Tim Leach - A Winter War

‘There will be more than one rider slipping away, I think.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘more than one. They thought to send him alone, but I made them think better of it. I shall keep him company on the path to the west.’ She hesitated. Then she said: ‘I told them that you would go, Kai. That you should go.’

‘Why would you ask such a thing of me?’

‘That is not for you to know,’ she said. Then, with a bite to the words: ‘Perhaps because you know better how to surrender than most.’ But when he offered her his arm, she took it – a warrior’s clasp of one sword arm to another, the other hand upon the heart.

‘I thank you,’ said Kai. And then he knelt down, beckoned the others to join him.

No words for a time. They spoke only in little touches, a choking sob, a shaking of the head, a brave smile half glimpsed in the moonlight.

‘I go west again, little one,’ Kai said to Tomyris. ‘Do you understand?’

She nodded, solemn as any warrior.

‘You must stay here,’ he said, ‘and watch the herd. But you can help me find my friends. The white-painted riders, you remember them? They came here with gifts. For Bahadur.’

‘I remember.’

‘Find as many as you can, and say as little as possible. Just enough to bring them here.’

‘What shall I tell them?’

‘To bring their war gear and best horses. To say their farewells.’ Kai hesitated. ‘And that it matters. That what we will do shall matter more than anything.’

‘What will you do?’

‘I will search too, for one in particular. Let us go, now.’

Others were trying to speak then – Bahadur, and Arite, talking over one another, clutching at his arm. But Kai cut them off. ‘We do not have long, and it will be a hard search in the darkness.’ He hesitated. ‘And you must say your farewells, too.’

Before they could say any more, he was away – hands outstretched to guide himself in the darkness, tracing his passage along the side of wagon and tent. He looked back only once, as he hurried through the labyrinth of the camp. He saw Laimei speaking with Arite, leaning close and whispering, and in the light of the stars, he thought he saw Arite’s face turn pale as milk. As though she were one of the chosen, marked with the white of killing. Then the two women faded away from him, like a memory or a dream.

No barriers or signal fires, totems or cairns to mark the divide. But Kai knew at once, when he crossed the invisible boundaries between one clan and another, and he trod carefully once he was amongst the people of the Wolves of the Steppe. There was little love lost between their people, and though there was peace that winter, it was a fragile one. Much was done in the night that was forbidden in the day, loving and killing.

As he moved through the shadows, he could hear them trading rumours around the fires – that their chieftain Zanticus had come back furious from the council tent, that there would soon be war between the clans. Kai even thought that he saw the chieftain himself, a towering figure that strode amongst the tents, speaking in clipped whispers to the bodyguards.

Kai had to get close to the fires to look on the faces, to search for one in particular, risk a whispered conversation with a child and lone woman he met between one wagon and another. Soon there were shadows behind him, breeding and gathering in number. Silent at first, but soon they found voice – calling insults, drinking in a murderer’s bravery from their wineskins, and the light of the stars upon a knife brandished towards him.

He was just deciding whether to stand and fight or run for his life when he heard a voice calling from the darkness. Even in the dim light, Kai knew Gaevani at once from the dark hair, broken by the ugly flap of scarred skin across the scalp, as he came forward and ordered the others away.

‘Some lover of yours?’ one of the shadows called out.

‘No,’ Gaevani answered. ‘I have better taste than that.’

The others slunk off, and Gaevani held a careful distance. As though they were messengers meeting before a battle, offering a parley that they knew would be refused.

‘So,’ said Gaevani. ‘Bahadur rides to the west.’

‘You know of this?’

‘It is the rumour that sounds the most truthful. Obvious enough, to any man with wits to think. And I have never seen Zanticus so angry as he is tonight.’ He sniffed. ‘A fool’s errand.’

‘You believe so?’

‘I do. These people will never surrender.’ But there was no pride in Gaevani’s voice as he spoke.

‘You think that they should?’

‘Of course. You remember, I knew we were beaten long ago. Before you rode to the fire, and that horse won your duel for you.’

‘You rode with me then,’ said Kai, ‘because you had to. Will you do so again, because I ask you to?’

The other man went quite still. ‘You go to the west? To the Romans?’

‘We do.’

‘I did not think the chieftains would send you. ’

‘Laimei convinced them.’

‘She really must hate you,’ said Gaevani. ‘To have chosen you to go and die.’

‘Perhaps it is a kind of love, from her. I shall find out on the way. Why not find out with me?’

Gaevani cocked his head. ‘The others too?’ he said. ‘And Laimei?’

‘As many as will come, from those I led back from the ice.’

‘The company that should have been mine.’

A silence for a long time. Gaevani with his hand across his mouth, staring into nothing. ‘You think yourself in one of the old songs, don’t you?’ he said at last. ‘No. I will not go. Perhaps I wish I were fool enough for that. But I am not.’

‘You think as Romans do,’ said Kai. ‘Always to have the odds in your favour.’

‘Yes, perhaps. That pet Roman of yours wishes himself a Sarmatian, I think. Perhaps we were both born to the wrong bodies.’ Gaevani hesitated once more. Then he said: ‘Come back, if you can.’

‘Why?’

‘Unsettled business, between us. It is my spear that should kill you. Out here, on the steppe. Not some Roman in the west. What would that death mean? So come back. And we shall finish things.’

‘I do not think that I shall return. But I will, if I can. And if that is still what you want, it shall be so.’

With that, Gaevani was away – muttering to himself as madmen do. And as he watched him go, another omen came to Kai with a quiet certainty. He knew that he was not meant to die on Gaevani’s spear.

‘So I do die in the west, then,’ he said to himself. And he felt a lightness settling upon him, beautiful and barely felt, like a scattering of snow, light and gentle and cold. The gods whispering to him, whispering yes.

One by one, Arite watched as they came in from the darkness.

Tomyris first, bone tired, mumbling a report like a weary sentry before she stumbled to the tent to collapse and sleep. Then Phoros and Goar – a near wordless pair of young men with the hungry, lean look of hunting dogs as they knelt before Laimei to honour their captain. Kai soon after, an absent look to his eyes as he paced about the fire. A sound from the darkness, the moonlight on silver hair, and Saratos walked in, grinning and cackling like a man half his age.

‘Should have known that you would come,’ said Goar. ‘I suppose an old man like you gets lonely on the cold nights.’

‘Oh, I’d wager I keep more company in my tent than you do,’ Saratos replied. ‘But I am growing old. I’d not have my son kill me.’ But he clasped Kai’s arm after he said it, and there was kindness in his words.

A lull, then. A nervous quiet, as they looked at one another, and wondered if they were all that would come. And Arite, sitting upon the ground with her husband, put her hand to Bahadur’s shoulder, hoping for something she could not describe.