Lords of Grass and Thunder (67 page)

“Come,” he said, and invited the Lady Bortu with a glance he hoped conveyed casual command and not the vague unease he was feeling. “We can talk more comfortably on the dais.”

Whatever she saw in his face, she followed him and settled herself on the right side of the dais. She didn’t try to take the little girl away from him, but seemed to challenge his honor on that score with eyes too dark for comfort. It didn’t matter. He set the Princess Orda down beside him and made a little den out of his arm for her to cuddle in as his own daughter liked to do. And like his own daughter, the princess tucked herself among the folds of his sleeve and peeked out at him with a hopeful pout.

“Is Tumbi here?” she asked.

He closed his eyes, unable to speak for the moment. The old woman was watching, cataloging his weaknesses, but the sudden sharp pain was too new for any practice at hiding it. “Not this time, my sweet,” he told her.
Not ever,
he thought, unless he turned the Princess Orda over to his father the Tinglut-Khan. The problem was, he didn’t think he could do it.

Lady Bortu saw more than he wished her to see, and perhaps understood more than he did himself about what he would and would not do and what that line might cost him. At any rate she was giving him a look he hadn’t seen much in his life. Sympathy.

“Come here now, child,” she called the princess to her side with brusque disapproval. “Don’t tire our guest with your questions.”

Princess Orda crawled out of her nest beneath his arm and curled up next to her grandmother, who smoothed her coats with grumbling sounds of normalcy. “So tell me about this Tumbi,” she told the little girl, with a warning glare at Daritai to keep his teeth shut around his objections. “Do you like him very much?”

“He’s nice,” the princess assured her grandmother. “And when I grow up, I’m going to marry him.”

“Oh, are you now, girl? And don’t you think your khan may have something to say about that?”

“Tumbi could steal me away, like in the story of Quchar and Nomulun,” she said, defiant in her determination.

“Who is telling you such tales?” The old khaness chided her. “Children shouldn’t listen to such stories, much less make plans for acting them out when they are bigger!” She laughed to take the bite out of her scolding, however. It seemed to Daritai that Lady Bortu didn’t object to the idea but tested the feelings of the little girl. Though she had seen only seven summers, the royal family of the Qubal was well known for sprouting witches on their family tree.

Daritai had seen the value of the match the first time the idea had come to him, over a Qubal murder. Unfortunately, his plans depended on keeping both of the children alive, which didn’t seem all that likely at present.

“Well, we’ll see what we can do, then.” The Lady Bortu gave the princess a hug. “We can’t have you running away like Quchar and Nomulun.” With the sweet dark head tucked under her chin, she looked at Daritai, measuring up all that he was thinking. Lines of concern etched the corners of her eyes, but she gave him a little nod, accepting the bond forged by two children that would unite them as more than conqueror and conquered. He just had to get Tumbinai out of Tinglut’s clutches alive.

“But first,” the lady continued, and this time she spoke to Prince Daritai, though still in tones that wouldn’t frighten the child. “We must stop my foolish grandson, who is causing such a fuss.”

“Prince Tayy?” the little girl asked.

“No, my dear. The other one.” The old grandmother patted the child reasuringly, but tears gathered in her eyes.

Daritai knew that all he had surmised and the worst that his spies had gathered was true. “Let me help you,” he said. “For Tumbinai’s sake.”

The crows had started to gather. Sprawled in the rusty mud awash in his own blood, Bekter had accepted his approaching death. Already his mind and spirit withdrew from the terrible pain that racked his flesh. He would have liked to see Toragana one last time, though, to tell her that he’d changed his mind about older women. One of them, at least. He would miss her.

A bird settled too close to his face and he flinched away, closing his eyes tightly against the threat of its sharp beak. He was getting used to the agony in his back, but the thought of ending his life in blindness and rending pain as the creature ripped the eyes out of his living head was more than he could bear.
Please,
he tried to say, though nothing escaped his lips but a scarlet froth of blood.
Not my eyes.

He didn’t know whose mercy he would have begged, but a gentle hand wiped the blood from his mouth and fluttered softly to his cheek.

“I know, my love. You’re safe now. Be still.”

Chapter Forty-two

S
TILL EXHAUSTED, General Jochi rose from a brief nap in his campaign tent. He demanded proper rest periods for his soldiers and tried to set an example. While he pretended to sleep, however, his mind replayed the events of the battlefield behind his eyelids. Mergen’s misbegotten blanket-son fought with demons at his side. The Qubal fallen lay running blood from eye and ear and mouth until they died in agony, blackened and swollen as if they had been dead for many days. Jochi shook his head, but he couldn’t dislodge the images that stole his rest. Warriors went happily to their death, knowing they would fly to their ancestors in the bellies of the birds. But how would the spirits of their dead find peace when even the birds refused to eat from their battlefield?

He remembered a story about the Uulgar, who roamed a land without forests and set their noble dead, not just those of lesser rank, for the birds to take their souls to rest. It was said that when they feasted on the poisoned khan of the Uulgar, the birds died in a dark and stinking blanket that covered all the grasslands around it. He feared the same doom for his own fallen souls.

When he returned from relieving himself, Chahar was waiting. The scout had brought news that Yesugei had turned back with half the Qubal and all of his Uulgar horde to defend the ulus, but so far—

“Anything?” Jochi asked, and gestured for a drink of strong kumiss.

“The Tinglut prince sends his regards,” Chahar told him, bringing no good news of Yesugei’s reinforcements, then. “He’s pulling out of the field with three of his thousands to rest. You have two thousands of his still to command.” The captain had already stated his disapproval of joining forces with their conquerors and he didn’t hide his feelings now.

“
Choices?” Jochi threw the challenge at him. His officers and field servants were accustomed to this argument and went about their business preparing him for battle without comment. “Give me choices. Prince Daritai’s withdrawal, even to refresh his troops, leaves us vulnerable.” Like his own horde, the Tinglut had to rest. Demons, apparently, had no such weakness.

“He doesn’t serve you,” Chahar insisted. “His ten thousands will answer to your command only as long as Qutula remains a greater threat to his own security. Once we’ve dealt with the Durluken, what will prevent this Prince Daritai from turning his army against us?”

Alone, Qutula would not have stood against Jochi’s forces for even a single battle. But he had seen for himself the Lady Chaiujin shrouded in a green mist and riding among the Durluken. Where she rode, the ground seethed with vipers that rose up larger than a man to sink their poisoned fangs into the warriors who rode against them.

Alone against such supernatural forces, Jochi’s army would have fallen long ago. He didn’t delude himself that Prince Daritai had become a friend, however.

“Just because he’s polite about it, don’t forget that he has taken the ger-tent palace by force of arms,” Jochi reminded his captain. “The Tinglut prince holds the Lady Bortu hostage, with the Princess Orda and all the noble fathers and Great Mothers.

“Right now we need him against Qutula. And we need his goodwill toward the hostages.”

A rumor was spreading that Prince Tayy had died of the bite of a serpent-demon and another that Qutula had stabbed him through the heart. The prisoners he’d interrogated spoke freely, more terrified of their allies than their enemies. They told both stories, among others. In all the tales, however, the prince was dead. If the reports were true, Daritai held the last recognized blood of the khanate.

He understood Chahar’s anger. Who did they fight for, with the khan and his heir both dead? Certainly not for the Tinglut prince who had seized the ulus and only sent his men to fight in defense of his own interests. But General Jochi would fight to the last living breath in his body
against
Qutula, the murderer who had brought down the Qubal ulus.

Later, when Yesugei arrived with his combined forces and they had ended the usurper’s war, then they would sort out the Tinglut prince. A niggling doubt rippled across all his assumptions, however. Lady Bortu did not seem to disapprove of the conqueror and, as his captive, she’d observed the Tinglut prince more closely than any of them. Jochi needed time to think, but Qutula gave them no respite. He’d slept with his sword still clasped to his side, so he had only to pick up his spear and let his servants put his helmet on his head. His captains were ready, his horse saddled and pawing the ground, anxious for the battle. The general kept them waiting no longer.

Yesugei-Khan sat astride a mare the faded gold of autumn grass, watching from a low-rising swell in the rolling plain. All seemed peaceful in the afternoon light of Great and Little Suns, but looking down on the shadows that crossed the ger-tent palace he had served all his life, he knew that for a lie. Chahar had delivered the message from his dream and departed at speed while Yesugei had prepared his army and swept down on the tent city a day behind the scout.

Mergen was dead, according to the shaman Bolghai, who had appeared to Chahar in his dream: murdered by his blanket-son Qutula with the aid of Sechule, who had agreed to be his wife. Yesugei was surprised the news hadn’t shocked him more. Grief, yes, he felt a terrible pain at the loss of his khan. But when he thought of Sechule without the presence of her beauty to blind him, he realized that her treachery came as no surprise at all.

Jumal had predicted Qutula’s betrayal and the reports of his scouts had only confirmed the worst. But Yesugei-Khan hadn’t expected to find the Tinglut installed in the palace while the Qubal fought each other for a dais they no longer owned. His scouts had counted a shifting number of Tinglut warriors, no more than eight thousands in the tent city at any time and half of them sleeping or moving to and from the battlefield.

It was clear that the Tinglut were present as an occupying force, however, and not merely as an ally. Tinglut guarded the wagons that formed a protective barricade around the tent city, and Tinglut scouts moved back and forth from the ger-tent palace to the front. His spies sent to report on the conflict had not returned, so he was left to guess what part the Tinglut played in the Qubal civil war.

But time, he had determined, was running out. His captains were ready, and he raised his arm, ready to alert the drummers and the trumpeters to sound the attack. His vastly larger army, combined of his Qubal forces and former Uulgar prisoners, would fall on the Tinglut as Prince Daritai had likely done to the Qubal. When Yesugei had driven out that threat from the rear, he would . . .

“A message!” Otchigin, who had once been a princeling among the Uulgar, but who had given his devotion and the loyalty of his horde to the gur-khan, galloped toward him. “Delivered from the Qubal city under a white banner.” At his side came a rider whose beaten leather armor bore Tinglut decorations.

“I’m only interested in one message,” Yesugei informed the messenger. “If Prince Daritai wishes to see Great Sun rise tomorrow, he’ll return all that he has stolen from the Qubal. Including the dais of the khan.”

“The Lady Bortu sends me, not my lord Prince Daritai,” the messenger met Yesugei-Khan’s baleful glare with wilting courage. “I bring the words of the khaness to her general, the esteemed Yesugei, named khan over the Qubal-Uulgar by her own son Mergen, who has returned to his ancestors, may they grant him rebirth fitting his station.”

As greetings went, it was a mouthul, but it contained the necessary elements to confirm the sender. “Go on, then,” Yesugei instructed him. Mergen, after all, had failed to listen to Jumal, and now the gur-khan was dead.

“The Lady Bortu sends this message: ‘I would have my beloved general beside me. At my behest, Prince Daritai grants safe passage to Yesugei-Khan and his captains and a guard suited to his position. The prince would have me give you also his reminder, that he holds the Princess Orda in his hands and, I would hesitate to add, my own worthless life as well.’ ”

Insolent colt! Safe passage indeed, when Yesugei had twice as many warriors as the Tinglut. The Qubal were furthermore fighting for their home. But Prince Daritai had the princess and the old khaness, as he pointed out. He would doubtless cut their throats if Yesugei-Khan defied him.

If he were a different kind of man, Yesugei-Khan would feint an attack and let the Tinglut remove the last obstacles between himself and the dais. His own army would easily defeat the Tinglut. Too late, of course, for the prisoners, but it would add gur-khan to his title and put the grasslands in his hands, from the Shan Empire to the Cloud Country.