Chapter Twenty-Four: Scalp

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How selfish to sleep when so much was still to be done. Where was Aruna? What of Aric’s wound? And the injured horses? 

Already the vultures and crows were picking, feasting on horse and man. Behind them, the remains of the village were engulfed in flame, smoke from the timbers and thatched roofs wafting over me in a sudden gust, stinging my eyes and throat. As always after a spell, I was nauseated. I stood and staggered through the crowds of weary men, searching for Aric or Antisthenes.

“Thank the gods!” Aric shouted, and I spun around to see him standing behind me. “I’ve been looking everywhere. Where the fuck did you go?” His anger seemed to abate as he spoke. “Say something.”

Aric was beside the settlers’ defensive ditch, standing over a corpse with an arrow stuck in its ribs. 

Looking around, I whispered to him, “Aric, is this… real?”  

He hesitated a moment, confusion written on his wrinkled brow. “Real enough.” Then he inhaled deeply, and his manner turned grave. “You are finally a warrior this day.”

I swooned a bit, turned aside, and vomited into the ditch. Wiping my mouth on my sleeve, I looked at him apologetically. He pressed his lips together, nodding.

He reached for the dagger in his belt and, nursing his wounded side, crouched over the body. I could not see him working, only hear a sound like wet cloth ripping. 

“Your horse is safe. He’s with mine.” 

He knew my mind well. “I hope I didn’t disappoint too much?”

“You did well for your first real fight.”

“I regret my… absence.” Missing the battle because of my spells lacked even the dignity of being thrown from my horse. “You know I can’t control—”

“Don’t worry. You persisted despite it,” he looked over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow, apparently as shocked as I was. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know more. 

“Well, I regret the arrow. Thank you. Truly.”

“I owed you,” he smiled.

“All the same….” 

 He worked quickly with his blade, and I peeked over his shoulder to see what so occupied him. Was he stripping the man’s armor and clothing to collect the valuable bits? I glanced toward the arrow sticking out from the man’s ribs. It bore a curious forked marking on the shaft—the antlers. It was one of mine. 

Aric stood and turned to me, holding up the man’s head by his hair, eyes still open, mouth gaping. 

“Congratulations,” he said dryly.

He thrust it toward me, slick and dripping. I’d made my tally. 

Fuck. This can’t be happening. I shook my head. 

He frowned, and the confusion spread across his face. “Go on. You’ve earned this.” He dangled the bloody mass before me like a bauble. 

I only stared at him. I wanted nothing of it. Not the scalp, not the skull, not what followed. I hadn’t meant to kill anyone. Indeed, I tried my best not to. Some intuition assured me I wasn’t yet finished here. I couldn’t go back—not to the life that awaited me there.

His arm fell limp to his side. In his hand, the earthy hair still clasped in his fingers, blood hanging from its strands in clots. 

“Take it,” his frustration mounted, and he shoved the head within a hair’s breadth of my face. 

“Not yet,” I pleaded. I didn’t flinch, but I didn’t yield either. “You owe me another life.” I peeled the two gold rings from my arms and offered them to him. “Take them back; we’re even now.”

He regarded me for a long moment, his brow wrinkling in consternation. “All right,” he finally said, his expression softening as understanding slowly dawned across his face. But he waved his hand dismissively at the rings.

“What now?” I asked tentatively.

He crouched over the head, working with his blade, and lifted it before me. Rivulets of blood ran down the face from long gashes across the forehead and around the ears. With a quick snap of his arm, he shook the head, and the skull slipped free from the cap of flesh that had once been the man’s scalp. It fell to the ground, rolling into place at my feet, the eyes staring up at me, jaw slack.

Aric looked around us, and his voice softened to almost a whisper. “I’ll keep it for you till you want it.” With a flick of his wrist, he gave the scalp a snap to loosen the clots of blood clinging to it the way a wet dog shakes the drops of water from its fur. Spatters of blood struck the ground, and he held it before his eye to inspect his handiwork. Satisfied with the result, he wrapped the scalp in a chamois and stuffed it into his pack.

“I’ll make three kills like a real Skythai does,” I stated as if I now had the power to change the terms of the arrangement. 

I dipped my fingers into the pooling blood spilling from the decapitated body, still warm, and touched it to my tongue. 

His lips thinned, but he gave a curt nod. “That’s one.” 

He yanked the arrow from the man’s ribs and handed it to me. Wiping the blood from it in the grass, I slid it back into my quiver.

The Warband set about the gruesome task of dispatching those who would not survive their wounds. I was neither prepared to handle such a job nor a warrior of high enough status to deserve the right, for the Skythai deemed it necessary for the hand wielding the blade to be of equal or greater honor than the victim—a dignity offered to friend and enemy alike. 

Instead, I saw to the horses, which seemed the least of anyone’s priorities, but had nonetheless received wounds as horrific as any man. They thrashed helplessly on the ground, hamstrung or dying, gimped about the field, lamed from their injuries, or ran themselves ragged in a frenzied panic. Someone had to quiet them and pull the arrows from their wounds, too. With a kindly young karik named Artavardiya to assist, we quickly assessed those that could be healed and those who would not recover. For the latter, the spike end of my sagaris to the center of the forehead took away their pain forever. 

Frantic shouts from farther afield drew my attention. The vazarka called Aric’s name with urgency. Though wounded himself, Aric sprang onto his horse and galloped toward their cries. I leapt onto Aruna and followed. A group of men huddled around something on the ground, and when they saw Aric, the crowd parted, revealing a man lying with his head in the lap of another. 

Their kara brother, Tokhak, had his horse speared from under him, and he was crushed beneath it. They’d rolled the horse away, but now he could not rise or move his legs. He was asking for his dagger so he could put an end to himself, and the men called for Aric. 

I turned to Gohar, standing beside me. “Can’t he live out his days at court? Take up the mantle of the anarei?” The men nearby all gaped at me like I’d just uttered a curse over him. 

“And live like a woman?” Gohar asked incredulously.  

“He will never ride again,” Olgas said. “To sit in the wagons,” he spat on the ground, “what kind of life is that?”

“But he can be with kin, drink wine, and still be useful somehow. Share his wisdom, learn divination….” I grasped desperately for something that might sway them. “Has he not earned that?”

The man on the ground spoke up, and the gathering hushed itself.

“To be as a woman is worse than death,” Tokhak sputtered, mustering the breath to speak for himself as his chest deflated and heaved with the effort. “Look at the life I’ve been honored to live. How can I live any other way than this? I don’t grieve, so don’t grieve for me.”

He bid his comrades farewell and asked to be buried with the brave horse that fell in battle with him as he wheezed and closed his eyes. Then Aric unwound the bast girdle from the man’s waist, and I knew what was to follow. In my heart, maybe I even agreed, but I didn’t want to watch. I gathered my reins and led Aruna away.

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Chapter Twenty-Five: Arrow

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