Lords of Grass and Thunder (21 page)

The Lady Chaiujin, he meant, who had murdered Mergen’s brother and his brother’s wife. They had seen or heard no sign of the lady-serpent since their return from war, however. Given the politics of a living court and his knowledge of both ladies, Mergen believed Sechule the more dangerous of the two. The false Lady Chaiujin had no claim on him.

To make certain the general understood the full import of the honor bestowed on him, Mergen countered the question with one of his own, spoken loud enough for all to hear. “Who would I send to be khan in my place but my best right hand?”

A murmur passed through the great ger-tent palace like a wave through grass. The general would be a khan in his own right. Not over the Qubal ulus and still answering to Mergen as his gur-khan—-khan of khans—but a khan with a ger-tent palace and five hundred retainers and an army of his own. Perhaps that would be enough for Sechule. If not, Yesugei might choose from among the noble ladies of the Uulgar as many wives as he wanted to warm his tents.

A light had ignited in General Yesugei’s eye as he came to understand the full import of his new position. “As the gur-khan wishes,” he agreed, the first to address Mergen by the new title he had claimed, and held himself a little taller, as befitted a khan.

“Now about this noble slave—” Mergen’s conscience would let him sleep peacefully enough over the death of the old raider who had worn the trophies of his murders on his chest. He counted on his general’s humanity to spare an innocent boy, however.

“I will need captains to ride at my side,” Yesugei said. “And a figure known to the prisoners to treat with his master on their behalf.” He turned to the young man, who balanced on the knife point of his words, knowing that his life or death depended on the outcome. Mergen watched with admiration as he drew himself up, waiting for reprieve or the blow that would end his life.

“Do you pledge fealty to the gur-khan Mergen of the Qubal ulus?” Yesugei asked him. “Do you declare that all the lands and clans of the Uulgar-who-were now belong to the Qubal-who-are?”

The mouthful was hard to swallow. The boy had pledged the loyalty of the Uulgar, but had not surrendered their name. Tears he had not shed at the death of his father now gathered in the corners of the young man’s eyes. But he bowed to the dais, so low that his head knocked on the carpets. Still bent over his knees, he touched his forehead to Yesugei’s booted foot.

“All that the Uulgar were has been destroyed,” he said. “Only the Qubal remain, stronger now by ten thousand of army and many tens of thousands of herders who call the South their home. This I pledge with my life.”

“You do that a lot, boy,” Mergen commented wryly as the boy climbed to his feet. “Are you so anxious to throw away your existence on this plane?” The question was a test of sorts. In less than a season he’d lost a war, his father, and now his home. Perhaps he offered his life so glibly in the hope that someone would take it and spare him any further losses. If that were so, better to give him what he wanted now than after he’d committed some costly mischief to earn it.

“I’m more anxious to keep my skin intact than you could know, Mergen-Gur-Khan. But I’ve seen what happens when a soldier trades his honor for gain. I would not ride down that road.”

“Spoken like a true Qubal warrior.”

“Thank you, gur-khan.”

Mergen saw him flinch at the reminder of his losses, but the boy bowed deeply to accept the compliment. Taking a breath to gird himself against the shame, he turned next to Yesugei. “What would you have me do, master?”

“If I have your parole, you are free to go. Find your people and prepare them for the morning.” Yesugei-Khan gave no sign of softness that might have humbled the boy further, but waved a dismissal.

With a bow, the young slave backed away from the dais but Mergen stopped him with one last question. “Do you have a name, boy?”

“I did.” He turned and bowed again, offering Mergen a level gaze filled with meaning. “That name, like the people who gave it to me, no longer exists.”

Mergen nodded, understanding. Shame demanded one more loss. In this, at least, he could reward the sacrifice. “Then I will give you the name of my anda, Otchigin, who died in the wars brought on us all by the magician-usurper.”

Again the nobles and chieftains put their heads together; the buzz of their whispered conversation reaching even to the dais. All the court knew of the love he had borne for his blood brother. But Otchigin the elder would not be coming back from the dead. It was time to move on. The young warrior read more in Mergen’s silence than he felt comfortable sharing, but he accepted the gift as the challenge it was.

“If my fame should rise in the service of my khan, I share it gladly with my namesake.” With that, the new Otchigin turned and walked down the aisle, his back tensed as if he expected a spear between his shoulders with each step.

Mergen waited until the boy had passed the firebox, then he yawned and stretched. “Great Sun rises early after feasting,” he said, giving his general and all the court permission to find their own beds.

“We march at break of day, but now I must find sleep,” Yesugei agreed. He gave his bow and followed the new Otchigin from the ger-tent palace, trailed by the chieftains and many of the nobles. They would whisper of this day’s work in their own tents, and make their own judgments about their new khan.

Bolghai, who had waited until Mergen-Gur-Khan had made this latest pronouncement to speed the spirits of the Uulgar dead on their way to the underworld, settled a stoatlike gaze on him. Slowly the lashes lowered over the shaman’s glittering eyes and slowly they lifted again. What thoughts he hid behind them as he began to beat his drum, Mergen chose not to ask.

Mergen likewise refused to wonder what bed Yesugei would find that night. Casting about for something to occupy his mind before the feel of a man dying in his hands robbed him of all sleep, he remembered Jumal’s strange behavior during Bekter’s hero-tale about Prince Tayy and the bear. What had Jumal meant by it? So far, the boy had held Prince Tayy’s friendship, second only to Mergen’s blanket-son. Did he chafe to take Qutula’s place on the dais? To offer gifts of blood brotherhood? That would be impossible. Qutula rose above his rank on the unspoken promise of his father’s favor. Jumal had no such claims to lift him to a higher saddle.

One drunken night did not conspiracy make. Jumal seemed more likely to throw his life away in some extravagantly heroic act to win favor than to harm the prince in some rage at his own lot in life. He didn’t want to cause dissension in the ranks of his nephew’s guardsmen with suspicions if the young warrior’s intentions were pure, and he wouldn’t trust an inexperienced watch to know if they were not. With Yesugei gone in the morning, who would he trust with such a duty?

None. But Yesugei might still serve in this if not in matters closer to home. He would send Jumal as one of the young captains in the new khan’s personal guard. The fortunes of Jumal’s clans would rise in the South and Mergen would remove the risk that some rash act might drive the Qubal clans into grief and disaster again, so soon after Chimbai’s death.

Satisfied that he had resolved the most pressing problems of his court, Mergen rolled over in the furs of his bed and tried to sleep. It was a lonely bed, however, and he allowed himself to dream of the day that he might step down from the khanate and take a wife. Until then, he resolved to sleep alone; Sechule had taught him well enough the dangers of a casual bed.

Qutula sat astride his horse at Prince Tayyichiut’s right hand, and watched General Yesugei—now Yesugei-Khan—lead the army of ten thousand prisoners south to lay claim to the Uulgar lands in the name of Mergen-Gur-Khan. On either side of the broad central avenue crowds had gathered to cheer the army on its way. Prayers followed like the dogs who ran beside them, baying with their own mournful greeting. All but the prince’s hounds, of course. They flanked his mare, alert to every movement in the crowd but never leaving his side. Occasionally the red bitch snapped at the heels of Qutula’s mount, but she made no other protest at his presence this morning. Court manners, even in his dogs.

He didn’t let the bitch’s dislike bother him but held his head up proudly as befit one who stood among the highest members of his father’s court. All might see who looked upon them that he ranked second only to the prince and the Lady Bortu themselves in closeness to the khan.

Pride wasn’t enough to keep his mind on the rank of scruffy prisoners filing by. Memories of the night before, however, had offered sufficient entertainment to hold him quietly to his seat this morning. His lady of mystery hadn’t come to him in their place by the river. He finally wandered home to his mother’s tent to find the general there, hidden under his mother’s blankets as if no one would notice who lay there. Qutula had politely muttered a singular greeting on his way to his own bed, pretending to ignore the pair who quickly resumed their argument in hushed tones under Sechule’s blankets.

“I
am
a khan!” Yesugei had whispered himself hoarse in his impossible quest. Sechule had been adamant: she would not follow him south.

“I don’t stay for myself, but for my sons,” she insisted.

True enough as far as it went, Qutula thought. She planned to ride her son’s coattails into Mergen’s tents.

“You see how close my son sits to the khan, who now calls himself gur-khan, ruler over khans as well as clans.”

That would appeal to her more than traveling as a camp follower and second wife to a minor khan who still set his hand beneath Mergen’s foot, however great his title. But Yesugei refused to take “no” for an answer, and Sechule somehow managed to reject him without ever quite saying “no” in the first place. It had all grown so boring and useless that at one point Qutula had risen up in his bed and muttered, “Who’s there?” as if he’d just awakened to their noise.

The poor general had fallen silent, as if he hadn’t meant to be caught in a mother’s bed, arguing for her to leave her sons behind for an uncertain future among people who had, until this night, been the enemy. Finally he had departed with his trousers in his hands instead of promises and they’d all gotten some sleep. He’d still be annoyed about the whole thing except that there in the front, next to Yesugei and looking about as happy to be going as the general, rode Jumal. The spirits were smiling on Qutula today, and about time, too. He didn’t let his elation show, but sat firm and proud in his saddle, imagining Prince Tayyichiut dead and his own horse one step closer to the heart of the khan.

Mergen’s voice, full-throated to reach the crowd, brought him out of his reverie. “Salute your victors!” he cried, meaning the soldiers of his army who filled the grand avenue. Half would go with General Yesugei to subdue the Uulgar while the remainder would stay behind to serve the khan at home. And then he gave the word to break camp. “We move before Little Sun reaches the horizon!” he declared. Enough time to fold the tents and pack them on the carts, not longer. Great Sun would still be on the rise. Some would head out in their own directions, but the army and those who supplied it would follow the khan to the court’s next camp, farther up the river. And with Jumal gone, Prince Tayy would need his company all the more.

With a smile that might have been joy that the camp was moving again, Qutula asked permission to help his mother fold her tent. When it was given, he bowed his thanks and turned his horse down the avenue where a conquered army had just passed. The crowd had not yet dispersed and would have seen him speaking familiarly with the gur-khan. He rode with his head high, therefore, and with a stern and courtly expression on his face, so that all who saw him would wonder at his heroic profile and remember him when he had passed.

Chapter Fourteen

B
EKTER LEFT HIS HORSE to crop the wet grass by the shamaness’ tent. The rains of late summer had begun soon after they’d made camp, and he cursed his luck at having to be out in the wet. He had songs to write and music to work out on nice dry instruments in the comfort of the ger-tent palace. Instead, he was out on the ragged edges of the tent city, following the gur-khan’s secret instructions.

“Find out what you can about this girl,” his father had charged him, “but don’t tell anyone—especially Prince Tayyichiut.”

He hadn’t understood at first. Then it was clear that Mergen had seen Tayy looking at the girl on their way home from the hunt for Nogai’s Bear, as it had become known. He’d protested the gur-khan’s concern.

“It was nothing, a chance encounter with a stranger. Neither of them spoke a word. I’m sure the prince hasn’t seen her since the hunt.” Tayy knew better than to look at a lowborn girl for a wife, and he knew better than to take on a shamaness as a mistress. Lady Chaiujin had taught them all a bitter lesson about the power of potions in a royal bed. But something in the way Mergen-Gur-Khan had looked at him cautioned Bekter against saying any of that to his father.

So here he was, out in the rain and the mud, tracking down an apprentice shaman in a clan that didn’t have two sheep to warm a pen together while his brother got the easy task, keeping an eye on the prince. Qutula already sat at Prince Tayyichiut’s right hand, tasted his food, and rode with him in the hunt, all of which gave him every opportunity to serve the khan in his request. How was Bekter to explain his presence in the tent of a lowly shamaness who served a nameless clan?