Jaran

by Kate Elliott

  “Sweet Goddess, it was an easy enough delivery.”

  “Marco, there was nothing you could have done. You didn’t know about the reaction that set in.”

  “I damn well could have not gotten her pregnant!”

  “Yes, you could have. One can take this going native business too far.”

  “Thank you, Cara. Your sympathy overwhelms me.”

  “My sympathy rests with that poor girl. Where do you think Tess is?”

  “I think she’s on Rhui. Just a feeling I have.”

  “Then why didn’t she come here? Where could she possibly be? Marco, can you imagine the kind of danger she could be in, if that’s the case?”

  Marco smiled, but mockingly, without any humor at all. “Yes, in fact, I can.”

  The horns woke Tess. She started awake, standing abruptly. A white rump flashed, an animal bounding away into the trees. Twigs snapped. A bird shrieked.

  Bakhtiian woke just before she reached him, one hand on his saber hilt, the other open, out in front of him as if he were confused. Tess halted out of range of his saber.

  “Bakhtiian?”

  He pulled his hands in and looked up at the sky. His eyes followed the invisible trail of the sun to the rim of the western hills where clouds, a low gray sheet stretching halfway back across the sky, obscured its face. Shadows drew long lines across the meadow. “It’s late.”

  “I’ll go saddle the horses.” She turned away.

  “Tess.” She turned back. “You’ll have to ride Kriye. I can’t handle him with one leg.”

  “Who?”

  There was color in his cheeks, but that might only have been from his afternoon’s rest. “My black,” he said in a constrained voice.

  Tess almost started laughing. “Kriye. That’s what you call a very young boy. ‘Little one,’ but masculine?” He said nothing. “You must admit, Ilya, it’s hardly what one would expect you to name a horse.” Still he did not reply. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it,” she added hastily. “I think it’s sweet. But what if you can’t ride at all?”

  A withering leaf, blown up by an eddy of wind, rolled across his knees. He grabbed it, flinging it to one side. “I can ride.”

  “Fine. What do I do with an unconscious man?”

  “I don’t faint.”

  “Just like you don’t sleep?” Then, seeing his face, she realized she had gone too far, and she quickly left.

  Kriye remained placid for Tess. In the level valley, forced to a slow walk by the dusk and the trees, and with the stirrup adjusted to hold his splinted leg pretty much in place, Bakhtiian managed Myshla, who was more amiable than the tarpan remounts. But they had barely started up the trail, Tess riding behind, when Myshla broke into a trot, and Bakhtiian acted instinctively to slow her. It was his curse more than any movement that alerted Tess; in the darkness she could see only shapes. She urged Kriye up beside him. He gripped the saddle in both hands, reins slack in his fingers. Tess pulled the reins from him and kept going.

  Clouds scudded across the farther reaches of sky. The hooves of the horses rang like the echo of a bell on the hard trail. When the clouds reached the far horizon and covered the moon, she had to dismount and lead the horses.

  The wind struck when she reached the crest. Her hair streamed back, caught in the flow. In the darkness, she felt as if she were on the edge of an abyss, the world falling away before and behind her. Dark masses of rock loomed around her, the suggestion of ages. She felt very old, knowing that as she stood here, with the wind’s pull like the rush of the planet’s rotation, she was as much a part of the scene as the wind itself.

  Myshla shifted. Glancing back, she saw Bakhtiian sway in the saddle. She shook him. Finally he blinked and stared at her. His look of complete confusion frightened her.

  “You can faint when we get to shelter,” she snapped. “I could hold out longer than that. I could hold out twice as long.”

  “I doubt it,” he whispered, but he pushed himself up.

  The wind tore at her clothes as if it was trying to scatter her off the heights. She tugged the horses forward, stumbling down the path. Her boots slipped on pebbles. Kriye’s breath warmed her neck. Her hands stiffened into a tight grip on the reins. Her toes ached with cold.

  When the trail gave out on a broad ledge that angled up into a deep overhang, she realized that in the dark she had missed the switchback and taken an offshoot. As she moved forward she no longer felt the wind, only a still presence over her head. She halted and untied the blankets from Kriye’s saddle.

  “Where are we?”

  “Shelter. For the rest of the night.” She laid out the blankets by the far wall.

  She had to help him off the horse. He slumped against her. She let him down very carefully onto the blankets and knelt beside him. She was shivering.

  “Ilya?” There was no answer, no movement at all. “Oh Lord.” She rested a hand on his chest. His breathing was regular and even. She sat back with a sigh. She cared for the horses first; afterward, taking two strips of meat, she settled down at the far edge of the overhang. Darkness surrounded her. Soon, she dozed.

  A rush of sound startled her awake. It was raining. She sank back against the wall, tucking her hands under her cloak. For a time the rain kept her awake. Later, despite the cold, it lulled her to sleep.

  She woke abruptly at dawn, chilled and shivering. Her cheeks and forehead felt warm. No wind penetrated the overhang, a shallow cave eroded from the hill by a millennia of storms. Outside the rain had stopped. Surely such rain would cover their tracks.

  She stamped her feet and rubbed her hands together to try to bring some warmth into them. Turning, she caught Bakhtiian looking abruptly away from her. He was already sitting up. Dark circles set off his eyes. A smudge of dirt mottled one cheek. The night had tangled his hair and trapped a tiny yellow leaf in his beard. Unbelted, the tunics bunched and wrinkled at his waist. One sleeve of his red shirt, showing at a wrist, had twisted at the cuff.

  “This is all very foolish,” he said.

  “You don’t still think I should go on ahead, do you?” She offered him water and food.

  “It’s cold,” he said.

  She felt her heart race with fear. If he was getting ill from the shock—

  “No,” he said, reading her expression. “I’m not—I’m well enough. But the air. Can’t you feel it? It’s the ayakhov, the wind from the peaks. It brings the storms. This shelter can’t possibly protect us.” He halted, just breathing for a while, as if the effort of speaking so much had exhausted him.

  “Can you go on? I’ll saddle the horses.”

  He shook his head, a gesture compounded half of answer, half of pain. “No.” She waited. “If we’re caught in the open—These storms last days sometimes. You’ll have to scout for better shelter. Even a deeper overhang where we can set up the tent…” He trailed off.

  “Yes,” she said, not wanting to remind him that they had no tent with them. “I’ll go now.” She saddled Myshla and left. She rode down into the canyon and half up the other side before tethering Myshla and exploring. By the time she found a good cave, the wind had indeed blown up, cold enough that all her exertion did not keep her warm. She gathered all the brush she could find, arranging the softest into a couch set against the steep-sloping cave wall, and gathered scraps, everything she could find for fodder for the horses, and piled rocks for a corral in the dark recesses of the shelter.

  He was asleep when she returned. She unsaddled Myshla and took all four horses out on a long lead, letting them graze and water behind her as she hiked up to the crest. As she had hoped, the rain had swept all traces of their passage from the rock-littered trail. At the height she tried to recapture that timelessness she had felt the night before. But the rocks looked drab, worn away by the weather and the years, and there were too many windblown plants clinging to their surface, a few wilted leaves holding tenuously to branches.

  It was cold. Wind whipped the ends of
her cloak around her knees. No one was following them. Surely the khaja had given up their search. Turning away, she saw a mass of thick clouds tipped with darkness, sweeping down, almost on her where she stood high and exposed on the ridge. Alarmed, she mounted Myshla bareback and rode back to the overhang.

  She found Bakhtiian standing at the entrance, hands clutching his walking stick, staring at her as she dismounted and led the horses under the rock. If he could have looked anything but haggard, pained, and tired, she would have said he looked glad to see her. He had made some effort to tidy himself up. His face was clean, his hair combed, the hunter’s tunics straight and neatly belted.

  She chuckled, because the incongruity—of their desperate situation, of the approaching storm, of his appearance—was simply too much.

  “Where were you?” he demanded.

  “Scouting. I found shelter.” She began immediately to saddle Kriye and Myshla. “The storm is coming.”

  “Why didn’t we leave sooner?”

  His bad temper irritated her. “You were asleep. And I must say you needed it.”

  “I am aware,” said Bakhtiian slowly, “that I am not looking my best.”

  Tess laughed and stooped to pick up the blankets he had already rolled up and readied. “Do you know why I like you, Ilya?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  She knew she should stop now, but the storm, the danger, his whole attitude, made her reckless. “Because you’re vain.”

  He limped across to Myshla. “At least,” he said, tying the blankets to the saddle with hard, efficient jerks, “I am not uncivil.”

  “No.” Her whole face burned, with excitement, with fever, with anger—she could not be sure. “That fault will never tarnish your reputation.” She turned back to Kriye and tightened the cinch of his saddle. “Do you need help to mount?”

  He cursed, a phrase she did not recognize, and she started around to see that he had already mounted. He clutched the pommel, eyes shut. “Forgive me.” Though his voice was scarcely more than a whisper, she knew he was in earnest. “My language.”

  Immediately she felt guilty. “No, I’m sorry. I have a terrible temper.” When he did not reply, she judged it prudent simply to go.

  She led the horses out. Drops of ice-tipped rain stung her face. She tucked her braid beneath her cloak and pulled her hood up over her head.

  A gust of wind scattered leaves across the trail. Kriye whickered and tossed his head, and Tess moved her grip up closer to his mouth. The wind dragged at her, pulling her hood back off her head, so cold that it stiffened her joints even as she moved. The trail veered down around a boulder. Tess slipped on a damp stone; only Kriye’s pulling back kept her from falling. Rain spattered her face. All color faded suddenly. She looked up to see the entire sky darken, curling down like a black glove from invisible heights.

  “We’ve got to go faster!” she yelled. “Can you hold on?”

  He was hunched so far over Myshla’s neck that his hood had not been blown back. “Yes.” The word vanished on the wind.

  She mounted Kriye. He sidestepped, taking her into a bush. Branches scraped her leg. She jerked him back onto the trail, driving him ahead. Myshla came forward, and the tarpans, nervous, hesitated and then followed the drag of their lead-lines. The wind swelled. Rain broke over them, hard as pellets, sounding like thunder on the rocks around them. Her head was soaked in an instant. Water blurred her vision.

  Finally, finally, they reached the valley floor. She slowed to negotiate a litter of rocks. Water streamed away in little runnels between them. A leaf blew into her face, attaching itself like a damp tentacle. She flinched back, jerked the reins. Kriye shied. For an instant she had all that she could do to control him. A thick gust of rain drove into her from the side. A large branch tore loose from a tree behind them and crashed down onto the path. Myshla bolted.

  The mare stumbled on the rough ground and fell, flipping over sideways. She pushed back up to her feet and then, unaccountably, she calmed.

  “Ilya!” Tess scrambled down off Kriye, throwing the reins over the black’s head. Rain drowned the landscape in gray. Bakhtiian lay half in a ditch at the side of the trail. Water eddied over his boots. She grabbed him under his arms and tugged him up onto the trail, and knelt by him, pulling him up into her arms. “Ilya!”

  His eyelids wavered, opened. He had a cut below one eye, thin and jagged. The brown tunic was ripped. Blood welled up from a scrape on his palm. He mouthed something. She had to lean down. Rain drenched her neck, slipping under her cloak to run down the curve of her spine. She shuddered.

  “Go on.” He shut his eyes.

  She eased him down on the trail. With both hands she smoothed his hood back away from his face. Then she took off one of her gloves and slapped him as hard as she could. He sat up. Rain and blood painted a broad red line down his cut cheek. He lifted a hand to his face. Blood dripped from his palm.

  “Stand up, damn you!” She got behind him and lifted. He got his good leg under him and came up with such strength that she had to take a step backward to balance. He pushed her away with one arm and hobbled over to Myshla. Blood leaked from a gouge midway down Myshla’s left foreleg.

  “Oh, hell.” Tears burned her eyes. “Ilya, you’ll have to ride Kriye.” He did not reply, but with a movement half extraordinary and half ungainly, he got himself on the stallion. Tess mounted her remount bareback, tying Myshla to Kriye’s saddle. They went on.

  Partway up the far slope, with wind and rain pouring against them, she had to dismount. Bakhtiian lay bent, almost hugging Kriye’s neck. She tied her mount on behind, put her head down, and led them forward. Water gushed down the path in fresh trails. The hard surface had dissolved into mud. The rain soaked through her gloves, through her trousers. Rivulets trailed down her calves to pool in the toes of her boots.

  The pile of stone marking the approach to the cave was half obliterated. Beyond it, rock fell in slick ledges down toward the bottom of the canyon that lay, dim and obscure, far below. Rain pelted at the low bushes, stripping them of their last leaves. Tess got a tighter hold on Kriye, up at his mouth, and started across.

  That Kriye was surefooted was the best of her luck. In this direction, the wind whipped her cloak open. Rain drenched the front of her shirt. Convulsive shivers shook her every few steps. She picked her way across the pathless slope of loose rock, slipping once, knee jarring on stone, one hand plunged to above the wrist in a sink of icy water. Kriye held steady. Tess pushed herself up, slipping again, clutching the reins. A steep slope, its carpet of lichen torn into strips by the storm, a rubble-strewn ledge, and at last the broad entry and narrow doorway of the cave.

  “The gates of paradise.” Bakhtiian’s voice, faint and far off behind her. Kriye nosed against her, recognizing shelter, and suddenly the rain no longer pounded furiously on her head.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “We have come into this roofed cavern.”

  —EMPEDOCLES OF AGRAGAS

  SOMEHOW BAKHTIIAN GOT HIMSELF off Kriye. With cold-numbed fingers, Tess fumbled with the harness. Myshla’s saddle slipped from her hands to land on her feet. Pain lanced up her leg. She led the horses into the rock corral and rubbed them down with the hunter’s undershirt. The gouge on Myshla’s leg did not look too deep. She put salve on it and wrapped it, and left the horses to their forage. There was still enough light to see. She thanked someone for this; whom, she was not sure. From inside, the high whistle of the wind and the rain’s monotonous staccato sounded almost subdued.

  Dizziness engulfed her. She sat down. She felt hot and cold together, and her head felt as if it was about to float to the ceiling. A low voice cursed in an undertone to her left. A spark caught, and then flame: Bakhtiian had started a fire. He rubbed at his eyes, pausing in the action to rest his forehead on a palm.

  Tess stood, unsteadily, and gathered together the blankets—few enough with this bitter cold. “I’ll make a bed for you,” she said, and carried them over
to the couch of branches she had laid earlier in the day.

  He glared bleakly at her. “You’ll have a fever by morning. Dry your clothes first.”

  She knelt by the fire. The heat steamed off her. A draft carried the smoke up and out, and the fuel burned merrily, snapping and crackling. Then she realized that he was taking his clothes off. She averted her gaze and stared at the horses.

  “I said dry your clothes.”

  “I am.” She peeled the cold, wet cloth of her red shirt away from her skin, but it reattached itself an instant later, and she flinched.

  There was a silence. She did not look to see what his expression was. His red shirt lay on the ground next to the fire. A moment later, his right boot joined it, and then his trousers, laid out to absorb the heat.

  “Soerensen.” His voice was hoarse with pain or anger. “This is not a request. Take them off.” A flutter in the air, and a blanket struck her on the side of her face. Forced to turn, she could not help but look at him. He was entirely covered, wrapped quite primly in a blanket, only his feet showing, where they were thrust out close to the flames. His face was white with exhaustion, but he also looked annoyed. Seeing her turn, he pulled an edge of the blanket deliberately across his face, so that he could not see her.

  “Oh, God,” sighed Tess. She stripped and wrapped the blanket around herself. It was damp but offered warmth despite that. After a time she actually felt her toes and fingers. The darkness deepened as night came on and the storm continued to rage outside. Inside, fire illuminated them. The gray rock walls of the cave curved up into darkness, their surface rippled and rough as though some ancient chill had frozen them in the midst of movement. The air seemed close and harsh against her throat. Smoke settled in her lungs. The part of her farthest from the fire felt perpetually chilled, so she shifted frequently. She yawned.

  “At least they’ll never follow us in this storm,” she mumbled. She glanced up. Bakhtiian lay slumped over his knees.

  She got on her trousers and shirt through a combination of habit and fear and circled the fire to kneel beside him. The blanket had fallen down, revealing the strong curve of his shoulders, and as she tugged it up with sudden prudishness, his eyes fluttered and opened. He stared at her, confused. His hands closed on her waist. The blanket slipped to reveal his naked torso. Tess jerked back.