Earthly Crown (29 page)

He gestured toward the retreating riders below. “Do you know where they’re heading? What path they’ll take?” he asked, speaking khush slowly.

She tore her gaze from his face and studied the valley and the swell of hills that marked the western boundary. Near a lake, a city lay smoking and battered, and it was past these ruins that the riders fled. “That way,” she replied, pointing to a gap in the hills. Her khush was faltering, but comprehensible. “A road leading to the pass.”

“Is there a good spot for an ambush?”

She looked back at the band: about one hundred horsemen in black, all with sabers, a few with lances. “With arrows, yes.” She ran her left hand over the quiver that hung from her belt along her thigh. “With swords…” She shook her head. “It is narrow.”

“I want that general,” said the leader.

“Vasil, are you mad?” asked Yevgeni. “Let the khaja pig go, that’s what I say. What does he matter? He’ll be a worse burden on the khaja king alive than dead.”

Vasil glanced at the riders in his group and then down at the jaran army driving through the khaja infantry in the valley below. Evidently the bulk of the army had not yet realized that its leader had deserted it. “I need a prize.”

Yevgeni shook his head. “I don’t understand you, Vasil. Your father was dyan of your tribe’s jahar. It’s a fair enough claim, if you want it back. But your cousin has been dyan now for—what?—three years? He may contest you.”

“Anton is Arina Veselov’s brother,” said Vasil.

“That’s bound to cause trouble, two so close making decisions.”

“And knowing Anton and Arina as I do, because of that, they’ll be glad to give the command over to me. It isn’t my cousins I have to convince. Viaka.” He turned to address the girl. “We must go, quickly. Can you lead us?”

“It is a bad place for swords,” she insisted. “There are others of my family who will come, if we can stay in the heights and shoot down. Then perhaps you can overcome your enemy. They have fine armor.”

Grumbling arose from the men closest. “Archery…arrows in battle…it’s dishonorable.”

“Come now,” said Vasil scornfully. “Surely you men don’t believe I’d ever suggest such a thing against an honorable man of the tribes? But these are khaja. What does it matter if arrows are used against them? They have killed enough jaran men with arrows. And these khaja villagers have agreed out of their own free will to accompany us.”

Yevgeni snorted. “Out of the will of their headman’s daughter, who’s bedding with you.” The girl started around and glared at him. Then she flushed. She was an unremarkable young woman, scrubbed clean, with her brown hair tied back and bound with a net of tiny golden beads strung on a bronze wire. She wore a girdle of iron plates around her waist, and a golden embossed pectoral hung from around her neck, covering her upper chest: it was more armor than any of Veselov’s riders had.

Vasil smiled. “Yevgeni, my love,” he said softly, “are you jealous?”

Yevgeni flushed with anger. “You have no right to say such a thing to me,” he said in a fierce undertone. “I have never asked anything of you, Veselov, except first a place in Dmitri Mikhailov’s jahar and now, a place with your arenabekh.”

“Forgive me,” said Vasil, his voice as smooth as silk, “but I do not like to be questioned. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

Vasil surveyed his riders. He pitched his voice to carry to the back ranks. “We’re going to bag a prize, boys. We will take some khaja archers with us. If there are any of you who can’t stomach their presence, then you may stay behind.”

No one moved. Vasil shifted his gaze to the girl. She gazed at him as much with avarice as with love. “Then we can go,” he said to her. “And swiftly.”

She urged the pony forward and the band set out, riding on twisting paths down off the ridge and through the steep hills. At a narrow crossroads, the party of villagers joined them. A woman took the baby from Viaka and vanished up the trail. The rest went on. The villagers were mounted on sturdy ponies, each man—and a few young women—armed with bow and arrows and a long knife. Only Viaka spoke khush well, and she used this skill and Vasil’s deference to her to bully the older khaja men, who clearly objected to her authority.

She led them along a narrow road cut through the hills. They rode two abreast, with Viaka and Vasil at the fore and the bulk of the villagers at the rear. At last the road dipped down into a gully and gave out onto a wider road that led up toward we pass. Here, they found signs of the city’s death: A burned out wagon and seven corpses, three of them children, littered the roadside.

Yevgeni moved up beside Vasil and sniffed the stench in the air with distaste. “Arrows. Do they kill their own children?”

“These are Farisa,” said Viaka. “As are my people. We ruled this land once, until the King’s grandsire rode here with an army, in my grandfather’s father’s time. He killed our prince and became prince himself. It was his army attacked the city, not yours, and killed these people. Those who escaped ran to the hills. We do not love the King.”

Vasil lifted a brow, questioning. “So that is why your father agreed to help us? I thought all the khaja were alike. Where is the site for the ambush?”

They rode down and came to a curve in the road that was shielded by a rocky ridge. Vasil concealed his riders behind the ridge. Viaka sent archers up the steep cliffs on either side, where they hid behind boulders and underbrush. Then they waited.

After a time, the ring of harness and the pound of hooves drifted to them on the clear air. No voices carried: it was a silent flight. Vasil’s face bore a curious stillness as he listened, as if this skirmish signaled the beginning of a momentous campaign.

Sudden shrieks echoed off the cliffs. Shouts and a scream blended with the terrified neighing of horses.

“Forward!” cried Vasil. He led the charge.

The jaran riders came around the curve and smashed straight into the panicked troop. Already demoralized from the battle, they scattered under the archers’ fire, half fleeing back down the road, half ahead into the jaran charge.

Next to Vasil, Piotr lowered his lance and with the weight and speed of his horse behind the thrust, he toppled a heavily armored rider from the saddle. The khaja warrior screamed as a man in the second rank cut him down. The charge drove through the khaja ranks and Vasil shouted for half the jahar to go on, after the retreating remnants. Fifty riders headed down the pass. Behind, the archers let loose a new stream of arrows into the group that had just survived the charge. Then Vasil wheeled his horse around along with his remaining fifty men and hit the disintegrating troop from the rear, trampling some, killing the rest.

Yevgeni and Piotr cornered a man in a golden surcoat, and when the man saw that he was surrounded and defeated, he dropped his weapons and began to plead in a language none of them could understand. Vasil rode up and stared at him: an older man with a grizzled beard, dark eyes and skin, and fine gilded armor.

“Yevgeni,” said Vasil, “take twenty riders and help Georgi mop up the others.” Yevgeni rode away.

The mountain people scrambled down from the heights and scurried among the bodies, gleefully stabbing those still alive and looting the dead.

“Is this the general?” Vasil asked when Viaka came up beside him on her pony.

She shrugged. “How should I know? All these Habakar bastards look the same to me. His armor is rich enough.”

“Then you shall have it, my dear. Piotr, strip him.”

The man protested, at first. Piotr grabbed his left hand and cut off his little finger, and after that, the man submitted in silence. Until Yevgeni returned with seventy riders, a few of whom were wounded, and two captives. The first of the captives was a stalwart man in a fine brocaded surcoat who endured many bleeding wounds stoically. The second was an adolescent boy without a trace of beard on his face, tall but clearly young and terrified. He, too, wore a gold surcoat and gilded armor. When the Habakar general saw him, the old man broke out in a storm of weeping and struggled away from his captors to embrace the boy.

“They force children to ride into battle, too,” said Yevgeni, pulling his mount up beside Vasil. “It’s barbaric. But the boy seemed important, so we let him live.”

“The other man?”

“He fought courageously to defend the child.”

“Bind his wounds, then, after you’ve stripped him of his armor. Leave the boy in his, though, or they’ll never believe we found such a child fighting.”

The old man, stripped down to his linen tunic and hose, broke away from the boy and threw himself at Vasil’s feet, babbling in his khaja tongue. Vasil sighed and looked around for Viaka, but she was kneeling, running her hands over the golden surcoat and the fine armor with a gleam of lust in her eyes. She glanced up, and when she saw that Vasil was watching her, her face flushed with pleasure and she rose and came over to him, glancing back frequently as if to make sure her new armor was not being stolen by one of her villagers. She halted beside Vasil and listened to the old man, then spat on him.

“He says he will gladly give you anything you please, as long as you spare the boy,” she said to Vasil. “He says his name is Yalik anSiyal, and he is a great nobleman and the leader of this army. The boy is his son.”

Vasil smiled. Not gloated, not quite, but he felt entirely pleased with himself. “We’ll ride, then. I have what I need.”

“I’m coming with you.” Viaka’s gaze up, at him seated splendidly on his mount, was worshipful as well as possessive.

Vasil chuckled. “My dear, you are wealthy now. You don’t need me.”

“My father will only take these things from me once you are gone and give them to my brothers. I would gladly become your wife. My father would not protest.”

Yevgeni laughed under his breath. “He’d be glad enough to be rid of her,” he said softly.

“I am married,” said Vasil quietly.

She gestured impatiently. “I do not ask to be your chief wife. But surely you have a place for a secondary wife.”

“Savages,” muttered Yevgeni.

“Yevgeni, get the men ready. We must go.” Vasil put out a hand and took Viaka’s, holding it a moment. “My dear, however much I might wish it, it is impossible.” Then he released her hand and reined his horse away. Piotr bundled the general onto his horse and tied him there, stringing the boy’s mount on behind. Viaka simply stood, staring at them. One of the villagers, an old man who had protested the most at the girl’s usurpation of authority, grinned vindictively as the riders mounted and rode away.

Vasil did not even glance back, although Yevgeni did. “You cold bastard,” he said to Vasil. He laughed. “Gods, these khaja can’t even keep their own tents in order. How can they expect to resist Bakhtiian’s army?”

“We are not part of Bakhtiian’s army yet.”

“I still don’t understand,” said Yevgeni, “how you can expect Bakhtiian to take us in, now that we’re arenabekh, and then agree to let you become dyan of the Veselov tribe, after we rode with the last dyan who tried to kill him.”

“There is a great deal you don’t understand, Yevgeni. There is a great deal no one understands. But I am determined to have my way, this time.” He glanced back as Piotr cantered up from the rear. “What is it?”

“The girl. She’s following us.”

“Let her follow. I’m no longer concerned with her.”

Yevgeni snorted. “Meaning you don’t need her anymore.”

Vasil did not answer. He picked up their pace, and they made good time down to the valley, riding past the ransacked city by late afternoon. A contingent of armored riders, hailing them, met them by an outstretched arm of ruined wall.

“Halt! I hadn’t heard of arenabekh in these parts. Where’s your leader?” This from their captain, a beautiful young man whose handsome face was marred by scars along the jaw and across the ridge of his nose. “Vasil! Gods, I thought you were dead! Everyone thought so.”

Vasil smiled. “But I am not dead, Petya, as you see.”

“But these are arenabekh, Vasil!”

“It’s true that I’ve proven myself as a dyan by leading these men. Now I’ve returned. How is my sister? Have you any children yet?”

Petya flushed. “You must know that Vera is disgraced. It isn’t—it isn’t anything to speak of here.”

“Then forgive me for speaking of it. Have you any news of my wife?”

“Karolla is well. Your cousin Arina took her in.”

A gleam lit Vasil’s fine blue eyes. “And my children? They are well also?”

The tight line of Petya’s mouth relaxed slightly. “They are well. They are sweet children. Everybody loves them.”

“Of course. You’re outfitted differently—all that armor. You look like khaja soldiers.”

“Things have had to change.” Petya regarded the older man warily. “Why are you here, Vasil?”

“Even arenabekh may return to the tribes, if their etsana agrees to it. I heard that my father died. I have come to claim the position that is rightfully mine. Can you take me to Anton? He is here, is he not? I saw the Veselov standard.”

“He is here.” Petya hesitated. Then, as if he could find no excuse to refuse, he motioned to the riders under his command and they turned and escorted Vasil and his men back along the valley. Corpses speckled the grass and the fields, fleeing soldiers who had been cut down and left to die. An overturned cart blocked the road, but the riders simply rode around it, not bothering to move it. Vegetables spilled out from its bed, bruised or flattened by the impact. In a far field, a crowd had been herded together under the watchful eyes of a group of riders.

“You have prisoners,” Petya studied the two men and the boy in the middle of Vasil’s jahar. “We were just heading up into the hills to see if we could catch the general of this army. He fled the battle.”

“I have him. That one, there, and his son.”

“Ah. Sakhalin will be pleased.”

“Yaroslav Sakhalin leads the army? Bakhtiian isn’t here?”

Petya’s brows drew down in confusion. Then he laughed. “You didn’t think this was the entire army, did you? We’re only the vanguard. Bakhtiian is coming soon with the main army. We are as plentiful as the birds, and as strong as the winter wind.”