by Kate Elliott
Tess parried a spear, batting it aside with reflexes she had forgotten she possessed, and cut with a sweeping stroke at the bare head of a man standing below her. He staggered back, but there was another man there, and another, and another. Aleksi reined his mare back and like a demon he cut Tess free.
“Stay with me!” he shouted. She whipped Zhashi forward, slicing, back-cutting, whipping one stocky man on her left—dark eyes, bulbous nose—across the cheek, raising a welt of blood, and then lost her whip and the next moment Zhashi raced unhindered out onto a little plateau of ground. Tess jerked the mare hard around, found Aleksi, and formed up beside him. Most of the first rank was gone. Aleksi waved riders forward to fill the gaps.
“Now!” he cried. “Before they have time to regroup!”
They poured back, hitting the khaja soldiers from behind. Men sprinted for the hills. Arrows sprayed down from the heights. Tess caught a glimpse of Ursula, still with that horrible grin; an arrow, fletches quivering, stuck out from her body armor. Zhashi jumped again, over a body, and came down in the center of a skirmish. Tess fought her way to the aid of two jaran riders—no, three: one was Valye, sobbing, saber held rigid and unmoving in front of her. Then she heard Aleksi calling to fall back. She slapped Valye’s horse on the rump and she and the other two riders retreated in good order. One of them had snagged the reins of the girl’s mount.
They rode out into the little valley.
“You didn’t stick by me!” Aleksi shouted, riding up to her with blood on his face and a wild look in his eyes. He looked a little crazy. “Pull back farther, damn you!” he shouted at her. “Out of arrow range.”
Then he swore again. They were halved in numbers, and isolated now. Arrows fell and skittered toward them along the ground. The infantry regrouped but did not—yet—advance, although by Tess’s quick estimate the khaja outnumbered them two to one.
“Here, girl, stop that crying,” Ursula yelled at Valye, but the girl was almost incoherent with fear, shaking. She had dropped her saber, and it lay in the dirt.
Tess rode over to them. “Ursula, go away. Get that arrow out of your armor. Valye.” She said it firmly, but without anger. “Where is your bow?”
A sob, stifled slightly. “I couldn’t—I just couldn’t—So close…so many…”
“Where is your bow?”
“Here.” A tear-stained face tilted up toward Tess. Gods, she was young.
“Shoot some of the bastards for me. I know you can do it.”
The tears stopped. A sudden light gleamed in Valye’s eyes. She pulled her bow from its quiver and nocked an arrow. And let fly. A khaja soldier stumbled and went down. The men cheered, immensely heartened. A barrage of arrows rained down from the heights, but they fell just out of range. The infantry advanced, step by slow step. Valye shot again, and hit. And again, and hit.
With a great shout, the infantry charged. An instant of indecision on Aleksi’s part: the khaja center was heavy and thick with soldiers, and if the riders went to either flank, they exposed themselves to archery fire from the hills.
Then he grinned. “Retreat! We’ll break back at my command.”
They retreated in good order toward the distant end of the little valley. But there, on the road where it wound around a rise, a second group of infantry appeared. Tess heard the khaja shout in triumph at their victory.
And then shout a warning. “Turn!” cried Aleksi. They turned, to see Anatoly and the rest of the jahar charging through the gap and hitting the infantry from the rear. Behind Anatoly, emerging through the smoke, came the first of the wagons.
They charged through and, meeting Anatoly’s group, routed the infantry between them. As quickly as wagons came forward far enough out into the valley they halted and with astonishing speed and efficiency, women shouting and cursing, a square formed. With a handful of other riders, Tess chased the retreating khaja, cutting them down from behind, those that did not turn to fight. Just in front of her, a khaja soldier fell with an arrow in his neck. A man shrieked out in pain up in the heights above.
“Fall back!” cried Anatoly. The cry went out.
“Tess!” yelled Aleksi. “Fall back with me!”
In that wild instant, Tess realized that her charge had brought her out to the very edge of the battle, that she was surrounded by khaja soldiers with only Aleksi trailing at her side. A clot of khaja turned on her. She reined Zhashi hard around, slicing with her saber. A thump jarred her helmet, and an arrow fell over Zhashi’s withers and tumbled down to the ground. Tess froze, realizing in that second that she had been shot in the head. A man lunged forward, sword raised—and an arrow sprouted from his throat. Like a brilliant, sudden, red germination, another arrow sprouted from the throat of his companion, and the man next to him, and the next one, a lethal flowering. Tess did not wait to see anymore but fled, Aleksi beside her.
There was a gap in the wagons. They rode through it into the eddying calm of the center. Behind, a wagon rolled to close the gap.
“Dismount,” said Aleksi in a low voice. Tess dismounted, because she was suddenly so tired that she could not think. “Were you hit anywhere?” he demanded. She shook her head. Her hands shook. Without that helmet, she would have been pierced through the skull. Bile rose in her throat.
“Aleksi, I’m going to be sick.”
“Here.” He held her by the shoulders while she threw up. A moment later Anatoly appeared, and with him, his grandmother. A moment later Sonia ran up and knelt beside Tess.
“Tess—? Gods!”
“No, I’m all right. Just sick.”
“Ah.” Sonia rose as quickly. “Mother Sakhalin, come. We need all the women old enough to shoot placed along the wagons. We need to prop up shields for cover. Boys to the herds. Some kind of screen—some wagons upended, I think—for the littlest ones.” They hurried off.
“Aleksi,” said Anatoly. “Come with me. The women can hold them off for the time, but I’d like your opinion—should we sortie out to that other troop before the ones we routed have time to regroup?”
Aleksi patted Tess on the shoulder and let go of her and went away. Tess sank back on her heels and groped for her water flask at her belt. It was punctured, empty. She stood, feeling dizzy and swept in waves by nausea, and staggered over to Zhashi. Thank God, the flask on Zhashi was unharmed. Tess gulped down water and then cupped water in her hands to let the mare drink. She raised her head.
Chaos. No, not chaos at all. Herds bleated; a string of boys pressed the animals into one corner of the square. The song of bows serenaded her. Sweet-faced Katerina crouched down beside a limp khaja soldier tumbled in the dirt and stabbed him up under the palate, making sure he was dead. Three silver-haired men turned a fourth wagon up onto its side and herded a troop of little children inside. Tess recognized Mira among their number. The little girl was sober-eyed, not crying, clutching the hand of an older child, who carried a baby. There, at the edge of the wagons, two young women staggered in from the outside. Each wore a wicker shield bound onto her back, and between them they carried a jaran man. Tess saw his lips move and realized that he was alive, though wounded. They laid him on the ground next to another injured jaran man, and as they turned and went to run back out, Tess realized that they were Galina and Diana.
Katerina kicked a khaja soldier and unbuckled his helmet and threw it to one side. She glanced up. “Oh. Aunt Tess! Can you help me strip these two? And then help me drag them out of here?”
The man was dead. Thoroughly dead. Perhaps Tess had killed him herself. Tess felt a haze descend on her as she stripped his armor, his weapons, anything valuable from him. She and Katya dragged the two dead bodies over to one side where a considerable pile of the khaja dead had built up, brought here by other children.
“I think we got all of the ones who were inside the wagons,” said Katya, sounding as practical as her mother.
“You’d better check again,” said Tess. The girl nodded and trotted off. Tess went back to find Zhashi, but t
he mare was gone. Over to one side a set of wagons had been formed into a square within the square, and here the wounded congregated. Young Galina sat on the ground between two men. She held her left arm with her right hand, gripping her arm where an arrow protruded from the flesh. Her face was pale, her lips set tight with pain, but she talked with the men. Cara moved among the wounded: Niko mirrored her over on the other side, and Juli Danov shouted at someone—gods, it was one of the actors, the chestnut-haired girl—who was offering water to the wounded but spilling more than she gave because her hands shook so badly. Gwyn Jones knelt beside a black-haired jaran man, delicately turning an arrow out of his side by easing the unbroken silk of his red shirt back along the twisting path of entry. Farther, at the outer line of wagons, women stood and shot, a rhythmic, deadly pattern.
“Aunt Tess! Aunt Tess!” It was little Ivan, leading Zhashi. “I looked for you. Here is Zhashi.”
“Thank you, Vania.” Tess let Zhashi blow in her face and watched as the mare’s ears pricked up. She kissed Ivan on the cheek. “I want you to go make sure the little children are well. Where is Kolia?”
“But, Aunt Tess, I’m supposed to help with the herds.”
“Take care of yourself, then.” He ran off.
“Tess!” Aleksi hailed her. He rode over to her. “We’re about to make another sortie.”
“Another sortie?” She swung up on Zhashi more from habit than volition.
“We drove them back once, but they’ve re-formed again. That crazed woman Ursula says we should let the women hunt them.”
“Hunt them?” They trotted across to the far wall of wagons, where the remains of Anatoly’s jahar milled, forming up for another attack.
“Hunt them,” Aleksi repeated. “Distance, with arrows. She’s right, you know. I know Bakhtiian and the other men would never consider archery in battle, but they’re wrong. We’re not fighting feuds any longer, that it matters as a point of honor. I suggested to Sakhalin that we use archers. They’re only khaja, after all.”
Tess was greeted by the sight of about fifty mounted women, bows ready, each with a sheaf of arrows at her back, ready to ride out with the men. They wore their heavy felt coats as protection. Anatoly’s little sister rode with them and—to Tess’s surprise—Vera Veselov and little Valye Usova.
Anatoly, deep in discussion with Ursula nodded; his face lit with a grin. “Now, you women,” he said, and then flushed as if at his own presumption in ordering them about. “You will fire over our heads into their ranks. Once we engage, if there is room, circle them and fire into the rear where most of their archers stand.” He waved Aleksi over, and Tess and Aleksi took position in the second rank. Mother Sakhalin yelled out the order to move the wagons: a string of men, boys, girls, and women—some actors among the group, Tess saw—rolled four wagons aside. With a shout, Anatoly led the jahar out at a trot.
The khaja infantry unit had marched close enough to fire arrows into the square. The khaja soldiers jeered and let out a great shout at the appearance of the jaran riders.
The jahar broke into a canter. The women began to shoot. The sky went black with arrows. They broke into a gallop, and then hit the front rank of the khaja fighters and she was too busy to see what became of the women.
Until the khaja line disintegrated in front of her. The soldiers ran. Their entire back had vanished, shot through, decimated with archery fire. Out to either flank, Tess saw the women riding in circles, firing off to their left, cutting down the fleeing soldiers from behind with their devastating fire. The men rode the enemy down and cut them to ribbons. Not many escaped back into the hills.
The jahar re-formed quickly, but it took longer to get the women back in order. They rode a great circle around the wagons, and not one arrow disturbed their circuit. The women ululated in triumph. Tess caught a glimpse of Vera Veselov, her face lit with an expression of uncanny glee, as if she had come to life again after so many years in a daze.
“What have we started?” Tess asked Aleksi.
“By the gods,” said Aleksi. His face shone. “So will they all fall before us.”
The first outriders of the segment of wagons that traveled just behind them reached them soon after. These scouts reported that sporadic arrow fire had impeded the progress of the train, but several forays up into the hills had rooted out—killed or chased away—the khaja rebels. Mother Sakhalin ordered the wagons back into line, but there was delay with the wounded, and the road to be cleared behind them, so in the end, with night lowering down on them, they stayed where they were. They built the debris into a pyre and burned the twenty dead, as was fitting. One of the archers had died—a heart-faced young woman whose mother wept because the girl had left no children to follow her. Tess did not watch the pyre burn, but others attended it all night long.
The khaja dead they left lying, except to clear them from the road and the camp. Of the rest, perhaps two-thirds of the fighters had received some kind of wound, although Tess had come through unscathed—this ascertained in a ruthless examination by Cara. Four children had been wounded by arrow fire. Tess was too tired to eat, but Aleksi made her eat anyway, and she slept next to him and the children under one of the wagons.
At dawn, Tess woke thinking at first that she had just had a bad dream, but when she staggered out from under the wagon, it all came back to her, much too clearly. The battle itself—her fighting, the skirmish—was all a blur, except for the man she had whipped across the face and the line of khaja soldiers wiped out by arrows in front of her. But it was the memory of Katerina stabbing the injured khaja soldier that haunted her. So young to be forced to such a horrible act, and the pragmatic nature of the act made it worse in a way: not done with rage, or viciousness, or sadism, but simply because it was necessary, and little Katya was the one available to do it.
Katerina came by at that moment, looking nothing like a murderer. “Aunt Tess, did you see? Part of the army is riding back in. Mama says a scout came in, and that it’s Cousin Ilya.”
“The scout is Ilya?” Tess felt hazy, a little dizzy.
Katerina’s face pulled in concern. “Have you eaten anything?” She put an arm around Tess’s waist. “Here, come with me. You’re looking very pale. The doctor said to bring you to her anyway. I’ll get you something to eat. Wait, here’s a bit of cheese.”
It was glariss cheese. The sight of it made Tess’s stomach turn, and then Katya, all unknowing, lifted the crumbling, pungent mass up to Tess’s face, just to be helpful. It reeked.
“Excuse me,” said Tess politely. She clapped a hand over her mouth and ran to get outside the wagons so she could throw up with some privacy. But the run, the adrenaline, the abrupt removal of the awful cheese, shut off some reflex. She fell to her knees, gagged, choked, coughed, but nothing came up. She sat back with her eyes shut and tried to concentrate on anything but the sick feeling in her stomach.
“Tess!”
Of course Ilya would find her like this. She opened her eyes to see him dismiss his entourage and run over to her.
“Dr. Hierakis said you weren’t hurt.” He sounded angry as he knelt beside her. She sighed and leaned against him and buried her face in his shirt. Thank the gods that he smelled good to her. She took deep breaths, inhaling his scent.
“I’m not hurt,” she said into his chest.
He tilted her head up and studied her with a frown. “You look pale. Anatoly says you fought well yesterday.” He offered her the praise grudgingly enough. “I know that—” He stopped, grimacing, and she could see what it cost him to go on. “—I have been unfair about this in the past. It’s only that I fear to lose you, Tess. But Anatoly needs new riders to make up those he lost in the battle. Archery in battle! Gods.” He lapsed into silence and just held her close.
She watched him. He had a slight smile on his face and a distant look in his eyes, a gleam, plotting, thinking, working out how he could use this new development to his advantage. As he would. Ilya would not let tradition hold him back
now that the advantages of using mounted archers were so clearly shown, and now that someone else, not him, had been forced to use them for the first time. It was not his innovation; he himself had not broken with tradition. But now that it was done, now that Mother Sakhalin had seen her own granddaughter ride into battle, seen the women used so effectively, seen the devastating effect on a khaja unit larger than their own, Ilya could exploit it.
“So,” he said at last, his attention returning to her, “I will put no obstacles in your way if you wish to ride with Anatoly’s jahar.”
Gods, what he must have gone through to bring himself to this point. “But, Ilya, I have my own jahar. My envoys.”
“Yes,” he agreed, looking guilty, looking trapped.
She chuckled. “I know you offered that only to get me out of riding in the army.”
“That’s not the only reason,” he exclaimed, looking offended. “It’s perfectly true you’re well suited to it, but you have always been so determined to ride with the army to fight.”
She sighed and stood up, and he stood with her, still holding her. “Yes, well, and I fought. I’ll fight again, if I have to. But I’ve decided that a jahar of envoys is exactly what I want. Eventually, with good enough diplomats, your army won’t have to fight at all. Think how many lives that will spare. Ilya, why are you here, anyway?”
He surveyed the field of battle, the square of wagons even now unwinding into the line of march. The last smoke from the pyre dissipated into the cool morning air. “We discovered that a whole unit of khaja soldiers had circled wide around our line and gone back into the hills. Of course we came back, knowing that they might threaten the wagon train. With the line of wagons drawn out so thin along this narrow road, and the rearguard such a distance behind—” He shrugged. “But what were you doing out here, my love?”