Tim Leach - A Winter War

‘Shame to waste water on a dying man,’ said Gaevani. ‘But then, I have always heard Kai of the Dragon was soft-hearted.’

Kai looked over to the fire. ‘You know me, then?’

‘Aye, I know you. Stories of you. Stories of your father, too. He should have taught you better.’

Kai gave a quick look about the circle, but saw no recognition on their faces. ‘Did your father teach you to leave your camp unguarded?’ he said.

‘I did not think that it mattered. The gods are against us – there is no setting a watch against them.’

‘You are of the Wolves?’

‘Most of us are, aye. A few from other clans.’

‘No time to think of the Five Clans now. We stand together.’

‘No doubt,’ said Gaevani. ‘Just a question of who leads.’

‘No doubt.’

Silence for a time. Beside the fire, Kai saw a map carved crudely into the ground by the edge of sword and knife. The boundaries of the five clans of the Sarmatians, marked as best they could be, the vague, unseen lines by which his people lived and died. For they had fought against each other long before the coming of the Romans, only the most desperate famine bringing them together against their common enemy.

The fair-haired woman spoke then. ‘How did you get away?’

‘What is your name?’ Kai asked.

‘Tamura.’

‘I was left for dead on the battlefield. Buried beneath a horse.’ Kai glanced towards his mount, standing apart from the rest of the herd and staring at them, one-eyed, with lordly contempt. ‘He was left for dead, too.’

‘A lucky man!’ she said. ‘And a lucky horse. We need a little good fortune.’

‘He’s no lucky man,’ said Gaevani. ‘None of us are.’

‘I think we may all be counted lucky,’ Kai answered. ‘To live as we do.’

‘To live shamed. You are hurt?’

Kai quickly took his hand from the wound at his side when he saw how the firelight shone in the other man’s eyes. ‘Not much. I was lucky.’

‘So you keep saying.’

‘How did you all get away?’ said Kai, looking about the circle.

Their eyes slid to one another for a moment.

‘After the first charge, we tried to circle back for another. It was too late by then,’ Tamura said.

Kai did not answer. He merely thought of how long they had fought upon the ice.

Gaevani tilted his head back towards the horses. ‘Looked like a good bit of a treasure you found for yourself, picking at the corpses.’

The others about the fire followed his gaze, and Kai heard them sigh as they saw once more what he had brought from the battlefield. A spear, a few swords, a coat of mail – it was still enough to make him a rich man amongst the people.

‘Gifts for the rest of us?’ Gaevani said.

‘They are mine.’

‘We are friends here.’

‘Yes. And not thieves.’

The fire burned low. A creak of leather and scrape of horned armour as the men shifted around the fire.

Kai looked about them, slid back just a little from the fire. He tapped the ground where the map was marked. ‘Where do you go now?’

‘We were just speaking of this,’ Tamura said softly.

Gaevani cut her off. ‘ We are—’

‘I shall be heading to the east,’ said Kai. And he laid a finger onto a place unmarked on their map – a little to the east, in the lands of the River Dragon. ‘I have kin here, in a village called Iolas. Beyond the swamplands, but it is not so far from here, if you know the way as I do.’ He looked each of them in the eye, one by one. ‘All who want to are welcome to ride with me, no matter what your clan. I know you are far from your own country.’

Gaevani shook his head ruefully. ‘Making choices for us? You think to be a captain? A chieftain, with all that iron dripping from your horse?’

‘I make no decisions. I am no chieftain or captain. I ride to the east.’

‘You ride alone then. We are not of your people.’

Kai looked at them again, one after another. ‘On my honour,’ he said, ‘you shall find safety with my kin in Iolas. This truce between our people, it shall hold a little longer, until the spring thaw at least. It is no time for Sarmatians to be killing each other.’ A moment’s silent debate. Then, by the light of the fire, Kai could see the others nodding. ‘It seems they will ride with me,’ he said to Gaevani.

‘Is that so?’

‘It is so.’

‘A shame. That is a shame. On your honour, you say? If only they knew how little that honour was worth.’

They stared at each other, across the fire. Kai saw the man smile then, his lips twitch as he made ready to speak. Kai knew the words that would be coming next – the words from his past, the story to shame him.

But it was Tamura who spoke, starting and staring into the darkness. ‘Did you hear that?’ she said.

‘Quiet,’ Gaevani said. ‘You would jump at the wind if it blew hard enough. We still need to settle this. There are things you need to know about this man you would follow.’

But he spoke no more. They all heard it then – the rasp of shifting armour, the heavy tread of footfall in the snow, the rattle and gasp of a blown horse. A shape in the darkness, a rider leading a horse towards the fire. Clumsy, staggering steps – the horse’s head bobbing up and down, the way a horse moves when utterly exhausted, the man’s steps crossing over one another like a drunkard’s, for it seemed the horse was no longer strong enough to bear a rider.

Closer now, and they could see a Sarmatian who seemed aged by wounds. Closer still, and they could see the man’s armour was almost ruined, the plates of horn and bone ripped and torn away. A thing of blood the figure seemed, though how much was his own and how much that of others they could not say.

Another sound – from behind, a tearing sound, like blade through flesh, a dark shape moving at his side. The one-eyed horse was loose, the tied reins torn apart, the beast rushing forward to stamp the life out from the stranger who came towards them. Kai waited for the horse to rear and strike, that great murderer of men that had left so many dead behind it.

But the horse stopped short, stood still and trembling before the newcomer. The bleeding man raised a hand and gave a gentle touch to the horse’s face. For the horse came to greet, not to kill.

The warrior’s face was half covered by the helm. Blood ran from the mouth, and there was something wrong with the jaw – dropped low on one side, fixed in place. That was why Kai had not recognised that face at first. That was why he had not known her for who she was.

Laimei pulled the helm from her head with shaking fingers, her close-cropped hair matted with blood and dirt. She leaned her head against her horse, and the horse gave a great cry of joy and grief. Then, slowly, Kai’s sister sank to the ground and painted the snow with blood.

Her jaw was cracked and swollen – perhaps by the edge of a Roman shield, the pommel of a sword, or the kick of a blinded horse. But Kai knew that there would be a worse wound than that. So many times before he had helped to search a bloodied body, thinking it almost whole, only to find the flesh spilling its secrets from a ragged slash in the belly, the life pulsing away from a cut in the thigh, a great blackish bruise that bloomed into some deep and hidden wound.

Kai did not check the throat or the thigh, for if she had been cut there she never would have made it to the campfire. He pushed his fingers past the hacked plates of armour and searched the belly and the low sides of the back, seeking those slow wounds that bleed but do not knit, that stink of rot from the moment they are opened. He ran his fingers over her skull, feeling for a shifting softness, the kind of wound that would slowly drive a warrior mad before it killed them. And she twitched at his touch, little jerks of hand and foot, for even unconscious it seemed that she fought against him. Even in dreams, she remembered the feud.