Jaran

by Kate Elliott

  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 be
cause 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.

  “Tess? Are you coming?”

  She sighed and transferred her gaze from the Chapalii to the riders, who gathered in anticipation of her arrival. After staring death in the face, she could not imagine why she had ever really feared the Chapalii. Truly, they posed no greater threat than the threat this little presentation posed to her composure: it was her own resources being challenged. Death—real, stark, painful death, that Fedya had faced without flinching—was something else again.

  “Tess.” Niko came forward to lead her over to the fire. “We have something to present to you, which you have fairly earned.” Somehow Kirill had got hold of the shirt so that he got to give it to her along with a kiss on the cheek. Despite all this, she still found that she could receive it without blushing. Until Yuri said, “But, Tess, that’s exactly your color!” and everyone laughed. The sound echoed round the little vale, and she blushed and smiled and knew suddenly that she had gained a whole family of cousins and uncles—that gifted one tent and one mirror and one shirt, she now had a tribe, a place where she belonged simply for herself.

  Unexpectedly, in the chaos that attended leaving, Garii brought her saddled tarpan.

  “Lady Terese. Please allow me to offer you this service,” he said colorlessly, offering her the reins.

  “I thank you, Hon Garii,” she said, accepting them. He flushed pink.

  “If I may be permitted to ask a question?” She nodded again. “These men have given you a shirt. Although my understanding may be incomplete, the gift itself seems to act as a symbol of your acceptance into their bonding unit. Perhaps you will be generous enough, Lady Terese, to enlighten me on this.”

  “No, it is true enough, what you surmise.”

  “And yet,” he hesitated, colors chasing themselves across his cheeks in a brief, muted display, “they have offered you this not because you are Tai-endi, the heir of a duke, but because of acts you have yourself accomplished.”

  “That is also true, Hon Garii.”

  “This culture,” he said, “is very different from my own.” He bowed, glanced back to where the Chapalii were readying their horses, and looked again at Tess. “My family of Takokan has been pledged to that of the Hokokul lordship for only five hundred of your years, a great dishonor to my clan, for we had an impetuous ancestor who transferred his pledge away from the Warakul lordship when that lord used my ancestor’s wife and daughters in an impolite fashion.”

  “Hon Garii, why are you telling me this?”

  For the first time, he looked her straight in the eye, without arrogance and yet without any shame either. “Lady Terese, what has passed between us—has passed between us. I withhold from you none of my family’s disgrace. I trust you to judge fairly.” He bowed and retreated, walking back to Cha Ishii and the other Chapalii.

  What had passed between them? He could be referring to nothing but his offer of personal loyalty to her the night Doroskayev had died. An offer that would make him a pariah in his own culture should it become public. But given the protection of a duke’s heir, would being a pariah even matter? No wonder opportunism was so reprehensible a trait in a culture whose hierarchy had not changed in centuries.

  She sighed and rubbed her finger along the smooth red silk of her new shirt. Not even the Chapalii could ruin this day. She grinned and mounted and rode with Yuri. They took a slower pace for the sake of the horses, and it was fine weather for the sake of her equally fine mood.

  At dusk on the second day they camped in a small, high-sided valley tinted with green, the ghost of summer still resisting autumn’s pull. From one of the containing ridges the plateau could be seen, flat and yellowing. The sight of it was welcome. Two days passed uneventfully. In the early afternoon of the third, the watch on the trail let out a shrill yell, and soon Bakhtiian could be seen, slowly leading a string of fifteen horses, his black at the forefront, along the valley to the camp.

  He looked terrible. The stallion no longer had any trace of glossy sheen to its coat, but it held its head up. A number of men ran to care for the horses. Vladimir took the black. Ilya washed first, and he went from there directly to his tent. That was the last anyone saw of him until morning. Everyone rose early the next day and lavished their energy on the horses, these relics of the arenabekh, yet always they kept an eye on Bakhtiian’s tent. When he finally emerged, however, Niko and Josef and Tadheus greeted him first. Tess and Yuri sat on some boulders a bit above the camp, tossing stones at a cleft in the rock, watching the four men as they talked.

  “How does he keep his looks?” Tess asked.

  Yuri grinned and began to laugh, an infectious and utterly irresistible influence. “I dare you to ask him that.”

  Tess swallowed a giggle. “Don’t, Yuri. I will.”

  Yuri put a hand over his mouth. Below, the stream shone, sparkling in the sunlight. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Bakhtiian!” yelled Tess.

  Yuri choked and held his stomach. “Tess!” he squeaked.

  Bakhtiian said something to his companions, detached himself, and walked toward them, his boots light on the moss and low grass. Yuri shook in silent mirth, tears seeping from his eyes.

  “We were just wondering,” said Tess as Bakhtiian came up to them, “how you manage to keep your looks, running around at the pace you do.” She had so far managed some semblance of seriousness, but a giggle escaped from Yuri and she had to cough violently to stop herself from laughing. Bakhtiian stared at them for a moment, as if puzzled. He drew himself up very straight and advanced on them sternly. Yuri’s glee vanished like a flake of snow on fire.

  “Oh,” he said, eyes widening. “I take it all back, Tess.”

  “All of it?” Bakhtiian halted in front of the young man, arms crossed.

  “Help!” said Yuri faintly, but Tess started to laugh. Yuri stared at her in horror. Bakhtiian climbed up to sit on the rock, with Yuri between him and Tess. He wiped dust from his hands.

  “Well,” he said to Yuri, “it is my experience that when a woman shows interest in a man’s looks, he’d best begin to pay attention.”

  “What!” Tess’s laughter vanished. “I deny everything.” She blushed.

  “I keep my looks,” said Bakhtiian with dignity, still looking at Yuri, “by not indulging in frivolity.”

  “He must have been a dull child,” said Tess to Yuri.

  “And a dull youth,” said Yuri.

  “And I fear he’s becoming a dull man,” finished Tess. She glanced surreptitiously at Bakhtiian. It might have been that he was blushing slightly, or perhaps only the brisk wind on his cheeks, but in any case he had found something in the camp that attracted his gaze.

  “I don’t really believe it,” said Yuri to Bakhtiian. “You must have been the boy in the middle a hundred times before you were twenty.”

  “At the risk of destroying your very gratifying faith in me, Yuri, I must be honest with you. It pains me even now to remember how very thoroughly I was ignored by the girls when I was young.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Yuri.

  “It might even have partially influenced my decision to go to Jeds. And of course there was—” He paused and seemed to change his mind about something. “Nataliia,” he finished.

  “Of course.” Yuri stared at Bakhtiian as though he had never seen him before. “Ilya, I—” He flushed. “I didn’t mean to…”

  Bakhtiian’s gaze flashed past Yuri to Tess and immediately returned to Yuri. Tess suddenly got the impression
that this entire conversation was between her and Bakhtiian, with Yuri serving simply as the intermediary. A small, rodentlike animal rushed across rock, paused to look at them, and ran on, disappearing into the tiny crevasse.

  “Your sister Nataliia?” Tess asked.

  “Yes,” he answered, still looking at Yuri. He smiled slightly. “Growing the beard may have helped.” He stroked the dark line of his beard absently.

  “Men! You’re all of you vain.”

  “We have to be,” said Yuri, turning to Tess. “Since we live every moment of our lives subject to the whims of women.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes,” said Yuri and Bakhtiian at the same moment.

  Tess opened her mouth to reply, closed it, and shrugged.

  “Ilya,” said Yuri. “What did you find at the temple?”

  Bakhtiian shut his eyes. The high ring of sabers startled Tess. Down in the camp, several men were practicing. “Nothing that I ever want you to see, Yurinya. So. We ride at dawn tomorrow.”

  “That bad?” asked Yuri.

  “Autumn also brings the early storms, here by the mountains. We’re ten or fifteen days now from the shrine of Morava. We have to reach the port before the ships stop sailing for the winter months.”

  “It must have been terrible,” said Yuri to Tess.

  “I brought you something,” said Bakhtiian. A flat tone of metal from below, a curse, and laughter. “A gift from the dead. Run down to my tent and bring me the long leather sack. There is something for Tess, too.”

  “Of course!” Yuri scrambled off the rocks, dust spraying down after him, and ran down into camp.

  “Where I come from,” said Tess, resting her elbow on one knee and turning her head to look directly at Bakhtiian, “we call that contriving to get rid of someone without insulting them.”

  Bakhtiian smiled. “I believe it’s called much the same thing everywhere. I want to apologize to you.”

  “For what?”

  He stared down at his hands. Eyes lowered, he looked so incongruously modest that she had to smile. “At the temple. My behavior was…inexcusable. For a man to behave toward a woman in such a fashion is…shameful.”