‘Oh, I do know something of shame,’ she said quietly.
‘What do you mean?’ An eagerness then that he was not proud of, to know that there was another who might share that pain.
‘No.’ She shook her head – sharp, insistent. ‘I shall not speak of that today. But if you will not fight for your daughter, then all that they say about you will be true. And this is how you fight for her.’
To that, there was no answer. He remembered the duel with Gaevani – his leg remembered too, the wound aching in the cold. The decision to fight, and die, against the odds.
And so he walked with Arite to the herd, and called his horse. She trotted to him eagerly, for though they were new partnered they were already learning to love one another, that love born of loyalty. For Kai might trade away every scrap of iron he had for food that winter – perhaps his own body, if it came to it, for there was much that was done at night by the desperate in a starving campground. But no Sarmatian would trade away his last horse. Better to choose the quick death of the knife than that.
As he mounted, he saw the eyes of the Roman on him. Unthinking and by instinct, Kai waved to him as he might have waved to any shepherd of the people, and Lucius answered with a solemn nod – a warrior’s salute, perhaps. Good fortune to those who go to battle.
Arite watched Kai go. Once more the shadow upon his face, the captain’s light gone from him. An ache about the heart to see him so diminished.
A shrill chatter, close by, as Tomyris spoke and set the Roman to work. Arite went with Lucius amongst the horses – an escort to protect him, for she saw the rolling lips, and the ears pressing flat as they marked him as an outsider. Even with her there, it seemed most likely they would kick and stamp him to death before they would submit to his touch.
But the Roman knew his trade. Careful and patient, he worked to earn the trust of the herd. She saw Lucius pick out at once the gentlest horse, a placid roan mare that would never make a warhorse, watched as he circled to her and slowly won her trust with touch and whisper. His hands searching for the rubbed wounds that an ill-fitting saddle might leave behind, peering close at the nodding head and hesitant step that spoke of an injury, the foam upon the lips and panic in the eyes that might mean sickness. Lucius moved amongst the herd carefully, almost shyly, a priest at the ritual, and he did not yet dare try to lift a hoof, not yet. He would have to fight hard for such trust.
Arite could hear him speaking as he worked, soft words cast into the air. The babble and chant of a man soothing restless horses, but they were not in a language of his own. It was the Sarmatian tongue he spoke – she started as she heard echoes of her own conversation with Kai, as the Roman mouthed those words over and over as man might when he is trying to unpick a riddle, feeling the weight of the words on his tongue and seeking an answer.
Interrupting her thoughts, the trot of hooves and jingle of tack. A rider, dark-haired and swarthy, galloping up too fast to the herd, making the horses call and dance and scatter. One of Kai’s riders, the man called Gaevani – he offered her a mocking bow from the saddle but gave no word of greeting. He seemed content to watch the Roman work, a sour smile on his lips.
It was only when one of the horses danced up and feinted a kick, forcing Lucius to slip and stumble away on the frozen ground, that Gaevani broke the silence. A barking laugh, and he spoke to Arite: ‘The Red Crest knows his horses, I grant you that. But they know him, too. That stink of Rome. They’ll kill him one day.’
‘Perhaps,’ she answered. ‘Do you care to wager?’
‘I shall lay two flasks of wine against one of yours that he does not last the winter.’
‘Bargained and done,’ she said. ‘Is that why you come here, to gamble over another man’s life?’
‘Little enough to do in winter. I thought I’d take a look at your captive. I want him to teach me how his people die.’ The Roman started at the last word spoken, and Gaevani grinned. ‘He knows that word, does he? Die.’
‘He has learned a little of our speech,’ said Arite.
‘Well, he is learning the important words first.’ And Gaevani spoke again, but this time to Lucius, and in the hard and musical language of Rome.
‘What are you saying to him?’ she said.
‘I tell him of our wager.’
The Roman spoke now, slow and careful, as though still disbelieving that they might understand him.
‘He wants to know why he lives,’ said Gaevani.
‘Tell him that Laimei did not want to claim her third kill.’
‘He will not understand that.’
Arite shook her head. ‘He does not know of how a woman may leave the warband?’
‘They know nothing of our people. The Romans are fools. Amazing that they have conquered so much when they know so little.’
‘Tell him, then.’
And Gaevani spoke once more – stumbling from time to time over the unfamiliar language, his hands dancing in the air to mime the words he did not know. Arite felt the Roman’s eyes upon her, tracing the scars across her skin, the relics of wars long past. She tried to remember the three men she had killed to earn her freedom from the warband twenty years before, but they were faceless shadows now. Two Sarmatians and a Dacian, killed in feud and border raids. She had been free, then, to take a husband, raise children and leave the killing behind. A life that she had fought for and won, and yet now she had nothing left to show for it.
When Gaevani had finished, the Roman spoke again. Slow, halting words, as though dragged up from some place deep within him.
Gaevani smiled sourly. ‘Perhaps the Red Crest does have more courage than I thought.’
‘Why?’
‘He asks to be given a warrior’s death, and not live shamed as a captive.’
A heat under her skin, as though she were put to some torture of fire. And she was speaking then, so angry that the Roman, not understanding her words, took two paces back, raised his hands as if to ward away the stroke of a sword. ‘Tell him there is no glory in killing one who wishes to die. And that he shames himself, to seek such a death.’
Gaevani spoke – at length, more than seemed necessary to translate her words. The Roman gave her a wary nod, and returned to his careful work amongst the horses.
‘What more did you tell him?’ Arite said, breathing away her anger.
‘That you do not care to kill the helpless.’ He gave a shrug, palms turned up to the sky. ‘And that no doubt some fever or sickness will take him, and that shall be the end of it. He has no need to hurry towards death. They do not breed Romans strong enough to live on the plains.’
Once more, the sound of a horse approaching, and a half-stifled cry from Tomyris, watching them from the other side of the paddock. For it was Kai coming back, hunched over the saddle like a man wounded in battle, the horse wandering carelessly, barely guided. His daughter calling to him, but he gave no sign of hearing. He slipped from his horse and let it wander back to the herd unguided, and returned to the darkness of the tented wagon.
Gaevani spoke once more, his eyes on Kai’s tent. ‘We all must live with our shame, no? But they did not breed him strong enough either, I think,’ he said. And Arite thought that the other man spoke not in scorn, nor in the bitter tone of revenge, but perhaps with a certain quiet regret.
13
The heavy snows came. Perhaps a blessing from some kindly god, for even the Romans would not march in that weather. Or a curse from some trickster deity, sealing the nomads in place, forcing them to sit and wait. And to starve. For the Sarmatians only knew plenty and famine. Even with so many left dead upon the ice of the Danu, there was not enough for all to eat. Some had come to that great campground with their winter herds, some with only a few sacks of grain. And so it was a time of waiting, of whispering in the dark, of creeping slow death.