Jaran

by Kate Elliott

  He jumped up and ran off, holding his shoulder, making no attempt to conceal himself. Tess was halfway to her feet, hand on her saber, before she remembered Bakhtiian’s warning. She swore and dropped back down to the ground. Lord, did she really think she could use a saber against one of these men? She shook with adrenaline.

  After a time the trembling stopped. She was unharmed. She lifted her head to look around. A shape fled against the landscape, catching her eye. Two hunched figures ran up the far slope to disappear over the crest. Three forms detached themselves from the hill, just below the far crest, and ran down. From a trench in the dip, five figures rose to intercept them. A flash of metal, so brief that she was not sure she had seen it, and the sight of struggling, the more eerie for its quiet: a pained grunt, the thud of a weight hitting the ground, the thin, distinct tone of sabers touching now and now and—a pause—now.

  Eight forms moved, but three were constrained and one limped. Silence descended for a time, overruled once by the sound of running feet and again by an assembly of sabers talking all at once, out of her sight, seeming sentient in the way their conversation varied, first fast, then slow, then a flurry and, last, a silence when the conversation ended. A quick staccato of words penetrated the stillness, then suddenly cut off.

  Nothing stirred. Her back prickled as if several thousand insects crawled up and down it. She forced herself to breathe slowly, in and out, in and out. Don’t think about it. Don’t be scared. There was only the hushed wind and the mute stars and the coarse dust harsh against her skin.

  She felt him there before she saw him, flat on his stomach where he slid in beside her. She gasped. Her hands clutched pebbles.

  “Oh, God.” She shut her eyes and opened her hands. “You scared me.”

  “By the gods. You stabbed him. You can sit up if you want to. We captured them all.”

  “What did they want?”

  “To kill me, of course.” Bakhtiian’s voice was calm.

  She remembered, suddenly, violently, the man in his own tribe whom he had executed. “Are you going to kill them?” she asked, in a whisper, and she felt sick with apprehensive horror as she said it.

  “Not this time. They’ll serve my cause better alive. For now. We’ll tie them up and leave them here.” He was still lying on his stomach. “Except Doroskayev.” He chuckled. “He’s the one you stabbed.”

  “That’s a funny name. ‘Scar-sight’?”

  “He got a bad wound some years ago to his right eye. Never forgave me for it.” Bakhtiian laughed. “A pretty piece of work with your knife. Yuri got it back for you.”

  “I’m not hurt,” said Tess stiffly.

  “Of course not. No jaran man would harm a woman. What a thought. I know they do in Jeds.”

  “Oh, no. In Jeds, jaran men don’t hurt women either.”

  Bakhtiian laughed again. Tess had never seen him so jolly. It made her nervous. There was a moment’s silence before he jumped to his feet. “By the gods, I’m tired.”

  “Was anyone hurt, of ours?”

  “Ours?” She could not see his face but felt his grin. “Ours, indeed.” He put out a hand and, when she took it, pulled her to her feet. She dropped his hand and brushed off her clothing. “Josef Raevsky got a wound in the thigh, but it isn’t serious. Kirill got a cut across the arm. By the gods, why are we standing here, woman?”

  He set off for camp, Tess walking beside him.

  “Bakhtiian.” They reached the crest and started down into the little camp, where a number of men lay tied up near the campfire, Bakhtiian’s riders clustered around them. Gazing down at the prisoners, Bakhtiian had the grin of a satisfied and well-fed predator. He looked at her. “What does this mean?” She said the name Doroskayev had called her.

  He stopped quite short, and finally made a slight, coughing sound. “Forgive me. No man will ever explain that to you.”

  “My God.” She smiled. “Then I’ll have to ask Sonia.”

  “No woman ought to know that word,” said Bakhtiian sternly, “but if one does, then doubtless that one is Sonia.” They both laughed.

  Descending to the camp, he guided her directly to her tent, avoiding the captives. “It will be better if those men never know you are with us. My riders will say nothing.”

  “But Doroskayev saw me.”

  “One does not always believe what Doroskayev says. And perhaps you now understand why you must always wear your saber, and keep it by your side when you sleep. Now, if you will excuse me.” He gave her a curt bow, but the gesture was not entirely mocking.

  She watched him fade into the night, and then knelt to enter her tent. A closed, private refuge seemed suddenly desirable, and safe. A foot scuffed the grass. She jumped back and whirled. A Chapalii stood behind her, not five paces from her. He bowed, formal.

  “Cha Ishii,” she began, and then realized abruptly that this was not Ishii at all.

  “Lady Terese. I beg your pardon for this rash intrusion. Perhaps you will condescend to allow me to introduce myself.”

  She stared for a moment, amazed by his audacity. By his inflections, he ranked as a merchant’s offspring, of that class one step below the nobility. Why had he come with Cha Ishii’s expedition? The last dregs of fear and adrenaline from the skirmish melted away, seared into oblivion by her need to know what Ishii was doing here, and what it meant to her brother. “You may.” She set her hands together, palm over palm, in that arrangement known as Imperial Patience.

  He bowed, acknowledging her generosity. “I am Hon Garii Takokan. I beg your indulgence.” She waited, curious. “I was distraught to discover that these savages with whom we ride were to engage in violence this very night, but far more was I distressed to know that you, Lady Terese, perforce must face such dangers unarmed.”

  “You are well spoken, for a merchant’s son, Hon Garii.”

  “I have studied to improve myself, Lady Terese,” he answered, slipping in two inflections that skirted the bounds of impropriety, hinting that he had, perhaps, some connection with noble blood in him. “If I may be allowed to say as much.”

  “You may.”

  “Therefore.” He stopped short, glancing furtively behind and to each side. “If you will condescend to permit me to present you with this gift.”

  Tess considered. Giving gifts in the Chapalii culture was a gesture loaded with implied obligations and serious consequences. But her curiosity got the better of her, so she held out her hand to receive it.

  He handed her a knife, bowed, and slipped quickly away, not even waiting for her thanks. She held it up. And stared.

  This was not a knife. Certainly, it looked like a knife; it had a hilt and a blade. But twin points of light peeped from the crosshilts, and when she held the blade, it felt warm to her touch. This was something more, far more. That this was Chapalii-manufactured, a Chapalii weapon made to look like a native thing, she did not doubt for an instant. Like the tents. It took no great leap of imagination to guess that this was some kind of energy gun. No wonder Ishii was not concerned about these savages’ petty little wars. With such a weapon, one person standing alone could obliterate Bakhtiian’s jahar before they got close enough to put her in danger.

  “But I wonder,” she said to herself, tucking the knife into her belt and crawling into the sanctity of her tent, “I wonder if Ishii knows that Garii has given this to me.” It disturbed her very much to suspect that he did not.

  Chapter Eight

  “Thou shalt inquire into everything.”

  —PARMENIDES OF ELEA

  TWO DAYS LATER THEY deposited Doroskayev in the middle of a stretch of featureless flat lands, the hills a dark billow to the northeast. Tess and Bakhtiian tracked him that afternoon as he walked back toward his comrades, who had been trussed and tied and left by the water hole to wait in sullen expectation for their release. Finally, Bakhtiian reined in his horse on a rise. Tess stared down at the solitary figure, whose face was indeed disfigured by an ugly scar over his right eye.
It seemed a short enough time ago that she had stumbled, alone and scared and determined, through grass that scraped constantly at her legs. Now it merely brushed the soles of her boots. They turned their horses southwest and caught up with the jahar by evening.

  It might have been dull, this riding day after day, week after week, across a land as routine as their daily tasks, but it was spring, and spring was a joy, and the life itself was new, like a language that needed learning. Tess could never resist the lure of an unknown tongue. The sky lifted far above. The land slipped by beneath horses’ hooves. It rained once or twice, but it was no more than an inconvenience. Huge herds of antelopelike animals passed them, heading north in a frenzy of bawling and mewling, and on many days Fedya brought in a fresh kill. The other riders foraged for modhal, a tuber they mashed and shared equally between men and horses, and nekhal, a reedy grass whose shoots were edible. They mixed these with mare’s milk and with the hard bread and dried meat brought from the tribe. The Chapalii ate sparingly of this diet, and if they ate anything else in their tents at night, Tess was none the wiser.

  So it was that when, one afternoon as Tess and Bakhtiian scouted the wake of a passing herd, they saw five women riding southward with their day’s catch, Bakhtiian hailed the hunters and spoke with them while Tess hung back and watched.

  “I know this tribe,” he said when he returned. “We’ll stop a few days with them.”

  They returned immediately to the jahar. At the first good campsite, a small lake ringed with scrubby trees and a profusion of flowering bushes, Bakhtiian called a halt for the night.

  “Why don’t we just go on today if this tribe is so close?” Tess asked Yuri as they walked to the lake’s edge. She batted away a swarm of insects, ducked her head as they returned, and retreated from the reedy shore.

  Yuri laughed at her and strolled on. It had become the jahar witticism to call them dhal and khal, the twins, because they spent so much time together. Tess liked it because she saw in it an acceptance of her place in the jahar: she was one of them, not one of the pilgrims.

  “There are courtesies,” Yuri explained when she caught up with him, “when one tribe comes upon another. Some people might not observe them, but Bakhtiian is very traditional. Now they have warning to know we are coming.” He grinned. “And Vladimir can polish his stones so his necklaces can gleam brighter and impress the young women.”

  “Poor Vladimir.”

  Yuri looked at her consideringly. “Have you ever really spoken with Vladimir?”

  “No. I think he avoids me. But then, you and Kirill and the others scarcely make him welcome.”

  “A horse ridden too hard,” said Yuri in khush, “is a horse ruined.” He added, in Rhuian, “If Vladimir is not welcome, look to him, not to us. We’d better teach you to dance, Tess. There’s sure to be a dance in Bakhtiian’s honor. It would look odd if we kept you to ourselves. Though how much we can teach you in one afternoon…”

  “I’ve danced before,” said Tess, but the image that came to her, thinking of her folk dancing club at the university, was unwelcome: that night, when Jacques—so cowardly that he had to choose a public place, where pride constrained her from reacting with real emotion—had told her their engagement was over, broken, while they were dancing the last waltz of the evening.

  “Are you all right?” Yuri touched her on the arm.

  “No, I’m fine. Just hungry. Fedya didn’t bring in a kill today, did he? He shouldn’t be the only one who hunts. I want to practice archery while it’s light. We can dance with a fire. I’m going to get good enough with the bow to do some hunting.”

  Yuri laughed at her vehemence. “You’ll ruin my good name. Very well. But you have to get Sonia’s bow. Meet me over there.”

  The minutes she spent fetching the bow and arrows gave her time to regain her composure. Damn Jacques, anyway; he wasn’t worth agonizing over. But her anger carried over into her first course, and she shot poorly. Yuri sighed, fetched the arrows and readjusted the four ribbons tied for the target at varying heights around the tree trunk.

  “You did better than that with Sonia,” he chided.

  While he shot, Tess watched the water birds as they paddled aimlessly back and forth on the pond and with no warning upended and dove under the surface, vanishing, without even a ripple, for so long that one’s breath stopped until they suddenly resurfaced in a flurry of wings and water somewhere else. Submerged—that was the word that haunted her. She had been submerged in Charles’s life since the day she was born. She had never been herself, but always his sister, his heir, doing his work.

  “Three out of five,” said Yuri proudly. “Let’s see you match that.” Returning with the arrows, he handed the bow to her. She aimed and hit.

  “There. Is Doroskayev the only dyan riding against Bakhtiian?”

  “He’s one of the few left. Roskhel is dead now. Veselov—Ilya won him over. Zukhov, Boradin, Makhov. They’re all dead, too. Boradin and Makhov died in the battle at the khayan-sarmiia. Ilya shouldn’t have won that battle because they outnumbered him, but he did. Doroskayev only hates Ilya because he hates Ilya, if you see what I mean. But his tribe is small. There is one dyan left, Dmitri Mikhailov, who commands a jahar large enough and dangerous enough to threaten us. But we haven’t seen him for two summers. I think he’s given up.”

  Tess nocked another arrow and drew. “What about the tribal Elders? The women?”

  “War is men’s business.”

  “Meaning women are left to clean up.” She shot, missing the tree entirely.

  “It’s your concentration.” Yuri rested one hand on the back of his neck. She drew again, steadying herself. “Ilya could never have united the jaran without the approval of the Elders. After all, his own mother was the first Elder he had to convince, and if he could convince her, he could convince anyone.” Tess shot and hit. “Do you know,” Yuri added, “when a person stands so still, you see them best. Like your eyes. I never knew eyes could be the color of gorad leaves. Such a green.”

  Her fourth and fifth arrows hit true. Yuri shot and hit five times along the length of the tree. “You’re better at this than you think,” she said when he returned with the arrows.

  “For a man. It comes of having four sisters. But I always liked archery better than saber.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Yuri!” Kirill called to them from the shore of the lake. He strode over and stopped to stare at the younger man. “You’re not actually practicing that, are you?”

  Yuri hastily handed the bow to Tess, who turned to face Kirill with one hand on her hip. “If you practiced, we might eat fresh meat more often.”

  Kirill had a careless air about him that belied his authority among the younger men. “It isn’t a man’s weapon, but it’s true, on such a long trip, we would eat better. I know.” He smiled. “We’ll have a contest.”

  “I don’t like this,” muttered Yuri.

  But the young riders took quickly to the idea: ten shots each. Mikhal immediately took the lead, with seven mid-hits, but this was blamed on his willingness when courting Sonia to go hunting with her.

  Eventually Bakhtiian came up. Tess, finishing, found herself with five mid-hits, third behind Mikhal and Yuri. “Do you want a turn?” she asked Bakhtiian, made bold by her success.

  “Gods, contest with the rest of us, and with a woman’s weapon?” asked Kirill.

  Bakhtiian’s face shuttered as he looked past Tess at Kirill. Birds landed on the lake, wings skittering. Kirill returned Bakhtiian’s scrutiny with an even gaze. No one spoke.

  “Very well.” Bakhtiian accepted the bow from Tess. “I would never disparage a woman’s prowess in archery, especially not if she had bow in hand. Not unless I had a very long head start.”

  Everyone laughed except Kirill, who turned and left. Tess felt tension that she had not known was there leave her throat. Bakhtiian stood perfectly still, entirely concentrated. The dark waves of his hair matched his intens
e eyes and severe expression. With his arm drawn back, the curve of the bow framing him, he could have been the god of the hunt, caught forever in the instant before death. All ten shots hit between the middle ribbons.

  Kirill returned, and he brought Fedya with him. Fedya was neither for nor against joining the contest. Kirill insisted.

  “You don’t have to,” said Tess.

  Fedya shrugged. “I don’t have the energy to refuse.” He was one of the shorter riders, stocky without stoutness, with long blond hair caught back in a single braid. Alone among the men he wore a second braid, a horse-tail pinned into his hair. He also habitually wore an expression that suggested that he knew the one, awful secret of man’s doom but was kind enough to hide it from everyone else. “I don’t mind. After all, I’m the only one here who can outshoot Bakhtiian.” The look he gave Kirill was ironic. But he also hit ten mid-shots.

  It was growing dark. Tasha, at the fire, called to them that the food was ready. Tess did not follow the others, and Yuri sat with her, finding pebbles to toss into the pond.

  “I like it here,” Tess said finally, watching the birds dive.

  Yuri glanced at her but did not reply. The shifting greens and yellows of leaves stirred in the twilight breeze. Several birds flapped their wings, spraying water, and then settled.

  “Fedya’s as good as some of the women. I thought men never practiced archery.”

  “Fedya doesn’t need to practice. He sings to the bow, and it responds.”

  “He looks as if he knows the wrongs of the world.”

  “Fedya was touched by the gods as a child. What he knows, he’ll never tell.”

  They rose and walked slowly toward the fire. This close, the breeze brought the spicy scent of Tasha’s vegetable stew to her. Stars bloomed one by one in the darkening sky. “Do you mean to say…” Tess hesitated, then began again in a lower voice. “That Fedya never boasts, or—”

  “If you mean, does he talk about his lovers, no, he doesn’t. For all anyone knows, he hasn’t gone off with a woman since his wife died. If you made up to him, no one would ever find out through him.”