“Are you ill, my prince? Is that why the shaman was watching you?”
Qutula seemed wholly unaware that he had nearly murdered the heir to the khanate that afternoon. Rubbing distractedly at the bruises hidden by the high collar of his embroidered silk coat, Tayy wondered if it were possible to strangle someone without realizing where one’s hands had fallen. It seemed unlikely, which was a disturbing possibility in one so close to him. He doubted that his cousin could be so thankless as to wish him dead for saving his life the day before, however.
“Just some small injury taken in the bouts.” He scarcely recognized the raspy voice, little more than a whisper, as his own.
Qutula was all concern. “You should have the old shaman, then, or my own mother will make you a poultice. She has experience treating wounds.”
Thoughts he’d rather not have stirred at the notion of Sechule’s hands on his body. Here, he imagined, and it aches here most of all. But he shook his head, leaving that spiderweb to General Yesugei and his uncle. “I’ll be fine in the morning.”
“Tell me who did this to you and I will lay my own honor to teaching him a lesson,” Qutula fervently volunteered.
“It’s nothing. I would have no feud in my uncle’s tents.” With you, he kept to himself. I would not set my uncle’s tents against his own children, no matter that he has not claimed you. He could never say as much to Qutula, nor could he say what he believed, that Mergen honored his sons with the love of a father even if he did not name them so. But he could drink more kumiss, and he did, gasping as the fiery relief made its way past the swelling in his throat.
With the feast came singing. First one and then another of the court poets stood up to memorialize the events of the day. Prince Tayy leaned on his cousin’s shoulder as he settled in to listen with the rest of his uncle’s court. The children’s race careened from octave to octave as the singer’s words followed the rough course until, in triumph, the youthful champion claimed his embroidered ribbon from the khan’s own hand.
The game of jidu turned into a comical song, with hand gestures broadly playing out the missed catch, the player unhorsed. No one mentioned the girls who competed, or the champion among them as half the winning team, but pronouns diplomatically shifted to the ambiguous forms.
The archery competition among the seasoned warriors was transformed into a tale of battle so that it was impossible to tell if the winner had claimed victory over his fellow contestants or against the southern Uulgar clans in the recent war. When Bekter’s turn came to memorialize the wrestling matches, however, the poet bowed his head in apology.
“I am not happy with my efforts tonight, and would not put my reputation to the test with these poor words. Perhaps this one will do—
“Like an army rode his hunters after the bright shining one
Seeking meat for hungry soldiers and livers for their manhood.”
The bear. Prince Tayy listened, politely indifferent to the acclaim the hero’s tale heaped in his honor. At his side, Qutula looked as though he’d eaten something unpleasant. Bekter’s song should have memorialized his brother’s victories in the wrestling matches. Perhaps he had been called away on some urgent matter and hadn’t seen them to record in song. Or perhaps he had seen too much. Tayy wondered what he had made of Qutula’s thumbs.
But the song in which Prince Tayyichiut killed the bear had already passed from mouth to ear to mouth again. Chieftains and clan Great Mothers, all the nobles gathered in the ger-tent palace of the khan, clapped their hands in time to the music. The newly blooded warriors among Tayy’s cadre shouted out their allegiance to the Nirun, the bright shining ones. Duwa, Qutula’s follower, answered with the cry, “Durluken!” and his counterparts on the opposing team answered with the same cry, their fists raised to acknowledge their champion’s victory, even if the song did not. Qutula modestly lowered his lashes, but his color did not rise. Not embarrassed by the fuss, then, but wishing to seem so. Tayy thought he would surely feel the same in his cousin’s position, and gave him a friendly punch on the sleeve.
“Savor the praise while you can, my friend—” He could not call him by any closer name, though he muttered the words for his cousin’s ear alone. “—next time, it will be me on the victory stand!”
Qutula turned away his praise. “It was only luck you did not stand there today, my prince,” he said
Mergen smiled, and Tayy knew he’d heard the humble words delivered with proper modesty. He didn’t see the pride in his blanket-son’s eyes, or the hunger, quickly hidden. Tayy hadn’t been meant to see it either.
Bekter had reached the part of the song where Prince Tayy struck the bear with his arrow—
“An arrow fletched with silver wings, flew to his mark with deadly sting.”
Suddenly, Jumal left his place along the perimeter to act out the part of his prince, pulling an imaginary bow and letting fly the imaginary arrow. At the applause of the crowd he cut a jubilant caper, beating his chest and leaping in a victory dance before flinging himself at his prince’s feet.
To all who watched his comic antics he must have seemed very drunk, and no doubt drink had spurred him to action. So close, however, Tayy saw the tension in his eyes, the drape of his hand carelessly, it might seem, near the hilt of his knife.
“You are the prince’s own fool, Jumal!” Acting as drunk as his companion, he leaned over, falling upon Jumal’s shoulder almost as a ruse, although the ger-tent palace spun in lazy circles when he moved his head. They had both drunk too much for court intrigues, he suspected, but still he whispered, “What danger?” as he made a mock struggle to right himself.
Jumal drew his knife then, raised above his head in a dramatic sweep that might have sent flying the noses of anyone who drew too close. Half a hundred swords slid from their scabbards.
“Your Nirun will defend you to the death!” he declared for all to hear, still as if drunk, but the words carried the weight of hands around his throat for Tayy.
“I know you will. Now put away your knife before someone gets the wrong idea.”
For a long moment, it seemed that no one breathed. Slowly, Jumal lowered his knife until the point rested above his own heart. “My life is yours to spend as you please.”
“I am a parsimonious prince,” Tayy told him, lifting the knife gently from his fingers. “And would rather save than spend your life. I certainly don’t want it stolen by some anxious guardsman of my uncle.” He held the knife between his own numb fingers, could feel the blue-coated warriors relaxing in the muscles of his own arms and in his back.
“Nor do I, my prince.” With a gentle smile, Jumal spread his hands wide to show that he no longer held a weapon.
“I think it’s time you went to bed,” Tayy told him. With a gesture he motioned Altan and others of his own cadre to come forward and take their friend away, which they did, scolding him for his foolishness and laughing at his drunkenness. The prince thought he saw something more in their actions, however. He noted that the members of his cadre who had followed Qutula in the Durluken team came forward reluctantly, and only after a gesture from their captain.
Danger, he thought. The Lady Bortu’s eyes were bright with calculation she shared with Bolghai. His uncle, lost in his own concerns, had dismissed the scene for no more than Jumal had intended it to appear—a proper devotion made to look foolish from drink.
Mergen watched with strained good humor as Jumal with his helpers passed the firebox. Jumal’s clans had pinned their hopes for advancement on the coattails of the young warrior. He ill-served them by playing the buffoon and might have cost them everything if an uncoordinated thrust of his knife had injured the prince. But Tayy seemed to know how to handle him.
The khan had his own political mire to navigate, however, and little thought to spare for a drunken youth. When the commotion that had accompanied Jumal’s departure settled, he turned to his generals among the chieftains and nobles. “Tonight we feast our victory over the Uulgar clans
and the evil magician who led them,” he declared, setting his features in stern lines as the musicians put away their instruments and the singers found their places among the court. “But justice demands answer before we find our sleep. Bring me the chieftains who will speak for the Uulgar in this place.”
Chapter Thirteen
AT THE DOOR, GUARDS who had been waiting for the khan’s call brought forth the prisoners. Three had named themselves chieftains among the Uulgar when taken prisoner. Others surely marched among those of lesser rank, but they would wait to see what happened to these three before they presented themselves for judgment. A wise choice, Mergen thought, lounging as casually as his tension allowed while he waited for the prisoners to make their way down the long aisle to the dais. Although necessary, he didn’t relish the decisions he must now make.
“I would wish for Justice at my right hand today,” he muttered under his breath, and meant more than the wisdom of his own judgment. For a while the clans had ridden with a god called Justice among those foreigners who followed the Way of the Goddess. Little more than a boy, on occasion the god had been clumsy as a colt. At other times, of course, he’d shown great powers of compassion and skill, enough to save the Cloud Country from both natural and unnatural foes. But then he’d disappeared into the mountains, leaving the defeated Uulgar clans to Mergen’s less exalted disposal.
Old Bortu had not traveled with the army, but she’d met this young god and had heard his story. He knew she had an opinion, and no hesitance to tell it to him.
“You fear to judge, believing that Justice has departed the kingdom of men,” she chastised him. “But did the wisdom of the Qubal people follow that young man into the mountains? Did the gates of a foreign heaven lock up the heart of a Qubal khan? Or does justice reside in all of us who see the darkness truly and would find our own path into the light?”
Mergen bowed his head to his mother, recognizing the echo of her words in his own heart. “You humble me with your wisdom.”
“Then I would raise you up again,” she said with a wry smile. “Look into the soul of a true khan for justice. Look into the minds of your enemies and know what you must do. But you already knew that, or you wouldn’t be the true khan of your people.”
The mother of two khans could not have a gentle soul. In the crinkle of her eyes, however, he saw pride as he had not since the death of his brother, Chimbai. She had thought him a poor substitute for the great leader they’d lost. It seemed she’d changed her mind. Or something in him had changed it for her.
He wanted to believe that, especially now as three Uulgar with the braids of chieftains strode toward him between the ranks of gathered nobles. Each carried his chains as if they were the most precious ornaments and each ignored the guardsmen in their blue coats who pricked at them with the points of their spears to hurry them toward the khan.
Locks of hair with bits of skin attached swung from the vests of the two grizzled oldest. Brown- and reddish-hued and black as pitch; a braid, a handful still gathered up into a silver clasp as a woman of the Golden City had worn it, dangled from their bits of flesh to adorn the chests of the chieftains. Raiders, then, and no honorable soldiers. He saw no remorse in their eyes, only arrogance and threat. The one with the broadest chest let his eyes rest on the thin switch of gray hair that flowed from Bortu’s headdress, as if he measured its worth for his own decoration.
The youngest of the three had been in a training saddle when the raiders had invaded the Golden City. He wore the face of the eldest, though thinner and less well formed, and his soldier’s garb bore no tokens ripped from the skulls of his victims. Close up, Mergen saw that much of his arrogance was feigned; the boy’s hands shook with fine tremors, making a sound like the tinkling of wind chimes with his chains. He would have released him, but he knew that wasn’t possible. By some manner of choosing among the Uulgar themselves, the young man stood side by side with the old. Not for his own crimes, Mergen guessed, but to represent the crimes of all his people for the khan’s judgment.
When the prisoners had been brought before the dais, Yesugei left the nobles and advisers to take his place at the head of the royal guardsmen. He stood with his legs a little apart and his arms clasped over his broad chest and waited; he would perform Mergen’s justice, whatever he asked. After a moment Qutula followed him, leaving the dais to stand beside the general.
Mergen knew what he had to do. Chimbai would have done it already. But there was a form to justice and this khan was a cautious leader. He turned to the eldest among the Uulgar chieftains, who stood a pace in front of his companions as their spokesman.
“What say you, before the khan decides your fate?” To show that he gave this prisoner no respect, Mergen kept his seat, his tone and glance mild, as though the question of the man’s life or death held no great interest for him.
If he had claimed compulsion from afar by the mad magician for his deeds, or demonstrated remorse and pledged to live in peace with his neighbors, Mergen-Khan might have sentenced him to hard labor as a slave. After a proper time he could have freed the chieftain to make amends for his actions as he might.
Instead, the chieftain laughed. “The Uulgar have done no harm to the Qubal people! What does it matter to a Harnishman if the prayer-mad traders of the Golden City die?”
He used the Tashek word for the people of the grasslands, Harnish, meaning the movement of the wind in the grass. “If you want a share in the loot, you will have to wait until the fools rebuild the Golden City, but something can be arranged, I’m sure.”
As the chieftain’s breast rose and fell with his words, the blood-crusted hair of a long-dead woman swayed on the silver clasp pinned to his vest. Mergen found himself fascinated by that rich red hair. He wanted to reach out and touch the clasp. Was it warm to the hand, or cold as the grave of the woman who had worn it? He couldn’t find out without losing his dignity, but its presence told him enough about the man who bargained for the lives of his people with carefully veiled threats. He had wondered who among the clans who roamed the grasslands could build a wall around a city. Now he knew.
“No harm to the Qubal?” He said it so softly that the Uulgar chieftain seemed to think for a moment that Mergen spoke to him alone, and in secret agreement. Gradually, however, his voice rose so that all the gathered court might hear each word as it vibrated with indignation.
“Otchigin, my anda, fell in the battle against the stone monsters raised by your master. Our shaman Bolghai lost a son, and many others died in the battle to free the people of the Golden City. And you come before this court with the ignoble badges of your treachery emblazoned on your chest!
“To conquer one’s enemy in battle brings a soldier honor. To fall upon an unsuspecting people and murder the weeping innocent with no declaration of war is the work of a craven. It brings shame upon his people.”
As the khan of all the Qubal ulus spoke, the youngest of the prisoners hung his head in shame. The second of the elder chieftains cuffed him sharply for his remorse. Their spokesman clamped his lips tight against a hasty retort, but the color rose from his throat. He held Mergen’s gaze with threat carved into every tensed muscle of his body until Yesugei stepped forward to chastise him.
Mergen stopped him with a hand sign. “Shame, and no honorable death. For the injustice the raiders of the Uulgar clans meted on our allies of the Cloud Country, I sentence you to death. For allying with the evil magician who raised up the stone monsters to murder the khan’s own anda, Otchigin, I sentence you to death. For the destruction your actions would have brought down upon all the living and dead and the gods in their heaven if our war had not put a stop to them, I sentence you to death.”
Moving like lightning he rose from his place on the dais and seized the prisoner. Then he dropped to one knee and bent the man backward with a sharp twist. The snap of the chieftain’s spine rang sickeningly through the tent. Surprise came first into the dying eyes, then slowly the light went out of them.
Silence followed, as if winter had blown through the ger-tent palace, freezing the moment in time. Of Chimbai the Qubal had expected such swift justice. At Mergen’s hand it sent a message to more than the defeated Uulgar; his own chieftains with a mind to seek the khanate for their sons shifted in their places.
General Yesugei recovered first, or perhaps had guessed even before Mergen what his khan intended. “Take him,” the general instructed a handful of his troops, breaking the moment with his voice. “See that no drop of blood taints this place.”
Mergen heard breathing again, the rustle of warm bodies. With a nod he acknowledged the service. He wanted no part of the raider’s spirit to touch the palace of his ancestors.
When they had taken up the body by its hands and feet, the second of the two old raiders barked a protest, “You can have the loot, all of it! Take the cub if you want him. Only spare my life and I will give you the Uulgar people!”
The young chieftain quaked where he stood, very pale as he watched the guardsman carry out his relative. He showed no surprise to hear himself offered up as a sacrifice to Qubal vengeance, nor did he speak either to confirm his guilt or to separate himself from the raider who blustered at his side. He could be no older than his own son Qutula, Mergen realized, a fact which must not influence his judgment. He set the thought aside, unwilling to consider the boy’s fate sooner than he must and focused on the more pertinent of the chieftain’s bribes.
“As you can see, I already hold the Uulgar in my palm. The question remains only, do I clasp it lightly?” He extended his hand to show the fingers curved gently, as if they held something both fragile and precious. “Or crush it, as the Uulgar would have done to the Qubal, squeezing the life out of the clans to fill your coffers by the blood of our dead? As he spoke, he tightened his fist until the knuckles whitened.
Lords of Grass and Thunder Page 14
