‘I do. These people will never surrender.’ But there was no pride in Gaevani’s voice as he spoke.
‘You think that they should?’
‘Of course. You remember, I knew we were beaten long ago. Before you rode to the fire, and that horse won your duel for you.’
‘You rode with me then,’ said Kai, ‘because you had to. Will you do so again, because I ask you to?’
The other man went quite still. ‘You go to the west? To the Romans?’
‘We do.’
‘I did not think the chieftains would send you.’
‘Laimei convinced them.’
‘She really must hate you,’ said Gaevani. ‘To have chosen you to go and die.’
‘Perhaps it is a kind of love, from her. I shall find out on the way. Why not find out with me?’
Gaevani cocked his head. ‘The others too?’ he said. ‘And Laimei?’
‘As many as will come, from those I led back from the ice.’
‘The company that should have been mine.’
A silence for a long time. Gaevani with his hand across his mouth, staring into nothing. ‘You think yourself in one of the old songs, don’t you?’ he said at last. ‘No. I will not go. Perhaps I wish I were fool enough for that. But I am not.’
‘You think as Romans do,’ said Kai. ‘Always to have the odds in your favour.’
‘Yes, perhaps. That pet Roman of yours wishes himself a Sarmatian, I think. Perhaps we were both born to the wrong bodies.’ Gaevani hesitated once more. Then he said: ‘Come back, if you can.’
‘Why?’
‘Unsettled business, between us. It is my spear that should kill you. Out here, on the steppe. Not some Roman in the west. What would that death mean? So come back. And we shall finish things.’
‘I do not think that I shall return. But I will, if I can. And if that is still what you want, it shall be so.’
With that, Gaevani was away – muttering to himself as madmen do. And as he watched him go, another omen came to Kai with a quiet certainty. He knew that he was not meant to die on Gaevani’s spear.
‘So I do die in the west, then,’ he said to himself. And he felt a lightness settling upon him, beautiful and barely felt, like a scattering of snow, light and gentle and cold. The gods whispering to him, whispering yes.
One by one, Arite watched as they came in from the darkness.
Tomyris first, bone tired, mumbling a report like a weary sentry before she stumbled to the tent to collapse and sleep. Then Phoros and Goar – a near wordless pair of young men with the hungry, lean look of hunting dogs as they knelt before Laimei to honour their captain. Kai soon after, an absent look to his eyes as he paced about the fire. A sound from the darkness, the moonlight on silver hair, and Saratos walked in, grinning and cackling like a man half his age.
‘Should have known that you would come,’ said Goar. ‘I suppose an old man like you gets lonely on the cold nights.’
‘Oh, I’d wager I keep more company in my tent than you do,’ Saratos replied. ‘But I am growing old. I’d not have my son kill me.’ But he clasped Kai’s arm after he said it, and there was kindness in his words.
A lull, then. A nervous quiet, as they looked at one another, and wondered if they were all that would come. And Arite, sitting upon the ground with her husband, put her hand to Bahadur’s shoulder, hoping for something she could not describe.
No words had passed between them, in that time the others had been gone. She had called the Roman out of the tent, set him to readying the horses and gathering supplies. But she had found not a thing to say to her husband. He sat upon the earth, pulling up handfuls of grass and letting them slip through his fingers like grains of sand, a weary relief written upon his face. That they were soon to depart had lifted some weight from him. Yet still, he would not speak with her.
Arite thought again of what Laimei had said. And there must have been some invisible message that spoke through her skin, some way that her pain passed through her touch, sharp enough for Bahadur to know it in the way he always seemed to. For his hand was upon hers, and he looked at her like one waking from a fever.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I was not myself, before.’
Behind Bahadur, she saw Kai cease his pacing back and forth, his gaze upon hers. She let her head fall forward, until her forehead rested against her husband’s and he could take, in her silence, the answer that he needed. She closed her eyes and welcomed the darkness, the still quiet, until a dancing step of hooves gave her something else to look towards.
For another shape came from the shadows – a horse without a rider it seemed at first, as though it had heard the call go out and answered it alone. But there was a small shape moving beside it, almost seeming to hide in its shadow. Tamura, prayer-solemn as she took her place amongst them, eyes wide as a man’s who is drowning.
More came then, men and women that Arite did not know, the hungry and the proud and the lost, until more than a dozen were together in the darkness, clasping hands and embracing, just as their horses were mingling and rubbing up against one another, remembering old feuds and friendships of their own. Until the first touch of light was in the sky to the east, and they knew they could wait no longer.
‘I did not think Gaevani would come,’ said Tamura.
‘I hoped otherwise,’ said Kai. ‘But it is done now.’
‘And what of the Roman?’ This from Saratos, and they were all looking on Lucius then, as they might have looked on a horse of dubious heritage.
One of them, a man that Arite did not know, said: ‘Could buy some goodwill, returning a captive such as him.’
‘No harm in having a hostage,’ said another.
‘Can’t trust him with us, or to stay behind,’ said Phoros. ‘Who knows what he shall do or say? Better to slit his throat and be done with it.’
They were looking to Laimei then, awaiting her decision. But she gave a restless shrug. ‘He does not belong to me.’
‘Kai?’ This from Saratos, and Kai was smiling then, teeth shining in the dawn light, to be asked to command once again.
‘We shall ask him,’ said Kai. He spoke towards the Roman, who stood still, almost at attention. A man awaiting sentence or reprieve. ‘What should we do with you?’
‘Do you mock me,’ Lucius said slowly, ‘or do you ask honestly?’
‘No mockery. You are an enemy, and a slave. But you have earned the right to speak, and we shall listen.’
The Roman passed a thumb across his lip, lost in thought for a time. Looking upon them both standing there, the Roman dressed as one of them and with his beard untamed and hair thick, one would not have thought them enemies or of a different people. And it was another world Arite saw for a moment there, one free from the endless patterns of raid and war she had known all her life. An impossible fantasy, but beautiful for all that.
‘You should keep me here,’ the Roman said at last. ‘Others of your people will miss me if I am gone, will they not?’
A murmur then, from the Sarmatians. No longer were they smiling as those carving meat for the feast.
One spoke from the back: ‘A brave thing, to pass upon the chance to go home.’
‘If it is to be peace, then I shall be home soon enough,’ said Lucius. ‘And I am no prize amongst my people. I shall bring you no favour.’
Saratos hissed through his teeth. ‘And now he speaks thus, and I want to take him.’
Laughter then, as the breaking of soft thunder in the distance.
‘It shall be so, then,’ said Kai. ‘We have lingered long enough. Let us be gone.’
All was motion then – riders making their last preparations, tying and retying the knots on saddle and pack that might save a life, the horses tossing their heads and stamping at the ground, winter-mad and hungry to feel the steppe rolling away beneath them. Always, in such chaos, the time for the secret farewells.