Lords of Grass and Thunder (47 page)

“A warrior has died here,” he said. With a gesture of his bow he parted the gathered Nirun and Durluken to reveal General Jochi bent on one knee over his son. Prince Tayyichiut knelt at his side; neither wept, but vengeance crackled like lightning in the air.

Duwa’s father cast a beseeching glance at Qutula, saying more about the spring at the source of Duwa’s ambitions than he might have liked. Mergen’s blanket-son had taken a step away from his companion, however, distancing himself from his follower’s crime.

“A fine young man, son of my general, companion of my heir, has been murdered and his murderer stands accused by his own bloody hand and his bloody knife.

“Witnesses, then?” Dobun bowed deeply, dismay carved in the downturn of his mouth. This was politics far above his inclinations, about to cost him a nephew.

“My own eyes,” Mergen nodded. “And these.” Stretching out his hand he took in the gathered armies of the Nirun whose sword hands itched for vengeance and the Durluken, whose stubborn necks would not bend to accept any blame.

Dobun tugged anxiously at his mustaches. “What price?”

Jochi had risen as the moment for judgment came. He stood a silent witness with the drying blood of his son painting his fingers as the khan handed down his sentence.

“From the Dobun-Qubal, two herds of horses and one of sheep, to become the property of the clans of the Jochi-Qubal. Half the tents of his father with all their household goods now belong to General Jochi, as compensation for the loss of those things which might have come to his family through his own son who now lies dead.”

The Dobun-Qubal clans would survive, but Duwa’s family was ruined, impoverished possibly forever. The worst remained, however. Knowing it, Duwa’s father spoke up, asking the question that as a father he must dread the most.

“And my son?”

“My lord general?” Mergen turned to Jochi, the injured party. Tradition dictated the answer, and the general gave it. “My servants need a servant.” Duwa would become a slave in the household of the general.

“For as many cycles as the accused, Duwa, has fingers,” Mergen agreed. On occasion a murderer might be returned to his family quickly, with all his fingers severed, but Mergen didn’t think his general would stray so far from honor.

The chieftain accepted this judgment with tears in his eyes. “You will have your herds and tents by nightfall,” he promised the general and with a final bow to the gur-khan, departed in the company of Duwa’s uncles. His father remained, though he refused to watch as Duwa’s wrists were tied and he was led away. He made no apology to the general, but spat a speculative hawk into the dirt and silently followed his chieftain.

Jochi would receive the oldest and sickest beasts from among the Dobun-Qubal herds, but most of the animals would be sound and the tents well mended. He would, of course, have given it all up to have his son sit up and curse them roundly for making such a fuss at a mere scratch. Altan didn’t move, though, and wouldn’t be sitting up this side of the underworld again.

“Travel in peace to the land of your ancestors, and make a place for us when we follow,” Mergen prayed his farewell. Tayy had regained his saddle. The track of drying tears had cut their own path through the streak of Altan’s blood that crossed his cheek, but after a moment he started moving toward the forest that bordered the river. Together with the gathered hunters, Nirun, and the older bands with allegiances to the khan, they would collect the trees for Altan’s pyre. In the deceptive momentary peace, Mergen prayed for time to break his unruly children to his hand before they set chaos loose across all the grasslands.

At a little distance, and in his totem form, Bolghai watched the Durluken as by ones and twos they slunk away. Finally only their captain remained, close by his father’s side, contemplating the Nirun pyre with a cold eye. Trouble was coming; the stoat’s black button nose twitched with the stink of it. Conspiracy. Eluneke had been right all along.

Fortunately, the sky god and his daughters had been kind to her. After his own visit to the heavens, Bolghai had spent three days as a stoat before remembering how to be human again. The girl’d had help, of course; the prince had called her home as well as any shaman might. Still, the fact that she’d returned to herself so quickly spoke well of the power of her gifts. Which reminded him . . .

Stretching, the shaman shaped human arms and human legs, and drew his spine out straight and long. With a last thought for his robes, he stood up and made his presence known in answer to his gur-khan’s call.

“I’m here,” he said, “though your own daughter seems to have the matter well in hand.”

“She shouldn’t be here at all. She’s a royal princess, you old fool. She had no right to choose this path and you had orders to stop it.”

Danger rumbled in the words. Bolghai didn’t think the gur-khan would have him killed, but the part about being an old fool gave him the edge in their argument, especially the old part, though Toragana would doubtless tell him it was the fool part. Because he was ready to die, if he could leave the ulus in the hands of a shaman powerful enough to protect it. Like the gur-khan’s daughter. Now was not the time to have that discussion, however.

“The hungry spirits grow fat on our disputes,” he rebuked Mergen gently. “When we have sent this brave young man to his ancestors, you are welcome to flay me as you choose.”

“Don’t think I won’t, old man.” Mergen delivered the rebuff as an insult, with his back turned to the shaman. The argument wasn’t over.

Bolghai sighed and untied his drum from the strings where it hung at his side, and the drumstick made from the shinbone of a roebuck. Demons and lost souls drawn by violent murder had gathered thickly around the quarrel. With his drum and his dance and his prayers, he set about dispersing them while Eluneke, with the dead khan’s daughter still in her arms, directed the construction of the pyre.

Chapter Twenty-nine

A
TOAD. THE GIRL whom Mergen-Khan had summoned to wed the Tinglut-Khan was a toad. Gazing in dismay over the shambles of his mission, Prince Daritai had to admit that his father might have been right about the Qubal all along. He’d never believed the explanation Mergen-Khan had given for the disappearance of the Lady Chaiujin. Murdered, Tinglut had guessed, by a Qubal hand and not a serpent-demon.

“Mergen cost me a royal daughter,” the khan had reminded him. “He owes me a royal wife, something pretty and young to warm my bed in winter.” Though he wouldn’t say as much in front of Hulegu, Tinglut wanted heirs with royal Qubal blood. He would use those children to claim the Qubal ulus in the war he planned, to install himself as regent for the sons he planned to get. The present heir possessed all the skills he needed to foresee his own downfall if Daritai succeeded. Hulegu, of course, would expect the mission to fail.

The treaty had offered an opportunity to spy out the truth about the Qubal’s intentions. It hadn’t taken Daritai long. At best he could report that the proposed bride was a dirty-faced shamaness with no court manners, a ridiculous totem, and an overbearing manner. Tinglut wouldn’t have minded the dirty face if she were pretty enough, which she was. He might even find the skills of a shamaness useful for prolonging his vigor. But the khan his father would never accept a sharp-tongued toad in his bed.

It seemed clear that Mergen had never intended to claim her and that he did so now only to pacify his neighbor, who would have accepted the girl in ignorance of her lowly station and her calling. And, it seemed, if he read the direction of that wind correctly, that the prince himself had interests in that quarter. From the careful way he moved around her, Daritai thought they hadn’t slept together yet, but it seemed likely to happen soon. The Qubal prince didn’t mind the toad part either, which Daritai didn’t want to think about. So much for honorable intentions.

As for murder, the young warrior with the knife in his chest gave clear evidence that those closest to the khan were still busy killing each other. He thought the general’s son was just the first move in the latest game of Qubal politics, and wondered how long Mergen had before he followed his brother onto the pyre. Sooner than later, if the gur-khan didn’t do something about his blanket-sons. Tinglut would have solved the problem by strangling them in their sleep. Daritai sometimes waited sleepless in his own bed for the soft tread of the assassin.

His own father wasn’t the issue now, though. He had seen too much, and so had his son. Mergen knew it; his personal guard glared at the Tinglut forces across a divide no greater than a single step, yet fathoms deep in mutual suspicion. The hostile tension of the armies had settled like damp in Tumbinai’s bones. The boy sat rigidly erect in his saddle, dark eyes wide, afraid to make a move that would tilt the balance into violence. Daritai had trained him for warfare, but they were too outnumbered to call it anything but slaughter. Tumbinai would know that, too.

Whatever happened to Daritai, he was determined to bargain or beg for the life of his son. When the gur-khan had dismissed his old shaman to his duties, he nudged his horse forward, keeping his hands in view of the guardsmen who surrounded him.

“We should return to our own tents and leave you to your grief.” He bowed to acknowledge the mourning court, but said nothing of his intention to pack up his tents and his son as quickly as he could and slip away like Mergen’s own Durluken.

The gur-khan cast a brief glance at him but his opaque gaze fixed on the dead boy with his arm flung over the ram. The silence between them stretched like a bowstring until Daritai could endure it no more. Breaking every rule of hostile diplomacy, he slid from his horse and knelt at the foot of the mounted khan. With head bowed, he filled the silence with his bargain.

“If you need a hostage, I will stay, and vouch for the discretion of my men. I ask just a small party of his most familiar guardsmen to take my son home.”

“And what will keep the boy quiet when he finds himself the target of his grandfather’s questions?”

Still on his knees, Daritai tilted his head back to face Mergen. Great Sun, he noted, had begun to fall, and it shone like a gathering of spirits around the impassive gur-khan. “He knows you’ll kill me if he breaks his word.”

“A good argument if he cares. What if your death means nothing to him?” The golden light behind him cast Mergen’s features in shadows from which an emotion as powerful as it was fleeting escaped his glacial eyes. It seemed he was not so unaware of his own peril as Daritai had suspected.

With a wry half smile the prince answered the emotion behind the question. “Then I’ll die, but Tumbinai will be as safe as I can make him.”

“Not safe enough.”

The wistfulness of Mergen’s tone robbed it of any threat. They both knew they stood on the brink of war, with only the love of their children as common ground between them.

“Send half your guard with him.” The gur-khan nodded permission and Daritai bowed deeply, slack-muscled with relief. This time, maybe, love would be enough.

But Tumbinai said, “No.”

From his precarious position among the horse’s legs, Prince Daritai had lost the advantage of perspective that Mergen held from the back of his gelded bay. So he couldn’t see the boy’s growing horror as his father offered his life for his son’s freedom. Daritai wouldn’t have noticed that Tayy had returned and listened sharply or that Eluneke had drawn closer with the Princess Orda still in her arms. Or that the little girl had fixed the Tinglut boy with a stare that sent a warning shiver straight up Mergen’s spine.

The gur-khan had seen it all, however, and he wasn’t pleased with any of them, least of all the boy Tumbinai, who was looking back at Princess Orda with a fierce pro tectiveness that seemed equally to enfold his endangered father. So when he said, “No,” to the gur-khan’s offer to hold his father prisoner in his place, Daritai was surprised. Mergen wasn’t, though they shared a common displeasure.

“I won’t leave my father. And the little girl needs someone to watch over her.” Stubborn and headstrong, the boy firmed his quivering chin and met the gur-khan’s stare with a level gaze of his own. He’d grown up in the court of the Tinglut-Khan, that look said. He knew about throwaway lesser children and he wasn’t going to let anything happen to the Princess Orda.

At that moment, Mergen could cheerfully have wrung General Jochi’s neck. The boy had held the little girl in his arms, stirring all the instincts in him to defend the weak. Mergen indulged in a little silent swearing while the father tried not to show his terror and the boy swallowed a lump the size of a walnut in his throat. Prince Tayyichiut, of course, was watching him with all the terrible knowledge of his own experience in his eyes. Tayy had seen the murders of his father and mother, his own enslavement by pirates, and the deaths of his friends in battle. And now he trod a careful path through the uncertain threats of his own court.

None of them wished their own prince’s history for this child. Mergen just wasn’t sure how he could prevent it. They were at an impasse until, in a quavering whisper, the boy Tumbinai said, “I don’t like my grandfather.”