Lords of Grass and Thunder

by Curt Benjamin

  The war was over. His mind still shone with the wonders he had seen in the Golden City high in those mountains; like the ferryman, however, marvels demand a fee. He had run away looking for adventures and to save his own life from the conspiracies that seethed around the firebox in the ger-tent palace of the khan. In the aftermath of battle he returned in body to the clans. His heart, however, remained apart from the friends who had been his companions for all of his life.

  The time he spent traveling in faraway countries had made him into something new, a hero who had endured great hardship and fought beside creatures of mythic terror: gods and dragons and ghosts and kings. There were questions about his travels that his old companions were afraid to ask. It’s mostly cold and wet and scary, he would have told them. And in between it is the unspeakable pain of terrible wounds patched badly in the field. He didn’t have words to describe the parts they were afraid to hear, but the knowledge stood between them as a darkness in his eyes. So the distance grew while all he wished was to return to those days when he knew nothing of faraway countries or conspiracies at home.

  Tayy was thinking all of this when he looked back in his saddle to make a last, silent farewell to the friends of his journeys whom he’d left behind with the distant mountains. By chance, his eye fell on his cousins Qutula and Bekter deep in conversation.

  “A long road is a short road,” Mergen reminded him with a nod in the direction of the brothers. Bolghai the shaman often posed the riddle as a reminder when the clans prepared to move camp. The solution, of course, was conversation, which shortened a long road by relieving the tedium of travel, thus making the time pass more quickly. Mergen had returned his attention to the road ahead so he didn’t see Qutula look up then to fix a darkly brooding gaze between the khan’s shoulder blades. Tayy saw, however, and a chill settled in his belly, as if the sun had dropped suddenly behind a mountain peak.

  “He is my friend and loves his father,” he thought, while a tiny whisper of a doubt troubled his confidence.

  When he was very young, he thought his own father a perfect example of the cunning and bravery required of a khan. Chimbai-Khan had been murdered by his second wife, the false Lady Chaiujin, however, leaving Prince Tayy an orphan and his people on the brink of war with unholy forces of evil. Tayy had to admit to himself that his father might have made more than one error of judgment along the road to his untimely death. He should not have brought the demon-lady Chaiujin into his camp. And he should not, Tayy suspected, have forbidden his brother Mergen to marry.

  Recriminations wouldn’t bring his parents back. But Prince Tayy wondered if his uncle didn’t follow too closely down the path of Chimbai-Khan’s errors. Mergen’s wisdom about matters of policy and warfare could not be faulted. But in matters of family politics he relied too much, perhaps, on his great mind and too little on his heart.

  Tayy wanted peace. He wished for nothing more than a quiet place to study and grow into his new knowledge. Now, he judged, was not the time to bring such a notion to the khan.

  “Your mind seems to be wandering today, nephew. What are you thinking about?”

  Prince Tayy gave a start, suddenly afraid that the khan had somehow read his mind. But Mergen turned to him with a wry twist of a smile and he relaxed into his saddle again. Safe in his own thoughts, at least for now, he gave his uncle the smallest part of his truth.

  “Hunting. Fishing. Everyday things.”

  “Tired of adventures already?”

  “There is much to be said for a quiet life.” Tayy rubbed a hand across his gut, worrying at the scars beneath his clothes. It was becoming a habit and he pulled the hand away to rest it on the pommel of his saddle.

  He wasn’t quick enough to evade his uncle’s sharp eye however. “Not all adventures carry such a heavy cost,” Mergen reminded him gently, and asked, “Does it still hurt?”

  “Sometimes.” Tayy found it easy enough to admit to the physical ache that still plagued him on cold days. The memory hurt more, though, and he couldn’t talk about that. He looked away into the distance, remembering. Soon the clans would return to their usual grazing grounds, the scene of his father’s murder, and his mother’s. Their murderer still breathed, if such as she lived in the way of mortal creatures, and he feared the spirits of his parents would never find rest until he had avenged their deaths.

  “Chimbai-Khan would have been proud of you,” his uncle said, and Prince Tayy did wonder then if his uncle Mergen could read his mind after all. But then he added a reminder of the ritual of praise and homecoming, “You acquitted yourself with bravery in the field of battle, and brought honor on your house.”

  Tayy gave his uncle the smile his words demanded, but he doubted honor would be enough.

  Chapter Two

  WHEN THE SUN BURNED red on the horizon, Mergen called a halt for the night. The less-than-sweet water from a marshy spring nearby would satisfy the thirsty horses and his army would have time to set up their small round campaign tents before nightfall. They needed to light the fires before the hard dark. His own forces had helped to seal the gates of hell that had spilled monsters onto this land, but a few stray imps and goblins still wandered the plateau in search of home. By nature they avoided the light, however. And the smoke from the fires would keep away the mosquitos big as moths that drove an otherwise hardened warrior mad.

  While his followers worked to set up the command tent, Prince Tayyichiut, his heir, led his horse aside to tend her needs himself. The khan watched his nephew perform the simple tasks with keen attention.

  Tayy looked up as if he felt his uncle’s eyes on him and answered with a puzzled smile. “Am I needed elsewhere?” He gestured with the brush in his hands “I can let one of the others rub her down. It’s just that she nips if you aren’t careful about her sore spots.”

  “I’ll need you beside me soon enough, but not right now. You have time to tend to your lady.” Mergen would have done the same, but his new position forbid him such homely tasks.

  “No lady,” Tayy laughed. “She has a will of her own, but we see eye to eye on most things.” He rubbed her nose in a comradely gesture to show that there were no hard feelings between them.

  “And so it has been throughout history.” Which reminded Mergen of his blanket-son’s request. “Bekter has submitted formal petition to record a history of the Qubal court. I told him ‘yes,’ of course. How could I deny the clans the pleasure of his songs? He plans to create a whole cycle of tales and it would please him to hear your adventures in your own words, with your own commentary.”

  “I know. He asked me about it when we were still in Kungol, but I wasn’t ready then.”

  “And you are now?”

  “I’m not sure.” Tayy paused, brush raised for the next stroke. His vision seemed to turn inward as he thought. “Maybe. Soon.”

  It struck Mergen that the young prince had little experience by which to judge his current feelings, and he offered a bit of his own truth from past wars fought at Chimbai’s side. “There’s always a letdown after battle.”

  “I know. I’m fine.” The next stroke with the brush came down on a raw spot with more force than the horse liked. She tossed her head and sidled a step away from the hurt. “Sorry, sorry, girl,” he said, calming her.

  He seemed unwilling to accept any comfort for himself, however. After a long silent moment, Mergen turned for the command tent. “Come when you are ready,” he said with a glance over his shoulder, and meant many things by that.

  Prince Tayy didn’t look up, but his nod seemed to answer all of them.

  There was nothing left but to go, and so Mergen did.

  Yesugei, the general of his armies in the recent struggle, caught up with him and matched his pace as he made his way across the avenue that divided the camp. The hair caught at the nape of his neck in the long flat braid of a chieftain was scattered with more gray than before the war. Otherwise he showed no signs of aging, but remained broad in the chest, his thick arms still
capable with the sword or the spear. He’d been watching the halting conversation between khan and heir, it seemed, and now spoke up with more understanding than Mergen felt comfortable acknowledging: “He’ll be ready when the clans need him.”

  “I know he will.” Mergen had called himself a humble servant of the khan and few knew how deeply felt those words had been. But if he could do this one last service in Chimbai’s name, set Chimbai’s son on the dais, he’d be free. He just had to keep the prince alive and moving forward. It seemed, for the moment, he had. “The boy has survived when others haven’t, a valuable skill in a khan.”

  “In the present khan as well,” Yesugei reminded him. “Where else will a boy learn how to lead?”

  They had reached the command tent. Great Sun had set below the horizon, chased to his sleep by little moons Han and Chen. Great Moon Lun would follow her brothers soon to light the night sky. Now, fire painted the side of Yesugei’s face crimson and gold as he gave one last word before taking his place among the captains and chieftains at the side of the dais.

  “On the dais or whispering in the ear of the heir who takes your place there, your people need you,” he reminded the khan. It would have been impertinent, except that his bow, and the cupped hand outstretched in the gesture of a supplicant, made clear that he spoke not as a friend but as a chieftain. A reminder that the clans had elected their khan to be above them for a reason.

  “I serve at the will of my people,” Mergen answered with a tilt of his head to acknowledge the gentle rebuke. With that he took the dais, calling for his supper so that the others might eat.

  The road down from the mountains was hard and the recent battle left all the armies that fought in it exhausted and reeling both from the fighting and from the onslaught of wonders they had seen. Mergen-Khan therefore kept the court in attendance only until Great Moon Lun had begun her descent. Then he sent them all to their own tents to sleep as they might until morning. Bekter was not the only one that night to fall like the dead on the sheepskin of his saddle pad, under the warm cover of a low round campaign tent. Qutula, however, remained wide awake, twisting on his own bed in an excess of feverish energy. He wanted someone to talk to—not just anyone, but a brother who shared his interest in bettering their position in the eyes of their father, the khan.

  “Bek,” he called across the narrow darkness between them.

  Nothing.

  The jade fragment on its silken cord itched at his breast and Qutula wrapped his hand around it, wishing it to be still. He’d found it high in the mountains, outside a cave that a demon-king had used for his den. They had fought a terrible battle there with imps and minions. He often wondered if the jade had come from the underworld as part of some vessel used in that evil court. The demon-king was dead, however. The crack in the world that had let the horrible creatures escape the land of the dead into that of the living was closed.

  Sometimes, when he thought about it, though, the shard made him feel strange hungers he didn’t understand. He wanted to devour the world whole, to wield power and control, to amass a wealth of herds and precious goods and to gather women to him like fluttering butterflies drawn to their special tree. Not a few, but all the women. He wanted to tell the wind to fall and have it do his bidding, or tell the sun to rise at midnight and have the night spin by as nothing. He wasn’t sure if the feelings attracted or repelled him, but he didn’t want his brother to know about them.

  “Bek, are you awake?”

  “Mrmph.”

  “We need a plan.”

  “Mrmph.”

  Hopeless. Qutula pulled his blanket over his shoulder and turned his back on his brother.

  A stranger was lying in his bed. “You’ve stumbled into the wrong tent, soldier,” he said, keeping his hands and other body parts discreetly to himself.

  “Not a soldier,” a woman’s voice whispered hot breath in his ear. “But an admirer of one.”

  Qutula froze, uncertain what to do. Such things happened in war, of course. Camp followers always accompanied the traveling hordes to ease the burdens of weary soldiers. The boldest didn’t wait to be asked. Mindful of his own parentage, however, he did not as a rule indulge himself so freely. Which was one thing. For another, the camp followers he had known didn’t smell like this—like fresh grass and wildflowers and spring on the Onga River. She didn’t, he realized, smell like a woman at all.

  “Don’t you like women?”

  Her hand reached under his shirt, scratched at the sparse hairs on his chest. Qutula didn’t really need to tell her that yes, he did like women, because his body moved toward her as if his will meant nothing in the matter. She must not think that she could rule him with her body, however, so he held himself a little apart while the sweat bloomed on his forehead and on his nether regions. “I like them well enough,” he answered her question, “when I do the choosing.”

  “Ah. I see.” She reached out and took his hand, placed it on her naked breast. “And do you not, then, choose me?”

  Her breast . . . her breast felt softer than anything he had ever touched, softer than the wool of a newborn lamb. It molded under his touch, unblemished and fine and he wanted to explore it with his tongue. She reached down between his legs and the distance between them vanished. They were one creature writhing luxuriantly in the dark. His legs tangled with her smooth limbs, his sinewy bones cradled in the welcome softness of her thighs, his hard chest crushing the lush pillows of her breasts between them. Her dark places felt like warm butter on his flesh. She would not let him kiss her, but her tongue flicked out to nuzzle at his neck, at the skin exposed at the collar of his shirt.

  “Ahh . . . Ah . . .”

  She covered his lips with her hand when he would have cried out, her silent laughter warm against his cheek. “Bekter will hear,” she whispered. “Do you want your brother to know?”

  No. Torn by shame and greed he wished only to keep even the knowledge of her to himself.

  “Who are you?” He reached out with strong arms to hold her close. This time it was she who pulled away, wiping herself fastidiously with a corner of his shirt.

  “My name is Lady—But no, not yet. Let us make a bargain.”

  He thought that she would name her price then. The realization that she was indeed a soldier’s whore troubled him because he had begun to build fantasies of magical women drawn to the worth of his blood, if not his rank. When she made her demand, it seemed she read even the dreams of his waking mind.

  “A kingdom, for a name. When you bring me the silver cap of the khanate, then will I give you my name.”

  “How—I will not kill my father,” he said, though it was in his mind that he would. But Prince Tayyichiut was heir. Mergen’s death would bring Qutula no closer to the dais than he was now.

  “Not a patricide.” The lady’s voice hissed softly against his ear. Her tongue flicked at his throat, where the blood pulsed quick at the angle of his jaw, while her hands wandered freely beneath his clothes. “I could not love a patricide.”

  Prince Tayy, then, she meant him to murder.

  When the serpent poisoned Tayy’s father, the prince had been an untried boy with neither the experience to lead nor the confidence of the chieftains who elected the khan. They had chosen the dead khan’s brother who had, in turn, redeemed the honor of his word when he named his weak young nephew his heir. Qutula had felt certain that his father would see the error of that decision before it came to fruition. Now, however, Prince Tayyichiut returned from battle as the darling of the khan’s advisers and the hero of the army. It gave one pause to wonder how long Mergen himself would live with so popular a candidate waiting for his place on the dais.

  In his calculation of the future, Qutula had forgotten that he was not alone until a whisper brought him back to himself with a start.

  “Events are not on your side, young prince-as-should-be,” she urged him with her words and her body.

  She followed his thoughts as a hunter followed its
prey, not by visible sign, for it was too dark to see. Somehow she had learned the patterns of his mind: where a thought would take him next and how he would reach the end of any trail. But who could she be? How had she grown so familiar with the workings of his intellect?

  “Will you come again?” he asked. He told himself he would use a future visit to ferret out a name, a rank. When he would have rested his hand upon her breast again, however, she withdrew farther from his reach.

  “Maybe. If you promise.”

  To murder his cousin, she meant. As the lady read him, so Qutula learned the pathways of her thoughts. She leaned over him and with her mouth and fingers and her soft, soft thighs, she teased him with her own promises. “Swear it,” she whispered.

  He was dizzy with her scent, which had deepened with the rich smells of moss and loamy earth and the slightest trace of something less wholesome lurking at the bottom of it all. And sex, of course. She smelled most strongly of the sharp tang of his musk and her own juices, mingled with their sweat in the covers. When she mounted him, he could only groan, “Anything, anything,” into the hand she placed over his mouth

  She sighed back at him, “Promise, promise,” and held him on the brink that way until he said the words.

  “I promise.”

  It seemed the words were all the outpouring he needed. She withdrew from him and he held her only lightly, not wishing to impede her, only to ask a favor, “If not your name, then may I have a small token of your visit, my lady? Or when I wake this will all seem like a dream.”

  He did not mean his request as a threat to forget his promise, but cold and bitter eyes gleamed out of the dark at him, as if he had betrayed her.