He limped across to Myshla. 'At least,' he said, tying the blankets to the saddle with hard, efficient jerks, 'I am not uncivil.'
'No.' Her whole face burned, with excitement, with fever, with anger-she could not be sure. 'That fault will never tarnish your reputation.' She turned back to Kriye and tightened the cinch of his saddle. 'Do you need help to mount?''
He cursed, a phrase she did not recognize, and she started around to see that he had already mounted. He clutched the pommel, eyes shut. 'Forgive me.' Though his voice was scarcely more than a whisper, she knew he was in earnest. 'My language.'
Immediately she felt guilty. 'No, I'm sorry. I have a terrible temper.'' When he did not reply, she judged it prudent simply to go.
She led the horses out. Drops of ice-tipped rain stung her face. She tucked her braid beneath her cloak and pulled her hood up over her head.
A gust of wind scattered leaves across the trail. Kriye whickered and tossed his head, and Tess moved her grip up closer to his mouth. The wind dragged at her, pulling her hood back off her head, so cold that it stiffened her joints even as she moved. The trail veered down around a boulder. Tess slipped on a damp stone; only Kriye's pulling back kept her from falling. Rain spattered her face. All color faded suddenly. She looked up to see the entire sky darken, curling down like a black glove from invisible heights.
'We've got to go faster!' she yelled. 'Can you hold on?'
He was hunched so far over Myshla's neck that his hood had not been blown back. 'Yes.' The word vanished on the wind.
She mounted Kriye. He sidestepped, taking her into a bush. Branches scraped her leg. She jerked him back onto the trail, driving him ahead. Myshla came forward, and the tarpans, nervous, hesitated and then followed the drag of their lead-lines. The wind swelled. Rain broke over them, hard as pellets, sounding like thunder on the rocks around them. Her head was soaked in an instant. Water blurred her vision.
Finally, finally, they reached the valley floor. She slowed to negotiate a litter of rocks. Water streamed away in little runnels between them. A leaf blew into her face, attaching itself like a damp tentacle. She flinched back, jerked the reins. Kriye shied. For an instant she had all that she could do to control him. A thick gust of rain drove into her from the side. A large branch tore loose from a tree behind them and crashed down onto the path. Myshla bolted.
The mare stumbled on the rough ground and fell, flipping over sideways. She pushed back up to her feet and then, unaccountably, she calmed.
'Ilya!' Tess scrambled down off Kriye, throwing the reins over the black's head. Rain drowned the landscape in gray. Bakhtiian lay half in a ditch at the side of the trail. Water eddied over his boots. She grabbed him under his arms and tugged him up onto the trail, and knelt by him, pulling him up into her arms. 'Ilya!'
His eyelids wavered, opened. He had a cut below one eye, thin and jagged. The brown tunic was ripped. Blood welled up from a scrape on his palm. He mouthed something. She had to lean down. Rain drenched her neck, slipping under her cloak to run down the curve of her spine. She shuddered.
'Go on.' He shut his eyes.
She eased him down on the trail. With both hands she smoothed his hood back away from his face. Then she took off one of her gloves and slapped him as hard as she could. He sat up. Rain and blood painted a broad red line down his cut cheek. He lifted a hand to his face. Blood dripped from his palm.
'Stand up, damn you!' She got behind him and lifted. He got his good leg under him and came up with such strength that she had to take a step backward to balance. He pushed her away with one arm and hobbled over to Myshla. Blood leaked from a gouge midway down Myshla's left foreleg.
'Oh, hell.' Tears burned her eyes. 'Ilya, you'll have to ride Kriye.' He did not reply, but with a movement half extraordinary and half ungainly, he got himself on the stallion. Tess mounted her remount bareback, tying Myshla to Kriye's saddle. They went on.
Partway up the far slope, with wind and rain pouring against them, she had to dismount. Bakhtiian lay bent, almost hugging Kriye's neck. She tied her mount on behind, put her head down, and led them forward. Water gushed down the path in fresh trails. The hard surface had dissolved into mud. The rain soaked through her gloves, through her trousers. Rivulets trailed down her calves to pool in the toes of her boots.
The pile of stone marking the approach to the cave was half obliterated. Beyond it, rock fell in slick ledges down toward the bottom of the canyon that lay, dim and obscure, far below. Rain pelted at the low bushes, stripping them of their last leaves. Tess got a tighter hold on Kriye, up at his mouth, and started across.
That Kriye was surefooted was the best of her luck. In this direction, the wind whipped her cloak open. Rain drenched the front of her shirt. Convulsive shivers shook her every few steps. She picked her way across the pathless slope of loose rock, slipping once, knee jarring on stone, one hand plunged to above the wrist in a sink of icy water. Kriye held steady. Tess pushed herself up, slipping again, clutching the reins. A steep slope, its carpet of lichen torn into strips by the storm, a rubble-strewn ledge, and at last the broad entry and narrow doorway of the cave.
'The gates of paradise.' Bakhtiian's voice, faint and far off behind her. Kriye nosed against her, recognizing shelter, and suddenly the rain no longer pounded furiously on her head.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
'We have come into this roofed cavern.'
Somehow Bakhtiian got himself off Kriye. With cold-numbed fingers, Tess fumbled with the harness. Myshla's saddle slipped from her hands to land on her feet. Pain lanced up her leg. She led the horses into the rock corral and rubbed them down with the hunter's undershirt. The gouge on Myshla's leg did not look too deep. She put salve on it and wrapped it, and left the horses to their forage. There was still enough light to see. She thanked someone for this; whom, she was not sure. From inside, the high whistle of the wind and the rain's monotonous staccato sounded almost subdued.
Dizziness engulfed her. She sat down. She felt hot and cold together, and her head felt as if it was about to float to the ceiling. A low voice cursed in an undertone to her left. A spark caught, and then flame: Bakhtiian had started a fire. He rubbed at his eyes, pausing in the action to rest his forehead on a palm.
Tess stood, unsteadily, and gathered together the blankets-few enough with this bitter cold. 'I'll make a bed for you,' she said, and carried them over to the couch of branches she had laid earlier in the day.
He glared bleakly at her. 'You'll have a fever by morning. Dry your clothes first.'
She knelt by the fire. The heat steamed off her. A draft carried the smoke up and out, and the fuel burned merrily, snapping and crackling. Then she realized that he was taking his clothes off. She averted her gaze and stared at the horses.
'I said dry your clothes.'
'I am.' She peeled the cold, wet cloth of her red shirt away from her skin, but it reattached itself an instant later, and she flinched.
There was a silence. She did not look to see what his expression was. His red shirt lay on the ground next to the fire. A moment later, his right boot joined it, and then his trousers, laid out to absorb the heat.
'Soerensen.' His voice was hoarse with pain or anger. 'This is not a request. Take them off.' A flutter in the air, and a blanket struck her on the side of her face. Forced to turn, she could not help but look at him. He was entirely covered, wrapped quite primly in a blanket, only his feet showing, where they were thrust out close to the flames. His face was white with exhaustion, but he also looked annoyed. Seeing her turn, he pulled an edge of the blanket deliberately across his face, so that he could not see her.
'Oh, God,' sighed Tess. She stripped and wrapped the blanket around herself. It was damp but offered warmth despite that. After a time she actually felt her toes and fingers. The darkness deepened as night came on
