The Novels of the Jaran (34 page)

Bakhtiian stood and turned. “My own demons from the mountains.”

Keregin rode over to Bakhtiian. “Your sweethearts are no longer so eager.”

Bakhtiian looked down at the mouth of the gorge. A few shadows still overlay it, but light descended steadily, and soon enough it would lie fully lit in the glare of the sun. “They don’t approve of my relations.”

“They’ll get over it. Do you want us to entertain them when they return?” Keregin grinned, peering through half-closed, heavy-lidded eyes.

“You have no obligation to take on my quarrels.”

“The gods have touched your head, Bakhtiian. You send away your jahar to make the odds interesting, and then, because that isn’t enough, you send away the last four, so that you can impress the world by beating off—how many?”

“One hundred and seven.”

“One hundred and seven! Ah, Bakhtiian, you’ve taken our fighting from us by uniting the jaran. Whom can we hire ourselves to now? Give us this. Don’t be greedy.”

“You are only forty riders.”

Keregin laughed. “Rather unfair odds against those khaja bastards, don’t you think? If we’d wanted to live forever, we’d have married and gotten children. No, let us do this. This day’s work alone will make your reputation.”

Bakhtiian smiled slightly. “Make my reputation what?”

“Something for you to live with and live up to. And yet, I still have no good idea of your height.” He grinned, purposely insulting. “From up here, you still don’t seem that impressive.”

“I improve as one gets closer.”

“Oh, I like you, Bakhtiian.” Keregin slapped his thigh. The sound reverberated through the vale, and he chuckled. “If only I were a younger, handsomer man—but no, you wouldn’t make that choice, would you? Ho, there, Sergi!” he yelled down to one of the lead riders. “What are our sweethearts up to down there?”

“Cowering,” replied the distant man. “Afraid of love, the fools.”

“Love!” shouted Keregin. “No. Passion.” His shout echoed back at him.

“Keregin, I’ve never before let others do my work for me.

“If you plan to lead the jaran, Bakhtiian, you’d best get used to it. Other men have made you a devil to our friends below. Why shouldn’t you leave us to make you an atrocity that will terrify them for generations?”

“Damn you. Leave a few alive to tell the tale.”

The wind was rising. “We’ll tell them you called us up from the very depths of your fire-scorched heart.”

Tadheus had mounted. Bakhtiian paused, as if to say something, but swung up on his horse without a word. He sat there a moment, while he and Keregin simply looked at one another.

Abruptly, Keregin reined his horse downward and yelled at his riders. They all left the upper level, scattering down into the ruins, and those in the forefront started down to the gate that led onto the meadow and from there to the neck of the gorge. A volley of arrows sprayed out from the gorge. Tess caught her breath, but no one fell.

Not yet. The riders shouted insults at each other, arguing among themselves over who would get to lead the charge. Until Keregin, shouting, “Move aside!” sent his horse down in front, thrusting past the others, through the gate, and plunged down onto the meadow, the rest crowding behind.

Soldiers burst out of the gorge, swords out. Arrows flew. Two of the riders fell, but four khaja were struck down by the sabers that flashed in the sun. The khaja soldiers retreated in great disorder back into the gorge, and Keregin, to Tess’s horror, charged down the neck of the gorge after them, shouting, all in black, like the shadow of death against rock. The rest of the arenabekh followed him, one by one. Shrieks of agony and shrill, exultant cries echoed through the vale.

“Tess!” A touch on her arm. Yuri. Tadheus, Mikhal, and Konstans had already gone, vanished up the trail. Bakhtiian, like her, had been watching. Now he rode up beside her.

“Go on, Tess. Haven’t you had enough excitement?”

“I don’t call that excitement,” she muttered, but neither man heard her, Yuri riding in front, Bakhtiian behind, as they followed the trail up into the mountains, the vale and the sounds of fighting lost in the towering rocks they left behind. Her last glimpse: fair-haired Sergi, thick braid dangling to his waist, saber raised, horse half rearing as he drove it down into the gorge.
Someday,
she thought,
a great avalanche will cover it all up.

Yuri paused at the switchback to glance back at her. He grinned. Tess pulled the last of her ruined tunic free and tossed it away, letting it fall where it would. The sun warmed her back where it penetrated the delicate weave of her blouse. Ahead, a bird trilled.

“I’ll get you a new shirt,” shouted Bakhtiian from below. Tess laughed. “By the gods,” he said, coming up beside her, “we’ll give you a red one.”

Chapter Sixteen

“When therefore in the air there occurs a clash of contrary winds and showers.”

—
ANTIPHON THE SOPHIST

T
HEY FOLLOWED THE NARROW
trail all day, hemmed in by high rock, then dismounted and walked their horses until the moon set. Tess slept huddled in her cloak, shivering, starting awake at intervals, but even so, Yuri woke her all too soon. The flush of dawn stained the sky, softening the darkness, and they went on.

The path curled through the heights, ascending and descending by turns. For one interminable stretch a fall of rock half obliterated the trail, and they dismounted and picked their way over the gray slivers that littered the ground. At midday Bakhtiian stopped them at a waterfall that fed a lawn of lush grass; the horses drank and grazed. Tess slumped against a rock, chewing on a strip of dry meat. She was glad of the rest at first, but as it stretched out she became afraid. What if the khaja soldiers were behind them? What if Keregin’s men hadn’t killed them all? What if more khaja had come hunting them? At last Bakhtiian called to them to mount, and they continued on. Still, they saw no sign of their jahar.

“Niko’s driving them,” said Bakhtiian when they halted by yet another stream. They rode again until the moon was gone, shadows staggering over the ground. Yuri’s Kuhaylan mare went lame with a stone in its hoof. Mikhal’s chestnut tarpan began to cough and wheeze.

Tess slept badly. When she woke at dawn, one of her calves had cramped. Her back ached. She limped. The path worsened and their pace slowed. Bakhtiian stopped them again at midday to water and graze the horses; Tess ate her food mechanically, without hunger. The shock she had had in the vale, the sudden appreciation of death, had drained her; she kept going now only because Myshla followed the other horses.

In the late afternoon they halted to let the horses breathe, a rough, tearing sound in the stillness. Tadheus, white-faced and sweating, was too exhausted to dismount by himself, but at least his wound was no longer bleeding. Konstans sat hunched and shaking on the ground. After a bit he rose and checked all the horses’ hooves with unnerving thoroughness. Then he argued with Mikhal and Bakhtiian over whether to kill the chestnut, who was lagging badly. They decided to kill it.

Tess leaned against Myshla, not wanting to watch. She breathed in the mare’s hot, dry smell as if it were tenacity. No matter how much of the thin air she gulped down, it was never enough.

“Here, Tess.” It was Yuri, holding a cup of blood, still warm. “Drink.”

Tess clutched Myshla’s mane, feeling dizzy with revulsion. “I can’t.”

“Drink it.”

Because it was an order, she obeyed.

“Thank the gods, Myshla and Khani are holding up so well,” said Yuri, taking the empty cup from her. He rubbed Myshla’s nose affectionately. “Ilya says he’s never seen horses with the stamina of these khuhaylans. The khepellis must be the finest breeders of horses in all the lands. Come, Tess. We need your help.” He left.

Tess went to relieve Mikhal, who was watching the horses, so he could go help with the slaughter. The horses stood, heads drooping, exhausted. Tasha dozed on the ground. Yuri’s words bothered her: the Chapalii—and the Arabians they had given to Bakhtiian—who should have been doing the worst on this journey, were doing the best. Chapalii efficiency. The horses had to have been altered somehow. Yuri brought more blood, and she lifted Tasha up and helped him drink. After an interminable time, the men finished their work. They went on, leaving the chestnut’s carcass to rot on the path behind. Yuri and Konstans stank of blood.

The moon rose, bright, throwing hallucinatory shadows on the rock walls that surrounded them. Tess held onto Myshla’s reins and stumbled along in Yuri’s wake. This went on forever.

Eventually the path narrowed. Directly ahead rose a blind wall of stone blocking their trail. Somewhere in the rocks an animal called, mocking them. A shout carried back from Konstans, who rode at the fore. She could not see him. The sheer cliff loomed before her, impassable, huge, and she began to rein Myshla aside, for surely they must halt here, having no farther to go. But the path twisted sharply to the right between two hulking black boulders, angled back to the left, and she heard a laugh above her and looked up.

“Kirill!” At that moment she could have seen nothing more pleasing.

He stood on a small ledge, looking more then usually self-satisfied. “Tess. I could have spitted your four companions as they rode past, but I thought that if I did, I’d block the path with bodies and then
you
couldn’t get through.”

Tess laughed, spirits already lighter. “You’re too good to me, Kirill. Where can I find a space large enough to sleep?”

“At my breast,” said Kirill cheerfully, aware that Bakhtiian had come up behind her and was listening.

“Wanton,” said Tess.

“If you go on,” he added, not a bit contrite, “it opens up and we’ve made a little camp.”

She walked on. The path remained an arm’s span wide for about one hundred paces. Shadowy forms, concealed at strategic intervals, greeted her. Where the path widened, Niko was waiting. He took Myshla’s reins.

“Yuri says you’re tired, child. Let me take the horse.”

She merely stood after he left, her eyelids fluttering, her head sinking. A low humming filled her ears.

“Tess.” Yuri took hold of her hand and led her to a small space away from the path. “Sleep.” He dumped her blanket and cloak on the ground and left. She slept.

The sun woke her. Its warmth on her face felt like the stroke of a hand, soft and comforting. Until it occurred to her that in this ravine the sun had to be very high to shine down on her; that they should still be here at this late hour of the morning was impossible. She sat up.

“I thought you’d never wake up.”

Looking up, she saw Yuri smiling at her from where he perched on top of the boulder against which she slept.

“Why are we still here?” She got hastily to her feet and blinked in the brightness. Ahead, she saw the camp—the four Chapalii tents and one fire crowded in between the high walls. One scrubby, yellow-barked tree shaded the fire, and a few bushes clung to the slopes. “It must be midday.”

“Ah, Tess,” he said in Rhuian, “your perspicacity amazes me.”

“Why, Yuri, your vocabulary is finally improving.”

He grinned, then lifted his head and looked around, so remarkably like a lizard that Tess laughed. He slid down the rock to stand beside her, lowering his voice. “Ilya and Niko had a terrible argument last night. You were already asleep. Ilya was furious with himself for not sending everyone ahead up the trail to begin with, but Niko told Ilya that only a damn fool sent horsemen ahead on a trail that hadn’t been scouted and that other circumstances had forced his hand. Well, it was a good thing the arenabekh came along when they did.”

Tess nodded.

“But now we can rest and take an easy pace to our next camp. You looked just awful last night though you look fine this morning.”

“How you flatter me.”

“It comes naturally from having four sisters. One learns how to keep on their good side.”

“Where is our next camp?”

“The first good site with forage we come to. We have to wait for Ilya.”

“Where did he go?”

“Back to the temple.”

A cloud shaded the sun. She shivered. “You can’t mean it.”

“What do you mean, I can’t mean it? He took fresh horses and left as soon as he saw that Niko had everything in order. After they had argued, of course. Niko thought Josef should go back.”

“Last night? But we’d been riding for two and a half days.”

“Don’t you think I know that? If Khani wasn’t so damned stubborn she’d have gone dead lame from that stone, and we’d have killed her. Pavel say she’ll be fine. But the chestnut—” He shook his head. “Still, I could hardly keep my eyes open. Surely you know that Bakhtiian has nothing in common with such weak stuff as you or me. So off he went, fresh as a spring breeze, singing—” Tess giggled. “Very well. He wasn’t singing. You must want something to eat.”

“I’m starving.”

Yuri laid a hand on her shoulder before she could leave the shelter of the rock. “Niko is going to give you a red shirt. I wasn’t supposed to tell you, but I thought you’d rather be warned.”

Her face suddenly felt hot and it was not just due to the sun emerging from the clouds.

“I don’t remember any woman being given a red shirt. It makes you—this story will be told everywhere, even after you—”

“After I what?”

He hung his head. “After you leave us,” he said softly, but, being Yuri, he brightened immediately. “That’s so much later I can’t even think of it.”

“Good. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She took a step and paused, not quite willing yet to be fussed over—for knowing these riders, fussing it would be. The conical white tents caught her eye. Ishii sat outside one, alone. Rakii and Garii reclined on the rocks above, gambling to pass the time. Meanwhile all eight stewards were busy saddling horses and taking down the first two of the tents.

Had she really feared them so much? Like the khaja priest’s terror at the possibility of sacrilege in the temple, the Chapalii’s adherence to custom and hierarchy had protected her all along. She could spy on them because of her rank. Ishii would keep secrets from her because his mysterious liege outranked her. But Garii’s allegiance puzzled her. Clearly he must be pledged to Ishii’s house to have come on this expedition. As clearly, he had pledged himself personally to her in direct violation of his previous pledge, a breach of Chapalii custom that ought to brand him as something lower than a serial killer in her eyes. And yet, as a human, she wondered if perhaps he was just trying to better himself, hoping to attach himself to the household of a lord who outranked Ishii.