Lords of Grass and Thunder

by Curt Benjamin

  Duwa, like the rest, approached her with dread and only when his master required it, like now. He entered the tent with a sneer on his face but kept to the lattices, well away from where she huddled on the filthy carpets.

  “Ribbit,” she said, just to annoy him.

  He dropped the steaming bowl of millet boiled in whey, where it spread new stains across the muddy patterns. “Catch your own, then,” he snarled at her, backing out of the tent.

  Through the felted tent cloths she heard him say to someone outside the door, “I won’t go back in there, no matter what you do to me.”

  “If that’s the way you feel, then of course you won’t have to go back,” Qutula’s voice answered. Then Eluneke heard a scream which ended suddenly in the thunk of something hard hitting the ground.

  “Anyone else having second thoughts?” Qutula inquired, his voice cool and unruffled. No one volunteered an opinion. The blood seeping under the edge of the tent cover made the reason for that perfectly clear.

  “Oooohhh,” Eluneke wept. Wrapping her arms across her stomach, she clasped her shaman’s costume tightly around her and rocked and moaned. They hadn’t fed her the day before. Qutula hadn’t been there and no one would come near her unless he forced them to it. She would doubtless starve to death if he didn’t murder her first. Eluneke didn’t like the idea, but she was starting to learn the limits of terror on that score. She knew he had sent for Tayy, however, and that she couldn’t bear.

  “Toragana!” she cried. “I need you! Where are you?”

  As if in answer to the apprentice’s prayer, a raven flew through the smoke hole and landed on one of the spokes that held up the roof. She shifted uneasily from one foot to the other on her perch. Though she didn’t fly away again, neither did she change into the woman Toragana.

  Qutula nudged the head of his follower Duwa with his toe. It rolled a little bit and he worried for a moment that it would fall into the pit his followers had dug for the prince. “Someone get rid of this.”

  As if they had been turned to stone, no one moved. Except Duwa, or his head, at least. It stopped when his nose hit a tuft of grass, which seemed to startle the life back into his army. Enough, at least, to drag the corpse away.

  With a little nod of satisfaction, he turned his attention to his sword, carefully wiping the blood off with a soft square of cloth. When he had removed the last speck from the blade, Qutula dropped the cloth into the pit and slid the sword into its scabbard. He was almost ready.

  In the distance he could see a smudge against the horizon that he figured for the prince coming at his command. His cousin had a reputation as a hero, but even the “bright shining one” couldn’t overcome two hands of guardsmen sent to accompany Mangkut. Once the great Prince Tayyichiut was dead, he wouldn’t need the girl. It would all be over soon.

  He hadn’t heard his demon lover join him until her hot breath whispered, “Kill him,” in his ear. Now that they were so close to their goal, she had come out of hiding and stood beside him as a woman for all the camp to see. He missed her presence on his breast, missed the gift of pleasure that laced itself through his bones at the prick of her inky fangs and the voice riding in his head that had become a part of him. But he loved the fear and envy he saw in the eyes of his warriors when they recognized her for the Lady Chauijin, who had murdered the khan in his bed and who now chose to put Qutula in his place.

  “I will,” he promised, “But the army will fight for him. My brother has seen to that with his stupid songs.”

  “My people will help you.” With a nod she showed him where the grass moved with a hundred and a hundred more of her snaky kinsmen.

  His own heart stuttered in his breast. With an army of vipers he scarcely needed his human riders. And yet, who would follow a khan who openly ruled such creatures? Qutula suppressed his own terror at the slithering doom he saw approaching. The lady had murdered a husband before, and she was easily offended.

  “Let the humans die for us,” he suggested. “When we have won, I will build a new religion that honors the serpent-demon above all other spirits.”

  “And will you worship me in your tents, O great khan?”

  He felt the threat in her fingers sliding to the back of his neck. Felt the promise as well when she drew his mouth down for a kiss.

  “I will worship you in my tents, or anywhere you come to me,” he sighed into her mouth.

  “And will you worship me in the tall grass and among the stones, and anywhere my people gather?” she asked, and he said, “Yes, yes.” His hands moved to her breast and he sought the serpent’s tongue and the serpent’s teeth in her mouth.

  “We have time,” she said, and Qutula let her lead him away to the tent he had taken for his own. Her serpent minion who watched over the shaman-princess would make sure that there was time. No one would find them until he chose to let them. His lady was proving to be a demanding lover, but he only had to satisfy her for a little while longer. When he was khan . . . but he mustn’t let the thoughts come too close to the surface, where she might read them in his mind.

  So far the plan was working. Prince Tayyichiut had delayed his departure with Mangkut while Jochi set a large force in place among the wagons that ringed the outer perimeter of the tent city. They had easily taken Qutula’s small group of guards. Too easily, Tayy thought. They’d all been young and untested; some had seemed relieved of a great burden when they handed over their weapons. Qutula had been far away then, unable to control his nervous followers with threats or punishments. The next part wouldn’t be as easy.

  Mangkut had said nothing since they’d put him back on his horse. Several times Tayy caught him staring out of wide, blank eyes. Once, it seemed that the pupils of his eyes had narrowed to slits, as though a serpent were looking out of them. Perhaps, Tayy thought, she was.

  “My Lady Chaiujin?” he inquired, but Mangkut’s lips peeled back in a rictus of a smile and then he turned away. Not the emerald green bamboo snake-demon then, but another. Mangkut had said there was another.

  “My pardon,” he tried again. “I mean you no harm. I only wish to rescue the lady your master holds prisoner against her will.”

  “I have no master.” The voice was not Mangkut’s. He could read in the serpent eyes that the creature lied. Perhaps Qutula’s soldiers were not the only ones who would betray him for their own freedom.

  “Under my rule,” Tayy promised, “the khanate will hold no creature slave against its will.”

  “Tell that to your horse,” the demon replied. Contemptuously, he turned away, ending the conversation. Mangkut’s shoulders sagged then. Released from the demon’s control, the man began to tremble so fiercely that Tayy worried he might fall.

  He had more important things to think about, however. A small tent city half hidden among the trees at the edge of the Onga had appeared as if out of nowhere. Mangkut had brought them through the demon’s glamour which ringed the camp like a barricade of wagons. While there were few tents compared to the gathering under the gur-khan’s banner, there were far too many to confront with Tayy’s small force. He called a halt and slipped from the saddle.

  “Where does he keep her?” he asked, dragging Mangkut after him.

  “It’s the one a little apart from the others; you can barely see it for the trees.”

  Not only did the tent stand alone, but it seemed that the warriors in the camp took care to stay well clear of it when they had to pass that way. Among the clans, only their shaman dealt easily with the spirit world. Tayy knew only Qutula who willingly treated with demons. That would work in their favor.

  “General Qutula will have seen us coming,” Mangkut remarked, promoting his captain, though not yet to the rank of khan. A small force had set out from the camp to intercept them but with no urgency.

  “Mangkut will come with me.” He tugged the traitorous captain from his saddle by the bonds that tied his hands. “I’ll need five men to watch him, and to make sure no one comes into the tent w
hile I release Eluneke.”

  “You’ll have to get past my lord Qutula’s demon first,” Mangkut pointed out. “Once you see her, you may change your mind anyway.” His sneer would have been more convincing if he’d managed to stop shaking.

  “What has he done to her?” He didn’t need the messenger any more. It would be easy to kill him.

  “Nothing!” Mangkut shrank away from him, caught between terrors. “She’s not hurt, just ugly as old Bortu’s butt, and she did it to herself! It’s not my fault!”

  “It became your fault when you followed Qutula from the palace, and when you helped him kidnap her.”

  “I made a mistake! I’ll do whatever you ask!”

  Though Mangkut’s eyes were round and human, the prince could see why the serpent-demon had found a comfortable home inside them. He wouldn’t know the truth if it stepped on his foot.

  “Take him,” he said to one of the warriors who had dismounted to follow him. “As for the rest of you—”

  “We know, Lord Gur-Khan.” Their captain repeated his part of the plan. “We hold your horses for your escape and guard the perimeter of your rescue.”

  “Your bravery will not go unsung.” Prince Tayy clasped the hand of each man who would hold the way open for their retreat.

  “My lord.”

  With a last salute, Tayy crouched low in the blowing grass and led his cohort around the camp. They would approach Eluneke’s tent under cover of the forest that clung to the river.

  The toads were still there, moving through the grass like a determined horde. Bekter was beginning to doubt the wisdom of following them, however. For one thing, he regretted not filling a waterskin for the journey which, at the rate toads traveled, seemed unlikely to put him in his brother’s camp in time to do anything useful. For another, a storm was coming. Thunder rumbled ominously behind him. With his luck, he’d probably step in a puddle and find himself sucked into the underworld, or he’d be swept up to the heavens by lightning and left dead on the grass at the end of the storm.

  He’d have done better to go immediately to the ger-tent palace. He should have told the prince what he had learned; General Jochi would have known what to do. He wouldn’t have set out alone, but would have had the sense to bring his own horde with him. In spite of the bright sunlight, the thunder had settled into a steady roll that rumbled in his chest and shook the ground beneath his feet.

  Oh. Not thunder, then. Half afraid to see what was following him, he turned around. Though still too far away to recognize by their features, it was easy enough to Hell that there were riders coming. A lot of them. For a heart-stopping moment he thought they would ride right over him. Then he realized that they were slowing their pace, stumbling around as if they had lost some trail they followed. Bekter could sympathize. He even figured that proved they were on his side. A handful of Qutula’s people had passed him earlier, riding with no hesitation until they vanished before his eyes.

  He’d have been more confident if he’d been able to figure out how a whole army had gotten this far without a magical toad to lead them, but it was worth turning back to find out. They would doubtless have water on them as well.

  Bekter was not a small man and, mounted on his horse, made a large target against the bright blue sky, but the horde didn’t seem to notice him. He flapped his hands over his head to draw their attention with no better success. Hmmm. That suggested he had passed within the influence of Qutula’s demon, though not so far that he could actually see the Durluken camp. Not one to look a gift horde in the mouth, he turned around and headed back the way he had come. He worried about losing sight of the toads, but they seemed to understand his purpose in following them. A few had slowed their own frantic hopping as if waiting for him to catch up with them again.

  It was easy to tell when the gur-khan’s forces finally saw him because the horses in the front of the line reared up and would have unseated less skilled riders. Once the mounts were under control again, General Jochi, thank the gods and spirits, rode forward a few paces and rested his arms on the pommel of his saddle.

  “And what are you doing out here alone, poet?”

  The general didn’t sound happy. Bekter didn’t figure he’d like the answer much either, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. “Following the toads,” he said, and pointed to the ground.

  The general had raised his hand but stopped mid signal. The warriors closest to him had started to move toward him, but stopped, confused both by their general’s aborted command and by the grass ahead of them boiling with toads.

  “We’ve been looking for you for the past two days.”

  And not for a chat or an epic, Bekter guessed. Jochi’s fingers curled in what could only have been a choking motion. Not hard to figure what throat he imagined between his hands.

  “I was with Toragana,” Bekter explained. “Since this morning, I’ve been following these toads. According to Toragana, they know where my sister is.”

  “Your sister—” Jochi looked shocked that he had used the word, which made sense, considering that Qutula had kidnapped her. And suddenly he understood why they’d all been looking for him.

  “I didn’t help Qutula steal her. I don’t know her well enough to know if I like her yet, but she’s my blood, and the prince loves her. I can’t believe you would think I would hurt either of them that way!”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “For the same reason you are, to find her and get her back.”

  But they hadn’t been following a horde of toads. Suddenly, he had hope. “Do you know where she is?”

  Jochi’s frustration told him otherwise. “We were following the prince, then he disappeared.”

  “The prince—” It was unmanly to faint, Bekter reminded himself, but he nearly did it anyway.

  “Water!” the general called, and one of the warriors formerly singled out to arrest him instead propped him up in his saddle and offered him the waterskin.

  Bekter drank gratefully. It even helped his light- headedness enough to offer a suggestion. “The prince, I gather, was farther ahead of you than I was.”

  Jochi nodded, his eyes tense and watchful. “He had a guide from Qutula’s camp. We were following at a cautious distance, but suddenly they disappeared. We continued in the direction he seemed to be heading, but we haven’t seen them again.”

  “Well, if the prince’s guide was taking him to Eluneke, and the toads are leading me to her as well, if you follow the toads, you should find the prince.”

  It struck him then that horses of the general’s horde would trample the toads into the ground. But if the horde hadn’t seen him until he stepped toward them, they must be close to the boundary of the demon’s influence. They couldn’t be that far from the camp.

  “I’ll follow the toads,” he amended his suggestion. “Your army can follow me. When I disappear, you will know I can be no more than a step or two from where you last saw me. You ought to see me again as soon as you cross the spot where I vanished. It won’t be fast, but when the camp comes into view, the toads can go to ground, allowing the horses to run.”

  Jochi clearly didn’t like the idea, but he had little choice. The prince, heir to the khanate, was on the other side of that invisible barrier. Going back without him wasn’t an option for any of them.

  With a nod, the general gave his permission to continue. Bekter turned around and followed the last of the toads through the demon’s invisible shield. Behind him he heard swearing, but he held his mare to her steady pace and let her pick her way carefully among their warty guides.

  Below, on the filthy carpets of the tent where Qutula held her prisoner, the shaman-princess Eluneke huddled in a heap and hid her sobs with a knobby hand held over her toady mouth. Within her breast, the shamaness Toragana wept for her pupil. Perched among the umbrella spokes of the roof, her totem form didn’t know how to cry tears. She didn’t dare to utter the bird’s cry of desolation either, for fear of bringing Qutula’s g
uardsmen with their bows. Toragana would be just as dead with an arrow through her feathered breast as she’d be in human form. So she hopped from one foot to another, lifting her sooty wings in distress, but kept her beak firmly closed.

  She had a simple problem: find Bolghai and bring him back to free the princess from the talisman. But the demon’s spell had clouded her vision even in her totem form. She had found Eluneke’s prison only with the help of the toads and had no certainty of retracing her path on her own.

  “Criii-kit!” squeaked a very small toad.

  Wiping the tears from her eyes, Eluneke lifted her half-toad head to listen. “That might work,” she agreed once the toad had explained their plan to rescue her with the help of Bolghai’s sharp stoat’s teeth. “But how will he find me?”

  “Cri-yi-yi!” the toad responded.

  Toragana fixed the creature with a long and thoughtful stare. He was certainly small enough to ride on her back while she searched out the shaman, and he could whisper the directions in her ear when she needed to return. She had to balance that against how tasty he looked for supper.

  It was, of course, an unworthy consideration, and a reminder that she had held her totem form a bit too long. Fortunately, Eluneke didn’t appear to have guessed what was going on in her raven’s mind. The look she cast on her teacher was so full of hope that Toragana had to busy herself preening a feather so that her gaze did not give her away.

  It took only a moment to bring herself around to it. Toragana hopped from the spokes of the umbrella roof and lightly flitted to the ground. Bowing her head, she accepted the little toad on her back with no more than a ruffle of her feathers. Then she was off, struggling to fly through the smoke hole and then gathering speed in the free air.

  “Caw!” she warned the toad. She thought that when she passed into the dream realm the creature would be drawn with her. If she was wrong, however, he would fall from where her back had been, a long way to the ground.