Warrior

by Zoë Archer

  “Are you nervous about tomorrow?” Oyuun asked as she came to stand beside Thalia.

  “Not at all,” Thalia answered. With a rueful laugh, Thalia realized that she had been so absorbed in thoughts of defeating the Heirs, she had not even considered the possibility of losing in the nadaam.

  “I will tell you a secret,” Oyuun said, cupping her hand over her mouth. When Thalia leaned closer to hear better, Oyuun whispered, “I hope you win.”

  “Why?”

  “Because no one thinks that a woman can best a man. I know that Gabriel guai will compete with you,” she said to Thalia’s objections, “but the fact that you dare to enter when no other woman has ever done so before—that, to me, is wonderful.”

  “Perhaps next year, you should try,” Thalia suggested, but Oyuun laughed.

  “You think I haven’t enough to worry about, between my children, my husband, and the well-being of this tribe? I should add the ruby to my burden, too? No”—she chuckled—“I leave such tasks to the young and free. Although,” she added with glittering eyes, “perhaps you are not free.”

  Thalia knew immediately that Oyuun was speaking of Gabriel, and her face flushed. There was no point denying it. The wild creature of her soul had finally yielded to the calloused hand of one man.

  The chieftain’s wife smiled wickedly, looking toward the entrance to the tent. “And here is your handsome Englishman, and I am glad to know that you are not related, especially given the way he looks at you.” Before Thalia could offer up a rejoinder, Oyuun had disappeared into the crowd, acting as hostess for the enormous party.

  Thalia watched from the other side of the tent as Gabriel entered. Her heart leapt like an unbroken horse to see him, even after merely an hour apart. He’d shaved, and his face was starkly handsome in the glow of the lanterns, sculptural and piercing. His hair, now a dark gold with damp from his bath, was brushed back from his forehead, so that nothing hid him from view. And he’d managed to find some clean clothing, only slightly rumpled from being stowed in his pack. She didn’t doubt that, in his uniform, he would have been a sight to tempt any woman to profligacy. As it was, even with him in his travel-creased jacket, vest, and shirt, Thalia was willing to give him whatever he wanted. He looked around, as if trying to find someone. She almost waved to him, but then held back. She wanted to see him on his own in the realm of the herdsmen.

  As soon as Gabriel came into the tent, he was greeted boisterously by several men. Some of them, already deep into their third or fourth bowl of arkhi and in good spirits with the universe, threw their arms around Gabriel in a hearty, manly embrace. Gabriel didn’t stiffen or pull away. He seemed startled at first, but then returned the gesture at once, smiling and laughing. Thalia let go the breath she hadn’t known she held.

  Gabriel was quickly commandeered by some of the tribe’s younger men, and escorted through the tent. The men with him beamed with borrowed glory. Whatever trepidation both Englishman and Mongols had toward one another was long gone, lost beneath the joined experience of setting up a ger. A liberal quantity of arkhi didn’t hurt the cause of fellowship, nor the fact that, on the morrow, Gabriel would be competing in the nadaam not only as a foreigner, but as the partner of a woman. Thalia saw that, with great good humor, the tribe had decided to informally adopt him. A bowl of arkhi was put into his hand. Someone put a velvet-trimmed, pointed Mongol hat on him, and he didn’t take it off.

  But he continued to look around. For her. Had any woman wanted to be found more than Thalia did at that moment? Yet she wanted to prolong the game a little longer, and ducked behind some women when his gaze moved in her direction. When she felt that he’d moved on, she peered around the women to watch him some more.

  Gabriel was talking animatedly to some herdsmen, and they laughed rowdily together, the kind of uninhibited laughter men reserved for each other. Batu stood next to Gabriel, translating, though by the looks of things—everyone’s arms slung around each other’s shoulders—a translator wasn’t really necessary.

  She felt the strange twin sensations of joy and jealousy. Joy to see Gabriel so light of heart, after days of focus and skirting danger. Jealousy to share him even with these good people, after all this time when he had been hers alone. Seeing him across the smoky interior of the ger, his tall, lean body loose with relaxation, his face truly glorious as he smiled and laughed, she was dizzy with longing. There wasn’t a man she wanted more. Not even what she had felt for Sergei could match this hard hunger, this need. She barely recognized herself beneath its bright radiance. Always before her mind had held dominance, but now her body and heart had taken control.

  As if sensing the hot pulse of her desire, Gabriel suddenly looked right at her. Sharp, golden, unavoidable. His smile faded and was replaced by something much more intent. A soldier again. No, not a soldier—a man. He murmured something to Batu without breaking eye contact with Thalia, then moved swift and straight toward her on the other side of the tent. He was an amber arrow headed for her, and she the target that could not, did not want to, move. The crowds swirled in a tide around him. She waited.

  He stopped a foot away from Thalia, then raked her up and down with his gaze, saying nothing. It became difficult to catch her breath as she stared back.

  “You’ve changed,” he finally rumbled.

  “Not particularly,” she answered, “I’m the same Thalia you’ve always known.”

  A small smile appeared in the corner of his mouth. “Same biting tongue. But the feathers are different.” He gently touched the strands of pearls and coral that draped from her silver headdress and curved in a low, graceful swath from temple to temple. The headdress itself was a band that encircled her head like a diadem, studded with more pearls and coral. She had taken the unruly mass of her dark hair and braided it into a single, heavy plait that reached the middle of her back, bound at the end with a silver clasp. Gabriel’s eyes moved lower, taking in the fine emerald silk del she now wore, covered with intricate embroidery, and the golden sash around her waist. Unlike the del she wore every day, this one was longer, lightweight, cut to show a woman’s figure. The flare in Gabriel’s eyes showed her that he liked what he saw of hers.

  “Oyuun,” Thalia explained. Realizing that something had changed between them, she suddenly felt awkward and shy, a young girl only recently admitted to the company of men. “Actually, her sister-in-law, who’s closer to my size.”

  “I’ll have to thank them both later.” He lightly traced the embroidery running along her collar, his fingers brushing against her neck. Liquid heat gathered between Thalia’s legs.

  To keep herself from dragging him against her and demanding his kisses right in the middle of the crowded feast, she tried some distracting pleasantries. She looked up at the Mongol hat he wore. “Seems the tribe has taken you as one of their own.”

  He pulled his hand away to touch the hat, as if he’d forgotten it was there. “More like a mascot,” he said wryly.

  “No, it’s respect. It’s a rare foreigner who falls in so easily. You work hard. And tomorrow, you compete in the nadaam.”

  “With a woman as my partner.”

  She grew tense, guarded. “We agreed—”

  “If there was another way, I’d do it,” he said at once and without apology. “But there isn’t, and if anybody can trounce these blokes, it’s me. And you. Besides,” he added with a disarming grin, “I’d wager they’d all want to be on a team, if their partners could be as pretty as you.”

  His compliment turned her cheeks crimson. “Flatterer,” she chided playfully.

  Gabriel scowled. “I don’t know flattery from a tiger’s arse.”

  “Well…thank you.” Her attention snagged on the activity of the feast. “The singing is about to begin,” she said.

  A small space had cleared from the middle of the tent, and several men with morin khuur, the horse-head fiddle found everywhere in Mongolia, seated themselves on the floor while the crowd quieted. Smiling, laughing, a few
men and women were pushed in front of the musicians as their friends and relatives playfully demanded songs.

  “This won’t make me fall into some kind of magic trance, will it?” Gabriel whispered in Thalia’s ear as he stood behind her.

  “No magic,” she whispered back. “Music only.”

  Bows were drawn across the fiddles resting between the musicians’ knees, and at once the tent was filled with the keening, plaintive sound of the open steppes. Then a woman began to sing an urtïn duu, a long song. An old favorite, one that Thalia had heard many times before, but it never ceased to touch her deeply.

  “She sounds so sad,” Gabriel whispered. “Is it a love song?”

  “She’s joyfully calling praise upon the lush green fields that sustain her people,” Thalia translated.

  “Doesn’t sound so joyful to me.”

  “There’s always a hint of melancholy in Mongolian music, no matter what happy event or thing it describes.”

  “Like life,” he murmured.

  Thalia turned her face to one side, so that she was breaths away from Gabriel’s mouth. As she contemplated his lips, she understood that every day brought more uncertainty. “Just like life.”

  In groups and alone, the people of the tribe sang, and Thalia realized that she had lied to Gabriel. There was a kind of magic in this music, binding the multitudes within the tent together through sound and collective experience. Even if one couldn’t understand the words, the power of human voice and instruments worked their enchantment, drawing deeply upon the place within oneself that had no language, no shape, but simply was. She’d heard both European music and Mongolian music, and each meant something important to her, but in different ways. One spoke to her mind, the other, her soul.

  “Do you like it?” she asked Gabriel quietly.

  He frowned, considering. “I can’t say just yet. But I’d rather listen to this than the damned bagpipe corps.”

  “Faint praise.” But at least it wasn’t outright condemnation.

  After two brothers finished singing about the heavenly blessing of horses, Oyuun, who had been standing close to the musicians, called out to Thalia. “Sister, please honor us with a song,” she cried, a mischievous glimmer in her eyes. Everyone in the tent turned to look at Thalia, who felt fairly certain she would immolate herself from embarrassment.

  Thalia felt Gabriel tense, and he moved quickly to stand in front of her, shielding her. “It’s fine,” she said, placing a hand on his arm. “She just wants me to sing.”

  “Do you want to?” He seemed ready to defend her against anyone and anything, which broke her heart just a little.

  “I’d rather listen to bagpipes. But it would be unspeakably rude if I said no.” She stepped around him, but not before giving him a small smile of reassurance.

  She edged through the crowd until she was standing in front of the musicians, careful to keep from looking up and seeing the hundreds of faces staring back at her—including Gabriel’s. Everyone in Mongolia sang. Herdsmen on horseback tending their flocks would sing to keep themselves company on the lonely steppes. Babies and children were coaxed to sleep with lullabies, camels and horses serenaded to persuade them to nurse their young. People sang with their families, friends, to their animals—a way to fill the vast skies with sound. Even Thalia would sing, and thought it as natural as the earth, but always in small groups or by herself. Feeling the presence of many eyes upon her now, she was beset by a new and painful modesty.

  “What shall I sing for your pleasure?” she asked Oyuun as she stared at the tops of her boots.

  “Something for every blushing young maiden and brave young man, I think,” Oyuun answered, and Thalia could hear laughter in her voice. “A love song.”

  Without meaning to, Thalia’s glance shot up to catch Gabriel’s across the tent, then quickly returned to a thorough contemplation of the floor. At least Gabriel spoke no Mongolian, so he would have no idea what was being said just then. But he had to see the meaning in her eyes.

  She felt dizzy—not with fear about singing in front of strangers, not from the heat of the tent—but with understanding. It had happened to her. When she had least anticipated it. She’d thought that the process would be slow and gradual, taking months, years, but it had happened in a span of weeks, and it had grown from a sapling to a forest, thick and lush. And now she stood in the midst of it, the unknown land. Love, at last.

  Her pulse raced. Despite the revelation of her feelings for Gabriel, she wasn’t quite prepared to announce them to several hundred people. “How about a song to welcome autumn?” she suggested as an alternative.

  “A love song,” shouted a man.

  “Yes, a love song,” a woman cried. “Tell our men how it should be done!”

  Soon, the whole tent was filled with demands for a song of love. Thalia wished that she could, perhaps, ride naked through a field of brambles while simultaneously chewing on carrion, but since that pleasant option was not available, she had no choice but to yield.

  “I cannot deny the request of my generous hosts,” Thalia finally said, and the crowd fell silent in anticipation.

  Knowing she couldn’t sing to her boots, Thalia raised her head and closed her eyes. All the better to block out the undivided attention she was receiving. Taking a deep breath, she started to sing, then her voice caught, and she stopped. After clearing her throat, she began again. It was an old, old song that everyone in the tribe had heard a hundred times already, about a courageous horseman who rode through the heavy snows of winter to reach a beautiful maiden on the other side of the mountains. Thalia’s voice was at first thin and reedy, but after a verse, she gained courage and strength, and let the words come out without hindrance. She opened her eyes and looked directly at Gabriel as she sang.

  It was a well-known song, but often sung because no one could grow tired of hearing about the power and perseverance of love over obstacles. Thalia thought of her own heart, that battered, proud animal, darting over the steppes, and the fierce creature of Gabriel’s heart, and how strange and yet right that they should meet. But there was doubt, too. Brought about by dangerous enemies. The ambiguity of an unknown future. Since he could not understand the lyrics she sung now, she let them speak for her. Her longing. Her fear. Her need for him that she could not deny.

  As she sang, she watched him. His jaw was tight, his nostrils flared slightly, and his chest rose and fell with quickening breaths. And his eyes. Burned her. He was carnal, predatory, impossibly desirable and yet desiring her. His eyes made promises, dark promises, that she longed to fulfill. Even standing in front of all these people, she felt a slick dampness gathering between her legs, and her breasts felt full, sensitive beneath the silk of her del. It would have been embarrassing, if she hadn’t been so thoroughly aroused and focused on Gabriel alone.

  When the tent filled with loud applause, Thalia realized that she had finished the song. Glancing around, Thalia saw Oyuun beaming at her and Bold nodding his approval. Batu frowned, knowing not only the meaning of the song’s lyrics, but how she had sung them and to whom. He wanted to protect her, but there was no shielding her now. Thalia had made her choice. She looked for Gabriel. But he was gone.

  She moved out of the circle and into the crowd. Behind her, three girls were challenging each other to a contest balancing full bowls of arkhi on their hands, heads, and feet, while the other guests rowdily urged them on. After searching for him in the tent and finding no sign of Gabriel, Thalia quietly slipped outside. The crisp, cool air pleasantly stung after the oppressive heat inside. Because of the brightness of the ger, it took some moments for her eyes to adjust to the black night.

  Peering into the darkness, she searched for Gabriel nearby. No sign of him. A thread of panic unwound inside her. Had something happened to him? The Heirs? Or maybe she was just being unreasonably afraid. He could have gone off to take care of his bodily functions. Even now, a few men ambled past her and into the ger, adjusting their trousers, ready to
launch into another round of drinking.

  Yet after she waited a few minutes, allowing plenty of time for tending to any and all bodily needs, there was still no Gabriel. Her internal debate lasted only a moment before she went to find him. She quickly checked to make sure her hunting knife was still tucked inside her sash.

  At the chieftain’s ger, Thalia found only Bold’s elderly grandmother watching the small children as they played. The woman hadn’t seen Gabriel but urged Thalia to rejoin the feast.

  “You won’t find a husband out here with the old people and babies,” she chuckled.

  Thalia thanked her for the advice and left. Instead of heeding the grandmother’s recommendation, Thalia ducked her head into other gers, but they were either empty or contained only the elderly or very young. No one had seen Gabriel. From one of the gers, she borrowed an oil lantern.

  She stalked through the ail, searching, the lantern held aloft. She told herself not to be alarmed—he was a soldier and more than capable of taking care of himself—but a man didn’t simply vanish from a crowded tent without explanation. The Heirs could have used any number of Sources or spells to spirit him away. For the first time, Thalia wished that the Blades had more flexibility in their moral code. She would like nothing better than to summon some vicious demon to track the Heirs down and rip their miserable carcasses apart. On second thought, if anything were to happen to Gabriel, Thalia would greedily break the Heirs’ bones with her own hands.

  Her breath came in frantic puffs that misted the cold air as she started to sprint. The pearls and coral beads hanging from her headdress swayed and clicked with a frenzied rhythm that matched her heartbeat. Yellow light swung back and forth as the lantern danced in her hand, turning the still night into a dreamlike tableau. She didn’t know where she was running, only that she had to find Gabriel.

  In the corner of her eye, she caught the faint gleam of blond hair. Thalia skidded to a halt as she saw Gabriel sitting on a large rock, watching a herd of horses nosing at the ground and huddling together in the evening chill. Relief hit her so hard she nearly cast up the roast mutton eaten earlier. She waited for her breathing to calm, feeling the sweat cold upon her back, even though she wanted to run to Gabriel and throw her arms around him, confirming that he was real and safe.