Tim Leach - A Winter War

‘A good death,’ Tamura said, a hollowness to her voice.

‘Come,’ Kai answered, ‘we have waited here too long. They might be after us soon.’

They made their way towards the west, just as the first signs of dawn began to touch the sky. The dead man’s horse trailed a little behind them – and, perhaps, the dead followed them too.

When Kai led them back into the camp at first light, silent and war weary, Laimei was there to greet them. She did not speak. Kai saw how she looked amongst them, silently noting the missing and the horse that bore an empty saddle, the darkened weapons and hacked armour. But she looked too on the pride they carried in their silence – the arrogant tilt of the head, the gaze sharp and clear, answering her with no shame. This, it seemed, was report enough. A little nod was all the praise she offered in return, a sweeping gesture with an open hand, ordering them to take their place in the line.

It was the others who questioned them – leaning across to whisper in the saddle, three of them clustering around Tamura when they first stopped to water the horses. Kai heard the others speak of the charge by the river, and they spoke more freely when they saw that he would not tell the story, for they would not see the captain – their captain – sell himself short. But Tamura and Saratos would not say whom they had fought. No matter who asked him, Kai kept his silence. There was only one that he wished to speak to, but Bahadur rode at the head of the column, head hung low. He alone showed no interest in the return of Kai and the others – lost, it seemed, in some other journey of his own.

It was late in the day, when Kai’s riders could be seen swaying like drunkards in the saddle, the battle weariness lying upon them as sure as a curse, that Laimei took him aside. When they stopped to rest the horses, she looped an arm about his shoulder, a pretence of a sister’s love for the others to see. For though there was a smile upon her face, her eyes were dull as she led him to the edge of the line, out of earshot of the others. Still smiling, she said: ‘Now, tell me what you would not tell the others.’

‘Some day,’ Kai answered, ‘I shall find out how it is you know such things.’

‘Your face is like the painting of a child. I do not know how the others cannot see it themselves.’

He looked about, for riders in a warband were as curious as children, gossiped like old men. But there were none, he thought, who rode close enough to hear.

‘I could not tell the numbers exactly,’ he said. ‘But it was a well-chosen size. Small enough to move quickly, to track us and catch us. And—’

‘Great enough for the advantage if they fought us.’ He saw the killing madness in the smile then. ‘They know our number. Well then.’

Kai hesitated then, at the look on her face. ‘There is more,’ he said. ‘Our horses knew each other. And I saw one of them clear in the moonlight. They were—’

‘Enough.’

‘You do not believe me?’

‘I believe the horses,’ she said. ‘That is enough. What do I need to know of what you thought you saw, or thought you heard.’

‘You do not seem surprised,’ said Kai.

‘Why should I be? What else would make sense? I thought they would be Sarmatians.’

He felt his skin cool at that, at the naming of their people. For though a part of him had known when he saw the armour of horn scales in the moonlight, since one horse had called to another, to have it spoken aloud was something else entirely. That they were hunted by their own people.

He watched her think for a time. Her eyes shifting about the camp, making the captain’s endless judgements. Numbers and spirit, speed and weight. And time, always time above all.

‘We shall press forward, lose them in the next few days,’ she said. ‘You did well to bloody them. It was bravely done.’

A surge in the heart then, to hear her praise him, and he hated himself for it. ‘You mean to go on?’ he said.

‘Of course. The Romans shall not wait for us. We have our command, and must take Bahadur over the water.’

‘Laimei, we must go back. Some of us, at least.’

She stared at him then, and made no answer.

‘I do not know what it means to have our own people trailing us,’ he continued. ‘But it counts for nothing good.’

‘It does not matter.’

‘You do not wish to know what it means? Why we have been betrayed?’

‘If the message does not make it to the Romans, then nothing matters.’

‘At least let a single rider go back.’

She smiled again, her ghastly, murderous smile. ‘Oh, you look to escape at the last? I thought better of you.’

‘Send someone else. Go yourself, none doubt your courage. A word of warning to our clan, that is all.’

‘Brother.’ How long it had been since she had called him that, he thought, as she gestured to the riders scattered about them. ‘They ride towards death gladly,’ she said, ‘for they feel there is no choice. Give it to them, and they will desert in but a few days. We have both seen warbands break that way. The courage of men is such a fragile thing. All must go, or none.’

She looked at him, and for a moment there was nothing of their feud etched upon her face. Only something imploring in the softness of the eyes, a hand half reaching towards him. A sister wishing for her brother to make the right choice.

‘You are the captain,’ Kai said at last. ‘And I ride at your command.’

‘That I am. You have done well. Go and take your place in the line.’

He turned back towards his horse – he would have to lose himself, then, in the rhythm of the horse beneath him, the feel of spear in hand and the taste of the spring air upon his lips. But before that, he asked one more question. A question that he knew the answer to already.

‘What did you say to Bahadur?’ he said.

‘The truth, of course,’ she answered. ‘As I always do.’

Those days that followed all passed like one another. Hard riding, seeking to outpace those who followed, and more besides. A moment of shame or cowardice, a broken heart or a lost fellowship – all could be forgotten in the movement of a horse across the plains. To forget what lay behind them, to believe it an impossibility to turn back as though the ground fell away into some black abyss behind the horses’ hooves at every step. That only the world ahead mattered.

The riders drew close on the ride, close enough to be able to reach out and touch another with a crooked arm and an open palm. Closer still at night, huddled together in the blankets, rushing to help each other with the thousand little chores of a warband on the march, careful to do nothing alone. Speaking of many things, but more often holding the silence together. That comfort of the pack, when one man often found his thoughts spoken by another, an action begun that was completed by a companion. And Kai let himself be swallowed up by them, for it seemed that the past no longer mattered. He had his place amongst his people once more.

And so, one night by the fire, when Kai felt an arm wrap about his shoulder, it was no surprise – every day found a different companion settling beside him. Yet the sharpness of the embrace was unexpected, the arm bones hard across his shoulders. The grey eyes he saw that had once been sharp and full of life were watery now, the eyes of a drunkard or an old man. But there was comfort to be found there still, as Bahadur took the place by his side.

They leaned against each other for a long time, and they did not speak.

At last, Bahadur said: ‘I was told a story, of our ancestors. How each man hung a quiver on his tent, and at the end of each day, he dropped in a white stone or a black, to mark a good or evil day. And at the end of a man’s life they would turn out the quiver, and so judge it.’