“Let’s hope so,” Mergen agreed, riding comfortably, it seemed, with his own son at his side. Qutula kept a triumphant smile from his lips with difficulty. Soon, Mergen would be forced to acknowledge him as he had the girl Eluneke. He would ride at the side of the gur-khan as his right. Then a terrible accident, and the gur-khan would follow Chimbai and his heir. He might, with cunning, avoid a war altogether. Qutula would take Mergen’s place at the head of the clans.
Perhaps he would bring the Tinglut under the Qubal sway as Mergen himself had swept up the Uulgar. He would rule the grasslands from the valleys of the Shan Empire to the mountains of the Cloud Country. He said nothing of this, however, as the gur-khan’s hunting party stopped to greet the Tinglut prince—auspiciously for his plans, he thought—across the ashes of the murdered khan.
“ ’I ve lost too much already to let you go as well.” Tayy buried his face in his hands. However lost she became in her initiation rites, he didn’t think Eluneke would forget him, but he was afraid to look and find that it was so.
“Ribit.” A little toad with a high, rusty voice like a badly hung gate plopped on his boot. “Ribit!”
“Eluneke?” Tayy leaned far over so that he stared eye to eye with the toad that perched on his upturned toe.
“Ribit!” she answered, sounding more desperate than she had a moment before. She bobbed her head in a little dance but didn’t turn back into the girl he knew.
Suddenly, plop, plop, plop, toads were tumbling all around him. A great rain of toads spilled out of a sky as clear and blue as the silk of his best court robes. As they fell, the wood filled with the sounds—high and deep, croaking and bellowing—of their voices. With their return the crickets and cicadas came to life, mosquitoes bit, and flies lit on his arms. The little toad on his boot looked hungrily at a fat insect that flew too close, but she refrained from eating it. Tayy was glad of that, since it was hard enough to harbor romantic feelings for a toad. He might have to resort to keeping her fed on such fare if she didn’t find her own true form soon, but for now he’d rather not think about such things.
“Don’t worry,” he soothed her, though his own heart trembled in his chest. What would he do if she never remembered how to become human again?
Daritai sat his horse at the center of his five hundred and waited for the gur-khan’s hunting party to draw near. In the aftermath of the rain, no dust blurred the Qubal approach, At least a thousand in that line, he guessed. They had all—Qubal and Tinglut, too—come from battle too recently for any easiness with the sight. Like a nervous habit, his hand shifted to his bow. Others among his picked guard did the same but none was so ill-trained as to set an arrow. At least, not in the front ranks. His men would take nothing for granted in this meeting.
Tumbinai, smart boy, nudged closer on his mount. Given the choice, he would have sent the boy to the lower ranks with instructions to stay out of sight. The Qubal-Khan might take affront if he found out that the Tinglut emissary felt a need to hide his children from his allies, however. That meant his son front and center, at his side, preferably not shifting quite so wildly between excitement and terror.
“The gur-khan has no reputation for serving leg of visitor baked in coals,” he said, trying to settle the boy. “Be polite, try to look stupid if he asks anything you shouldn’t answer, and beyond that, you’ve been to court. I trust you to know how to behave.”
“He guts his enemies and buries them alive so that the horses beat the dirt down on top of them,” the boy muttered with a shiver.
Daritai had heard the same rumors, had also heard they weren’t true. Having met the man, he wouldn’t put it beyond him at great need, which was better than he could say for the boy’s grandfather, whose enemies were better off plunging the dagger into their own livers. He didn’t plan to offer the gur-khan a reason for displeasure and felt confident in reassuring his son, “Stories for stormy nights. Mergen Gur-Khan is an honorable man and would never harm an unblooded youth.”
Unlike your grandfather, he thought, who might want to clear his own ger-tent palace of too many heirs. He couldn’t think of that, however, not and do the job required to keep them all alive at home. The Qubal party had neared enough that he could make out the features of the gur-khan at their center. Daritai nudged his horse forward to greet his host, his son following a few paces behind. He didn’t look back, just hoped the boy had smeared an appropriately friendly expression on his face.
Mergen stepped out of his line as well, to face him with a welcoming tilt of his head, no more for a lesser son. Prince Tayyichiut wasn’t there, and for a moment Daritai’s heart turned over. Treachery, he thought, and would have sent his own son flying. But it was too late, the boy was too exposed. What have I done? I’ve killed my son . . .
“The prince has a sore head, but will join us shortly,” Mergen lied with a tip of his hand to pantomime a cup. Drunk, then. His ironic smile shared the lie between them with no expectation of belief, just reassurance that the prince’s absence meant nothing in the scheme of Daritai’s mission. Or so he meant his adversary to believe.
The guardsman who had ridden at the gur-khan’s right hand set his unblinking gaze on Tumbinai. He might have been a viper coiled upon the saddle. Qutula, his name was, and dependable report said the gur-khan’s blanket-son. Did the absence of the old khan’s prince mean a change in the royal succession in the wind? The young guardsman didn’t take the place of the heir in the greeting as Tumbinai had done. Resented it, too, by the look of him. Not the danger he’d anticipated but more, perhaps, than he had counted on. He didn’t think this one would stand on honor to preserve his father’s agreements. Daritai was glad he’d rejected the old khan’s child, but he wondered if any bride Mergen offered would serve for more than warming old Tinglut-Khan’s bed.
He kept his thoughts to himself when he greeted the gur-khan however. “A fine day for a hunt!” he said, his face turned with proper appreciation into the wind-drenched sunlight.
“A fine day, indeed,” Mergen Gur-Khan answered. “Would you have a wager?”
“First shot,” Daritai agreed, meaning the first game brought down between them. The Qubal hunters outnumbered his own by too great a number for betting on the greatest catch.
“Done.”
With the wagers between the first of the hunters concluded, the lesser members of each party broke into their own groups and pairs, setting wager against wager with a low roar like distant thunder.
So the Tinglut prince had brought a ready-made hostage with him. As he listened to his father make the first wager, Qutula set a cold and thoughtful eye on the boy, Tumbinai, who looked back with a combination of terror and fascination difficult to resist. Whose idea were you? he wondered, half aloud.
At his breast, his lady whispered “Fathers, sometimes, wishing to be rid of troublesome sons, invite their enemies to feast on kinship’s bones.”
She could have meant the Tinglut prince, or his own father for that matter, but he didn’t think so. He wasn’t the one who had fallen under Mergen’s displeasure this time. As for the Tinglut pup, Qutula saw the moment of panic when Papa Daritai counted up the players and realized the Qubal heir hadn’t added into the sum while his own offspring was flying in the breeze, a banner to be taken in the games of statecraft. He ought to be able to make something of that. Tilting his head at a regal angle he’d seen Tayy pull off far too often, Qutula let the Tinglut wonder why he rode at Mergen’s side. Look your fill, he thought. Soon enough the contest will come to us two.
A line opened then to let the beaters and the handlers through with the dogs, who milled about baying and nipping at each other in their own drawing of ranks. Just like their human counterparts, Qutula observed, they jockeyed for position. And like the old dogs, the older guardsmen had settled their places in the pack long ago; Mergen’s followers rose among the ranks while Chimbai’s found themselves drifting to the rear or, like General Yesugei, sent away where he could have no influence on the cou
rt.
Qutula’s own Durluken guardsmen followed the lead of their elders, crowded at the right hand of the khan. The absent prince’s Nirun muttered blackly under their breath to see their adversaries hold the place they had claimed for themselves as the heir’s favorites. Altan, the prince’s own, nudged his horse closer to the khan as if he might preserve his prince’s place with his own person, but Duwa pushed him back. Words were spoken. Altan set hand to his dagger and in the same breath, Duwa had cleared his own sheath. Neither moved then, as if the seriousness of what they had done in the gur-khan’s presence paralyzed them in their saddles.
Qutula saw the displeasure his father otherwise hid from the hunting party.
“Save the daggers for the conies, we do not need them between friendly rivals,” Mergen chided the young guardsmen. Each dropped his head in shame to have brought censure on Nirun and Durluken both, but satisfaction gleamed in the eye Duwa turned on his captain. Qutula knew better than to share with his followers his private plans for the khanate, but it seemed that if he chose to fight, he would have willing accomplices. Good. With no outward sign that he approved his henchman’s actions, he gave his full attention to his father’s speech.
“Instead of bickering uselessly among yourselves, turn your rivalry into meat for the cook pots,” Mergen proposed. “Whichever team brings in the greatest catch will win for their captain the praise of the singers of the royal court. Bekter himself will compose a ballad in the winner’s honor. Is that not so, good poet?”
Bekter, who had ridden with little attention to his place in the line of the gur-khan’s hunting party, worked his way forward at the mention of his name. “Of course,” he said, bowing from the saddle with all show of acquiescence though Qutula was certain he hadn’t heard what Mergen had promised in his name. It was enough to cool the hot heads among the younger guardsmen, however.
“Do something,” the snake tattooed on his chest whispered in Qutula’s ear. Mergen had turned the confrontation into a formal contest; now he could show his appreciation for Duwa’s silent promise with his own reward. “And to sweeten the pot, a coral bead the size of the knuckle on my right thumb, to the Durluken who brings down the first branchy game.” Buck or roedeer, he meant by that, game worthy of a prince.
A shout went up among the Durluken, who raised their bows above their heads to salute the prize. Then Bolghai came forward with his rattle and his drum, singing the low ululation that called the game. The stoats at his throat flying about him as he whirled, the shaman danced with little hops to signify the conies and jerboa, and all the small animals who scurried close to the ground. With swoops and the flapping of his arms he mimicked the birds and with huge gallops summoned the greater game, the roe deer and wild ram and other fleet, four-footed prey.
The blessing ended and the beaters took up their own drums and clashing bells, surging forward with their wild and terrifying noise. The master of the hunt, with horns blowing, set the order of the day for the waiting hunters. The lake formation, as in battle, would sweep across the grasslands. The gur-khan’s party, with the Tinglut prince beside him, would lead from the center where they would find the best hunting. His guard captains, acting for his absent generals Yesugei and Jochi, would take the wide sweeping arms on either side, encircling their prey and driving it toward the waiting arrows of the royal huntsmen.
When each knew his place in the order of march, the hunt moved out
Chapter Twenty-eight
IF NOT FOR the Tinglut warriors who rode among his own forces in numbers sufficient to make a bloody mess of a clear blue day, Mergen would have enjoyed the hunt. The rains had tamed the dust and the breezes were cool against his face as he rode. Beneath him he scarcely felt the strike of hooves on the soft ground. And ahead, among the lesser game, the beaters had spotted a ram standing as tall as his horse at the shoulder, with horns curled on themselves in a circle which he could scarcely have measured with both arms spread wide.
He would, on another day, have drawn his own bow for a shot at the beast. But the youngest warriors had forged ahead, shouting their allegiances to Nirun or Durluken, or to the prince of the Tinglut, each promising to bring down the wild sheep for the glory of his hero. Qutula paced him on the right, letting his Durluken run ahead for his honor, while on his left, the Tinglut prince, Daritai, rode with his own son close to his flank.
The boy rode well, as any born of the grasslands would. The moods careening across his face, however, spoke of a sharp mind behind the childish face. Smart enough to understand the danger, at least, and adventurous enough to enjoy the day in spite of it. His father need only teach him to keep those feelings behind his eyes, defended against enemies who would read him like a well-marked trail. A pity the boy wasn’t the groom on offer. He’d have suited Princess Orda when they both had a few years on them.
A compliment might seem like a threat under the circumstances, so Mergen kept those thoughts to himself. He followed the hunt for the ram, letting the drama of the chase unfold ahead.
“ Bolghai will know what to do,” Tayy promised the toad-girl, and put out his hand. “He’ll want to see you right away.”
He had tried everything he could think of to return her to her natural form, but Eluneke remained stubbornly toad. She stepped into his waiting palm, however, as he added, “He’ll be attending the hunt to bless the catch. I should be there myself—my uncle will have my bones for soup spoons for staying away so long.”
She listened gravely, then leaped from his hand onto his hunting jacket, nudging the edge where it crossed his breast.
“Oh, yes, of course.” That was clear enough. He loosened the fastenings to cradle her inside, close to his heart. As he climbed away from the river he tightened the strings again to keep her safe. “Just don’t make any noise until we find him. I don’t want to have to explain you to my uncle in this shape.”
She croaked some answer, though if she meant it as indignation or agreement he couldn’t tell. They both fell silent as he climbed. When the lip of the dell was in sight, Mangkut called down, “Who goes?” He’d set an arrow to his bow, pointed at Tayy’s breast.
Is this the moment? Tayy asked himself. Would Qutula prove now, with murder he could disavow, that his hands around the prince’s throat had been no accident but assassination, thwarted by the skills Tayy had learned in his travels with foreign armies?
He answered Mangkut’s challenge calmly enough—“It’s only Prince Tayy”—and waited for the arrow to prove . . . something.
“The hunt has begun,” Mangkut informed him, and pointed his arrow at the ground. “I can hear the dogs in the distance.”
Tayy mounted his horse with a nod to his cousin’s follower. Mangkut didn’t ask about the girl. It wasn’t his place to do so and the Durluken followed Qutula’s lead, who perhaps had never expected the prince to find her. Tayy kept his own counsel about the small toad riding in his coat.
The young warriors, Nirun and Durluken and a few of the Tinglut as well, had driven their prey to staggering exhaustion. While their lesser fellows contented themselves with smaller game, more than a hand of young warriors had pulled taut the strings of their bows in hope of bringing down the ram. As Mergen bore down on them with the rear guard, they let fly over the heads of their horses.
A strike, there on the flank. The ram, already running, surged ahead. Another arrow, glancing off the horn, fell harmlessly to the ground but a third caught him in the neck. The ram staggered to his knees, rose again as more arrows pierced his shaggy hide. A drunken step, another, as if the creature did not own the legs that carried him. Unchecked, his forward motion brought him down on his great spiral horns as the young horsemen drew up around him, Altan and Duwa among them, which boded ill for a peaceful day.
Altan drew his arrow from the neck of the beast and held it over his head in victory for the Nirun. Duwa snarled something, curse or challenge, over his shoulder while he cut his own arrow from the ram’s breast. Whatever he’d said c
arried sufficient heat that the others who had come to retrieve their own arrows drew back in a wary pack.
Withdraw, Mergen wished of Altan, who might have had the right of it, but who always lacked for tact. Altan, of course, didn’t hear his khan’s thoughts, and acted as he always did, with an instinct for the killing shot. He laughed. Duwa’s face suffused with bloody-minded rage.
If Qutula had ridden with his followers, he might have stopped it, but his blanket-son had remained at Mergen’s side, his eye on his own soaring prey. His arrow flew, a bird fell from the sky, and a little farther ahead, Duwa raised his knife.
“Don’t do it . . .”
Qutula didn’t seem to hear, but the Tinglut prince turned sharply to stare at him as the knife found its mark over the body of the ram.
“What—?” Daritai began, but their line was breaking around the fallen in front of them. Mergen would have wished the foreign prince with their flank, following the game and none the wiser. Instead he stopped, the child at his side, while the gur-khan on his steaming horse drew up to take accounting of the tragedy before them.
What have you done? he wished to demand of the young man who stood with bloodied hand before him. What have you brought down on your house and clans by your rash actions? But a khan could show no such human weakness even for the boyhood companion of his blanket-son. Not when Altan, the pride and heir of his own general Jochi, lay dead beside the ram.
So, so, so. “Find his father. General Jochi must be told,” Mergen instructed Qutula, whose man had committed murder over a dumb beast for the cook pot. “Tell him I sent you to stand guard over the princess; he may come at the will of his gur-khan.”
Lords of Grass and Thunder Page 33
