Lords of Grass and Thunder

by Curt Benjamin

  Home. Prince Tayy gave Bolghai a preoccupied smile. He owed the shaman a lot—probably his life—but he couldn’t quite shake the conversation he’d overheard on the road between General Yesugei and the kahn.

  “Something is troubling you, grandson?”

  “Nothing important.” Tayy gave a little shrug, muttering curses in his head where he hoped his grandmother couldn’t hear them. Maintaining his court face while his thoughts wandered where they would used to be as natural as breathing to him. He was pretty sure that he had it in place now—politely attentive, with nothing deeper showing in his eyes than calculating his odds of snagging another pie. Lady Bortu easily saw through the pretense, however.

  “You don’t have to talk to me,” she sniffed. “All I’ve done in my life is raise two khans from womb to the dais and lead the ulus in their absence for more years than are decent for an old lady to live. How could I have any comfort to offer a young warrior home from his first war?”

  When she put it that way, it really did seem like nothing. But he let his glance drift from the khan to his general, which told the perceptive Bortu all that she needed to know.

  “Sechule!” she sniffed. “Those two are worse than dogs after the same bitch. If you have any sense in you at all, and I hope you do, you’ll let the women choose your wives and leave this sneaking into friendly tents to the foolish.”

  “We have many allies now. I expect Mergen-Khan will make a political match for me.” He knew better than to mention love. His father had grown to love his mother, but it hadn’t always been like that. He worried more about a match like the Lady Chaiujin.

  Bortu had lost a son just as Tayy had lost a father to that demon-lady, and knew where his thoughts had settled. “Your uncle would not let that happen again. But Mergen holds the place of khan in trust for you. He may suggest a match, but will make no demands that cross your own wishes. If you desire a Qubal girl to wed, he will doubtless defer to clan tradition.”

  That meant Lady Bortu would put her head together with the Great Mothers of the clans. Between them they would choose a girl who met their high standards for family and form and disposition. And the politics of the ulus, of course. Nothing that happened in the court was free of politics, least of all a royal wedding.

  “In the meantime,” Bortu continued, “There is no rush to the marriage bed. You have tales to tell and adventures still awaiting you. And you have only just come home. Allow yourself a little time to enjoy the carefree life of a hero in peacetime before you take on the burdens of husband and khan.”

  Lady Bortu was right. His uncle’s woman trouble didn’t seem like much compared to where he had been and what he had seen, the things both wonderful and terrible that had happened to him in the far reaches of the world.

  “Home,” he agreed, taking in the huge tent around him. Many of the guardsmen who circled the perimeter of the tent in their deep blue coats and cone-shaped hats had stood guard in just this way when his father had been khan. They hadn’t saved him from the serpent who crept into his bed and murdered him in his sleep. No, carefree didn’t cover it.

  Suddenly the walls oppressed him. The riches and heirlooms were like lead weights dragging him down, drowning him in foreboding. Childhood had fled while he schemed to stay alive in this deadly court. Now the ulus needed him to take his place as a man and a hero. His grandmother was right about one thing at least: he wasn’t ready yet to give up his freedom to the responsibilities that had killed his father.

  Bortu watched his struggles with an answering sorrow in her eyes. “The prattling of an old woman must be tiresome to the young.”

  “Not at all! Believe that I take your words to heart.” He gave an apologetic shrug, unable to share his restlessness with the woman who had lost as much as he and never shirked her duty. “Summer is short.” He offered the distraction of sunshine and long grass as an excuse for his fidgeting.

  One might, if one chose, take his words as the simple plea of a very young man who wished to enjoy the rare warmth of the day out of doors. He should have known better than to bandy metaphors with his grandmother, however. Too late to unspeak it he saw how much his answer revealed in its riddle form. Life, like summer, was short, and his own moved too swiftly toward the autumn, as he saw it, of adulthood. Bortu, who lived in the snows of age, let the skin around her eyes crinkle with her black-toothed grin.

  “Like young stallions, young men should never waste the sunlight of summer among the toothless,” she agreed.

  “I meant no disrespect.” He understood the riddle hidden in her permission to go. A young man’s place was out beyond the firebox of home, winning followers to secure his place among his tents. Tayy had helped to win a war already and now he had alliances to build. He couldn’t do that sitting at his uncle’s knee in the tents of his elders. With a bow to the khan and a kiss on the cheek of his grandmother, he took his leave.

  Where once he would have run laughing from the tent he now strode purposefully with his head high and his shoulders set for battle as a hero might. He could have the freedom he wanted for a little while longer, his grandmother seemed to say, provided he acted the part of the hero in a shadow play for the clans. He could do that.

  So, with his hand to the hilt of his sword, he made his way toward the door. Below the firebox he picked up those among his own house guard who had accompanied him into the palace, his unacknowledged cousins Qutula and Bekter at their fore. Altan fell in behind them, and Duwa. Others he recognized and some were only lately assigned to fill the places of those lost in the war. Together they made a princely sight, and Tayy thought that Bolghai must approve this change in his bearing. But when he looked to the corner, the shaman encouraged him with a smile more sad than proud. Tayy wondered how he’d got it wrong this time, but he refused to let uneasy questions trouble him. The door was straight ahead.

  Chapter Four

  SQUATTING AMONG THE DOGS and casting lots with the older guardsmen, the companions of lesser rank waited for them at the side of the door. Tayy counted Jumal there, and Mangkut who, with Duwa, had followed Qutula into his service. Their horses lazily cropped the grass at a little distance but, true to their training, did not stray far from their masters.

  “Whew!” Bekter exclaimed with a dramatic wiping of his brow. “I wondered how long they would keep us indoors!”

  “Too long,” Tayy agreed with an answering grin. His guardsmen never pressed him for his secrets and he’d had more than enough of his grandmother’s keen eye.

  “At last!”

  “Here they are!”

  Their companions at the door rose noisily from their games to greet the cousins.

  “Halloo!” Tayy answered, then sought out his own two hounds and accepted their doggy welcome with a vigorous rub. They had just been pups when he left them and he’d had little enough of their company before that. The Lady Chaiujin had claimed to fear them, though he figured, now, that she was afraid they had scented her demon form as an emerald green bamboo snake. He’d doubted they would remember him, but the red bitch whined and butted her nose against his leg, demanding his attention. The black dog snarled a warning.

  Meeting the creature’s red-eyed glare with a glower of his own, Qutula took a step back, which satisfied the beast. “Your dog takes affront at my presence,” he said, which all of their companions must surely have noticed. “I don’t know what I’ve done to upset him.”

  Tayy gave the dog a reassuring rub, which settled him a little, though he continued to regard Qutula with the intense interest he generally applied only to his dinner. “We’ve been away a long time; he’s probably forgotten you and thinks you’re a stranger.” It had been his own fear, after all. “He’ll get used to you again.”

  The dog lapped a slobbery tongue across his cheek and the prince felt the comfort in the gesture settle his troubled heart. With a last ruffling scratch at the thick hair around the dog’s throat he rose from this second homecoming with a challenge for his compani
ons: “Why are you sitting around on your haunches when Great Sun is shining and the warm breezes carry the scent of flowers from the river?”

  “Waiting for you, Oh leader of warriors.” Among the guardsmen at the door, Jumal answered with an exaggerated bow and a mocking pucker of his lips that aped Qutula’s disapproval.

  “Watch your tongue!” Qutula snapped, “or I’ll cut it out for you.”

  Tayy laid a warning hand on his cousin’s arm. “It’s just a joke,” he said. “I was no less a prince the last time Jumal poked fun at my station than I am today. Why reward him now with more than the usual groans?”

  He knew the answer even if he didn’t want to admit it. Jumal’s status had fallen with his family’s fortunes while Qutula’s had, indirectly, risen. Though Tayy continued to favor among his followers the friend and partner in the boyish games of childhood, the politics of rank now gave an uneasy precedence to Mergen’s blanket-sons.

  Jumal might have meant his joke as an insult to Qutula’s birth, an offense that would surely lead to murder between them. But if his friend resented the brothers for taking his place at the prince’s side, he never showed it. From childhood, however, Jumal had an abrasive sense of humor which seemed a more likely explanation for his joke than some new resentment.

  Picking up his follower’s tone like the spear exchanged in a game of jidu, therefore, Tayy answered the jape in a similarly exaggerated style. With all the pomp of his station as Prince Tayyichiut of the Qubal people he issued his edict to enjoy the day.

  “Wait no longer, minions, for Great Sun will not wait for you!” Consciously, he mimicked the most imperial tones of Chimbai-Khan as he used to do when his father was alive. He thought it might hurt, the memory of old and loving jokes. But his companions laughed as they were meant to do, and he discovered that he could laugh, too. His father was gone, but he hadn’t taken the joy of his living with him into the underworld. It remained in the clear eyes of his son and his straight arm with a bow or the spear. And it remained in the old jokes from boyhood when they had all aspired to be their own parent.

  Bekter laughed as loud as any, but Qutula’s eyes flared briefly in anger. In childhood he had copied his own father’s manner, but with Mergen so raised in station and his own rank still in question, such games were forbidden him.

  Tired of picking his way through the nettles of his cousin’s feelings, Tayy thought that perhaps all games were best left to childhood after all. “Are we going hunting, or are we going to stand around and argue?” he asked in his own voice.

  “Hunting!” his companions shouted with as much relief to have the brewing quarrel ended, he thought, as pleasure at the chase.

  His horse waited among the others and came when he whistled. “Come, sweet,” he murmured in his mount’s ear. In moments he was on her back, flying down the grassy avenue. The dogs knew the hunt and leaped away, barking excitedly, but Tayy called on his uncle’s lesser guardsmen to hold them fast. He would stalk the wood for game today; dogs would be more hindrance than help.

  The black dog snarled and strained to follow, his eyes wild with longing, but the guardsman tightened his hold. With a nod of thanks, Prince Tayy ducked his head down at the side of his horse’s neck, urging her forward. His companions followed and soon flanked him protectively, though they made it a race. They left the palace behind quickly.

  The khan’s city was huge, tens of thousands of round felt tents with all the women and children and the aged, with the sheep in their pens and the horses who wandered at will both out on the plain and among the camps. But the grand avenue was clear ahead of him and soon the ranks of white tents fell away as well. The companions spread out in the lake attack formation; in close order the young hunters turned in a sweeping curve and headed for the forest that bordered the river.

  Qutula preferred hunting from horseback on the open plain, but the heir, Prince Tayyichiut, led them in a hell-bent turn back toward the forest that crowded the banks of the Onga. Just as well. The tattoo on his breast warmed and calmed him to his purpose. Today he would hunt the biggest game of all, and win for himself all that he had wished.

  When they reached the line of trees, they leaped from their horses. The prince took only his short bow, a quiver of arrows, and the knife at his belt. A bow could throw an arrow farther than an arm could throw a short spear. It would drive the point of the arrow deeper than an arm might guide a short spear. Close in, however, a spear offered more control for a lethal first strike. Qutula would need that advantage against his human prey.

  Satisfaction hummed through his body; warm memories of the mystery woman who had come to him in his sleep clung to his skin. If not for the tattoo over his breast, he might have thought her just a dream. But he had asked for a token and refused to question how she had done it with just the prick of her sharp teeth beneath the fragment of jade he wore around his neck. The mark, in the shape of an emerald green bamboo snake, tingled with the promise of new memories to come if he did just this one thing for her. For himself, really.

  Not with his own weapon, however. He fumbled with the ties on his quiver until Bekter raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  “Are you coming, brother? It’s not like you to lag behind when there’s game to be had.”

  “The ties are loose.” Qutula had artfully loosened them, and he showed his brother the quiver, where he was tightening them again. “Go on with the others—I’ll catch up in a few minutes.”

  The rest of their party had already entered the wood, leaving the horses to nibble the leaves from the bushes, but Bekter hesitated. “I can wait.”

  “No, go.” Qutula looked up from his work on the strings with an indulgent smile. “Think of it as a head start, the way we raced as children. I’ll wager a dozen arrows I will still bring down the first game between us!”

  “In that case I’ll match your bet with this bow, and take the advantage!” With a last companionable slap on the shoulder, Bekter headed purposefully into the forest, his clumsy efforts at stealth rustling old leaves as he made his way toward the river.

  Qutula watched him go. He wasn’t worried that Bekter would actually win the bet, but he liked that bow. He didn’t think his brother would accept the prince as fair game, but maybe no one would notice Tayy was missing until he had bagged something for the pot and won the bet. It would give greater credence to his own story as well. If only I had stayed closer to the prince, he rehearsed in his head, if not for that stupid bet, I might have saved him. That would work.

  When he was certain that no one would see him, Qutula glided up to a horse not his own. Hushing her with whispers in her ear, he took the spear from the sheath on Jumal’s saddle. Jumal’s family had suffered reverses in their fortunes in the years since the prince had made his boyhood friendships. No one would stand up to defend him in the khan’s court.

  It seemed to Qutula that Jumal truly loved Prince Tayy, and not only for the place his friendship had gained him at court. In grief for the terrible loss of his beloved prince, he might take his skinning knife to his own gut, saving them all the effort of accusations and denials. And if he didn’t think of it himself, Qutula would be happy to help him along.

  A smile lingered on his lips as he followed his fellow guardsmen into the woods, tracking not the buck or doe of his companions, but the huntsman himself. Prince Tayyichiut.

  Light, filtered through the highest branches, fell like hangings of gold in the trees. The thick carpet of rotting leaves and pine needles underfoot swallowed the sound of his companions. Tayy wiped a bloom of cold sweat from his forehead and notched an arrow. The last time he’d been alone in a forest, a magician in the shape of a huge bird had sliced his belly open. He’d almost died and some nights the pain of the healed wound still pulled him from his sleep. So did the nightmares.

  The magician was dead, however, and the Onga River itself was the most perilous danger lurking in this familiar wood. He had only to stay away from its banks—a rustle of fallen leaves pulled h
is head around, listening. There it was.

  A roebuck, its antlers in full maturity this late in the summer, stepped delicately between the trees almost close enough for him to touch. For a moment he hesitated, thinking of a friend who had traveled in the shape of just such a creature. Only animal intelligence moved behind these eyes, however. He aligned his body with the target and pulled, his bow hand level with his eye.

  From the shadows, hidden among the trees, Qutula watched as the prince nocked his arrow. He had grown used to the idea of killing Mergen’s heir. The thought of slipping the point of Jumal’s spear between the princely ribs gave him only the slightest twinge of doubt. He hesitated, however, to end his cousin’s life until after the taking of his prey. He had his father to lead him to the home of his ancestors, of course, and his mother. But it always helped to bring an offering for the spirits with you. Qutula’s hand clenched around the shaft of the spear. He would do it—

  A rustle in the underbrush signaled the arrival of his companions. Too soon. If he’d acted, he’d have been caught. Grateful to whatever demons or spirits were looking out for him, Qutula turned to hush whoever had come upon them as they would expect him to do—Tayy still had to take his shot.

  “Roooaaaar!”

  Oh. Not his fellow guardsmen after all. A great black bear reared on his hind legs. Towering over him, the bear stretched his mouth wide to threaten him with sharp teeth long as his fingers.