Tim Leach - A Winter War

Behind him, a shadow – a ghost, he might have thought at first, one of the dark riders that haunt the plains, hunting those foolish enough to travel alone. For those without companions were often found dead without a mark upon them, speared from their horses by some unseen lance from another world. But the clouds parted a little from the moon, and he felt a shiver of fate, and love, as he looked upon his sister’s face.

‘You had to run, didn’t you?’ said Laimei. ‘You could not, even once, do as you are commanded.’

‘You saw me go?’

‘I knew you would go. It has always been my fate, to know all the foolish and cowardly things that you will do, even before you do them.’ The horse stirred beneath her, restless. ‘I knew you would not kill our father. That you would shame us all, and I would have to take your place. To do what you could not.’

‘And I am sorry for it.’

‘That is not enough,’ she said, her eyes never leaving his. ‘Was it Bahadur who told you to do this? Some deal that you struck? Did he agree to let you share Arite in the bargain, as men might share a horse or a bowl of stew?’

‘No. I chose myself. And we share much, but not her.’

Laimei’s spear swung down in the darkness, laid across the neck of her horse – not levelled at him, not yet. ‘Come back with me,’ she said. ‘There is still time. If the others ask, we shall—’

‘I cannot do it,’ said Kai. ‘It is as it has always been. You cannot forgive me, and I cannot do as you command.’

‘And I cannot let you go.’

‘Call the others, then. You have your deserter. Call them and kill me.’

Silence answered him.

‘Is this not what you want?’ he said.

‘I do not need them. And I cannot trust them.’ Motion from the spear – a tremor passing down it, from the hands that held it. And when she spoke, it was as though she dragged up the words from some deeper part of herself, as if the words themselves came out bloody. ‘They love you more than me,’ she said. ‘Perhaps that is the worst of it. But I suppose the weak are always loved more than the strong. The way men love mewling infants, and blind puppies, and fools.’

‘They do. But that is not the only reason that they love me more than you.’ Kai reached forward, stroked the neck of his horse. To calm her, and reassure her, so that she would not blame herself for what was to come. ‘How shall we settle this?’ he said.

‘Wait for the wind to blow,’ she answered. ‘There is no need for the others to hear this.’

A touch of the reins, a shift of weight, and his horse was moving backwards, one careful duellist’s step after another, until they were far enough apart for the charge. He took the spear in both hands, looped the leather thong about his wrist. He waited.

The wind had been strong that night, great cutting gusts rolling across the long grass and through the trees. Yet now the air fell to perfect stillness, and it seemed some god held his breath, giving them a chance to change their minds.

Kai breathed in deeply, took in that beautifully sharp scent of horse sweat. It must have been one of the first things he had smelled – first the gore of birth, and then the smell of a horse. Fitting that it should be reversed now, for there would be blood in the air soon enough. Another circle closed.

A little stirring of wind. His horse’s ears flicking against it. Then a great roaring in his ears as the air tore sideways, and the horses were surging forward, the spears tilting low. No time to blink, weeping eyes held open against the wind, the movement of the horse seeming impossibly fast in the darkness.

And, just as they drew close, Kai cast his spear to the ground, and closed his eyes.

A slap of air struck his side, the clatter of armour and hard fall of the hooves passing close. But no sudden force of a blade into his chest, no unseen hand lifting him from the saddle, no hot taste of blood in his mouth. His sister riding past, her spear high in the air. Had she raised it before he cast his down, or after? Impossible to tell in the darkness.

He watched her then, to see if she would come around for another pass. But the horse was turning and wheeling, and she was stabbing at the air all about her as though surrounded in the press of battle, lunging at phantoms that only she could see, roaring and weeping as she gave one killing stroke after another into the empty air.

No time to wait out the frenzy, for the others would surely note their absence by now. No words that he could risk that might stir her from the madness, for he could only think she would seek to kill away the shame if he gave her the chance. And so he struck out into the darkness, taking his mark by moon and star.

He should have kept to a light pace, spared the horse for as long as he could. He might be pursued, and there was that other warband somewhere in front of them, hunting in the dark. But his horse was flying through the night, towards the point where the sun would rise, for Kai already had the feeling, as sure as curse or omen, that he would be too late.

The hard wind called from the west, and blew upon on the camp of the River Dragon. The spirit wind, their people called it, for there were unseen messengers abroad in the dark, bringing word from the living and the dead. And so it was that when the hard west wind blew, there were many who did not sleep. They huddled on the steps of their wagons and at the entrances of their tents – wrapped up thick in felt and fur, but with their heads uncovered, ears white with the cold and teeth gritted against the pain, for they would not pass the chance to hear some whisper on that wind. And so it was with Arite.

For days their people had wandered slowly from the winter campground, parting once more into the five clans, a nation divided and on the move once more. The dream of a nation, like all dreams, that dissolved under the light of a spring sun. And Arite’s people, the clan of the River Dragon, had moved to the south and the west, back towards the boundaries of their lands. A moving city upon the plain, resting here for only a single night.

Lucius and Kai’s daughter lay asleep in the caravan behind her, but the wind called to her as surely as a lover in the night, some turning passage of the wind that seemed to sound her name. She found herself walking far from the embers of the fire, to the northern borders of the camp. The sentries were lost in the darkness, the clouds thick and stars unseen. It was as though she stood at the edge of some great black sea, those waters that had swallowed her husband and children and her lover. And she listened for them, and waited for them to speak.

No words came to her on the wind, from the living or the dead. Perhaps it was that Kai and Bahadur were already slain, that their spirits wandered back slow across the plain and forest, sparing her the knowledge of their deaths for as long as they could. But she chose to believe that they lived. She waited there to see if the wind might change, so she might send a message of her own back with it.

A twist of the air rolled across her skin then, and somehow it carried a warning with it. Not one of sound or even smell – it was as though something invisible were carried to her from someone hidden in the night, some part of their spirit laid across her skin by the wind. For there were moving shadows out there, swimmers in that black sea beyond the camp.

And so it was that she saw them as they came, the line of riders from the darkness. Silent, faces soot-blackened, and even the horses were voiceless, their mouths bound with leather thongs. They were Sarmatians, bearing the long spears and scale armour of their people, and they could have been mistaken for ghosts, her clan’s dead riders returning from the Otherlands, until the first spear struck home and pinned a man to the ground at the edge of the camp. His screams drowned out by the war cry of the raiders, a song of the Wolves of the Steppe.