We reached it. They pushed me onto a small box, and a noose was fastened around my neck. The colonel shouted a command in the local language, and a roar of approval went up from the crowd. I looked up. The sky was a perfect pink, like a sliced salmon fished from a river in my distant homeland. I took a deep breath and smelled smoke and men and horses. It seemed fitting.
They kicked the box away from under me, and I fell, the noose tightening.
I think they had miscalculated. At well over six feet tall, my feet grazed the frosty ground just enough to stop me from choking. Some of the men laughed, but more were angry. One of the guards wrenched the noose from around my neck and dispatched a soldier to climb up the wagon bed and see if he could somehow make it shorter. I stood there, contemplating the sunrise. In the fall, the shock and expectation of death had made me attempt to jerk my hands up to my neck. My bindings had broken. My hands were free. At the moment, though, I could not quite work out how to turn this to my advantage. I was surrounded by a mob of baying soldiers intent on my death. Four mounted officers kept them back. So what I was supposed to do with my bare hands was beyond me.
One thing was for sure—I would not go down without a fight. I’d rather be beaten to death than hung, although it was a close thing, and hanging had its advantages too. Of course, they might be planning to cut me down whilst still alive and throw me to the mob anyway…. I was not in a very good frame of mind by this time.
Suddenly a commotion behind the mob caught my attention: a stray horse. I could not see too well because my face was covered with blood still streaming from my wounds, and both eyes were partly closed from swelling. But I’d know Xavier anywhere. I wet my mouth as best I could and called to him. He heard me. He could not work out why we were being separated by angry men. He was stepping daintily, trying to be polite, snorting with dismay. I saw a soldier grab him roughly by the mane. Xavier rose and dashed him in the head. Even with my poor vision, I saw the blood fly in an arc through the clear air. Then pandemonium broke out. Armies do not employ horses as cavalry because they are beautiful to look at. They use them because they terrify foot soldiers. Xavier had endured enough. He was a warhorse, and he went for the mob of men holding him back from me. He whirled around, leaped forward, and brained two more. The rest fell back.
At a gallop, Xavier reached me. He had no saddle, and that saved me. If he had been saddled, my instincts would not have kicked in as they did. I flew onto his back and twisted one hand in his mane as I had learned to do as a boy. Such instinct does not leave you, despite disuse. I lay low upon his naked back as he galloped through the camp. The ride was perilous, as he swerved and shied, reared and jumped. I could feel every muscle and almost read his mind as he ran. No one could catch him, for they had nothing to catch: no bridle, no reins, no stirrups.
We cleared the edge of the camp. I could hear pursuit. This was the easy part, though. I let him find his spirit, and he took off like an arrow in flight, all the stretch of his enormously long legs and powerful muscles. The sounds of pursuit faded, but I could hear another set of hoofbeats coming at us from the side. I glanced over. Aleksey lay low over the back of his warhorse, giving her free rein, urging her forward. We met, and our horses fell into a matched rhythm of speed until it seemed we were as one in this as we were now in all things.
CHAPTER 20
WHENTHEREwas no sign of pursuit, we slowed to a walk.
I am ashamed to say I promptly fell off Xavier’s sweaty back and landed inelegantly on the frozen earth.
Aleksey was at my side before I could rise, his hands ripping at my clothes. In other circumstances, I would have enjoyed this. He was only searching me for injury, however, cursing me roundly, so it was not enjoyable at all.
Eventually, I batted away his concern and with some assistance regained my seat on Xavier.
Aleksey was working himself up to something. I could tell by the angry set of his back, and we walked the horses to recover. When he spoke, I understood the source of his anguish.
“I could not return for you, Niko, although I heard you were captured. I could not risk being captured myself and for knowledge of the planned attack not to reach our friends. Do you forgive me?”
I made to reply, but my lip split open on the attempt, and the inconvenience silenced me. He gave me a furious glance, as if my battering were extremely inconvenient forhim, and added, “I knew Xavier would find you, so I released him. I was right in that, at least.”
I nodded, touching a fingertip to my lip. I couldn’t see much and blinked from one swollen eye to the other, testing my vision on distant trees.
I was in a bad way. I had only my shirt and breeches on, and my beating had been severe. Neither of us knew exactly where we were, and Aleksey was fraught with the need to find his army and use the intelligence we had been at such pains to win.
He didn’t need to be distracted by me.
I straightened my shoulders. “It all looks worse than it is. I am quite well. We need to ride hard now.”
Aleksey gave me such a look of approbation, a combination of love and admiration, that I felt invigorated already.
We kicked the horses to a gallop.
Wehadto ride.
The three days and two nights of our return to the army were very miserable for me. I could not even smile without pain. Pissing was agony. Aleksey said I need not do one and he would help me with the other, but that split my lip again, and I muttered, “You would smile too, if you had escaped a noose.”
“I would not be so foolish to put my head in one in the first place. Stop smiling, Niko! You need to heal.”
I ruffled his hair. “I cannot think what makes me smile so.”
WHENWEarrived back in the lines, Aleksey was not initially recognized by his soldiers on sentry. I certainly wasn’t. It would take days more before my face became recognizable, and neither of us knew the daily password. I think we both realized how close we came to failing our mission in the worst way possible—being killed by our own sentries—and it made our return to camp somber rather than triumphant.
Aleksey immediately called a meeting of all his officers.
Maps were produced, and Aleksey used them to explain what the Saxefalia army was attempting to do. He had been right: it would have been wholesale slaughter. In this part of the world, armies fought wars with the trusted method of forming up into lines facing each other and then just marching forward. It seemed utterly alien to me. Wars I had fought had been stealthy, fluid, and constantly full of feints, counterattacks, confusion, and surprise. Here, war was like a formal dance with partners declared, the music decided upon, and only the skill of the step yet to be seen. The Saxefalia plan to set upon Aleksey’s army whilst they still trundled along the road—strung out, not in battle order, soldiers not in fighting squares, weapons not ready, cavalry not even mounted (possibly even playing with sticks and little balls)—was a revolutionary divergence from accepted practice. The question was, how could we best use the information we now had?
Half of Aleksey’s officers wanted to do to the enemy what they planned to do to us: ambush them while they traveled to ambush us. It was far too complicated to organize, however, and Aleksey knew this. Maneuvers such as the Saxefalians were about to attempt took years to practice with soldiery: new drills, new orders, and new use of weapons. The other half wanted to divert from the route along which we were expected and fall on the Saxefalian rear echelon, which Aleksey and I had just left. A victory was fairly guaranteed there, given our vastly superior numbers and their recent unfortunate fire. I could see Aleksey was tempted, especially when he looked at my face and recalled what had nearly happened to me.
Finally, when everyone had had a say, he turned back to me. “What do you think, Doctor? Any suggestions?”
