Stefan took two steps more and fell to his knees.
No, God, no, Lisaveta pleaded, and she bargained her soul in the following seconds as she urged her pony to more speed. Don't let him die… I'll do anything. She offered up every sacrifice and overture and resolution for the future if the gods would only heed her cry.
And then Stefan slowly came to his feet.
'Thank you,' she whispered, her throat thick with tears.
Stefan stood absolutely still and waited, his breathing ragged, drawing in great gulps of air to his gasping lungs, not capable at the moment of taking another step. His saber wound on his shoulder had opened again with the effort required to transport Haci through the snow, and he could feel the warm blood seeping through his shirt. But he was smiling. He was gaunt and bone-weary and bearded and weak but smiling, because a miracle had occurred and Lisaveta was here.
It took nearly five full minutes for Lisaveta to reach him- five motionless minutes, five windswept, snow-gusting minutes of thankfulness and joy.
She threw herself off her horse at the end as though she had wings, and crashed through the last short distance of drifted snow in great swooping leaps, despite the weight of Stefan's heavy fur coat.
Stefan's arms opened in welcome, his black burkah flaring out in dark winged folds, and she fell into his embrace, her hat toppling into the snow, her tears freezing on her cheeks, laughing and crying and wordless against the splendor of her feelings. They held each other in flushed and trembling silence for long moments, afraid to speak lest they break the spell and the fantasy disappear, wanting only to preserve the spell if it were an illusion.
They were sweetly warm, engulfed in a heated enchantment as if they alone with their utter joy could melt the snows of Kurdistan. But at last, Stefan tentatively touched Lisaveta's face, felt the corporeal reality of its silky texture, brushed his roughened fingertips across the soft curve of her mouth and dared to say, 'You're real.'
Her face was lifted to his, flushed and rosy-cheeked, snow-flakes clinging to her lashes, her golden eyes as sunshine beautiful as he'd remembered, her smile more perfect than memory. 'I was afraid, too.' And her arms tightened around his waist.
Concealing his wince of pain he smiled back. 'I'd dreamed so often the past weeks of precisely this, I thought I'd hallucinated.'
'Kiss me, please,' Lisaveta whispered, her simple plea underscored with fear and uncertainty. Could she be imagining all this in the desperation of her longing? If he kissed her, if she felt the coolness of his lips on hers, could she in safety know he was real?
'I'll kiss you for a lifetime,' Stefan murmured, and touched her lips gently, a sweet aching tenderness filling his heart and soul. The snow blew past them and around them, sparkling crystals falling and melting on their faces, the darkening twilight of the storm surrounding them, and they were complete and whole.
'In all the world…' Lisaveta whispered, the reality of their kiss lingering breath-warm on each other's mouth.
'I was coming home,' Stefan answered, his voice husky. He understood her cryptic phrase, knowing that while they both lived, they would have found each other through distance and time and adversity. 'But, thank you,' he murmured, a small smile creasing his wind-chapped cheek, 'for shortening the journey.'
'Nikki let me come,' Lisaveta replied, her voice still tremulous with emotion.
'Let?' Stefan teased in familiar mocking irony.
And she thought how relentlessly strong he was and seemingly indomitable, holding her against the buffeting wind, chaffing her with his habitual impudence as though they weren't standing knee-deep in the desolate snow- swept landscape of Kurdistan, as if he hadn't been lost to the world for weeks, as though he weren't so debilitated he'd only raised himself from his knees moments ago.
'You're wounded,' she exclaimed, guilt-ridden she'd only considered her own happiness.
'Not too badly,' he casually replied, the blood from his saber cut running down his chest in a sluggish trickle.
'And I've been thinking only of myself,' she apologized. 'Let me do something, help you somehow…am I hurting you?' Her arms fell away in self-reproach.
Stefan grinned. 'I'm fine, darling, more than fine now. I could recuperate from sheer joy alone. But Haci, though-' His tone abruptly changed, concern drawing his brows together, his voice deepening. 'He needs a doctor. I love you,' he went on in another mutation of resonance, 'you know that, but-' His arms, too, released their hold and he half turned to gauge the progress in bringing Haci forward. Turning back, he softly said, 'He's like a brother to me. He's the only one of my bodyguard to survive.' His voice broke briefly as he finished. 'He saved my life… and now… I must save his.'
At the road Haci was transferred from Nikki's arms into Stefan's, and they slowly traveled the last few miles to the caravansary. On the way, Stefan related in a neutral voice how he and his bodyguard had stood together in those last desperate minutes before they'd been overrun and how one by one they'd fallen. He'd been the last standing and his final memory was the rushing charge of Turks coming in for the kill as he screamed his defiance, his sword raised high. He'd been struck from behind a moment later by a saber blow and blackness engulfed him.
'Haci tells me,' Stefan quietly said to Nikki and Lisaveta, who flanked his mount as they rode side by side, 'he regained consciousness, found I was still breathing and dragged me away into the cellar of a nearby house until the fighting passed us by. We'd been saved, he said, by two Turkish soldiers falling dead on top of us and protecting us from the next counter-attack.'
Nikki noticed Stefan didn't mention how important that concealment was. It had been a close thing apparently. The Turks routinely bayonetted all enemy wounded. They didn't take prisoners. Their inhumanity extended to their own troops, as well. They brought no ambulances to war, and the handful of surgeons and hospital staff were primarily volunteers from Europe.
'He found horses after the main assault had moved on and carried me away from what appeared at the time to be a Russian defeat.' Stefan's smile was gentle. 'Obviously, there was a reversal.'
'Thanks to your charge, the story goes,' Nikki said.
'Thanks to my soldiers,' Stefan replied softly.
'He didn't know the ultimate conclusion of the battle when we left, but there were Turks everywhere, Haci said, so he took me into the mountains. He found a shepherd's hut with enough goat cheese and dried millet stored against next season to sustain us. In nursing me back from the grave he endangered his own health. I think he has lung fever…and I didn't know when we started out yesterday whether we were walking into enemy territory or not, but he wouldn't live without medical care so I took the risk. Perhaps we could get to a village at least… You were a miracle…an answered prayer.' He looked suddenly defenseless and vulnerable, as he must have felt knowing Haci needed help or he'd die.
'Haci must live,' he said, exposed and powerless against the angel of death, his voice no more than a whisper. 'I pledged him my word.'
They were traveling down one of the deep-slashed ravines, the red sandstone rising like lofty enclosing walls on either side, the wind silenced, the snow falling gently now in the motionless air.
'We'll be at Meskoi in less than an hour now, Stefan,' Nikki gently said, 'and Haci will have help.'
Stefan wrapped his burkah more tightly around his friend, oblivious to his own pain and wounds. 'He was raised with me like a brother, we've fought together since we've been sixteen,' he murmured, 'and I promised him.'
Reaching out, Lisaveta touched Stefan's arm, and when he turned to her, his dark eyes were wet with tears. 'Our sons will be friends,' he softly whispered. 'I promised him.'
'They will be, Stepka,' Lisaveta quietly replied, wishing she could bear some of his pain and ease his sorrow. 'We're almost there now. He won't die.'
Chapter Twenty-One
You
