Tim Leach - A Winter War

Laughter then, from the pack of riders behind her, and a madness stirring in his heart and on his tongue.

‘I have always heard it takes a brave spear to start a feud, but a braver one to end it,’ he said. ‘I did not take you for a coward.’

‘Oh, you would speak of bravery? A braver man with your tongue than with your sword.’ She favoured him with a hideous grin. ‘Hoping to be my third man, Kai? You’d earn some fame with that honour. But I shall not darken my spear on you.’

‘You had best keep it bright for the Romans. Even you might have your share of blood after this battle.’

‘I doubt that.’

‘Laimei…’ he said, risking her name.

A turn of the wrists, too quick for him to see until it was done, the spear cutting through the air towards him. He leaned back and away, but he had misread her – that was always her art, some trick of the arm or eye, for the attack never came from where one thought it would be. One guarded against the blow of a phantom, only to take the stroke from a warrior of flesh.

She aimed not for him, but for his horse.

The spear came from above like an eagle plummeting to the mark, and his mount staggered beneath him. He thought it a killing blow at first, but the dull crack that sounded in the air told a different story – she struck with the flat of the blade, and not the edge.

A sharp snort of anger, a toss of the head, and Kai’s horse made to rear and strike, to beat to death this enemy who wore the smell and garb of a friend, for a horse hated a traitor just as much as a man would. For one terrible moment Kai wanted to let it happen, for the feud to be over in a flash of hooves and blood upon the ice. But he bore down with his knees and wrenched the reins to the side, while her warband jeered and hooted with laughter.

‘Ride on, little boy,’ said Laimei. ‘Have that touch of the spear as your blessing, and well may it serve you. Or rather, well may it serve your horse, that she may find herself a better rider. I shall waste no charms on you.’

‘This will be the last battle you ride in. Even you shall have had enough blood after today.’

‘When the grey is in my hair, and I can no longer mount a horse or steady a spear, then it will be my time to die. But I shall ride and live longer than you. My spear is cruel, but yours is cursed.’

There were words – he knew there were words that might break the feud. He dreamed it sometimes, as they embraced in forgiveness, raced each other across the plains as they had done when they were children. When he woke he could remember every dancing turn their horses had taken, the pattern of the clouds in the sky, the sound of her laughter. Everything he could remember of that dream, save for the words that had been spoken, the words that might silence the feud.

But then from all about him, the song began. The war song of their people, sung for generations, since the time when they had ridden across the great plain that spanned half the world. A song of victory. First, the deep voices of the men, speaking with the tongues of the ancestors. And then another set of voices joined them, higher and sharper and sweeter. The voices of the women.

For there were other women among the warband. Wrapped thick in furs and armour, an unpractised eye might have mistaken them for young men. Yet they were there, the grandchildren of the Amazons and Scythians, the young women who had not yet earned the three kills that might free them from the warband, and they too sang of war and victory. And when Kai looked back towards the river, he saw what it was that had stirred those voices. Shadows at first, a line of black figures. Then there were the red cloaks dancing in the wind, the great shields and narrow spears, the golden eagles swooping above them in the mist. The Legion had come.

Before he went back to his place, he cast one last look back at Laimei. He thought of the face that lay beneath that helm, the coppery skin marked with nicks and cuts, black hair rough-cropped, chopped away by a dull bronze knife. It was a face that he could see himself at any time, were he to look into a polished copper mirror. A face just like his own.

For what else would one expect, from a brother and a sister?

The battle line was forming, the captains shouting their last orders, riders leaning forward and whispering words of love and encouragement to their horses. Somewhere, there was a speech from Fearless Banadaspus, chieftain of the River Dragon – a distant figure who rode back and forth before his clan of the Sarmatians, bellowing and exhorting and answered by cheers. From that distance it was barely a whisper on the wind. Later, if they won, Kai would learn what had been said. If they lost, it would not matter.

As he rode back to his place, Kai saw the riders passing skins of wine and drinking from them greedily, marking beard and chin with red. Kai had heard tell that his people were thought of as cannibals abroad, the eaters of the dead – surely those stories had begun from a shaking hand that lifted the wineskin before a battle. Here and there, he saw a god-touched man draw a hare from a writhing bag at his waist, slit it open and cast its entrails on the ice, looking for some favourable omen from the gods.

Beneath the banner of the River Dragon, the battleline was forming, each veteran paired with one who had not ridden a charge before. A one-eyed warrior next to a trembling boy, a greybeard whispering words of advice to a woman who had yet to claim a kill. Kai nodded to the rider he had been paired with, a heavy-set girl of sixteen summers. She seemed steadier now – earlier he had smelled the mix of bile and wine on her breath, the sweet and rotten scent of a frightened warrior.

Bahadur was giving last instructions to his son, shifting his grip upon the spear and tightening the ill-fitting armour as best he could. When Kai rode up, Bahadur asked a silent question with his eyes, and Kai answered with a little shake of his head. The older man sucked air through his teeth and tapped his spear against Kai’s weapon, metal ringing on metal. There was nothing to be said.

Out upon the ice, the Romans came not as a wandering horde but in the precise lines and columns that their people seemed to love. Warriors who walked rather than rode – a shameful thing by the code of the Sarmatians, for only cowards and madmen would go upon their own two feet. Many of them were beardless, an army of children so it seemed, though they were children the Sarmatians had learned to fear. Red cloaks, plumed helms, and everywhere, the cold glitter of iron. On the links of the mail that they wore, on the thin spears, the rounded pommels of their swords and the curves of their helms. A fortune in iron, out upon the ice, and above them, the standards almost obscured in the mist, the golden eagles flew.

The Legion drew still. No war cries or death songs rose from the Roman ranks, for that was not their way. They fought in near silence, save for the sound of drum and horn and whistle to signal a change in formation, to advance or retreat. They were passionless killers.

The speeches of chieftains and captains died away, the last words of advice and command fell silent. The horsemen waited, the Romans waited, the only sound the calling of the wind and the chatter of the ice.

Against his palms, Kai felt the weight of the spear, the feel of the wood. A memory came, of finding his way through the forests of the northlands, one hand pushing past the trees, the other twined about the hand of a lover. He felt that ache, that longing for love that only the warrior knows before a battle, that last moment when life is at its sweetest.

Then a sharp, clear image came to his mind, of a child. A carved toy made by Bahadur in her hand, a half-toothed smile, as she looked up and caught sight of him. His daughter, Tomyris, somewhere far to the east. A greater love, then, to look upon her, the mad urge to stir his horse forward and sweep the dream figure from the ground, to hold her close and never let her go. She seemed to call to him, but her words were not her own – it was the chanted roar of those soon to kill and to die that he heard, that brought him from his mind and back to the ice.