The Novels of the Jaran (67 page)

She turned her head away from him, staring out at the men riding ahead of them. “I don’t want to speak to you at all.”

They rode on in silence for a time. Her head ached, but when he paused long enough to give her some water to drink, the pain dulled to a throb.

“Can’t you at least untie my ankles so I can ride more comfortably?” she asked at last.

“Certainly. I’ll untie your ankles and your wrists if you will promise me on your husband’s honor that you won’t attempt to escape.”

“Damn you. I can’t promise that.”

“I didn’t think you would. Ilya holds his honor very high.”

She did not reply. They rode on, and she gauged by the sun that they were riding northeast. In early afternoon they rode into a hollow backed by a steep ridge. A copse of trees ringed a water hole at the base of the ridge, and beyond it lay a small, makeshift camp. One great tent was pitched on the far side, on a low rise above the others, twenty small tents scattered haphazardly below it. The inhabitants were mostly men, she saw as they paused on the crest of a rise to look down, but women and children were there as well.

Vasil and his companions made directly for the great tent. Dmitri Mikhailov stood outside, leaning on a crutch, watching them.

“Evidently you failed,” he said. “Who is this? The khaja pilgrim? Why?”

“I wouldn’t have failed!” Vera cried. “I would have gotten him to come back with me but then
she
interrupted me!”

“He would never have gone with you,” said Tess. Her ankles were bound loosely enough that she could stand next to Vasil.

“Do you think so? Everyone knows you sleep in separate tents. You couldn’t even get your own husband to lie with you.”

Tess was suddenly struck with a feeling of great pity for Vera, who had nothing left to her now but her own gall to succor her through the months and the years. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Vera slapped her. Vasil grabbed his sister and wrenched her arm back so hard that Vera gasped with pain.

Mikhailov sighed. “Must I put up with this? Karolla!”

A young woman about Tess’s age emerged from the tent. “Yes, Father?” Her gaze settled on Tess, and she looked surprised and curious at the same time. She bore an old, white scar of marriage on her cheek.

“Take this Veselov woman somewhere, anywhere, that is out of my sight.”

“Yes, Father.” Karolla looked at Vasil. Tess caught the infinitesimal nod that he gave her, as if it was
his
permission and not her father’s that she sought. “Well, you must be Vera. I’m sure you’d like to wash and get some food. Will you come with me?”

Vera gathered together the last shreds of her dignity and with a final, parting glance of sheer hatred—not for Tess but for her brother—she walked away with Karolla.

“You three,” said Mikhailov to the riders, “please follow them and see that she makes no mischief. Now, Vasil, what happened?”

“As Vera said. Vera got us into camp easily enough but Bakhtiian would not go with her to her tent. It was luck that this woman and Bakhtiian came walking through camp—well, there wasn’t time to fight him fairly, so I took her as hostage.”

“That is very well, Vasil, but how will this help us kill Bakhtiian? We are already driven into a corner, and now he will attack us with far superior forces.”

“But, Dmitri, she is his wife.”

“There is no mark.”

“By the Avenue.”

“Gods!” Dmitri looked at her for the first time as if her presence mattered to him. “Is that true?”

Tess did not reply. Her cheek still stung from Vera’s slap.

“Yes,” answered Vasil. “Given the brief moments we had to get out of the camp alive, I did as well as I could. I told Bakhtiian that if he did not leave us alone, I would let Vera kill her.”

Mikhailov smiled, bitterly amused. “Did you?
Would
Vera kill her?”

“I think so. Gladly. Vera is not
all
show, Dmitri.”

“But would you let Vera kill her?”

Vasil shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Well, send Yevgeni with a message: Tell Bakhtiian that if he gives himself into our hands, we will free his wife.”

“Will Bakhtiian believe you?”

“What is left us, Vasil? This is our last chance. We’ll break camp and move, and when Bakhtiian comes, we must kill him. Put her in my tent.”

Vasil picked Tess up and carried her inside, depositing her on two threadbare pillows in the outer chamber. Mikhailov followed them in.

“Leave us,” he commanded. Vasil left without a word. Mikhailov lit a lantern and then twitched the entrance flap down with his free hand. The other hand still gripped his crutch. “Yes,” he said, following her eyes to the crutch. “You nearly cut my leg off. I’ll have this hurt for the rest of my life.”

“Why do you want to kill him?” she asked. The lantern cast shadows high on the dim, sloping walls.

His mouth was an angled line, like the edge of shadow. “I don’t know that you can understand the complexities of the jaran. His reputation hurts mine. His greatness lessens all. His peace enslaves us to his will. He has great notions, our Bakhtiian, but he will kill us as surely as he saves us.”

“The old ways must give way before the new,” said Tess quietly. She had a sudden, fierce vision of Charles’s face, still and shadowed, knowing as he must that in time, whether years or centuries, whether in his lifetime or his descendants’, this sanctuary that was Rhui would be breached and flooded, its culture obliterated by the wave of progress brought down from the stars. “But even if you kill Bakhtiian, it will still happen. You are a thousand tribes, and a thousand thousand families, and the lands of the khaja stretch all around you. Another man will come to the jaran, and he will lead them into war against the settled lands.”

Mikhailov limped over to her, grabbed her shoulders, and jerked her to her feet. He was very strong, and he could stand quite well without the crutch. “Are you a prophet?” he asked, not mocking at all. “Is that why Bakhtiian married you, a holy woman?”

“Oh, I’m many things, but not a prophet, I don’t think. Let me go, Mikhailov, let me go free, and I’ll see that your family and your riders are forgiven all this.”

“Not myself?” He smiled.

“No,” she said even more softly. “You killed my brother.”

His eyes were a deep blue, deeper than any she had seen, almost green, like the sea. He muttered an oath and let her go. She fell in a heap onto the pillows.

“Even if what you say is true, I will be dead and burned. But I swore by the gods and by my honor that I would not let Bakhtiian destroy my people while I yet lived. And if your brother died, then only remember, that is the price every sister will pay for Bakhtiian’s dreams.”

He blew out the lantern and left her in darkness. It was true, of course. Where Bakhtiian commanded, men died. It was true of Charles as well, and if he acted on the information she had given him in the Mushai’s cylinder, many more, humans and Chapalii, would die. And, of course, he would act on that information. He had to.

“If there is no one to check him, then what will happen to him, and to us?” If she stayed, would Ilya return to the plains and live out his life in peace and quiet, for her? Almost she could laugh at the absurdity of it. Another man
would
come, another Bakhtiian, another Charles.

And yet together with them, fires would burn in the night and families would gather and bonds be forged based on duty and loyalty and love. A family would take in an orphan, friends would clasp hands, and a man and a woman would come to know and love one another. How could both these things, death and life, hatred and loyalty, killing and love, exist at the same time? There was no good answer. There never was.

She pulled up her knees and struggled to untie her ankles, but it was hard to see and her bonds were tight. A breath of wind stirred the tent, moving along the walls, and then abruptly light glared in on her and was as suddenly extinguished.

A hand caught her chin, and a man kissed her on the mouth. She rolled away from him. He laughed and lit a lantern.

“You have fire in you,” said Vasil. “I can taste it.”

“How dare you!”

“Because I am more a part of Ilya than you can understand, Tess.” He knelt beside her and cut her loose with his knife. “Here are some jahar clothes. You can probably get out of camp without being noticed. You can take the knife but not my saber, I fear. I’ll need it.”

“Why? Turn around.” Obediently, he turned his back to her, and she slipped into the inner chamber and changed quickly, hooking the curtain back just enough that she could see him. “Why?” she repeated, stripping off her tunic. “You brought me here.”

“Yes, I brought you here. But now I see it was a mistake. I can’t protect you. Mikhailov will let Vera kill you, or she will find a way to kill you in the confusion of the battle.”

“That still doesn’t explain why.”

“You can’t understand. So long as I thought Ilya had never and would never marry because he loved
me,
so long as I thought that he banished me from his jahar only because he wanted his war more than he wanted me and did it selfishly, knowing the jaran would never follow him believing there might be something between us, so long as that, I could want him dead. But he rode with you down the Avenue.” He laughed again. “Why do you suppose it never occurred to me that he never really loved me except when we were boys, that he had simply not yet found a woman to match him? That he banished me because I forced him to make that choice?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think the answer is that easy.” She pulled on the black trousers. They fit her well enough, once the red shirt was tucked in and belted. “And he would never give up his war for me either.”

“No, but you wouldn’t ask him to.”

“Did you? My God, that took a lot of nerve.”

“Yes, but then, I’m very beautiful, you know.” He turned. “Here is the knife.” He tossed it to her casually but not without malice. She caught it deftly. “Cut out his heart, if it hasn’t all burnt away by now. But leave a corner for me.”

“Thank you, Vasil.”

“Oh,” he said with a smile that made him look uncannily like his sister, “I wish you joy of him. Go.”

She walked past him to the flap and thence out under the awning, not looking back. Men and women moved below, striking the camp. She walked swiftly over the crest of the rise and turned back along it toward the high ridge. Then she ran until she could break into the trees. She had no idea, really, what she ought to do, except that once Mikhailov left this camp, someone, some scout, even Bakhtiian’s entire force, would track him here. And find her waiting. She hiked out of the trees, which gave scant cover, and scrambled up along a ridge of rock to the top of the height.

There she turned to survey Mikhailov’s camp. Far below, Vasil walked through the camp. Karolla ran up to him and took his arm. He shifted to answer her, then froze, and his face lifted suddenly and he stared.

Beyond the hollow the sun spread like a flow of water from the crests of hills. Looking out along Vasil’s line of sight, past the hill that marked the other end of the valley, Tess saw a solitary rider emerge on the lit swell of a far rise. He sat there for the space of ten heartbeats before a man shouted off to her right, and the other sentry left his post, running into camp. The rider urged his horse forward.

“Oh, God,” whispered Tess.

Men emerged from tents. Horses were saddled. Movement flooded toward the end of the valley where he was about to enter. Alone.

She should have stayed in the tent. At least she had a knife. She had never imagined he would ride in alone, just for her.

The sun illuminated Bakhtiian as he crested the last hill and came down the final slope. Men surrounded his horse. Four riders closed in around him. Mikhailov limped out from the crowd. Taking the horse’s reins, he led Bakhtiian through the camp as if he were a king. It was very quiet.

Quietest of all when they drew up next to Vasil, who had not moved. Something communicated but not spoken passed between them, the dark man tall on his horse and the fair man staring up at him. Tess thought,
that is how it has always been between them.

Vasil stepped forward. He had a hand on his saber but it was his other hand that lifted. He grasped Ilya’s fingers, lifted the dark man’s hand to his lips, and kissed it. Mikhailov said something. For a moment no one moved. Vasil let go of Bakhtiian’s hand and Mikhailov led the horse on. Vasil did not follow. They were halfway through camp, people dropping away from the main escort, heading toward Mikhailov’s tent, before Tess realized where they were going and that they would not find her there.

“You idiot,” she said aloud. She pushed herself forward and slid along the loose rock. Pebbles slipped and tumbled out from under her boots, and she fell, sitting hard on the stones.

Out on the plain, riders came.

A jahar rode in. To its right, a second. To the left, more men rode, their shirts brilliant against the dull grass. In an instant she would hear their cries. In an instant they would reach the camp. But they would never find Ilya in time. She saw neither Bakhtiian nor Mikhailov below. She impelled herself forward, sliding and scrambling down the slope.

She reached the trees just as the first wave of riders hit. She pushed through, thrusting aside branches without care that they snapped back to whip her face. A woman screamed. Men shouted. Metal rang on metal. She burst out of the copse and ran for the camp—to be almost trampled by a knot of horses. She flung herself aside. A horse pulled up beside her, and she looked up to see Vasil. Blood painted his face, and stained his side and one leg.

“Veselov, come on. We’re going,” shouted one of the men ahead of him, reining in a half-wild horse.

“I told you I was a coward,” said Vasil. “But I love my life too well.”

“Vasil, where did he go?”

“To Mikhailov’s tent.” He offered her his saber. When she took it, he gave her a brief, bitter smile and rode on, away from the fight.

Tess ran. The world dissolved into confusion. She dove to one side to avoid the trampling hooves of a line of horses. One of the animals, pressed too close to a tent, caught a leg in the ropes. The horse stumbled, throwing the rider off its neck. The tent shuddered and collapsed. Tess scrambled past it and ran on.