by Kate Elliott
They turned to the left.
“Edvard, wait here and alert us when the gate is breached.”
Vasha knew that the gate would be breached only when all the defenders had died. It seemed odd, though, that he could feel nothing about it.
“Thanks be to God, Who has protected us this day,” said Jaelle in a low voice.
Vasha looked up to see a flight of steps that led to a set of huge arched double doors, set into the towering church. Rusudani stood poised on the steps, brilliant in the dying sunlight from the west, and beside her stood a khaja man in strange jeweled robes, with a funny hat on his head. He knelt in front of her and kissed her hand.
Edvard shouted. Vasha turned and saw the rider breaking toward them. Then Edvard jerked, jerked again, and fell from his horse. His helmet tumbled off onto the ground. His horse slowed, stopped, and stood in the road, confused.
“Up the steps,” said Konstans. “Go, Vasha!”
Rusudani had gone white, but she did not cry out. She spoke quickly and fiercely to the old man, but he shuddered. She shook off his hand and beckoned to Vasha.
“Come!” she said in khush. “Come. Follow.”
They stumbled up the steps.
“Leave the horses,” said Konstans. “They’re no use to us now. Leonid and Piotr, you must try to get through, to return to the army. May the gods be with you.”
The two riders reined about hard and rode away around the church. Vasha knew they would not get through. Surely the khaja commander who had ordered this would expect such an attempt. He took each step one at a time, each one an effort. The khaja churchman watched them go by with rheumy, frightened eyes.
The great doors yawned open, and Vasha followed Stefan through them. The horse shied, but Stefan spoke softly, calming her, rubbing her. Dimness shuttered them, except for a blaze of candles at the far end. A second arch led them farther in, and then the roof leapt up into a great gulf of air, as if the heavens had invaded. Benches stood like soldiers in ranks all the way up to the altar.
There, framed and illuminated by candlelight, Rusudani knelt and prayed at the white stone altar, under the image of Hristain sundered and made whole again.
The horse, unsure of itself, came to a halt. While Stefan coaxed it, Vasha looked back. He heard a murmuring from outside like the muttering of the storm-swept sea, like the roar of fire, like the ominous rumble of a blizzard blowing in. Two men detached themselves from the ten or so riders remaining at the door and ran—one limped—to Ilya.
They lowered him down from the horse and did what Vasha had not yet managed the courage to do: They laid him on the floor and checked to see if he was still alive.
“He is still alive!” Vladimir shouted back toward the door. Vladimir’s right arm hung twisted and useless. He glanced up at Vasha. “Where can we find safety for him?” No panic, just a question.
“Jaelle,” Vasha said in Taor, “where can we hide him?”
“This is a church! No one will harm him in here.”
From the door: “Go see to your cousin,” said Konstans. “There’s nothing more we can do. Drag Izyaslav in, and we’ll shut the doors. If they burn us down, then we’ll go to the gods having fought well.”
The doors scraped shut and, with a resounding thud, closed.
From the altar, Rusudani spoke, urgently beckoning them forward.
“You must bring him to the altar,” said Jaelle, catching her urgency in her tone. “God Himself has decreed that blood must never be spilled in His sanctuary. God will protect you.”
“You shouldn’t move him too much,” protested Stefan as the two riders hoisted Ilya and hauled him up the aisle.
The door shuddered behind them. Again, cracking. The khaja were trying to break it down. The riders dragged benches in front of it, heaving them along. One rider lay on the ground. Vasha could not tell if he was dead or not. The sound of hacking echoed through the great lofty expanse of the church.
They lay Ilya down beside the altar, and Rusudani knelt beside him, praying.
“Is he alive?” asked Katerina.
“Katya!” That stirred Vasha out of his numbness. He stared at her, but she was real. She stood two paces from him, studying Bakhtiian with a weary gaze. She had blood on her face, and she cradled her left hand against her chest. Vladimir knelt on one knee, testing his grip with his left hand on his saber, and the other man—a younger man, come recently into Ilya’s guards, a Vershinin son—winced, testing his weight on his leg, and then leaned on his spear. Both of the riders gazed steadily at the door. They knew what was coming.
“It isn’t true,” said Stefan. “They’ll kill us all anyway.”
“It would blaspheme God’s holy word!” Jaelle knelt as well, on the other side of the altar from Rusudani, and folded her arms over her chest. “We will be safe here.”
The church lay around them, silent except for the echo of the doors being cut down. Strange faces peered at them from the gloom, faces carved into the pillars that held up the ceiling, and light splintered in through windows drawn of a thousand colors, fading, muting, as the sun set. Vasha smelled sweet incense, and leather. Dust swam in the gold streams of light that filtered down from the clear shaft of the window that rose above the altarstone. Footsteps sounded, measured, and the creak of armor. Vasha marked Konstans approaching them by his white plume.
“He yet lives?” Konstans asked quietly.
“He lives,” said Vladimir.
The simplicity of their loyalty staggered Vasha. They said nothing more. They needed to say nothing more. That Bakhtiian yet lived, might live still, was all that mattered.
The two khaja women, he and Stefan and Katya, and, in all, ten riders plus Izyaslav, who lay dying in the entryway. He found his voice suddenly. “Where is Andrei Sakhalin?”
“He’s run like the rat he is,” said Konstans calmly. He favored one leg, Vasha saw now, but if the wound pained him, he did not show it on his face. “He has betrayed us to the khaja. I only hope that I can someday tell Yaroslav Sakhalin what his baby brother has done, and have Andrei there to witness the telling of it.”
The door splintered, sharp, and an ax blade bit through. A shout rose from outside.
“Kill the horse,” shouted Konstans. He slanted a look down at Vladimir. “I leave him in your hands.”
Vladimir nodded.
Konstans walked back down the length of the church. Vasha could barely make out two riders as they killed the mare right in front of the door, where it made yet another barrier. They overturned benches, made a great obstacle with them, and settled in with their spears. Konstans knelt beside Izyaslav and, with a deft move, slit the wounded man’s throat. He rose and backed away, taking a place at the back rank.
The door splintered again, and again, wood spitting out in chunks now, cracking and fragmenting until the first man-sized hole was formed. A spear met the first khaja soldier who ducked through. Outside, they kept hacking. The next time, four men pressed through, and the fighting was quiet, intense, grunting, a terse command, a shriek of pain and the sheer bitter cold fury of the last jaran riders fighting to save their dyan.
Jaelle prayed, hands clutched at her chest. Rusudani rose to her feet as the khaja soldiers came through and fell, came through and fell—but they wounded one rider, then a second. There was a rush. They fell back, and now Vasha saw only three jaran standing. The doors had fallen to nothing, and the last scraps of them were torn down by men out of reach of the jaran spears. On the stairs outside, torches blazed and rank upon rank of soldiers stood, waiting to come in.
Katya took aim.
“No!” Rusudani restrained her. Katya’s eyes blazed, and she looked ready to punch the other woman, but Rusudani kept talking.
“Listen to her,” pleaded Jaelle. “What she speaks is truth. You must trust in God to grant you peace and safety.”
Katya snorted and lifted her bow again, and again Rusudani restrained her.
“Let me go!” Katya snarled.
“But
you see,” said Jaelle, rising as well. “No one comes through the door. They wait, because they do not wish to violate the Lord’s holy refuge.”
From the door, a voice rang out. In Taor.
“I am sworn to kill the man known as Ilyakoria Bakhtiian. His life alone I must have. The others I care nothing for.”
“Who are you?” asked Konstans. He stood in the central aisle, flanked by the last two guardsmen left standing, the cousins Nikita and Mikhail—Mitenka—Kolenin, men who had ridden with Bakhtiian since they came of age to ride, men who had been with him since the beginning of his great ride, his unification of the jaran and the khaja lands beyond. They were all of them armed only, at last, with their sabers. Between them and the door lay the wreckage of their final defense.
A man resplendent in a coat of mail stepped into the doorway, flanked in his turn by men bearing torches. The light shone and scattered off his helm. He wore a bright red cloak trimmed with silver brocade, and the clasp winked and sparkled; even at this distance, Vasha could see that it was encrusted with jewels.
Katya shook off Rusudani’s hand and lifted her bow.
“Katya,” said Konstans coolly, in khush, without turning round, “I think you would do well to save your arrows for those who will need them more later.” He took one step back. “Nikita. Mikhail. Move back.” He pitched his voice loud again, replying in Taor. “Come forward and name yourself. If you can best me here, then surely the gods favor you.”
“I am Prince Janos of Dushan.” The khaja prince let his men clear a path for him, rather than trying to pick through it. Close behind him came the khaja holy man, babbling on about something.
“He says,” Jaelle murmured, keeping up a constant translation, “that it is against God’s law for men to profane the church with fighting.”
“What does Prince Janos say?” asked Vasha, glancing at Rusudani, who was white-lipped and frozen, staring at the scene.
“God forgive his arrogance. He says that he will sort that out with God once he has done what he came here for.”
“If I agree to fight you,” said Konstans, “what surety will you give me that the rest of my people will pass unharmed and alive from your hands?”
“I need give you no surety.” Prince Janos halted in the open aisle, hefting his shield on one arm, drawing his sword with the other. “I grant you only a warrior’s death. The rest of them are in my power.”
“If I kill you?”
“Then they may go free, if they can win free.”
Konstans said nothing, but attacked.
Vasha had watched men duel with sabers. Konstans was among the best. But, unhorsed, he was hopelessly outmatched by a man with a shield and a straight, heavy sword. Janos absorbed hits to his shield and armor and simply pounded Konstans with the weight he brought to bear. That the fight lasted as long as it did only attested to Konstans’ skill, and to his desperation.
He died well.
There was silence in the church. The hall filled with Prince Janos’s soldiers. Suddenly, Vasha could hear Ilya’s labored breathing, like the talisman of hope, the slender thread on which all of their lives hung.
Rusudani pushed past Katerina and stood full in the line of sight. She lifted her chin. Vasha admired her courage.
“Prince Janos,” she said coldly, regally.
He stepped back from Konstans’s body, but he did not lower his shield or sword. “Princess Rusudani. I hope you have not been harmed.”
All translated by Jaelle in a whisper, a hush sounding underneath the shuffle of feet and the settling of dust and the darkening as twilight infiltrated the church, covering them as in a shroud.
Rusudani did not bother to reply to that pleasantry. “If you have accomplished what you came here for, then perhaps you will leave us and go on your way, having profaned God’s house.”
“I admire your piety, Princess, but I do not have the luxury for piety now. I have a war to fight.”
“Against the jaran? You are a fool, then. You will never defeat their—”
“I have made my peace with the jaran, Princess.” He looked down at Konstans’s body one last time, then signaled for his men to remove the body. “My war is in Dushan. You yourself must know that you are now the most valuable piece on the board. That is why Presbyter Matyas has agreed to marry us.”
“Marry us?” She blinked, taken aback.
“Yes. I am not leaving this church until the vows have been spoken and sealed. Our parents betrothed us years ago—”
“A betrothal my father renounced when God called me and I entered the convent.”
“—a pledge not broken in my eyes, Princess.”
“Let lie until it became expedient for you to renew it.”
“No less expedient for me to renew than for the jaran to wish to add you to their considerable possessions.” He pointed with his sword at Konstans’ body. “Were you to marry him? To give him the key to Mircassia?”
“No. He was already married.”
Prince Janos surveyed the altar. Vasha could practically see him counting the survivors and weighing what to do with them: Kill them now, or later. His gaze wrenched to a halt on Katerina.
“What is this? It is true, then, that the jaran are such barbarians that they take their women to war with them?”
Rusudani’s voice grew even colder. “Barbarian or not, the women of the tribes have taken me in and given me protection, by the laws they have received from their gods, which they follow better, Prince Janos, than you obey the laws set down by God and the true church. This is not any common woman, but Katerina Orzhekov, a princess of the Orzhekov tribe.”
He examined Katya a few moments longer with all the immodesty of a savage. Katya glared at him, fingers caressing the string of her bow. Finally he looked away from her. “And these others?”
For a searing instant, Rusudani’s gaze touched Vasha and seemed to ask something of him. He could not tell what. “Loyal soldiers.”
There was a long pause. “I will spare the woman, then,” said Janos, “but the men must, of course, die.”
“Give me their lives as a token that you will treat me as a wife, not a servant.”
He looked surprised at that, and actually lowered his sword slightly, aware that Nikita and Mikhail stood about six paces from him, still armed. “You will marry me, then?”
“I was not aware I had any choice, Prince Janos. You have hundreds of soldiers with you. I have only my faith in God, which I trust will shelter me through adversity. And I have what power my birth has brought me, which you can be sure I will use to make your life difficult if you do not grant me the respect I deserve.”
Janos smiled. Evidently he found this amusing. “For that price I will spare them. Our bargain will be sealed with my morning gift to you.” She flushed, although Vasha did not understand why those innocuous words would upset her. Janos switched to Taor, speaking to the men. “Put down your weapons, and I will spare your lives, by the grace of Princess Rusudani.”
There was a longer silence. Nikita and Mikhail and the Vershinin son all looked toward Vladimir. Vladimir glanced down at Bakhtiian, and reflexively Vasha did so as well. Ilya’s eyes were open—open!—but he made no movement, no sign, and Vladimir glanced away as quickly, looking uninterested. Then, deliberately, Vladimir and Nikita nodded at each other. Janos marked, surely enough, the man the others obeyed. Vladimir tossed his saber down on the stone step that fronted the altar, and Nikita and Mikhail followed suit. Reluctantly, the Vershinin son threw down his saber as well.
“Stefan, Vasha, you, too,” said Vladimir quietly.
It was hard to let go of the saber. Especially since it had been a gift from Ilya, four years ago. But Vasha did so. He set it down, and at once felt entirely vulnerable.
There was another pause.
“Katerina Orzhekov,” added Vladimir, “I beg you, put down your weapons.”
“No,” said Katerina hoarsely. “I will not give my weapons over into khaja hands.
” But her hands shook as she unstrung her bow and put it back into its case, which hung over her back.
Janos watched her closely, and when she was done, he sheathed his sword and handed his shield over to one of his men, and lifted off his helmet. He was not, oddly enough, an ill-favored man. Vasha marked that with a kind of detachment.
“Now you are the Princess Rusudani’s slaves,” said Janos. “Be grateful for her mercy.” He gestured, and his men shoved Nikita and Mikhail over to one side. Vasha helped Vladimir and Stefan shift Ilya away from the altar, over into the shadows, where he might escape notice.
Stefan knelt. “I need cloth to bind the wound,” he muttered. “I have to get his armor off.”
Ilya’s face was white, drawn, but his eyes were still open, and he watched the strange ceremony that proceeded at the altar.
The presbyter began to chant, speaking words in a sing-songy voice. Rusudani placed her hands on the altar, but she did not look at the man who was becoming her husband: She kept her eyes fixed on the image of Hristain, whose eyes gleamed eerily in the light from the candles and torches, as if He, too, were watching, marking, all that passed at his altar.
Katerina slid over and knelt beside Ilya. She took out a knife—there was a bit of a stir when one of the khaja soldiers noticed she had it, but she glared everyone down, and when she began to use it to cut through Ilya’s surcoat, slicing it into strips, the soldiers relaxed and, maintaining their guard, let her alone.
So while Rusudani was married to Janos in the flickering light, serenaded by the rustle of armor and the expectant mass of victorious soldiers looking on, Stefan eased Ilya out of his blood-stained armor and bound the wound in his side. Blood leaked and slowed and was covered under red silk. Ilya breathed harshly, in and out, his gaze fixed on the swaying of the presbyter’s odd hat.
“Not good,” breathed Stefan finally, “but not as bad as I feared.” He glanced toward the altar and caught Jaelle’s eye. She still knelt, halfway between the clot of jaran and the altarstone itself, trying to look unobtrusive. Now she sidled over slowly toward them, seeking safety in their company. When she came close enough, Stefan put out a hand and touched her arm, comforting, and she smiled wanly at him and closed her other hand over his, and held on.