Not a moment’s hesitation before the king rose, standing nearly a head taller than Lucius and the iron war gear glittering upon him. Worse than that, a glitter of cunning in the Sarmatian’s eyes. His gaze seemed to feel out old injuries – the spear wound in Lucius’s side, the shield arm broken and reset three years before, the knee that he had wrenched when he first joined the Legion and still favoured in cold weather.
The first and last king of the Sarmatians came around the fire, threw his arm about Lucius’s shoulder, almost brotherly. He leaned close – close enough for Lucius to smell the stink of wine and horse blood upon his breath. For a moment, for all that they were surrounded by a nation, they spoke as if alone.
‘You are brave, Red Crest,’ Zanticus whispered. ‘I will give you the honour of a place on this cloak, and you will still be alive when I peel the scalp from your skull. That, I promise you.’
‘You are a coward,’ Lucius answered, ‘not a king. Your people shall sing my name before the day is out, and you shall be forgotten. That I promise you.’
A slight widening of the eyes, a hint of grey to Zanticus’s lips – whatever he had expected in answer, it had not been that. Perhaps he, too, had misjudged his opponent. Then the bloody smile spreading across the lips. And Zanticus turned his face to his people, and roared: ‘Though our lives be short!’
And the Sarmatians answered, with one voice: ‘Let our fame be great!’
29
It was no simple thing, to find the place for the killing. No use looking behind the encampment, the earth torn to pieces by the passage of cart and horse, and all before them the ground was treacherous and uncertain. And so together they went, Lucius and Zanticus pacing across the plain, testing the earth with their spears, stamping down long grass, probing the tussocks and reeds. And as he watched them, Kai thought he saw an odd companionship there, as they pointed out to one another the soft bog that might snare a horse, the tripwire of a root and the pit-trap of a watery hole in the earth. Perhaps, having made the decision to wager their lives, they now only feared a foolish death. A brief truce between them, as each sought to ensure that the other might die well.
All about the Sarmatians gathered – spreading across the rolling bank of the hillside above the campground, others climbing trees and roosting there like birds, while before them the seers and dream readers tore entrails from hare and horse, each one finding victory for the king of the Sarmatians in the bloody loops they cast upon the ground.
Kai sought to forget them all – Zanticus and Lucius, the Sarmatians and the Romans, Arite, Bahadur, and Tomyris in their cage over the water. There was only himself and the horse he tended, the horse that Lucius would fight upon. He led it back and forth to keep it limber, testing again and again the girth of the saddle, kneading the muscles with a horsemaster’s careful love, whispering prayers to the gods of the battle and the hunt. For all his ministrations, the horse tossed its head and stamped upon the ground. It could feel the battle coming.
No horn called to the champions, no marked hour was reached. But something in the crowd grew tired of waiting, and a restless chanting began. A long spear raised into the air, as Zanticus silently answered his people and made his way to his horse.
As Lucius came to him, Kai searched for any signs of fear. Perhaps there was the slightest tremor in the fingers of one hand, that slowness to his steps of a man who cannot bring himself to hurry towards death. But a good blush of colour to lip and cheek, his eyes bright as he took the reins of the horse. It seemed unthinkable that a man so full of life might be about die.
‘We shall see soon enough,’ Lucius said, ‘if I have wasted my chance.’
‘You have not wasted it.’
‘That I do not know.’ A flashing smile. ‘He is a big bastard.’
‘Whatever happens, you have not wasted it,’ said Kai. ‘Courage is never wasted. You always meant to challenge him?’
‘I did. I thought he could not refuse me in front of his people.’
‘You do know us well.’ Kai ran his hand one last time across the neck of the horse. ‘Is it for hate or love that you fight?’ he said.
‘What?’
Kai smiled at him. ‘I have always heard it said that one may only fight well for hate or for love. Better to choose now.’
‘Let it be for love, then,’ Lucius said. And he fell silent for a moment, searching. Many times before had Kai seen it, in friends and close companions, on the eve of battle and duel, or by those struck by fever or sickness who do not know if they shall see the sun rise another time. The search for the parting words, the ones that might matter most.
At last, the Roman spoke. ‘Amongst my people,’ he said, ‘it is the worst of crimes to kill one’s father. There is little that the gods hate more than that. I do not know whose gods speak true, yours or mine. But your shame is not fixed, it is not certain. My gods are not yours, but even so, perhaps that may mean something.’
‘It does. I thank you for it.’
A calling then – a roaring, wordless challenge from the Sarmatian king across the field.
‘I wish there was more time,’ said Lucius.
‘Go and earn it, then,’ Kai answered.
‘I will. For all of us.’ And he was mounted in a moment, snatching up his spear and setting the horse to dance its way to the killing ground, sitting with the easy grace of a man born to the saddle. And though many Sarmatians howled their scorn, a few lifted their weapons in a warrior’s salute, wished him good fortune, a brave death. For they loved horsemanship above all else, beyond the blood ties of clan, the feuds of nations, beyond honour or love.
They took their places, little more than a bowshot apart. The ground between Lucius and Zanticus was no clear horseman’s run. Rough sodden earth, long grass that might still hold traps of bog and mire. Yet for all that, the light fell across it well, and the wildflowers fringed it with colour – perhaps, for all their searching for the best ground to fight upon, that was what had made their choice for them. A beautiful place to fight, and to die.
Zanticus set his horse stamping and feinting, trying to goad the Roman into charging first across uncertain ground. But Lucius let the reins go slack in his hands, leaned back and let the sun play across his face. He looked as though he would be willing to wait forever.
It began with silence. Not a sound, but the absence of sound, that moment where a horse’s hooves are in flight but have not yet struck the ground. And then the horses tore across the plain, the light shining upon the spearheads, the great crowd struck to stillness. Kai saw it all so slowly – the careful placement of each horse’s hoof, the shift in weight of the riders in the saddle. The spears weaving in the air, moving forward and back. But one of them was moving too far back, Lucius’s spear drawing away from the mark, giving up all advantage of weight and reach. Then the weapon came forward once more and took flight into the air.
It was a heavy cavalry spear, not weighted for throwing. And so Lucius had waited almost to the last moment – thrown half a heartbeat before or after and it would have been for nothing.
For a single breath, the spear seemed to hang still in the air. Then all moved too fast to be seen – the rending crash of iron against iron, the screaming of a horse. Impossible, at that distance, but Kai thought he could taste blood in the air.
The horses together, then parted, slowing, still. Both men still in the saddle, but a cry from the crowd about them, the sound men made when they sighted a wound. And how frightening it was to know someone was wounded but to not know who.