East Read online

  I stood and trailed her to a neighboring tent. In this one were two children under the age of five who appeared to be sharpening knives and arrowheads. It was definitely a different world, if children this young were comfortable with weapons.

  I changed out of the ruined white silks into a sturdier, more comfortable linen tunic, loose pants and wool overtunic that reached mid-thigh. She took the white layers and carefully folded them before we returned to the other tent.

  Batu was on his feet when we entered, testing his body. The wine goblet was empty. He wore a tunic and had replaced his weapons. His face was beginning to swell, giving his features a lumpy appearance.

  “You are prepared to leave, goddess?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Are you?” I looked at his broken arm.

  “I have traveled with far worse,” he assured me.

  “Okay then.”

  He clasped arms with his cousin, spoke a few quiet words and then strode out of the tent.

  “Thank you for your hospitality,” I said to the women.

  They both smiled.

  I trailed Batu into the morning. Six horses awaited us, two with saddles, two with supplies and two bareback.

  “Can you ride, goddess?” he asked, pausing beside a grey horse.

  “Yes.” I stopped beside him, admiring the pretty creature. I rubbed its forehead.

  He took the reins. “Then let us ride.”

  I mounted the horse. The wooden saddle was less comfortable than I imagined though it felt sturdy. He adjusted the stirrups with no sign his arm was bothering him before mounting his horse.

  Wheeling his to face the east, he wove his way through the encampment and the herds of ponies between it and the river.

  We headed upstream, to the north, after reaching the river. I glanced back towards the burning city several times, plagued by fear and doubt. My last known location was the city. I had assumed if Taylor’s people found me where Carter originally dropped me off, then someone could find me again, no matter where I was.

  I hope.

  Chapter Seven

  We rode north until it was sunset, passing over low hills and through patches of forests until we reached an area of rolling plains. There was no road, and we ran across no one, once we left the river. I wasn’t sure what I expected – maybe a rudimentary form of hotel? – But it wasn’t to see Batu unloading one of his horses in the middle of a field.

  “We’re stopping here?” I asked.

  “We are.”

  I climbed off my horse and grimaced. My legs were sore and my ass hurting from the day on horseback. Not much of a fan of camping, I watched Batu begin to build a fire with grasses, small branches and what looked like dried cow poop.

  I sat opposite him with a groan.

  “Can you hunt?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Fish?”

  “No.”

  “Shoot a bow?”

  “No.”

  “Cook over a fire?”

  “No.”

  He glanced at me then the horses. “Can you manage to take their saddles off, ugly one?”

  “Yes.” I was almost relieved he wasn’t upset that I had no real value whatsoever in this place. “How is your arm?”

  He shrugged.

  I rolled my eyes and got to my feet. Limping to the horses, I stripped off their saddles and bridles with no grace. It was hard enough trying to remain on my wobbly feet. I wasn’t able to lower anything to the ground without my legs feeling like they were going to buckle.

  The horses moved away and began munching on grass. Batu had stopped near a stream, and one headed to it for water.

  “Will they run away?” I called to him.

  “No. They follow me wherever I go.”

  Like really big puppies. I wasn’t totally convinced animals I knew to be pretty independent were going to remain, but this was his world. In the morning, he’d be healed anyway, so he could chase them down.

  I went to the stream and knelt beside it, loving the peaceful sound of rushing water. I rinsed my face but feared drinking from it without asking Batu about its quality. Tugging off my over tunic, I shivered in the cool evening breeze and peeled off my bandages to clean my wounds. After my first adventure, I’d learned to be a little less prissy. I could bathe with a bowl of water or a stream. There were no copper pots out here for bathrooms, and I guessed I was about to become a little less prissy than before by going to the bathroom in the wild.

  My arms didn’t seem infected in the last light of the day. They hurt, though, and I had a stress headache.

  “I will not hunt today,” Batu said, joining me.

  “Fine with me. Is this water safe to drink?”

  “Yes.”

  I drank my fill and sat back on my heels. Stars were brilliant on the side of the sky opposite of the horizon, and the moon was a sliver.

  “The night I came here, the moon was like this,” I murmured, a pang of longing in my chest.

  Already I saw more stars than I ever had in southern California, and the sun wasn’t fully gone yet. This world … Batu’s world … was raw, unspoiled, beautiful.

  But I didn’t feel part of it. I didn’t know if I ever would. If I spent too much time thinking of the aunt and uncle who raised me, of Taylor, of how this might be penance … I’d cry.

  I wasn’t a crier. I didn’t like feeling sad or down or depressed. I had a sunny disposition, although, since arriving here, it had been more like this twilighty time of night, a combination of dark and light where there had only been sunshine before. The loss of Taylor was forever on my soul. This much I knew.

  What would Amy Pond do? I asked myself, thoughts on one of my favorite Doctor Who companions. She’d believe the Doctor could find her and trek on until he does.

  Carter was my Doctor Who. I didn’t care that Taylor’s people had found me. It was possible I leaned towards Carter because I had met him and experienced a sense of kinship, however weird and improbable that was. Moreover, I knew how smart he was. He had done the impossible, according to Taylor, albeit, somewhat imperfectly.

  I touched the back of my head, where I imagined the microchips were implanted by Carter. He had almost mastered technology an entire agency of time travelers viewed as impossible.

  If he did this, he could find me.

  Do I want him to? I couldn’t trust him or his intentions. He also claimed not to be able to return me to my time. Confusion jammed up my ability to reason, to identify what I really wanted – and what was possible.

  Maybe it’s better I stay lost in history.

  But here?

  “I miss home.” I sighed. “I don’t think I’ll ever see it again, Batu.”

  He was quiet, gaze on the sky.

  “If you couldn’t go home to the steppes, what would you do?” I asked the warrior beside me, genuinely curious to hear his grounded take on reality.

  “I would make a life wherever I was,” he said simply.

  “You wouldn’t try to go home?”

  “I would, unless it was impossible.”

  He spoke to my situation, not his. There was no impossibility large enough in a world this small for him not to return home. I had nearly a thousand years of time between me and my home. He just had to travel for a few weeks on horseback to get anywhere in the known world at this time.

  The breeze tickled the back of my neck. I picked up my over tunic and pulled it on.

  “What if you weren’t convinced it was impossible?” I asked.

  “Then I would try until I succeeded or until I knew it was not possible.”

  There was tightness around his eyes that warned me his well-masked pain was wearing on him after the long day of travel. I was still uneasy about being around him but finding it difficult to recall him as the monster I’d seen him become when we were close like this and he seemed so … normal. Pleasant almost.

  “The fire will keep wolves away,” he told me and got to his feet.

  I trailed
him to the small bonfire. He had stacked the saddles and his belongings neatly on one side of the fire. He had put up a pup tent-sized shelter consisting of a felt wall connected to the ground on one side and a boulder on the other. It was going to be a tight fit … unless it was for him and I was on my own.

  Sitting with another grunt, I sighed when I was down and my leg muscles could relax.

  Batu passed me dried cheese and meat, along with milk. The meat had no flavoring but was tender.

  I ate what he gave me and gazed into the fire, feeling a little lost in my thoughts. He tossed me a pouch, and I blinked. It landed in the grass beside me.

  “What is it?” I asked and plucked it up.

  “I carried these since I was a child.”

  I dumped the contents of the pouch into my hand. “Moldavite,” I murmured and leaned forward until the fire turned the dark chunks of glass a familiar green.

  “I was born near where you fell from the sky,” he added. “My bloodline supplies the guardians. We all carry these to remind us of the sacred honor. They came with you, did they not?”

  “Yeah,” I said, smiling.

  “Does this remind you of home?”

  I considered how to answer. Not of home, but it was a connection to my time. As a hobby geologist, I had a fascination with the green glass before leaving on my adventure and awoke in the eighteen forties surrounded by it, and again seventy years ago when Carter dropped me off in the steppes.

  “It helps,” I replied, touched by the thoughtfulness of someone who beat his opponent to death barehanded not twelve hours before.

  “You can fashion a new crown.” His eyes went to the delicate silver ring around my head in amusement.

  I had forgotten about it and touched the filigreed silver. I always wanted to be a princess when I was little. Maybe a goddess of sorts was close enough. “Can I keep one?” I asked and studied the murky green glass.

  He hesitated.

  “Or … maybe I can see them whenever I’m feeling homesick?” I added, realizing how important the fragments of Moldavite were to him if they represented his family honor.

  “I like this better.”

  Replacing them in the pouch, I tossed them back to him. “Thank you, Batu.”

  “I understand.” He shrugged.

  You are so weird. Sweet in one instance, collecting human ears in the next … I didn’t understand what I was dealing with, because he was too foreign to the kind of people I’d met thus far in my life.

  “When you are ready to sleep, we have shelter,” he said and motioned to the pup tent.

  “I’m ready,” I said, exhausted by my day. “Will we both fit?”

  “We’ll make do, ugly one.”

  Whatever. I still didn’t get his sense of humor. I went to the tent and saw he’d put down one blanket on the ground, and there was another rolled and waiting. He didn’t follow me, for which I was somewhat grateful. I was tired enough to tell him this sucked, and I didn’t think it was the right emotion considering he didn’t have to help me survive out here at all.

  I crawled into the pup tent. The felt blocked the breeze. While nowhere near as comfortable as a bed, it had to do. Resting on my side, facing the felt wall with my back to the center of the tent, I closed my eyes.

  I think I do want Carter to find me. But I wasn’t sure. What was worst about everything I’d been through: the helplessness of knowing I could do nothing to change my fate? I was either being manipulated by others or … lost.

  I slept deeply at first, until I rolled from my side onto my stomach. Pain from my hands and arms shot through me, and I jerked awake.

  “Owww,” I muttered and delicately shifted off of them once more. My lower body was so stiff, it trumped my arm pain, if only for a moment.

  “What is it, goddess?” Batu’s sleepy voice came from beside me.

  My back was pressed to his once I straightened. He was warm and solid. I stifled tears of pain and released the breath I was holding.

  “Nothing. My arms hurt,” I answered him.

  “Mine does not.”

  “Good for you!” I snapped, irritated once again my magic worked on everyone but me.

  He chuckled. His breathing deepened, and he slid back into sleep.

  I rolled onto my back then side then back. Everything hurt now that I was awake. My thighs, my ass, my hips, my arms and hands. There was no comfortable position on the hard earth.

  Shifting onto my side once again, I flexed my hands to test them. They hadn’t healed at all, or at least, they felt as raw as they were when Batu’s uncle cut them.

  I moved to my back and stared into the darkness. Batu moved beside me.

  “Be still, Moonbeam,” he grumbled.

  “I can’t. Everything hurts!”

  He shifted onto his side facing me. Seconds later, his arm went around me, and he pushed and pulled me until my back was to him. Draping his over tunic over me, he pulled me into him.

  I wriggled away. “What’re you doing?”

  “A shepherd does this when a lamb is fussy.” His arm locked around me.

  “I’m not a lamb!” Trapped inside his shirt, with his ungiving frame behind me, I ceased struggling not long after I started. His scent was strong, his warmth stronger, and both began moving through my system to relax me.

  “But you are fussy.”

  There were moments when I really hated his observations. He jostled me more to slip his arm beneath my neck. He wasn’t the first man I’d slept with like this, but he was definitely the strongest. It was a little unnerving to have his powerful body at my back.

  “Shall I sing to you?” he asked.

  It’s not really singing. I was too irritated to want to explain how different his singing was from what I knew. “Maybe.”

  “What song? Sky? Grass? Water?”

  “Water.” Not that I remotely understood the difference between them.

  The low growl emanating from his chest began. His chest rumbled at my back, and the vibration entranced me before the second layer of higher pitched notes came from his mouth and nose.

  The non-song was as unusual as it was soothing. As with the first time I heard him sing, I was very quickly taken away from my own thoughts and plunged into a near trance by the droning.

  My eyes drifted closed, and I felt my body relax under the influence of his song and heat. Seconds before I fell asleep, his singing drifted off, and his breathing deepened once more. He fell asleep. Drowsiness soon softened my pain and pulled me the rest of the way under.

  I slumbered soundly in his arms and dreamt of the night Taylor was erased from the universe.

  “It is time, goddess.” Batu’s words woke me.

  I lifted my head.

  He was shifting behind me. The sudden absence of his body heat woke me fast as the predawn chill crept in. Batu left the tent.

  I sat and blinked, shivering. “Time for what? It’s not even dawn.”

  “We must leave soon. But first, you learn the bow.”

  It didn’t really sound so great. I was sore and craving coffee. Deciding I might need to know how to shoot someone if I was truly stuck here, I forced my achy body to move and left the warmth of the tent for the chilly, dark morning.

  “I am fully healed,” he said from the fire, pleased.

  I’m not. “Good,” I murmured. “In case we run into another battle today.”

  “It is possible.” He stood. “You have no survival skills, ugly one. I will teach you if I can, if you are able to learn.”

  “I can learn,” I said, somewhat taken aback. “It can’t be that hard.”

  “Steppe children begin learning when they are three seasons.” He waved me towards him and held out a bow. “They ride a horse first and then learn the bow.”

  “Three?” I echoed. “It can’t be that hard if you teach three year olds.”

  “We shall see.”

  I approached and waited.

  With no sense of personal space, as u
sual, Batu took my shoulders and turned me around then stepped into me until his chest brushed my back. He held the bow in front of me with one hand and took my other hand with his.

  He placed both my hands on the bow. “Can you draw it?” With his hands hovering, he waited for me to try.

  Determined to prove I could do what any toddler could, I braced one sore hand on the front of the bow and started to pull the taut string back.

  Or tried. It didn’t move more than an inch. Squaring my stance better, I tried once more.

  “Is this a trick bow?” I asked, puzzled.

  He took it from my hands and drew it effortlessly, even with me standing between it and him.

  “Maybe I can learn something else.”

  “The knife or sword?”

  I grimaced. I didn’t look forward to stabbing anyone. “Or … I can take care of the horses and you can kill people.”

  “You are too delicate, ugly one. I may not always be around to protect you.”

  Frowning, I took the bow and made another attempt without getting much farther. “Are you sure children can use this?” I asked.

  “They have bows made for their size. I will have one made for you. It will be slightly bigger than that of a child of five seasons.”

  “Really?” I twisted in his grip. “I’m that bad?”

  Batu flicked my braid over my shoulder, his features not yet visible in the dark morning. “You will learn, Moonbeam.”

  A little too close for comfort, I stepped back. His arms dropped.

  “You really think I need to know?”

  “You will be hunted.”

  “Why?”

  “For your blood. For your blessings. For many reasons,” he said.

  I shuddered, and this time, it wasn’t the morning chill.

  “Do not be scared, goddess,” he reassured me. “I am here.” He moved away, towards the six horses grouped together a short distance away.

  I watched him go, not at all convinced he could stand between me and armies of those who sought me. Of all the places to be lost …

  I was starting to stress out. Bad. “Batu, I need to … stretch.” His uncle had clearly never heard of yoga, and I doubted Batu had either.

  “What is this?”

  “I’ll be by the stream.” With some resignation, I chose a boulder to use as cover while I went to the bathroom and used leaves for toilet paper. I once thought peeing in a bucket was bad, but it now seemed like a luxury.