Time slowed as it does in battle. Qutula felt the beat of his heart pressing the blood through his veins, heard it pounding in his ears. The tattoo on his breast stirred with anticipation. No time to set an arrow; he pulled back and threw the spear he carried, held his breath as it flew through the air and plunged deeply into the flesh of the bear’s shoulder.
“Roooaaaaar!” The black bear dropped on all fours, limping, and shook his head. Maddened slobber frothed at the corners of an old purple scar that cut across his muzzle. He charged, and Qutula reached for the knife at his waist, knowing there was no time to draw it, that it wouldn’t stop the beast. He’s mad, he thought, looking into beady eyes red with ancient rage. I’m going to die.
An arrow snapped past his shoulder, so close Qutula felt the breath of its passing against his face. It pierced the beast’s eye, penetrating deep into his brain. The power of his dumb limbs kept the bear moving a pace, two, until his body finally realized that he was dead. Then he tumbled forward, crashing over on his side no more than a pace away.
I’m alive, Qutula thought. The terror had gone, leaving a melting lassitude in all his limbs. He hadn’t died after all.
“Qutula! Are you hurt?” The prince stood at the ready, a second arrow set to fly. But the bear was dead. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. He didn’t touch me.”
His voice sounded distant, disinterested even to his own ears. Jumal and Bekter crashed through the underbrush then and for a moment he allowed himself the foolish hope that Bekter had made the killing shot. But the newcomers were both out of breath and he recognized the fletching on the arrow.
“You saved my life.”
“ ’Tula? What’s wrong with my brother?” Bekter was still gasping for air. Later, there would be pointed questions, but now he accepted the prince’s answer, “Shock. He says he’s unhurt.”
Jumal had followed Bekter. His eyes were more for the creature when he asked, “What happened?”
That’s a bear at my feet with the heir’s arrow in its eye. It should be pretty damned obvious what happened.
“ ’Tula?”
Qutula looked at his brother, but he couldn’t quite make sense of what Bekter wanted from him. He’d heard Tayy’s answer, however; it seemed easiest just to repeat it. “Unhurt. Yes, of course.” He’d rather be dead than owing a life debt to the man he planned to murder. But he couldn’t tell Bekter that. As the lethargy of near-death passed off him, he realized it wasn’t really true either. Better the prince had been in his place, and Qutula’s own shot missed—how unfortunate!—but being alive was always better than being dead.
More of their companions had joined them, Mangkut and Duwa adding their worried questions to Bekter’s. Altan, last to arrive, uttered only a muttered curse as he examined the dead beast. Silence descended quickly, however. They seemed to be waiting not just for the obvious explanations but for some outburst of gratitude—effusive thanks, praise for the hunter’s keen eye and steady hand. Death had brushed Qutula too closely for manufactured emotions, however, and his real ones were scarcely fit for public display.
When the silence had stretched beyond enduring, Jumal took a step closer to the bear and examined the fletching on the arrow.
“A fine shot, Prince Tayy. And a fine trophy. Look at his face.” He pointed to the scar on the creature’s muzzle. “He’s fought men before and won. He would have killed Qutula, surely.”
His laugh edged with the danger averted, Tayy responded with bravado. “Better to face a bear than to suffer the wrath of my uncle if I had lost a guardsman within shouting distance of his own tents.” He might have meant any of them gathered there, but they all understood the implication. Mergen would not suffer the loss of his blanket-son easily.
You’re wrong, Qutula thought. That bear’s teeth and claws would have freed my father from the troubling presence of a son he has never wanted. But the fizz in his blood of life or death was calming. He was starting to think more clearly again. He might use this to his advantage.
“My prince.” He dropped to one knee in front of his father’s heir and bowed his head, though it was a hard thing to do with the imagined weight of the prince’s booted foot upon his neck. “I owe you my life. Let me stand between you and your enemies, let my breast be your shield and my arm be your defense.”
A ruse, Qutula thought, as the emerald green bamboo snake painted on his skin bit deep. But pain hot as a brand burned straight through his heart.
“You have always been my strong right arm.” Tayy blushed, and tugged at his sleeve. “Now get up. We’ve been friends too long for so much formality.”
Qutula blinked the sweat from his eyes, saw guilt trouble the prince’s brow. Interesting. He could use the day to his advantage. Qutula would not sully the bond of an anda with a false pledge, but Tayy must surely take him up now as closely as a sworn blood brother. There would be many opportunities to keep his promise, with less risk of discovery. He remained on one knee, therefore, pressing his advantage.
“I would be first at your side,” he insisted with a pointed glance at Jumal, who with the rest of their companions had set themselves to the task of butchering the great beast for its hide and meat. “I would offer my own breast to the arrow meant for yours, my throat to the tooth bared at your throat.” To allay suspicion. The lady was not pleased with him, however. Blood pooled in his vision and he felt a damp trickle from his nose.
Someone squelched a snicker. Qutula had been thinking about the bear, trying to control the pain his lady sent him at his apparent betrayal. He’d forgotten the damned dogs. It wasn’t Tayy who had to worry about the bared tooth. He couldn’t stand and he was making a laughingstock of himself in the eyes of the prince’s followers, and his own. Tayy seemed not to notice, however, only studying with concern the sudden flush that had suffused his features.
I’ll explain, he promised the lady. When he thought he had control over his features, he lifted his head to meet the Prince’s gaze with a gravely sincere one of his own. “You have bought my life with the force of your arm, and I would be first to repay that service.”
Jumal was listening attentively, his skinning knife poised but not moving. “This is my spear,” he noted, his voice neutral. “I carved this device in it myself, for luck.”
“we eneeded it,” Tayy acknowledged, thinking of the spear itself, but also the luck carved into its shaft. “It delayed the bear’s attack until I could steady a killing shot.”
A stray question troubled his thoughts, though. Why Jumal’s spear, when Qutula had a perfectly good weapon of his own? It seemed petty to remark upon the pilfering of a trifle when that trifle had done as much as the arrow to save his cousin’s life, however. Or he thought it had. Qutula was looking decidedly unwell.
“You said you were unhurt!” he accused his cousin as a drop of blood welled from the corner of his eye. Qutula had paled suddenly; Tayy saw him flinch in spite of his effort to hide his weakness.
“You are hurt!” Bekter took a solicitous step toward his brother.
“No—”
Qutula toppled over.
“ ’Tula!” Bekter fell to his knees, his ear pressed to his brother’s chest.
“How is he?” Tayy asked. He should have known sooner. Had known something was wrong, and had dismissed it when he saw no blood. But there was blood now, leaking from Qutula’s nose, and from the corners of his eyes. The last time the prince had seen blood like that from a man with no visible wounds, he had died, murdered by the bite of the venomous Lady Chaiujin in demon form, the emerald green bamboo snake.
“He’s breathing—” Bekter shook his head. “I can’t find a wound on him, but he’s burning up with fever. No. Wait. He’s coming round—”
“What happened?” Dislodging his brother, Qutula rested a hand over his heart, as if it ached there. His eyes were still cloudy with pain, or the memory of a fading misery.
“I thought for a moment you had died,” Tayy answered
. He was still shaky, old memories fueling new fears for his cousin.
“I assure you, my lord prince, that I’m not dead. I fainted, that’s all, making more of a fool of myself than I had already.”
“No fool,” Tayy insisted, “but wounded in some way we cannot see. Do you need a litter?”
“I need nothing but my prince’s good opinion and the help of my brother’s arm to regain my feet,” he said.
“Then I’ll get out of your way.” Tayy stepped aside, making room for Bekter who held out his arm to his brother.
“When you feel better, you’ll have to tell me everything,” Bekter insisted. “I’ll make a song about the hunt. The great Prince Tayyichiut will be the hero, and you will be his strong right arm, just as you say.”
Tayy could see the effort he was making to sound normal, just as he saw the worry that creased the round soft face.
“As for the fainting business, it must have been the dying curse of the bear, which is only now releasing you as the bear’s spirit departs. You’ll have to talk to Mother about a charm to protect you until we’re certain the danger has passed, but it’ll make a wonderful song.”
“Don’t be foolish.” Qutula brushed off his brother’s praise, but Bekter could not be stopped so easily.
“Are you well enough to ride?”
“Well enough, though I may die of shame if you say another word.” He seemed to be feeling more himself. Bekter must have thought so, too, because he did what he was told for a change.
Tayy refused to let it go at that. “Sometimes even heroes need help,” he said.
Qutula seemed on the point of making a sharp retort, but then he shrugged a shoulder, dismissing whatever objection he had planned to make. “And sometimes the only hurt is to their pride. I am no hero, though I doubt we can stop Bekter from composing a song in which I have a far greater part than the facts would tell.”
“I think you are exactly hero enough.” Clasping his cousin’s shoulders between his hands, Prince Tayy kissed him first on his right cheek, then on his left. “If it truly would displease you to hear a song in which we appear side by side as legendary heroes, I’ll forbid it.” He smiled slyly then. “But I think it would please you very much. And it would certainly please Bekter to write it!”
“Then it is decided,” Bekter announced. “ ‘Prince Tayyichiut the brave against the terrible mad bear, with Qutula his strong right arm at his side.’ I will build my history around this moment when the fate of the clans hung in the balance!”
When the fate of the clans hung in the balance indeed. Little did Bekter know how truly he spoke. It will be better this way, Qutula promised the lady. No one will suspect a thing when I kill him.
Her token subsided, waiting, he knew, to inflict pain or pleasure as he did her will or crossed it. Feeling much better, he brushed the leaves from his clothes and offered his prince a false grin.
“I’m sorry that in rescuing me you lost the roebuck you had within your grasp,” he said.
“A bear will serve the pots as well,” Tayy answered with a laugh.
Jumal had taken up the direction of the skinning, and at the prince’s signal he divided the prize according to custom. “Skin to the prince, for the arrow that brought him down,” he said. “Qutula had the first strike, so the meat is divided between them. As for the liver—”
“A gift to my uncle,” Tayy was quick to say, adding only after, “in both our names, as is fitting. I might not have stopped him with my arrow if Qutula had not already wounded him with the spear.”
“A gift suited to a khan,” Qutula agreed, careful to claim no closer relation to his father.
The liver was large as a saddlebag and nearly didn’t fit, but Jumal wrapped it tightly in a piece of doeskin for carrying game and bound it with strips of hide used for that purpose. “We’ll stay to finish the butchering and carting,” he said, and slung the liver over the haunch of Prince Tayyichiut’s horse. “Mergen-Khan will want to hear the tale from your own lips.”
“One should never keep a khan—or a poet—-waiting,” Tayy agreed, summoning Bekter to return to camp with them.
“Jumal, too,” Bekter insisted. “It was his spear, in Qutula’s hand, and so the khan will want to show his gratitude to Jumal as well.”
Qutula would have hit him if they’d been alone. The last person he wanted in his company just then was Jumal. It seemed the guardsmen felt the same. He would have stayed behind with the others of his guard, but Tayy agreed with his cousin.
“Bolghai will want to hear about this design worked into the shaft for luck,” he said, “and my uncle will want to thank you for your part in the adventure.” He did not say, “For saving the life of his son,” but the unspoken meaning hung in the air like the clinging golden sunlight.
“Of course,” Qutula agreed, though it pained him almost as much as the lady’s mark to say it. “If I have to suffer the outrage of my brother’s song-making, then so should he who carved the spear!”
They all laughed at his mocking display of indignation, which gave Jumal no choice but to join them, leaving the bear in the hands of their lesser companions. When they sorted themselves out for the return to camp, Jumal rode at Bekter’s left, as far from Qutula on Tayy’s right as he could be. And somehow, Duwa had joined the company with a watchful eye on Jumal as they rode.
Chapter Five
AS THEY MADE THEIR WAY home to the great tent city, Duwa and Jumal regarded each other with suspicion across the backs of their champions. Each had mis trusted the other since some childhood prank—Tayy couldn’t remember what had happened—which had set them eternally at odds. They usually put their differences aside for the more important task of defending their prince as his guardsmen. The division of the recent prize, however, seemed to have added chips to the flame of their animosity.
“I’d have thought fighting a war together would have . . .” Tayy started to say to his cousin. But Qutula, who had lately escaped a bloody death at the jaws of the maddened bear, had fallen into a brooding silence that the prince recognized only too well. Like the two quarreling guardsmen, they had been to war together in the Golden City. Fighting hand to hand in the squares and down streets both wide and narrow, they’d had to worry about an arrow in the back or a monster swooping down on them from the air.
On the battlefield, memories of the tent city of the Qubal Khan must have filled Qutula with a sense of safety and warmth just as it had Tayy. Neither of them had expected to find his life hanging in the balance on their own ground. The realization that they would find no safety even here at home heightened battle nerves more happily left behind. The prince took a breath to say some word of sympathy, but his cousin’s brooding, closed-in silence rejected any comfort before it could be spoken.
They were passing through the outskirts of the tent city. Qutula’s hooded gaze ranged over the camps, smaller and more widely scattered here than they were closer to the ger-tent palace of the khan. Tayy did the same, saw the gaps and absences of a city eroding at its edges as clans with no particular wealth or political connections packed their tents. They would follow the horses grazing afield on the rich grasslands that rolled away from the river in a sea of green and wildflower blue. Soon there would be nothing left but the political center around the khan, and his army of young fighters.
Against these lowering thoughts, only Bekter seemed to have an antidote. He held his bow in the position of a lute and muttered nonsense words under his breath while he fingered imaginary strings, working out a tune. He’d want the story out of his brother before Great Sun set, Tayy suspected; they might have the first performance after the feasting.
“So,” he said, directing his comments to Bekter, but speaking loud enough for all his companions to hear. “Do you think our bear is bigger than the one Nogai presented to the khan on his wedding night?”
Qutula looked at him strangely, but Bekter had perked up at the reference to the old story. As Tayy had hoped, he recited the firs
t exaggerated description of the bear that Nogai killed.
“Old Brown raised up on his feet
Twice taller than the center pole
On which the silver palace stood,
In girth, wider than the lattices around.”
Songs often called the ger-tent of the khan “the silver palace” for the glittering silver embroideries that covered the white felt. Tayy would have had the recitation end there, with the bear, but Jumal, with his usual absence of tact, picked up the tale where Nogai entered it.
“The khan called Nogai to his side
His eyes aglisten with the dew of tears.
‘All I have is yours, good friend, but
find for me what I have lost.’ ”
“Our own tale reversed!” he said, pleased that he had made the connection. In the tale, the bear had stolen the khan’s new bride. Nogai had caught up with the bear and in a savage battle killed it. At the end of the tale he presents his khan with the huge bearskin, in which he has wrapped the rescued bride. “Instead of the friend saving the heir, the heir has saved the friend!”
Qutula glared murderously at his fellow guardsman and Tayy groaned under his breath. He’d have been annoyed enough if Jumal had compared him to the khan’s wife. But Jumal meant what happened next. Nine months after her return, the bride had produced a son and heir for the khan, thus Nogai had saved not only the bride, but the heir as well. The Nogai cycle didn’t end there, of course. The heir, it turned out, was the true offspring of the bear. When he reached the age of manhood, the bear-boy wreaked vengeance on the Qubal people for the death of his father. Finally Nogai met with him in a great battle fought on the banks of the Onga, where both had died of their wounds.
But that came much later. The story of Nogai’s bear was a favorite of childhood and only the coincidental symmetry of their ranks would have brought the end of the cycle to mind at all.
Lords of Grass and Thunder Page 5
