Tim Leach - A Winter War

The crowds gathered about great bowls of watered wine, as big as tables. Every so often a great cry would go up, as some young rider would step up on the edge of the bowl, seeking to dance about the rim without spilling a drop of it as the old heroes were said to have done. Most barely made half a dozen steps before they were toppling off and tumbling with hoots of laughter, howling like wolves at the half-moon above them. Further back, shifting about the fire were those who danced in shifting circles, those arcing loops that the Sarmatians so loved, twisting and turning and never-ending.

Into the crowd Kai went, a swimmer into the water. No longer the marked man, the outsider, the shamed. In the darkness, his face lit by only the occasional flash of firelight, he was but another one of the people, and even those that knew him still smiled and greeted him as a brother. All was forgiven for one night alone.

They had gathered at the edge of the world and made ready to enter a new one. No longer an army or a nation, but something still remaining. A fragment of a people, a last ember of a fire. They had all been killers, out to the west. But now they gathered as children, as playful and fickle as the young. And in many of them – those who were new newly blooded in the warband, those who had lost their families to war and fever, the brilliant, the lonely – there was something else. A kind of pleading in their eyes, as they waited for the moment of the choosing.

For Kai knew that was the edge of the blade that glittered amidst that reckless joy, the unseen spear point that pricked at each of those who drank and danced around the fire. The question that remained unanswered – who was to be honoured, and who would not. And he knew that pleading look was in his eyes, too, the longing in the heart.

The time came when the songs fell silent and the games of hand and foot ceased. For they were coming through the crowds, silent as ghosts – even the great chieftains gave way before them, all their gold and their rank counting as nothing before those who walked.

They were the ones honoured already, their faces daubed with white paint. The light of the fire glittered across the scales of the armour – the dull sheen of fire across horn for the most part, but here and there the sharp light of fire upon polished iron. For while the rest of the revellers wore the belted jackets and leather trousers of the traveller, they alone came dressed for war. The champions, those who had killed bravely.

This was their moment. Not the ugly death that might await them in the west, impaled on the tip of a Roman spear, pulled to the ground and hacked apart, or festering from a rotten wound. Here, in this place, witnessed before the people – this was the feeling that they were willing to trade their lives for. And so there were others crying out, pleading to be chosen. Men and women both, calling for their place, shouting the great deeds that they had done, the courage they had shown.

Kai saw Laimei walking through the crowd with the careless ease of a queen from the old stories. All about her there were hands darting out, withdrawn just as fast, as though they feared to touch her. One by one, she made her choices. Seemed at a whim, cast to chance, though no doubt there was a reason behind every choice that she made. Some particular light in the eye of the young man from their clan that she picked out. The man from the Wolves of the Steppe, perhaps it was the scars on his face and his hands and the steady way that he returned her gaze that made her select him. Laimei had little time for beggars, but there was something in the imploring cry from a young woman (her wrists marked with the blue ink, her hair unspooled in mourning) that made her daub that face with white, tears carving runnels through the fresh paint.

A few places left to choose, and Laimei seemed to slow, turning one way and another through the crowd, one finger tapping against her lip. Her eyes flitted across, met Kai’s for a moment, and just as quickly passed him by.

But there were others then, gathering around the fire, gathering around him. At first he did not recognise them in the darkness, their faces pits of shadow. It was not until the first one spoke that he knew them for who they were.

‘Choose Kai,’ she said.

It was Tamura – thin from the winter, painfully thin, her head seeming too heavy for her body now, overripe fruit on the bough. But she stood tall and proud, and the light of the fire made something more of her.

Another stepped forward – Saratos, another of the riders whom Kai had led, the light of the fire upon his silver hair. ‘He brought back iron, and led us from the ice. Choose him. It is right.’

And they were all speaking then – the riders he had led from the river. Those that had lived through the winter, scattered amongst the crowd and come together once more. Only one remained at the fringes, and even in the darkness Kai knew Gaevani by the proud tilt of his head.

A moment’s stillness, Laimei staring at him in the light of the fire, her face unreadable. Then soft footfalls, drawing close, and she was amongst them, her hands reaching for him, the heavy coldness of the paint running on his face, the fingers roughly pushing his head down and to the side like one disciplining a wilful hound before she let him go.

Kai reached out, a took a cup of wine from a still hand nearby. ‘I follow my captain to the death.’ He lifted the horn cup to toast her and drank deep, the wine running down his face like blood from a fresh cut.

With a careless toss of the wrist, like one casting aside an empty skin of wine, she threw the horn bowl of paint into the fire. And with that gesture, a shivering madness swept over the crowd. No longer were they still and silent, for they swarmed forward, screaming and laughing and weeping, hands reaching out for one another as though they had almost all their senses stolen and only touch remained.

Kai could feel open palms falling against his back, fingers plucking at his arms, trying to draw him and those he stood with into the shifting crowd. But Kai and his riders stood firm as spearmen in formation, turned in amongst themselves to block out the rest of the world. A circle within a circle, a band of their own. The hands clasping and unclasping at the centre of the circle, their heads bowed low so that their foreheads rested against each other. Some were laughing like children, others bared their teeth in wolfish grins, and there were some, like Tamura, who were as still and attentive as those in prayer. And it was only when they were ready, when each one’s hand felt the touch of all the others and they had felt that bond renewed between them, that they broke away and let themselves be taken by the crowd. Yet still Kai fought for one path in particular, against the movement of the people. For Arite was there, on the other side of the mob.

Like the battle on the ice, it was a sightless battle fought by inches. Twisting and prising, feeling for a gap and turning into it, judging the passage of the crowd and swimming through it like white water. But the memory held no fear for him, for he knew that he was safe. He knew what waited for him on the other side.

He was through then – her hands strong about him, her breath hot against his face. For that was the only way that they could speak in that press of the crowd, lips to ears, held close against one another.

‘It is a thing of a season – of winter, yes?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘But it is still winter tonight.’

A madness at those words, a fire in the blood, and his arm was about her waist as he made to lift her up and carry her away. But at that moment the pace of the festival began to slow, the dancers fell to stillness, lovers looked on one another with open hunger, the drummers paused to shake the life back into their hands. And in that silence, another sound from the western edge of the camp.