Tim Leach - A Winter War

‘And you shall make a home with Kai there?’ he said carefully.

She laughed at him. ‘It is a wearisome thing, to be in love with young men. I am glad to have left those times behind me. You do not have lovers in Rome?’

‘We do.’

‘Well, it is just so. A thing of a season. He will find a young wife, and perhaps I will find an old lover, and that shall be the end of it.’

The Roman hesitated. ‘Perhaps it would be better to ride east, rather than west.’

‘There are tribes beyond the mountains that would not welcome us. This is a hard land, but it is our home.’ She raised her head proudly. ‘And your people give us good raiding beyond the Danu. The Red Crests will forget us, and all shall be as it was before.’

He did not answer.

‘There is talk,’ she said, watching him carefully. ‘That the Romans mean to cross the Danu this year. You think it more than talk?’

‘There is no knowing the mind of the Emperor. But there is a great anger in my people, when they are roused to it.’

‘You speak of them as though they are not your kin.’

‘I do forget it, sometimes.’ And he looked out across the plains – the low sun dancing across the frosted grass, that beautiful light that makes the earth seem touched with fire. ‘This is a place to inspire forgetting.’

There was more to be spoken – she could see the Roman’s hunger for it, having spent so long a wordless prisoner. And she could feel that longing too, for here was one to whom she had no ties. It would be like speaking to a spirit glimpsed in a mirror, the way that the seers did. But she could see Tomyris riding back towards them, drooping in the saddle from a hard day upon the practice fields, could hear Kai stirring in the tent nearby. And so she set to tending the cooking fire, and let the moment pass.

Late in the day, they huddled under blankets by the embers of the fire, the earthy smell of the meal still thick in the air – grass and bone, and whatever other scraps they could find to make the watery stew. Arite leaned back against Kai, felt the warmth of his neck against her face, and watched the others across the fire.

A mirrored image of a kind – Tomyris and Lucius sat close together, sleeping upright. Something had changed between them. No longer was he a prisoner to be watched, it seemed, and so with the instant and wordless forgiveness of the child she no longer hovered about him when he worked with the herd. She took it upon herself to teach him the ways of the nomads, for while he knew much of horses he knew none of the subtle arts of the steppe. They made a strange pair amidst the camp, her berating him furiously while he patiently nodded and followed the commands of a girl half his height, lighting fires with bone and dung and scavenging together for the little herbs and flowers that lurked beneath the frost.

Kai stirred a little, and against her skin she felt the thrum of his throat as he spoke. ‘One might almost think them brother and sister, don’t you think?’

‘If one were half blind,’ she answered. ‘But they do have something of that urgent, quarrelling kind of love.’

A pause. ‘What do you think Laimei meant, by summoning me to that circle?’

‘More than hate, if that is what you are asking.’

‘You truly think so?’

‘She does hate you, Kai. But there is more to it than that.’

‘Yes, there is.’ She felt him shift, move, hold her a little tighter. ‘I think that she means to teach me something. But I cannot tell what it is.’

Silence, for a time. Somewhere distant, a keening cry of mourning broke out over the camp – another dead from a winter fever, or a wound gone rotten. From another fire close by, the sound of laughter, the smell of hemp smoke twisting into the air. For it was festival and funeral all at once, it seemed, in the campground of the Sarmatians.

She took his hand in hers, turning its palm towards the ground and tracing across the back of it. Her skin rough and calloused, first from the spear, and later from the work of herd and field.

‘Some charm you mark there?’ he said.

‘No. I just enjoy the feel of the skin. I had forgotten what it was, to have a young lover.’ She felt him go tense behind her. ‘Was it a thing of pity,’ she said, ‘that passed between us? You may say if it was. I am no heartsick girl.’

‘No, it was not a thing of pity. You are beautiful.’ Kai hesitated. ‘I think of him. That is all.’

‘I think of him too. And somewhere in the Otherlands, I can hear him laughing at this. And he will mock you for it, when you go to meet him beyond. And perhaps he’ll chide me for it, too, when I see him again.’ She turned her head to the side, as though trying to hear some whisper spoken from above. She grinned, and spoke gently to him. ‘Can you hear him laughing?’

‘I think that I can.’

Suddenly she was serious again. ‘It means nothing more, Kai,’ she said. ‘I do not want you to…’

‘Oh, I am not so foolish as you think,’ he said. ‘I do understand.’

‘The feast tonight, for those that go to the west. The fire, and the dance. And after…’

‘And after.’

He caught her face and risked a kiss. For a moment, the stillness of the nomad life stole over her, that sense of all things in their right place. A fire and family before her, a man at her side, the enemy far distant and a journey ahead.

Then, beyond, she saw something that brought her back to the world, that set the river of time flowing once more. Laimei.

She was on her horse, that great one-eyed beast, the two of them circling the edge of the camp. It looked as though she had been riding towards them, but now she stopped short. Her mouth a little parted, as though in surprise. She nodded once, and Arite felt herself marked in some way she could not understand. Witnessed in something forbidden.

But then Laimei turned away – the moment passed. They huddled close for warmth, and together, in silence, they watched the sky, wishing for the sun to fall from the sky, and for the night to begin.

At the heart of the campground, the fire rose in the night.

It was not the kind that had marked the passage of winter, those little smoking fires made just strong enough to warm a foul stew, to stave off the cold biting death that rotted fingers and toes black. All winter the Sarmatians had eked out their fuel as misers, every bone and twist of peat counted, the dung from the horses collected and dried.

This fire was a wild and roaring thing, a pillar of flame reaching up to the sky. No longer had they any need to count and hoard, for soon they would be gone. Nothing would remain of the Sarmatians in that place but ashes, footprints, the furrows of wheel and hoof marked in the ground like sword cuts upon a shield.

They burned it all to give a lightness to the journey ahead, and more than that, there was a defiance in their greed. Reckless strength, the battle joy, the smile before the execution – all came from the same place. For what better way was there to show the gods that one stood unafraid than by excess and plenty? Burn every scrap of fuel and drink every drop of wine. Find more tomorrow, or die.

The air was thick with the smell of cooking meat, the tang of sweat, the babble and chatter and song of a free people. And everywhere, they fought and played. The wrestlers who contended with the art of weight and balance, hacking at heels and twisting arms. Drunken archers loosing at the mark, betting every scrap of iron and gold they had on a single shot of the bow. For everywhere around the fire, little fortunes would be won, lost, traded, and spent before the dawning of the new sun, and the warrior who had begun the night a rich man and left it without a scrap of metal to his name would still be laughing. For still the wheel turned.