by Megan Bannen
“I don’t usually fall off, my lord,” I tell him doubtfully, and even that’s a stretch.
His exhaustion-glazed eyes stare at me before he nods and then calls out to one of his men. “Nasan!”
I recognize the tall, narrow-faced man who finishes hoisting a ger frame onto a cart and hurries over to where the prince and I are standing. He’s a little older than the prince and he’s dressed like a soldier of rank, but he doesn’t seem to mind taking orders from the younger man.
“My lord?”
“This boy will help you pack up what we need from the stores. Put him to use.” He claps Nasan on the shoulder before returning to the carts and horses.
Nasan looks at me with a face devoid of expression. He meets my eye and nods. I nod back at him. I have no idea what I’m doing or how I’m going to pull this off or even why. I only know that I have to follow after this prince, and so I push everything else to the back of my mind to worry about later. For now, I lead Nasan into the carts. He chases off slaves who are pilfering food, prodding them out with the blunt end of his lance. We spend the next hour packing up dried meat and cheese curds and pressed yogurt and pots and spoons among other, more important items.
When we’re finished, we haul what we have managed to scavenge outside. The icy drizzle comes to an end as dawn peeks over the horizon. The few Kipchaks who remain in Sarai gather by the horses with mists of steam drying off their bodies. I shuffle uncomfortably in the small pool of men, my head bobbing through their sea of shoulders, unsure what to do with myself while the men check and double-check the packing to make sure it’s secured to the horses.
Timur Khan hasn’t moved since Prince Khalaf told him his oldest two sons were dead. He has turned to stone, his thick eyebrows forming a heavy line over his eyes.
The prince speaks with Nasan for some time, their heads close together. Then Nasan walks over to Timur Khan and bows before him. The growing light of morning gleams off his shorn head as the two braided loops and front forelock of his remaining hair dangle from his bowed form.
“Might I offer a suggestion, my lord?” he asks.
Timur Khan makes a sound that is little more than a rumble. Nasan takes this as permission to speak.
“As you know, there are few trade routes through the Caucasus Mountains, and most of them are treacherous.”
“Are you seriously suggesting we escape by heading straight into the Il-Khanate?”
“Exactly, my lord. The il-khan will have cut off the trade route east to the Yuan and will expect us to head north or west.”
“So we go south, directly into the lion’s mouth, and hope that his army doesn’t follow?” The khan’s voice begins to regain life.
“I doubt he could bring an army through those mountains, my lord. And once we’re past the Caucasus, we can head north and west around the Black Sea to the Bulgarians. They have no love of the il-khan either.”
Timur Khan nods grimly. Any fool would know the route is Prince Khalaf’s idea, but maybe the prince hopes it will sound like a good plan if it doesn’t come from him. Whatever the case, the exile party heads south, taking me along with it.
5
IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE HOW THE Kipchak horde I saw sprawled across the grassland outside Sarai just two months ago could have been reduced to this handful of men riding beside the khan and his son. They look like children’s toys against the vast backdrop of the steppes, woefully incapable of defending their leader—much less me—should the Il-Khanids catch up to us.
I spend the long days staring at the horizon we leave behind, willing the il-khan’s army not to appear and terrified that it will as a light snow falls all around us. After five days of hard riding, with me rattling around the back of a wagon beside sacks of dried meat, we catch our first glimpse of the peaks in the distance. It feels like a turning point two days later when we enter the new terrain without Hulegu Il-Khan materializing to our north.
I’m freezing in the mountains. I’ve had few opportunities to spend time outdoors and certainly not while fleeing for my life in the company of eight men. Frankly, I’m not sure which is worse, the mountains or the men. At least a mountain doesn’t bring out its private business to pee. The only one with any sense of propriety is the prince, who disappears from time to time into the trees.
And speaking of pee, I am coming to realize that I did not quite think through the ins and outs of what it would mean to masquerade as a boy. Urination has become a furtive endeavor, and it involves my having to hold it in for long chunks of time until we stop somewhere and I can scurry off into the woods without getting left behind. Then there is the fact that I get my period on our fourth day in the Caucasus. The extra shirt I packed now serves a very different function than originally intended. So for me, at least, our slog through the mountains is a new kind of hell.
The reason that few trade routes run through the Caucasus Mountains is because the Caucasus comprise the worst terrain in the history of horrible terrains. Plateaus of frost-coated steppes disappear into narrow gullies between looming mountain peaks. All around us, the world is dense with trees and shrubs. Oak and hornbeam give way to birch and pine as we climb higher and higher, and then birch and pine give way to oak and hornbeam as we descend lower and lower in an unending cycle of trees and altitudes.
Somewhere along the way, we cross into the Il-Khanate, although it’s hard to say exactly when. This area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea has been hotly contested between the Kipchak Khanate and the Il-Khanate for decades. I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to live here, much less fight over it. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing here but mountains and snow and trees and mud and more mountains.
The route cutting through the Caucasus grows so narrow that we ditch the wagons after a week and load up the horses and ourselves, too. I am now carrying a bag of stinking curds, and I feel like a peasant woman hauling a fat, sleeping toddler on my back.
We’re a quiet lot, nine of us traveling together on a hard road. The six soldiers who accompany the prince and the khan were all in Prince Khalaf’s tumen since he was in charge of tens of thousands of men on the field of battle, and most of them were in his own arban of ten as well, which would make them almost family. They’re the ones who cut through enemy lines to reach Sarai. Nasan, ever the loyal friend, looks only to the prince for orders and guidance, but the rest of the men shift their eyes between the prince and the khan whenever Prince Khalaf gives a command, as if they’re ascertaining Timur Khan’s approval, too.
I collect their names: Farit, Kamil, Rustam, Almas, Ildar.
No one has asked me for my name, I notice.
Another week passes and I’m marching behind Rustam, a boy soldier maybe a year or two older than I am. I watch his shoulders slump with each passing step. I suppose his dead are walking alongside him, weighing him down with grief. That’s nothing new for me. The burden of my ancestors is heavier than the overstuffed pack I carry on my back. Even so, I almost feel badly for him until I nearly collide into his backside when he stops to pee.
I have seen more penises in three weeks than I thought to see in a lifetime. I shudder, completely mortified, every time a man urinates. My mother must think me a disgrace, wherever her spirit resides. She used to sit by a courtyard window and embroider silk, her body still and lovely, her only movement the deft flick of hand and wrist. She was so effortlessly womanly. She had little patience for my sulking and my lack of grace, but being in her presence had been easy and uncomplicated. What I wouldn’t give to be home beside her now, to appreciate her as I never did before.
My eyes dart to Prince Khalaf far up ahead of me where he walks at the front of the line side by side with Nasan. It’s hard to see around Timur Khan’s enormous bulk in the middle of our formation, so I have to tilt my head to catch a glimpse of him, the prince who is, if not the complete cause of all my sorrow, at least a small instigator of it. I feel nothing for him in this moment. Nothing at all.
And that’s a good thing.
The only positive news is that Prince Khalaf’s plan seems to have worked. The Il-Khanid army hasn’t followed us through the mountains. But positive news is pretty relative at this point.
The Kipchaks brought me along to cook, but so far I’ve done nothing. We’ve kept our fires low and lit them only at night. I haven’t even been the one to hand out rations. Nasan has seen to that. All I’ve done is walk and walk and walk.
Finally, Prince Khalaf calls for a day of hunting and foraging to bolster our stores after losing the wagons, and the men give a faint cheer in the understanding that tonight there will be a decent fire.
I guess I’m cooking. Hopefully, I won’t poison anyone, I joke to myself.
As the men break off to hunt, the prince holds out a bow and half a quiver of arrows to me. It’s ludicrous, the fact that he’s handing me a weapon. I almost burst out laughing.
“You said you could shoot,” he says in response to my hesitation.
“I can, my lord,” I lie.
Timur Khan curses. “Then if you see something tasty to eat while you’re out there pissing in the forest, shoot it.”
“Yes, my lord.”
When I reach for the weapon, the prince leans in and murmurs, “Please don’t shoot any people, though.”
He’s kidding, but it is emphatically not funny. I scuttle away into the trees with the bow and arrows before I can bring any more of the khan’s scorn upon myself. The old man has hardly spoken a word since Sarai, and I don’t particularly want to be the one who inspires him to speech. My experience is that he doesn’t usually have anything nice to say.
I don’t hunt, obviously. How could I? I’d probably wind up shooting out my own eye by accident. Instead, I climb a tree. It was something I used to do as a little girl to get away from my family, to think and dream in the quiet of the courtyard garden, in the time before I was a slave. Well, here is the perfect tree, and I may never have this opportunity again. Plus, I desperately need to do some thinking.
I’ve been operating under the assumption that slaves have exactly zero choices in life. Now, cold and exhausted, a girl disguised as a boy, tottering after the losing end of a battle, I have to second-guess that assessment. It seems to me that I’ve made some choices—some very bad choices—that have led me to this moment.
I catch myself singing under my breath. It’s a nervous habit. Half the time I don’t even realize I’m doing it until I’m well into a song. But this is a particularly bad venue for an audible nervous habit. For all I know, our pursuers are out in these woods, and my tuneless humming might have led them straight to us. I bite my nails to keep quiet.
I don’t go back to the camp when I should. I don’t know why I watch the sun set through tree branches that stretch up to the sky like arms and fingers. I don’t know why I sit stiff and frozen for hour after hour, my back growing sore against the trunk as the moon rises and spins slowly through the leafless tree branches above. I’m not really planning to escape. It’s just that I can’t bring myself to go back yet. It’s not as though anyone will come looking for me.
Maybe I hope they will.
Maybe I hope I matter enough, that’s all.
It’s funny. While to all outward appearances my life has changed drastically over the past couple of years, there are some things that stay the same. Like my complete insignificance, for example.
My breath slows, and I close my eyes.
“He’s going to kill us,” I say, although I can’t remember why.
“Not if we don’t get caught,” says Weiji.
My brother sits on a branch across from me. I can just make out the familiar features of his face in the moonlight. It should be day, though, shouldn’t it? Why is it night?
“But what if he does catch us?” I ask.
“He won’t if you shut up.”
We perch, each of us on our respective branches, and listen to the wind in the trees.
“Zhăngxiōng? Older Brother?”
“What?” he asks, clearly annoyed.
“I want to go home.” The memories of the ancestral altar, the feel of a beautifully crafted chair beneath me, the taste of tea on my tongue—they all threaten to overtake me like a river overflowing its banks. There’s no end to the damage it could do.
“I want to go home, too,” Weiji answers.
“Then let’s go,” I beg him. “Please.”
His wound snakes down his body, forming a slow channel from his shoulder to his heart, a black chasm in the darkness.
“‘Are we buffaloes,’” he says in a voice that is not his own, “‘are we tigers / That our home should be these desolate wilds?’”
Before I can say or do anything, he steps off his branch and plummets to the ground below.
I open my eyes to find myself frozen to the core and more uncomfortable than I can bear. The dream quickly disintegrates in my memory. I remember only Weiji telling me he wanted to go home, and it leaves me feeling hollow and depressed. I have no idea why he’s showing up in my dreams nearly two years after his death, but it can’t bode well. And I have nothing to offer his soul.
I climb down from my perch and reluctantly head back to camp, inventing a lame story in my mind about following some promising tracks that led to nothing.
A muffled shout from the direction of the camp brings me to a halt. I look around, suddenly aware of how very dark it is. Another cry reaches me, rattles my insides with trepidation. I walk forward a few paces, and when nothing jumps out to attack me, I keep walking. As I get closer, I don’t know what I’m hearing, but I know it’s not good.
I stop again and listen.
Another cry, sharper than the last. The faint clank of metal. Men killing men.
The memory of the violence I have seen and experienced floods me, fills my entire body, threatens to drown me with fear.
Maybe if I just stay here and wait, it will end, and I won’t have to deal with it. Maybe everything will be over before it even begins. Maybe I was right about having no choices, that I won’t have to make any.
But standing here and doing nothing is a choice, too.
I look around me at the moon-glazed trees, the way the ethereal light reflects off the dusting of snow on the peaks beyond. This is a world of ghosts and night. I don’t want to be alone in it. What good would it do me to have my choices taken from me here, now? I will my feet to move forward.
The skirmish grows louder with each step. My heart pumps hard in my chest and my limbs go jittery. My pace is slug-like as I press on, praying the whole way that whatever is happening will be over and done with by the time I arrive. I have no such luck. The battle is still going when I reach the campsite and hide behind a completely inadequate shrub.
It isn’t the Il-Khanids attacking the Kipchaks. It’s just a bunch of ragged bandits out to rob a nicely outfitted envoy, not that they know or care whom they’re robbing. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether it’s enemy soldiers or a band of criminals with swords and knives. Death is death in all its ugliness, regardless of who delivers it. Several of our men already litter the ground, and the bandits have what’s left of the Kipchaks completely surrounded. I try not to look at the bodies, although I can’t help but recognize what remains of Nasan, even with half his face and his brains strewn across the ground. I have to bite back the horror that threatens to overwhelm me as I peer out from my vantage point. That’s when I realize that Prince Khalaf is the only Kipchak left standing.
I don’t know much about war. I haven’t had many opportunities to see men fight to the death, thank heaven. But even I can see that Prince Khalaf’s skill in battle puts most men to shame. Outnumbered five to one, with an uurga in one hand and a dagger in the other, he dodges every blow or blocks it with the uurga’s long handle while wounding an opponent with each strike of the dagger’s blade. It’s almost like he’s dancing. If it weren’t terrifying to behold, it would be beautiful. His deel is blood-darkened, and I
have no idea how much of it is his and how much belongs to his assailants.
At first I don’t understand why he never moves from his spot, why he never seeks the advantage when he has the chance, until I realize that he is ruthlessly defending a lump of humanity that I can only assume is his father sprawled on the ground behind him.
I was mistaken. It’s definitely not nothing that I feel for him. His love for his undeserving father gouges my conscience even as I think the words, Let him die. He’s not worth it.
Prince Khalaf lassos one of the men around the neck with the uurga and pulls the leather loop tight when another bandit finally slips past his guard and slices into his shoulder with a long knife. The boy who gave me apples cries out in pain.
Logic abandons me. I nock an arrow, pull the bowstring taut, and release. The arrow flies through the moonlight and lodges itself in a tree three feet to the side of the bandit.
What on earth are you doing, Jinghua? the voice of reason asks somewhere in the recesses of my mind, but my instinct ignores it. My instinct nocks another arrow and sends it hurtling toward the bandit and into another tree. It’s pathetic, but in that instant Prince Khalaf has the distraction he needs to strike three men in one breath.
“Halt!” calls one of the assailants, and his remaining men fall back, some of them stumbling with shocked surprise over their own dead as well as ours. I drop the bow and make a run for it, but two of them catch up quickly and drag me roughly to their captain.
“It’s nothing but a little slave,” one of the men points out. He hawks and spits in my face. If I weren’t exactly what he says I am, I might have the dignity to wipe it away. But as it is, I just shiver, my mind blank with fear.
“Put him with the rest,” orders the leader, jerking his head to the bandits’ growing pile of spoils. “Not that he’ll fetch much.”
I have just been stolen for the second time in my life. You’re an idiot, Jinghua, I excoriate myself. You are such an idiot.
A bandit pushes me past one of the dead men lying on the earth, polluting the soil with the blood that pours out of the hole in his neck. I can see bits of bone and muscle, too, and the man’s lips pulled back in pain and fear. I collapse to the ground and retch. The bandit kicks me, knocking the breath out of me, but I don’t care. I retch again, and strings of vomity snot stream from my nostrils. My guard has to roll me with his foot the rest of the way to the stolen goods.
