Tim Leach - A Winter War

All throughout it, she waited for him to speak – a word of kindness, some question of how she had survived the winter. Some fragment of a song that she loved. But he wrapped himself in blankets, watched her with pebble-black eyes, and remained silent.

‘The Roman lands must truly be as beautiful as they say,’ she said. ‘Fields of crops taller than a man on horseback, gold upon every woman’s neck, iron in each man’s hand.’

At this he stirred, and spoke. ‘Why would you think such a thing?’

‘For otherwise, why would you so regret returning here?’

He flinched at that, caught, and for a moment there was something of the man she had known. That fear he had of hurting another.

‘There was nothing beautiful about what I saw there,’ he said. ‘Oh, the sweetest wine I have ever tasted, wonderful foods that I could not name – that is right, your eyes see it well enough, there was no torture for me.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘He did not need that to break me.’

‘How then?’

‘He showed me the end of the world,’ Bahadur said simply, as he might have remarked on a change of the wind, or the look of rain on the horizon. ‘All men must die. Women too. And… and our children. But I saw the end of our people there.’

‘Not yet.’

‘A scattering of years. No more than that.’

‘Always you were a man of the day. Feast or famine, love or grief.’

‘I had lost less, then. And who can throw their life away for nothing? When our people have no future?’

Together, they listened to the river for a time.

‘I hoped,’ he said, ‘that perhaps you would not be here. That you would be at some other sanctuary on the plains. That you would not have to see me, and…’ He hesitated, then spoke again. ‘That I would not have to see you.’

‘That is why you asked for Kai? And not for me?’

He nodded.

‘Perhaps they shall not send you back,’ said Arite. ‘Perhaps they will choose to fight.’

‘Then we shall have to watch each other die.’

‘That was always to be the way of it, we knew that when we made our promises, long ago. There is something more that you do not wish to say.’

His hands drifted to the pile of fresh clothes she had brought – picking at them absently, but he did not seem to know what to do with them. She took them up, and began to dress him as she might have dressed an invalid. But as she tied his jacket around him, for a moment, she let her hand drift to a different kind of touch. Then he took her hand in his, and there was a moment where he held it hard enough to hurt her.

‘I did think of you,’ he said, ‘when I was a prisoner. I thought of why it was that you sent our son to fight with me. Why you insisted he must go.’

She said: ‘There was never anything that I could conceal from you.’

‘Our son should have stayed behind. He should be with us, now. You sent him to be a hostage to my heart. I should not have had to watch him die.’

And he rolled up in the blankets they had brought, and turned to face the water.

She found herself on her feet – no decision to rise, yet there she was. She could not leave him alone there at the water’s edge, and yet she did. Striding away, hands balled into fists, longing for something to fight. A hunger for touch, an ache beneath the skin.

Always before, the crowds of a winter camp had brought her comfort, a great embrace into the people that held her close. But now it was choking, suffocating, the stink of horses like black smoke, every accidental touch of a body against hers as fearful as the touch of a sword.

There were those she knew in the crowd, voices calling and hands reaching. But she kept her head down, leaving them to shout and curse behind her, until she was back at the campfire where Kai and Lucius and Tomyris sat together. A treacherous relief, to see them, and to be free of her husband.

Kai was rising then. She saw his eyes hunting about, in search of Bahadur, and anger there too, at first, when he saw that she was alone. In that moment she hated him, fell upon him with fist and foot, tearing at him with her nails. His hands were about her wrists and he pulled her close, leaned against her like a wrestler trying to recover his strength. She let her weight fall upon him until they were in an embrace – a wonderful, terrible kind of embrace, and she did not know what it would mean.

The rumours spread through the camp, as wildfire passes across the steppe in a dry summer. Everywhere he went, Kai heard the people speaking to one another of what the rider from the west might mean. They came to him with wine and iron, smiling like children, expecting him to tell them everything he knew of what Bahadur had said. For his people were not keepers of secrets – one must share everything to live upon the plains, and the silence and the lies sat uneasy upon his lips.

He had spoken of the Emperor’s message only to the chieftains of the Five Clans, and each day he returned to the centre of the camp to await their answer. Always before the chieftains had spoken on the open plain, and any man or woman might witness what was said and speak to it if they had the courage. But in a tall white tent the chieftains gathered now, and their sworn bodyguards chased back any who drew close. For there were many others who now gathered in that place with Kai, kneeling in circles and waiting, and though they knew not how, they knew that their fate was being decided. Supplicants before an altar, awaiting a sign of the gods.

And the gods themselves were asked to speak, for again and again the seers and diviners would come before the great tent, casting stones or scoring lines and dots into the ground with a branch of sacred wood. Perhaps it was that even the gods could not see a path for the people of the plains, for every oracle was inconclusive. The gods remained silent.

Others came and went, summoned to the tent and sent away once more. Some were champions of war, others the far travellers who had ventured beyond the boundaries of their lands, others still the old women who had lived longer than any others. And when each one emerged, stony faced, the crowd begged them to tell what was spoken. But their lips were bound by the strongest of oaths, and they would not break their silence.

Kai went there day after day, waiting for the chieftains to make their choice. Yet when finally the decision was made, it came at night. The time amongst his people when only the secret, shameful things were done.

He was woken by a scraping at the felt of his tent – the sign a shy lover might give, but for Kai it had another meaning. When he was a child he had heard that same pawing sound, just like that, when his sister had some risk for them to run or a childish wager to win.

When he emerged from the tent, he could sense others in the darkness, close by, and he reached out to know them by touch. A gloved hand that batted his reaching arm away – Laimei. The warm rounded cheek of Tomyris. Bahadur’s shoulder, sharp and hard like a bone picked clean of meat. And Arite, a calloused hand that found his for a moment before she drew it away.

‘I come with word from the chieftains,’ Laimei said. ‘Bahadur, you are to go at first light. We shall…’ She paused, and even in the darkness Kai could see her mouth twisting. Then she said: ‘The chieftains will surrender to Rome. Cowards that they are.’

A shivering cold twisting up the spine – the feeling of the gods setting their plans in motion, and Kai saw Bahadur stand taller, lighter. Released from some great weight.

‘There are those that watch us,’ said Kai. ‘That watch him. That shall know it when he leaves.’

‘They are going to break up the clans tomorrow. Each people back to their territory. Who will notice a rider slipping away in such chaos? Bahadur shall go west, and bring our message back to the Romans.’