‘Very well,’ Laimei said. ‘I shall spare what food I can. I shall send for him, at the end of winter when the time is right. And you may tell him that his champion fought well for him.’
‘I will. And I know I will answer for the insult I have given, when the time comes.’
‘Yes,’ Laimei answered simply, ‘you will.’
14
Kai heard it first as music – the chatter of water in high places, atop hill and crag, as the first springs began to thaw. The world growing louder, sound no longer dulled by the heavy weight of snow, the particular silence of winter.
They had survived the darkest months. Some bargain had been struck by Arite that she would not speak of, and warriors from the warband came from time to time, bringing what food they could spare. The charity given to keep a fighting man alive through to the summer, to last until the killing season.
Now it was almost spring, the time when the Sarmatians heard the plains calling to them, as sure as a sailor hears the whisper of the sea no matter how deep into land he goes, no matter how much he tries to forget. A gentle time for Kai’s people, when there was no war to be fought. A time for the traders and explorers, those wanderers who longed only to see what lay beyond the next turn of the plains. A time to break wild horses by driving them upstream, until, exhausted at last, they would turn back as a man will return to his lover after a quarrel. But this was no time of peace, for lovers from different tribes to make their way across the plains to meet each other at river and grove. It would be a spring of raid and feud, the settling of blood debts.
It was a crisp clear day as Kai rode his horse about the fringes of the camp. The horse moved well beneath him, for throughout the long winter he had spent much time practising alone with his new horse, teaching it the tricks of horsemanship as he knew them, trying to teach it love as well, that love between rider and mount that can save both in the hard times. And as they turned and circled, he heard the footfalls of another rider approaching, the muffled wet sound of hooves through mud and snow.
No warrior from the warband this time, sullenly bringing meat and milk to a shamed man. It was a child, and at first Kai thought it was his own daughter who had come to find him. The girl was near to the same age, and with her face marked with mud and hollowed by hunger it was a simple mistake to make, for winter starvation made all seem kin to one another. But it was not Tomyris – he knew from the horse first, for it bore no markings that he recognised. As she drew closer, he saw the girl’s head marbled with ringworm, the ragged clothes crudely patched and stitched. One of the lost souls of the camp, raised by all mothers and none. And she rode to him and spoke with a foundling’s studied bravery: ‘I was told to bring you with me.’
There was no need to ask who it was who summoned him, for the girl held a red tassel in her hand, the gift for her service, a treasure beyond compare for a child that age. And there was no question of refusing such a summons, and so he set his horse behind the girl and let her lead him, as a warrior might have ridden before a king or captive.
He thought he might be taken towards the council fire – perhaps it was that Laimei wished to speak with him before the chieftains, for many feuds had been settled by their judgement. But they did not go towards the heart of the encampment, nor did they go to the proving grounds at the outer ring, where the warband sparred and trained. They went instead towards the second ring of the camp, a place between worlds where the sacred things were done.
A part of him knew then, but did not want to believe. Even when they came to those places where the ground was already black with blood, he told himself it was the sign of old sacrifices, that he was being taken to a seer or prophet. For he was a man who had risen from a grave on the ice, and one of the dream speakers might see an omen in that.
In a sense, he was being summoned to a sacrifice. For he saw it then, the sight he had witnessed many times before, the shape of his dreams. A killing circle, the Sarmatians in their war gear, the high chants carried on the wind. A taste of copper on his tongue, the feel of sweat upon his skin, as Kai said to the girclass="underline" ‘She commands me there?’
‘She does.’
‘Then you have done your duty,’ he said, absent fingers fumbling for some token to offer. He thought to give her some little trinket of war – a splinter of an arrowhead, a lock of hair cut from the head of a foe, but when one hand ran over another he found the ring half slipped from his finger. An omen, no doubt, for his father had worn that band of bronze, long ago.
He offered it to her, just as he had offered it to his sister before the battle on the river. And the girl’s eyes were alight but not quite believing, waiting for the trick.
‘It is yours,’ Kai said. The light caught on the bronze as it spun through the air, and the girl took it like a hawk taking a sparrow.
The ground was soft beneath his feet as he dismounted, the circle of men parting like water before him, accepting him as one of their own. All about him was the stink of sweat, the chants of war, the rattle of arms and armour. And when he made his way to the front rank of the circle, he saw what lay within, the sight from his dreams. A man upon his knees, and a boy standing above him, weapon held high.
The man looked young to be in such a place. His temples touched by silver and his face worn like old stone beneath a river, but he could not have seen fifty summers. Kai wondered what infirmity kept that man from his saddle – fingers too pained and weak to hold the reins or steady a lance, or that splintering pain at the base of the spine like an unseen arrow shot by the gods. It was not that his mind had been broken by curse or fever, for those eyes of his were bright with life and love, as he looked upon his executioner.
The boy was young – perhaps the rest of the doomed man’s sons lay dead on the ice of the Danu, and this was the eldest who was left. No colour in his face, but his hands steady on the haft of the axe. Kai watched the boy, and prayed for his courage.
The chanting grew louder and louder, the clash of arms all too real, until Kai could feel that quickness of heart and the heavy sweat on his skin that came before the battle, his body remembering the killing, the closeness of death.
As one, without a sign being given, the circle fell silent. It was time.
But the boy did not swing. His father dropped his gaze – hoping, perhaps, that this would make it easier. Lips moving, some words to encourage his son, but they seemed to do no good.
The boy’s eyes were lost, imploring, looking about the circle for help. And when he turned his face to Kai, there was some recognition there. The child’s face became that of a man for a moment, for long enough, for he had seen the future that waited for him if he did not act. And so he swung the blade down, and painted the snow red.
For a boy, it was a killing well done. It took him only three strokes of the axe before the man at his feet lay still and silent. The man was brave, too – he only screamed once, right at the end.
All was as it had been before, as though it were a trifling thing that they had witnessed. The circle broke, the air alive with stories of the dead man, men and women making their way from that sacred circle as though they woke from a dream. Some came forward not to embrace the boy, but to clap him on the back and offer him wine for doing a man’s work. And there were those few who stood still in the moving crowd, like pillars of stone thrust up from the shifting sea.