Tim Leach - A Winter War

‘Speak then,’ said Kai, once there were none but the horses who would hear them. ‘Though I think I know what you wish to say.’

Gaevani did not hesitate. ‘You should not still be captain.’

Kai hooked his thumbs in his sword belt. ‘Yes. I do know your words already.’

‘It was to be to Iolas, and no further.’ He looked to Laimei. ‘She knows it, too.’

‘And there is no village left,’ Kai said. ‘Or should I hand my captaincy to the ashes?’

‘Clever, aren’t you? I suppose you speak all your oaths with that fancy tongue of yours. Swearing in riddles that you shall never have to keep.’

‘You have an oath of your own to keep. Sworn not on a riddle, but a sword. Keep your silence. On your—’

‘Yes, yes. On my oath.’ Gaevani kicked at the frozen ground. When he looked up again, in the dark his eyes were two dark hollows, like the gaze of an eyeless corpse. ‘I should have spoken the truth around the fire that first night,’ he said. ‘Before you swore me to silence.’

‘Yes, you should have. But you did not.’ A softer voice, then, such as Kai might have used to calm his daughter. ‘Listen, Gaevani, I do not keep this for my vanity,’ he said, as he tapped the captain’s mark on his chest, the emblem of sword and circle. ‘But so that they may have someone to follow.’

‘There are others who can lead.’

‘No, there are not. You are a shamed man to them. And the others are lost, no captain there amongst them.’

The other man tried to point, by instinct, with the arm that was wounded. He hissed with pain: ‘They would follow her.’

In her silence, Kai had almost forgotten Laimei. She had stood with her arms crossed, almost still. Just a gentle rock back and forth on the heels, such as a confident wrestler will make before a bout begins.

‘They would,’ he said. And then to his sister: ‘The captaincy is yours, if you want it. And if you can speak.’

She looked from one man to the other, gave a little shrug, a little backhanded cut of one hand through the air. Then she folded her arms once more.

‘When she speaks,’ said Kai, ‘I am your captain no more. When we find the others—’

‘If we do.’

‘If we do not, it shall not much matter who is captain or not, no?’

A pause. Then Gaevani said: ‘Not much choice you give me, is there?’

‘No.’

‘It shames me to be led by you. The others would be shamed, too. If they knew of your father—’

There was someone else there, close by. All three of them knew it at once, with the touch of cold at the back of the neck, that ghostly feeling of being watched as the horses turned and muttered towards a shadow in the darkness. And when Kai called to that shadow, it was Tamura who stepped forward, the moonlight shining upon her pale face. How long she might have been there, Kai could not say. Nor how much she had heard.

‘Forgive me, captain,’ she said. ‘One of the sentries thought she saw something. Maybe smoke from a fire, to the north and the east.’

‘You did well to bring this to me,’ said Kai. ‘We shall head that way tomorrow. The gods offer us good hunting.’ He hesitated. ‘Gaevani, go back to the fire. Laimei, Tamura, you stay a moment longer.’

A muttering in the dark, and Gaevani was on his way, short, quick, furious strides that took him close past Laimei. Too close, for there was a ringing slap as she cuffed the back of his head, hard enough that the horses tossed their manes and snorted at the sound. Gaevani turned, teeth shining and his fingers drifting towards his belt, but he checked himself – Laimei’s hand was already on the blade at her side. Gaevani backed up, palms towards her, a sour smile on his face as he walked away.

When Kai looked to Tamura, even in the dark, she could only hold his gaze for a moment before her eyes went to the ground. ‘You can move quietly,’ said Kai. ‘I shall have to remember that when I need a scout.’

‘I was always the scout on the cattle raids,’ Tamura said. ‘Before the war.’ She looked at her hands. ‘I was never much use with a spear, but they found other uses for me.’

‘You did not have the skill for the killing, or the heart for it?’

‘Maybe a little of both. I have never been brave.’ A head raised, then dropped once more, the slow fall of shame. ‘I have never told anyone that before. Please do not tell the others.’

‘I will not,’ said Kai. For he knew all too well that the Sarmatians were not kind to those whose courage faltered. ‘We have both heard secrets tonight,’ he said. ‘Or I suppose you have heard half of mine.’

‘I did not mean to hear what I should not.’

‘I know.’

He put his hand to her shoulder. ‘I will tell you the other half soon, I promise. But not today. It is no story for the hunt, but for the fire at the end of the journey.’

She nodded and smiled shyly, like a lover trusted with a secret.

‘Go back now,’ Kai said. ‘You ride at my side in the morning.’

And she was gone, hurrying away, leaving Kai alone with his sister.

They shared a silence for a time. Distant, the muttering from the campfire. Closer, the sound of the horses shifting and moving in their own unspoken counsel. And all about them, the calling of the wind rolling across the steppe.

‘I was not lying to him,’ Kai said at last, ‘when I promised you the captaincy. When you can speak—’

A hiss interrupted him, a hand held up, palm towards him. He saw her swallow, her tongue dart out across dry lips. And then, she spoke.

‘Can talk.’ She winced – the words had forced her wounded mouth a touch too wide. ‘Little. Gaevani. Spared him. Why?’

‘Something Bahadur always said. That we would be the greatest people in the world, if only the five clans were united. I have seen enough of Sarmatians killing each other.’ Kai looked down to his right hand, let the hand clench and relax as though it were winding around the hilt of a sword. ‘You can speak. Enough to lead, if you want to. You never needed fine words for others to believe in you.’

‘No. Soon. Not yet.’

‘Why not?’

She cocked her head to the side, asked a question in silence.

Kai spoke again. ‘Why not take this from me?’

She pointed at him. ‘Fought. For me.’

‘And you did the same for me.’

She rolled her eyes, gave a little hiss of irritation, and Kai had to catch himself before he smiled. He remembered that gesture, too, from a long time ago. An ache, low in his belly. For the feud between them had been so long, that he had almost forgotten how once they had spoken. In word and gesture and look, the private, secret language of brother and sister.

‘Owed you,’ she said. ‘No more.’

He slipped a glove from his hand, tapped a bronze ring with his finger. ‘Our father would be proud of you.’

At once, Kai knew he had misspoken. Her foot scraped across the thin snow as she shifted to a swordsman’s stance, her head dropping low and her shoulders rolling forward.

‘Me,’ she said. ‘Not you.’

‘You are right. He would not be proud of me.’

Her mouth twitched and for a moment he thought that she might speak again. Wounding words, or words meant to kill, for she had that murderous light on her face that always came before rough talk or swordplay. But she did not speak – perhaps to wait for another time when she might wound him more deeply, and have others there to see the wounding.

She was away then, back into the darkness and then to the fire, her silhouette lit by the low flames for a moment before she took her place with the others.

Kai did not follow her, for he knew there would be no sleep for him. He made his way amongst the horses, his hands outstretched as though he were feeling his way through the woods in the dark. A few stamped and snorted when they found him in their midst, but soon they settled, there was the soft touch of a nose against his neck. He inhaled the sweet stink of horse, and felt the warmth they gave together, the strange heat of the herd that was stronger than any fire he had ever known, for it must have been long before men and women had first struck fire that the horses had kept themselves warm through the winter. Kai leaned back and wrapped his arm around the neck of the horse that stood silent behind him.