‘You ran?’
‘No. But I did not follow you, not until we held the bank.’
‘Did any of the others see?’
‘I do not think so.’
‘Do not let it happen again.’
He heard a soft intake of breath, the choke of tears. ‘I thought that perhaps you might…’
‘What did you think?’ Kai said, sharper than he had meant to. He waited for a moment, to see if his voice would bring death riding from the tree line. But there was nothing but the dark and the wind.
‘The horse called out,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know.’
Another question, hanging heavy in the air. A truth that was not quite ready to be spoken. Perhaps it might have been, if they had been given a moment longer. But another shadow came from the woods – Saratos, trotting up to them with a smile upon his face.
‘A good night for a ride. A lover’s moon they call this, and here I find you both.’
‘Yet always you seem to ride alone,’ Tamura shot back.
‘Quiet, both of you!’ Kai said.’ Or would you bring the others down on us?’
‘No, captain. Forgive me,’ Saratos said. They were close enough now that Kai could see the white skin marked with black across the cheek, dried blood from some near miss. The trembling across the skin that Saratos had tried to still with his jest. They clasped their hands together, and they waited.
As the moon turned through the sky, they stayed in place hoping for others to emerge from the woods. Slowly, achingly slowly, as if entire nights passed between every beating of the heart.
They waited together, silent, for as long as they could.
‘Well,’ said Kai at last, ‘that is it.’
Again, the hand looping in the air to draw them close, and again they formed their circle, clasped their arms around each other.
‘I saw Goar on the ground,’ said Kai. He remembered once more the sight of that man’s face, hands reaching up like one swept into the white water of a river – a man so close to safety, who already knows that he is dead. ‘Did either of you see others fall for certain?’
‘I think that I saw Erakas die,’ said Saratos. ‘Speared from his horse. I killed the man that did it, but he was in the water then. I saw no more than that.’
A hard touch in the heart, to know Erakas dead, for he had been the first beside Kai on the riverbank. A memory swam up from the winter – laughter around a fire, the wine running freely, Erakas’s arm about his shoulders, a mad and merry smile upon his lips. Then the memory was gone, and the man with it.
‘I think that Phoros stayed, that he tried to get Goar from the ground,’ said Tamura. And they would not look at each other then. For they had all ridden past, and none of them had found the courage to stop.
‘If they are not here now,’ said Kai, ‘then they never will be. They go to the gods, and bravely, as friends. We shall see them soon enough.’
‘Ware, behind!’
At once the three of them were in a line, ready for the charge, as the undergrowth tore open and a shadow came from the trees.
A single rider – no, a single horse, its saddle bloody and empty, the horse itself snorting and dancing about. But seeing its companions there, it gave nearly a human cry of relief. For it was only in the worst of times that the horses almost seemed to find a human voice. It came close – still wary of them, but close enough for them to see the pattern of its coat and the markings on the war gear.
‘It is Phoros’s horse,’ Saratos said. ‘They are all gone, then.’
‘A good death,’ Tamura said, a hollowness to her voice.
‘Come,’ Kai answered, ‘we have waited here too long. They might be after us soon.’
They made their way towards the west, just as the first signs of dawn began to touch the sky. The dead man’s horse trailed a little behind them – and, perhaps, the dead followed them too.
When Kai led them back into the camp at first light, silent and war weary, Laimei was there to greet them. She did not speak. Kai saw how she looked amongst them, silently noting the missing and the horse that bore an empty saddle, the darkened weapons and hacked armour. But she looked too on the pride they carried in their silence – the arrogant tilt of the head, the gaze sharp and clear, answering her with no shame. This, it seemed, was report enough. A little nod was all the praise she offered in return, a sweeping gesture with an open hand, ordering them to take their place in the line.
It was the others who questioned them – leaning across to whisper in the saddle, three of them clustering around Tamura when they first stopped to water the horses. Kai heard the others speak of the charge by the river, and they spoke more freely when they saw that he would not tell the story, for they would not see the captain – their captain – sell himself short. But Tamura and Saratos would not say whom they had fought. No matter who asked him, Kai kept his silence. There was only one that he wished to speak to, but Bahadur rode at the head of the column, head hung low. He alone showed no interest in the return of Kai and the others – lost, it seemed, in some other journey of his own.
It was late in the day, when Kai’s riders could be seen swaying like drunkards in the saddle, the battle weariness lying upon them as sure as a curse, that Laimei took him aside. When they stopped to rest the horses, she looped an arm about his shoulder, a pretence of a sister’s love for the others to see. For though there was a smile upon her face, her eyes were dull as she led him to the edge of the line, out of earshot of the others. Still smiling, she said: ‘Now, tell me what you would not tell the others.’
‘Some day,’ Kai answered, ‘I shall find out how it is you know such things.’
‘Your face is like the painting of a child. I do not know how the others cannot see it themselves.’
He looked about, for riders in a warband were as curious as children, gossiped like old men. But there were none, he thought, who rode close enough to hear.
‘I could not tell the numbers exactly,’ he said. ‘But it was a well-chosen size. Small enough to move quickly, to track us and catch us. And—’
‘Great enough for the advantage if they fought us.’ He saw the killing madness in the smile then. ‘They know our number. Well then.’
Kai hesitated then, at the look on her face. ‘There is more,’ he said. ‘Our horses knew each other. And I saw one of them clear in the moonlight. They were—’
‘Enough.’
‘You do not believe me?’
‘I believe the horses,’ she said. ‘That is enough. What do I need to know of what you thought you saw, or thought you heard.’
‘You do not seem surprised,’ said Kai.
‘Why should I be? What else would make sense? I thought they would be Sarmatians.’
He felt his skin cool at that, at the naming of their people. For though a part of him had known when he saw the armour of horn scales in the moonlight, since one horse had called to another, to have it spoken aloud was something else entirely. That they were hunted by their own people.
He watched her think for a time. Her eyes shifting about the camp, making the captain’s endless judgements. Numbers and spirit, speed and weight. And time, always time above all.
‘We shall press forward, lose them in the next few days,’ she said. ‘You did well to bloody them. It was bravely done.’
A surge in the heart then, to hear her praise him, and he hated himself for it. ‘You mean to go on?’ he said.
‘Of course. The Romans shall not wait for us. We have our command, and must take Bahadur over the water.’
‘Laimei, we must go back. Some of us, at least.’
She stared at him then, and made no answer.