Del and I rode abreast. “Fire,” I said.
She nodded. “We burn sick trees. We cut them down, feed them to a bonfire. To keep the others from blight.”
But I was uneasy. “Is that what it is?”
Before she could answer, Neesha turned back in his saddle. His tone was urgent, his expression deeply worried. “It’s too close. We have to go.”
“But if it’s sick trees they’re burning—” I began.
My son rode back to us, unwinding the mare’s lead-rope. “Take her. I can go faster without her.”
“Neesha—”
But his face was a mask. “Those are not burning trees.” And his bay was wheeled, sent headlong into a gallop straight away from us toward the smoke-clogged horizon.
“Oh, no,” Del said.
“Go,” I told her tautly, dallying the mare’s lead-rope around the saddle pommel. “I’ll be slower with her; go on.”
But not so much slower. As Del’s gelding kicked up clods of dirt, I sent the stud after her, nearly dragging the mare along until she sensed the urgency. She ran sideways to the end of the rope, ducked her head and let loose a buck. She tried to run even with the stud, then attempted to forge ahead. The rope kept her from it, the rough hempen rope that slid angrily across the stub of a former finger.
Neesha was gone. Del nearly so. There were things in this world more important than a horse. I unwound the mare’s rope, threw it at her. Hoped she wouldn’t trip. Then left her behind as the stud stretched out and ran, chasing Del’s gelding.
A house, and all of it burning, though the flames were dying. It wasn’t a fresh fire.
Neesha’s bay was loose and had taken himself away to stand upon a nearby ridge. Neesha himself, I couldn’t see. Del was dismounting, was setting the gelding free. Horses fear fire. Even those well-trained. Even the stud.
I reined in sharply, threw myself out of the saddle. Del was running toward the house. I followed swiftly, barely aware of aches and pains. Neesha was missing.
And then he came around from the back of the building, soot on his face. His eyes were wild. Through heavy coughing, he said, “I can’t get in! It’s too hot! Oh, gods above, I have to get in there!”
Soot coated his hands, his forearms. He had tried to lift charred timbers away, to tear them aside as he fought to go in. His hair was singed, flesh licked with flame. Coughing continued.
“Swords,” I said, even as Del unsheathed.
Neesha was in shock. He didn’t understand.
“Swords,” I repeated. “We’ll knock down some timbers, make our way in. We can do this, Neesha.” But inwardly, hiding in my heart, was the knowledge that it was much too late.
We knocked aside burning timbers as if in a sword-dance, sweeping with blades, smashing down charred wood. Three steps inside, we felt the heat. Too much heat. Neesha, frantic, was unheeding of his body, of the danger to himself.
Del, beside me, coughed in the smoke. “We can’t,” she said hoarsely. “It’s too late. Too hot. No one could be alive.”
A painful truth but truth nonetheless. Trying to suppress lung-tearing coughs, I took a long step forward, caught hold of the back of Neesha’s burnous; closed hands, through the fabric, on his harness. I yanked him backward so hard he dropped his sword and nearly stumbled. I swung him around, pushed him back through charred timbers, through the ruins of the house in which he had grown to manhood.
When he turned on me outside, when he shoved at me, when, with wild eyes, he tried to knock me aside, I tossed my sword away, grabbed handfuls of burnous at both of his shoulders, and threw him down. Threw him down hard.
“You’ll die,” I said flatly. “The smoke will fill your lungs. You’ll die choking to death. You might even catch fire.”
He tried to scrabble up. “I have to find them!”
As he gained his feet, I shoved him backward. Once, twice, thrice, slamming the heels of my hands into his shoulders. I backed him away, and away. “If they’re in there, they’re already dead! Nothing can be done! You’ll kill yourself for nothing!”
Neesha got to his feet once more, coughing, voice breaking from it. “I’m going in.”
“You will not.”
“I have to!”
“No,” I said, “you don’t.” And I knew what was coming, what he would say.
“You can’t stop—”
Before he could finish, I smashed a fist into his jaw. He dropped to the ground, limbs all askew. Unconscious. “Yes I can.”
“Gods,” Del said, voice raspy from smoke as she echoed Neesha. “Oh gods, Tiger…do you think they’re in there?”
“Tomorrow,” I said briefly, suppressing a cough. “We’ll look tomorrow. We ought to be able to make our way in. It will be hot, still, but the flames will have died, the smoke mostly lifted. If the bodies are in there, we’ll find them.”
Her expression was stricken. Blue eyes shone with tears. “I know what it is,” she said, voice uneven. “I know what it is, to lose a family.”
I couldn’t share that. I’d lost my family before I was even born.
“Gods—” she said. “Poor Neesha.”
I moved around his body. Squatted. Hooked my arms beneath his and dragged him farther away.
Del glanced around. Said, newly stricken, “Oh, no.”
I settled unconscious Neesha, putting loose limbs to rights. “What is it?”
“The corrals. Tiger, look. The poles are all broken.”
I followed her line of sight. “Horses,” I said heavily. “They came after the horses.”
Del looked back at the burning home. She ran two flattened, grimy hands across her skull, front to back, stretching hair taut, then dropped her hands to her sides. When she looked at me again, her eyes were cold. “We must go after them.”
“Of course we will, bascha. And we’ll bring the horses back. After the raiders are dead.”
Neesha roused some while later. In the meantime, as the flames died into charred timbers, as whiffs of smoke rose and coals burned hot, the wary horses returned. My stud, Del’s gelding, Neesha’s bay, and even the roan mare, who apparently did not like the idea of roaming across the grasslands on her own, trailing a lead-rope. All were bothered by the remains of the fire, but Del and I repaired one of the smaller corrals with a few strategic poles put into place and tied off with leather thongs, and turned the untacked horses into it. They had water from a trough. We pitched to them grass hay that had escaped the fire. Strangely, we found heaps of produce. We tossed that to the horses, too.
As late afternoon grayed out, the day promised an end. I’d struck Neesha hard, and it took him awhile to make his way back to awareness. Already his jaw was swollen. Bruises would follow.
And then he sat bolt upright, saw the remains of the house, remembered all, and scrambled wobbly to his feet.
In two long strides I had him by the arm. “Tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll go in tomorrow, if we can. It’s just too hot, Neesha.”
He tried to twist his arm out of my grasp. His face was smeared by soot, and there were some burns upon his hands. “I have to—”
Again, I didn’t let him finish. “No, you don’t. Neesha—if they’re in there, they’re dead. I don’t say that for effect, but because it’s true.”
“It is true.” Del joined us. “Neesha, you must see it. Either they died from smoke or burned to death.”
Each of us coughed from time to time, bringing up blackened mucus, breathing through the heaviness in our lungs.
He winced at her bluntness, but his attempt to break free of my hold was now less frantic, and I loosed him. As he stared at the house burned into ruin, his posture was one of defeat, of grief. He linked hands across the top of his skull, elbows jutting out.