Tim Leach - A Winter War

‘Then how do we defeat them?’

‘You cannot. I think that only Rome could defeat Rome.’

‘What would you have us do?’

‘Lie down and die. Or beg for their mercy. It is all the same to them. It is all the same to me.’ And Bahadur covered his face – not to weep, but to pull and claw at it, as though it were a mask he sought to lift away. Arite began to reach towards him once more, but, this time, checked her hand halfway.

‘You must rest,’ she said. ‘The chieftains will speak of it, and decide what to do. In the spring, we shall send our messengers—’

‘No. I have but a few days here.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I have to return. That was what he told me. And if I do not go back, then that shall be his answer. That he will have to destroy us all.’

Kai understood then, every little pause that Bahadur made, how hesitant and forgetful he seemed. It was not the mark of a man who had lost his wits, but of one trying to fix the memories in his mind. To not let any gesture or moment pass by unobserved and unnoted. To do the impossible, to take his home back with him to the west.

‘He will not do such a thing for a single prisoner,’ said Kai.

‘He will do it. He can do it. I tell you again, you do not know what Rome is. Who this man is. They have their own honour of a sort. No, not honour. But revenge. They know much of that.’ He choked then, hacked and coughed and spat upon the ground, reached a trembling hand back to the skin of wine. After he had drunk, he wiped the wine from his lips with the back of his hand, and licked that dry. Then he spoke again: ‘They would burn a whole nation to nothing. Salt their fields and destroy their treasures. Melt gold away as though it were dung upon a fire. For no profit, nor to protect themselves. Not to honour the gods. But simply because they said that they would.’

Kai let his gaze drift to the Roman, for the man had gone quite still. ‘Could this be true?

‘If he says that he will do it,’ said Lucius, ‘then he will. The Emperor does not lie. The soldiers love him for that. Always, they are lied to by their masters. But he does not lie, even if he means to send men to their deaths.’

‘And do you have an oath that you can swear, that I might believe what you say?’

‘I swear it upon the names of my ancestors,’ said Lucius, ‘and the gods of my people.’

‘Something other than that. Strong oaths, but…’ Kai hesitated, licked his lips. ‘Do you have a daughter? For I would swear by my daughter. By Bahadur, or Arite. Can you swear in the same way?’

Nothing, for a time. Then: ‘A wife and a son, both long dead. A sister – taken in a raid across the water. Dead now, I think, or a prize for some chieftain’s bed. But I shall swear by them all if that will make you believe me.’ The Roman went to place a hand over his heart, and then, leaned forward to touch the sword at Kai’s hip, placing one finger upon the point and swearing in the way of the Sarmatians.

‘I accept the oath,’ Kai said. ‘And now I ask you this – can they do it?’

‘It would be a great risk to them. But they can. The other border tribes are beaten. There is no trouble at home that might draw the Legions back. If it remains quiet elsewhere… then yes, they can do it.’ The Roman hesitated. ‘Will your people surrender?’

‘To be slaves? No. They shall die,’ Kai said simply.

‘And what if they could remain warriors?’

Bahadur snarled at this. ‘To fight beside our conquerors?’

‘You have fought beside the Romans in the past.’

‘As equals, not slaves. And this Emperor would not allow it. He said so, and he does not lie.’

‘He may not have a choice.’ And Lucius was carving in the dirt with his fingers then, marking another map into the ground. ‘We are surrounded by enemies on every side. Now there is peace, but it is never long before another war upon the border. Always, some senator at home wishes to take his chance at the purple and make himself Emperor. And when that time comes, the Emperor shall not let eight thousand heavy cavalry rot by serving wine and ploughing fields.’

Silence between them for a time. Then Kai said: ‘Always the hunt, always the war. I do not trust to much, but I trust to that. There may be a chance.’

Arite spoke then, to her husband. ‘How much time do you have?’

‘I was delayed in the swamplands,’ said Bahadur, ‘lost the spare horse they gave me to a broken leg. The Roman horses are so weak… I have a day or two, perhaps. I have so little time left. I must have an answer by then.’

On his feet once more, Kai felt his head swim with the motion – the feeling of nausea, like one deep into the wine, or upon the eve of a battle.

‘Rest now,’ he said. ‘I will tell the chieftains what you have said. What we have said. Perhaps they shall listen.’

‘Tell only them, Kai,’ said Arite. ‘The camp will tear itself to pieces if they hear that spoken.’

He nodded, and swallowed. ‘Bahadur…’ And the words were there upon his lips, the confession that would release him. But once more Arite’s eyes were on his – already they had that intimacy of lovers, that she could command him to silence without a word being spoken. Bahadur looking at him too, dull eyed and not watchful for a lie.

‘If you go back, you shall not go alone,’ said Kai. ‘And that, I swear.’

No knocking of distant thunder, nor eagle’s call, nor any of the signs that might mark an omen. Yet Kai felt it sure enough, the whisper-soft feeling of a god acknowledging the oath. For he knew that they bound men most surely to those kinds of oaths – those given in haste, and to cover a lie.

Away then, the soft grass falling away beneath his feet, hurrying towards the heart of the campground, towards the chieftain’s fire. Hurrying, to try to seal away the secret in his heart, before his traitor lips might speak it aloud.

There was a river that cut through the campground the way lightning cleaves the night sky – shallow, quick-running, one of the nameless waterways of the steppe. Gift to the living, passageway to the souls of the dead, and at different times one would see it running black with dirt or red with blood, a story told in water.

When at first Arite tried to take Bahadur to that place, he would not go. His clothes were stinking rags, his skin marked with the traveller’s grime, yet still he resisted. But at last he let her lead him there like a stubborn horse, head down and back bowed.

There were many bathing naked there – not lingering long, for the water still ran sharp and cold as whetted iron, but crouching in the free-running water and scrubbing themselves with grit before they leapt out once more, whooping and whistling at the cold air on wet skin. But they fell quiet when they saw Arite and Bahadur come to the side of the bank, moved away and made signs against ill omen.

She cut the clothes from his body, piled them carefully to the side so that not a scrap would be wasted, for it would all be kept for patching and kindling. At last, he was bare-skinned and filthy – shy as well, rolled half to the side and covering his nakedness. She remembered when they had been wed, twenty years before, the longing to see his skin like a kind of madness in the blood. Now she searched for the marks of torture, a wound that she could bind. She found nothing but a few red-raw sores from the journey, and all the signs of a half-starved man.

She did not coax him fully into the water. She filled a wineskin up and poured it over him a handful at a time, watching the water cut runnels through the dirt as he sat and blinked and shivered before her, rubbed at the skin with cloth and a scraper of horn, until he was clean and winter-pale under the midday sun. She took a comb and teased out his matted hair, cut away what seemed irreparably tangled, and, at the last, she marked him with a little oil – another gift from one of Kai’s riders, a shy young woman who had parted with her own private treasure.