Jaran

by Kate Elliott

  “Ilya! We did that to save lives.”

  He did not look up. The brown rodent ran out from the crevasse and halted on the next rock, its bright eyes fixed on them. “Please believe that I would never have done such a thing if I’d been thinking clearly, but I never think clearly when I’m in battle.”

  “No, you think quickly, and that is why you’re a good commander.”

  He glanced up at her. “You don’t hold it against me?”

  “Bakhtiian!” She slapped a hand down on her thigh. The little animal scrambled away. “Did you ever see a play in Jeds?” He nodded. “We were acting. It was a scene played out for that moment, nothing else.”

  “I learned well enough in Jeds how lightly they hold such violence.” He studied his palms where they lay open in his lap. “This is not a thing that is ever spoken of between men and women, but should a jaran man ever try—may the gods forgive me for even thinking of such a thing—to force a woman, he would be dead the next instant. And no man would lift a hand to stop the women from executing their justice.”

  “There are many things I admire about the jaran, and that is one of them.” She lowered her voice. “Ilya, you and I understand why it was done. Every man in this jahar understands.” Reflexively, she smoothed the silky soft sleeve of the red shirt she now wore.

  He shrugged conciliatorily and at last met her eyes. “You don’t think I’m a demon?”

  “No.” She could not resist smiling. “Though I liked Keregin’s suggestion that you called the arenabekh from—what did he say?—from the depths of your fire-scorched heart. Did they all die?”

  “I hope so, since those who did not would have been taken prisoner by the khaja.”

  “And the horses?”

  “Those too badly injured I killed. The others—” He gestured below, “—as you see, though not all will be able to keep our pace. Here is Yuri.” And it occurred to Tess that Bakhtiian’s own remount had not come back with him.

  Bakhtiian jumped down from the rocks, took the bag from Yuri and, rolling down the edges, carefully lifted sabers out and placed them side by side on the ground.

  “Gods!” exclaimed Yuri. Tess merely gaped. Light flashed from the blades.

  “Spoils,” said Ilya. “I thought they would rather we had them than the khaja. I couldn’t carry many, so I took the ten best. And an eleventh, for myself.” He looked at Tess. “Tobay. Do you remember? His saber is as good as his arm.” He reached down. “Here, Yuri. This one for you.”

  “But, Ilya, it’s beautiful.” Yuri tested it, turning his arm, feeling its weight. “I can’t possibly deserve it.”

  “Perhaps it will inspire you to practice as often as you should. This for Mikhal. Oh—” He laughed, picking up another by its ornate, jeweled hilt. “This for Vladi, of course.” He replaced them one by one in the bag until there was only one left: a delicately curved thing that rang when he struck the blade with his nail. “Cousin,” he said to Tess. “Our kinsman Yurinya did very poorly for you when he got you a saber. He must have applied to his most miserly cousin who could scarcely bring himself to begrudge you his third blade, and only a few men have two. That you have any aptitude for saber at all is incredible, considering how ill-balanced and ill-wrought that thing is. I suggest you take it off, cast it in the dirt, and forget you ever knew it.” He held out the saber. She stared at it. When he put it into her hands, the metal cold on her fingers, she merely continued to stare, until she saw the mark.

  “This is Keregin’s saber. I remember this mark. Is it a rune? I can’t take this.”

  “I think he would have been pleased to know you inherited it. It was the finest blade on the field. Yes, that is a rune on the hilt.”

  “What does it mean?”

  Bakhtiian frowned. “It can’t be explained in one word. It means, the soul that finds the wind that will bear it the highest and does not shrink from being borne. The soul that does not fear being swept up into the heavens. The soul kissed by the gods that rejoices in their cares. That hardly does it justice. Words are too poor.”

  “Excuse me,” said Tess in a small voice. She turned and walked away from them, cradling the saber against her like a baby.

  Bakhtiian stared after her, motionless, his back to the sun, his face shadowed.

  “Ilya,” said Yuri, “that was your old saber you gave me for Tess when we left the tribe.”

  Bakhtiian started and bent to hoist the bag, his face lit now as he turned into the sun. “Let’s take these down,” he said.

  Tess spent the rest of the day with her saber, sharpening it, polishing it, turning it so that it flashed in the sun, convincing now this man, now that, to give her a short lesson in fighting. She slept with it that night and welcomed the dawn and their early departure because there was nothing more glorious to her at that moment than the feeling of her saber resting on her hip as she rode.

  “I’d have brought you another,” said Bakhtiian, “if I’d known you’d be so pleased with this one.”

  Tess reined Myshla past a slight irregularity of ground and laughed. “Gods! What would I do with two? There’s enough to learn with one.”

  Bakhtiian smiled. “Watch yourself, or your brother won’t recognize you when you reach Jeds.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ve begun to swear in khush. The outer trappings of an alien culture are easily assumed, but when the inner workings begin to touch your own, then you’re in danger.”

  “In danger of what? Being consumed? Amnesia?”

  “What is amnhesia?”

  “Forgetting who you are.”

  He considered. Tumbled boulders obscured the sides of the path. Plants thrust up from every cleft and crack in the stone, reaching for the light. “There were times, in my three years in Jeds, when I felt confused as to who I was, but I was never in any danger of succumbing to that culture. I’m not very adaptable.”

  “But that’s not true, Ilya. You are.”

  “Being able to understand alien ways, being able to accept the fact of them, is not necessarily adaptability. I am jaran heart and soul. Nothing will change that.”

  The path snaked up to the top of a ridge, where they halted. Far below Tess saw the golden sheet of the plateau. They sat for a moment in silence and simply looked. He had killed a man—long ago it seemed now—for transgressing the code of jaran religion, for nothing more than killing a bird, and yet he struggled to understand Newton and was compelled to ask what amnesia was, hearing it mentioned. It was as if half of him questioned incessantly and the other half never questioned at all.

  “Perhaps,” she replied at last. “But many people would not be able to understand enough of the inner workings of another people to know that, say, the religious strictures of the khaja would be strong enough to stop them at the temple when—”

  “Please.” Bakhtiian turned away from her, urging his black down the slope. “It is my disgrace that I acted as I did. It is also improper for a man and a woman to speak of such a thing.”

  “Forgive me,” said Tess coldly, but the comment was addressed to his back. She followed him as they descended into a long valley. A thin layer of clouds trailed along the horizon. A snake moved sluggishly off the white-soiled path, leaving an elegant line in the dust. Here, deep in the valley, there were few sounds.

  After a long while, he spoke. “Those clouds are no threat, but here in the hills, the weather can change very quickly.”

  Tess, still angry at his rejection of her and feeling humiliated that she had stupidly broached a subject that offended him, did not reply. Instead, she pretended she was studying the lay of the land. The trail forked below where a huge rock outcropping thrust up from the ground. One path ran on toward the plateau, but the other ran up the opposite ridge and disappeared over its crest. Even so, she was surprised when he pulled up next to the split in the path. In the shadow of the rock lay a dead shrub, scattered and brittle. Bakhtiian dismounted and stacked a triangular pile of rocks on an area of f
lat ground to one side of the fork.

  “What message are you leaving?” she asked, irritated that he had not volunteered the information.

  He glanced up at her. “These trails are too well worn. If the arenabekh knew about them, surely the khaja do, too. I want to scout the upper trail, see where it leads. But the jahar should go down. If we’re attacked, better for us that we be in the open.” He hesitated, frowned, and looked away. “We’ll join them at nightfall. Of course.”

  “Of course.” The sunlight stung her eyes. She shaded them with one hand.

  “You can wait, if you wish, and ride with the jahar.”

  “No,” said Tess, sure that he only wanted to be rid of her. “I’m curious to see where the trail leads.”

  He shrugged, and they went on. For a time they saw the second trail like a thread winding away beneath them before they topped the ridge. Beyond, the path dipped into a shallow, rocky canyon, climbing up the canyon’s far slope in a series of gradual switchbacks. The sun rose steadily as they rode up to the far crest. Below them now lay a forested valley. Trees, touched orange and yellow on their leaves, stood in thick copses that thinned and dissipated into meadows and rock-littered open areas. Flashes of gray sheets of water showed here and there, streams and pools. It was nearing midday. In the distance, at the far end of the valley, smoke rose.

  “Khaja,” said Bakhtiian. “Some kind of settlement. Come on.” They rode down. The light, broken by leaves and branches, made patterns on their faces and hands. Reaching the valley floor, they found a thick grove of trees and dismounted and led their horses in. Tess tied them on long reins to a sturdy pair of trees within reach of grass and water. Bakhtiian left.

  So much vegetation. Scents blended here, damped down by shadow. Moss hung from branches.

  He reappeared presently, surprising her, his approach had been so quiet. “I don’t know. No doubt we’d be better off leaving, but I’d like to scout out that settlement. I can get there and back by mid-afternoon. We can still catch the jahar before the moon sets.”

  “You can get there and back?” Water pooled and murmured near her feet, slipping in and out of light as leaves swayed in the breeze. “I’m not staying here by myself.”

  “Soerensen, I gave you the option of riding with the jahar. Now you can stay here with the horses. The settlement is at the other end of the valley, and not large, by the signs. You won’t be found here.”

  “Did Keregin say something about how the khaja hereabout treat their women? How do you suppose they would treat me, Bakhtiian, if they found me here alone?”

  He flushed and looked away from her. “Very well,” he said in a tight voice. “The horses can protect themselves.” He began to walk away, halted, and glanced back at her as she followed him. “But when we get close to the village, you’ll stop where and when I tell you.”

  “Agreed.”

  But they had not gotten even a third of the way up the valley when Bakhtiian froze suddenly. Despite her efforts to move just as he did, Tess still made twice as much noise, shifting at the wrong moment, getting her hair caught in branches. When he stopped abruptly and put his hand back to warn her, she stiffened to a halt: following the line of his gaze, she saw the hunter.

  The hunter could not have seen them yet, but he had certainly heard something. He turned his head this way and that, listening for further noise. Through the brown branches and fading green and yellow thickets their scarlet shirts would betray them. She dared not stir. She wanted to sneeze.

  The hunter moved, shoulders twisting as he turned half round to look behind him. In a single movement, Bakhtiian stepped backward and pushed Tess down. She caught her weight on her hands and lowered herself to lie full on the ground. The leaves and moss smelled of moisture and rich soil. Bakhtiian lay beside her, barely breathing. His arm still lay across her back. His hand rested on her far shoulder. Her other shoulder pressed against his, her hand caught under his chest, party to the movement of his lungs, her hip and thigh warmed by his, her foot captured under his ankle.

  The hunter whirled back, hearing the rustle. He checked his knife, drew an arrow from his quiver, and fitted it to his bow.

  Bakhtiian’s hand tightened on her shoulder, his thumb tracing the line of her shoulder blade through her shirt, up and down. A strange double awareness descended on her, an instant drawn out into eternity: the man tracking them; the weight of Ilya’s arm on her back, the pressure of his fingers, the unintentional caress. Death stalked her in the guise of a black-haired, middle-aged khaja hunter. Desire had already trapped her, how long ago she did not know, only knowing now that her heart pounded so fiercely not just because she was afraid of being killed. If they had been alone, and this had been Fedya, the cushioning leaves would have been invitation enough—but Fedya had understood that some expressions could be left pure, that they need not become entangled in deeper concerns. Fedya had perhaps been a simpler man. Certainly his needs had been simple, and they had accorded with hers.

  Nothing with Bakhtiian would be simple. Imagine that restless, penetrating intelligence focused on her. Imagine him, compulsively ambitious, driven, obsessed with conquest, discovering that the sister and heir of the Prince of Jeds—the greatest city he knew of—was interested, attracted, drawn to him.

  The children of different worlds, there were so many things between them that could never be resolved. She had a duty to Charles, she had to leave, she could never tell Bakhtiian where she really came from, and she would live—however primitive Dr. Hierakis might claim the longevity treatments were—she would long outlive him. But they could be friends, surely, and to let the vagaries of physical attraction, the insidious compulsion of the loins, ruin that, ruin everything—Never! If I once gave way to him, I would burn like straw. She would not accept it. In that instant of drawn-out time, fear fought desire and won, and she fled, internally, seeking refuge with cold Reason, a friend of little comfort but great constitution.

  Time started again. His hand moved, as cautious as the hunter, wandering to her neck. His fingers, light, smooth, brushed her skin. The hunter paused; Tess’s hands tightened into fists; Bakhtiian drew his breath in sharply.

  He rolled away from her, leapt to his feet, and dodged left through the undergrowth, making a great deal of noise.

  The hunter dashed forward, pulled back his bow, and stopped. Nothing moved. Silence had fallen like a sudden fog. The hunter stared fixedly in the direction Bakhtiian had run. A twig snapped to Tess’s right. The hunter’s gaze swung around, exploring. She saw Bakhtiian moving up behind him. The hunter began to swing back. Her hand found a pebble. She flung it as far as she could to her right. It clacked against twigs. A bird fluttered noisily up into the trees. The hunter whipped back, taking a step toward her. The rocky ground of a little meadow lay behind him. Bakhtiian moved to the edge of the trees.

  The hunter took another step toward her, eyeing the trees above. She drew the Chapalii knife—but no, Ilya would see. She had to save it as a last resort. She found another rock and flipped it away. A dull thup as it struck the leaves of a nearby bush. The hunter’s gaze shifted down, and down. Bakhtiian pushed himself away from the trees, sprinting for the hunter’s back.

  Stumbled. Fell, landing on one knee, his head thrown back. The hunter, bow drawn, whirled and aimed.

  Tess jumped up, shouting, and dove for him, hand slipping on the knife. Twisting back, he shot at her. As she threw herself flat, conscious in a detached way of the nearness of the bow, the notched arrow, the jolt up her arms as she struck the earth, she saw a flash, heard a gasp of pain and, a second later, a grunt.

  For a long moment she lay perfectly still. The heavy scent of moss and leaves drowned her. Dampness seeped into her palms and through the cloth of her trousers at her knees. Finally she raised her head slightly. The arrow lay a body’s length away, its point slid under a clump of yellow lichen. There was no sound at all from the two men. She rolled onto her side and pushed herself up with one arm.

&n
bsp; Bakhtiian stood in front of her, his face white, his saber bloody. Something in his stance was peculiar. He looked fierce, wild, with his hair mussed and his empty hand in a fist, but she was not scared. Instead she stared up at him, a sudden sinking in her heart, knowing without knowing why that the easy, cheerful friendship she had with Yuri was a thing she could never have with Bakhtiian. Something else waited; she felt it like a force between them. Behind him, leaves drifted down from the trees, shaken loose by the wind.

  “If you’ve killed him,” she said, “we’d better go.”

  He stared at her. “You could have been killed!” His eyes seemed black with anger, focused on her face.

  “By God, Bakhtiian!” She could have struck him for belittling her in such a way. “I did what had to be done.” He did not hold out a hand to help her up. She would not have taken it in any case.

  She did not want to see the body. As she stood, she sheathed the knife and turned away, to go back the way they had come, to return to the horses, to leave this valley. A soft noise behind her stopped her.

  “I can’t walk.” His voice was strained and thin.

  She turned back, recognizing all at once the whiteness in his cheeks and the pinched line of his mouth: he was in pain. He was standing on one leg.

  “My knee.” It was hardly more than a whisper. His eyes shut. Shadow grew on the meadow. “I have to sit down,” he said, almost apologetically.

  She put out a hand and, using it for leverage, he lowered himself without putting any pressure on his injured knee, but he winced as he touched the ground. Beyond him, she saw the bloody corpse. A line of sunlight illuminated the open, staring eyes.

  “Oh, God,” said Tess.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Hollows, ditches, caves and gates.”

  —PHERECYDES OF SYROS

  IT WAS VERY STILL, as if all the animals had fled, only the whispering lilt of a distant stream like a muted counterpoint to the undertone of his ragged breathing. Branches clicked together in a rustle of wind. He sat against a slim tree trunk, eyes shut, face ashen. She collapsed to her knees beside him.