Endgame Novella #2 (14 page)

She tends to it like it is her child.

When he was very small, Baitsakhan's mother told him stories of
other small children and the mothers who loved them. He wondered whether his mother loved him, what that would look like, and why he should care. These are things he no longer wonders about.
Love
is simply a word that tethers his mother to him, obligates her to feed and clothe him, which suits his convenience—for now.

But his mother sees him too clearly, Baitsakhan thinks.

Someday that will need to be dealt with.

To be the Player-elect is good.

As soon as the Trials are decided and Baitsakhan is named, his people respect the power he will someday wield. Baitsakhan is no longer required to tend the herd or feed scraps to the dogs. As the seasons change and the tribe migrates, Baitsakhan is not called upon to join the men who build the new gers, and he is not forced to join the other children when they help the women with their chores. Baitsakhan is spared these menial duties, because his only job is training for Endgame. When the time comes to ride, he is accorded the finest of horses. When the time comes to hunt, he is honored with the chance to take the death blow. He receives the choicest cuts of meat and the thickest leather shoes. His young cousins do whatever he tells them, and even his brother, Jalair, already married with a child of his own, has begun to obey his commands, treating him like a respected elder. Baitsakhan makes the twins hand over their sweets, and when he orders them to go for days without eating, they fast until they are half starved. Baitsakhan wonders if they are foolish enough to starve themselves to death, simply on his word.

They will do anything for him.

Just like everyone else.

Yes, to be the Player-elect is good—almost like being a king.

But to be the Player is better—almost like being a god.

Baitsakhan watches the current Player carefully, hating him from head to toe. Al-Ulagan wastes his opportunities. He could have anything he wanted from his people. He could torment them with
his capricious whims. Instead he bows and scrapes like the lowest of men. He pretends to be a servant to his line, rather than its despot. It is disgusting. Every time he smiles, which is often, Baitsakhan imagines a fist powering through his teeth, knocking them down his throat. The thought of the blood pouring out and those hollow sockets left behind helps Baitsakhan smile back.

Someday Baitsakhan will be the Player, and he will do it better. But if he is going to reach this goal, he must obey his trainer, the sour, elderly man who is meant to mold him into a warrior. He is meant to do everything Surengan says, to be respectful and compliant, even though he is young and powerful and Surengan is old and decrepit.

This too is disgusting.

Still, Baitsakhan is careful and disciplined—and he knows that Surengan has much to teach him about the infliction of pain. As the years pass, Surengan shows him many outstanding new ways to kill. Baitsakhan learns the body's weaknesses, the points of pressure that will cause even the strongest of men to shriek and wet themselves. He and Surengan explore the rich spectrum of pain, all the ways to break a human mind, force it to its limits and beyond so it can be bent to Baitsakhan's will. Where before, he took his pleasure with animals only in the dark where no one could see, now he is encouraged to practice his craft on the herd. There's no need for Surengan to know the extra efforts he takes, practicing his knife work. Whether he slaughters the goats efficiently or takes his time with it, eking out every last second of agonizing life, they end up just as dead.

Surengan tells him that the Players of other lines travel all over the globe, exposing themselves to the world's peoples. Not so for the Donghu Player. Baitsakhan learns their strange languages and mores, yes, but only for the advantage it will give him in the game. He stays close to home; he stays untainted by the so-called modern world.

There is nothing of value in the land beyond the steppe, Surengan tells him, and Baitsakhan believes it.

Out there, somewhere, foolish people crowd together in cities of glass
and neon, hiding their brute animal nature beneath the lie called civilization.

Out there, people are weak and confused. They have grown distant from their inner beast.

Out there, Surengan tells him, the Players of other bloodlines have been corrupted by modernity, weakened by the luxuries of the so-called modern world.

Here on the steppe, life is hard but honest. Here on the bare rock, under the pitiless sun, lies like civilization wither and die, like a tourist lost in the desert, corpse wrinkled up like a prune.

This, Surengan tells him, is why the Donghu will triumph in Endgame. The Donghu Player will have no mercy, no vulnerability, only purpose. The Donghu Player will be a creature of pure violence, tearing a swath of death through his opponents.

This lesson is one Baitsakhan eagerly heeds.

Surengan also teaches him much about the history of the Donghu Line, its glorious birth in the Gobi desert, where a lord of the sky created the first man and woman from clay. For 800 years, the Donghu ruled with the blessing of the gods, pillaging and tyrannizing tribes all across the steppe. Surengan tells him of the day of darkness in 150 BCE, when a Xiongnu prince slaughtered the Donghu leaders, and of the hundreds of generations since, desert warlords dreaming of their conquering past and the promised future, days to come in which they would triumph over humanity's inferior bloodlines and rule. Dreaming, above all, of Endgame.

Baitsakhan listens obediently to all of this but does not hear. He does his best to feign pride in his line, allegiance to the Donghu people; he promises Surengan that he understands what it means to be the Player, that it requires selflessness and self-sacrifice, and putting himself in service to a greater good.

Baitsakhan lies.

He cares nothing for his people, their past or their future.

He craves Endgame for its promise of blood, tidal waves of it
unleashed on an unsuspecting Earth. He is an artist of death, and Endgame will be his greatest canvas. He will lie about his true purpose, he will disguise his true self, for as long as necessary. And when he is alone, he laughs at the gullibility of Surengan, at the sorry, misplaced pride of the Donghu people. He laughs at the idea that he would sacrifice himself for the greater good or anything else.

Baitsakhan Plays only for Baitsakhan. He kills for the sake of killing.

Pain is his only god, and he serves it well.

The antelope streaks across the steppe, leaps gracefully over the dry riverbed, runs and runs but cannot escape its bloody, imminent death. The men of the tribe chase behind it, spears raised, two of them letting fly.

One blade slices through the air, stabs the antelope through the heart, dropping it in a lifeless heap of meat and bone.

The other, released at the wrong moment and the wrong angle, takes a disastrous turn, buries its tip in the chest of one of the men.

As the man grunts with surprise and pain, then crumples into the dirt, Baitsakhan stops abruptly. He fingers his own spear, almost confused to find it still in his hand.

So many times, he has envisioned this moment, casually allowing his weapon to find its way into one of his own people—and not just any of his own, but this one, this man.

His father.

He has always thought it would be fun to kill one of his own, and now fate has done it for him.

Baitsakhan will simply have to take advantage of the unexpected opportunity, before time runs out. The men shout and wail; Baitsakhan's father bleeds and bleeds into the steppe. Baitsakhan kneels by his side.

“It is good that a son be with his father in the last moments,” he hears a voice behind him say, and he can sense the other men of the tribe pulling back to a respectful distance, giving him the privacy he
needs to say good-bye. Baitsakhan bows his head, rests a hand on his father's chest.

His father neither weeps or moans. He's always prided himself a strong man, one who will greet death stoically, as a friend.

We'll see,
Baitsakhan thinks. Then he presses a fist into his father's wound.

The man spasms, limbs shuddering and mouth and tongue working like there's something he needs to say. No sound comes out, only bubbles of spit and blood, but Baitsakhan can imagine the message his father has for him.

No.

Stop.

Please.

He presses harder into the wound, then twists his hand sharply to maximize the agony. It would be better, he thinks, if there were more screaming. But he can see the pain in his father's eyes, and that will have to be good enough.

His experiments with animals have shown him that a body under enough strain will simply give up. Surengan has taught him that the same is true for humans. A heart will do whatever necessary to put its body out of its misery.

It is Surengan who has helped him understand the exact amount of strain and torment the human body can bear.

“Don't die, Father,” Baitsakhan says, loudly, so the other men can hear. But his hands bear another message for the man, pressing and tearing at the gaping wound.
Die slowly,
they say,
slowly and painfully, but surely.

Baitsakhan is given the honor of carrying the corpse back to camp. He anticipates his mother's expression when he lays the burden before her, the way she will shriek her grief to the heavens. Her pain, he thinks, will be nearly as entertaining as his father's death.

But she denies him the pleasure, merely kneeling beside the body, kissing its cold forehead, then meeting Baitsakhan's eyes.

“So it is done,” she says coolly, her gaze blank. It's as if she knows exactly what he wants to see, and is denying him, simply out of spite.

Most emotions are foreign to Baitsakhan, but he understands hate.

He has never hated her more.

In the wake of his father's death, there are some who say to Baitsakhan, “Now you are a man.” They watch him, expecting that his father's death will transform him in some way.

Baitsakhan wonders if they know something he does not, and so he watches himself, curious, waiting to feel.

He feels only relief.

With his father gone, there is one less person to keep track of his comings and goings, one less person to gauge his behavior, catch him in his lies.

There is one less person to keep an eye on his baby sister.

Baitsakhan has discovered that pain is most pleasurable when inflicted on those who are the weakest, and those who are the closest to him.

Little Arslan is both.

When she was first born, she was like an animal—poking and prodding her was like torturing a wild dog, if somewhat less enjoyable. For if he cut off his sister's finger, someone was sure to notice, and this was a risk Baitsakhan was unwilling to take. As the Player-elect, he is expected to be brutal but disciplined, cruel but honorable. Honor means nothing to Baitsakhan, but being the Player means everything, so he's smart enough to play by Surengan's rules. Even if he dreams of a day when he will no longer have to.

What Baitsakhan does with his sister, to his sister, must stay between the two of them.

The older she gets, the more fun she offers. He likes how she says his name, with such wounded confusion, as she did when he brushed her hair back from her neck and pressed a hot poker to her skin. She never tells on him, because he warns her not to. He is her brother, and she
loves him; she thinks this is how brothers are supposed to be.

He liked the game of it, making her love him and fear him all at once, so that she would keep his secret.

“Are you sure?” she says to him, blinking big, trusting eyes and holding the cup of nails between her two tiny hands. He is 11 years old and she is five, old enough to know better.

“I'm sure,” he tells her, and promises, “Nothing bad will happen.”

He's her brother, and so she believes him. She tips the cup to her lips. Forces herself to swallow one small nail, and another. Baitsakhan grins, encouraging her, and soon she is giggling, because it's not so hard after all.

Because he is happy, and that makes her happy.

He's not exactly sure what the nails will do to her—that's what makes it such an interesting experiment. He expects them to tear up her intestines, to cause internal bleeding, to make her scream.

He doesn't expect them to kill her, but he's not displeased when they do.

The years of his training pass. Baitsakhan tires of pretending, playing at a so-called “humanity” he has no desire to possess.

He dreams of a day when he will no longer need to hide. When he can do as he pleases with impunity.

Until then, he keeps his true self hidden in the shadows.

He waits.

Baitsakhan spends little time in his ger with his mother. His older brother has a wife and family of his own; his sister and father are dead. It is only the two of them now, and the small, domed dwelling feels both too big and too small.

He dislikes the way she looks at him, peering from around corners when she thinks he isn't watching, the way her gaze rests on him when he pretends to sleep.

“I will always love you, whoever you grow up to be,” she tells him, whenever he beds down in their ger.

His mother has faded over the years. As the ger has grown more crowded with color and decoration, she has hollowed herself out. Her husband's death struck one blow, her daughter's another, but Baitsakhan suspects her true exhaustion comes from enduring her youngest son's existence, day in and day out. And that pleases him. She rarely speaks, never smiles. Her gaze is flat, her lips so often pressed together in a thin straight line that Baitsakhan often forgets she's lost most of her teeth.

She is aging poorly, his mother, and he enjoys watching it.

“Sweet dreams,” she always tells him when he closes his eyes.

He likes that, and sometimes believes she has the power to make it so. Because it's when he sleeps at home that he most often has the best kind of dreams, dreams of blood and corpses and a dead, scorched world layered in ash. He kills when he dreams; he kills when he wakes. This, he thinks, must be what people mean by the word
happy
.