by Kate Elliott
“Well?” demanded Ivan.
“They’ll all have to emerge through a single gate,” said Vasha, “and advance along the road, with those wagons, so that will string them out. If we time it right, there’ll be some confusion when they meet the four wagons coming in. They’ll have to turn around, trade places, discuss what to do next. We’ll approach along the stream and break in when they’re distracted. Whichever horses are farthest north and east we’ll strike for and cut away. Ivan, you’ll hold back and be in charge of—”
“I’m always left behind!”
“You’re the best one of us with horses,” said Vasha, “so you’ll be responsible for herding them in the right direction once Arkady and I have cut them loose. Stefan will cover our action and strike in if necessary.”
They all nodded. It had been Vasha’s idea, and anyway, they all knew who his father was. They had agreed to come as friends, they were friends, but while they might question his authority they could never supersede it. Satisfied, Vasha swung onto his mare and urged her forward. She hesitated one instant as if to say: What fool notion have you got into your head now, young man? But Misri loved him too well to refuse, even if she was, perhaps, wiser than he was. She pricked her ears forward and led the other horses along the hillside.
Farther down, a scrubby vale of woods cut through the ridge and led out onto the flat where the villa lay. They cut through the woods, keeping the trees between them and the villa, and found the stream that wound out into the valley. In short order they had advanced far enough out onto the flat to observe the palisade gate at fairly close quarters while remaining hidden in the trees. The palisade loomed large from this angle, but they had all seen higher walls fall to the jaran army, and in any case, this was a mere villa, scarcely worth stopping for. More likely if a jahar of the army did pass through here, the house would simply be burned. They might not even bother to knock down the palisade. Of course, the khaja themselves all seemed to be leaving, so perhaps the work would be done for them.
Stefan leaned toward Vasha. “They’ll turn that into a messenger station,” he said in a low voice.
A flash of irritation sparked through Vasha, smothered quickly by envy and the usual admiration. Stefan always thought of things like that. Of course he was right.
“The wagons are coming in!” said Arkady. His mare, as high-strung as he was, minced under his restless hands. Ivan looked pale, but he was steady.
Vasha took in a big breath. Out on the road, the four wagons from the southwest jerked to a halt as the first line of wagons retreating from the villa slowed down and halted in their path. An armed guard and one of the men from the villa shouted at each other, gesticulating. The first clump of horses emerged through the palisade gates.
“Come on!” ordered Vasha, starting Misri forward. She caught his excitement and went eagerly. Arkady had to rein his mare back to restrain her from bolting forward.
“There could be arrows from the palisade walk,” said Stefan quickly, hanging back.
“Yes!” snapped Vasha, “but look how those riders are swinging out. They’re leading the horses around the wagons. By the time we reach them, they’ll be out of range of the walls. Come on!”
They forded the stream and broke out of the trees. At once, the horses broke into a run and Arkady let out a whoop. They pounded over the grass. Vasha’s heart beat fiercely, and he grinned. The khaja boy herding the horses hesitated, seeing them. Vasha drew his saber, and on either side of him, he felt more than saw Arkady and Stefan draw theirs as well.
More men burst out of the gate. At the wagons, the guards turned and a man shouted.
Arkady edged out in front. He made a tight turn between the khaja boy and the lead mare, shoving against the boy so hard that the khaja fell off his horse. Vasha and Stefan fanned out on either side. For a moment, nothing happened. Some of the khaja men went down on one knee submissively, watching them. Others simply stared. One fell down flat, as if he’d been struck down.
“Look!” shouted Arkady abruptly. The lead mare sidled away from him. “To the northeast. Dust. More riders approaching.”
“Into the trees!” ordered Vasha, and they pushed the horses back toward the line of trees. After a moment, the lead mare decided to go with them, and the rest followed her.
“Faster!” shouted Stefan, craning his neck around to look toward the approaching riders. “Those are soldiers!”
Catching their mood, the horses began to run. Arkady was laughing desperately, the way he did when he got excited. Ivan rode out to meet them, and they drove the horses on, passing through the trees and splashing noisily through the stream.
Vasha hesitated, struck by an instinct and also because he was a little angry that everything had gone so easily, that it had been khaja soldiers, not jaran, who these khaja were afraid of. And he was curious: Who so frightened them that they would let four unknown riders steal seven horses without a fight?
“Go on!” he shouted to Stefan. “I’m going to scout.”
Stefan could not protest. Once over the stream, the horses broke into a run, clearly enjoying their stampede. Stefan had to follow, and Ivan chivied the herd along from the rear. But Arkady turned back.
“I said—!”
“Oh, they can manage. We’ll catch up. Anyway, I want to see.” Arkady laughed again. Like the horses, he relished the excitement.
At the villa, the khaja now streamed back into the palisade. Two riders came racing out through the gate and headed southwest, passing the wagons, which still blocked each other. With a great deal of tugging and swearing, the wagons from the villa lurched out onto a field where their wheels promptly mired in mud while at the same time the four wagons from the south inched forward along the road toward the safety of the palisade, trying to skirt the two wagons that still blocked the path. Even at this distance they could hear shouting and cursing. The dust thrown up by the approaching riders drew closer. The fleeing messengers shrank and dwindled into the west.
“Look there,” said Arkady. “Some idiot is trying to escape on foot.”
Overlooked in the chaos, a single, small figure swathed in robes and veils clambered down from the second of the four arriving wagons and scuttled out across the field toward the safety of a clump of high grass edging a ditch. The boys watched with interest as the black-clad figure made the ditch safely and threw itself down where they could no longer see it. Wagons jerked forward and all at once a shout rose up and the men fighting the wagons mired in the field let go of them and in a great streaming cacophonous wave the four southern wagons, the guards, and the remaining people outside ran and rumbled for the gates. The gates swung to and closed just as a party of eighteen armed and mounted men outfitted in khaja fashion rode up and stopped outside of arrow range.
From the ditch, nothing.
At once, four men detached themselves from the group and galloped southwest along the road, following the messengers. The others rode over to the abandoned wagons and leisurely cut through the traces, two men dismounting to rummage through the goods while the others kept watch on the gate and the towers.
Arkady gulped down a cough. “Maybe we should go,” he said tentatively, sounding torn.
But Vasha was transfixed by the scene before him. A few arrows peppered the ground before the raiders, but they were out of range. Why were the khaja fighting amongst themselves when they must know that the jaran army advanced steadily on their lands? Why weren’t they uniting, as the jaran tribes had, to fight their common enemy? Did they not know? Not care? Were their own hatreds stronger than their fear of the jaran? Or were these raiders simply out for a quick profit before running before the jaran army? If they would not help each other, then it was no wonder they gave way before a united and single-minded force. Piecemeal and divided, they could never hope to defeat the jaran.
Black stirred in the rushes at the edge of the ditch closest to the boys, like an animal creeping out from its den. The fugitive at least had the sense to move
slowly, a bit at a time, and to keep low, and he wasn’t afraid to hold still for long periods of time, trusting to stealth over speed. Knowing full well he could not outrun mounted men.
“That’s not a man,” said Arkady in a low voice. “It’s a woman.”
“She has a veil,” agreed Vasha, squinting as the figure wiggled along a bare patch of ground and then lost itself in a waist-high field of grain.
“And she has breasts under that cloth.” Arkady managed to smirk and blush at the same time. Then his eyes widened. “Look, they’re setting their arrows on fire.”
The bandits began to fire flaming arrows into the compound. The skirmish had begun. Smoke trailed up from a thatched roof. Animals bellowed. The human noise drifted out to them like the distant roar of a waterfall.
Whether the fugitive chose that moment to panic, or simply judged herself far enough away for a dash to freedom, Vasha could not know. Or even—at that moment—where she thought she was escaping to. But she reached the edge of the grain field, jumped up, and ran, flat out. Shocked, Vasha stared. Unlike any other khaja woman he had seen, she wore not just skirts but belled black trousers under her skirts and robe, and because of them she could run. But horses ran faster, and the bandits had seen her. Two of them broke away in pursuit.
Arkady moved before Vassily did. His mare danced forward and as Arkady urged her on, clearing the stream with a single clean jump, Vasha and Misri skirted a dense clump of underbrush and made it out to open ground while Arkady was still thrashing through.
The two bandits closed in on her. They shouted, seeing the two boys emerge from the trees, drawing the attention of their comrades. At that instant, Vasha realized that the fugitive must have seen him and the others as they stole the horses, that she was following them, because she veered toward them even though it meant crossing the path of the nearest bandit. She clutched at her waist and drew a long knife, dodged the mounted man and kept running while he jerked his horse around. Four more men broke away from the main group of bandits.
Driving his mare at a dead run, Arkady reached her first. As if they had rehearsed it, she stuck the knife in her teeth, reached up just as Arkady drew his mare in, and he swung her on behind him and turned all at once. Vasha cut across the path of the second bandit. He saw the man’s face, the glint of gold in his teeth, his blue eyes and the bronze embossing on his leather breastplate. Vasha wore no armor at all, except for the thick padding afforded by the embroidery on his sleeves and along the collar of his gold shirt. He felt paralyzed.
The man swung at him, and Vasha parried instinctively. He had never fought anyone before who meant to kill him. Parried, and struck back, heard Arkady yell something. Misri sidestepped and Vasha cut again, a head cut that unbalanced the bandit and sent him reeling back… open. An arrow, and then another, skidded past his vision.
As if someone else saw it, Vasha realized in the next instant that four riders were bearing down on him. The gate to the villa swung open and a ragtag, screaming clot of fighters burst out, charging the remaining bandits. But the arrow fire came from his side. An arrow lodged in the bandit’s shoulder and dangled there while Vasha stared dumbly and the bandit, righting himself, cursing, fought to stay on his horse.
“Let’s go,” Vasha shouted. Misri moved with him as if with one thought. Arkady was already two lengths in front, headed for the trees. Behind, the bandits hesitated, torn between the sortie from the villa and the lost fugitive.
Out in front of the trees, Ivan sat on his stockstill mare and shot, calmly, accurately, swiftly, just as his sister and cousins had trained him to do.
Arkady was laughing again.
An arrow sprouted in Ivan’s shoulder. Ivan went white and swayed, but he did not drop his bow, although the arrow nocked there slipped over his bay’s withers and fell to the ground. Vasha came up alongside him and grabbed the bow out of Ivan’s hands. Gritting his teeth, Ivan reined his mare around and followed the others into the trees.
Behind, a melee cluttered the muddy ground before the villa. With halberds and scythes, the defenders gave as good as they got, but it was easy to see that before long numbers would win out.
They followed the trail left by the horses. Stefan had encouraged them back up the vale into the hills and along the base of the ridge. Their fugitive said not one word, only watched them with dark eyes, her face hidden by a scarf. After what seemed like forever, they found Stefan, who had run the horses into a shallow defile and boxed them in.
“Ivan,” said Vasha curtly, dismounting. “Let Stefan get the arrow out and bind that wound.”
Ivan obeyed meekly. He bit on a strip of leather, sweating and pale, while Stefan eased the arrow out and staunched the bleeding. Surprisingly, the woman ripped strips of cloth off of her robe and gave them to Stefan to use as a bandage. Otherwise she stayed away from them. Her hands looked soft and smooth, and her nails were tipped with gold paint. She did not speak, and Vasha was not inclined to ask her questions, knowing that pursuit might be close behind.
When they mounted again, she stuck next to Vasha and without words made it obvious she intended to ride with him. She had a decent seat on a horse, but he felt incredibly aware of her close up behind him. Her presence embarrassed him. Why did she choose him now? Why had she run to them at all? Did she know they were jaran? But how could she know, since none of them had yet been granted the privilege of wearing the red shirt of the jahar. They wore boys’ shirts still, green or gray or the gold he wore, with embroidery on the sleeves.
Then he looked closely at Ivan and saw how pale the younger boy was. “Ivan, you can truly ride?” he demanded, his fear making him angry. “You’d better get up behind Stefan.”
Ivan bit down on his lips. “Just because I’m sixteen doesn’t mean I’m a baby. I’m fine. I can ride. It doesn’t hurt too much.”
“It’s a clean wound,” added Stefan, and because he had been trained in healing by his grandfather Niko, Vasha accepted his judgment.
Chastened, they rode on. Before too long, they came across the forward units, battle-hardened veterans who looked more amused than angry to see them out in front of the lines, where they assuredly should not be.
“Look what we’ve caught us, Riasonovsky,” said the man who commandeered them, leading them back to his captain. “It’s Bakhtiian’s son, doing a little horse stealing out in front of the lines.”
Riasonovsky was a light-haired man with steady eyes. Vasha knew his type: Risen from the ranks to command his own hundred, he undoubtedly did not suffer fools gladly, nor did he have to. Bakhtiian gave his generals complete authority over their own armies, and the general of this army, Yaroslav Sakhalin, was notorious for strict discipline and an unswerving instinct for the right men to promote. Everyone knew that he had thrown a Suvorin prince out of a command and into the ranks for not following orders to his satisfaction during a battle. So Riasonovsky, wherever he might have come from before, was not afraid of Vassily.
“Bakhtiian’s son must be all of six years old now,” said Riasonovsky calmly. “What’s that to do with these four boys?”
Vasha flushed.
“How dare you—!” began Arkady.
“I am Bakhtiian’s son,” cut in Vasha, “as you well know.”
“You are Vassily Kireyevsky, and if Bakhtiian was ever married to your mother, I wasn’t aware of it.”
“I do not expect to be insulted like this!”
“I do not expect to have boys out in front of my lines causing trouble for me! And I expect you to hold a civil tongue in your head, young man.”
Vasha was furious, but he knew better than to say anything that would put him in a worse light, and, mercifully, Arkady said nothing stupid. Stefan kept quiet, and Ivan just looked white and weary. The old veteran snorted, vastly amused, and Vasha felt humiliated as well.
“Well, Zaytsev,” finished Riasonovsky, who clearly had better things to worry about, “escort him back to Sakhalin, where he’s supposed to be. And don’t tro
uble us again, Kireyevsky. Gods!” He turned away to talk to his scouts.
Stefan shot Vasha a look, but that was all that was needed to plunge Vasha into a morbid gloom. Stefan would never say so now, not in front of the others, but his eyes spoke as loudly as words: I told you so.
The veteran, still chuckling, led them to the back of the unit and rode out toward the northeast hills, beyond which the bulk of the army lay. “My cousins and I stole horses from the Vernadsky tribe back when we were lads. Got one of us killed, too. That was before Bakhtiian united the jaran.” But then his gaze slipped to the black-clad figure sitting, silent, behind Vasha. The woman had scarcely stirred and not made a single sound since they had reached the jaran line. “We never stole women, though,” he added, and those words hurt, they were spoken so hard.
“We didn’t steal her!” Vasha was appalled. “We would never do anything like that. She ran after us. If we’d left her, khaja bandits would have taken her, and you know what they would do—!” He broke off, furious and ashamed that any man would think such a thing of him. Especially an old soldier like this: Vasha desperately wanted the old rider to think well of him. He wanted all the riders to think well of him, to think that he was one of them, that he deserved to be.
“Well,” said Zaytsev thoughtfully, “no doubt trouble rides in on its own horse. Sakhalin will have to judge the case.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence. Vasha smothered his dread by riding close by Ivan and asking him if he felt well enough so often that the boy finally set his lips and refused to reply.
The army was on the move, so no one remarked the five riders and seven extra horses passing back through the line. But there was no such luck when the old rider handed them over to one of Sakhalin’s personal guard and went on his way with a casual farewell. Yaroslav Sakhalin was waiting for them. He wasn’t alone.
