His Conquering Sword (17 page)

“Feodor, you can’t speak like that to me, like you did out there, before. It just makes me furious. And it isn’t right.”

“I can speak to you however I wish. I’m your husband.”

“Yes, as you’re forever reminding me.”

There was silence. “No,” he said finally, so low that she had to strain to hear, “perhaps it’s myself I’m reminding. Gods, I dreamed, but I never thought—” He broke off. He turned his face into her cheek and just breathed. She felt like she didn’t know him at all. “Anyway,” he said, his lips moving against her skin, “I’ll bet your head doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“Oh, gods,” said Nadine to the air. She settled in against him. He began to hum under his breath: He was happy. Nadine sighed and resigned herself to her fate.

A
RINA HAD DIED ONCE
already by the time Diana got to Dr. Hierakis’s tent. A boy from the Veselov tribe brought Diana the news—garbled, she prayed—at the Company encampment, and she ran all the way to the hospital grounds and into the doctor’s tent, pitched in the center. She stopped at the edge of the carpet. Her ribs were in agony; she gulped air.

Tess sat cross-legged on a pillow, mending the torn hem of a tunic. Her eyes lifted once to watch Kirill, pacing in the distance, and then shifted to Diana. Her face lit. “Ah, thank goodness,” she said in Anglais.

“What happened?” Diana fairly shrieked the words. Beyond the tent, Kirill opened and closed his good hand to the rhythm of his pacing. His face was white. Once a man paused to speak to him, but the exchange was brief and the man shook his head sadly and walked away.

“We got caught in a skirmish. Arina was wounded.”

“But—she’s dead—?”

Tess pinned the needle into the fabric, bound up the loose thread, and set down the torn tunic. “Her heart stopped. At that point, Cara threw every jaran out of the surgery and began—well, she’s operating now.”

“Operating!”

Kirill halted stock-still and looked their way, caught by the sound of Diana’s voice. He strode over to them and flung himself down on the carpet, next to Tess. Tess embraced him. He accepted it. More than that—he buried himself against her as if he sought his comfort from her. Diana knew body language. When acquaintances embrace, one can read the gap between them. When friends, when siblings embrace, no matter how close, there is still an infinitesimal distance, like a layer of molecules, separating them. When a mother hugs her child, they meet. But when lovers embrace, they don’t just meet but join. Tess held Kirill against her as if he was her lover.

At this inopportune moment, Bakhtiian appeared. A bandage swathed his left arm. Tess’s gaze lifted and met his. Diana watched an entire conversation pass between them, wordless and within seconds. A lifted eyebrow. A grimace. Eyes slanting toward the tent. The movement of a chin, signifying a nod. To Diana’s astonishment, Bakhtiian grabbed a pillow, threw it down on the other side of Kirill, and settled down beside the other man. At once, Kirill broke away from Tess and sat up. He flushed.

“Here is something to drink.” Bakhtiian offered the other man a cup of komis. Trapped between Tess and Bakhtiian, Kirill had to accept. He sipped once, twice, and then gulped the rest down like a man who has only just discovered that he is desperately thirsty. Then he sat, breathing hard, gaze fixed on his withered hand. He closed it into a fist, and opened it again. Closed it. Opened it.

“Do you want a command?” asked Bakhtiian, refilling Kirill’s cup.

“Ilya—” began Tess.

Kirill flung his head back. “A command!”

“A general doesn’t have to fight in every engagement. He only has to lead. I know your worth, Kirill. And I know the worth of your loyalty to me. You and Josef and Niko are the three men I trust most in the whole world. You’ll never be the fighter you were, but you’ve some use in that arm now. Enough to lead your own command, I think.”

Diana was appalled. Was this how Bakhtiian consoled him for the death of his wife?

Kirill’s expression underwent so many swift changes from one emotion to another that Diana could not read them all: anguish, exhilaration, hope, fear, ambition—Goddess! He was going to accept.

“You honor me, Bakhtiian,” he said softly.

Bakhtiian snorted. “It’s only to keep you away from my wife.”

Kirill grinned. Yes, he was a distinctly attractive man, and he knew it. “I suppose it’s unlikely that she won’t succumb to my greater charms sooner or later.”

“Perhaps,” said Bakhtiian. His lips quirked.

“I find this conversation offensive, considering the circumstances.” said Tess in a voice thick with emotion. “If you can’t talk about something decent, then stop talking.”

Immediately both men looked chastened. Into their silence, bells sang softly and Ursula emerged from the doctor’s tent. Kirill jumped to his feet.

“Arina?”

“She’ll live,” said Ursula curtly. “Tess, Cara needs you—Ah, Diana. You’d be much better. Can you come in?”

“Can I—?” Kirill faltered. “May I see her?”

“No. Diana?”

“Yes,” said Diana hurriedly. “I’ll come.” She nodded at the others and escaped inside.

In the inner chamber, Dr. Hierakis leaned over the foot of the scan-bed and stared at a pulsing graph configured on a flat screen. “Tess,” she said without looking up, “I want to look over the other wounded. Can you sit by—?” She glanced up. “Oh, hello, Diana. If you can spare the time, I’d be pleased to have you sit here and monitor her.”

“Of course I can spare the time!” Diana hesitated, not sure how awful a scene she would discover. She edged closer, but Arina simply appeared to be deeply asleep. A slick transparent cap covered her hair, and her mouth gaped slightly open. A sheet draped her; warmth emanated from the bed on which she lay.

“Oh, there’re no gaping wounds to see.” Dr. Hierakis’s attention had snapped back to the screen, but as usual she seemed able to read unvoiced thoughts. “All right and tight, and no scars except the ones they’d expect to see.”

“What happened to her?”

“Spear or sword thrust shattered her rib cage and she got a bone chip in her heart. For one. Died twice on me, she did, but she’ll be fine.”

Diana crept forward and covered Arina’s limp hand with her own. “Why did you bring her in here? If she’d been a man, you’d have let her die, wouldn’t you?”

The doctor glanced up, surprised. She blinked. Without its frame of black curls, her face showed stark and strong in the soft light. “Why I suppose I would have. Probably ten men less badly wounded than her have died already, while I’ve been in here.”

“Not to mention the Habakar soldiers.”

The doctor snorted. “Don’t mention them, please. I have enough on my conscience as it is. Though the jaran healers are saving ten times the number of wounded they would have before I came. Still.” She pushed off from the bed and pulled off her surgery cap. Though her hair was bound back in a twist at the nape of her neck, stray wisps had escaped here and there, giving her an untidy appearance. “Goddess. Maybe I’m biased. It just tore at me, though, when they brought her in that way. That, and Kirill’s face.”

“Doctor! You’d let a man’s looks sway you?”

The doctor laughed. “I meant his fear and grief. But, yes, frankly, I would. Why not? There’s little enough joy, and far too much pain, in a world like this not to appreciate the beauty that comes your way. He has a kind heart, and kind hearts count for a great deal in my book.” She peeled off gloves so sheer that Diana hadn’t known she was wearing them. “She’ll be out for eight more hours at least. I’ve got her under deep recovery. I’d like to keep her with me for another two days, and then I think she can be moved back to her camp. How long can you stay here?”

Diana hesitated. “I don’t know. Rehearsals… Can Kirill come in and just look at her, at least?”

“Not today.” The doctor ran a cool towel over her face and then scrubbed her hands under the sonic decontaminant shelf. “I don’t have time to disguise the equipment, and I understand there’re mobs of wounded and more expected. I’ll tell Kirill to see to his children.” She swept out.

Diana stood in silence, holding onto Arina’s cool hand. At the foot of the couch, projecting up, a faint three-dimensional image of Arina’s body rotated slowly in the air. Angry red pulsed around the heart and scored a half-dozen other places around her midsection. She did not stir, only breathed. Diana found a stool and sat down to watch over her.

After a long while, bells chimed and Tess entered. “Do you want anything?” Tess asked, regarding Arina pensively. “I can send Aleksi to keep watch—oh, hell—no, I can’t. It wouldn’t be proper. There’s no one but the actors, you, and Ursula, and myself.”

“Can you send Owen a message?”

“Better yet, I’ll go myself and ask him to release you for two days. Will that be—?”

“No.” Diana winced, thinking of rehearsals, thinking of the parts she had yet to master. Quinn and Oriana had divided her old parts between them, leaving an odd combination of secondary roles for Anahita to fill in, but Anahita had collapsed once onstage already so she could no longer be relied on. But this was Arina. “Yes. But could you bring my slate back, so I can study my parts? And a change of clothes?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

Tess explained about a sortie and how the trailing edge of the battle had slammed against their surveying party and then charged on.

“Dr. Hierakis said there were lots of casualties.”

“Many,” said Tess grimly. “And many more to come.” She left.

Diana did not understand what Tess had meant by that final comment until three days later, when the hospital was full of jaran injured, many of them from the Veselov tribe. The Veselov jahar had been hit hard by the battle and the pursuit. The doctor designated a stretcher for Arina that morning, and Kirill arrived breathless to walk beside his wife as they carried her back to her own camp. Arina was conscious but pale and weak. Diana walked on Arina’s other side.

They walked in silence for awhile. At last, Kirill spoke. “Arina, Bakhtiian is going to give me my own command.”

Diana winced. Arina had already expressed her fear that Kirill would want to ride in the army; this wasn’t going to help her get better.

But Arina got a sudden spark of light in her eyes. Her voice, when she spoke, was faint but clear. “Your own command? Not just to ride in the army?

“My own command. My own army. We talked about it. There’s much reconnaissance yet to be done. There’s the Golden Road that runs east to be scouted, and the lands southwest from here, past the city the khaja call Parkilnous.” He had warmed to his topic, but now he faltered and looked down at his wife in concern.

In the distance, Diana heard a rhythmic thump and whistle, thump and whistle, over and over and over and going on endlessly.

“What is that noise?” Diana asked when it became apparent to her that Arina had nothing to say about Kirill’s good fortune—which, of course, must seem the worst of fortunes to Arina.

Kirill answered without looking up from his wife’s face. He held her hand in his withered one, but Diana could see that the hand looked fleshier and the arm actually had some substance to it now, as if by constant exercise he meant to restore it to its former strength. “It’s a
catapult.”

“Oh. What are they doing? Lobbing stones into the city for practice?”

“No. Heads. For a lesson.”

It took Diana a full thirty strides to realize that he wasn’t joking. She turned her face away and shuddered. Of course, she thought of Anatoly, sent out to bring the king’s head to Bakhtiian. How did you separate a head from its shoulders? How difficult was it? Did it cause a terrible mess? Was there a lot of blood, or only if the victim was still alive? Or if the blade wasn’t sharp enough?

“Diana, are you well? You’re looking pale.”

She started. “No, Kirill, I’m fine. Just worried about Arina.”

Arina, on her pallet, smiled weakly. “I’ll be well,” she said. Her voice was breathless and wheezy, but determined. “Bakhtiian has honored you, Kirill,” she said finally.

“You’re content?”

“Your own command? Yes, I’m content.”

She lapsed into silence. But her words shocked Diana. It hadn’t been fear for Kirill’s life that had caused Arina to speak so before, but only fear that he’d be just another rider. But make him a general in his own right, and then all was well. Goddess, she would never understand these people.

The whole tribe came out to meet them as the little party entered the Veselov encampment. They kept a respectful distance, but they wanted a glimpse of their etsana. At times like this, Diana was wrenched away from her view of Arina as a sweet girlfriend about her own age and forced to realize that Arina had considerable authority and extremely high status. It reminded her of Mother Sakhalin’s disappointment in the common woman—a mere entertainer with a pretty face—whom her grandson had married. Anatoly should have married someone important, someone like Galina Orzhekov or a foreign princess, someone who wanted him to ride in the army, who was proud that he commanded his own jahar and was sent by Bakhtiian to perform important and dangerous deeds. She put a hand to her face, touching the scar that branded her left cheek. What was it Sonia had said, that a woman and a man are married as long as the scar marks the woman’s face, or the man lives? And yet, on Earth, it would be a simple procedure to erase the scar forever.

At Arina’s tent, Arina’s young sister and Karolla Arkhanov waited to place her on pillows inside the great tent. They settled her in. Diana felt superfluous. Mira shrieked, to see her mother, but knelt a handbreadth away from her as she had evidently been instructed not to disturb her. Lavrenti bawled and arched his back in anger because his uncle Anton wouldn’t put him down on his mother. At last Kirill took Lavrenti and the boy calmed, his thin face caught in a baby’s sullen pout.

Vasil came to pay his respects. He looked battered and bruised, and he limped, but the injuries merely gave him an interesting air of nobility in the face of dangers seen and conquered. Diana edged away and backed out through the throng. It was time to go home.