‘I think that I can.’
Suddenly she was serious again. ‘It means nothing more, Kai,’ she said. ‘I do not want you to…’
‘Oh, I am not so foolish as you think,’ he said. ‘I do understand.’
‘The feast tonight, for those that go to the west. The fire, and the dance. And after…’
‘And after.’
He caught her face and risked a kiss. For a moment, the stillness of the nomad life stole over her, that sense of all things in their right place. A fire and family before her, a man at her side, the enemy far distant and a journey ahead.
Then, beyond, she saw something that brought her back to the world, that set the river of time flowing once more. Laimei.
She was on her horse, that great one-eyed beast, the two of them circling the edge of the camp. It looked as though she had been riding towards them, but now she stopped short. Her mouth a little parted, as though in surprise. She nodded once, and Arite felt herself marked in some way she could not understand. Witnessed in something forbidden.
But then Laimei turned away – the moment passed. They huddled close for warmth, and together, in silence, they watched the sky, wishing for the sun to fall from the sky, and for the night to begin.
16
At the heart of the campground, the fire rose in the night.
It was not the kind that had marked the passage of winter, those little smoking fires made just strong enough to warm a foul stew, to stave off the cold biting death that rotted fingers and toes black. All winter the Sarmatians had eked out their fuel as misers, every bone and twist of peat counted, the dung from the horses collected and dried.
This fire was a wild and roaring thing, a pillar of flame reaching up to the sky. No longer had they any need to count and hoard, for soon they would be gone. Nothing would remain of the Sarmatians in that place but ashes, footprints, the furrows of wheel and hoof marked in the ground like sword cuts upon a shield.
They burned it all to give a lightness to the journey ahead, and more than that, there was a defiance in their greed. Reckless strength, the battle joy, the smile before the execution – all came from the same place. For what better way was there to show the gods that one stood unafraid than by excess and plenty? Burn every scrap of fuel and drink every drop of wine. Find more tomorrow, or die.
The air was thick with the smell of cooking meat, the tang of sweat, the babble and chatter and song of a free people. And everywhere, they fought and played. The wrestlers who contended with the art of weight and balance, hacking at heels and twisting arms. Drunken archers loosing at the mark, betting every scrap of iron and gold they had on a single shot of the bow. For everywhere around the fire, little fortunes would be won, lost, traded, and spent before the dawning of the new sun, and the warrior who had begun the night a rich man and left it without a scrap of metal to his name would still be laughing. For still the wheel turned.
The crowds gathered about great bowls of watered wine, as big as tables. Every so often a great cry would go up, as some young rider would step up on the edge of the bowl, seeking to dance about the rim without spilling a drop of it as the old heroes were said to have done. Most barely made half a dozen steps before they were toppling off and tumbling with hoots of laughter, howling like wolves at the half-moon above them. Further back, shifting about the fire were those who danced in shifting circles, those arcing loops that the Sarmatians so loved, twisting and turning and never-ending.
Into the crowd Kai went, a swimmer into the water. No longer the marked man, the outsider, the shamed. In the darkness, his face lit by only the occasional flash of firelight, he was but another one of the people, and even those that knew him still smiled and greeted him as a brother. All was forgiven for one night alone.
They had gathered at the edge of the world and made ready to enter a new one. No longer an army or a nation, but something still remaining. A fragment of a people, a last ember of a fire. They had all been killers, out to the west. But now they gathered as children, as playful and fickle as the young. And in many of them – those who were new newly blooded in the warband, those who had lost their families to war and fever, the brilliant, the lonely – there was something else. A kind of pleading in their eyes, as they waited for the moment of the choosing.
For Kai knew that was the edge of the blade that glittered amidst that reckless joy, the unseen spear point that pricked at each of those who drank and danced around the fire. The question that remained unanswered – who was to be honoured, and who would not. And he knew that pleading look was in his eyes, too, the longing in the heart.
The time came when the songs fell silent and the games of hand and foot ceased. For they were coming through the crowds, silent as ghosts – even the great chieftains gave way before them, all their gold and their rank counting as nothing before those who walked.
They were the ones honoured already, their faces daubed with white paint. The light of the fire glittered across the scales of the armour – the dull sheen of fire across horn for the most part, but here and there the sharp light of fire upon polished iron. For while the rest of the revellers wore the belted jackets and leather trousers of the traveller, they alone came dressed for war. The champions, those who had killed bravely.
This was their moment. Not the ugly death that might await them in the west, impaled on the tip of a Roman spear, pulled to the ground and hacked apart, or festering from a rotten wound. Here, in this place, witnessed before the people – this was the feeling that they were willing to trade their lives for. And so there were others crying out, pleading to be chosen. Men and women both, calling for their place, shouting the great deeds that they had done, the courage they had shown.
Kai saw Laimei walking through the crowd with the careless ease of a queen from the old stories. All about her there were hands darting out, withdrawn just as fast, as though they feared to touch her. One by one, she made her choices. Seemed at a whim, cast to chance, though no doubt there was a reason behind every choice that she made. Some particular light in the eye of the young man from their clan that she picked out. The man from the Wolves of the Steppe, perhaps it was the scars on his face and his hands and the steady way that he returned her gaze that made her select him. Laimei had little time for beggars, but there was something in the imploring cry from a young woman (her wrists marked with the blue ink, her hair unspooled in mourning) that made her daub that face with white, tears carving runnels through the fresh paint.
A few places left to choose, and Laimei seemed to slow, turning one way and another through the crowd, one finger tapping against her lip. Her eyes flitted across, met Kai’s for a moment, and just as quickly passed him by.
But there were others then, gathering around the fire, gathering around him. At first he did not recognise them in the darkness, their faces pits of shadow. It was not until the first one spoke that he knew them for who they were.
‘Choose Kai,’ she said.
It was Tamura – thin from the winter, painfully thin, her head seeming too heavy for her body now, overripe fruit on the bough. But she stood tall and proud, and the light of the fire made something more of her.
Another stepped forward – Saratos, another of the riders whom Kai had led, the light of the fire upon his silver hair. ‘He brought back iron, and led us from the ice. Choose him. It is right.’
And they were all speaking then – the riders he had led from the river. Those that had lived through the winter, scattered amongst the crowd and come together once more. Only one remained at the fringes, and even in the darkness Kai knew Gaevani by the proud tilt of his head.