Kate Elliott - Jaran

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 breath 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.

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.