"Can you walk yet?" she asked, going back to Ilya.
His eyes were still shut. "Yes."
"We've got the hunter's belt and some rope from the quiver, for the splint."
He opened his eyes. "Very well."
After a time they managed something marginally effective. He grasped the heavy walking stick with one hand, bent his good leg under him, and pushed off. Halfway up his bad leg shifted, pressing into the ground. He gasped. Before he could fall, Tess grabbed him by the waist and pulled him up. He swayed. When she let him go, he staggered back a step. His free arm circled the tree he had been sitting against. He rested his head against the bark. All was quiet, except for the tik tik of an insect and the uneven flow of his breathing. Finally he opened his eyes and thrust himself away from the tree. Without a word, Tess slung all the extra gear over her shoulders, waiting for him to set the pace.
Watching Bakhtiian as he hobbled back along the valley toward the horses was a lesson in something; Tess wasn't sure what. After every ten steps, he halted. After the space of time to take ten steps had elapsed, he started again. His eyes, his whole face, were glazed with pain. Sometimes Tess spoke, to break the silence. He never answered. Once, when she made a bad joke, she thought he smiled slightly.
Finally, seeing that his progress was slowing perceptibly, she redirected their course toward the hills, hoping to find and follow a stream back to the end of the valley. When she heard the soft rush of water nearby, she left Bakhtiian where he had halted yet again and went ahead with the undershirt.
The stream pooled just below a ridge of rock over which Tess could see the slope of the nearest hill. After slipping down five shale steps, it trailed back into the forest. She knelt, plunging the shirt into the water, gasping from the cold.
A note rose high on the breeze, low and trembling. At first she thought it was an animal, but as the sound arced to a peak and cut off she knew suddenly that it was close by, far too close, and that it was a horn. She looked up. Froze, hands still in the water.
The man stood not twenty paces from her. He stared, as surprised as she was. He raised a hand, taking in her scarlet jaran shirt, her saber, and-she could see it by the widening of his eyes-her feminine form and face. She kept her hands below the surface of the water, terrified all at once that he would see his dead companion's shirt. How could she have forgotten? No one hunted alone.
He drew an arrow and nocked it, but he did not immediately let fly. Instead, he stared. She lifted her right hand from the water. It ached with cold. It hurt to curl her fingers around the hilt of her Chapalii knife, but she did so, watching him. He grinned and said something, foreign words. She drew the dagger. He raised the bow and said something more, clearly a threat. What had Garii said? Thumb over the third and second lights. The world slowed. She slid her thumb along the smooth hilt. The hunter drew the bowstring back and aimed and spoke-Light streaked out. A flush of heat. He fell. She gasped audibly, jumped to her feet, and ran to him. He lay motionless on the ground. He stank, but it was an honest smelclass="underline" dirt and onions and too many months without washing. He was still breathing.
For a long moment she simply gaped. How could he not be dead? One side of his face was flushed red. Daring much, she bent to touch it-it was warm, unnaturally so, but not burned. Stunned, not dead.
She lifted a hand to wipe at her face. She had broken out in a sweat. She felt hot under her clothes though the autumn air had a chill snap to it. Stunned not dead! Garii had given her a knife set to stun. So it couldn't be used against him? Against any Chapalii?
What the hell did it matter anyway? She ran back to the pool and fished out the wet shirt, wrung it out, swore, and ran back to the hunter and took all his weapons. Raced into the woods, stopping before she reached Bakhtiian. How could she explain these weapons? Her saber was not even bloodied. She ought to go back and kill the hunter while he was unconscious, but she knew she could never do it. She sawed the bowstring into thirds and then dumped the weapons into the densest clump of undergrowth she could find, and ran on.
When Bakhtiian saw her, he sheathed his saber. "How many?''
"One." She wrapped the wet shirt around his knee, which was by now so swollen that she couldn't even make out the shape of the patella.
"Did he see you?"
"Yes." She hesitated. He held onto a low-hanging branch and waited. "We just have to move fast. I'd suggest trying to follow the stream."
"We'll leave a clear trail."
"He has no weapons. He'll have to go back and get help.
If we follow the stream, we can keep the swelling down." She tied the shirt at his knee into knots, securing it to the splint. "And hope they don't find the dead man until tomorrow."
"That's the only thing that helps," he said.
"Besides your stubbornness."
There was silence, except for a few birds calling and the distant spill of water. "You'd better go. Find the jahar."
She slung the gear onto her back and handed him the walking stick. "Come on."
"Did you mention stubbornness?" He pushed himself away from the tree. "I mistakenly thought you referred to me."
She angled their path to avoid the pool. This time they made it all the way to the stream before he had to stop. While he rested, she wrapped his knee again, then scouted ahead a ways, but she heard nothing, saw nothing. Shadows stretched out around them. The bottom rim of the sun touched the blurred line of trees at the height of the hills, casting a deep red glow like blood against the low advance of clouds. Bakhtiian coughed, and she glanced over at him. The last of the sunlight cast gold across his face. It highlighted his cheekbones so that the skin seemed taut across them, in sharp relief like the face of a man who is starving or near death.
Eyes shut, he said, "Don't be an idiot. Go on without me."
"Bakhtiian, did it ever occur to you that I probably can't find the horses, much less the jahar, by myself?"
He was silent.
"By God. Now that's a compliment."
One corner of his mouth tugged upward. He opened his eyes. "You're right." He coughed again, but it was a trembling sound. "I don't know how I could have thought that." They both laughed.
And, eyes meeting, cut off their laughter abruptly. Silence. A bird sang in the distance, a little five-note figure over and over. Bakhtiian grasped his walking stick and pushed himself up. He winced, took a step, winced, took another. They went on.
His pace was so slow that night made no difference to their progress. Animals accompanied their retreat: noises fading out into the brush, drawing closer when they halted, a snuffling once, that skittered away when she threw a rock in its direction.
Each time they halted he counted. Each time, he reached a higher number before he rose and struggled on. Now and then she had to help him over a fallen log, through a thick scattering of rocks, past a screen of branches. Wet vegetation slapped her face. Vines caught at her legs or brushed, slippery and damp, across her hand. Once she fell asleep balanced on a log, but when Ilya rose the log shifted under her and she woke, startled. Dawn came before they reached the end of the valley. It was another hour at least before they staggered into the copse where the horses were tethered.
Ilya sank down onto the ground. Deep circles smudged his eyes. "I can't go on right now." He covered his face with his hands and slumped forward.