the western hills where clouds, a low gray sheet stretching halfway back across the sky, obscured its face. Shadows drew long lines across the meadow. 'It's late.'
'I'll go saddle the horses.' She turned away.
'Tess.' She turned back. 'You'll have to ride Kriye. I can't handle him with one leg.'
'Who?'
There was color in his cheeks, but that might only have been from his afternoon's rest. 'My black,' he said in a constrained voice.
Tess almost started laughing. 'Kriye. That's what you call a very young boy. 'Little one,' but masculine?' He said nothing. 'You must admit, Ilya, it's hardly what one would expect you to name a horse.' Still he did not reply. 'I don't think there's anything wrong with it,' she added hastily. 'I think it's sweet. But what if you can't ride at all?'
A withering leaf, blown up by an eddy of wind, rolled across his knees. He grabbed it, flinging it to one side. 'I can ride.'
'Fine. What do I do with an unconscious man?'
'I don't faint.'
'Just like you don't sleep?' Then, seeing his face, she realized she had gone too far, and she quickly left.
Kriye remained placid for Tess. In the level valley, forced to a slow walk by the dusk and the trees, and with the stirrup adjusted to hold his splinted leg pretty much in place, Bakhtiian managed Myshla, who was more amiable than the tarpan remounts. But they had barely started up the trail, Tess riding behind, when Myshla broke into a trot, and Bakhtiian acted instinctively to slow her. It was his curse more than any movement that alerted Tess; in the darkness she could see only shapes. She urged Kriye up beside him. He gripped the saddle in both hands, reins slack in his fingers. Tess pulled the reins from him and kept going.
Clouds scudded across the farther reaches of sky. The hooves of the horses rang like the echo of a bell on the hard trail. When the clouds reached the far horizon and covered the moon, she had to dismount and lead the horses.
The wind struck when she reached the crest. Her hair streamed back, caught in the flow. In the darkness, she felt as if she were on the edge of an abyss, the world falling away before and behind her. Dark masses of rock loomed around her, the suggestion of ages. She felt very old, knowing that as she stood here, with the wind's pull like the rush of the planet's rotation, she was as much a part of the scene as the wind itself.
Myshla shifted. Glancing back, she saw Bakhtiian sway in the saddle. She shook him. Finally he blinked and stared at her. His look of complete confusion frightened her.
'You can faint when we get to shelter,' she snapped. 'I could hold out longer than that. I could hold out twice as long.'
'I doubt it,' he whispered, but he pushed himself up.
The wind tore at her clothes as if it was trying to scatter her off the heights. She tugged the horses forward, stumbling down the path. Her boots slipped on pebbles. Kriye's breath warmed her neck. Her hands stiffened into a tight grip on the reins. Her toes ached with cold.
When the trail gave out on a broad ledge that angled up into a deep overhang, she realized that in the dark she had missed the switchback and taken an offshoot. As she moved forward she no longer felt the wind, only a still presence over her head. She halted and untied the blankets from Kriye's saddle.
'Where are we?'
'Shelter. For the rest of the night.' She laid out the blankets by the far wall.
She had to help him off the horse. He slumped against her. She let him down very carefully onto the blankets and knelt beside him. She was shivering.
'Ilya?' There was no answer, no movement at all. 'Oh Lord.' She rested a hand on his chest. His breathing was regular and even. She sat back with a sigh. She cared for the horses first; afterward, taking two strips of meat, she settled down at the far edge of the overhang. Darkness surrounded her. Soon, she dozed.
A rush of sound startled her awake. It was raining. She sank back against the wall, tucking her hands under her cloak. For a time the rain kept her awake. Later, despite the cold, it lulled her to sleep.
She woke abruptly at dawn, chilled and shivering. Her cheeks and forehead felt warm. No wind penetrated the overhang, a shallow cave eroded from the hill by a millennia of storms. Outside the rain had stopped. Surely such rain would cover their tracks.
She stamped her feet and rubbed her hands together to try to bring some warmth into them. Turning, she caught Bakhtiian looking abruptly away from her. He was already sitting up. Dark circles set off his eyes. A smudge of dirt mottled one cheek. The night had tangled his hair and trapped a tiny yellow leaf in his beard. Unbelted, the tunics bunched and wrinkled at his waist. One sleeve of his red shirt, showing at a wrist, had twisted at the cuff.
'This is all very foolish,' he said.
'You don't still think I should go on ahead, do you?' She offered him water and food.
'It's cold,' he said.
She felt her heart race with fear. If he was getting ill from the shock-
'No,' he said, reading her expression. 'I'm not-I'm well enough. But the air. Can't you feel it? It's the ayakhov, the wind from the peaks. It brings the storms. This shelter can't possibly protect us.' He halted, just breathing for a while, as if the effort of speaking so much had exhausted him.
'Can you go on? I'll saddle the horses.'
He shook his head, a gesture compounded half of answer, half of pain. 'No.' She waited. 'If we're caught in the open- These storms last days sometimes. You'll have to scout for better shelter. Even a deeper overhang where we can set up the tent…'He trailed off.
'Yes,' she said, not wanting to remind him that they had no tent with them. 'I'll go now.' She saddled Myshla and left. She rode down into the canyon and half up the other side before tethering Myshla and exploring. By the time she found a good cave, the wind had indeed blown up, cold enough that all her exertion did not keep her warm. She gathered all the brush she could find, arranging the softest into a couch set against the steep-sloping cave wall, and gathered scraps, everything she could find for fodder for the horses, and piled rocks for a corral in the dark recesses of the shelter.
He was asleep when she returned. She unsaddled Myshla and took all four horses out on a long lead, letting them graze and water behind her as she hiked up to the crest. As she had hoped, the rain had swept all traces of their passage from the rock-littered trail. At the height she tried to recapture that timelessness she had felt the night before. But the rocks looked drab, worn away by the weather and the years, and there were too many windblown plants clinging to their surface, a few wilted leaves holding tenuously to branches.
It was cold. Wind whipped the ends of her cloak around her knees. No one was following them. Surely the khaja had given up their search. Turning away, she saw a mass of thick clouds tipped with darkness, sweeping down, almost on her where she stood high and exposed on the ridge. Alarmed, she mounted Myshla bareback and rode back to the overhang.
She found Bakhtiian standing at the entrance, hands clutching his walking stick, staring at her as she dismounted and led the horses under the rock. If he could have looked anything but haggard, pained, and tired, she would have said he looked glad to see her. He had made some effort to tidy himself up. His face was clean, his hair combed, the hunter's tunics straight and neatly belted.
She chuckled, because the incongruity-of their desperate situation, of the approaching storm, of his appearance-was simply too much.
'Where were you?' he demanded.
'Scouting. I found shelter.' She began immediately to saddle Kriye and Myshla. 'The storm is coming.'
'Why didn't we leave sooner?'
His bad temper irritated her. 'You were asleep. And I must say you needed it.'
'I am aware,' said Bakhtiian slowly, 'that I am not looking my best.'
Tess laughed and stooped to pick up the blankets he had already rolled up and readied. 'Do you know why I like you, Ilya?'
'I can't imagine.'
She knew she should stop now, but the storm, the danger, his whole attitude, made her reckless. 'Because you're vain.'
