Lords of Grass and Thunder (58 page)

“If we don’t turn around now, we may be too late!” Jumal broke off a piece of hard cheese and dipped it in his tea while Yesugei considered for the hundredth time in a week how to answer his young captain. No matter how he counted up the stones, his place on the board never changed.

“We are under orders to proceed south. If we turn around, we commit treason, a crime punishable by a more horrible death than I hope you ever see, let alone suffer.” He’d seen Mergen use the threat of such a death to wring a confession out of a prisoner and he had no doubt it would destroy the gur-khan to carry out such a sentence on the boy, but he kept that part to himself.

“And if we’re too late?” Jumal knew better than to speak his fears by name in front of all of Yesugei’s captains, but they both understood his meaning. What if Qutula murdered the prince? What if civil war had already broken out? Could they save the ulus without destroying the khanate?

Yesugei hadn’t trusted the boy at first. He’d roundly cursed Mergen under his breath for burdening him with a Qubal problem as well as the young Uulgar chieftain whose father had died at Mergen’s own hand, a gift with teeth and claws if he’d ever seen one. The gur-khan had sent Jumal south to get him away from the prince, and Yesugei had wondered what kind of danger the boy might represent to his own party. Over the weeks of travel south, however, he’d come to know both young men better. He now trusted them as far as their experience permitted.

Gradually, he had drawn out Jumal’s story. The weight of their combined suspicions had caused him to slow their progress, in case they might be needed nearer home. To turn around against Mergen’s direct orders, however, would set him in opposition to his gur-khan. With the one exception of the woman Sechule, that was something he would never do.

“My lord Yesugei-Khan—” His second challenge, the Uulgar boy who had taken the name of Otchigin to honor Mergen’s dead anda, burst into the command tent and skidded to a halt on the carpets. In taking on the name, he’d taken the devotion to the gur-kahn as his own as well. And as the living heir of their executed khan, he had pledged the loyalty of all his fellow prisoners, who he now named Uulgar-Qubal.

He’d been on duty guarding the perimeter. His sudden appearance, breathless and anxious, could only mean one thing. Yesugei didn’t have to look at Jumal to know the young captain had come to the same conclusion even before the young Otchigin had finished his announcement: “A messenger from the gur-khan to see you, my lord khan.”

The messenger hadn’t waited but had followed the young captain into the war tent and gave his own precise court bow. Otchigin bounced nervously on the balls of his feet, his hand drifting to the hilt of his sword. No defense was required, however. Yesugei knew this messenger well.

“Chahar!” He rose to greet the newcomer at once, clasping the messenger’s arms in a welcoming embrace. “Rest here beside me,” he said, bidding the messenger to take a seat on the thick carpets layered to make a soft floor for the war tent. “You look like a man ten years older than the last time we met.”

Chahar sat heavily and accepted a damp washing cloth from a servant. In the few weeks since Yesugei had left the gur-khan’s court, worry had creased new lines in the familiar face. The muscles in Chahar’s arms quivered with a fine exhaustion when he wiped the dust from his face.

“First your message, then food,” Yesugei instructed his old friend, glad that he hadn’t made greater haste southward.

His young captains waited at attention with their blue-coated backs to the lattices as proper guardsmen to a khan. He trusted them, and their companions who defended him, to follow any command and to take to the grave any secret they heard in his tent. But the gur-khan hadn’t offered such trust when he sent his messenger, and so he dismissed them with a command he knew would soon be necessary. “Prepare the camp to move out. Send the hunters ahead—we’ll need to feed a hungry army on the march. We head north when Great Sun leaves no shadow.”

Jumal cast a doubtful glance at the messenger, but they both knew Chahar would never serve the enemies working against the gur-khan. With a calming word to his Uulgar second, he gathered his guardsmen and left his khan to his private report. Yesugei had no doubt he would remain to guard the door, but no one else would hear what went on in the command tent.

“Tell me why you look like the hunting hounds of the underworld are on your heels,” Yesugei said when he was alone with the messenger. His weeks in discussion with Jumal had shown the new khan greater dangers within the ger-tent palace itself, so he felt prepared for whatever he might hear.

“My message—” Chahar stammered and stopped, his eyes suddenly empty of the deep intelligence Yesugei knew in him. At first he thought the man suffered from an exhaustion so extreme that he had temporarily lost control of both memory and senses. But with a bitter little laugh Chahar pulled himself together.

“The gur-khan sent this message: ‘Tell him that his gur-khan wishes his company, and that of his armies.’ ”

With that Chahar handed him a tourquoise bead, the signal for a threat of war, though not an imminent one. It was clear the man had missed more than one meal reaching the southbound camp at speed, however. A handful of steps brought him to the door where Jumal waited, as he had expected. The servant with a tray of food, already standing just beyond the carrying of their voices was a welcome surprise.

“He didn’t look fit for much.” Jumal passed off his foresight with a little shrug. “I thought this might help.”

“I’m sure it will.”

The servant followed him into the tent and set his tray on the floor in front of the newcomer, leaving Yesugei and the gur-khan’s messenger alone. Chahar helped himself to a cup of tea and a chunk of hard cheese, chewing for sustenance but also to gain time. He would have had the weeks of travel to order his report, so this continued hesitation knotted the breakfast in Yesugei’s belly.

When he had gathered his senses, Chahar began to tell his tale. “After you left on your errand to subdue the Uulgar South, Mergen revealed Eluneke, the apprentice shamaness, to be his own daughter . . .”

The news about Mergen’s offer of his daughter to the Tinglut-Khan and his emissary’s subsequent refusal came as little surprise. Yesugei had known about the girl since her birth and had shared her father’s dismay that she had apprenticed herself to a shamaness. He remembered the day of the hunt, when Prince Tayy had first set eyes on her. That they might have grown to love each other, while unfortunate, came as no surprise after such a fateful meeting. It was just more bad luck, perhaps, that Prince Tayyichiut and the princess had appeared at their absolute worst in front of the ambassador. But Yesugei was certain that Mergen’s ill fortune had a darker purpose behind it. Chahar’s next revelation confirmed all of his and Jumal’s suspicions.

“Last night, as I lay sleeping, my father came to me in a dream. He wore his totem form and wept, but in the way of dreams I understood him. The worst has happened. Mergen himself is dead, murdered by his own son Qutula, perhaps with the assistance of the Lady Sechule, whom the gur-khan had lately agreed to wed.”

The air went out of Yesugei’s lungs, as if he’d received a blow to the chest. “Sechule?” he repeated. Though he had believed Jumal that Qutula was dangerous, he could hardly credit that Sechule would aid in his schemes. Except, she had always championed her older son.

The jealousy he expected at the thought didn’t come. It seemed some part of him had already accepted the truth of Bolghai’s message and he mourned the loss of his dreams about Sechule almost as much as he mourned his gur-khan. How could he have been so wrong?

“But why? If Mergen meant to marry her . . .”

“He meant to hand the khanate to the prince and then marry. Which would have removed all hope for Qutula to win the dais for himself, or for his mother to become khaness. Or so my father deduces. Qutula has fled; his mother likewise cannot be found, but my father says he saw her spirit roaming lost and bitter between the worlds and that she, too, must be dead. He says that Eluneke has been missing since the Tinglut left, and he can find no trace of her in any of the realms open to his shamanic senses.”

“Is she still alive?” Yesugei was having trouble processing it all, but one thought rested uppermost in his mind: his duty to defend and protect the legitimate gur-khan and his family, whoever that might be. Eluneke was part of that.

“Bolghai has found no sign of her among the dead.” Chahar picked a cautious way through his point. “But he can’t find her among the living either. He is at a loss to explain it, but fears that Qutula may be conspiring with demons.”

He hadn’t thought it could get any worse. “The prince?” he asked.

“Safe when last I heard. But he searches for the shaman princess while there is light and mourns his uncle in the dark. My father worries for his health as well as his safety.”

Yesugei accepted this report and recalled his captains. If Tayy still lived, he was gur-khan now, or would be when Yesugei arrived to uphold his position. And he was determined to do so before Qutula had shed more royal blood. “Leave a small force to support the camp followers,” he told the captains when they had rejoined him in the command tent. “We ride to war in the name of Tayyichiut Gur-Khan.”

“Tayyichiut Gur-Khan!” Jumal’s exclamation carried equal parts of dismay and devotion. Like the new Otchigin at his side he understood the terrible loss the ulus had suffered. More than any of them, however, Jumal owed his allegiance to the new gur-khan.

“And the Uulgar prisoners?” the young Otchigin asked, with more questions than he dared ask in his eyes. Mergen had spared his life and the lives of the ten thousand Uulgar taken in the recent war for the Cloud Country. He had pledged his people and his life to serve the gur-khan, but Mergen reigned no more.

“There are no prisoners in this camp,” Yesugei assured him with a clasp on his arm. “We are all Qubal now and we ride together to defend the gur-khan.”

“As my khan orders.” Otchigin bowed so low that the crown of his cap brushed the floor. When he followed Jumal from the command tent, his face had flushed deep wine with pride.

Trust, Yesugei thought, was a dangerous weapon. Mergen’s trust in his son had led to murder and war. He hoped his own faith in the boy chieftain was not so misplaced.

Chapter Thirty-seven

T
AYY PROPPED HIS HEAD on his hand, elbow resting on a map of the grasslands spread on a low table. The dogs had slept the night through at his feet but were raising their heads again in the doggy ordering of priorities: a visit outside and then breakfast.

“Go,” he told them. They both hesitated, whining their distress at leaving him before leaping from the dais. In the gray dawn filtering through the smoke hole, he watched their tangle-legged run for the door. The shadowy light had dulled the glow from the lamps but provided little illumination for the maps he’d been studying. He closed his eyes for a moment, but it didn’t help. The details, blurred and indistinct, had burned themselves onto the backs of his eyelids.

After another wakeful night of mourning, his grandmother had finally fallen asleep, allowing him to turn his attention to his general and the maps spread out between them. Like Jochi, most of the guardsmen in their blue coats and the gathered advisers who offered their opinions in respectfully lowerd voices had belonged to his uncle. Once his own cadre had guarded him. He’d expected to rely on his age-mate captains then, but Altan was dead and Jumal far to the south. And Qutula . . .

“You’re
sure
Prince Daritai didn’t kidnap her?”

“As you requested, I had the Tinglut party followed. The prince set a careful watch and his force moved quickly to leave Qubal lands, both reasonable precautions given the failure of his embassy.” No one mentioned that General Jochi was just repeating the significant facts he’d already covered in his report. “The Tinglut could scarcely prevent our spies from observing their progress, but none of our people saw any sign of the Princess Eluneke in their camp, nor did they sense any undue secrecy in the Tinglut’s movements.”

Prince Tayy nodded. “So Qutula has her, as we thought, and likely murdered my uncle as well.” Staring down at the scraped horsehide map, he idly traced the branded lines that represented caravan routes and grazing boundaries. If he were Qutula, where would he go? Where would he find allies?

Beyond the ger-tent palace, the sound of horses going through their paces in the practice yard rumbled like distant thunder. His army prepared for war against an enemy who had until recently been a captain in their own ranks; who had sat on the very steps of the dais. Now he seemed to have vanished from the grasslands.

“Has anyone discovered Bekter’s whereabouts?” They would have told him if they knew, but Tayy couldn’t yet accept that Bekter had conspired with Qutula to murder their father. “Do we know if he’s hiding? Could he not know we’re looking for him?”

“I don’t have an answer yet.” Jochi shrugged a one-shouldered apology. “Until Yesugei comes, our armies are spread thin. But we’ll find him; it just takes time.”