by Kate Elliott
He looked terrible. The stallion no longer had any trace of glossy sheen to its coat, but it held its head up. A number of men ran to care for the horses. Vladimir took the black. Ilya washed first, and he went from there directly to his tent. That was the last anyone saw of him until morning. Everyone rose early the next day and lavished their energy on the horses, these relics of the arenabekh, yet always they kept an eye on Bakhtiian’s tent. When he finally emerged, however, Niko and Josef and Tadheus greeted him first. Tess and Yuri sat on some boulders a bit above the camp, tossing stones at a cleft in the rock, watching the four men as they talked.
“How does he keep his looks?” Tess asked.
Yuri grinned and began to laugh, an infectious and utterly irresistible influence. “I dare you to ask him that.”
Tess swallowed a giggle. “Don’t, Yuri. I will.”
Yuri put a hand over his mouth. Below, the stream shone, sparkling in the sunlight. “I don’t believe it.”
“Bakhtiian!” yelled Tess.
Yuri choked and held his stomach. “Tess!” he squeaked.
Bakhtiian said something to his companions, detached himself, and walked toward them, his boots light on the moss and low grass. Yuri shook in silent mirth, tears seeping from his eyes.
“We were just wondering,” said Tess as Bakhtiian came up to them, “how you manage to keep your looks, running around at the pace you do.” She had so far managed some semblance of seriousness, but a giggle escaped from Yuri and she had to cough violently to stop herself from laughing. Bakhtiian stared at them for a moment, as if puzzled. He drew himself up very straight and advanced on them sternly. Yuri’s glee vanished like a flake of snow on fire.
“Oh,” he said, eyes widening. “I take it all back, Tess.”
“All of it?” Bakhtiian halted in front of the young man, arms crossed.
“Help!” said Yuri faintly, but Tess started to laugh. Yuri stared at her in horror. Bakhtiian climbed up to sit on the rock, with Yuri between him and Tess. He wiped dust from his hands.
“Well,” he said to Yuri, “it is my experience that when a woman shows interest in a man’s looks, he’d best begin to pay attention.”
“What!” Tess’s laughter vanished. “I deny everything.” She blushed.
“I keep my looks,” said Bakhtiian with dignity, still looking at Yuri, “by not indulging in frivolity.”
“He must have been a dull child,” said Tess to Yuri.
“And a dull youth,” said Yuri.
“And I fear he’s becoming a dull man,” finished Tess. She glanced surreptitiously at Bakhtiian. It might have been that he was blushing slightly, or perhaps only the brisk wind on his cheeks, but in any case he had found something in the camp that attracted his gaze.
“I don’t really believe it,” said Yuri to Bakhtiian. “You must have been the boy in the middle a hundred times before you were twenty.”
“At the risk of destroying your very gratifying faith in me, Yuri, I must be honest with you. It pains me even now to remember how very thoroughly I was ignored by the girls when I was young.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Yuri.
“It might even have partially influenced my decision to go to Jeds. And of course there was—” He paused and seemed to change his mind about something. “Nataliia,” he finished.
“Of course.” Yuri stared at Bakhtiian as though he had never seen him before. “Ilya, I—” He flushed. “I didn’t mean to…”
Bakhtiian’s gaze flashed past Yuri to Tess and immediately returned to Yuri. Tess suddenly got the impression that this entire conversation was between her and Bakhtiian, with Yuri serving simply as the intermediary. A small, rodentlike animal rushed across rock, paused to look at them, and ran on, disappearing into the tiny crevasse.
“Your sister Nataliia?” Tess asked.
“Yes,” he answered, still looking at Yuri. He smiled slightly. “Growing the beard may have helped.” He stroked the dark line of his beard absently.
“Men! You’re all of you vain.”
“We have to be,” said Yuri, turning to Tess. “Since we live every moment of our lives subject to the whims of women.”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” said Yuri and Bakhtiian at the same moment.
Tess opened her mouth to reply, closed it, and shrugged.
“Ilya,” said Yuri. “What did you find at the temple?”
Bakhtiian shut his eyes. The high ring of sabers startled Tess. Down in the camp, several men were practicing. “Nothing that I ever want you to see, Yurinya. So. We ride at dawn tomorrow.”
“That bad?” asked Yuri.
“Autumn also brings the early storms, here by the mountains. We’re ten or fifteen days now from the shrine of Morava. We have to reach the port before the ships stop sailing for the winter months.”
“It must have been terrible,” said Yuri to Tess.
“I brought you something,” said Bakhtiian. A flat tone of metal from below, a curse, and laughter. “A gift from the dead. Run down to my tent and bring me the long leather sack. There is something for Tess, too.”
“Of course!” Yuri scrambled off the rocks, dust spraying down after him, and ran down into camp.
“Where I come from,” said Tess, resting her elbow on one knee and turning her head to look directly at Bakhtiian, “we call that contriving to get rid of someone without insulting them.”
Bakhtiian smiled. “I believe it’s called much the same thing everywhere. I want to apologize to you.”
“For what?”
He stared down at his hands. Eyes lowered, he looked so incongruously modest that she had to smile. “At the temple. My behavior was…inexcusable. For a man to behave toward a woman in such a fashion is…shameful.”
“Ilya! We did that to save lives.”
He did not look up. The brown rodent ran out from the crevasse and halted on the next rock, its bright eyes fixed on them. “Please believe that I would never have done such a thing if I’d been thinking clearly, but I never think clearly when I’m in battle.”
“No, you think quickly, and that is why you’re a good commander.”
He glanced up at her. “You don’t hold it against me?”
“Bakhtiian!” She slapped a hand down on her thigh. The little animal scrambled away. “Did you ever see a play in Jeds?” He nodded. “We were acting. It was a scene played out for that moment, nothing else.”
“I learned well enough in Jeds how lightly they hold such violence.” He studied his palms where they lay open in his lap. “This is not a thing that is ever spoken of between men and women, but should a jaran man ever try—may the gods forgive me for even thinking of such a thing—to force a woman, he would be dead the next instant. And no man would lift a hand to stop the women from executing their justice.”
“There are many things I admire about the jaran, and that is one of them.” She lowered her voice. “Ilya, you and I understand why it was done. Every man in this jahar understands.” Reflexively, she smoothed the silky soft sleeve of the red shirt she now wore.
He shrugged conciliatorily and at last met her eyes. “You don’t think I’m a demon?”
“No.” She could not resist smiling. “Though I liked Keregin’s suggestion that you called the arenabekh from—what did he say?—from the depths of your fire-scorched heart. Did they all die?”
“I hope so, since those who did not would have been taken prisoner by the khaja.”
“And the horses?”
“Those too badly injured I killed. The others—” He gestured below, “—as you see, though not all will be able to keep our pace. Here is Yuri.” And it occurred to Tess that Bakhtiian’s own remount had not come back with him.
Bakhtiian jumped down from the rocks, took the bag from Yuri and, rolling down the edges, carefully lifted sabers out and placed them side by side on the ground.
“Gods!” exclaimed Yuri. Tess merely gaped. Light flashed from the blades.
&nb
sp; “Spoils,” said Ilya. “I thought they would rather we had them than the khaja. I couldn’t carry many, so I took the ten best. And an eleventh, for myself.” He looked at Tess. “Tobay. Do you remember? His saber is as good as his arm.” He reached down. “Here, Yuri. This one for you.”
“But, Ilya, it’s beautiful.” Yuri tested it, turning his arm, feeling its weight. “I can’t possibly deserve it.”
“Perhaps it will inspire you to practice as often as you should. This for Mikhal. Oh—” He laughed, picking up another by its ornate, jeweled hilt. “This for Vladi, of course.” He replaced them one by one in the bag until there was only one left: a delicately curved thing that rang when he struck the blade with his nail. “Cousin,” he said to Tess. “Our kinsman Yurinya did very poorly for you when he got you a saber. He must have applied to his most miserly cousin who could scarcely bring himself to begrudge you his third blade, and only a few men have two. That you have any aptitude for saber at all is incredible, considering how ill-balanced and ill-wrought that thing is. I suggest you take it off, cast it in the dirt, and forget you ever knew it.” He held out the saber. She stared at it. When he put it into her hands, the metal cold on her fingers, she merely continued to stare, until she saw the mark.
“This is Keregin’s saber. I remember this mark. Is it a rune? I can’t take this.”
“I think he would have been pleased to know you inherited it. It was the finest blade on the field. Yes, that is a rune on the hilt.”
“What does it mean?”
Bakhtiian frowned. “It can’t be explained in one word. It means, the soul that finds the wind that will bear it the highest and does not shrink from being borne. The soul that does not fear being swept up into the heavens. The soul kissed by the gods that rejoices in their cares. That hardly does it justice. Words are too poor.”
“Excuse me,” said Tess in a small voice. She turned and walked away from them, cradling the saber against her like a baby.
Bakhtiian stared after her, motionless, his back to the sun, his face shadowed.
“Ilya,” said Yuri, “that was your old saber you gave me for Tess when we left the tribe.”
Bakhtiian started and bent to hoist the bag, his face lit now as he turned into the sun. “Let’s take these down,” he said.
Tess spent the rest of the day with her saber, sharpening it, polishing it, turning it so that it flashed in the sun, convincing now this man, now that, to give her a short lesson in fighting. She slept with it that night and welcomed the dawn and their early departure because there was nothing more glorious to her at that moment than the feeling of her saber resting on her hip as she rode.
“I’d have brought you another,” said Bakhtiian, “if I’d known you’d be so pleased with this one.”
Tess reined Myshla past a slight irregularity of ground and laughed. “Gods! What would I do with two? There’s enough to learn with one.”
Bakhtiian smiled. “Watch yourself, or your brother won’t recognize you when you reach Jeds.”
“Why not?”
“You’ve begun to swear in khush. The outer trappings of an alien culture are easily assumed, but when the inner workings begin to touch your own, then you’re in danger.”
“In danger of what? Being consumed? Amnesia?”
“What is amnhesia?”
“Forgetting who you are.”
He considered. Tumbled boulders obscured the sides of the path. Plants thrust up from every cleft and crack in the stone, reaching for the light. “There were times, in my three years in Jeds, when I felt confused as to who I was, but I was never in any danger of succumbing to that culture. I’m not very adaptable.”
“But that’s not true, Ilya. You are.”
“Being able to understand alien ways, being able to accept the fact of them, is not necessarily adaptability. I am jaran heart and soul. Nothing will change that.”
The path snaked up to the top of a ridge, where they halted. Far below Tess saw the golden sheet of the plateau. They sat for a moment in silence and simply looked. He had killed a man—long ago it seemed now—for transgressing the code of jaran religion, for nothing more than killing a bird, and yet he struggled to understand Newton and was compelled to ask what amnesia was, hearing it mentioned. It was as if half of him questioned incessantly and the other half never questioned at all.
“Perhaps,” she replied at last. “But many people would not be able to understand enough of the inner workings of another people to know that, say, the religious strictures of the khaja would be strong enough to stop them at the temple when—”
“Please.” Bakhtiian turned away from her, urging his black down the slope. “It is my disgrace that I acted as I did. It is also improper for a man and a woman to speak of such a thing.”
“Forgive me,” said Tess coldly, but the comment was addressed to his back. She followed him as they descended into a long valley. A thin layer of clouds trailed along the horizon. A snake moved sluggishly off the white-soiled path, leaving an elegant line in the dust. Here, deep in the valley, there were few sounds.
After a long while, he spoke. “Those clouds are no threat, but here in the hills, the weather can change very quickly.”
Tess, still angry at his rejection of her and feeling humiliated that she had stupidly broached a subject that offended him, did not reply. Instead, she pretended she was studying the lay of the land. The trail forked below where a huge rock outcropping thrust up from the ground. One path ran on toward the plateau, but the other ran up the opposite ridge and disappeared over its crest. Even so, she was surprised when he pulled up next to the split in the path. In the shadow of the rock lay a dead shrub, scattered and brittle. Bakhtiian dismounted and stacked a triangular pile of rocks on an area of flat ground to one side of the fork.
“What message are you leaving?” she asked, irritated that he had not volunteered the information.
He glanced up at her. “These trails are too well worn. If the arenabekh knew about them, surely the khaja do, too. I want to scout the upper trail, see where it leads. But the jahar should go down. If we’re attacked, better for us that we be in the open.” He hesitated, frowned, and looked away. “We’ll join them at nightfall. Of course.”
“Of course.” The sunlight stung her eyes. She shaded them with one hand.
“You can wait, if you wish, and ride with the jahar.”
“No,” said Tess, sure that he only wanted to be rid of her. “I’m curious to see where the trail leads.”
He shrugged, and they went on. For a time they saw the second trail like a thread winding away beneath them before they topped the ridge. Beyond, the path dipped into a shallow, rocky canyon, climbing up the canyon’s far slope in a series of gradual switchbacks. The sun rose steadily as they rode up to the far crest. Below them now lay a forested valley. Trees, touched orange and yellow on their leaves, stood in thick copses that thinned and dissipated into meadows and rock-littered open areas. Flashes of gray sheets of water showed here and there, streams and pools. It was nearing midday. In the distance, at the far end of the valley, smoke rose.
“Khaja,” said Bakhtiian. “Some kind of settlement. Come on.” They rode down. The light, broken by leaves and branches, made patterns on their faces and hands. Reaching the valley floor, they found a thick grove of trees and dismounted and led their horses in. Tess tied them on long reins to a sturdy pair of trees within reach of grass and water. Bakhtiian left.
So much vegetation. Scents blended here, damped down by shadow. Moss hung from branches.
He reappeared presently, surprising her, his approach had been so quiet. “I don’t know. No doubt we’d be better off leaving, but I’d like to scout out that settlement. I can get there and back by mid-afternoon. We can still catch the jahar before the moon sets.”
“You can get there and back?” Water pooled and murmured near her feet, slipping in and out of light as leaves swayed in the breeze. “I’m not staying here by myself.”
“Soerensen, I gave you the option of riding with the jahar. Now you can stay here with the horses. The settlement is at the other end of the valley, and not large, by the signs. You won’t be found here.”
“Did Keregin say something about how the khaja hereabout treat their women? How do you suppose they would treat me, Bakhtiian, if they found me here alone?”
He flushed and looked away from her. “Very well,” he said in a tight voice. “The horses can protect themselves.” He began to walk away, halted, and glanced back at her as she followed him. “But when we get close to the village, you’ll stop where and when I tell you.”
“Agreed.”
But they had not gotten even a third of the way up the valley when Bakhtiian froze suddenly. Despite her efforts to move just as he did, Tess still made twice as much noise, shifting at the wrong moment, getting her hair caught in branches. When he stopped abruptly and put his hand back to warn her, she stiffened to a halt: following the line of his gaze, she saw the hunter.
The hunter could not have seen them yet, but he had certainly heard something. He turned his head this way and that, listening for further noise. Through the brown branches and fading green and yellow thickets their scarlet shirts would betray them. She dared not stir. She wanted to sneeze.
The hunter moved, shoulders twisting as he turned half round to look behind him. In a single movement, Bakhtiian stepped backward and pushed Tess down. She caught her weight on her hands and lowered herself to lie full on the ground. The leaves and moss smelled of moisture and rich soil. Bakhtiian lay beside her, barely breathing. His arm still lay across her back. His hand rested on her far shoulder. Her other shoulder pressed against his, her hand caught under his chest, party to the movement of his lungs, her hip and thigh warmed by his, her foot captured under his ankle.
The hunter whirled back, hearing the rustle. He checked his knife, drew an arrow from his quiver, and fitted it to his bow.
Bakhtiian’s hand tightened on her shoulder, his thumb tracing the line of her shoulder blade through her shirt, up and down. A strange double awareness descended on her, an instant drawn out into eternity: the man tracking them; the weight of Ilya’s arm on her back, the pressure of his fingers, the unintentional caress. Death stalked her in the guise of a black-haired, middle-aged khaja hunter. Desire had already trapped her, how long ago she did not know, only knowing now that her heart pounded so fiercely not just because she was afraid of being killed. If they had been alone, and this had been Fedya, the cushioning leaves would have been invitation enough—but Fedya had understood that some expressions could be left pure, that they need not become entangled in deeper concerns. Fedya had perhaps been a simpler man. Certainly his needs had been simple, and they had accorded with hers.