He looked up at her. ‘The fire was dying down,’ he said simply.
She said nothing for a time. Then: ‘Did you think to run?’
‘I did. To take a horse and some food. Follow the stars and the rivers to the west.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘I do not think the Roman has been born that might outride a Sarmatian.’
‘I think that you are brave enough to take the chance and find out.’
‘Perhaps that is true.’ He stirred the fire once more, and when he spoke again, it was slowly, each word carefully weighted and measured. ‘My gods are different to yours. I have my own way of speaking to them. And they did not tell me to run.’ He hesitated. ‘What would they have done to you, if they found me gone?’
‘I cannot say. That would have been up to the chieftains. Nothing, perhaps. They might consider you a stray horse and nothing more. Our own foolish loss.’ She sat down, the patterned soles of her boots towards him. ‘Or they might have had us flayed alive,’ she said, matter-of-factly, ‘for letting an enemy escape.’
‘I would not wish that for you.’
‘Why not? You rode into my village to kill me.’
‘I might equally ask why you let me live.’
She inclined her head to him, the way a sparring partner might acknowledge a good touch. ‘I do not know what will happen to you,’ she said. ‘When we leave this place.’ She gestured about the camp, that impossible gathering of warring clans. ‘This is a place that exists out of time. A stolen season, while we decide what path our people will take. When it is settled, other things may be settled too. Some may look on you as bad luck.’
‘That would be reason enough, I suppose. Men have been killed for less than that.’ He hesitated. ‘Is it true, that you sacrifice people to your gods?’
‘I have heard that our grandfathers did. The Scythians, out upon the steppe. But no longer.’ She held a hand towards the fire. ‘If it is to be death for you, I shall give it to you quickly myself.’
‘If it is to be death for me, I shall die by my own hand. My people have never feared to do that.’ The sunlight shone on his hair as he looked away from her, watching the motion of the camp. For it was stirring to life, horses and wagons carrying their burdens towards the heart of the encampment. Men stood combing and braiding their long hair, women could be seen gathering in circles and practising the intricate steps of a dance. ‘Something happens tonight?’ he said.
‘There will be a feast.’ She smiled then, seeing the doubt on his face. ‘Oh, we came close to starving this winter. But you shall see. Our people can find a way to feast and dance, even at the ending of the world. And after the feast, we break camp. The Five Clans will part, and return to their lands. We shall return to the west.’
‘And you shall make a home with Kai there?’ he said carefully.
She laughed at him. ‘It is a wearisome thing, to be in love with young men. I am glad to have left those times behind me. You do not have lovers in Rome?’
‘We do.’
‘Well, it is just so. A thing of a season. He will find a young wife, and perhaps I will find an old lover, and that shall be the end of it.’
The Roman hesitated. ‘Perhaps it would be better to ride east, rather than west.’
‘There are tribes beyond the mountains that would not welcome us. This is a hard land, but it is our home.’ She raised her head proudly. ‘And your people give us good raiding beyond the Danu. The Red Crests will forget us, and all shall be as it was before.’
He did not answer.
‘There is talk,’ she said, watching him carefully. ‘That the Romans mean to cross the Danu this year. You think it more than talk?’
‘There is no knowing the mind of the Emperor. But there is a great anger in my people, when they are roused to it.’
‘You speak of them as though they are not your kin.’
‘I do forget it, sometimes.’ And he looked out across the plains – the low sun dancing across the frosted grass, that beautiful light that makes the earth seem touched with fire. ‘This is a place to inspire forgetting.’
There was more to be spoken – she could see the Roman’s hunger for it, having spent so long a wordless prisoner. And she could feel that longing too, for here was one to whom she had no ties. It would be like speaking to a spirit glimpsed in a mirror, the way that the seers did. But she could see Tomyris riding back towards them, drooping in the saddle from a hard day upon the practice fields, could hear Kai stirring in the tent nearby. And so she set to tending the cooking fire, and let the moment pass.
Late in the day, they huddled under blankets by the embers of the fire, the earthy smell of the meal still thick in the air – grass and bone, and whatever other scraps they could find to make the watery stew. Arite leaned back against Kai, felt the warmth of his neck against her face, and watched the others across the fire.
A mirrored image of a kind – Tomyris and Lucius sat close together, sleeping upright. Something had changed between them. No longer was he a prisoner to be watched, it seemed, and so with the instant and wordless forgiveness of the child she no longer hovered about him when he worked with the herd. She took it upon herself to teach him the ways of the nomads, for while he knew much of horses he knew none of the subtle arts of the steppe. They made a strange pair amidst the camp, her berating him furiously while he patiently nodded and followed the commands of a girl half his height, lighting fires with bone and dung and scavenging together for the little herbs and flowers that lurked beneath the frost.
Kai stirred a little, and against her skin she felt the thrum of his throat as he spoke. ‘One might almost think them brother and sister, don’t you think?’
‘If one were half blind,’ she answered. ‘But they do have something of that urgent, quarrelling kind of love.’
A pause. ‘What do you think Laimei meant, by summoning me to that circle?’
‘More than hate, if that is what you are asking.’
‘You truly think so?’
‘She does hate you, Kai. But there is more to it than that.’
‘Yes, there is.’ She felt him shift, move, hold her a little tighter. ‘I think that she means to teach me something. But I cannot tell what it is.’
Silence, for a time. Somewhere distant, a keening cry of mourning broke out over the camp – another dead from a winter fever, or a wound gone rotten. From another fire close by, the sound of laughter, the smell of hemp smoke twisting into the air. For it was festival and funeral all at once, it seemed, in the campground of the Sarmatians.
She took his hand in hers, turning its palm towards the ground and tracing across the back of it. Her skin rough and calloused, first from the spear, and later from the work of herd and field.
‘Some charm you mark there?’ he said.
‘No. I just enjoy the feel of the skin. I had forgotten what it was, to have a young lover.’ She felt him go tense behind her. ‘Was it a thing of pity,’ she said, ‘that passed between us? You may say if it was. I am no heartsick girl.’
‘No, it was not a thing of pity. You are beautiful.’ Kai hesitated. ‘I think of him. That is all.’
‘I think of him too. And somewhere in the Otherlands, I can hear him laughing at this. And he will mock you for it, when you go to meet him beyond. And perhaps he’ll chide me for it, too, when I see him again.’ She turned her head to the side, as though trying to hear some whisper spoken from above. She grinned, and spoke gently to him. ‘Can you hear him laughing?’