“Look at me, Temur,” she called. “I am no warrior.”
He faltered, staggering to a stop as his hind foot caught up to the fore. The knife lowered, and lines formed in his brow as he considered her. The light of intelligence flickered across his visage once more.
“Samarkar—” he said. And then, steadier, “Samarkar-la.”
She nodded. He turned his gaze aside. Samarkar tugged her halter down, bruising the tops of her breasts this time. It was as much a need to busy herself as modesty. She felt waxen with pain. She swayed in circles over the saddle while Temur, chest still heaving, wiped his knife on a scrap of black cloth.
He had parted company with Bansh, and she stood three span away, square and stubborn as the mules.
“Archers?” he said, his voice rough and unsteady. The edge of the sun crept beyond the side of a mountain whose name Samarkar did not know. She squinted into the dazzle, shuddering, her nervous reaction or the smell of blood making Buldshak dance.
“Handled.” Hrahima shrugged. “There were only three. I didn’t manage the Nameless assassin, however.” She touched a gash across her chest with more irritation than dismay. “He looked like he had an arrow in him, but it didn’t slow him down much.”
She snarled in distaste at the sticky fur of her arms, and tore a rag from a dead man’s shirt to mop the worst of the blood away. Samarkar suspected she did not lick the fur clean mostly out of respect for the sensibilities of weak-stomached humans.
Payma had swung down from her mount and was examining the gelding’s injuries. The harsh morning sun cast everything in stark shadows. Temur shaded his eyes. Payma made an irritated sound and said, “He took an arrow. We’ll have to cut it out.”
Temur looked at his knife. Samarkar said hastily, “I have a scalpel.”
“You’re wounded,” Temur said, gesturing.
She glanced down; the tails of her coat hid the wound on her leg, but the wetness soaked her trousers to the knee, and the wound where the arrow had passed through her arm was finally starting to hurt as her heart slowed and her breathing came less like a bellows. She curled the arm up carefully and relaxed it, feeling sting and strain and a sharp throbbing. Trying to close her hand brought a worse gasp of pain.
“I won’t be able to use the arm tomorrow,” she said. “But it missed the bone and the artery. If I can keep the heat out of it, it won’t kill me.”
Gingerly, she moved to dismount. Hrahima was crouching to examine the clothing and implements of the dead men; Temur came forward to hold Buldshak steady while she got the foot on her injured leg out of the stirrup.
When she was grounded, she gently pinched the arrow shaft that pierced her arm below the fletching and thought of fire. Heat gathered in her fingertips, a slow process, measured in hundreds of heartbeats. But when she released it, it charred the width of the shaft to coals in a breath, and the fletching tumbled away.
“Temur,” she said.
Understanding, he came forward and grasped the arrow by the head. “Ready?”
She nodded, and before the motion was complete, he pulled. The shaft was smooth, at least; it moved without snagging, and so she managed to scream between her teeth, muffled against her knuckles.
When she drew a breath in again, the morning wheeled around her. She put a hand out, and Temur steadied her.
“I’ve seen generals who didn’t handle that so well,” he said. “Now what?”
“I’ll let this bleed for a little. The gelding next, unless—Payma, are you hurt?”
The princess shook her head. “Scratched,” she said. “I’ll go see if I can catch the mules.”
“Take Bansh,” Temur said, shaking his head. “She’s not hurt. And she’s sure-footed as a goat. I thought for sure we were going over the edge, but she must have glue on her hooves.”
Samarkar showed the flat of her hand to the gelding. He snuffed her, and she stroked his velvet, porridge-colored nose, cupping his warm breath in her palm. “What’s his name?”
Payma, turning away, stopped and laughed lightly. “I never asked,” she said. “I guess we’ll have to ask him what he wants to be called.”
She nodded to Hrahima as she passed, and kept going. Samarkar trailed her hand along the gelding’s shoulder as she walked back to the broken arrow jutting from his haunch. It had struck deep in the muscle, and blood still welled from around it. He favored the leg, holding it awkwardly off the ground. Samarkar didn’t touch the wound, but she leaned close to it.
Payma was right; the arrowhead was barbed and would have to be cut free. But she could smear the cut with poppy to numb it. That would help.