It was glariss cheese. The sight of it made Tess's stomach turn, and then Katya, all-unknowing, lifted the crumbling, pungent mass up to Tess's face, just to be helpful. It reeked.
'Excuse me,' said Tess politely. She clapped a hand over her mouth and ran to get outside the wagons so she could throw up with some privacy. But the run, the adrenaline, the abrupt removal of the awful cheese, shut off some reflex. She fell to her knees, gagged, choked, coughed, but nothing came up. She sat back with her eyes shut and tried to concentrate on anything but the sick feeling in her stomach.
'Tess!'
Of course Ilya would find her like this. She opened her eyes to see him dismiss his entourage and run over to her.
'Dr. Hierakis said you weren't hurt.' He sounded angry as he knelt beside her. She sighed and leaned against him and buried her face in his shirt. Thank the gods that he smelled good to her. She took deep breaths, inhaling his scent.
'I'm not hurt,' she said into his chest.
He tilted her head up and studied her with a frown. 'You look pale. Anatoly says you fought well yesterday.' He offered her the praise grudgingly enough. 'I know that-'He stopped, grimacing, and she could see what it cost him to go on. '-I have been unfair about this in the past. It's only that I fear to lose you, Tess. But Anatoly needs new riders to make up those he lost in the battle. Archery in battle! Gods.' He lapsed into silence and just held her close.
She watched him. He had a slight smile on his face and a distant look in his eyes, a gleam, plotting, thinking, working out how he could use this new development to his advantage. As he would. Ilya would not let tradition hold him back now that the advantages of using mounted archers were so clearly shown, and now that someone else, not him, had been forced to use them for the first time. It was not his innovation; he himself had not broken with tradition. But now that it was done, now that Mother Sakhalin had seen her own granddaughter ride into battle, seen the women used so effectively, seen the devastating effect on a khaja unit larger than their own, Ilya could exploit it.
'So,' he said at last, his attention returning to her, 'I will put no obstacles in your way if you wish to ride with Anatoly's jahar.'
Gods, what he must have gone through to bring himself to this point. 'But, Ilya, I have my own jahar. My envoys.'
'Yes,' he agreed, looking guilty, looking trapped.
She chuckled. 'I know you offered that only to get me out of riding in the army.''
'That's not the only reason,' he exclaimed, looking offended. 'It's perfectly true you're well suited to it, but you have always been so determined to ride with the army to fight.'
She sighed and stood up, and he stood with her, still holding her. 'Yes, well, and I fought. I'll fight again, if I have to. But I've decided that a jahar of envoys is exactly what I want. Eventually, with good enough diplomats, your army won't have to fight at all. Think how many lives that will spare. Ilya, why are you here, anyway?'
He surveyed the field of battle, the square of wagons even now unwinding into the line of march. The last smoke from the pyre dissipated into the cool morning air. ' 'We discovered that a whole unit of khaja soldiers had circled wide around our line and gone back into the hills. Of course we came back, knowing that they might threaten the wagon train. With the line of wagons drawn out so thin along this narrow road, and the rearguard such a distance behind-' He shrugged. 'But what were you doing out here, my love?'
'Trying to throw up.'
He shook his head, looking perplexed, and cupped her face in his hands. 'You aren't well? I was sick the first time I fought in a battle, too.'
Tess smiled. 'Were you? That gives me hope.' She paused and thought back, calculating. She was over two months along, Earth standard. Surely that wasn't too early to know. Aleksi had already guessed. 'I'm pregnant.'
He let go of her as if she burned him. Then, an instant later, he hugged her so tightly that she could not breathe. She wheezed. He pushed her back, holding her by the shoulders, and just gazed at her. He was alight. He was radiant. He blazed.
'Oh, God,' said Tess, 'I'd forgotten how insufferably smug you get when you're happy.'
He laughed and kissed her, right out there in the open where anyone could see them. 'Oh, Tess.' That was all. They just stood there for a while, not needing to say anything more.
Beyond, the first of the wagons lurched forward. 'I'd better go,' said Tess. 'Mother Sakhalin doesn't wait for anyone, including me.'
'No. You'll ride with me today.'
'Will I?' she asked, trying not to laugh at his autocratic tone.
'Yes, you will. If it pleases you to do so, my wife.'
'It pleases me to do so, my husband.' They went to find their horses.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Diana would never have believed that she could sleep so soundly after living through a battle, but she did. She slept snuggled in between Quinn and Oriana, for comfort, under one of the wagons, for safety, and if she dreamed, she did not recall it in the morning. Anatoly spent all night on guard. In the morning they hitched up the wagons and went on as if nothing untoward had happened: nothing except the lingering ash of the funeral pyre and the mound of khaja dead. She was happy to leave it behind.
And yet, handling the reins of the wagon, she felt-not happy, not that, but valiant. She had seen the worst, she had run out into the line of fire with no weapon but only a shield to protect her, and she had saved lives. Terror had racked her, but she had done it anyway. And the worst terror hadn't been on her own account. The worst had been seeing Anatoly ride out of the protective square of wagons straight into the other army. Had she even breathed between the time of watching him ride away and seeing him return?
All day the wagons rolled on through a narrow valley whose heights rose in stark green relief against the hazy blue of the sky. In the late afternoon they drew up in a broad field that bordered a rushing stream, and the word came down the line that they were allowed to set up tents, for the sake of the wounded. Diana delivered her wagon to a Veselov girl and then walked back along the train to find the Company, to see if Owen intended to rehearse tonight. Although surely even Owen would allow them a break after what had happened yesterday.
She had to stop, though, to stare. Green still, the heights, ragged and steep and falling down to the fiat bed of the valley through which they rode. In the forty days since Anatoly had returned, their road had followed this kind of path: long valleys snaking along river bottoms through the hills and then a sudden ascent over a pass only to dip down again into another green valley. The heat grew stronger each day; perhaps the summer would soon bake the hills brown, but for now, it was beautiful. They had been harried a bit, but yesterday had been the first time a real skirmish had hit the train. Pockets of the basins were dense with cultivated fields and villages, but most of it seemed to be pastureland. The only city she had actually seen had been the ruined Farisa city, but Anatoly assured her that far greater cities, Habakar cities, lay ahead of them.
And there he came, leading his horse along the line of wagons, looking for her.
It was a little embarrassing, how quickly she smiled, seeing him. It was gratifying, how quickly he smiled, seeing her. He loved her. He said so every day, and she believed him. Because it was true. Because a Sakhalin prince had no cause to lie-that much she had learned about the jaran and their various tribes-and because Anatoly wasn't the kind of person who needed or wanted to lie.
He came up to her, glanced around, and thought better of kissing her in public where anyone could see. But his eyes kissed her by the very light that shone in them, and his smile promised more.
'My heart,' she said in khush. 'You must be tired.'
'Not when I see you.' Definitely promising more. 'My grandmother wants to see you.'
If she had actually tripped and fallen, the sudden plunge could not have jarred her more. 'But I don't want to see your grandmother,' she said without thinking. The old harridan practically haunted her, asking every other day at least about supper arrangements and where Diana's tent was sited in the Company camp. Making sure her
