Lords of Grass and Thunder (20 page)

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.

Sweat bloomed on the old chieftain’s lip as desperation replaced arrogance in his eyes. He would have fallen to his knees, but Mergen’s guardsmen held him up by his arms.

“I can make you rich beyond your dreams!”

“Perhaps,” Mergen agreed. “But I can send you to a place beyond wealth or dreams.”

It took only a glance at the guardsmen who stood behind the prisoner, but he hadn’t expected his own blanket-son to step forward.

Qutula seized the hair of the Uulgar chieftain “How, my lord khan?” he asked, readying himself to strike. It troubled Mergen that his son chose to honor him with this grim service, but he would not shame him by hesitating.

“Quickly,” he answered. At need, to extract information or to serve as a lesson, he could draw out the death of a prisoner for days of screaming torment. But he took no pleasure in such punishments and hoped Qutula understood.

Like a serpent striking, Qutula’s arm curled around the man’s throat. The man struggled, but the khan’s guardsmen grasped him firmly. Muscles stood out in carved relief as his son’s arm crushed the wind out of his prisoner with iron strength. Mergen held his eye, refusing to flinch away from the act as the dying man’s thrashing slowed, then stopped. Someone had to do it, certainly. Death was the work of a soldier and he appreciated how promptly his son obeyed him. Some hesitance in the matter of cold-blooded killing would have pleased him more, though he wasn’t certain why he felt that way.

“How do your stolen riches serve you now?” Mergen asked the dead man as Qutula released his hold and stepped back, letting the body fall into the arms of the waiting guardsmen.

Unruffled, Yesugei watched him over the body between them. Mergen saw well into the soul of his friend, however; saw the furtive, troubled glance he cast at the youngest warrior brought before them as a chieftain. The sacrificial goat, he figured, meant to be the one to pay for all their crimes, while his elders haggled with the khan over the spoils of the recent war. The general would take it on himself to execute the boy if it were demanded of him, but he questioned the justice of such an act. As he turned his attention to the young man, a son perhaps, or a nephew of the old chieftain, so did Mergen.

Guardsmen in blue had laid hold of the younger prisoner, but he made no move to defend his relative or to take vengeance for his death. Rather, he raised his head with the pride of one who has seen too much and looks only to finish the job as bravely as he began it.

“We have lost our khan to an evil sorcerer,” he said, “the sorcerer to battle, and yet a third khan to your vengeance, my lord.” The young warrior’s voice drifted off, his eyes lost to a private grief that went far to explain his place among the chieftains. Mergen winced, imagining his own sons, his nephew and heir, standing in the youth’s place in front of an unfriendly khan.

“I have seen the futility of trying to strike a bargain with the Qubal-Khan,” he went on with less bitterness than despair. “But I beg mercy—” He dropped to his knees then, almost ending his life at the hands of battle-nerved guardsmen. But he stayed where he was, arms out in supplication,“—for my people only, the ten thousand you hold prisoner here and the tens of ten thousand, peaceful herders and their wives and flocks who await their return. What will become of them?”

Not “us,” Mergen noted. He expected to die as his elders had, but still he pleaded for his people. “You wear no badges on your chest,” he persisted, wanting an answer to this riddle before he handed down judgment. He had a nephew watching him, learning how to lead, and sons who understood from his actions the value of following a just khan.

“Not all the Uulgar take such trophies. We have come to know, at great cost, the price of honor.”

“Master Markko was good at teaching such lessons, I understand.” Mergen goaded him. The magician had left a path of death and destruction across thousands of li. Accepting the hospitality of the raider clans within sight of his goal, Markko had poisoned the Uulgar-Khan and seized his tents and armies as a weapon he used to lay siege to heaven. He’d lost that final battle, but the Uulgar had a head start on conquest and tyranny well before the magician had shown up to give them a touch of their own lash.

“He certainly taught us the cost of losing,” the boy agreed. “I don’t need another such lesson. The Uulgar are yours. If you plan to kill me, I wish you would do so now and save me the humiliation of abasing myself any further for nothing. If you would ransom me, I must in conscience tell you that the only person who would have paid for me now lies dead at the khan’s own hand.”

Well spoken. With better teachers than a mad magician and a raider for a parent, the boy might have made a worthy khan, perhaps even a husband for Eluneke to seal a treaty of friendship between their people. Mergen gave no sign by any softening of eye or quirk of lip where his judgment might lead, but he wanted to test the young man further. “And what would you do with one such as yourself, were you on the dais and I at your feet?” he asked.

The young man who would have been khan of the Uulgar people sat back on his heels, considering the question. He answered with one of his own. “If I said that in your place I would return your flocks and herds and send you intact to reclaim your lands and tents, would you take my advice and free me to lead my Uulgar clansmen home?”

“No,” Mergen conceded. The court murmured with laughter. A chuckle escaped even the Lady Bortu, though she might have drawn blood with the sharpness of her gaze on the prisoner. Next to him, Mergen felt the presence of his heir, tense and waiting, absorbing every word.
That’s right,
he thought. P
ay attention. If things had gone differently, you would be kneeling in this young khan’s place, begging for the lives of the Qubal clans.

“That isn’t really an option.”

“I didn’t think it was.” The young man gave a bitter laugh. “I won’t bandy words with you. I’m not a diplomat and I’d rather not make a fool of myself before I die. But if you would grant me one boon, I ask only to accompany your army as a hostage. With my words and actions I would persuade your emissary that a whole people should not be judged by the actions of a few.” He gave a little shrug, a rueful half smile. “Even if those few are their leaders. By my example as our dead khan’s heir, the Uulgar will learn to love the Qubal-Khan as their own.”

The boy had offered him a gift in the loyalty of the Uulgar, but too much mercy would make the Qubal look weak. A price had to be paid. But, “Not a hostage,” Mergen-Khan judged, “since by your own word there is none to pay your ransom. But a slave, bound to serve for a full cycle of the seasons, or more if your master should deem your freedom to be a danger to the Qubal ulus. As for what is to be done with such a slave, that is a decision best made by he who will hold your bond. My emissary, indeed. General Yesugei, what would you do with this young warrior who will not, it seems, be a khan today?”

Yesugei’s gaze searched the khan’s face as if he might find some other meaning there, but Mergen didn’t soften in his resolve. “In the morning, good Yesugei, allow the women who lost husbands in the war to choose from among the most presentable of the prisoners. Then I would have you ride out with an army of our best warriors and the ten thousand of prisoners to lay claim to the Uulgar lands and rule there in my name.”

“If my own wishes carry any weight in the decision, I would not leave your side.” The general bowed low to his khan while his eyes accused a friend of many complex things. Banishment for one. Standing in the way of his suit for Sechule’s attentions for another. His words, however, offered perfect solicitude. “Who knows better the enemies closest to your tents than one who has fought at your side and at your command to the very gates of a foreign heaven?”