Warrior (17 page)

But there was one silence he could end. Glancing over at Thalia, her dark hair like a silk standard fluttering behind her, he urged his horse beside hers, until they were riding side-by-side.

“If I could,” he said to her, “I’d go back in time and butcher that Russian. Or hunt him down now.”

She looked over with a flash of surprise. Thalia shook her head at herself. “I should have known you knew I was within earshot.” Her shoulders drew down as she sighed, no longer holding up a burden of tension. “That’s good. I was tired of pretending. And,” she added, with a small smile, “thank you, for your bloodthirstiness on my behalf.”

“I’m not speaking tripe, Thalia,” he said. “I’d slowly kill that vodka-steeped bastard if it was possible. Stomach wounds are good. Takes a long time to die from them.”

She stared at him for a moment. “I believe you,” she said at last. “And, maybe it’s wrong to revel in your thirst for vengeance, but it’s a better gift than a bouquet of posies.”

“You want his guts tied up with pretty ribbons, I’ll do it for you.”

“Such a lovely gift.” But she didn’t look too bothered by his imagined grisly offering. “Although, you might want to save such ribboned presents for your future bride.”

“Something’s wrong with your eyesight. You keep seeing a bride where there isn’t one.”

“I’m no shamaness, but I can see into your future based on the plan you made. And it included returning to England and finding a wife.”

He swore roundly—his natural compulsion whenever he was frustrated. “I hadn’t a bloody idea what I wanted to do with myself after I left the army.”

“So you went to England without any plan?”

“Not exactly. Do you remember the night we spent in the cave? After the storm from Thor’s Hammer?” When she nodded, he continued. “I burned something that night, and you asked what it was.”

“You said it wasn’t important.”

“It was a letter.”

“A love letter?”

Gabriel snorted. “Hardly. From an old friend, promising me a job and the possibility of a bride. If I wanted it.”

“And did you? Do you?”

“Now…” Gabriel felt the sun on his face, the wind tugging at his clothing and breathing life into his whole self. He was alive. Here and now. “I burned it that night because the rain had turned it to useless pulp. Now I think it was for another reason. I don’t know what tomorrow brings. Soldiering taught me that. But I know that a job behind a desk, an ivory doll for a wife who knows only embroidery and babies—such things aren’t for me.”

“Ah,” she said, and couldn’t quite hide the hope and happiness in her voice. “That makes things…very different.” Thalia quieted, turning her thoughts inward, as if trying to reach an important conclusion. If only he could climb inside that clever brain of hers and know what she was thinking. Then she seemed to come back to herself, away from larger schemes. “But we cannot make any kind of plan with certainty, not while we search for the Source, and the Heirs are out there, somewhere, trying to claim it for themselves.”

“Certainty is for milksops.”

She smiled, and he felt it plain throughout his whole body. “We are definitely not milksops, are we, Captain?”

“No, ma’am, we aren’t.” She didn’t object or pull away when he brought his horse up beside hers, then took her hand. A slim woman’s hand, but definitely strong and able. With just the touch of her skin to his, heat roared through his body. He had the urge to take her sweet fingers in his mouth, lick them, or guide them to where he needed touching most. Instead, he made himself what he never thought he could be: a gallant. He kissed her hand. But he wasn’t completely transformed into some cavalier. Her eyes widened as he pressed his mouth to her palm, then she flushed as his tongue came out quickly to lap at the sensitive skin.

Gabriel made himself release her hand and put a little distance between their horses, otherwise, he’d drag her right off her saddle and give in to what his body and heart demanded—claiming her for his own.

Fate was a contrary bitch, bringing him to Thalia when every day meant facing mortal peril. Gabriel had never known another woman like her. It wasn’t his own possible death that bothered him—though he wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of his final muster, not when being alive was pretty damned pleasant—so much as knowing that she was in danger. Well, he’d just have to stay twice as vigilant.

Yet she had sharp eyes, too. “There it is,” Thalia said, pointing ahead into the broad plain. Her voice came out a bit breathless, which gratified him even if he wasn’t satisfied. “It’s beautiful.”

As Catullus Graves’s distance-viewing device had shown, there were almost a hundred acres covered with small red flowers, with a large encampment of gers in the midst of them. The flowers weren’t of themselves extraordinary, but in the entire time Gabriel had been in Mongolia, he had seen only small sprinklings of these flowers, and never in this abundance. A soldier wouldn’t note them outside of what they might indicate about the season, the quality of the land, or whether there was water for horses nearby, and that’s what his mind went to first. But then, at Thalia’s comment, he did see the flowers for their bright beauty, a carpet of flame that dazzled between the lush green grasses and the blue sky.

There wasn’t much time for poetic fancy, though. “Do these nomads follow the flowers, or the other way around?” he asked.

“We’re going to find out,” Thalia said. “However, we cannot simply stop and examine the flowers without first paying our respects to the tribe. That would be suspicious and rude.”

“I don’t know the first thing about Mongol customs,” Gabriel admitted.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Just follow my lead.”

Since his promotion to captain, he hadn’t much experience being directed by anybody else, and certainly never by a woman. Even so, he was out of his element here in Mongolia, and had enough brains rattling around inside his skull to understand it was best to let Thalia take charge. For now.

As they rode into the encampment, they were met with naked stares of curiosity from the people who lived there. Men tending herds of livestock and horses watched them from the backs of their saddles, while women stopped in the middle of their chores to gape. And a flock of children chased after them like ducklings, jostling and peeping amongst themselves. Almost everyone was looking at Gabriel, not at Thalia or Batu. Their interest didn’t unsettle Gabriel too much. He was familiar with being the first white man locals had ever seen. Some soldiers never got used to it, or felt that the color of their skin somehow made them better than a country’s natives, but Gabriel wasn’t one of them. So he returned everyone’s stares with a polite nod.

“This is the chieftain’s ger,” Thalia said as they neared the largest tent. “We shall speak with him first.”

Riding up, they were met by a barking dog, who danced his guard in front of the ger, and Thalia called out, “Nokhoi khor!” A little girl darted out and grabbed the dog by its neck, but that didn’t stop the animal from continuing to bark. As Thalia, Gabriel, and Batu dismounted, a boy came from behind the tent and took hold of the horses’ reins. He and Thalia spoke for a moment before she gestured for their party to go inside.

It took some moments for Gabriel’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. The only light came from an opening at the top of the tent. At first he was reduced to using his ears, listening to Thalia exchange pleasantries with a man, the sounds of someone preparing a meal, two children playing on the floor. But then the haze that filmed Gabriel’s sight disappeared, and he looked around. He hadn’t been inside a ger since he’d left Urga, and was curious what he’d find. And he was surprised, but for a different reason than he’d originally believed.

“Yes,” Thalia said softly at his side, sensing his question. “It looks the same. All gers are arranged exactly the same way as one another. The stove is at the center, while the door must always face south.” She made a small movement toward the left side of the tent, where a woman was stirring a fragrant kettle of milk. “That is the women’s side, where food is prepared and the children sleep. The right is where men sit.” Sure enough, a man stood on the right-hand side near some saddles, ready to greet the visitors. Everything else, from beds to red-painted cupboards, to the shrine that decorated the north part of the ger, was just as Gabriel had seen in Urga. “It is an ancient custom that is never broken,” Thalia explained. “And this way,” she added, “you always feel as if you are home.”

Having spent the last fifteen years in tents and barracks, none of them remarkable, comfortable, or at all homey, the idea that a man could find his home anywhere and with anyone strangely pleased Gabriel.

The man Thalia had been speaking with started to talk to Gabriel, but he could only shake his head in response. Thalia immediately stepped in and began to talk, while Batu quietly provided an ongoing translation.

“He is my cousin from England, and speaks no Mongol.”

“You are welcome to my home, cousins,” the man said, with Batu translating. Gabriel noticed that his del was slightly finer than everyone else’s, with silk trim along the cuffs and hem. The chieftain.

Not content with playing mute, Gabriel repeated what he had heard Thalia call out earlier. “Nokhoi khor,” he said, with a small bow.

The chieftain looked puzzled, while Thalia suppressed a smile, and the children giggled. “You just told him to hold his dog,” she whispered.

“I’ll shut my gob, then,” Gabriel muttered as he felt his face grow hot. So much for international diplomacy. He’d stick to shooting and scouting from here on.

More pleasantries were exchanged, including questions about livestock fattening, horses, and family members, in that order. After this, Gabriel was waved toward the northern part of the tent, which, Thalia murmured, was the seat of honor. He sat on the ground, with Thalia to his right and Batu on his left. While small talk was made, the chieftain approached Gabriel and pulled a silken pouch from his del while also going down on one knee. The chieftain touched his right elbow with his left hand as he pulled a small bottle from the pouch and held it out to Gabriel expectantly.

“A customary snuff exchange,” Thalia said when Gabriel looked at her. “All men do this when they greet one another.”

“I don’t have any snuff. Just cheroots.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s custom, a sign of friendship.” She offered quiet guidance as Gabriel did what she instructed. “Take a pinch of the snuff using your thumb and forefinger, that’s right, now sniff it. Bless you,” she added when he sneezed. The chieftain laughed good naturedly. “Return the bottle to him, and mime handing him your own bottle. Yes, just like that.” Gabriel tried not to feel like a dolt as he pretended to give the Mongol chieftain a snuff bottle, but no one seemed to think it odd, and the entire ritual was enacted one more time in pantomime.

“What about you?” Gabriel asked Thalia.

“Only men.”

The ritual was repeated with Batu and the chieftain.

After this, the chieftain turned to Thalia, and, as he spoke, Batu continued to provide an ongoing translation. “We have heard of you. My brother has gone to Urga and made mention of the English Mongol and his daughter.” It did seem an apt way to describe Franklin and Thalia Burgess, since they weren’t one nationality or the other, but some kind of mix. It wasn’t rare for people living away from home to go native in one way or the other—sometimes the efforts were absurd, and sometimes the expatriates turned more native than the actual natives, as if trying to lose themselves in someone else’s culture. Somehow, Franklin Burgess had struck just the right balance, and his daughter was proof. Gabriel was beginning to wonder if he could ever get used to seeing an Englishwoman cinched into a corset or dragging a bustle behind her after seeing Thalia’s freedom of movement. And freedom of self. She was so different from the girls his comrades in arms used to moon over, those gentle creatures who were trained to serve, docile and obliging. What the hell had he been thinking, even to consider having a girl like that as his bride?

Batu interpreted Thalia’s answer into English, so Gabriel might follow the conversation. “You honor us,” she replied, but the chieftain waved away the compliment. A woman, whom Gabriel assumed was the chieftain’s wife, stepped forward with her eyes downcast. She held out a bowl of steaming tea to Gabriel, which he took and sipped from, before returning the bowl to her. She offered the same hospitality to Thalia and then Batu, before returning quietly to the women’s side of the ger.

Gabriel burned with questions about the flowers, but he knew that the polite rituals would have to be observed. Even so, he longed to leap up and run outside. It felt strange to be in a shelter again after living and sleeping in the outdoors. The monastery of Erdene Zuu had been but a small break in the routine. Inside again, Gabriel was becoming much too aware of Thalia’s nearness, the sweet soft femaleness of her; the sound of her voice, contained as it was by the felt walls of the ger, played low and hot in his belly.

“We are honored by your presence at our humble ail,” the chieftain said through Batu. “Whatever I have is yours, my sister.” A small child toddled up to him and began playing with the frogs that fastened the side of his del, and the chieftain accepted his baby’s mischief with good grace. “Have you joined us for our nadaam?”

“Forgive me, but are not the nadaam festivals held in July?” Thalia asked. She repeated the question in English for Gabriel’s benefit.