Tim Leach - A Winter War

Then a touch at her side, words spoken that she could not hear at first. She opened her eyes and saw Kai there at her side, below her. He had dismounted, clasped one of her hands in both of his.

He said the words once more, and now she could hear them. ‘Will you forgive me?’ he said.

‘For what?’

‘He came back to try to save me. Bahadur. In the battle. He came back for me, and they cut him down. He could have got away. Can you forgive me?’

‘I forgive you. Of course, I forgive you.’ Other words were on her lips as well – He loved you, Kai. And they were true words – how many times had Bahadur said that to her, as they watched Kai herd the cattle or practise with the lance upon the plains, whisper it to her when Kai lay asleep by the fire. Bahadur would watch him, the wild smile on his lips, and speak those words over and over again. She should have said them then, but found she could not. For that was the love that had killed her husband.

‘Where do we go now?’ she said.

His eyes dimmed in pain, and she felt the guilty, quickening touch of revenge. ‘The Romans must be raiding all across the border. We shall go east, to the old winter campgrounds. Those of our people who are left will flee there, I am sure of it. And the Red Crests will not follow us that far.’ A hand tightening around hers for a moment, and then releasing it. ‘I must go and check upon the wounded. Gather your riders at the edge of the river – we cannot stay here for long.’

‘My riders?’

He grinned at her, boyish once more. ‘You are still their captain, are you not?’

‘Yes, I am,’ she said, and found there was still a weary pride in that.

As Kai moved across the battlefield, he might have thought it a festival at first. For all about him were open-toothed smiles, the shy and careful meetings of lovers who had not thought to see one another again. It could have been one of the great conferences of the shepherds were it not for the butcher’s work going on amidst the fallen – wounded Romans having their throats opened onto the snow, and elsewhere men and women swarming over the fallen horses, cutting strips of meat from them and drinking the quick-cooling blood. For they had no food left save for those horses, and many had not eaten in days.

Elsewhere, Kai could see the children being guided amongst the corpses, for it would never do to pass up a chance to pass on the lessons of war. Most of those children were pale, and he saw one or two pulling up handfuls of snow to wipe the vomit from their lips. But all watched as they were instructed, their lips moving as they repeated back what they were taught.

As he moved through the crowd, he made the captain’s count, noting the injured and the dead. There were many wounded, bearing those cuts across arm and cheek that were the mark of a fight between cavalry. Only one of his riders dead that he could see, an unlucky boy with his leg laid open at a gap in the armour, that little place in the thigh that kills a man in moments. His face wearing an expression of utter surprise, as the dead often did. Nearby, his horse circled, one of its flanks painted with blood below the saddle, kicking madly at the air.

The women of the village, unarmoured, had fared worse. Four at least lay dead in the snow, and another lay curled up around some mortal hurt, surrounded by friends who silently watched and waited for her to die. And he could see others gathered around the small still body of a child that seemed to be sleeping on the ice, the face painted red with blood and warped by its wound. Those that watched over her were silent, for now, though he knew the keening would begin soon enough.

Something else he saw there – a gathering circle at the heart of the battlefield, the men and women all unmounted. Only for ritual or duel would such a thing be seen amongst the Sarmatians, and he did not know what he expected to find there, as he pushed forward through the crowd. Two of the hot-headed fighters quarrelling over some fine piece of war gear, or someone struck into a trance by the touch of a god and mouthing prophecies for all to hear. Instead, at the centre of the circle, he saw the Roman captain lying on the ground, his hair and beard a bright reddish gold, his skin grey. And kneeling beside him was Laimei.

He thought at first she meant to take his scalp as a memento of the kill, strip his armour and claim it as her own, though that would not explain why the crowd had gathered so close. But then he saw her hands move, pressing cloth and rag to the wound at his side, or slapping at his face to try to wake him. For he saw now the slightest rise and fall of the chest, the tremor at the lips that spoke of a man still living.

He sidestepped around that circle without breaking it, careful as a duellist, until he stood beside Gaevani. The man stood with his arms folded – his axe daubed in red, but not a fresh mark on him.

‘What is this?’ said Kai.

‘Wish that I could say. The Roman will make a fine kill for her.’ Gaevani whistled through his teeth, and threw up his hands. ‘Trouble is, she does not seem to want to let him die.’

At this, she raised her head and snarled at them, gasping with pain a moment later. She returned to the dying man, her hands moving uncertainly. They went to the oozing wound, to the man’s forehead as though she sought to check for fever, aping the gestures she had seen others make over the sick and wounded many times before. On a horse, with spear or sword in her hand, every motion was precise, considered. It had been a long time since Kai had seen her so utterly at a loss.

Gaevani snorted. ‘She never learned the healer’s art, did she?’

‘No,’ Kai answered. ‘She never had any use for it.’ He risked a few steps forward until he was at her side. Just for a moment, looking on the Roman crest, he felt a ghost of that feeling he had felt before – a flash of white at the edge of his vision, a burning in his throat like swallowed fire.

‘Sister,’ he said, ‘it is no time to be taking prisoners. We cannot feed those we have with us. And this man cannot ride even if he lives. Finish him, and let it be done.’

She inclined her head at him, and levelled a finger at the wounded man on the ground. He remembered the Roman at his side, his horse shying away, the sword rising before him. Her spear snatching the Roman off the horse at the very last moment. He remembered that fear, too, that had come before, and wondered how much she had seen. What she might speak of to the others.

As he knelt beside the Roman, at first he thought it hopeless. A spear to the belly, there could be no answer to that, save for the quick mercy of the knife. But as he knelt down and inhaled deeply, there was not the sharp, acrid smell that usually bloomed from a belly wound like the scent of a rotting flower. He parted the cloth and tested with his fingers – torn flesh and oozing blood, but nothing more than that from the shallow wound. He looked to where the spear lay, daubed with gore. But there was no head upon the spear, just a ragged edge of wood.

‘Broken when you struck him?’ he asked. She nodded.

Kai put his mouth to the wound – finding the splinters with his tongue, working them loose and pulling them out, spitting them upon the snow. When he had finished, his beard was daubed with blood, as though he had partaken of the old rituals of the Scythians, the eaters of the dead. But perhaps the wound would not fester.

He searched for other wounds, and found only one on the man’s forehead, where a black bruise bloomed. Struck on stone or hoof when he fell, no doubt, and Kai did not like the look of it. He had seen men bear such a bruise with laughter, only to be slowly lulled to a sleep from which there was no waking. But he packed snow about the scalp, as his father had taught him long before, and hoped that the man would wake.