Chapter Twenty-Eight: Blood

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The days grew shorter as Holy Month drew to a close. Slowly, we made our way back north now that the pastures had time to recover. Aric and Antisthenes spoke of moving the camp to a buna farther west, on the banks of the Tura, for the winter. But for now, on a crisp morning with frost in the grass, we rode up the Madhu Water and camped. We’d found signs of bandits, so we mounted a patrol to scout the area before making camp. 

We waited for the signal from the east under the breast of Eagle Rock, an outcrop of cold, grey granite in the shape of a magnificent raptor with wings outstretched. We sat in its shade, beneath the spread of its wings, beyond all warmth and light. The wet soaked through even my waxed cloak. I was miserable, and the flash of light from Stormai’s mirror came like a sign from the heavens. Aric flashed a signal back, and by mid-morning, we were on the move again to our next lookout point on Thorn Hill and back in the warmth of the sun. 

My clothes dried quickly against the heat of Sakha’s sides and with the sun and wind at my back. Before long, we were on a high bramble-covered knoll overlooking a creek at the head of a shallow valley. We splashed our faces and necks with the icy water and refilled our flasks. The grass was beginning to fade at the end of summer. But late blackberries rallied in some of the brambles cascading down to the stream. Ripe berries hung heavy on the lithe canes. We picked handfuls, our skin bitten by the thorns, and lay in swaying feathergrass, letting the waning summer soak into our greedy flesh. The horses dozed in the afternoon sun, their lids heavy, muzzles drooping, their ears floppy and twitching, and their tails swishing idly at flies.

Aric rose in search of more berries, leaving his bow in the dry grass. My eye traced the graceful, sweeping curves of it where it lay. It was a stout, powerfully built weapon, thick layers of wood and tough sinew, gracefully curved and well worn. Aric had gifted me a beautiful new bow, as promised. It was twice as powerful as my old bow, and I surprised myself when I could draw it with ease, stronger now than I had been when I arrived. But I was curious about the draw weight of Aric’s warbow. 

I glanced at him as he wandered further around the hill, distracted with his foraging. Cautiously, reverently, I took the weapon into my hands, caressing its bold, sweeping lines. Its grip polished with use. I fitted my palm to it and touched the string, testing it. It was heavy, stiff in my hands. I could barely move it. I stood, widened my stance, braced myself, and tried again in earnest. I pulled with all my strength but only budged the bow to a little past a three-quarter draw. My muscles began to shake, and I had to ease the arrowless string back, careful not to release too quickly and risk shattering the bow. I marveled at the beauty and power of the thing in my hands a moment before setting it back as I had found it.

He soon returned with a double handful of berries, which he offered to share. A cemetery of small, unremarkable barrows overlooked the creek at the end of the valley. Everywhere we rode in this country, we encountered earthen mounds. So well did they merge with the landscape that it was often difficult to tell which were natural features and which were manmade. Some were ringed with stones, some bore stone idols or trees atop them, and others were so vast, tall, and round that they stood out upon the flat plain as something foreign. High as mountains they seemed, and more magnificent than any barrow built in my homeland. I couldn’t imagine how many men it must have taken to construct such things.  

“Do you know whose tombs these are?” I asked Aric. 

He wrinkled his brow. “They’re ancient. Not Skythai barrows. Kimmeroi, I think. They were here before our people came.” 

“Where did they go?” 

“Most who remained went South, I think,” he said, popping a blackberry into his mouth. “To the Kimmerian Peninsula, Tauris, and the Bosporus. Some went far west, they say, gone in search of the Summer Isle and were never heard from again. These tombs were all they left behind.” 

“That’s unfortunate.” 

“It’s a disgrace. Abandoning the graves of their ancestors. I can think of few things worse than for a people to concede the ground where their forefathers are laid to rest. Wherever they are, they must be cursed.” 

“But it was your people who took their land…?”

“They lost this land. No people, no pack, is owed the patch on which it feeds, the ground on which it walks. They must hold and defend it or cede it to those cleverer or stronger than themselves. This is Nature’s law.”

“Will you say the same when the Hellenes come and take this land from the Skythai?”

“If we should be so heedless and weak as to lose this land to them, what else is there to say? These are the richest pastures in the world, and all creatures—men and beasts alike—lust after them. A man, a tribe, is owed nothing—not territory or existence. We must defend what we wish to keep.”

“I was wrong to have suggested it. That will never happen to you—to the Skythai,” I tried to reassure him, perhaps in vain. Who could honestly say what the future held for any of us? 

He regarded me earnestly. “Won’t it? I watch my people grow weaker each day. They forget. They begin to disdain this life for one of indulgence—for indolence. For rows of stone houses and markets; for Greek wine and easy bread. And this is the most coveted land for the herdsmen of the earth. The eastern tribes, hungry for our lush grazing, will continue to press us as we pressed the Kimmeroi. Our time will pass like these clouds. And me? Will my bones lie silent in a field, forgotten like these? My name and works lost forever?”

It grieved me to hear him speak this way. “I’m surprised then that you don’t wed.” 

“You mean make sons to carry my memory? Recite my genealogy? Recount my deeds…?” I detected a hint of sarcasm as he spread his arms wide in mock pomposity. 

“Something like that. I thought that was what all men wanted?”

“Most men, I think,” he plucked absently at the grass beside his boot. 

“I suppose you’ve got a hundred ‘sons’ already. They are loyal to you like kin.” 

“The Warband? Truly they are three hundred motherless bastards, but they do me proud. I suppose they are the closest thing I will ever have.” He lay back on the ground, his hands tucked behind his head, his tawny hair spilling around him into the crisp, sunburnt grass.

“I heard you had a wife once?”

He remained silent, staring up at the sky.

Regretting my question, I attempted a retreat. “I shouldn’t have asked. There’s no shame in sorrow,” I offered.

“You mistake me, Ana,” he said, inclining his head toward me and shielding his eye from the sun with his hand. “Many believe I keep this life out of grieving. Let them believe as they like. But you should know the truth.”

I nearly stopped him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what came next. But, the way he worried his brows, I couldn’t refuse him. “If you wish.”

“I don’t grieve.” Averting his gaze, he cleared his throat and continued in a hushed tone. “I didn’t wish her ill. Not really. But the king arranged it. I never wanted her.”

“I didn’t even know kara were permitted to take wives.”

“A karadar is. His wife has a special, sacred purpose. She is the satanaya—Mother of the Hundred.”

“And she was not able…?” 

“She was unfit. She’d have brought misery and misfortune upon us.”

“Not every tree will root in every soil.”

“You don’t understand. I was glad. When she was… gone. My heart was full of secret joy—and guilt. I am not proud, but it’s the truth.”

“Why guilt?” I pressed gently, recalling the sinister whispers Antisthenes spoke of.

He combed his beard with his fingers as he seemed to search for an answer. “Because maybe I willed it. Maybe the gods granted me my heart’s wish.”

“Oh, Aric, that’s… nonsense.”

Crowned in tufts of brittle meadow grass, he drew a deep breath and clasped his hands over his chest. “Now the gods play games with me.” 

“How so?”

He sighed. “My father still tries to make matches for me from time to time. It’s funny, actually. When the subject of your father’s pact first came to our court, the king proposed you for me. I refused.” He shook his head and let out a defeated chuckle. “I didn’t know then. How could I have known?”

Stunned, I fell still. Motionless and mute, my mind groped for words but found none worthy of saying aloud. In a daze I sat, palms pressed into the grass, blades grazing my fingers, as the flies buzzed around us. I stared at him blankly, the sun shining adoringly on his face, turning his hair and beard to gold. I had a vision of reaching out and touching him, laying my hand over his, running my fingertips across the gilded contours of his cheekbone.

But to what end? Instead, I tried to break the spell. I withdrew my gaze and imagined disappearing from this spot where the sun shone, and bees hummed. From Skythia. From the world.

“The gods play with us both,” I said before the silence could stretch too long between us, “but whatever grim fate they may have planned for us, I will never forget you, not in this life or the next.” My eyes and voice filled with tears, and I suddenly felt imprudent.

He was quiet for a long time, lying in the grass. I thought perhaps he had drifted off to sleep. Then he began softly to speak, his voice tremulous and deep with bittersweetness. “Let me be forgotten. I care nothing for these bones. Let the wolves gnaw them. May they crumble to dust. Let this blood pour out and wash into the sea. My name—let it vanish like smoke into the air. But, when this body has gone to its grave, my mind, I think, will never leave this plain. It will roar like the tempest or the howling of wolves. Or whisper, maybe, like the breezes that rustle the grass—that catch your hair just now. Let whatever I possess of luck or skill go to my people. I have no desire for another life, the High Halls of Goetosura, or the meadows stretching beyond the Iron Gates of Yama. My will, my thoughts, my memories—let these never leave this place, but return to the wind which flies over this boundless steppe.” 

“I can’t ever forget,” I whispered, almost to myself.

He pushed himself upright and looked me in the face, his brow scrunched, a fistful of grass clenched between his fingers. “You say you can’t see the future. Nor can I. But I see this moment. Though we may be parted someday, I can’t forget you, either. Our tribe has a noble practice that unites two people in sacred fellowship, body and spirit. There is nothing the Skythai pride themselves on more than sharing the hardships and hazards of their friends. When I look upon the Warband, I have many loyal comrades, but no friends. Would you join me in the blood-bond?”

“I don’t understand.” 

“This form is a poor container,” he said, laying a hand over his heart. “But it is all I have. To keep the peace among the men and not favor any one above the others as blood-brothers, I have sworn to make no such oath to any man. To you alone, I would be bound—and you to me—in noblest friendship, in this life and the next. This flesh, these bones, this blood, they are yours.”

“But you have sworn not to?”

He shook his head and grinned impetuously. “You are no man.”

I held his gaze for a long moment, trying to make sense of his words. Blood. Friendship. Bound. They filled me with a cold foreboding. But the keenness in his voice and the honor of his offer thrilled me and filled me with desire. 

“Our lives have never been our own,” I mused aloud. “It would be an honor to be bound to you, and you to me... as equals. What must I do?” I asked, stifling the giddiness that sped my breathing and made my palms sweat.

He beamed broadly and quickly set to work. “I’ve only ever seen this done by others. Do as I do.” 

He rose to his knees, withdrew his dagger, and pricked his finger. Into his drinking horn, he let the drops of blood spill. Kneeling beside him, I drew my dagger and cut my finger, squeezing the wound to wring out every last drop into the horn until the flow ceased. 

Our blood mingled in the cup as it trickled down the translucent sides of the ivory horn. With this, he mixed some wine from his wineskin. Then we dipped the tips of our blades into the cup. 

“Repeat these words,” he said, holding the horn before us. “I swear by Vayu and Ari—Wind and Sword—to live together and, if need be, to die for one another.” 

With both arms clasped around one another’s backs and our hands around the drinking horn, I repeated the words and placed our lips to its rim, cheek to cheek, and drank in unison. 

His beard coarse on my cheek, I swallowed the potion, spilling some down my chin. Tipping the horn, I became aware of our lips touching one another’s on the rim of the cup, but I did not pull away. When we had drained the drink, I looked at him and smiled to see his copper beard glistening with wine. With my sleeve, I sopped the wine from my lips and guardedly from his. He ran his thumb along my throat and wiped a stray drop that had trickled down my chin. 

“What comes now?” I asked demurely, avoiding his eye.

“Now we drink some more,” he chuckled as he moved to fill the horn again.

“Wait.” I lay the horn aside for a moment and turned to face him, clasping his right hand between my palms. “Hamazor beem,” I said, full of hope. 

“What does it mean?” 

“It means: ‘Let us be one—of equal strength.’”

With his left hand, he warmly pressed my hands between his as I pressed his between mine. “Hamazor beem,” he repeated solemnly, holding my gaze.

We knelt, sweating hands clasped, restlessly staring into one another’s eyes. I knew I should move or speak, but I could not. I sat on my heels, his hands trembling in my grasp—or was it my hands that shook? A thrill not unlike panic washed over me, and I could hardly catch my breath. 

Aric suddenly turned away. A rider—one of our Ravens—approached from the north through the pass between the hills above us, hooves drumming the hard ground.

“Say nothing of this,” he whispered, though there was no one around us to hear.

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Chapter Twenty-Nine: Sacrilege

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