Chapter Forty-Six: Fallen

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Far ahead on the plain, the battle had begun. Oktamasad’s men were doing an admirable job of introducing chaos among the Geloni ranks with their arrows, and the Siaposh, for all their attempts to outflank the Skythian cavalry, had so far been thwarted by the sheer numbers and speed of our riders. Watching from above the valley floor, the only sounds that reached my ears above the low and ceaseless rumble of the men’s war growls were the blasts of horns and the panicked cries of horses. 

The fighting swept forward but had not yet reached the Warband, where we waited amassed across a hillcrest at the western edge of the valley overlooking a gentle bend in the old riverbed. Aric stood apart from his vazarka astride the leggy chestnut. With the butt of his spear anchored to the ground, its long, sharp point aimed at the sky, he assessed the carnage below. King Ariapaithi, in full battle array, surveyed the field of combat with his Royal Guard surrounding him from a vantage behind us. Though out of sight, Skyles and his small guard were positioned down the hill’s back slope, protecting our rear.

So far, the strategy seemed to be working. The remaining enemy troops, weary and scattering, were succumbing to the assault of the most skilled warriors. For a time it seemed we might not even be called upon to fight, and whatever qualms consumed Aric about my presence here would prove unfounded—I would risk neither making my tally on these fields nor putting myself in harm’s way. But his hounds were straining at their tethers. Used to being in the vanguard of every assault, they chafed at being called to heel. Even Aric could not hold the leash for long. I watched him for a sign. Any moment now, the vazarka would ride down that hill into the fray with their spears, ready to break the final resistance.

A shout rose up behind us, and then the sound of iron clashing upon iron. A horse shrieked. There was a loud scuffle of hooves as horses rushed to and fro in panic. I spun around to look. A crude band of fifty or so Siaposh riders had stealthily outflanked us and summited the hill from behind. They were likely no match for the king’s Royal Guard, but they shouldn’t be there. Had Skyles’ guard been overwhelmed?

I raised my hand and shouted to Aric, but the din of hooves and screams of men and horses was too loud, and the men’s eyes were all trained on the armies grappling in the field below. No one seemed to grasp the threat from behind. 

With all the kara on the field, the battle between Oktamasad’s forces and the remaining Geloni crawled up the slope of the hill. The vazarka, on Aric’s order, charged down to meet them in hopes of ending the battle. Aric lingered atop the hill, glancing over his shoulder at me after I’d failed to follow the others into the fray. Spear in one hand, he yanked at his reins and kicked at his horse’s ribs until it stood beside mine, his face warped with rage and regret. I held his livid gaze as he opened his mouth to shout something, and by the curl of his lip, it was something unkind. But I raised my hand to point up the hill toward the king’s position and the invading Siaposh. His eye followed and grew wide when he saw the black-cloaked riders. Drawing a deep breath that expanded his chest, he turned his eye to the sky. Breast heaving, panting hard, his body began to sway. He clenched his trembling fist on the reins, and the chestnut gelding began to prance frantically beneath him. Unblinking, he stared over the hilltop as if unseeing, and suddenly let forth a terrible roar from deep in his chest, spooking the horse he rode. Brandishing his spear over his head, he drove his heels into the horse’s ribs and galloped, not toward the battle, but up the hill toward the king. 

I reined Vatra back a moment, unsure of what had happened. Then I put my heels to him and followed Aric, plucking arrows from my quiver as I rode, my bow already in my hand.

As Aric galloped alone into the tumult, I saw him in pursuit of a Siaposh warrior riding a quick little bay. A warrior in Skythian armor approached from his right flank, and I hoped Skyles’ guard had finally arrived. It looked like Rathagos’ eager chestnut, angrily chomping his bit, flaring his nostrils, and thrashing his legs wildly as he galloped into the chaos. He leaned into his bridle as his rider whipped him on. As I got closer, I recognized the man, if not the new armor. Rathagos had indeed joined the fighting. But he was alone. Skyles and his men were nowhere in sight.

The Royal Guards had quickly surrounded the king and whisked Ariapaithi off to safety, battling the swarming Siaposh as they galloped across the hillcrest. None of the vazarka had noticed Aric’s absence from the battle and followed him here. Could Rathagos really be the only one to ride with Aric to the king’s defense? Was he the only one of Skyles’ guards not to be overwhelmed? 

Galloping hard, Aric nearly caught the Siaposh rider. He raised his spear, ready to strike. Suddenly, another spear flew through the air and caught, not the enemy warrior, but the Siaposh rider’s mount. Rathogos’s spear. The quick little bay shrieked, then tumbled and lay in a heap, its black-cloaked rider thrown hard into the dirt beside it. Aric’s chestnut hesitated, then made an awkward leap, trying to clear the writhing bulk of speared horseflesh and thrashing legs before him. But the gelding was too late; he faltered as he left the ground, catching the hook of a contorted foreleg as the wounded beast flailed, and got tangled in the tumbled horse’s limbs. Aric’s horse tripped in flight, flipped in mid-air, and fell with a crash onto its back, causing Aric to be thrown into the confusion. 

Aric struck the frozen ground hard, his head thudding heavily amid a whirlwind of brittle chaff. From where I stood, I couldn’t be sure if the horse had fallen on him. The chestnut gelding floundered atop him as he struggled to his feet, then fled. But Aric lay in the torn grass, still as death. 

The battle had moved on, and all was calm. I froze, pulling Vatra to a halt fifty paces away. I had to go to him—I had to see—but I couldn’t ease my grip on the reins.  

Rathagos trotted to where Aric lay and pulled up his horse long enough to look down at his unmoving form. Then he turned away and kicked his horse on, riding away down the back of the hill. It was clear what he’d decided: Aric was lost.

For all the cold fire coursing in my limbs, I could not make them move. Numb, the arrows and bow I’d drawn from my goryt fell from my dead fingers. A roaring filled my ears, and a voice inside my mind chattered, begging him to rise. Endlessly repeating his name. Imploring, coaxing, commanding, in vain. My watering eyes awaited a sign, and as the voice grew more urgent, it grew fainter, as did the hope he would heed it. The moments stretched on, and he still did not stir.

I longed to ride to him, but I did not dare. I’d seen my share of horrors on the steppe—some portion of them my own doing—but I was not prepared to look on this one. Not today. So I remained frozen, awaiting a sign that would not come. Praying for the other warriors to return.

A spear’s throw away, the unhorsed Siaposh rider slowly pushed himself to his feet and searched across the field for his comrades. Sighting them down the back of the knoll, he began to walk, unaware I was watching him. And then, halfway down the hill, he stopped. He glanced again toward Aric, unmoving where he fell, and drew his dagger from his warbelt. The most precious trophy left on the battlefield lay right there for the taking.

Like in dreams, I tried to scream, but no sound came. Had I tried to run, my legs would have rebelled. My strength had fled, along with my courage. I shrank in coward’s fear before a duel I could not win. What could I do? And what could it matter now? He’d told me time and again it was only hide. We were not our flesh. By the way he spoke, it seemed only natural that predators should gather around a kill and have their fill. Maybe it was so. He would forgive me.

But inside, nagging voice cried go, go, go. And without a thought, I put my heels to Vatra. He, at least, was immune to whatever doubts betrayed me, and he closed the distance in only a few strides. Then, my sagaris was in my hand, the spike end facing front, and hurtled through the air like a hawk to a hare. The spike caught the Siaposh in the thigh, and he fell to his knee, trying to wrest the prong from his leg. 

I reached for my sword. As I closed with the warrior, I leapt from Vatra in mid-stride, slashing the blade of the akinaka down onto the back of his skull, where it cracked like a walnut shell. Blood flowed, and the man’s head jerked back as I landed on him, my left arm around his shoulder, my legs wrapped around him. His chest heaved as he tried to scream but only choked, and fell forward, face in the dirt. I withdrew my slick sword, grabbed a fistful of hair to pull his head back, and ripped the blade across his throat, severing his windpipe and veins in one swift motion, cutting so deep I could feel iron against bone. I squeezed my legs around his hips until he stopped bucking under me. A spurt of blood surged forth, and I leapt back as his limp form lay on the ground contracting in meaningless jerks and spasms, the gore pooling at my feet. 

The blood was warm and strangely comforting. As I saw the man’s force and menace drain from his face, my fury flowed out with it. I breathed deeply and turned to Aric's lifeless form in the center of this chaos of fallen horses and spent arrows and knelt over him, my hands beside his face, calling out for him to wake, as he had done with me so many times. 

There was breath in his body still. Faint though it was, he was not dead. If I begged, would he return from the depths and stir once more among the living?

More Siaposh riders approached in the distance, their bows drawn. 

“Awake,” I demanded, shaking his stubborn bulk. “Awake!” But his eye rolled back into his head as he began to writhe and quake upon the ground. There was blood and foam on his tongue as he spoke words I could make no sense of. He was dying. We were surrounded by enemies with not a single karik about, and Rathagos, the traitor, had ridden on. 

I could neither defend nor surrender him, neither as a prisoner nor a trophy. Amid manure, blood, and the thunder of hooves, I saw no shelter, no aid. Vatra was gone. But when I leaned close and spoke my name, Aric grasped my hand and held it tightly.  

The second wave of enemy riders was coming upon us now, and our warriors, I knew, were all occupied with a feigned retreat further south. How had the Siaposh broken through? Where were the other bloody vazarka, sworn to protect their daranaka unto death? I could hold off a few, perhaps, but what then? In desperation, I did the only thing I could think to do; I lay down upon him, covering him with my body.  

I slid the shield still strapped to my back up over our heads as the troop thundered by, and a hail of arrows turned from the shield. Like being kicked and trampled by a hundred hooves, every bolt was a violent blow, luckily unable to pierce the quilted, waxed hemp I wore concealed beneath my caftan. But the backs of my legs were left unprotected for riding. One arrow lodged in my hip, and another grazed my calf, pinning my trousers to the ground. 

A body landed hard on the ground beside me, and I turned my head to see if it was dead, my dagger in my hand. A rider pulled his horse up nearby. Then he dismounted, yanked the point of his spear from the corpse, and stood guard over us. Through the gap beneath the shield, I recognized Stormai’s waxed leather boots. 

A third wave of riders rushed by, but I felt no more arrows. When I didn’t hear any more hooves or voices, I slowly lifted my head. Nothing. The fight had moved north into the plain. Aric lay still, but he was breathing quietly. 

“Awake,” I pleaded again in a whisper. His eye flickered, but he didn’t respond.

I reached back to release the arrow pinning my trousers to the earth so I might be free to move. The arrow in my hip I tried to pull out on my own, reaching to brace the shaft with one hand so I could draw with the other. With the slightest bit of tension, the shaft slipped free, the loose tendon bindings dangling bloody from its end. The head would have to wait. I knelt straddling Aric, speaking to him, pleading with him, and trying to summon him back from whatever dark place he had descended.  

Finally, slowly, he opened his eye and blinked against the sun for a moment. Then tried to sit up, but I pinned his shoulders gently to the earth. 

“Lie still.”

He grunted and fell back, his eye scanning my face. I wasn’t sure he knew me. “The danger is passed, and the king is safe. But you’ve been thrown from your horse. Rest a moment to be sure you’re not hurt.”

He looked around him, frowning and confused. Stormai stood guard over us, his spear gripped tight in his fist

“Anaiti,” Aric said with a soft smile. Then his brow furrowed. “Let me up!” he pushed his palms into the cold ground and struggled to sit upright.  

“Please—you’ve already scared me half to death,” I insisted, trying to hold him down.

“You should take the lady’s good counsel,” Stormai said from behind me.

“You mean I’ve missed the whole thing?” Aric groaned hoarsely. “I am disgraced.” He propped himself up on his elbows as he looked around.  

The other Paralatai riders were making their way back, Rathagos riding at the fore. I flinched at the sight of him and struggled to my feet.

“Where the fuck were you,” I barked at Rathagos, “when your prince needed your help? You saw Aric fall, and you just rode away.” If he could play the accuser, why couldn’t I? “And how did so many Siaposh get past Skyles’ guard?”

“We were ambushed and held at bay. I rode onward to meet my Prince Skyles and see to the rescue of the king. Seeing Aric fall as he did, I feared him lost,” Rathagos said dryly. “I celebrate this turn of good fortune.”

Celebrate? I bet you did. 

“It was a frightful sight,” Rathagos said as he dismounted and strode up to stand over us, “seeing the prince come to grief. But there is something else to celebrate: Lady Anaiti has finally made her tally.” He turned to wink at me. “So, a victory for all, wouldn’t you say?”

Aric’s head snapped around, his eye wide with panic.

“Congratulations are in order,” Rathagos added as he reached for the dagger in his belt. He had turned his back to us and knelt over the body of the Siaposh warrior. As Aric fought to gain his feet, I tried to help him, but he shrugged me off. 

I strode forward and grabbed Rathagos by his greasy hair, yanking his head back. “Take your filthy hands off!” I shouted louder than necessary. “I’ll do it myself.” 

He turned and, in one hand, held my bloody akinaka and, in the other, his own raised dagger. I hobbled over to him and snatched the sword from his hands. Snake. He would not menace me. I fell to my knees over the corpse, the stabbing pain in my hip agonizing, and withdrew my dagger. Looking at the man’s ruined skull, where my blade had cracked it open, now resting in a pool of cold, congealing blood, I hardly knew where to begin. His cold, blue eyes, half-lidded, stared skyward as I pressed the point of my blade deep into the skin of his hairline until I felt the resistance of bone, and I half expected him to flinch or blink or cry out. But then I reminded myself I’d hunted and skinned creatures before. Creatures that also felt pain and feared death. Why should this be so very different? Like those, the body lay still and spoke not a whisper, made not a whimper, as I began to cut, in long sweeping arcs along the contours of his face, around his ears, and behind his neck. Then, eager to have it done, I grabbed the mass of his hair in my hand, recalling the moist tearing sounds I’d heard before, and I heaved with all the strength I had left. With a brief tug of resistance, it slipped loose, and in my fist, I held up a clotted, blond scalp to the onlookers. The men of the Warband let up a cheer.

I staggered to my feet as Rathagos stepped in close, raising his hand before me, and tried to force his wet fingers between my lips. “You must drink the blood of your ‘first’ kill,” he insinuated knowingly. I shoved at him, trying to escape, but he was quick, strong, and determined, managing to slide his filthy fingers into my mouth, the tang of tepid blood and salt bitter on my tongue. I tried to spit, but it was too late. 

A hot rage surged through my breast and, without a thought, I swung the fist, which still gripped the handle of my dagger, catching him squarely in his nose. I felt a crunch and believed at first I had broken my hand with the force of the blow. But as he fell reeling back, his hands flying to his stunned and dumbfounded face, I watched with satisfaction as blood flowed freely over his lip and down his chin, soaking his scraggly beard.

“Drink your fill of that!” I taunted, still gripping the scalp in one hand, dagger in the other, as the gathered men fell so silent I believe they had stopped breathing. Refusing to let the rage inside me die, I glared at him with all the hatred I could muster, daring him to come for me again, begging him to fight. Rathagos, still cupping his spouting nose in his hands, did not approach or even speak but, meeting my eyes briefly, flashed me an inscrutable glance, spat his own blood upon the ground, and turned to walk away. Something perverse in me longed to call out after him and name him the coward all could see he was, compounding his shame, but I restrained myself out of some sense of decency, as, when tempers rise and voices roar, the shame too often removes to the accuser before long. 

Savoring this small triumph amid my greater defeat, I turned toward the men when the searing pain in my hip shot down my leg and up my back, and I nearly crumpled to the ground. As my vision wavered, I looked desperately for Aric, hoping it was only pain mixing with fury and the strain of the battle. Then the wave of darkness overtook me, and the last thing I remembered was that taste on my tongue.

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Chapter Forty-Seven: Invalid

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