The Novels of the Jaran (35 page)

“Tess? Are you coming?”

She sighed and transferred her gaze from the Chapalii to the riders, who gathered in anticipation of her arrival. After staring death in the face, she could not imagine why she had ever really feared the Chapalii. Truly, they posed no greater threat than the threat this little presentation posed to her composure: it was her own resources being challenged. Death—real, stark, painful death, that Fedya had faced without flinching—was something else again.

“Tess.” Niko came forward to lead her over to the fire. “We have something to present to you, which you have fairly earned.” Somehow Kirill had got hold of the shirt so that
he
got to give it to her along with a kiss on the cheek. Despite all this, she still found that she could receive it without blushing. Until Yuri said, “But, Tess, that’s exactly your color!” and everyone laughed. The sound echoed round the little vale, and she blushed and smiled and knew suddenly that she had gained a whole family of cousins and uncles—that gifted one tent and one mirror and one shirt, she now had a tribe, a place where she belonged simply for herself.

Unexpectedly, in the chaos that attended leaving, Garii brought her saddled tarpan.

“Lady Terese. Please allow me to offer you this service,” he said colorlessly, offering her the reins.

“I thank you, Hon Garii,” she said, accepting them. He flushed pink.

“If I may be permitted to ask a question?” She nodded again. “These men have given you a shirt. Although my understanding may be incomplete, the gift itself seems to act as a symbol of your acceptance into their bonding unit. Perhaps you will be generous enough, Lady Terese, to enlighten me on this.”

“No, it is true enough, what you surmise.”

“And yet,” he hesitated, colors chasing themselves across his cheeks in a brief, muted display, “they have offered you this not because you are Tai-endi, the heir of a duke, but because of acts you have yourself accomplished.”

“That is also true, Hon Garii.”

“This culture,” he said, “is very different from my own.” He bowed, glanced back to where the Chapalii were readying their horses, and looked again at Tess. “My family of Takokan has been pledged to that of the Hokokul lordship for only five hundred of your years, a great dishonor to my clan, for we had an impetuous ancestor who transferred his pledge away from the Warakul lordship when that lord used my ancestor’s wife and daughters in an impolite fashion.”

“Hon Garii, why are you telling me this?”

For the first time, he looked her straight in the eye, without arrogance and yet without any shame either. “Lady Terese, what has passed between us—has passed between us. I withhold from you none of my family’s disgrace. I trust you to judge fairly.” He bowed and retreated, walking back to Cha Ishii and the other Chapalii.

What had passed between them? He could be referring to nothing but his offer of personal loyalty to her the night Doroskayev had died. An offer that would make him a pariah in his own culture should it become public. But given the protection of a duke’s heir, would being a pariah even matter? No wonder opportunism was so reprehensible a trait in a culture whose hierarchy had not changed in centuries.

She sighed and rubbed her finger along the smooth red silk of her new shirt. Not even the Chapalii could ruin this day. She grinned and mounted and rode with Yuri. They took a slower pace for the sake of the horses, and it was fine weather for the sake of her equally fine mood.

At dusk on the second day they camped in a small, high-sided valley tinted with green, the ghost of summer still resisting autumn’s pull. From one of the containing ridges the plateau could be seen, flat and yellowing. The sight of it was welcome. Two days passed uneventfully. In the early afternoon of the third, the watch on the trail let out a shrill yell, and soon Bakhtiian could be seen, slowly leading a string of fifteen horses, his black at the forefront, along the valley to the camp.

He looked terrible. The stallion no longer had any trace of glossy sheen to its coat, but it held its head up. A number of men ran to care for the horses. Vladimir took the black. Ilya washed first, and he went from there directly to his tent. That was the last anyone saw of him until morning. Everyone rose early the next day and lavished their energy on the horses, these relics of the arenabekh, yet always they kept an eye on Bakhtiian’s tent. When he finally emerged, however, Niko and Josef and Tadheus greeted him first. Tess and Yuri sat on some boulders a bit above the camp, tossing stones at a cleft in the rock, watching the four men as they talked.

“How does he keep his looks?” Tess asked.

Yuri grinned and began to laugh, an infectious and utterly irresistible influence. “I dare you to ask him that.”

Tess swallowed a giggle. “Don’t, Yuri. I will.”

Yuri put a hand over his mouth. Below, the stream shone, sparkling in the sunlight. “I don’t believe it.”

“Bakhtiian!” yelled Tess.

Yuri choked and held his stomach. “Tess!” he squeaked.

Bakhtiian said something to his companions, detached himself, and walked toward them, his boots light on the moss and low grass. Yuri shook in silent mirth, tears seeping from his eyes.

“We were just wondering,” said Tess as Bakhtiian came up to them, “how you manage to keep your looks, running around at the pace you do.” She had so far managed some semblance of seriousness, but a giggle escaped from Yuri and she had to cough violently to stop herself from laughing. Bakhtiian stared at them for a moment, as if puzzled. He drew himself up very straight and advanced on them sternly. Yuri’s glee vanished like a flake of snow on fire.

“Oh,” he said, eyes widening. “I take it all back, Tess.”

“All of it?” Bakhtiian halted in front of the young man, arms crossed.

“Help!” said Yuri faintly, but Tess started to laugh. Yuri stared at her in horror. Bakhtiian climbed up to sit on the rock, with Yuri between him and Tess. He wiped dust from his hands.

“Well,” he said to Yuri, “it is my experience that when a woman shows interest in a man’s looks, he’d best begin to pay attention.”

“What!” Tess’s laughter vanished. “I deny everything.” She blushed.

“I keep my looks,” said Bakhtiian with dignity, still looking at Yuri, “by not indulging in frivolity.”

“He must have been a dull child,” said Tess to Yuri.

“And a dull youth,” said Yuri.

“And I fear he’s becoming a dull man,” finished Tess. She glanced surreptitiously at Bakhtiian. It might have been that he was blushing slightly, or perhaps only the brisk wind on his cheeks, but in any case he had found something in the camp that attracted his gaze.

“I don’t really believe it,” said Yuri to Bakhtiian. “You must have been the boy in the middle a hundred times before you were twenty.”

“At the risk of destroying your very gratifying faith in me, Yuri, I must be honest with you. It pains me even now to remember how very thoroughly I was ignored by the girls when I was young.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Yuri.

“It might even have partially influenced my decision to go to Jeds. And of course there was—” He paused and seemed to change his mind about something. “Nataliia,” he finished.

“Of course.” Yuri stared at Bakhtiian as though he had never seen him before. “Ilya, I—” He flushed. “I didn’t mean to…”

Bakhtiian’s gaze flashed past Yuri to Tess and immediately returned to Yuri. Tess suddenly got the impression that this entire conversation was between her and Bakhtiian, with Yuri serving simply as the intermediary. A small, rodentlike animal rushed across rock, paused to look at them, and ran on, disappearing into the tiny crevasse.

“Your sister Nataliia?” Tess asked.

“Yes,” he answered, still looking at Yuri. He smiled slightly. “Growing the beard may have helped.” He stroked the dark line of his beard absently.

“Men! You’re all of you vain.”

“We have to be,” said Yuri, turning to Tess. “Since we live every moment of our lives subject to the whims of women.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” said Yuri and Bakhtiian at the same moment.

Tess opened her mouth to reply, closed it, and shrugged.

“Ilya,” said Yuri. “What did you find at the temple?”

Bakhtiian shut his eyes. The high ring of sabers startled Tess. Down in the camp, several men were practicing. “Nothing that I ever want you to see, Yurinya. So. We ride at dawn tomorrow.”

“That bad?” asked Yuri.

“Autumn also brings the early storms, here by the mountains. We’re ten or fifteen days now from the shrine of Morava. We have to reach the port before the ships stop sailing for the winter months.”

“It must have been terrible,” said Yuri to Tess.

“I brought you something,” said Bakhtiian. A flat tone of metal from below, a curse, and laughter. “A gift from the dead. Run down to my tent and bring me the long leather sack. There is something for Tess, too.”

“Of course!” Yuri scrambled off the rocks, dust spraying down after him, and ran down into camp.

“Where I come from,” said Tess, resting her elbow on one knee and turning her head to look directly at Bakhtiian, “we call that contriving to get rid of someone without insulting them.”

Bakhtiian smiled. “I believe it’s called much the same thing everywhere. I want to apologize to you.”

“For what?”

He stared down at his hands. Eyes lowered, he looked so incongruously modest that she had to smile. “At the temple. My behavior was…inexcusable. For a man to behave toward a woman in such a fashion is…shameful.”

“Ilya! We did that to save lives.”

He did not look up. The brown rodent ran out from the crevasse and halted on the next rock, its bright eyes fixed on them. “Please believe that I would never have done such a thing if I’d been thinking clearly, but I never think clearly when I’m in battle.”

“No, you think quickly, and that is why you’re a good commander.”

He glanced up at her. “You don’t hold it against me?”

“Bakhtiian!” She slapped a hand down on her thigh. The little animal scrambled away. “Did you ever see a play in Jeds?” He nodded. “We were acting. It was a scene played out for that moment, nothing else.”

“I learned well enough in Jeds how lightly they hold such violence.” He studied his palms where they lay open in his lap. “This is not a thing that is ever spoken of between men and women, but should a jaran man ever try—may the gods forgive me for even thinking of such a thing—to force a woman, he would be dead the next instant. And no man would lift a hand to stop the women from executing their justice.”

“There are many things I admire about the jaran, and that is one of them.” She lowered her voice. “Ilya, you and I understand why it was done. Every man in this jahar understands.” Reflexively, she smoothed the silky soft sleeve of the red shirt she now wore.

He shrugged conciliatorily and at last met her eyes. “You don’t think I’m a demon?”

“No.” She could not resist smiling. “Though I liked Keregin’s suggestion that you called the arenabekh from—what did he say?—from the depths of your fire-scorched heart. Did they all die?”

“I hope so, since those who did not would have been taken prisoner by the khaja.”

“And the horses?”

“Those too badly injured I killed. The others—” He gestured below, “—as you see, though not all will be able to keep our pace. Here is Yuri.” And it occurred to Tess that Bakhtiian’s own remount had not come back with him.

Bakhtiian jumped down from the rocks, took the bag from Yuri and, rolling down the edges, carefully lifted sabers out and placed them side by side on the ground.

“Gods!” exclaimed Yuri. Tess merely gaped. Light flashed from the blades.

“Spoils,” said Ilya. “I thought they would rather we had them than the khaja. I couldn’t carry many, so I took the ten best. And an eleventh, for myself.” He looked at Tess. “Tobay. Do you remember? His saber is as good as his arm.” He reached down. “Here, Yuri. This one for you.”

“But, Ilya, it’s beautiful.” Yuri tested it, turning his arm, feeling its weight. “I can’t possibly deserve it.”

“Perhaps it will inspire you to practice as often as you should. This for Mikhal. Oh—” He laughed, picking up another by its ornate, jeweled hilt. “This for Vladi, of course.” He replaced them one by one in the bag until there was only one left: a delicately curved thing that rang when he struck the blade with his nail. “Cousin,” he said to Tess. “Our kinsman Yurinya did very poorly for you when he got you a saber. He must have applied to his most miserly cousin who could scarcely bring himself to begrudge you his third blade, and only a few men have two. That you have any aptitude for saber at all is incredible, considering how ill-balanced and ill-wrought that thing is. I suggest you take it off, cast it in the dirt, and forget you ever knew it.” He held out the saber. She stared at it. When he put it into her hands, the metal cold on her fingers, she merely continued to stare, until she saw the mark.

“This is Keregin’s saber. I remember this mark. Is it a rune? I can’t take this.”

“I think he would have been pleased to know you inherited it. It was the finest blade on the field. Yes, that is a rune on the hilt.”

“What does it mean?”

Bakhtiian frowned. “It can’t be explained in one word. It means, the soul that finds the wind that will bear it the highest and does not shrink from being borne. The soul that does not fear being swept up into the heavens. The soul kissed by the gods that rejoices in their cares. That hardly does it justice. Words are too poor.”

“Excuse me,” said Tess in a small voice. She turned and walked away from them, cradling the saber against her like a baby.

Bakhtiian stared after her, motionless, his back to the sun, his face shadowed.

“Ilya,” said Yuri, “that was your old saber you gave me for Tess when we left the tribe.”

Bakhtiian started and bent to hoist the bag, his face lit now as he turned into the sun. “Let’s take these down,” he said.

Tess spent the rest of the day with her saber, sharpening it, polishing it, turning it so that it flashed in the sun, convincing now this man, now that, to give her a short lesson in fighting. She slept with it that night and welcomed the dawn and their early departure because there was nothing more glorious to her at that moment than the feeling of her saber resting on her hip as she rode.