Tim Leach - A Winter War

He tried to sing to keep himself company, and the wind caught and turned his voice as though in mockery. He fell quiet once more, and in that silence, he felt the dead gather about him.

They had been there after the battle on the ice, watching him as he alone rose from the piles of the fallen. And they were around the campfire that night. Unseen, giving ghostly touches to neck and shoulder – the ancient dead from the barrow mounds and old pyres, and the freshly killed. Always before the presence of such ghosts had been a comfort to him, to be watched over by ancestors and guided by lost heroes. No longer, not when it seemed that the dead so outnumbered the living.

The spring air was warm enough to pass the night without a fire, and he could not be certain that there would not be men following his own trail, the warband that hunted him in the darkness. But with the spirits clustered thick about him, he scavenged the few remnants of wood from the old firepits, pulled what fuel he had from sack and saddlebag, and put a flame upon the plain. Soon he was guarding it against the wind with hands and cloak, the horse lying close beside him, and when the fire had caught fully he looped his arms about her long neck and held her close. A hard night lay ahead.

The horse shook and trembled, for she too was haunted by ghosts of her own kind. Kai looked upon the fire, and tried to remember – Bahadur’s laughter, the pride of seeing how well Tomyris handled a horse, the feel of Arite’s body against his. The taste of wine, the pattern of a braided gold necklace between his fingers, the light of the sunset seeming to set the plains afire. Only fragments remained.

Then a sound from the darkness. He did not trust it at first, for on those nights alone he had heard many things – unseen horses whickering and stamping at the ground, the soft murmur of voices, mocking laughter. They had grown louder each night, until he heard whole conservations between people who were not there, the repeated sounding of his name.

But the sound came again, the rattle of tack and uneven fall of hooves of riders moving in the night. There were shadows at the edge of the plain, coming towards the fire.

Kai should have been on his feet at once, mounted and made ready to fight. More likely foe than friend in such a place at such a time – hunters from the warband that had shadowed Kai’s riders across the plain, or bandits of the Lacringi raiding from the east. Yet Kai kept his place by the fire – he had no will left to fight or to run.

The shadows seemed to hesitate. Three riders that he could see, weighing up the ill omen of greeting a lone traveller upon the plains. He saw them motion to each other, some debate carried out that he could not hear, only see through mime and gesture. They slowly came forward, for it seemed they too were frightened to pass the night without a fire and company.

Not the hunters who had followed him to the west, then. He tried to guess at who they might be – lovers seeking to flee from one tribe to another, deserters from the warband who had not the courage to go back towards the Danu and the Romans beyond it. They would spend a night together at the fire, Kai would help them nurse their shame, and tomorrow they would be gone. He smiled a little at that thought. Once more he would collect the lost and broken and try to make them whole again.

The shadows closer now, the cold feeling of fate sliding across his skin. Kai’s eyes were poor in the darkness, the shapes too indistinct to determine, no sound from them that the air and wind did not swallow. But all at once he was yelling and weeping, calling their names out and running across the plain, bow-legged from a life in the saddle and stumbling like a child, arms outstretched. And the riders came forward to answer him.

Tomyris first, and she was laughing, as though delighted with a trick that he had played upon her. She slid from her saddle and rushed to him, and he took her from her feet, was throwing and catching her as though she were a child half her size, for he would not believe it to be her except by touch and weight. The Roman he took into his arms like a brother, a wrestler’s grip locked about his body that the other man answered in kind. And Arite, her eyes shining in the darkness – a hand reached, clasped, then withdrawn, but no more than that.

He led them all to the fire, fearful somehow of losing them in the darkness. And he saw them better there, blood-marked and war-scarred, those who had come from the killing. Fear on their faces more than love now, to find him in that place. For they were all ill omens for each other, their presence speaking only of disaster.

Perhaps there was something written upon his face that Arite did not like to see. She drew close once more and put her arms about him, almost shyly, laid her head against his neck. Only for a moment at first, but as she began to pull away he tightened his grip on her shoulders. Not enough to hold her in place, but enough to ask her to stay. She leaned back close against him, her breath heavy against his neck. A betrayal every moment he held her close, until she drew away from him, her eyes low and heavy and defeated as she took her place by the fire.

As they sat together in silence, Arite waited for the dancing light of the fire to fall on Kai’s face, so she might see what had changed in him. Older now perhaps, aged by the few days that they had been apart – a careful weight to the way he moved, the way an old warrior may favour a wound earned many seasons past. And a stillness, too, almost a peace to him, though whether it was that of the defeated or the contented man, she could not say.

They each spoke in turn, the way the storytellers will at a feast. Of the warband that had followed Kai to the east. The duel with Laimei, a battle fought without a single stroke of the sword. Of the raid on the camp, the butchering of the clan, all their hope unravelling with every word.

‘There must be revenge for what has been done to our people,’ said Kai.

‘Why did they do it?’ Tomyris asked, her voice breaking as she spoke.

‘They think to unite the clans,’ Arite said. ‘Take the war to Rome once more. They thought it the cowardice of our clan that held them back.’

‘It cannot be done,’ said Lucius. ‘They will be destroyed.’

‘They will not let themselves believe it,’ she answered. ‘And Bahadur’s message means nothing now. We have killed him again, for nothing.’

Tomyris crawled over into Kai’s arms. He held her close and kissed her hair, and said: ‘Laimei will see him safe across the water. There are none who can move and hunt upon the steppe as she can.’

‘And the Romans shall kill him when they hear that we go to war against them.’

The wind across the plain, the dance of shadow and fire. The horses watching silently, waiting.

‘The dead watch us here,’ said Kai. ‘They have brought us here for a reason, and I do not think it is to wait to join them.’ His hand resting on his daughter’s shoulder, tapping a soft, gentle rhythm. ‘Lucius, when will the Romans cross the water?’

‘Soon, but not yet. They will need to wait for good weather, if they are to bring the weapons and provisions from the west. They shall need to pay the men, too. Always late wages, at the end of winter. They won’t march until the silver arrives.’

‘And the Sarmatians will not march until the end of spring,’ Kai answered. ‘They will gather the host, and wait for the hard ground. We have a little time left.’

‘What can we do?’ Lucius said.

Kai stared into the fire. ‘It was a good plan that you had. Submit, wait, trust in the coming of a war to fight.’

‘Yet you think it flawed now?’

‘You said that we must wait, but the Sarmatians do not wait. Each day is the last day, for us, and we leave nothing for tomorrow. It is how we live, fight, love. Rome must give us a war to fight now, and perhaps we may win over our people. Not sit and rot in chains until they call for us. Give us a war at once, and they will fight it.’