive and so wracked?
And yet the surface of this wall, chest high and a meter wide, was as smooth as obsidian. She ran her right hand along it, out away from herself and back again. Scars marred it, chips gone, a runnel scored across it in one place, but otherwise cool and even, like a polished stone. She ran her left hand out—and stopped. And stared down.
Symbols, letters, had been traced into the surface. She ran her finger along them, feeling the dust and debris of long years caught in their track, feeling the eroded edges, blurred by time and wind and rain. The first two, partially eaten away by erosion, she did not recognize. The third she did. The Chapalii glyph for “tai.” Duke. She stood frozen for a long moment. The murmur of voices drifted to her on the cold air of evening. Kirill, telling a ribald story about a man who crept into the wrong woman’s tent one night. One of the
stewards, complaining about not being able to set up the tents. A lower voice, Pavel’s, talking about storms.
Breath stuck in her throat, she traced out the fourth symbol with her middle finger. And laughed. The fourth letter was a “w.” Or two “v’s” linked in the middle. Or the archaic Chapalii glyph for mountains. And the first, going back to it: with a little imagination and a tiny bit of allowance for erosion and time could be the Maya symbol for naught.
“Lord, Tess,” she muttered under her breath. “You’ll be finding the Rosetta Stone next. There’re only so many shapes can be chiseled into stone.” Maybe it was cuneiform. She sighed at her own folly and returned to the fire.
Yuri was on watch so she joined Niko and Bakhtiian where they sat together in the half light of one of the fires, arguing good-naturedly about the defensibility of the ruins. Niko smiled as she sat down, but Bakhtiian only glanced at her and continued speaking.
“I can’t agree that rain or storm gives the defenders the greatest advantage. Certainly, it ruins footing, but for both the hunter and the hunted. The loss of visibility is a far greater disadvantage for the defender than the attacker.”
“What do you think, Tess?” asked Niko politely.
“I think,” said Tess cheerfully, “that this is a terrible place to be holed up in. I feel like a pig trussed up and left in a pen for slaughter. Although I can see that the defending party does have the advantage of fortification and that narrow approach. Especially if they’re using spears or bows.”
“A jaran man never uses a bow in battle,” said Bakhtiian stiffly.
“Good Lord, I wasn’t talking about jaran. Sabers alone can’t hold this kind of position. I thought that was obvious.”
Bakhtiian stood. “Excuse me.” He left.
Tess stared after him. “Excuse me! I thought this was a theoretical discussion. Or was it presumptuous of me to have an opinion?”
“My dear girl.” Niko laid a hand on her shoulder, a fatherly gesture. “First of all, this is a holy place, and to liken it to a place where one would butcher animals is rather—shall we say—irreverent. Second, you might consider that Bakhtiian was the one who made the decision to lead us all here.”
She shut her eyes, wincing. “Oh, God. That was a stupid thing for me to have said.” She looked up at Niko. “I suppose I could just as well have said I thought he was a fool for bringing us here.”
“Be assured,” said Niko softly, “that he is wondering that himself.” Then, unexpectedly, he chuckled. “But few people admit their mistakes as readily as you do, my dear.”
“I wouldn’t learn anything if I always thought I was right. But I will say that he was awfully quick to get angry.”
“He has a heavy burden on him, Tess, and you must remember that.”
“I suppose I must. Can you entertain yourself here?”
“Don’t mind an old, frail, friendless man. I’ll manage.”
Tess laughed at him and left. She found Bakhtiian leaning against the wall, staring down at the ruins and beyond them to the neck of the gorge. His form seemed merely an extension of the shadows.
“Ilya?” He didn’t move. She put her elbows on that uncannily smooth wall and leaned out, staring down. The wall below stood like a purplish line against a darker background. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
“No. The things you said were true enough. The khaja will not scruple to use bows against us, when we ride into their lands. And here…well, no man likes to be told something he already knows and doesn’t want to hear.”
She shifted her elbows to fit into two hollows that marred the level surface of the wall. “And not when he could already be trapped.”
“Tess.” He turned his head enough to see her. “You have a habit of choosing unfortunate words.”
“What—oh, you mean ‘trapped’?”
“Among others. I don’t—” He reconsidered. “When you return to Jeds, you’ll have to be more careful. In khaja lands, people veil their true opinions in a layer of false words.”
“Oh, yes.” Tess leaned her chin on her intertwined fingers and stared morosely out at the moonlit outlines of the vale. The white ruins looked like a litter of bones on the dark ground. “When I return to Jeds—” She contemplated this event, amazed at her own lack of eagerness. When she returned to Jeds, when she returned to Odys, to be trapped once again by her duty to Charles. She pushed the traitorous thought away. “Why did you agree to bring me along?”
“You’re not going to admit that I was right all along?”
“You weren’t.”
“And you’re not going to tell me that now we’ve been run into a trap worthy of the fire-keeper’s daughter herself that you’re sorry you came?” He was, she realized, laughing at her.
“No.” She found she was blushing. “I’m glad I came,” she said softly, looking up at a bright star that shone above the gorge, glittering in the cold air.
“Yes,” he said, as if to himself. “Even for this short time.” He blinked, as if he had just realized where he was, and moved his elbows to a different place on the wall. “Of course you would be glad. Yuri and—and Fedya, and the others.”
“Yes. Yuri and Fedya and the others. It will be hard to board that ship.”
“It is always hard to board ships.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“No, I haven’t. I should have known better than to try to avoid it. Ishii insisted, finally. I’ll always wonder what you said to him.”
“But you’re too polite to ask.”
“That may be.” He smiled. “I also admired your spirit.”
“Now there’s a very handsome way of telling me that I was a nuisance.”
“You were. Jaran women are much better behaved.”
“I don’t believe that for an instant, Ilya.” She laughed. “Are you telling me now that you’re sorry I came?”
“Tess.” In the silence she heard, far away, the low cry of an animal, followed by a slide of rock, distant and muted. “Tomorrow morning you’ll see an army in that gorge.”
“What do you mean?”
“They did pursue us. At least one hundred soldiers.”
“Oh, God, Ilya. And I said—” He was staring down, his hair and body dark, blending into cliff and wall, his face and hands starkly contrasting with the darkness. “Can you forgive me? I can’t believe I said—”
“Stop it, Tess.”
She swallowed. “How long have you known?” she asked in something resembling a normal tone of voice.
“Last night I went back down the gorge.”
“You might have been caught!”
“I doubt it. They have no more night wit than a crying infant.”
“One hundred soldiers.” She gazed down at the shadowed gorge. From the rocks came a bird’s cry, deep and wailing, like an owl’s hoot or a woman’s mourning. “The khaja must hate the jaran more than I thought.”
“This is their holy place as well. For us to be here no doubt defiles it in their eyes. And jaran have raided a town. Many towns. What did Keregin say? They are like us in that they seek revenge.”
“And yet—” She turned her head to look at him. “Yet you rode through their lands and into—into this? Why?”
The dim illumination made his complexion ashen and bloodless except for the shaded hollows of his eyes. “It’s a kind of madness,” he said, as softly as the merest brush of wind.
“No,” she said, equally quietly, because she felt impelled to reassure him. But she knew that to be the kind of man he was, doing what he meant to do, he had indeed to be infected with a kind of madness, a fire that would burn inward and outward until, in the end, he would be consumed and his people transformed on the anvil of change. “No, it’s a kind of honor.”
He turned his head slowly and met her eyes. “Do you think so?”
“Yes.”
“Death should not be unwelcome to the honorable man.”
Tess felt her insides tight
en. She found it difficult to speak. “You once told me you had no intention of dying in battle.” He gazed at her, the two of them oblivious for that instant to all that surrounded them. Not me, she thought, I’m not going to get burnt in that fire. And then shook her head, disgusted at her own train of thought.
He shook himself as well and smiled, straightening his back. “Did I mention dying?” he asked, his tone light.
Tess attempted a laugh.
“I sent Josef up the back trail,” he continued conversationally, “to discover if it can indeed take us out. The pilgrims can look at the site tonight. In the morning, if the trail is good, we’ll ride out that way, though I’ll have to leave four archers behind to cover our retreat.”
“Who will you leave?”
“Mikhal, Tadheus, Konstans—”
“I’m better than Konstans.”
“You’re not included.”
“Who’s the fourth?”
“I am.”
“Of course,” she said softly. “Where did you learn to shoot so well?”
“In Jeds. I know how to shoot to kill a man. May the gods forgive me.”
“Why don’t jaran men use bows and arrows in battle?”
“Arrows in battle. That’s a grim thought.” Below, at the neck of the gorge, there was a slight movement. Stillness, a flash of light hair. Bakhtiian began to speak again. “The plains are as wide as you can see, and there is space to run. There is nothing to defend, except your kin and your honor, and honor rests in facing your opponent in a land where you could just as well flee.”
“In this land, between these walls, you’ll be dead before you can reach the man you’re trying to kill.”
“Do you wonder at our enmity?”
“No. I don’t wonder.”
“Look. The pilgrims have gone down. Just as I suggested to them. A surprise, don’t you agree?”
She looked down to the right, where a light moved among the ruins on the far side, against the slide, dipping up and down. They were looking for something.