Tim Leach - A Winter War

‘Kai!’

It was Bahadur – pale-faced, clutching at his saddle like an old man, panic in his voice. He made to stir his horse towards them, but Laimei was beside him, her hand tangled in his reins to hold him in place. Her head bowed close to his, lips moving, and though Kai was too far away to know what was spoken he could see they were quick sharp words, like the work of a knife in the darkness. And, before they drew deeper into the trees and lost sight of his companions, Kai saw Bahadur bare his teeth and look away.

A pain about Kai’s heart, to think that would be their last parting, as he and his companions rode on in silence, guiding their horses to the softer ground, ducking away from low branches. Now it was that the sounds of the forest came back stronger than those of the men and horses – the low hum of the insects, the sentry calls of the birds against intruders, the creak and groan of the trees as they shifted in the wind. The darkness settled deep. Kai let the reins go slack, trusting more to the horse’s memory than to his own eyes to guide them. And then, soft as the whisper of a lover, he heard the calling of the water in his ears. The river and the ford were but a little way ahead.

He looped his hand in a circle in the air, and the riders drew in close. Hands to one another’s shoulders, as they had gathered by the festival and the fire, the horses touching their noses together in their own silent communion.

‘Those who follow us shall have to cross the water here,’ he said, ‘if they are to come tonight. Wait for my signal. Charge through once, then back through the trees. Keep the Wolf Star at your right hand, until you find the others at the edge of the forest. And stay on this side of the water, by the gods. There shall be no way back for you if you cross to the other side.’

‘They shall be watching for us,’ said Tamura.

‘They shall be watching for more than six. They shall not see us.’

He looked around the faces gathered there, for the moon was out strong enough for him to see them. Most had that strange look of calm that comes before the battle, where the dice are cast in the air and the only thing left to do is see where they fall. Saratos was grinning, the joy of the chosen upon him. Phoros and Goar had the sour look of men tricked at the market, but resigned to the poor trade they had made – he would have to watch them. Only Tamura would not meet his eye.

Each of them found their place. The point where a tall bush met a tree, providing a shape that matched a horse and rider, the fallen log that one might place themselves behind, the low branch that was thick with leaves to screen the rider, and at a soft command their horses drew still as carved sculptures. For they too had hunted in the night before, and knew their lives depended upon the stillness. They waited.

The darkness was complete, save for the light of the moon low in the sky behind them. Soon came the frightening kind of boredom of the soldier lying in ambush, where time seems to still itself entirely. Kai watched the slow passage of a beetle crawling over a leaf, and it seemed to take an hour to cross half a hand’s distance. With the boredom was the sleep that seemed to steal up like a witch’s curse, to be blinked away at the very last moment with a sharp jolt of the heart.

Words came to him from the past, the way they do for those at the borderlands of waking and dreaming – a voice speaking sharp in his ear, Bahadur’s voice.

‘Bad ground for a horseman, a ford. Only a beach would be worse. That is why the heroes in the old stories are always fighting there.’ He remembered the older man’s smile, the eyes narrow and bright like little gemstones. ‘They like to show off.’

He remembered too, then, asking Bahadur how to stay awake on watch, when his back was still raw from a whipping he’d taken. ‘Think about women, lad,’ Bahadur had said.

Kai watched the others as a good captain should, looking for the dull eyes of one frightened to utter stillness, the nervous hands twitching on the reins of one ready to bolt at the least excuse. And perhaps it was that he was so intent on watching the others, that he did not notice what was happening to him.

There was something winding and curling about his neck, like the hard cord of a garrotte. He put his hand to his throat and felt nothing but flesh, and yet still each breath came shorter than the last. His fingers numb, his other hand growing slack upon the spear, and his head bowing down, bowing low.

It was there upon him once more, that feeling he had known only once before. When he had fought against the Roman cavalry, against Lucius. Not that familiar fear that all know before battle, that comes as strong and passes as swift as a thunderstorm on the plain, but the hollow madness that struck him to stillness and cowardice. He took up the reins with an unfeeling hand, his horse stirring beneath him as it felt his urge to run.

And it was then that the other warband came to the ford.

He heard them before he saw them – the crunch of a branch underneath heavy hooves, the clatter and rattle of arms. Men and horses trying to move softly, but there were many of them, and in the still of the night they could not hide themselves. In the darkness, as the undergrowth shifted and tore forward, it almost seemed that the forest was advancing towards them.

Kai’s eyes played the trickster as he tried to count them – one rider suddenly parted and split into two, or a trio of horse were revealed as the shadow of one. He heard the soft inhale beside him and looked to his companions, their eyes shining in the darkness as they silently asked for a command that he knew he could not give.

The soft splash of water, for they were fording the river – an advance guard that might have been a dozen riders on horseback. Shadows in the darkness, no way to see what arms they carried or what banners they rode under, and still Kai could not speak, could not move.

The moonlight broke through, and shone upon the rider in the lead. And from his side, Kai heard one horse try to call to another. It was Saratos’s horse, giving a snorted greeting that echoed out above the chatter of the stream, and one of the horses across the water called back.

A stillness, then, just for a moment. As though the whole world held its breath. And Kai called to his riders, and he called for them to charge.

No time to run, for they would be scattered and lost, hunted and cut down. The only hope the darkness that might turn his six men into sixty, or a hundred, for the half-moon was at their back, the shadows dancing and lengthening about them.

He put his nose to the horse’s mane, the branches cutting at his face like sword blades. He had to trust to his horse to find its way through, and at every fall of its feet he expected to feel the world lurch and turn about him, to taste earth and blood in his mouth and be buried beneath his mount. For already, close by, there was the high-pitched scream of a downed horse.

He could feel the earth through the pace of the horse, and it changed beneath them, soft and heavy as they charged onto the bank. And there was a shape before him, the shadow of man on horseback looming large and lifting a spear. But that other man had misjudged in the darkness, and Kai’s lance was in him with the sharp snap of blade and bone. The shadow screamed and twisted away, and Kai lurched in the saddle, his horse scrabbling and kicking the soft earth at the edge of the bank. He could feel the cool air rising from the river, see the moonlight silvering the spray from man and horse fighting through the water. And about him, he could hear men gathering to kill him.

He fought like a blind man, more through sound and feel than sight. The rank stink of a frightened horse close by, and he turned in the saddle and swung his broken spear like a sword, backhand across the nose of the horse, and it reared and dumped its rider in the water. He felt a pair of hands close about his wrist, trying to prise the weapon from his grip. But the fingers were gone a moment later, and all about him he could hear the war cries of his own riders. Erakas the closest, the rest nearby, and he could hear them all calling his name.