Stumbled. Fell, landing on one knee, his head thrown back. The hunter, bow drawn, whirled and aimed.
Tess jumped up, shouting, and dove for him, hand slipping on the knife. Twisting back, he shot at her. As she threw herself flat, conscious in a detached way of the nearness of the bow, the notched arrow, the jolt up her arms as she struck the earth, she saw a flash, heard a gasp of pain and, a second later, a grunt.
For a long moment she lay perfectly still. The heavy scent of moss and leaves drowned her. Dampness seeped into her palms and through the cloth of her trousers at her knees. Finally she raised her head slightly. The arrow lay a body's length away, its point slid under a clump of yellow lichen. There was no sound at all from the two men. She rolled onto her side and pushed herself up with one arm.
Bakhtiian stood in front of her, his face white, his saber bloody. Something in his stance was peculiar. He looked fierce, wild, with his hair mussed and his empty hand in a fist, but she was not scared. Instead she stared up at him, a sudden sinking in her heart, knowing without knowing why that the easy, cheerful friendship she had with Yuri was a thing she could never have with Bakhtiian. Something else waited; she felt it like a force between them. Behind him, leaves drifted down from the trees, shaken loose by the wind.
"If you've killed him," she said, "we'd better go."
He stared at her. "You could have been killed!" His eyes seemed black with anger, focused on her face.
"By God, Bakhtiian!" She could have struck him for belittling her in such a way. "I did what had to be done." He did not hold out a hand to help her up. She would not have taken it in any case.
She did not want to see the body. As she stood, she sheathed the knife and turned away, to go back the way they had come, to return to the horses, to leave this valley. A soft noise behind her stopped her.
"I can't walk." His voice was strained and thin.
She turned back, recognizing all at once the whiteness in his cheeks and the pinched line of his mouth: he was in pain. He was standing on one leg.
"My knee." It was hardly more than a whisper. His eyes shut. Shadow grew on the meadow. "I have to sit down," he said, almost apologetically.
She put out a hand and, using it for leverage, he lowered himself without putting any pressure on his injured knee, but he winced as he touched the ground. Beyond him, she saw the bloody corpse. A line of sunlight illuminated the open, staring eyes.
"Oh, God," said Tess.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"Hollows, ditches, caves and gates."
It was very still, as if all the animals had fled, only the whispering lilt of a distant stream like a muted counterpoint to the undertone of his ragged breathing. Branches clicked together in a rustle of wind. He sat against a slim tree trunk, eyes shut, face ashen. She collapsed to her knees beside him.
"Ilya?" Her voice shook.
For a long moment, as the vibration of her spoken word disappeared into the stillness, he did not move. Finally, he pulled his trouser leg out of his boots and probed his knee, his fingers as careful as an artist's. The blood drained from his face. He was so obviously on the edge of agony that it hurt her to watch him. His breath shuddered, stopped, and began again with forced evenness, but he finished and at last lifted his hands away and opened his eyes. They had a vacant, unseeing cast.
"Not broken." Each syllable was distinct, as though it were hard for him to form them.
"Oh, Lord." It came out of her like a sigh.
Abruptly his gaze sharpened on her. "Can't you do anything?"
He might as well have slapped her. She stood up, spun away from him, and walked, hands clenched, over to the dead hunter.
The hunter could have been asleep on his side except for the spray of blood that spread out from his neck, soaking into dirt and moss. A tiny black bug crawled across one of his open eyes. She pressed the heels of her palms across her eyes. Bile rose in her throat.
She picked up all his weapons-bow, arrows, dagger-and set them down beside Bakhtiian. Took in a full breath and walked back to the hunter. First she stripped him of what clothing was not too drenched in blood to be unusable. Then she grabbed his ankles-almost dropped them because they were still warm, the skin soft, yielding under her fingers. She gagged, clenched her lips together. His toes were white; hair grew below the first joint, but the nails were reddish-brown and dirty, as if they were already decaying.
She dragged him downslope over the rough ground and into a dense thicket. Branches stung her back and head and arms. She shoved him down an incline, and he rolled farther into the vegetation, twigs snapping under his weight. Retreating, she did what she could to cover his path, picking up dead branches and sweeping the trail the body had left until she came back to the congealing blood and scattered clothes at the beginning. Dirt stuck to the soles of her boots. The heavy scent of blood permeated the air. She put her hand to her throat, swallowed once, and turned and ran upslope, sound scattering out from her feet, until she was out of earshot. Then she dropped to her knees and was sick.
The stream murmured nearby. Its gentle chorus brought her back to herself, and she rose, still trembling, and explored until she found it. The shock of bitterly cold water on her face made her think again.
She ran back to the clearing.
Bakhtiian had not moved. She gathered up the dead man's trousers and two tunics, shook them off, and went over to Bakhtiian.
"Ilya. Put these on."
He looked up at her. Only a thin line of iris gave color to his eyes. His gaze strayed past her to the clearing. "He's gone."
"Yes. What happened to your knee?"
His gaze did not light on any one thing. "It went backward. I went forward."
"Hyperextended, probably." She offered him the clothing. "Do you need help?"
"I have clothes on."
"Damn it! You have to stay warm. Over yours." She tossed the clothing in his lap. "Let me see what I can do about your knee."
Just beyond the path of blood that stained the center of the clearing lay the dead hunter's sandals and heavy leggings. A yellowing undershirt lay draped across them, half covering a small, hollowed-out animal horn tied to a thong, the last of his possessions. She grabbed the undershirt and walked back to the stream.
It was like encasing her fingers in ice, but she grimly soaked the cloth and ran back to Bakhtiian. He had gotten both tunics on and was cleaning his saber on the hunter's trousers, slowly and with a kind of desperate concentration.
"I told you to put those on." She crouched next to him. If he heard her, he gave no reply. "Ice the injury," she said, feeling as if she were talking to herself. "Isn't that what you're supposed to do first?" She pulled up his trouser leg, and winced. Already the knee was swollen. Discoloration mottled the skin. He paused in cleaning the blade, and his eyes shifted to her. In a swift, careful move, she wrapped the cold cloth around his knee.
Suddenly, his hands relaxed their grip on his saber, his lips parted slightly. He shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the tree. Tess finished cleaning his saber with two smooth strokes. Then she set to work again. She found a walking stick and two straight branches for a splint, then eased off his boot-already it was tight at the top as the swelling increased-and bound his calf in the leggings. The blood that lay like rust on the rocks and lichen in the middle of the clearing could be disguised for the time by spreading it out with branches, sprinkling dirt over it, ripping up long swatches of moss and draping them across stained rock. She broke up this activity with trips to the stream, to resoak the shirt and bind his knee. Last, she threw the little animal horn into the same thicket that held the body. Like a grave offering, she thought, hearing the light thud as it struck dirt. Then there was only silence. It was almost as if the hunter had never existed. Almost.