Zaktal shrugged. ‘We are horsemen, travelling people. We go where necessity takes us.’
Sergei brushed that aside. ‘No matter what you were doing there. Speak of the child.’
Zaktal looked embarrassed. ‘We saw her – alone, unguarded. The children of the dvoriane do not customarily ride alone.’
‘So you decided to kidnap her – seize here – hold her to ransom,’ Sergei said, hoping to quicken the tale. ‘I beg you will tell me the truth. If she is unharmed, I will not exact revenge. I wish only for her return.’
Zaktal eyed him consideringly, and then said, ‘So, I will tell you plainly. My brother saw her first, and thought to seize her, as you say. But I saw you on the other side of the valley, and so I counselled caution. Let us follow, I said, and see what comes.’
And seize her when it was safe to do so, Sergei thought angrily, but he held his tongue.
‘We followed at a distance. The golden-haired one went on as though she were following a line drawn along the earth – she never hesitated, nor looked to left or right. Assuredly, she knew where she was going. When we had gone some way from the Valley of the Horses, we drew closer, and my brother said, Now is the time.’ He looked sideways at Sergei, noting the tension in every line of his body. ‘I tell you frankly, hiding nothing,’ he said defensively. ‘Soon you will see why.’
‘Very well,’ Sergei said grimly, ‘but be quick, for my men are restless.’
The eyes slid away, and rested on the middle distance. A little frown puckered Zaktal’s brows as he remembered. ‘We rode up close, and the golden one heard us coming and stopped, and turned to face us. She had no fear, truly, though she was so young, and we were many, and armed. She waited for us to approach; and when we were a few horse’s lengths away, I held up my hand and stopped my men. For I saw–’ He hesitated. ‘I saw she was not for us.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sergei said impatiently.
Zaktal’s frown deepened. ‘I saw at once that she was in the hand of some god, and that it would be ill-luck to touch her,’ he said. ‘There was a shining about her. We all saw it. She did not speak to us, and when she saw that we would not come near, she turned her horse and went on. We followed, and she rode before us all the way to Kourayashour.’
Barbarian lies, Sergei thought angrily: they had seized her and brought her here, and now he was spinning this web to deceive, and to excuse himself. Yet something deep in him was uneasy. It was not the usual sort of lie; and Zaktal did not look like a tribesman lying. He looked disturbed, anxious, even afraid -but not of Sergei.
‘So she is here, then? She is in this village?’ Sergei demanded, going to the heart of it.
But Zaktal shook his head. ‘No, she went on. She would not stay here.’
Sergei took a step nearer, in spite of the watching, hostile eyes. ‘What are you talking about? My sister came to this village you have admitted it. Where is she now? What have you done with her?’
Zaktal did not step back, or flinch. Instead he met Sergei’s eyes directly, and looked back at him steadily, something so unusual amongst the Tcherkess when talking to Russians that Sergei felt a flicker of panic.
‘Listen,’ Zaktal said quietly, ‘and I will tell you all. When the golden-haired one reached this place, she would have ridden on at once. But I called out to her, for her horse was lame, and she had not noticed it. So she stopped. The men of the village came out to meet us, but when they saw her, they drew back – they also, for they could see what she was. I asked her to come into our village and take refreshment, for in spite of all, her body was only that of a child. My brothers and the other men of the council were against it, wanting nothing to do with her, but still I asked. But she would not go with me. She asked that the horse be looked after, and went on, on foot, alone.’
‘Went on?’ Sergei asked desperately. ‘Went on where?’
‘Up the mountain,’ Zaktal said simply.
Sergei remembered that Kizka had said the same thing. ‘You mean she left her horse here and walked on alone? And did no one follow her?’
The tribesman looked pitying. ‘She was going to the Holy Place. None of us would go there, unless we were called. It is a place of great power.’
‘And where is she now?’
He shrugged. ‘She did not come back. She is still there or – or she has gone beyond.’
Sergei struggled to make sense of it. They had captured Nasha and brought her to the village, he thought, but for some reason she was no longer there. They had sold her, perhaps, or killed her and disposed of the body. Or they were holding her captive in some safer, more remote place. But why, in any of those cases, had they allowed Sergei to bring his men up here? Why hadn’t they ambushed them, or picked them off on the way up the mountain, or even attacked at first sight? Was it just the superiority of numbers on Sergei’s side? But to do them justice, the Chechen had never been cowards.
And this story that Zaktal was spinning: he didn’t understand it. He told it with simplicity, with conviction – so much so that the dark, atavistic part of Sergei’s mind wanted to believe it. But this was Natasha he was talking about, his little sister, a warm-blooded, mischievous seven-year-old, an ordinary little girl.
Still, it seemed that there was only one thing to do, only one way to find out more: he must go along with it.
‘Take me there,’ he said.
Zaktal’s eyes widened a little. ‘Take you to the Holy Place?’
‘Yes, so that I may see for myself, and bring back my sister, if she is still there.’
‘I cannot. I cannot go to that place.’
‘Why not? Is it so far away? Where is it?’
Zaktal pointed upwards. ‘Up the mountain. A cave, near the peak. I have never been there, but there is a path. Sometimes people go there, when they are called, but they do not come back. The child – your sister – went. It is the truth I tell you,’ he added a little angrily, seeing the scepticism.
Sergei’s eyes narrowed. ‘You will come with me and show me. Either that, or I will tell my men to open fire. We will kill every man in the village, and burn it to the ground. Take me to my sister, or I will give the order.’
There was a long silence. Zaktal stared at him, his mind evidently weighing the alternatives. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘I will take you. But it must be you alone, and you must go unarmed. I will show you where it is, but I will not go in with you, for that would be a blasphemy. And when you have seen for yourself, you will go away, with your men, and not return.’ Now Sergei considered. If there were another fortress higher up, a more secure one, where they were holding Natasha, all that would happen was that he would either be killed by the guards, or taken prisoner too. But what could he do? It was either that, or attack, and if he attacked, they would fight to the death, and he might never find out where she was. He felt he would have to go with the current, and trust that a course of action would become apparent.
‘I agree,’ he said at last, watching Zaktal closely for the tell-tale gleam of triumph in the eyes.
But Zaktal only nodded, seeming almost indifferent, as if he had made up his mind to perform some distasteful task, and wanted simply to have done with it. Sergei had the oddest feeling that he had not submitted to a threat, but decided to co-operate for entirely different, personal reasons.
‘You had better tell your people, then,’ he said. They walked back, and parted, each to his own side. Sergei explained to the lieutenant what he had agreed, and the lieutenant looked at him as though he were mad.