His Conquering Sword (31 page)

Diana felt like an idiot, as she was sure Mother Sakhalin intended her to. “I didn’t know—I just found out that Anatoly had returned.”

“Ah. Well, then, Anatoly, I have water and a tub for you to bathe in. You look filthy. Your cousins will help you remove your armor, and they’ll see that it’s cleaned.” Several boys hovered anxiously off to one side; at her words, they hurried forward, evidently eager to help their famous cousin, the youngest man in the army to have a command of his own. Diana wrung her hands. Anatoly glanced at her once, twice, and all the while kept up an easy flow of small talk with his grandmother.

“… and the water is still hot, so you must beware. Mother Hierakis has shown our healers how if we boil all the water we’ll have fewer fevers in camp.”

“Have there been fewer fevers in camp?” he asked.

“The khaja die in greater numbers than we do, it is true, but they are weak in any case. Still, Mother Hierakis is a great healer, and one must not discount her words.”

Stripped down to his red silk shirt and black trousers and boots, Anatoly looked suddenly much more—human. He handed his saber and sheath away to one of the boys, and he looked suddenly much more—gentle. His clothes smelled of sweat and of grime, but the sodden scent of rain dampened even that, although Diana imagined that he hadn’t bathed in weeks. Not on such a journey as he had ridden.

“Boris and Piotr will help you with the bath, if you wish,” said Mother Sakhalin. Two boys waited, each bearing a saddle pack.

Anatoly’s gaze flashed to Diana and away. “If that is your command, Grandmother, of course, but I had hoped that you might allow Diana to attend me.”

“Your wife has her own tent, and if it was not ready for you—” She sighed.

“Grandmother.” The dread conqueror softened, settling a dirty hand on the old woman’s sleeve. “Please.”

She gave way at once, before his blue eyes and pleading expression. “For you, Anatoly, but for no one else would I allow it!”

“Of course, Grandmother. You’re too good to me.” He kissed her again on either cheek.

“Hmmph.” She stood aside and gestured for them to go past, into the tent. Anatoly grabbed the saddlebags from the boys and went inside. Diana had no choice but to go with him.

Mother Sakhalin’s tent was huge, twice the size of any other tent in camp. To the right of the entrance a rust-red curtain embroidered with three leaping stags screened off a spacious alcove. A metal tub sat on a pile of carpets within, and a weary-looking old man poured a last pitcher of streaming water into the tub. Seeing Anatoly, he ducked his head and limped hurriedly out of the alcove.

“He’s not jaran,” said Diana, staring after him. The curtain fell into place behind him, shielding them from the rest of the tent. On this side, a herd of horses raced over a golden field toward the rising sun.

“He was a Habakar general,” said Anatoly, glancing that way as well. “Now he is Grandmother’s servant. She is kind to him, considering that he deserted his army on the field.”

“Oh,” murmured Diana, not knowing what else to say. She clasped her hands at her waist and stood there.

Anatoly tossed down the saddlebags and stripped. Diana just watched him. He paused, between pulling off his shirt and unbuckling his belt, and glanced at her, and grinned.

“Send one of the boys in to take these things away, if you can’t stand to touch them. Did you bring anything for me to wear?”

“No, I—I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

“Oh, never mind it. Grandmother will have thought of it.”

“Yes,” said Diana bitterly, “she always does think of everything.”

“There’s much you could learn from her, Diana. No etsana runs her camp as well as my grandmother runs hers.” He stripped out of his trousers and tested the water with a foot. “Ah,” he said, in a way that made her suddenly, achingly aware that he was naked, and close by her. He slid into the tub, which was barely large enough for him to stretch out his legs. Diana took a step toward him without realizing it, halted, and then walked over and knelt beside the tub.

“Where’s the—” he began. Diana found the stuff they used for soap and started to hand it to him, then set it down, threw off her cloak, and rolled up the sleeves of her tunic. “Here, could you unbraid my hair? Gods, it’s gotten long. I used to wear it that way when I was younger, but not since I joined the army.”

“You all wear it like Bakhtiian, now.”

Even with his hair as filthy as it was, she could not help but tangle her fingers in it as she unwound the braid. He sighed and lay back against her hands. She dipped a hand in the hot water and started to wash him, his neck, his back, his arms.

“How far did you ride?” she asked in a low voice, aware of his skin under her hands, of the gritty scrape of soap against dirt and sweat, of water sloughing off him. “Where did you find the king?”

“A long way. It would take the army—oh—one hundred and twenty days perhaps to travel as far as we rode southwest. In the end, the khaja bastard tried to row out across a lake. I think there was an island out there, and maybe his gods.” He chuckled. “But I was damned if I would let him get away after all that. I threw off my armor and rode after the boat.”

“Do you know how to swim?”

“Swim? Oh, in the water, you mean? No. My horse did.”

“But you might have drowned!” One hand, slick with soap, lay open on his chest. He caught the other in a now-clean hand and rubbed it against his beard. He smiled and shut his eyes.

“But I can’t die. When I saw you, after that battle, I thought you were an angel sent down by the gods from the heavens to take me up to their lands. The gods know my wounds were bad enough that they might have killed me, but they didn’t, because you were there. As long as you’re with me, I can’t die. So why should I fear?”

Diana buried her face in his neck. Tears burned at the back of her eyes. Absently, he stroked her arm with his other hand. “When the king’s men saw we were coming after them, even into the water, they threw him overboard, hoping to gain mercy for themselves. I’m surprised they rode with him that far. He’d abandoned his children and family already. So we caught him and brought him back. There were plenty of riches, too, with his family, but those will go to Bakhtiian.”

“You sent me some things, the necklace, the earrings, by a messenger.”

“Well, those were fairly won. Do you see the scar on my left thigh?”

She saw it, white and jagged but cleanly healed. She sank her hand into the water and ran it down his leg. He shivered all over and said something meaningless, and she drew her hand back up to his chest and kept washing him. “Did it gain them mercy?”

“Who?”

“The men who were with the king, giving him up like that.”

“Of course not. If they’d break allegiance to their own king, their dyan, then how are we to be expected to trust them? Diana, why did you lift him up off the ground?”

She pulled her hands away from him. As he shifted in the tub, arching back to look at her, the water slipped about him, lapping against his legs and the side of the tub. “I felt pity for him.”

“But he brought the gods’ wrath down on himself three times! First by killing our envoys, second by running away from battle, and third by abandoning his children. These khaja eat birds, you know.” He shuddered. “Savages. I only left him alive because I knew Bakhtiian wanted him. Here, can you find my razor? I’d like to shave.”

She rummaged in the bags and found the razor. He reclined and watched her through half-closed lids, the barest smile on his face. He looked content enough, having done his duty to Bakhtiian, gained glory in the doing of it, and come home to his beautiful wife. But he didn’t look smug, just at ease. Goddess help her, the truth was there for her to see, as bitter as it was. Even knowing how casually he had killed, how simple and pitiless his judgments were, how appalling, compared to what compassion and mercy she believed was due any human soul, still she cared for him.

“You look sad,” he said, puzzled.

Still, she would leave here, Rhui, the jaran, him. She had to. Her work lay elsewhere. “What would you do, if you weren’t a rider?”

“What would I do? But I am a rider, Diana. What would you do if you weren’t an
actor?”

But I am an actor.
She brought the razor back to him and watched him as he shaved. Then, because it gave her pleasure, because it gave him pleasure, she washed his hair. After that, she found the ceramic pitchers of warm water that the servant had left by the tub. “Stand up so I can rinse you. Look how filthy that water is.” But she did not look at the water, only at him.

Clean, he stepped out of the tub. “Now,” he said.

“Anatoly! Your grandmother—”

“—will not send us out into the rain this night, you can be sure. It’s a long walk from here to your tent, my heart. Shhh.” Rain drummed softly on the roof of the tent. “You see, she left pillows and a blanket along the wall, there. It’s raining again.”

Only much later, when he lay sleeping beside her, did she remember Marco. Had he come by her tent that night, only to find her gone? Anatoly stirred and shifted, opened his eyes, and smiled to find her there.

“Elinu,” he said. My angel.

T
HEIR TOUR OF THE
engineering works led them under the ground, down to where the sappers worked. The khaja laborers pressed back against the damp earth walls of the gallery as Aleksi and his escort ducked by them.

“Once we’re under the wall,” said David, “we’ll burn the props and the fall of the mine will cause the wall to collapse.”

Aleksi did not like being underground, nor in such a closed space. The other jaran men liked it less. Only Ursula seemed more excited than nervous, peering around in the wavering lantern light, breathing in the dank, stuffy air, lifting one hand to touch the earth a hand’s-span above her head, but then, everyone knew that she was a little mad.

David wore a loose cotton shirt pulled up to expose his arms. Dirt stained the cloth, and sweat darkened it all down his back. He glanced at the others and bent to whisper to Aleksi. “We’ve twenty feet to go to the wall. But ten feet out and four to the side there’s another tunnel coming. They’re countermining. We’re going to need to post some kind of guard down here. Those sabers aren’t going to work down here, or your lances, or bows.”

“Short swords and short spears,” said Ursula. “Thrusting weapons, mostly. You won’t be doing much cutting in these close quarters. ‘The best use of the companion sword is in a confined space.’”

“David,” murmured Aleksi, “how do you know there’s another tunnel? Is it from your box, your machine?”

“Yes. We can measure it—oh, I can’t explain it now. We’ve seen everything we can down here. Let’s go back up.”

They edged back past the laborers. Aleksi noted how David said a few words, here and there, to the khaja men stuck down here. All of the people in Charles’s party were like that: they spoke to everyone, even to the khaja, however briefly. Only Ursula behaved like a normal person, interested only in the task at hand. After all, when the attack began, most of these laborers would die in the front lines, taking the brunt of the assault.

They wound back through the mines and climbed up until they came out into a trench covered by thick hides, and thence out along a rampart built to screen the mine entrance from arrows. From here, Aleksi looked out over the grassy sward that separated the outlying district from the massive walls of the inner city of Karkand. Once, he supposed, animals had grazed here. Now nothing stirred. Pennants fluttered on the walls above. A few figures moved, patrolling the heights.

With a sharp thud, a siege engine fired, casting a missile into the city. Up until yesterday, they had thrown rocks and dead animals and corpses in. Now, with the Habakar king in Bakhtiian’s hands, they had stepped up the assault. Aleksi himself had watched at dawn when the first pot of burning naphtha had been launched. The sun sank in the west, lighting the walls with red fire. In the district where the palace towers gleamed, a thread of smoke flared up. By the southern curve of the walls another column of smoke rose.

“Down,” said David abruptly, shoving on Aleksi’s shoulder. As Aleksi ducked, he heard the distant echo of a
thunk,
and he rose to see a cloud of dirt and splintered wood rise in the air behind them, in the suburbs, and dissipate, falling back to earth. The defenders of Karkand had their own siege engines, but unfortunately for them, the jaran camp lay far out of their reach. The defenders could only attack the well-defended siege engines brought up to fire on them, or those portions of their own suburbs that lay within range of their catapults. Still, as the preparations for the assault grew up, ringing the inner city, the defenders stepped up their fire as well.

“Shall we go?” Aleksi asked. “This khaja warfare leaves a bad taste in the mouth. I’d rather fight out in the open.”

“It’s true that, as Sun Tzu says, ‘Attacking a Fortified Area is an Art of last resort,’” said Ursula, “but you have to adapt yourself to the conditions that present themselves. Are you coming, David?”

The engineer drew a hand across his brow, wiping off sweat. “No. I’ve a few more things to supervise here. We need more guards here, too. Some equipped for the tunnels, and another jahar. There was a sortie out from the eastern portal last night, according to the laborers. The auxiliaries posted here had a hard time of it. I don’t want any more of my workmen killed.”

“
Your
workmen?” Ursula asked, with a grin that Aleksi could not interpret.

“Charles gave me a free hand. Indeed, he urged me to do what I could.” David glanced at Aleksi and then away. “Let’s not discuss this here, Ursula.”

She saluted him mockingly and. followed Aleksi out to where riders waited with their horses. That was another thing that puzzled Aleksi about these people from the heavens: He could not tell where each one stood according to the others. One might defer to another and then be deferred to by that same person. The prince was clearly in charge, yet he deferred in his turn, at times, and the members of his party usually treated him as casually as they treated each other. Was this how the gods behaved in the heavens, among their own kind? But they weren’t gods—Tess assured him of that, and he could see it for himself.