Shadow of the Horsemen (Kalie's Journey) (32 page)

Whatever else Haraak might have said ended in a muffled thud as Riyik’s spear slid neatly through his ribs and into his heart. Haraak was dead before his body hit the ground.

Everyone looked at each other for a moment. Then Alessa said, “My king, I really must return to care for the wounded.” She slid her gaze to Riyik, then back to Kariik in silent urging.

Kariik nodded and turned to Riyik. “I owe you my life. But my only thanks will be to keep my word to you, and allow you to leave with those who would go with you.”

Riyik inclined his head. “That is all the thanks I wish, my king.”

From behind them, a few warriors suggested that Riyik should remain as the king’s new close advisor, but Kariik shook his head. “I’ve had enough of strong-minded men whispering in my ear. I will do better with men who don’t think much with their brains, and a woman who can actually help me become the king I want to be.” Then he turned his horse and led the remains of his army back to camp.

Riyik would have preferred to bypass the camp altogether and just ride west until they picked up their companions’ trail. But there were injuries that had to be tended—his included—if they were to ride hard enough to catch up with the others by dark, and now, at least, they could be safely treated there.

If Kariik kept his word.

As the camp came in view, it seemed smaller, sadder and less threatening than it had before. Some of the wounded had already arrived—with news of those who would not be back—and the eerie sound of women keening their grief could be heard on the wind.

Alessa was already organizing the care of the wounded. News of her new status traveled quickly, and now Alessa had many assistants and whatever supplies she called for.

Kalie slipped away to have one last look at the tent she had lived so long as a slave. Women made the sign against evil as she passed and a few spat at her feet, but no one stopped her.

As she drew close to Maalke’s tent, Kalie heard the unmistakable wails of mourning. Maalke lay dead on a blanket in front of his tent. Altia, dressed in her finest clothing was arranging his many possessions around his body, barking the occasional order to her daughters who keened their grief as they worked.

Beside Maalke lay a tiny bundle, also wrapped for burial.

“No!” screamed Kalie, rushing to open the blanket and see for herself.

“Don’t you touch him!” Altia screamed back, pushing Kalie away. “Don’t touch either of them!”

Kalie stared at the dead baby. “When? How?”

It took Altia a moment to understand. Just barely, her face softened. “He is no sacrifice. He breathed his last peacefully, a few hours before my brother returned with Maalke’s body. Everyone knew it was just a matter of time.”

“Everyone except Cassia,” Kalie said.

“If it had to happen, it’s better this way. He will ride to Paradise on his father’s shoulder, just as if he had lived to be a great warrior himself.”

Kalie turned at the sound of the voice, raw with grief, and found Cassia staring at her. She, too, was dressed in her finest clothes, and carried bedding Kalie well remembered: soft, well-made furs, pieced together into intricate patterns of subtle colors. Altia reached out to take them, but Cassia shook her head, and began arranging them around Maalke, save for the last— a rabbit-fur blanket—which she lovingly wrapped around her infant son.

Then she turned to Kalie.

“As you can see, your work here is finished. Why do you remain?”

“I wanted to speak with you one last time,” said Kalie, trying to keep the weakness she felt out of her voice. It was the first lesson she’d learned in this place: a woman must never show weakness before another woman. “To tell you I’m sorry that you and so many others had to suffer. That I wish things could have been different.”

Cassia’s eyes bored into Kalie’s. “They could have been,” she said simply.

“One of our tribes had to lose,” said Kalie. “And it was yours who set those rules, not mine. So I did what you taught me to do: win at all costs. And it has cost us all a great deal.”

“But it is you who will ride out of here,” said Cassia. She took in Kalie’s man’s dress and unveiled hair knotted behind her head. “Flouting our ways to last, it seems.”

“Come with me!” cried Kalie. Cassia burst out laughing. “Please, Cassia. You have skilled hands, a caring heart and a quick mind! You could be happy with my people. You have nothing left here.”

Cassia looked sadly at Kalie. “I have everything here. Already my husband and child wait for me. Tomorrow, we will be together.”

It took Kalie a moment to grasp what she was saying. “No!” It came out as a hoarse whisper. “You cannot. Altia is first wife. Only she…”

“She has agreed to share the honor with me. It is not often so with first wives, and I did not expect it from her. But it seems, in the end, she was a better friend to me than you, Kalie.”

“I suppose we each offered what friendship we could. That is not something I expected when I came here. But I will remember it.”

“Perhaps you will make a story of it.”

“Perhaps.”

Altia returned, carrying two knives. She gave one to Cassia.

“Now?” Kalie asked in terror, seeing, for the first time, that while they had talked, Cassia had seated herself beside Maalke, their child between them, with Altia now on his other side.

“Tomorrow,” said Cassia. “But we will keep watch beside him tonight. In the morning, we will walk beside our husband’s body to the grave that will be prepared.” She gazed across the still half empty camp. “There will be many graves, as I hear it. We will die beside him there, after the sacrifices are complete.”

“Complete?” Kalie choked. “You think your senseless deaths don’t rank with the others as ‘sacrifices’?”

“Leave us, Kalie,” Cassia ordered quietly. “You’ve caused enough harm already. You can laugh with your Goddess over your victory back in your own land.”

“My Goddess will never laugh at this,” said Kalie, backing away. “And neither will I.”

She hurried back to where Alessa was treating the wounded, wanting nothing more than ride away from this place and wash the images of Cassia and Altia from her mind. When she reached the tent, however, she saw at once that something had happened. Riyik stood with Kariik beside a body that lay on a rich fur robe, guarded by six exhausted men.

They were the last of the men who had ridden here with Nelek.

Kalie approached, slipping quietly between Riyik and Borik, and saw that the king still breathed. Alessa was examining a gory wound in his gut with far more compassion that Kalie could have mustered, had it been Maalke.

“The wound is mortal,” she told him.

She tried to offer him a bowl filled with a murky liquid, but Nelek turned his head away from it. “I knew I was dying when I rode here,” he whispered, seeming beyond the pain. “But I had to see you one last time, Alessa. To tell you that I forgive you. That when I am laid in my cairn, you shall lay by my side and travel with me to paradise.”

He waited a moment, perhaps expecting Alessa to fall on her knees and weep with joy. Then Nelek turned to Kariik. “See to it, my brother. Let none prevent her from joining me in death. I know my warriors will think her unworthy and try to prevent it…” His voice was lost in a horrible choking sound, as blood foamed at his pale lips.

Some of Kariik’s men shifted uneasily, but none dared speak. Kalie knew their dilemma: their future in the West depended on the woman to whom their king would listen. But she was still Nelek’s slave, and who could interfere with a dying king’s choice of companions? Certainly not Kariik, who gazed in horror at his brother king.

But Kalie herself faced no such dilemma. She drew her knife. “Rescind that order, Nelek,” she said mildly. His men growled, though Kariik’s were strangely silent. “If you don’t, I’m afraid you will have to meet your gods with no more manhood on you than a mare has.” She set her knife on the slight bulge between his legs, the blade just brushing his testicles. “And what do you think your fate in the next life will be then?”

Nelek worked his mouth, but only strangled cries emerged, along with more blood. His body seized up, and his lips drew back in a hideous grin.

Alessa pushed the knife aside, and laid a gentle hand on her former master. It seemed to help, for his body relaxed, even as the life faded from his eyes. “There will be no need for that, I promise, Nelek. You will ride to your gods just as they made you. But you will ride without me.” He tried again to speak, but Alessa continued. “I will stay here, and help your people prepare for the day when deaths such as yours—and the kind you sought for me—are remembered only in legend, and your bloodthirsty gods are forgotten. It’s what I came here to do. I thank you for your help, but I need it no longer. So go in peace.”

Nelek gasped once more, and died.

Kalie still held her knife. “If anyone tries to follow that last order…”

“No one will,” said Kariik, rising to his feet. “For to send the priestess of a foreign goddess with the king of the Wolf Tribe would surely anger his gods, and jeopardize his chance to be honored in paradise.” He looked at each of Nelek’s men. “Do you not agree?”

Every one of them nodded. Then they knelt, and offered their oaths to Kariik, who accepted them graciously.

“It is time for us to go,” Kalie said simply. “Alessa, are you sure about this?”

Alessa hugged Kalie to her in a warm embrace. “I believe we shall meet again,” was her only answer. “But in case we don’t…” She stepped back to meet Kalie’s gaze, a look of mischief pulling at her serene face. “Thank you for offering to geld Nelek for me. It’s an image I shall savor in the years to come.”

Kalie only grinned. Her friend would be just fine. But she wouldn’t bet on some of the others who gathered around Kariik, jockeying for position in the new government.

Riyik reached for her, clearly planning to set her astride Thunder, but Kalie shook her head. She walked to where Blossom stood, anxious to leave the smell of blood and death that already permeated the camp. “I will leave this place on my own horse, under my own strength,” she said. But she had to let Riyik help her mount.

“Will you ride beside me?” he asked when they were both astride their steeds.

“All the way to my home,” she said, then corrected herself. “To our home. And forever after that.”

They rode west, into a blinding sunset that seemed to paint the land the color of blood.

Soon, however, the sun sank into the grass before them, and a mellow twilight showed them where, still far in the distance, their friends were camped. No tracks betrayed the presence of enemies and no scavengers circled above the campsite.

Beside her, Riyik reached out his hand. Kalie reached out with her good arm, and put her hand in his, trusting her balance to her knees and her horse’s gentle nature.

“What will we find, you think, when we reach the west?” he asked.

“That has been my greatest hope and greatest fear since I came here,” she answered. “I’ve had nightmares: cities in flames, fields choked with bodies, a tribe of beastmen sitting on the corpse of my world while we fought here.”

“But have there been good dreams as well?”

She smiled. “Yes. I have seen a land in peace for many years, because of what we did today. I’ve seen horses grazing beside the cattle of my country, and boys and girls learning to ride together. And weavers exclaiming with joy over the wool made by local sheep bred with these hardy eastern ones. And I’ve seen you, Riyik, teaching men and women how to fight. I just can’t tell if that one’s a dream or a nightmare.”

Riyik squeezed her hand. “People can defend what they have without losing what they are, Kalie. And you and I will make certain it happens that way.”

She nodded, but her thoughts were already straying to the dream she’d had last night, as she lay in Riyik’s arms. The one she could not yet speak of. The one where she and Riyik lay together on a warm bed of soft sheepskins with a gurgling baby between them. In her dream, Kalie could smell the milk that dripped from her breasts; feel the soreness inside that could only come from bearing a child. Was it possible?

No fire had been lit, but they found the camp easily in the darkness. Varena was beside Kalie before she worked herself off the horse.

“Are we going home now, Mother?” she asked.

Kalie flung her good arm around the woman who would always be her firstborn child—no matter how many others the future might hold for her. “Yes, my love. We’re going home.”

The End

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A collection of short fiction by Sandra
Saidak
, including a new story in the world of Kalie's Journey
Coming 2012 from
Uffington
Horse Press

Yuraak fought his way through the blinding snow. He had no idea how many men were still with him; no thought of anything but the horse beneath him, and the desperate search for shelter. Of the twenty warriors who had followed him from the steppes of their homeland, only seven were left. At least he hoped so. The howling wind and snow that was more like sheets of ice made Yuraak wonder if he and his mount were the only living things in the world. At least they were out of those cursed mountains.

Haraak had never mentioned mountains in his tales of the land to the west. He had only told of grain and gold and women for the taking. Of fat cattle and sheep, of fruit trees in a rich green land that never knew thirst. Haraak never told him that the winter journey would take Yuraak’s wife and young son from him, along with most of this clan.

“Curse Haraak for a lying bastard!” Yuraak cried.

An answering curse made him look to his right. “Watch out!”
Marek
was shouting, although Yuraak caught only a muffled whisper, barely in time to keep his horse from sliding down the frozen waterfall he had mistaken for a trail. By the time Yuraak had the blown horse under control, he was having trouble seeing, but at least he was starting to feel warmer. In some corner of his mind, the warrior knew that this was not really a good thing. Then he heard
Marek’s
voice again, from much farther away.

“There’s light ahead,” the younger man was shouting. “And smoke!”

Zelena
stood protectively on the threshold of her home. “The Mother was awake late into the night, helping with a difficult birth,” she whispered harshly. “Whatever the problem is, one of the Elders can handle it until she wakens.”

“This is not something we have ever seen!” the fur-clad young man insisted. While the snow had ceased, heavy clouds made the morning barely lighter than night, and it was bitterly cold. “People—and strange animals! At the foot of the mountain—“

“No one can cross the mountain in winter—“
Zelena
began, but by then it seemed the entire village had erupted with voices as people shouted the news, healers gathered torches and supplies, and others argued between carrying the victims of the weather to the village, or going to offer them aid where they were.

“That is why we need the Mother,” the man said quietly.

“I am here,”
Laniya
said in her voice of practiced calm. She dressed quickly. “
Zelena
, please start breakfast and look after Aral.
Joran
, please take me to these strangers.” She followed her one-time consort out of the village, and into a throng of anxious, excited, and many just plain curious villagers. Shining Mountain was small—perhaps just over one hundred souls—but it was also isolated. Even in the summer it received few visitors. In the winter, with the mountain passes buried beneath snow and the little river that nestled the village half frozen and treacherous, travelers were unheard of.

While the healers who had first heard the news and the shepherd who had brought it were already moving,
Laniya
was soon at their head, projecting an air of calm assurance, while inwardly fearing she would find something that was bigger than she could handle. She swatted the thought away as she always did—then soon forgot it altogether when she saw what lay before her.

Bodies lay like clay figures thrown carelessly around a potter’s workshop. Although clearly human, they were like no people
Laniya
had ever seen: large and muscular, wearing clothing that seemed to be nothing but layers of animal skin. None of the people moved, but a small group of strange animals clustered together in the shelter of a small hill. But it was clear they would not survive long out here.

The healers and their assistants checked each body for signs of life.

“This one is dead,” said
Marnak
, senior healer, and one of the oldest men in the village.

“These, too,” said his apprentice
Karya
. “So sad; a mother and child, frozen together.”

Laniya’s
voice carried above the wind. “We must bring all of them back to the village! Only when they are warm, and some time has passed will we know for certain who has passed beyond recalling.”

The people nodded at the wisdom of their Mother’s words. All had heard of people lost in the snow, who had appeared dead when found, yet had returned to life after hours—or even days—of warmth and care. Some had even seen it themselves. Blankets were turned into litters, strong men lifted the smaller victims, and soon all the strangers were brought into the village. The shepherd who had discovered them, and a few who shared a similar affinity to animals, led the strange beasts, who looked a bit like giant goats, away for food and shelter, and whatever care they might need
.

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