Kate Elliott - Jaran

"Excuse me," said Bakhtiian abruptly, and he left.

' 'Tess.'' Fedya reached up and gently drew her hand down from her face. "In the morning, it will not seem so terrible."

And in the morning, it did not.

In the morning, Niko rode out with her and Bakhtiian. They circled back but found nothing, from which both men concluded that the trailing scout had veered off. Around noon, coming back to the copse and spring they had left that morning, they spotted the jahar away to their left where, Tess thought, they surely should not be. The range of hills dwindled away in front to the familiar flatness of plain. The three of them dismounted and crouched on the height, the horses downslope behind them.

Tess saw their jahar out on the plain. But the riders still in the hills-another jahar. Closing quickly, too quickly, with their position.

"Niko," said Bakhtiian crisply. "Get our jahar to cover. I'll delay them. We're not ready for a battle, not yet." But Niko did not answer, was already on his horse and riding.

"How long until they reach the spring?" Tess asked.

"Not long enough, although they may stop to water the horses. That can't be Doroskayev. They can't know we're so close, or they'd not be pacing themselves… Why are you still here?" He stared at her as if he had just seen her. "Follow Niko."

"What are you going to do?"

"Decoy them back the way they've come."

"But once they see you, they'll know your jahar is near. How many will bother to follow a lone man?"

"If that man is Ilyakoria Bakhtiian, quite a few."

She glanced to where his remount stood, a stocky tar-pan. "They'll catch you."

"I'll ride Myshla. They won't catch us. Now, woman. Go."

Tess jumped up and ran back to the horses, grabbed the tarpan's reins, and mounted Myshla, kicking the mare even before her seat was stable.

"Damn it," Bakhtiian yelled, rising. "Get back here!"

"I suggest you get down in that copse and hide. And hurry."

He took two stiff steps toward her. "Damn you, Soerensen. This doesn't concern you. I said-"

"You're wrong. I need to get to Jeds, urgently. If you stay there, they'll run you down." She reined Myshla farther away. "You'd better go. We haven't got much time. Trust me."

She turned Myshla and cantered down the slope to the copse, the remounts trailing behind. How to throw them off the scent, how? She tethered the two horses securely to a tree and pulled off the distinctive jahar saddles, obscuring them with the saddlebags. She ripped open her saddlebags, cursing under her breath; everything was jaran, everything. Why hadn't she even brought a change of clothing from the ship?

"Oh, God, Tess, you're in for it now." What was it she had once said about maenads and madness? Sometimes you had to choose all or nothing. And sometimes your weakness became your strength. All at once she knew what to do.

She strewed all her belongings about, piling them into disarray so that their provenance might be concealed. She took her blanket and ran back into the nearest screen of trees and awkwardly-for who knew where Bakhtiian was now-took off her tunic and trousers and wrapped herself in her cloak. It was difficult enough to go out there clad in her underclothes, underneath the cloak, but she had to trust what she knew of jaran culture. The white blouse Nadezhda Martov had given her was generic enough, seen from a distance, so she drenched it in the spring and dampened her Earth-made tunic and trousers and retreated to the edge of the trees, hanging the clothing over bushes to dry. She unlaced her boots and left them by the clothes, but not before stuffing her bracelets inside them; hid the saber and knife under the saddles, but kept the Chapalii knife with her, and finally rolled out her bedroll at the edge of the screen of trees and sat down on it. Nervously she fingered her necklace, the pewtar ankh from Sojourner.

The branches of one lopsided tree scraped incessantly against the trunk of another. On the other side of the water hole, the low rock Bakhtiian had sat on last night lay naked and dark in the midday sun. There was no sign of him. She prayed that he had taken refuge deep in the farthest screen of trees. She touched the hilt of the knife and withdrew her hand. Her palms were slick with sweat.

Then came the sound of hooves, pounding along the earth.

There were at least forty of them, scarlet shirts with low collars and banded cuffs, black trousers cut fuller than those of Bakhtiian's men but clearly jaran. They pulled up, undeniably amazed. She leapt to her feet with a cry of surprise, managing to almost let her cloak fall without actually revealing anything.

By the looks on their faces when the cloak slipped, she knew she would succeed.

"Why have you come back?" she cried in Rhuian. She clutched her cloak with both hands, pinning it closed at her chest. "You said you were going to the great temple of the goddess. You cannot have gotten there and back so soon."

A good three dozen or more men stared at her, and she suddenly doubted herself. She was utterly vulnerable to them except for the Chapalii knife belted over her underclothes, a weapon she had never used and was not certain she could use. How could she be sure Garii was the least bit trustworthy? Wind pulled up one corner of her cloak, revealing a glimpse of knee. As if it were a signal, the men's gazes flicked away one by one, and most of them colored as they looked at anything but her. Her hands gripped the cloth more tightly and she forced herself to breathe slowly. It had to work, it could still work, and yet it all rested on this: manners, custom.

A hurried consultation began among the leading rank of riders. She used its cover to look them over as surreptitiously as possible: like all jaran, most of these riders were light-haired and fair-complexioned with a sprinkling of darker ones throughout, but she recognized none of them, only the characteristic scarlet shirts boasting embroidered sleeves and collars and black trousers and boots that proclaimed these to be jahar riders.

Finally three of the men dismounted and walked slowly toward her. They kept their eyes averted. The grass made a low whispering sound as they passed through it. The first, a man of Bakhtiian's age, tall and very fair and unusually handsome even for a man of the jaran, glanced at her frequently but did not meet her gaze. The other two men were older. The man on the right had a sullen, angry expression, and he regarded her with the most direct gaze, suspicious of her. He looked like the kind of man who is suspicious of all people. The third man, in the middle, was the oldest, his fair hair silvering, his shoulders bowed, his expression that of a man harassed beyond all bearing. When the other two halted a decent two body-lengths from her, he came forward another three steps and stopped.

"Do you speak khush?" he asked.

Tess shrank back a step, feigning confusion.

"What is a woman doing out here on her own?" said the sullen man. "Do you think she's from that khaja town? She may recognize us."

The middle-aged man hunched his shoulders even more, frowning. "She may recognize you, Leotich. My men had nothing to do with that idiotic raid. Could you understand what she said, Vasil?" This to the blond.

An auspicious time to break in. "Who are you?" Tess asked in Rhuian. "You are not the men I talked to before."

Vasil tilted his head, thinking hard. "Something about men. But she speaks too quickly."

"But it is this-Rhu-an?"

"I think so."

Tess shrank further into her cloak and spoke very slowly and with precise enunciation. "Can you understand me?"