Lords of Grass and Thunder (71 page)

“Where are you going?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll send Barula to tend you.” She hoped he accepted the lightness of her tone, that he didn’t notice she was trembling. He was the court’s most famous poet, however, and his talent for observation had recovered from his injury faster than the rest of him.

“I’m not worried about myself. The danger is out there. Where are you going?”

“To fight. And so must you in your own way. Until your wounds are healed, the danger is in here as well.”

His grave eyes told her he had guessed as much, and longed to accompany and protect her.

“You’ve done your part, beloved Bekter.” She knelt and kissed him, smiled at his surprise but quickly grew serious again. “Now it’s time for the shamans’ war.”

“Be careful—”

She pressed a finger to his lips. “Shhh—now is not the time for caution.” She used a trick of her craft to muddy his senses so that he didn’t see her go.

Her horse was waiting.

“My lord general!” Mangkut fought his way to Qutula’s side. His captain’s breath came harsh and fast, more out of fear, Qutula thought, than from any struggle with sword or spear. His serpent allies terrified his Durluken as much as they did the Nirun, though with less cause. The demons usually honored the green armbands that marked Qutula’s army. Sometimes they didn’t, of course, but you could hardly expect a demon caught up in bloodlust to stop for a trifle. So far, Captain Mangkut had escaped both Nirun arrows and the fangs of his allies which, considering his betrayal, was better than he had any right to expect. With Duwa dead, however, there were few Qutula would trust more.

“What is it?” He cast an impatient glance to his side, where the Lady Chaiujin had ridden through most of the battle, commanding her serpent minions as he commanded his human ones. She wasn’t there, which irked him somewhat. He wouldn’t call it fear, that without her the army of serpent-demons might make no distinction between himself and his enemies. Nor would he say that he needed her advice. She was his, however, and she belonged where he wanted her.

“We’re under attack, Lord General.” Mangkut gestured in the direction of the Qubal city, which Prince Tayyichiut’s stubborn Nirun had so far denied him. This time, it wasn’t the Nirun.

“Damn his soul to the mouths of the hungry spirits.”

Yesugei-Khan, who should have been setting up his own court among the Uulgar far to the south, rode down on the Durluken with his sword raised in challenge. At his back came an army riding at full gallop in the lake formation. Qutula watched in disbelief as the flanks of Yesugei’s horde curved in a sweep that encircled his forces together with the Nirun who fought their desperate but useless battle against his army of serpent-demons.

What was he doing here, now, and with what appeared to be the whole army Mergen had sent away with him? Already the attack had closed the circle, and moved inward, tightening the noose.

Where was the Lady Chaiujin when he needed her?

He’d been drugged. Prince Daritai cursed himself for a fool, half surprised that he’d woken up at all this side of the pyre and half expecting the weight of chains on wrists and ankles. But small untroubled fingers carded the fringes of his braids and somewhere a little to the right of his numb backside he heard the Lady Bortu giving orders for dinner in a soft voice.

“The general has taken his troops to the battlefield,” she said. “I assume you will want to follow.”

Daritai hadn’t moved. He’d kept his breathing level and slow, but somehow she had known when he awoke. It seemed pointless to keep his eyes closed, so he opened them. The child, Princess Orda, gave him a secret smile. So the princess had known as well. He thought he’d made a better spy than that. And he still didn’t know why they’d bothered to drug him but hadn’t secured him as their prisoner. Lady Bortu answered the confusion if not the questions in his puzzled brow.

“You needed rest.” She patted him on the arm—he had a feeling she did that a lot, and that it wasn’t a compliment. “Don’t worry. You’ve slept no longer than you required of the men you brought with you from the battlefield. The effects of the drug will wear off when you’ve had something to eat.”

He was relieved to hear it, and gladder than he wished to show when a servant thrust a tray of suet pies under his nose. He took one and bit in. Even the rich, full bloom of sheep fat on his tongue couldn’t distract him from his plight, however, or from the servants and guardsmen righting fallen chests and wrapping cracked lattices along the palace wall.

“Why?” he asked. Her eyes had grown dark and intent as a hunting eagle. They made his skin crawl, but he had to know. “You had me in your power. General Yesugei commands fresher troops in greater number than my own. Why let me go?”

“I needed General Yesugei elsewhere,” she said. “As for yourself—” he found her grin more unsettling than the in tentness of her gaze “—the shamans’ war has begun. I have need of an escort.”

She didn’t wait for him to follow, but climbed down from the dais and headed for the door. The shamans’ war. He knew Yesugei would fight Qutula’s serpent horde, knew the general would see his warriors die in a vain attempt to hold back the demons. They were not mortal, after all, and not arrow nor sword nor spear could harm them, as he had grown to know too well. But shamans . . .There were too few in any camp, but perhaps the khaness knew something he didn’t.

“The earth moved while you were sleeping.” Princess Orda tugged at his hand, leading him after the khaness. “Grandmother says Prince Tayy is back.” The prince, her brother, was dead.

The princess seemed intent on following her grandmother, but to where? Into some war of magic? No child would take on such a burden while he stood to prevent it. Not if it cost him his life.

“I’ll go,” he promised the Princess Orda, “but you have to stay here. It’s too dangerous on the battlefield for little girls, even princesses.”

When she looked up at him, considering his answer, her eyes showed whiteless black, like her grandmother. Daritai shuddered in supernatural dread, but he didn’t let go of her hand. That seemed to decide something within her because she was looking at their twined fingers when she agreed, “Yes. You’d better hurry.”

What else could he do? He bowed gravely, relieved to see the whites of her eyes again. Then he put her in the care of her nobles and followed the Lady Bortu, who had disappeared by the time he reached the door. His mare was there, however, her halter in the powerful hand of a Qubal guardsman almost as old as the Lady Bortu herself. On the pommel of his saddle sat a golden hunting eagle without hood or jesses.

“I think you have the season confused,” he commented. Eagles hunted in the winter, when the furs were thickest.

Some joke lurked in the eyes of the keeper. Daritai’s hand caressed his sword, but the laugh never reached the man’s mouth so Daritai could hardly show offense.

“The lady knows what she hunts.” The keeper stepped away.

Daritai eyed the pommel with some trepidation, unwilling to place his delicate regions so temptingly near the powerful claws of the unhooded bird. The creature cocked her head as if she too were laughing at him. He thought he recognized that piercing gaze, though he kept his suspicion to himself. He would not have his sanity questioned.

“I trust you will behave like the lady and grandmother you are,” he muttered under his breath, and settled himself gingerly in the saddle. She was big even for her kind; the golden head came to his shoulder. But her eyes were for the distance. The prince was back from the dead, the princess had said.

Wondering who had conquered whom, he directed his mount where the eagle’s gaze led him.

Lady Bortu flexed her clawed feet and settled her feathers, amused to see the nervous glances her escort gave her sharply curved talons. She hadn’t done this, transforming into her totem creature, since before she’d married to create a dynasty and she hadn’t been at all certain that the form would come to her when she summoned it. But Eluneke had returned from the underworld, and the second tremor of the earth had told her she hadn’t come alone. Some demon-lord might have followed the girl, but she’d gone to bring back Tayy and the Lady Bortu trusted her own blood in the veins of both. The shamans’ war had begun, and she owed her sons this much, at least.

Still, she’d spent a few uncomfortable minutes with the body of an eagle, berating her old retainer with the mouth and head of an old khaness. Surrender to the totem had come hard to her after all this time, longer than the lives of both her dead sons since she’d tried to summon the spirits of the earth. But finally, in desperation, she made the leap into the mind of the bird. None too soon—Daritai mustn’t see her hesitate. She required his total commitment to her task.

Chapter Forty-four

Y
ESUGEI HAD NEVER been a simple man. When he led the exiled god-king through the grasslands to the foot of Chimbai-Khan’s dais, he had known that his world had changed forever by his actions. He had not desired fame or to mold that change to suit himself, nor did he claim a shaman’s gift to read the future in the bottom of a cup. But even a man who relied solely on his intellect could see that Fate had moved in young King Llesho’s eyes.

Since then, he’d seen wonders enough to last a lifetime. As a man who fought beside dragons, Yesugei considered himself free of supernatural fears. But if he had known the road on which he’d set the Qubal people would lead to this, he would have slit the god-king’s throat and left the Cloud Country in the hands of the Uulgar forever.

On any other battleground he would have expected the cries of the injured to join the squeals of the horses and the shouts of the fighting men. Here, no wounded lay among the dead, which was a mercy. From inside his coat he drew out a scented scarf to wrap around his face, though it helped little against the putrefaction rising from this field. The corpses lay black and swollen as if dead for many days, and among them crawled an army of vipers, slithering here from the open mouth of a dead man whose eyes stared in horror at the stormy sky and, there, burrowing beneath the leather half-armor of another so disfigured by the venoms that had killed him that he scarcely resembled a man at all.

Yesugei pulled his gaze away with an effort. Somewhere at the center of this abomination Qutula waited with his Durluken and with his lady who commanded the serpents. He had to be stopped. His demons had to be cast back into the underworld that spawned them. How a mortal man might be expected to accomplish that he didn’t know, but they had to try. Bracing himself against the horrors Qutula would throw at him, he pointed his sword. Banners dipped, and the defensive circle around Qutula tightened.

Then the earth shifted.

His horse screamed in alarm and fell heavily on its side. Yesugei jumped free before he was crushed by the weight of his mount, but his own legs would scarcely hold him. Solid ground became a tossing sea while men’s senses raged against nature overset. An eathquake. He’d heard of them from travelers. The hungry dead beat against the gates between the realms of the living and the underworld, they said. Demons reached through the shattered earth to swallow cities whole.

They had enough of demons in front of them. Better the underworld should open up and take these snakes back where they belonged and leave living men in peace. He waited for another tremor, but none came. His horse struggled to its legs, unhurt but shivering and rolling the whites of its eyes as it stood its shaky ground.

A khan could show no less courage than a dumb beast, or a general attend any less to his training. So exhorting himself, Yesugei leaped into his saddle and raised his sword again.

“Ayee-yah!” he cried.

The signal passed down the line of his captains, who watched him to shore up their own flagging courage. The order flowed from the captains to the thousands who took their lead from the officers charging at the head of their troops.

The horde surged forward. They would sweep this landscape of despair and drive out the human monster who had raised a demon army against his father the dead khan. And then Yesugei would take care of Prince Daritai. But a foreign conqueror seemed like a very small thing as his horse plunged toward the supernatural forces seething death in front of them.

“Rise up,damn you! Rise up!” Qutula called to his army of serpents. His men, those who had survived both the serpents and General Jochi’s attacks, fell back in terror. Chief among his Durluken, Mangkut circled his horse, panic stretching his lips in a grimace as he looked for a way out of Yesugei’s trap.

“Do you think the good general will allow any Durluken to live if he wins?” Qutula snapped at him. Duwa’s execution had taught him not to invite open rebellion. Where a man would not go at command, however, he could be pushed indirectly, with threats. If Mangkut cast a glance at his general’s sword before he turned his horse into the invading horde, he might be forgiven.