by Kate Elliott
She stood frozen until she realized his chest still rose and fell. She released his hand.
“Thank you, Diana,” said Dr. Hierakis. “Perhaps you’d do better here in the surgery. They’re stoic enough, but I must say this boy’s done the best of the lot.”
Diana felt like her head was attached by only a string to her neck. In an instant, she would be floating. She stared at the young rider, the blood, the pale curve of his lips, the blond mustache above his mouth and the cleanshaven line of his jaw. It stank here, of blood and wounds and pain.
“Diana,” said Gwyn calmly, “you’d better sit down.”
She sat down. Her vision blurred, dimmed, and focused again. Goddess, she would have fainted in another second. She took an even deeper breath, another, in and out, clearing her head. When it was safe, she looked up. Dr. Hierakis’s jaran companion, the old man, bound up the shoulder wound.
“Move him off,” said the doctor to Gwyn. “Who’s next?” She glanced down at Diana, who sat at her feet. “Move, Diana. You’re in the way.”
Gwyn and, to Diana’s surprise, Hal got their arms under the unconscious Anatoly and lifted him as gently as they could off of the table, carrying him away—to one of the tents, probably. Marco appeared, helping in a young man mutilated by a gash that had peeled the skin away from his cheekbone. Bone gleamed. It was horrifying.
“Where do you want me?” Diana climbed to her feet. “I’ll do whatever you think is best.”
Dr. Hierakis did not even glance at her. Diana felt—knew—that she had been judged and found wanting. An attendant who fainted at the least sign of pain was of no use in the surgery. “You’re doing very well with the water, Diana,” she said, though she certainly could not know how well Diana was doing, with all her efforts concentrated in the surgery. “Now, Klimova, you see here how the epidermis and facial muscle has—”
Diana retreated. Marco followed her, but she avoided him, gathering her canteen and cups back and starting down the line. A new group of riders had come in. She asked their names, one by one, as she gave them the precious water to drink.
Later, much later, she heard the wagons trundling in before she saw them. Belatedly, she realized that David was hanging lanterns from all the tent poles, that it was getting dark, well into twilight. The wagons rolled past: one, two…ten in all.
Diana hurried over to where they had halted, sure that these men would be parched, having fought all day and then jolted over the ground for such a distance. Out here, men had stripped off their armor and most of them clustered around the horses. A group broke off to assist with the wagons. At the head of the line, Marco and his young jaran associate leaned over the slats and peered at the wounded lying within. Diana ran up to the last wagon just as two men slung the first wounded man off.
She winced. How could they be so casual with him? Even if he was unconscious…They carried the rider past her, not a meter from her. He was dead. Fair hair hung down, trailing toward the grass. His face, so young, was unmarked. But the spark was gone. Whatever had animated him was fled, leaving only a shell.
Diana stared after him. She felt cold and hot all at once. He was dead.
“Diana?” The voice was tentative, and frightened.
Diana turned. “Quinn?”
“I…I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry. It’s just…it’s just too awful.” Quinn caught in a sob. Her brown hair hung, tangled, loose over her shoulders, and dirt streaked her forehead. Lines of tears trailed down her cheeks. “Oh, Goddess. Look at them.” Then she spun and ran.
Diana knew where Quinn was headed without having to look: to the tent at the other end of the pond, where Anahita held her court, away from the horror that the camp had become. At the second wagon, Marco Burckhardt paused to stare toward them, to stare after Madelena Quinn, retreating from the ugliness of death.
Diana was suddenly furious. What right had he to judge them? Was he better than them, for having spent so many years on this barbaric planet? Because he had seen death before, because he could shrug it off now, did that give him license to despise them for their innocence? Marco was still watching her. Waiting. Seeing if she passed the test, which was no test at all except that he wanted it to be one. A man moaned, sobbing in pain. Goddess, these were the men too injured to ride. Another man was carried past her while she stood, hesitating; another man who was dead. She took two steps, three, then four, to the side of the wagon.
A man lay there, on his back. His chest rose and fell, rasping. An arrow protruded from his eye.
If she thought about it, she would scream. She knew it. But she was damned if she would give Marco Burckhardt the satisfaction of seeing her give up. And oh, sweet Goddess, the pain they were feeling. It tore at her, it hurt, to see them suffer.
She unscrewed the canteen and poured some water into the cup. Spooning it out, she got some through the lips of the man with the arrow in his eye—he was still partially conscious—and then she moved on to the next wagon.
As long as she didn’t think, she could manage her job. Each canteen went a long way, because these men were so badly hurt that mostly a spoon or two, fed through their dry lips, was all they could take. At some point she must have gone through all ten wagons, but by then two more wagons had come trundling in. About a third of the men were dead. They were carried away and set down in the grass. Some of the least injured jaran men carried brush out into the grass and laid out a circle of tinder; for what, she could not imagine. Funeral rites? She dismissed the thought as quickly as it came, knelt by a rider propped up on his saddle, and lifted the cup to his lips for him to drink.
“Nak kha tsuva?” she asked him. He managed the barest of smiles and whispered his name so softly that she couldn’t make it out, but by that smile, she suddenly understood that he would probably live, although blood stained his abdomen and his right leg was sheared through to the bone.
She rose and went on to the next man. And the next.
Ran out of water and trudged across to get more from Rajiv. The moon was up. Its light cast hazy shadows on the pale expanse of grass and the monstrous angles of the tents. A man screamed in pain. A moment later the scream cut off, abruptly. A million stars blazed in the black sky.
Crossing back to the three new wagons that had just come in, she strayed past the field of the dead. Several jaran men rifled the dead bodies, but in a reverent way that made her understand that this was part of their culture, removing the silk shirts, unbuckling belts, rolling up tassetted armor, collecting sabers.
She got to the new wagons just as Marco did. Halted opposite him, staring in at six men thrown together on the floor. One was dead. She could recognize the dead ones instantly by now. Marco leaned in and pulled aside armor and cloth, looking for wounds, gauging their seriousness. They looked mutilated, all of them.
“This one, to surgery now. Stanai.” Marco’s jaran associate spoke to some waiting men. They lifted the wounded man gently from the wagon and carried him off toward the tents. “He can wait. He can wait. This one, stanai.” Marco paused by the sixth man, a young rider with black hair. His eyes were closed. His breathing came in liquid bursts, blood bubbling and sucking on his chest; a trickle of blood ran out of his mouth. Marco probed under armor for the wound. Then he shook his head. The young rider’s eyes opened, and he looked up at the sky and then at the men surrounding him. He spoke, weak words but clear.
Marco shook his head again, but he said nothing.
“Shouldn’t he go straight to surgery?” Diana demanded. All the riders started, shifting to look at her and then away.
“Lungs,” said Marco. “He won’t last another hour. If he’s conscious at all, now, it’s only because he’s in shock and can’t feel the wound.”
“But you can’t just leave him—”
Marco shrugged and went on to the next wagon. Riders carried the other wounded men away, and lifted out the dead one, leaving the black-haired boy alone in the wagon. He watched them, but he said nothing more.
He knew he was dying.
Diana started to cry. Tears trickled down her face. The worst thing she could do was to cry; it weakened all her defenses, it was idiotic. There was nothing she could do for him, nothing anyone could do.
Then he saw her. His face lit with wonder. “Elinu,” he said, and he smiled.
Fiercely, Diana wiped the tears from her cheeks. She slung the canteen over her shoulder and crawled into the wagon. Getting her hands under his shoulders, she lifted him up and cradled his head in her lap. His eyes were clear, perfectly clear, as he stared up at her.
“Nak kha tsuva?” she asked.
“Arkady,” he whispered. His breath rattled in his throat. “Arkady Suvorin.” He said something more, words she did not know, but that one word again, elinu. She faltered. What else could she do but stare at him, and he at her. What use? She wanted to cry, but that would do neither of them any good. She grasped, and found the first leading role she had played, as an ingénue. And said it to him:
“‘Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say ‘Ay;’ And I will take thy word.’” He gazed at her, rapt, as she went on with the lines, every fiber of her being concentrated on him. What else could she do, but ease him in his dying? “‘Therefore pardon me, And not impute this yielding to light love, Which the dark night hath so discovered.’”
But he was dead by then, slipped silently away. He lay still. His chest neither rose nor fell, and a last drop of blood congealed on his chin. But his face was at peace.
“Bravo,” said Marco softly, from so close beside her that she would have jumped if she weren’t so bitterly exhausted.
She stared at the dead man, his slack face, his dark hair.
“You’re braver than I thought,” said Marco. He made it sound like an apology.
“‘I have no joy of this contract tonight,’” she said in a low voice. She lifted the dead boy’s head off her lap and laid him down on the wagon floor. Stood up, brushing off her trousers and shaking out her knee-length tunic. Picked up the cup. Marco came around to the end of the wagon and caught her by the waist before she could clamber down, swinging her down, holding her. She felt the flush all along her neck, up into her cheeks. One of his hands rested at the small of her back, pressing her into him, against his chest and his hips. His breathing was unsteady, and he bent his head and kissed her lightly on the lips. Lightly, but he shook with some extreme emotion, desire for her, certainly, and perhaps even sorrow or rage at his night’s task.
“The other wounded—” She squirmed away, but he held her.
“No more. It’s quiet. They’re taken care of, or they’re dead.”
Out here, the two of them stood alone with the dead, those left in the wagons and those laid out in neat lines in the grass.
“I love you,” said Marco.
Diana wedged her hands in between them and shoved him away. “Don’t patronize me, you bastard,” she screamed, and then wrenched away from him and ran back to camp, not caring who stared.
Campfires ringed the cluster of tents. She slowed, coming to her senses. Or at least, coming to a sense of her dignity again. Her breathing came in short bursts, ragged, and she impatiently wiped another tear away from the corner of her mouth. Wiped at her nose with the back of one hand. The canteen sloshed against her right hip. She was gripping the cup so hard that her fingers ached, and then she realized that the fingers ached as well from the grip of the young rider, Anatoly Sakhalin.
As if the name, rising to her thoughts, was a talisman, she saw him. He sat inclined against a saddle, his face illuminated by firelight, talking to a man crouched beside him. He glanced her way, marking her movement, but his glance caught on her and his entire body tensed as he recognized her. The man next to him shifted and looked her way. Bakhtiian.
As if with a will of their own, her feet took her over to them, and she knelt beside Anatoly Sakhalin.
“We were just talking of you, my lady,” said Bakhtiian in Rhuian. His face glowed in the firelight, as if the heavens, even in the dark of night, could not bear to leave him unilluminated. “I am grateful, to you and to the others, for your work here today. I think I would have lost many more riders without your help.”
Diana blushed and looked at her hands, which rested on her knees. She could feel Anatoly Sakhalin’s gaze on her like a weight, pressing against her. Bakhtiian said something, short but not unkind, to the young man, and she looked up to see Anatoly avert his gaze from her.
“It’s Dr. Hierakis you should thank,” said Diana finally, finding her voice again.
“She is a great healer. There is much she can teach those of my people who are also healers. This young man, for instance, will keep the use of his arm, and since he is one of my promising young commanders, I am pleased.”
The young man had his left arm in a sling, bound against his chest, but the fingers of his left hand played with a necklace of golden beads draped around his neck, rolling the beads around and around against his palm. Now he spoke, quiet words to Bakhtiian. Bakhtiian raised his eyebrows, looking half amused and half quizzical, and turned back to Diana.
“Anatoly asks that I tell you that he is the eldest grandchild of Elizaveta Sakhalin, who is the—” He hesitated. “—I’m not sure how this would translate. She is the etsana, the woman who speaks for her tribe, of the eldest tribe of the jaran, the Sakhalin. He rides with my jahar until he gains enough experience to be awarded a jahar of his own. Which will be soon. Anatoly acquitted himself well today, leading the left flank in on the charge that broke their ranks.”
“What is a jahar?” At the sound of her voice using a familiar word, Anatoly brightened.
“A group of riders. Not my entire army, you understand, but a smaller group within it.”
“I understand. But I never heard what happened at the battle.” She hesitated. Was it even proper to ask such a thing? Bakhtiian seemed so mild, crouched here next to her. She knew the pose must be deceptive.
He smiled. “It seems that all khaja women are fascinated with war.”
“If I shouldn’t ask—” She broke off. Goddess, what if she had violated some kind of taboo?
“It is not my part,” said Bakhtiian cryptically, “to dictate to a woman what she should and should not do. As it happened, they were all on foot, a mercenary group hired by the port towns along the coast, with too few archers to do any proper damage.” Diana could not repress a shudder, thinking of the wounded men she had seen. “They had spears, too, and their captain seems intelligent enough. He seems inclined to shift his loyalty.”
“To shift his loyalty? To you?”
“As I said, he seems intelligent enough.”
“But could you trust such a man? And his troops?”
“A commander uses the tools he is given. It is up to him to use them where they will be strongest. Now, if you will excuse me, I have other riders to visit.” Bakhtiian spoke a few more words to Anatoly Sakhalin and then, nodding once at Diana, rose and left them. Anatoly lifted his head to watch Bakhtiian go. His expression betrayed the fierceness of his loyalty. Then he dropped his gaze to Diana, and then away, to stare at the fire.
Diana sighed. Suddenly, she realized how achingly tired she was. The barest gleam of light tinged the horizon. Soon it would be dawn.
Anatoly said something in khush to her, softly. There was no one else at this fire. Beyond, other fires sparked and burned, but she felt wrapped in a cocoon here, she felt, strangely enough, safe. She felt so completely unthreatened, sitting beside a man she barely knew, a barbarian, above all else, who had yesterday fought in a battle that would have sickened her to see, that she could not be sure if it was exhaustion that gave her a false sense of security or if indeed he posed no threat to her. The idea seemed ludicrous. He sat there, saber lying on the ground beside him, fingers playing with his necklace.
Out in the darkness, two people strolled by, talking in Anglais. A woman’s voice: “It was textbook, I tell you. The left flank charged in and just
within bowshot turned tail and retreated in the most ragtag flight you’ve ever seen, and, of course, the damned fools took after them, thinking they’d scared them off. I saw someone—I believe it was the captain of the mercenary troop—trying to pull them back into line, but they charged after the left flank and then, of course, got slammed by a second charge from the jaran center. Beautifully done, and whoever commanded the jaran left flank had his timing and distance down to the penny. ‘When opponents open a doorway, swiftly penetrate it.’ That’s Sun Tzu. And they use the spears effectively enough as impact when they hit the line, but I can’t fathom why none of these riders use bow and arrow.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself, Ursula.” That was Maggie, sounding tired and hoarse. “We saw the uglier end of it here.”
“Aha, do I detect the superior voice of civilization lurking in your tone?”
They faded off into the camp. A man moaned, and a woman spoke gentle words. Farther away, someone chopped wood. The rhythmic hacking soothed Diana’s nerves. It was such an ordinary sound.
“Diana.” She glanced up, startled, to see Anatoly looking at her. On his lips, her name sounded exotic and yet tentative. Somehow he had slipped the golden bead necklace off from around his neck and now he held it out in his right hand, offering it to her. He said words to her in khush, grimaced as if frustrated by their inability to understand each other, and then spoke again. A handful of syllables said quietly the first time, then repeated with vehemence.
The words were meaningless to her, but said with an intensity that people reserve for a heartfelt “Thank you,” or “You’re beautiful.” Or, “I love you.” The words Marco had mocked her with, that she wished she had not heard. And here sat this one, and she wished so desperately that she could understand him.