Lords of Grass and Thunder

by Curt Benjamin

  The last match save one. Tayy gasped for breath, noted Qutula did the same. Altan had made it to the third round, but finally fell to Mangkut, the best of Qutula’s Durluken save the captain himself. Knowing the bout the crowd wished to see at the end, the referees were careful about the matches they made for the captains. Jumal had the pleasure of besting Mangkut in the name of the Nirun, however. And so it came down to Tayy and his cousin, facing the khan for the honor of light, or the honor of darkness. Tayy wished that Bekter had come up with some other name in his song. It made him too much the hero, and he wondered what Qutula thought when he adopted the opposite appellation.

  Mergen was talking, however, a silver arrow in his hand. The prince squinted against the flash of sunlight, determined to pay attention. “To sweeten the contest as my own ancestors did in ages past, this silver arrow if the loser can draw the bow and hit a target of his opponent’s choosing.”

  Another family heirloom. No question to Tayy the message the khan sent with his choice of tokens. He allowed his opponent a small, conspiratorial smile, but Qutula returned only a flat, calculating stare. Exhausted from his own bouts, no doubt, but his cousin’s eyes gleamed hard and unforgiving in a face that seemed carved out of stone. Whatever was troubling him, they would have to have it out sooner or later. Just not now. Mergen called them to the contest and Tayy gave a low bow.

  “I dedicate this match to my father, Chimbai-Khan. May his spirit rest quiet in the knowledge that his unworthy son has learned at least this much of the lessons he tried to drum into brain and muscle!”

  The clan chieftains and advisers roared their laughter at the joke and their approval for the prince. Though a khan did not compete in public contests such as this, Chimbai had often exercised his skill among his nobles, clearing a space in front of the dais in the ger-tent palace where he might best any man in a throw. Once, in the pretense of a friendly match, he had challenged a traitorous noble whose back he broke in the contest, declaring the game over only when the noble was dead. Tayy hoped never to need that particular lesson and refused to let the memory darken the sunshine of the festival.

  The teams had taken their seats encircling the area where the last match would take place. With no sign of Tayy’s thoughts to mar their enjoyment, they whispered admiringly among themselves, setting their own bets on the contest. “Nirun,” he heard among them, and “Durluken,” returned. Even the dogs, held to the outskirts of the playing field, raised their cries as if they wished to encourage their master.

  Qutula stepped forward now, his chest running with oil and sweat in Great Sun’s yellow glare. “I dedicate this bout,” he said, and a shiver of tension went through the gathered courtiers and the closest of their friends on the platform. Would he use his dedication to confront the khan about his parentage?

  “To the mother who gave me life. And to the lady of my dreams, whoever she may be!” With a smile he waved a hand in the dizzy motion that signaled a love affair, by which he could have meant to alert the families gathered there that he was looking for a wife. The slyness of his smile suggested a secret connection already made, however.

  “A girl before me! You have won in the contest that counts, and now you boast of it in front of all the tents of the ulus. But don’t think you have shaken my confidence—I have more to fight for!” Tayy kept his laughing words just between the two of them, but Qutula’s glance swept the company with a pinched tightness around his mouth. A lady, perhaps, but it seemed she brought his cousin as much misery as joy.

  No time to question it now, however. Each set his hands to the shoulders of the other. Tayy had never thought himself squeamish, but the flesh of his palms crawled to be so near the emerald green bamboo snake coiled on Qutula’s breast. Not an insult to the dead khan, Qutula had said, but a reminder that such terrible creatures roamed the Earth. The prince believed that much. Still, the thing seemed almost alive as it rose and fell with his cousin’s breath. He had little time to consider his uneasiness, however. Mergen gave the signal, and the match began.

  Each leaned in, pressing any advantage that would send his opponent to the floor. Qutula’s greater reach made it difficult for Tayy to plant his feet as firmly as he wished, but he had the greater strength of back and arm. They struggled so with each other for minutes, neither budging while the chieftains and court advisers shouted out advice.

  “There!”

  “His foot moved, he is unsteady!”

  “Press him now!”

  “The prince will have him!”

  “No, it is ’Tula!”

  As he set his muscles to press his opponent and overset him, sweat broke out on Qutula’s shoulders and chest. His arms grew slick, and his hands. He lost a step, forced backward by the stronger prince. At first, focused on his own efforts, he scarcely noticed the heat pulsing at his breast. Soon, however, the sensation of movement crawling down his arm became too powerful to ignore.

  “Kill him,” the well-remembered voice of his lover whispered in his ear. “Kill him now.”

  Slowly, his hands slipped inward. Shifting his shoulder to hide his actions, Qutula rested his thumbs on the hollow of Prince Tayyichiut’s throat. His hands tightened, thumbs pressed inward.

  Tayy tried to catch his eye, but Qutula’s gaze had locked on the serpent slithering over his biceps, down over his forearm to join its strength to his squeezing hands.

  “ Qu—Qu!” Tayy scrabbled at the hands around his throat. It was impossible to breathe, impossible to utter the warning that would end the bout. Sparkling lights danced in front of his eyes.

  As his head dropped to his cousin’s breast, the tattoo shifted and moved. Uncoiling, the creature raised its head. This is impossible, he thought. Daylight-sense told him it wasn’t real, but the night-sense of his fading consciousness told him otherwise. The design grew fangs and bared them, poised to strike.

  “Notnow,you fool!” the woman Sechule muttered.

  Anger seethed in her eyes.

  Eluneke hadn’t recognized the danger. Her husband-to-be was dying in front of the cheering crowd, his opponent’s hands clasped around his throat. Already the flesh-and-blood face that hung like a mask over the death’s-head skull was fading.

  “Aaah!” she couldn’t stop the scream that escaped her lips. The snake that had hovered over the Durluken captain like a mist in the Lady Bortu’s eye grew, took on substance in her own as the life went out of the prince. The serpent-demon towered over the struggling warriors, fangs like curved swords poised to strike at the prince.

  “No!” she cried, but her voice was lost in the din.

  “Nirun!” the crowd shouted around her, unaware that their champion was dying.

  “Durluken,” cried others, who didn’t see that their contender was murdering the prince.

  Closing her eyes to focus on the toad that was her totem animal, Eluneke prepared to leap to the wrestling platform. What she could do there she didn’t know, but her appearance must at least distract the company enough to stop the match.

  Fortunately, Tayy had learned a few tricks of hand-to-hand combat on his travels. The move would give the bout to Qutula, but they’d both survive. He shifted his hands so that he was pulling Qutula closer instead of pushing him away. As his cousin forced him down, Tayy tucked himself into a ball and fell backward, his hands still clasping Qutula’s shoulders. When his back hit the floor, he planted his feet in his cousin’s middle and lifted. The murderous hands left his throat—Qutula flew through the air and landed on his back at the foot of the dais.

  “Iwin.” Qutula was still gasping when he said it, and he hadn’t tried to stand up yet. Neither had the prince. He didn’t know what Tayy had done to him, but his cousin had certainly taken the first fall in the doing. Mergen agreed. That much, at least, he had won.

  “You certainly did,” the khan nodded down at him with a laugh, “though by what strategy I am still confounded.”

  He thought for a moment that Mergen-Khan had seen his thumbs pr
essed to the heir’s throat. The tattoo hadn’t really moved. That was impossible, of course, though it had seemed to do so in the uncertain shadows cast by their wrestling arms. But his father wasn’t talking about his actions at all. Rather, he looked to his heir with bemused admiration.

  “Did you learn to do that on your travels? I can see the use of it, though not in a bout of wrestling. The prize goes to the last man to leave his feet, not the first whose back hits the ground!”

  “Qutula bested me.” Prince Tayy regained his feet with a reproachful frown at his cousin.

  The others might think the prince meant the frown for his own lack of strength or skill in the contest. Standing with some effort himself, Qutula pretended he thought the same. Tayy might suspect the slipping of his hands had been no accident, but nothing in his own demeanor would give his intentions away.

  “It was an equal match,” he conceded with a bow.

  “Almost,” Tayy agreed.

  Qutula kept his expression open and admiring for the prince’s scrutiny. After a moment a little shrug let him know that his unspoken excuse—he hadn’t realized what he had done—had been accepted.

  “And now, the prize.” His father held the bow out in his hands like a sacred offering, his face glowing with the pride of a father.

  “Durluken!” His followers were now joined by the clans, celebrating his victory. Bekter would make a new song, with a new hero.

  “I am honored.” Qutula took the bow in his own two hands and gave a deep obeisance of gratitude, as was proper of such a royal offering. His father would say it now—it must be why he had chosen this particular prize, why he seemed so proud that his son had won it. Almost, Qutula wished he hadn’t cheated, to make the moment perfect.

  “Use it well, in remembrance of this day.”

  “As the khan commands.” With the victory cup, then, it must be.

  “The arrow, to he that pulls the bow,” Mergen offered the silver arrow to the prince, but he turned with his question to Qutula, the victor in the match. “What target, then, to finish this contest?”

  He had intended to set an impossible task, a bead on a lady’s headdress or some other challenge that the prince dare not accept. Gracious in victory, however, he offered an honorable challenge. “Hit the center of the target,” he said, “from here.” A difficult shot, but not unreasonable.

  Tayy ran his arm over his brow to wipe the sweat from his eyes and drew the bow. His arms quivered, but he steadied himself and sighted on the target in the distance.

  Twang! The arrow flew.

  “Center!” came the judgment back through the criers. With it came the cheers of the crowd—“Durluken!” and “Nirun!”—the call and response of victory.

  Mergen-Khan turned to a server and gestured to the gathered court. “Kumiss!” he said. “A victory cup to toast the winner!”

  When he gives me the cup, Qutula thought, but Mergen left the words unsaid.

  Chapter Twelve

  EVENTS HAD MOVED on in Bolghai’s absence. The prince had killed a bear and the old Tinglut-Khan had sent a messenger sniffing around for a Qubal princess, which complicated things considerably. The messenger had watched the matches from a crowd of lesser notables and then departed with no formal farewells before the feasting that followed the contests of skill and prowess.

  The shaman smelled no magic about him, just the skill of a well-traveled spy. The Tinglut could not have seen the trick of light that had raised the serpent over Qutula’s head. As Bolghai did his stoat-dance up the aisle of the ger-tent palace to the foot of the dais, he wondered what the Tinglut messenger might have observed that he himself had missed. He had no time to riddle it out, however. The dais lay before him and he made his bows, first to the khan, then to the Lady Bortu, mother of khans, then to the heir.

  “And where have you been traveling, while your khan had need of you and could not find you in the night?” Mergen chastised, more gently than he might have done.

  “Among the living, on the business of the dead, or maybe among the dead, on business of the living,” Bolghai answered with a riddle he wasn’t sure he understood himself. While casting his protections over the games that day he had espied the girl Eluneke in the crowd, looking for the young warrior who wore the death’s head to her spirit-sight. He hesitated to speak of it to the khan, however—at least until he figured out the meaning of her visions.

  She thought she had strayed in her dream travels. What Qubal warrior would find himself half-murdered as a galley slave tossed on a stormy sea? Only one that Bolghai knew of—Mergen’s heir. That was the past, however; perhaps the girl’s vision remarked a threat already endured and overcome. In his shaman bones and his sharp little stoat teeth, he didn’t think so, but until he knew more, he had nothing useful to tell. Certainly nothing the khan would want to hear. As Eluneke’s father, however, Mergen-Khan would have to be told about the shamanic powers his daughter wielded with such unthought skill. “It seems we have much to say to each other, when the feasting is done.”

  “Prophecies from our ancestors?” Mergen’s attention sharpened.

  “Possibly. Or young hearts only, and the direction they would take.” Eluneke hadn’t mentioned hearts, but he’d sensed that she’d held back some secret knowledge as troubling to her as that which she’d told him. The riddle was easily solved, of course. She was young and danger always made a young man handsome to women. Romance—and angry fathers—would have to wait, however. It was clear to Bolghai that she exhibited great talent, and that at least for the present, her shamanic abilities would bring her no happiness. Sensible, then, that she had fought them for so long.

  She’d found her totem fast enough when confronted with a handsome prince in peril, though he’d swear she hadn’t known the boy was Mergen’s heir. He didn’t think the turn events had taken would please her father. The khan had plans for his daughter, just as he knew the khan’s sons fit somewhere into his political strategies. Unfortunately for the khan, the spirits of the dead made their own plans with little regard for the desires of the living.

  Mergen-Khan, no fool, grew suspicious. She was his daughter, after all, and he would have his own spies keeping watch on her actions. “We have much to discuss on the topic,” he agreed.

  With a wave the khan dismissed him, and Bolghai took his place among the closest advisers at the side of the dais. Yesugei was there, solid in his loyalty, though Bolghai wondered if the general’s love for Sechule would lead him to betrayal. Bekter, Mergen’s blanket-son, sat among the musicians, preparing for the singing to follow the feast. Bolghai looked around but didn’t see the prince anywhere.

  A stir of jokes and laughter rippling up from the doorway heralded a newcomer, who was indeed the khan’s nephew, attended by Qutula, his eldest son. Qutula swaggered to the foot of the dais and gave his father a triumphant bow. Prince Tayyichiut dropped a pace behind to give him the pride of first greeting due the winner of the wrestling matches. The prince watched him with a wary eye, however, and seemed troubled when he gave his own bow.

  With a little frown wrinkling between his brows, Bekter reflected the prince’s uneasiness, though perhaps no one would notice but the shaman, who was watching his reaction closely. Very interesting. Bolghai sniffed the air for mysteries, found the scent thick above the firebox of the khan.

  “Welcome, good warrior,” Mergen greeted his son. “Take your place beside us on the dais, first among wrestlers and first among the courtiers to my heir the prince.”

  “I prostrate myself before the wishes of my khan.” Qutula bowed with exaggerated flourishes, as if the khan’s offer flattered him beyond his rank. His eyes burned with suppressed longing before he wisely lowered his lashes.

  Nearby, Yesugei burned with an equal anxiety that the khan paid such honors to Sechule’s son. Sechule still hoped to become khaness through marriage or as the mother of a khan. The general had no place in either plan. Bolghai wondered how Mergen, who showed such cunning in war and suc
h wisdom in statecraft, could be so benighted when it came to those most closely tied to him, his daughter no less than his sons or his generals.

  Qutula was smiling when he curled into his place at the prince’s back, but this close, Bolghai could see the muscles bunching in his jaw. If he could figure out what way that storm would break, perhaps he could do something to lessen the blow.

  The spirits would know, or have a rumor at least. The trick was getting them to tell him. He thought perhaps Eluneke had a better chance at that than he did. Her inborn talent far exceeded his own. But her father’s wishes might prove an obstacle once he knew what was going on. Bolghai would have to tell him. Not now, though: tonight was for celebrating victories—in the games, in the recent war. But tomorrow . . .

  Qutala sat at his side on the dais, lavishly strewn with furs, sampling the many dishes that passed before them, but Tayy ate very few of the morsels his cousin urged on him.

  “Eat, my prince, that old shaman is looking this way.” Qutula offered him a broken bit of pie. “If you’re not careful, he’ll set the Lady Bortu on you.”

  It was a joke; the Lady Bortu’s interest would include sharp questions he little wanted to answer. It seemed to Tayy, however, that Bolghai’s attention had fallen on his cousin, not himself. He wondered briefly if the shaman had seen Qutula’s hands on his throat that afternoon, but he sensed no urgency in the gaze which quickly moved to a tray in the hands of a servant girl. Free of scrutiny, at least in this, he shook his head, ignoring his cousin’s outstretched hand.

  “Kumiss,” he suggested

  “As you wish.” Qutula took the first sip and Tayy accepted the richly decorated bowl from his hand. Tipping his head back, he drank a deep gulp that burned like fire going down, but left his throat numb in its wake. Bekter was watching him, a troubled frown crinkling his broad forehead. Probably fretting over a line or the turn of a phrase in a new song.’Tula pressed a morsel on him, and he took it rather than expend more effort fending off his cousin. He choked it down with another swallow of the fermented mare’s milk and grimaced, not sure which hurt worse.