Vasil stepped forward. He had a hand on his saber but it was his other hand that lifted. He grasped Ilya's fingers, lifted the dark man's hand to his lips, and kissed it. Mikhailov said something. For a moment no one moved. Vasil let go of Bakhtiian's hand and Mikhailov led the horse on. Vasil did not follow. They were halfway through camp, people dropping away from the main escort, heading toward Mikhailov's tent, before Tess realized where they were going and that they would not find her there.
'You idiot,' she said aloud. She pushed herself forward and slid along the loose rock. Pebbles slipped and tumbled out from under her boots, and she fell, sitting hard on the stones.
Out on the plain, riders came.
A jahar rode in. To its right, a second. To the left, more men rode, their shirts brilliant against the dull grass. In an instant she would hear their cries. In an instant they would reach the camp. But they would never find Ilya in time. She saw neither Bakhtiian nor Mikhailov below. She impelled herself forward, sliding and scrambling down the slope.
She reached the trees just as the first wave of riders hit. She pushed through, thrusting aside branches without care that they snapped back to whip her face. A woman screamed. Men shouted. Metal rang on metal. She burst out of the copse and ran for the camp-to be almost trampled by a knot of horses. She flung herself aside. A horse pulled up beside her, and she looked up to see Vasil. Blood painted his face, and stained his side and one leg.
'Veselov, come on. We're going,' shouted one of the men ahead of him, reining in a half-wild horse.
'I told you I was a coward,' said Vasil. 'But I love my life too well.'
'Vasil, where did he go?'
'To Mikhailov's tent.' He offered her his saber. When she took it, he gave her a brief, bitter smile and rode on, away from the fight.
Tess ran. The world dissolved into confusion. She dove to one side to avoid the trampling hooves of a line of horses. One of the animals, pressed too close to a tent, caught a leg in the ropes. The horse stumbled, throwing the rider off its neck. The tent shuddered and collapsed. Tess scrambled past it and ran on.
Two horseless men dueled, an eddy in the current rushing around them. Three women, a child sheltered between them, huddled against the wall of a tent. A sudden shove pitched Tess to her knees, and she ducked her head, flinging up her saber, as a horse galloped past. No blow came. Ten steps from her a man lay groaning. Blood bubbled from his mouth.
She struggled on. She felt as if she were fighting upstream. Her lungs stung. Riders galloped past. Men ran in twos and threes. Mikhailov's daughter stared at her, pale-eyed, from the sanctity of a tent. She got a moment's glimpse of Vladimir, mounted, cutting through a clump of horsemen, his saber tracing an intricate pattern through their midst. Beneath the shouting and the cries of the wounded, she heard the constant, anguished sobbing of a woman. A man cursed, shrill and fluent. There was a confusion of shouting: 'Break right; fall back; Tasha, to me, to me.'
Then she was beyond the fighting. Mikhailov's tent stood alone before her. With her saber leading, she charged up the hill. She could hear voices from inside the tent. A shout. She was almost there. Her breath came in ragged gasps.
A man cried out. Something hit the side of the tent. Then a saber, thrust with murderous force, ripped through the tent to gleam for a single, dull moment in the afternoon sun.
They seemed to be there a year, she and the bloodstained saber, frozen together. It was withdrawn. The form of a body slid down the inside of the tent wall.
Dead.
Far below, a man screamed in agony.
Tess flung herself to the entrance, jerked aside the frayed tent flap, saber raised. Shadows obscured the body slumped against the tent wall. A dark stain spread out on the light rug beneath the limp, tumbled form. The killer stood with his back to her, stiff with tension, arm pulled back as if for another strike, his fingers gripped to whiteness around the hilt.
She took a step. The flap rustled down behind her. He turned and without a break lunged toward her.
His movement halted as suddenly as if rope had brought him up short. The saber fell from his hand. She froze.
He said in the barest whisper: 'Tess.'
She took a single step toward him. Another. With a slight, inarticulate cry, she dropped her saber and ran into him.
Even at this short distance, he had to take two steps backward to counterbalance the force of their meeting. He had no chance to say anything more because she was kissing him. At first randomly, a cheek, an eye, whatever presented itself, but when he regained his footing he pulled her tight against him and returned her kiss.
Reality existed where their bodies touched, and where they touched, it was as if they were melding, as earth dissolves into the sea and that, evaporating into air, kindles to fire. He murmured something indistinguishable and kissed her along the curve of her jaw to her neck, to her throat. She pulled his head back and kissed him on the mouth again. What other substance could there be in the world, at this moment, but him? And all of him fire.
She felt his attention shift away from her, and he broke away and grabbed for a saber. She dropped to her knees and picked up Vasil's saber and rose to stand beside him.
'Bakhtiian!'
They both relaxed. 'Niko,' he said. 'I'm safe.' His gaze returned to her face, a look comprised of equal parts hunger and disbelief. From outside came a muffled command and the sound of horses riding away.
The tent flap was swept aside. Niko strode in, halting just past the entrance. Josef and Tasha screened the daylight behind him. 'Ilya. Tess! Thank the gods!' His eyes shifted to the slumped form. 'So Mikhailov didn't get away.'
'Get rid of it,' said Ilya. Without a word, Josef and Tasha carried the body out.
'The battle is won, Mikhailov's riders are dead or wounded. A few got away. We need some decision. There's wounded to be considered, and the camp is already half struck. Anton Veselov thinks-'
'We'll stay the night,' said Ilya. 'There's a fire to be built.'
'Yes,' agreed Niko, 'but we can leave a few riders to watch over the pyre while the rest-'
'Niko,' said Tess. 'Go away.'
An infinitesimal pause. Niko's gaze came to rest on Tess. He began to speak, looking back at Ilya, but only a meaningless syllable came out. A longer pause as he watched Ilya, whose gaze had not strayed from Tess, some invisible line connecting them down which their gazes were impelled to travel.
'Yes,' said Niko. 'I can see that I have overstayed my welcome.' Then he grinned and retreated quickly, pulling the tent flap shut as he left.
Outside, men called out, horses neighed, a woman sobbed. Already the first faint smell of ulyan reached them, but it was something far outside her, the sun seen from a brightly lit room. She felt him, a presence palpable as heat.
Into their silence, he said smoothly, 'Where did you get that imperious tone of voice?''
'From you.' She set down the saber, picked up the lantern, and walked into the inner chamber. He followed her, halting where his boot came to rest against a pillow. The lantern limned him in light where he stood facing her.
'Tess,' he said softly. 'You're trembling.'
'How could you have been so stupid? I thought he killed you. You idiot. Why did you ride in here alone?'
'I took the chance that once they saw me, they would forget for just long enough that I had a jahar behind me.'
'My God, you're arrogant.'
Even shaded as he was, she could see the intensity of his eyes. 'Is that what you think of me?' he asked.
She felt an intangible swelling within her, a tangle of anger, of wild-eyed hope, of exultation. And she felt despair, knowing he would someday far too soon die. 'You know what I think of you, damn you.'
If laughter could be noiseless, could be the set of a body changing, a stance, an arm shifted sideways, she would have said he laughed. At the same moment she became acutely aware of his body, of its sensuality of line, of the curve of his jaw, the cut of his trousers over his hips, the slight caressing lift of the fingers of the hand nearest
