Tim Leach - A Winter War

Arite reached forward and stroked the child’s face gently, and Tomyris leaned into the touch. They sat there together for a time, and it was Arite’s turn to look into the fire. How many generations of her people had lived upon the steppe, none could say. All the way back to the birthing of the world, Scythians and Amazons, and their children the Sarmatians. How many thousands of years had the horsepeople stared into fires like that, remembering their songs and those they had loved? And what would it mean, if this was the last generation?

But everyone thought that way, she told herself. That they would be last people. It would be true one day, but perhaps not yet. She held the child close, and walked her to the entrance of the hut. Together they looked upwards, at where the first few stars were gathering into constellations above them, the legends of their people. The trickster Syrdon, two matching lines of stars marking out his liar’s lips as he whispered to Tabiti. Pkharmat stealing fire from Sela, a wheel of stars showing the wheels of the chariot as she rode across the sky. Arash, plunging a sword of stars into a gravemound of black sky to seal an oath.

Arite looked on those stars, and prayed to any gods who might be listening. She prayed for the warband to return.

Far to the west, close to the banks of the frozen Danu, Kai watched the same stars break out across the sky, the same stories retold in points of light amidst the darkness. And beneath them, beneath them all, out upon the plains, ringed by the shadows of the Carpathian mountains, a second set of stars came into being. For there were none who would live upon the plain without fire on a winter’s night.

First, a great constellation of light – a new city, a fortress that had sprung up in a single day and would vanish at dawn like a dream. No mistaking it for a camp of the Sarmatians, one of those conferences of the shepherds that would sprawl and wrap about plain and river and hill like a lover’s embrace, for every line of the camp was as straight as a blade, each tent precisely laid in place, each fire marked and measured and positioned carefully by the Roman Legion. Claiming their ground beyond the Danu, ready to harry the defeated Sarmatians.

That was the first fire he saw, but soon there were others, little points of light that sprang up across the plain. At each one, Kai knew, Sarmatians would be gathered around fires made of bone and dried dung, huddled together to survive the night. Scattered bands, spreading back to the lands of clan and kin, the great alliance of their people broken upon the ice.

He tried to judge the fires from a distance, even as he shivered upon his horse. Some were made too openly, made by men too sick or stupid or careless with their lives, shamed by defeat and longing for death – too close to the Romans, and the night hunters would find them long before dawn. He could see other fires that were already fading, too weak to last until dawn, and no doubt when the sun rose it would show a ring of dead men like a circle of stones, already part entombed by the ice. But here and there, the fires burned strong, where some captain had held order, where the riders had been fortunate or careful with their fuel. It was to one of those that he made his way.

As he travelled towards it, he wondered if there were others like him – shadows moving across the plain between those points of light, men wandering like the ghosts of the dead, moving along the unseen paths back towards their homes. Perhaps even some who had died upright upon their mounts, held in place by the care of the horse beneath them who did not know that they faithfully bore a corpse towards the fires. He hunched up beneath his cloak, offered a prayer that he would live to see another dawn.

As he drew close to the fire, he slipped from the saddle. Even at a distance, he could see the light of the fire shining upon the horn armour of the Sarmatians, see the tall horses tied to a line of spears thrust into the ground. A longing to call out, to rush to them and embrace them as his own. But there was a silence in the air, the sharp kind of silence that is dangerous to break. None of the Sarmatians were speaking, their tongues stilled by the shame of defeat, and even the horses were quiet – leaning and nuzzling against each other for comfort, for they too had suffered in the battle, and sought comfort in silence, the embrace. In their own particular way, they too knew shame.

Only a low moan of pain broke the silence. A boy in blankets, his beardless face white with agony, hands clasped around a wound in his belly, red coils pulsing beneath his hands. Even at a distance, Kai could hear him speak.

‘Water. Please,’ said the boy.

None moved.

‘Water. Please.’

Slowly, one of the men about the fire placed his head in his hands.

Nearby, a fair-haired woman carefully nursing a wounded wrist said: ‘We can make the lands of the Shining Company in a few days. And then…’

‘Then what? You forget the feud between our clans.’ This from a dark-haired man on the other side of the fire.

‘You think any care for such a thing now, Gaevani?’

‘What else is there to do now, but settle feuds? It is the end. Even the gods shall pay what they owe, at the ending of the world.’

‘You think it is the end? Is that why you—’

‘You shall not speak of that.’ Kai saw the man called Gaevani lay a hand on the axe at his side. ‘We are too many mouths beside the fire already.’

The fair-haired woman looked about – seeking allies, perhaps, in those men around her.

‘Where do you say we go, then?’ she said.

Gaevani scratched at his jaw. ‘We go south tomorrow.’

‘That is towards Dacian land.’

Silence, then. But it seemed there was no need for words – the little defiant smile on Gaevani’s face spoke enough.

‘You cannot mean to…’

‘Ride alone, if you will,’ he said. ‘But those that want to live, ride with me. There’s always a place for a good man with a spear.’

Silence again, the crackling of the fire. The voice of the dying boy: ‘Water. Please.’

‘Quiet lad!’ Gaevani snapped. ‘Die quietly, will you?’

And at that, Kai spoke at last: ‘Why not give the boy water?’

The men around the fire started, stumbling to their feet like drunkards, pulling weapons and staring out into the blackness beyond the fire. Only Gaevani did not stir.

‘Be still, you old women,’ he said. ‘The stranger speaks our tongue, does he not?’ He turned his head towards the newcomer. ‘Come on. Let us see you.’

Their eyes were upon him as he walked forward, and Kai knew that they would see the metal first, catching the light of the fire. The curved pommel of a Roman sword slung in his belt, a few plates of metal sewn into the armour, the glint of a spearhead and a salvaged coat of mail upon the one-eyed horse that he rode – a chieftain’s weight in black iron.

Kai raised a hand in greeting as he came close, his eyes dancing from one man to another, reading the markings that were etched into their gear, searching for a sign of their clan. Wolves of the Steppe, for the most part, though he saw a man or two of the Grey Hand and the Serpents of Jade amongst the dozen or so who were gathered about the fire. Not a face there that he knew; no people of the River Dragon.

He swung down from the horse, clasped the hands that were offered to him. They gestured to a place close by the fire, for they could see the frost that laced his beard, hear the rattle of his armour as he trembled with the cold. But before he sat, he went to where the boy lay in soiled blankets, poured the water onto a rag and wetted the boy’s lips. A hand rose from the blankets, and Kai took it in his, knotted the fingers together.