‘I do love him,’ she said.
‘As do I,’ he answered.
‘There is a madness in the blood between us,’ she said. ‘It is something that cannot be undone. But I will not be ashamed. I wish I had not given him this hurt. But I will not be shamed for it.’
He said nothing. She had spoken so softly that she wondered if he had even heard the words.
Then: ‘I broke a promise,’ he said.
‘But did not lie.’
‘No.’ A little brightness in the eyes, then. ‘That is true.’
‘You go back across the water?’
‘Yes. With Lucius. We shall win the peace.’ He traced the borders of the bars with his fingers. ‘And freedom for you all from this cage.’
‘Live, if you can.’
‘Keep them safe, if you can.’
‘I wish…’ she said, but let it trail away.
It was time then, for the parting. A longing to touch once more, a binding of fingers, a joining of lips. Any touch a betrayal, yet to part without it seemed treachery of a different kind.
He must have felt it, too. For he reached down, and took something from a pouch on his belt – one of the guards nearby stepping forward and raising a hand, until the Roman saw it was merely a strip of leather, nothing more. A worthless thing that a rider may use to repair a saddle, or bind about a sword handle. Kai laid it on the floor of the cage by her feet, as though it were something sacred.
She took a twist of cloth from the folds of her clothing, a rag she had kept in the way that a prisoner saves everything they can, and placed it beside his offering. After a moment, on some unspoken signal, each took the other’s token.
One last brief touch, the back of her fingers passing against his. Then he was gone – away towards the horses, the river, the journey, and death.
28
Five days in the saddle, over the Danu and back across the plain. Lucius, Kai, and ten Roman cavalry sent to escort them. Their spears dressed with a branch and bound with twists of long grass, the marks of truce. A dozen men hunting an army.
Kai led them – in part from his knowledge of the mustering places and natural pathways across the plains, but also by a feeling, the unseen bond that pulled him back towards his people. The way that birds may make great sojourns across country and continent, through storms that may blow them countless miles off course, and yet still they find their way.
At night, about the campfires, the Romans whispered amongst themselves. Cursing him, no doubt, for they had little faith in the nomad’s instinct. After the fourth day, with no sign of the army on the plains, even Lucius was beginning to doubt him. That night, as they made camp, he took Kai aside, quietly said: ‘Are you certain of the way?’
‘Not certain. But we shall find them soon enough.’
The Roman glanced back towards his men. ‘We should have come across their scouts by now.’
‘They will have no outriders. Just a single great warband, riding as one.’
‘Why? It is madness for cavalry to move without scouts.’
‘Because,’ said Kai, ‘they come to die, not to win.’
And on the next day, he was proved right. At a distance, past a copse of trees, they saw armour glittering in the light that danced across the scales of horn and iron the way the sun plays upon the sea. When they passed through the trees, they saw a second forest laid out before them – the tall spears tipped up towards the sky, the banners streaming behind. Upon the air was the war music of horn and drum, and before them the horses and their riders spread across the plain. A whole people hurrying towards their deaths, and for Kai there was pride at first, to look upon them once more, to see a courage and defiance that made him ashamed. Perhaps it was the way that his people were meant to die, standing together against hopeless odds.
But as they drew closer, he could see men lolling drunk in the saddles – not from the little wine and koumiss that most took to find their courage before a battle, but in the way that doomed men drink. Many of the riders were still winter-thin, skeletons in the saddle, while others rode fattened and content. Always before they had shared and gifted their food before the mustering, but what use was there in sharing anything at the ending of the world?
At last some invisible line was crossed. For a horn was calling in the air, drowned out at once by something else – a howling and screaming, as the army spoke with one voice. For here they saw the enemy, an enemy that they could kill. The Sarmatians were swarming forward then, seeming blind to the truce signs, spears levelled for the charge.
All about him, Kai heard the Romans speaking, panicking, making ready to flee. ‘Do not run,’ he said, and held the truce spear high. For he could see figures amongst the Sarmatians, riding across the lines and screaming at their men. The captains of the warband, those who would bear the dishonour of their men as their own, who were threatening and pleading with their warriors to stop. And so it was the swarming riders broke like a wave, through fortune or fate or the old habits of command, sweeping around and encircling the trespassers.
A strange silence, for a time, filled only with the heavy breathing of the horses, the clatter and rattle of arms and armour. Then, without speaking to one another, the captains broke away from the swarming riders, coming forward with their spears held low. Kai searched amongst them, hoping against hope to find a man or woman he might recognise and bargain with. And he did. The gods, it seemed, had a sense of humour.
For one man bore a familiar crooked smile, a scar across the face, his neck and arms dripping with gold that he had not worn before. And Gaevani leaned forward over the saddle, and said: ‘So. It seems you did come back to die.’
‘I keep my promises,’ said Kai. ‘And there will be time for that one soon enough.’ He laid his hand to the twists of grass on his spear. ‘But we come under the sign of truce.’
‘No truce with the Romans. Not anymore. We have made our sword oaths for war.’
‘Yet they would speak with—’
A chant from the crowd, drowning Kai out. ‘No truce! No truce!’ as the swords beat against armour and lances danced in the air. And Kai saw his people for the first time as the Romans must have – blood-mad, blinded by their honour. Murderers to be put to the sword, wild animals on the border.
Kai lifted his spear towards the sky and held it there, point tilted towards the earth, and the strangeness of the gesture brought the mob to silence once more. ‘Let us speak, then, before you kill us,’ he said. ‘What harm can there be in that?’
A voice from the crowd: ‘We want to hear no trickery from Rome.’
Kai answered. ‘I did not ever think to see a Sarmatian be afraid of words. Are you?’
Hisses from the crowd, moving and shifting like a wave in water. But Gaevani was laughing then – a merry, murderous sound.
‘Let them speak,’ he said. ‘When they have emptied themselves of the air, they shall be easier to skin. They will make fine trophies for the hunt.’
All at once, the killing mood seemed to lighten, to pass. The mob drifted apart. A few Sarmatians came forward in the semblance of friendship, offering wineskins and speaking what broken Latin they had – mocking the horses that the Romans rode, asking questions about the women over the river. The Romans took the wineskins doubtfully, gave the briefest answers in return.
‘What is this, Kai?’ Lucius whispered to him.
‘We are their guests now.’