Shadow of the Horsemen (Kalie's Journey) (14 page)

Kalie moved between a shrieking Varena, who was trying to cover herself, and this new threat. Yet somehow she knew, though she told herself otherwise, that Riyik was not a threat. “What do you want?” she demanded.

“To help you if I can.”

Kalie snorted with contempt, and searched for a scathing remark, but once again, her tongue betrayed her. “Why? And what did you have in mind?”

Riyik shook his head. “I’ve been trying to explain the answer to your first question for longer than I can remember, so I won’t bother anymore. But as to the second—we’d better act quickly. Give me that bone.” Kalie surrendered it reluctantly, and set herself to comforting Varena. Riyik pushed the bone into the dry earth by Maalke’s head.

“Take her to my sister,” he told Kalie. “See if she can fix the girl’s clothes. If not, borrow something of Brenia’s for her. When Maalke wakes, I’ll tell him he fell and hit his head on that old bone.”
   

“And you think he’s going to believe that? He wasn’t that drunk!”

Riyik shrugged, took a skin of kumis from his belt and poured the contents liberally about the face and clothes of the unconscious man. “The important thing is that we make him believe that he was. He’ll wake up with the same symptoms as a hangover. Nice shot by the way.”

“And later? If he remembers what really happened?”

“By then you and your daughter will be safely in my tent, under my protection.”

“We’ll be what?” For once, Kalie and Varena shared the same reaction.

“It’s simple, really. Your actions will mean your death if Maalke remembers. I can’t change the law, but I can offer Maalke enough horses for you and the girl to buy himself ten comely slaves. I might even be able to get Maalke invited to one of the feasts reserved for the new king’s inner circle. Wealth and opportunity of that magnitude will make him eager to forget anything that would jeopardize it.”

Kalie looked at her daughter. Varena, at least, looked happy.

She felt her face close about her like a mask. “So we would be your slaves then?” She looked down at Maalke, and laughed. “Very well. It seems I have outmaneuvered myself once again.”

Riyik sighed. “Will I never be able to do anything right in your eyes, Kalie?” The pain on his face was like a slap to hers.

“I’m sorry, Riyik. It’s just that I don’t know what to make of all this.”

“You may be my slaves if you wish. But if you recall, I did ask you to marry me. The offer is still open.”

Kalie’s head spun. “I thought you were to marry Yasha,” she said faintly.

“I am.” The words were bitter. “I wish I were not. But you could still be a second wife. I would make you first, but I dare not offer such an insult to Yasha and her family.”

“What of Varena?”

“She will be my daughter.”

“You would do that?” Kalie felt that a faint breeze might knock her over.

“A man who marries a widow will often adopt her sons as his. There are fewer formalities with daughters, but they do exist. I will declare her my daughter, and name a dowry. Before the year ends, no one will remember she was ever anyone else.” Varena seemed caught somewhere between ecstasy and fear that it was all a cruel trick.

Kalie stared Riyik in the eye. He calmly returned her gaze. “I have rejected every effort you have made to win me over—“

“Save one.” Riyik glanced down at the water skin she wore at her waist, and then returned his gaze to hers.

“Yes,” Kalie said, the ghost of a smile on her lips. “For which I thank you again. It has been very useful. But what you speak of now involves a bit more of a commitment—from both of us. I have never been nice to you, or behaved as a good Aahken woman. Why then do you still pursue me? Why offer to help a girl you don’t even know?”

“Perhaps to convince you that not all men of Aahk are evil. Or perhaps out of the debt I owe to your people for sparing my life and showing me there is more to live for than battle and conquest.”

Kalie grabbed Varena for support—something that would strike her as funny later on. They both stumbled, and Riyik reached forward to steady them. This time, Kalie accepted his hand. She opened her mouth to speak, but whatever she might have said was cut short by the sounds of shrieking women and shouting men.

At once, the three who were conscious hurried to see what was going on. Riyik’s face showed regret that he would never know what Kalie would have said. Then he put a hand on his dagger, and hurried in front of the women to whatever danger awaited.
      

Pausing at
Riyik’s
tent only long enough to hand Varena over to Brenia with a few whispered instructions, Kalie and Riyik raced to join the crowd gathering in front of the king’s tent. While Varena was happy enough for the sanctuary of a dark felt tent, Kalie could tell Brenia would have preferred to follow the crowd and see for herself what was happening. But, like a good Aahken woman, she did as her brother commanded.

Before the king’s tent, a
half naked
woman was being tossed between three guards while she tried desperately to cover herself. Behind them, a slave girl with demurely lowered eyes quietly answered questions put to her by two other guards. Kalie strained to hear, cursing the fact that these women never spoke at a normal volume. Those nearest, however, were happy to repeat everything the girl said to those around them.

As the story of a slave girl interrupting an afternoon tryst in the king’s tent slowly unfolded, a rumpled, but fully dressed Kariik emerged from the tent and began barking orders to his guards. Just then, an older man arrived, greatly agitated and out of breath, demanding to know who had dishonored his daughter. It was then, when the woman broke free of her tormentors and rushed to her father that Kalie and Riyik saw finally saw her face.

Riyik’s intended, Yasha.

“He is my king, father!” Yasha shrieked. “I could not disobey him!”

The warrior turned to Kariik, but seemed suddenly at a loss on how to demand satisfaction for his daughter’s honor from his king. “My liege…” he began. “Yasha was promised to another, but if you wish her for your own, I of course will gladly…” Whatever else he might have said was swallowed by ugly laughter and ribald comments from those around him.

Kalie and Riyik looked at each other in the same moment. “It seems a solution had been handed to us, Kalie,” Riyik said. She could not hear him over the noise of the crowd, but she could read his lips well enough. “Whose work, do you think? My gods or your goddess?”

“Must be your gods,” she replied. “My Goddess is as confused as I am over this mess!”

Before she could say anything else, Riyik began wading through the crowd, trying to catch Kariik’s attention. “My king! My brother Levik! I would gladly renounce my claim on this woman out of loyalty to our new king…” Kariik did not seem to hear him, for he was still shaking his head in answer to Levik’s offer.

“I do not want this woman,” Kariik said, as though he was being offered a plate of fruit. His voice was soft, but it silenced the crowd, but for a single shared indrawn breath, and a strangled cry of horror from Yasha.

Levik shook his head as though he misheard, and managed a confused, “My king?”

Riyik, a black cloud of anger masking his face, surged forward even more desperately. “Brothers, please!” he shouted. “This is not the time or place for such talk. Privately, within your tent, my king…”
         

“I was enjoying a
well deserved
nap when she,” Kariik jerked his head toward Yasha, “pushed her way into my sleeping chamber. She had already shed her clothing, and made it plain what her intentions were. Of course I accepted the offer. What man wouldn’t?”

If the crowd had been wild before, they were frenzied now. Most only laughed and jeered, but others, sounding genuinely outraged, began gathering stones and pieces of bone from the hard ground.

Levik turned on his daughter, disbelief warring with rage. “Father, no!” she screamed.

A large, breathless woman, whom Kalie knew to be Yahsa’s mother pushed her way through the crowd. “It isn’t her fault!” she beseeched whoever would listen. “It’s those foreign slaves! They fill a young girl’s head full of ideas…”

Yasha was nodding desperately. “It was Kalie! She told me that among her people, if a woman wants a man, she just goes to him and…”

“Silence!” Levik roared over the voice of the mob.

Kalie pulled her veil tight around her, terrified she had already been recognized. Her eyes sought Riyik, who was making a last desperate attempt to reason with the king. “Kariik!” he whispered harshly. “That was not well done! Tell Levik you want his daughter, and offer him a few horses for her! He’ll sell her cheap in her present condition, and he’ll accept this stain on his honor if it means grandsons with royal blood. Everyone can still win!”

Kariik shot an annoyed glance at Riyik, then a more worried one at the still growing mob. “What do I need with another woman?” he demanded. “I have more than I can use already! And why should I waste good horses on one who throws herself at a man like a harlot? Doubtless she’d make me a laughing stock before winter! Besides,” Kariik eyed the mob. “Their blood is up. They’ll have their entertainment one way or another. It might as well be her.”

But there was more shouting than those demanding the blood of a dishonored woman. Men came to stand by Levik, calling for just compensation for the loss of his daughter. It was, after all, the king himself who had taken her. No true king would behave in this way they muttered, while others shouted that Riyik, too, was owed compensation. No one, they cried, not even a king, could just help himself to a warrior’s betrothed and walk away as if it were nothing.

Then Haraak arrived, out of breath and angry. No, Kalie realized. Not angry. Frightened. He had made Kariik king, and assumed he could control him. Kariik’s blatant incompetence at the job, demonstrated today by alienating so many of his men, threatened to destroy everything Haraak had worked for.

Kariik saw the look on Haraak’s face, and looked frightened himself. Then, gathering his composure, he turned to Levik and the noise of the crowd dropped off sharply. For a moment, Kalie thought he might take Riyik’s advice, and salvage the situation. “Take her home!” the king told Levik. “Find her a husband if you still can.”

Fury boiled in Levik’s face, and Kalie did not think all of it was directed at Yasha. But she was the only one he could strike at.

Riyik now fought to reach Levik, but the crowd would not let him pass. “Wait!” he shouted at his brother warrior. “I will still honor our agreement…”

Kalie never knew if Levik had heard Riyik’s offer. Taking his daughter by the shoulders, he flung her onto the hard, hot ground. Then he turned and walked away. His frightened wife rushed after him, trying to catch hold of him, and the protection she hoped to find for herself, now that her daughter was lost. Kalie guessed that her husband would keep her—after beating her for raising such a wanton daughter.

Then the mob closed in around Yasha’s sobbing form. Kalie sought to back away, as raised arms flung stones, bones and even their own filth at their victim, but found herself trapped by the press of bodies. She noticed the women flung their missiles even more viciously than did the men, and yelled even more outraged epithets.

Then Riyik was by her side, leading her through the crazed mob. They reached his tent, and were at once enveloped by an oasis of calm and quiet. Brenia brought kumis for Riyik and tea for Kalie—without being asked. Dressed in better clothes than she had ever owned, Varena shadowed her, quietly assisting Brenia in all she did.

“Did she die quickly, at least?” Varena asked, pulling Kalie’s thoughts back to the horror she had witnessed.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see.” Kalie looked at Riyik, surprised to see anger and grief and something more…guilt, perhaps? No, she realized: she wasn’t surprised at all.
         

Hesitantly, Kalie reached out. “It wasn’t your fault, Riyik. Yasha knew the risks when she went into the king’s tent.”

“She didn’t have to die!” he said, tossing back the skin of kumis. “It would have cost Kariik nothing to save her life, and he’d have gained her father’s loyalty for all time. Instead he threw away a young girl’s life and made an enemy of her father. What kind of king does that?”

Having no answer, Kalie asked, “Would you have really married her after what happened?”

“Yes.”

Brenia gasped. “Brother! You could not have!”

“Do you care for her so much?” Kalie asked. That hadn’t been how it seemed to her. Or was she simply jealous?

“I don’t care for her at all! I was thrilled when I saw her with the king, for I thought it meant a way to honorably get out of the agreement and marry you!” Brenia’s head was whipping back and forth between them as she sought to catch up with recent events. “But I care about what is right! What happened to Yasha was not right.”

“According to your people it was,” Kalie breathed.

“Of course, I didn’t think to ask you.” Riyik now looked uncertain. “Would you have been willing to share a tent with her?”

“Of course!” Kalie realized Brenia wasn’t the only one having trouble keeping up with recent events. “I doubt very much Yasha would have liked it, but I think she might have preferred it to death.”

“Are you two really going to marry?” Brenia asked. Crouched in the shadows, Varena awaited the answer with bated breath.

Kalie opened her mouth to speak but found she could not. Riyik looked up from the leather scroll, which held the tally of all his horses and met her gaze.

“Let us go for a ride,” he suggested.