many years on this barbaric planet? Because he had seen death before, because he could shrug it off now, did that give him license to despise them for their innocence? Marco was still watching her. Waiting. Seeing if she passed the test, which was no test at all except that he wanted it to be one. A man moaned, sobbing in pain. Goddess, these were the men too injured to ride. Another man was carried past her while she stood, hesitating; another man who was dead. She took two steps, three, then four, to the side of the wagon.
A man lay there, on his back. His chest rose and fell, rasping. An arrow protruded from his eye.
If she thought about it, she would scream. She knew it. But she was damned if she would give Marco Burckhardt the satisfaction of seeing her give up. And oh, sweet Goddess, the pain they were feeling. It tore at her, it hurt, to see them suffer.
She unscrewed the canteen and poured some water into the cup. Spooning it out, she got some through the lips of the man with the arrow in his eye-he was still partially conscious-and then she moved on to the next wagon.
As long as she didn't think, she could manage her job. Each canteen went a long way, because these men were so badly hurt that mostly a spoon or two, fed through their dry lips, was all they could take. At some point she must have gone through all ten wagons, but by then two more wagons had come trundling in. About a third of the men were dead. They were carried away and set down in the grass. Some of the least injured jaran men carried brush out into the grass and laid out a circle of tinder; for what, she could not imagine. Funeral rites? She dismissed the thought as quickly as it came, knelt by a rider propped up on his saddle, and lifted the cup to his lips for him to drink.
'Nak kha tsuva?' she asked him. He managed the barest of smiles and whispered his name so softly that she couldn't make it out, but by that smile, she suddenly understood that he would probably live, although blood stained his abdomen and his right leg was sheared through to the bone.
She rose and went on to the next man. And the next.
Ran out of water and trudged across to get more from
Rajiv. The moon was up. Its light cast hazy shadows on the pale expanse of grass and the monstrous angles of the tents. A man screamed in pain. A moment later the scream cut off, abruptly. A million stars blazed in the black sky.
Crossing back to the three new wagons that had just come in, she strayed past the field of the dead. Several jaran men rifled the dead bodies, but in a reverent way that made her understand that this was part of their culture, removing the silk shirts, unbuckling belts, rolling up tassetted armor, collecting sabers.
She got to the new wagons just as Marco did. Halted opposite him, staring in at six men thrown together on the floor. One was dead. She could recognize the dead ones instantly by now. Marco leaned in and pulled aside armor and cloth, looking for wounds, gauging their seriousness. They looked mutilated, all of them.
'This one, to surgery now. Stanai.' Marco's jaran associate spoke to some waiting men. They lifted the wounded man gently from the wagon and carried him off toward the tents. 'He can wait. He can wait. This one, stanai.' Marco paused by the sixth man, a young rider with black hair. His eyes were closed. His breathing came in liquid bursts, blood bubbling and sucking on his chest; a trickle of blood ran out of his mouth. Marco probed under armor for the wound. Then he shook his head. The young rider's eyes opened, and he looked up at the sky and then at the men surrounding him. He spoke, weak words but clear.
Marco shook his head again, but he said nothing.
'Shouldn't he go straight to surgery?' Diana demanded. All the riders started, shifting to look at her and then away.
'Lungs,' said Marco. 'He won't last another hour. If he's conscious at all, now, it's only because he's in shock and can't feel the wound.'
'But you can't just leave him-'
Marco shrugged and went on to the next wagon. Riders carried the other wounded men away, and lifted out the dead one, leaving the black-haired boy alone in the wagon. He watched them, but he said nothing more.
He knew he was dying.
Diana started to cry. Tears trickled down her face. The worst thing she could do was to cry; it weakened all her defenses, it was idiotic. There was nothing she could do for him, nothing anyone could do.
Then he saw her. His face lit with wonder. 'Elinu,' he said, and he smiled.
Fiercely, Diana wiped the tears from her cheeks. She slung the canteen over her shoulder and crawled into the wagon. Getting her hands under his shoulders, she lifted him up and cradled his head in her lap. His eyes were clear, perfectly clear, as he stared up at her.
'Nak kha tsuva?' she asked.
'Arkady,' he whispered. His breath rattled in his throat. 'Arkady Suvorin.' He said something more, words she did not know, but that one word again, elinu. She faltered. What else could she do but stare at him, and he at her. What use? She wanted to cry, but that would do neither of them any good. She grasped, and found the first leading role she had played, as an ingenue. And said it to him:
' 'Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say 'Ay;' And I will take thy word.' ' He gazed at her, rapt, as she went on with the lines, every fiber of her being concentrated on him. What else could she do, but ease him in his dying? ' 'Therefore pardon me, And not impute this yielding to light love, Which the dark night hath so discovered.' '
But he was dead by then, slipped silently away. He lay still. His chest neither rose nor fell, and a last drop of blood congealed on his chin. But his face was at peace.
'Bravo,' said Marco softly, from so close beside her that she would have jumped if she weren't so bitterly exhausted.
She stared at the dead man, his slack face, his dark hair.
'You're braver than I thought,' said Marco. He made it sound like an apology.
' 'I have no joy of this contract tonight,' ' she said in a low voice. She lifted the dead boy's head off her lap and laid him down on the wagon floor. Stood up, brushing off her trousers and shaking out her knee-length tunic. Picked up the cup. Marco came around to the end of the wagon and caught her by the waist before she could clamber down, swinging her down, holding her. She felt the flush all along her neck, up into her cheeks. One of his hands rested at the small of her back, pressing her into him, against his chest and his hips. His breathing was unsteady, and he bent his head and kissed her lightly on the lips. Lightly, but he shook with some extreme emotion, desire for her, certainly, and perhaps even sorrow or rage at his night's task.
'The other wounded-' She squirmed away, but he held her.
'No more. It's quiet. They're taken care of, or they're dead.'
Out here, the two of them stood alone with the dead, those left in the wagons and those laid out in neat lines in the grass.
'I love you,' said Marco.
Diana wedged her hands in between them and shoved him away. 'Don't patronize me, you bastard,' she screamed, and then wrenched away from him and ran back to camp, not caring who stared.
Campfires ringed the cluster of tents. She slowed, coming to her senses. Or at least, coming to a sense of her dignity again. Her breathing came in short bursts, ragged, and she impatiently wiped another tear away from the corner of her mouth. Wiped at her nose with the back of one hand. The canteen sloshed against her right hip. She was gripping the cup so hard that her fingers ached, and then she realized that the fingers ached as well from the grip of the young rider, Anatoly Sakhalin.
As if the name, rising to her thoughts, was a talisman, she saw him. He sat inclined against a saddle, his face illuminated by firelight, talking to a man crouched beside him. He glanced her way, marking her movement, but his glance caught on her and his entire body tensed as he recognized her. The man next to him shifted and looked her way. Bakhtiian.
As if with a will of their own, her feet took her over to them, and she knelt beside Anatoly Sakhalin.
'We were just talking of you, my lady,' said Bakhtiian in Rhuian. His face glowed in the firelight, as if the heavens, even in the dark of night, could not bear to leave him unilluminated. 'I am grateful, to you and to the others, for your work here today. I think I would have lost many more riders without your help.''
Diana blushed and looked at her hands, which rested on her knees. She could feel Anatoly Sakhalin's gaze on her like a weight, pressing against her. Bakhtiian said something, short but not unkind, to the young man, and she looked up to see Anatoly avert his gaze from her.
'It's Dr. Hierakis you should thank,' said Diana finally, finding her voice again.
