The Mongoliad: Book Three

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The pale-haired warrior, Haakon, knew some of the Mongol tongue. His accent was very bad, but he could make himself understood, and Gansukh suspected his comprehension was much better than his pronunciation. No wonder he watches us so closely, Gansukh mused as he wandered through the sprawling camp. He’s listening and learning.

A tiny smile flickered across his face. He would keep this tiny nugget of information to himself. Using the pale-haired youth to rile Munokhoi was a dangerous proposition, but an entertaining one. Given the pace at which the journey to Burqan-qaldun was progressing, he would need distractions. He couldn’t keep shadowing Munokhoi; sooner or later, the Torguud captain would catch sight of him and take umbrage at the attention.

He didn’t need to start a fight with Munokhoi. He just needed to be sure the other man’s attention was directed somewhere other than at himself or Lian.

Gansukh wandered toward the eastern edge of the caravan where the Imperial Guards had set up a makeshift archery range. He walked over to the line scratched in the bare ground where the archers stood.

Behind him he heard the guards’ conversation fragment, and he waited patiently. Finally, one of the them heaved himself to his feet and approached.

“Brother Gansukh.”

Gansukh turned his head and regarded the one singled by the others. “Are you from the mountain clans?” he asked, noticing the colored threads braided into the man’s hair.

The other man nodded.

“The days are long out here on the plain, aren’t they, brother?”

“Tarbagatai,” the man supplied. He wiped a hand across his face. “No longer than the nights, I suppose,” he said with a shrug.

Gansukh offered a bark of laughter. “That is true.” He waved a hand at the targets. “It has been a long time since I hunted in the mountains. I found the light to be different there. Night came swiftly, and if you were tracking prey, you had to be quick about making your kill. Otherwise, the sun would vanish and so would your target. Out here, though, the day seems to last forever.”

Tarbagatai squinted at the targets, his tongue working at the inside of his lower lip. He seemed to be wondering if Gansukh was making sport of him, and Gansukh made no effort to guide the younger man’s thinking. After his encounter with Namkhai and the Imperial Guard the other night, he had realized how few friends he had among the Khan’s elite guard. Lian’s schooling and his mission had kept him aloof from the men of the arban, a dangerous situation for a front-line warrior such as himself. If the caravan came under attack again, he needed some confidence that his fellow Mongols wouldn’t see him as an adversary.

“Care to test your skill?” he asked, nodding at the nearby rack of bows.

Tarbagatai laughed. “I have heard the stories about you,” he said. “In the Khagan’s garden. How you felled a deer with one arrow.”

Gansukh shrugged as he wandered over to the rack. He let his hands roam across the bows-stroking the hardwood curves, fingering the sinew of the strings-and he finally selected a likely candidate. Smoothly, he strung the bow, and then offered it to Tarbagatai. “Maybe I was lucky that day,” he said.

Tarbagatai snorted, and dismissed the offered weapon with a wave of his hand. His gaze darted toward his lazy companions. “I’ll use my own,” he said, and he called for one of them to fetch his bow.

Gansukh wandered back to the line, and standing shoulder to shoulder with Tarbagatai-who was slightly taller-he looked out at the scattered targets, counting them, noting their distance. “In the mountains,” he said, “if you have a good position, you can see everything.”

Tarbagatai nodded. “Anyone can shoot one arrow and hit one target.”

Gansukh smiled at the mountain man’s tone. Respectful, and yet slightly challenging at the same time. Tarbagatai had known who he was when he had approached, and he was certain the story of the deer in the Khagan’s garden wasn’t the only story that had been passed around. The cup at the Khagan’s feast. The wrestling match with Namkhai. His ongoing feud with Munokhoi. All of these stories contributed to his reputation among the Imperial Guard, but every member of the Guard had been hand-picked for his own prowess and reputation. Stories meant little; actions counted for more.

The consensus about his match with Namkhai was that it had been a draw, and only because the Khan had allowed them to withdraw from the field. Opinion was split on who would have truly won, but regardless, no one could recall anyone ever besting Namkhai before. And Namkhai, of course, hadn’t spoken one way or the other.

There was some allure to challenging Chagatai’s envoy, then. There were few other opportunities for members of the Imperial Guard to distinguish themselves.

“We could pretend these targets are Chinese raiders,” he offered. “A race to see who can kill more of them?”

The other guards wandered over in the wake of the man who brought Tarbagatai his own bow, eager interest plain on their faces. The pair in the back began to speak in hushed tones, making wagers.

Tarbagatai glared at the pair for a second, and then shook his head slightly, as if he was pushing their wager from his mind. The mountain man looked over the targets once more. “Ten,” he said. “A full arban. Shall we have ten arrows each?”

“I would hope you would not miss that many,” Gansukh said with a laugh. “How about six? That should be enough to warrant a clear winner.”

Tarbagatai agreed, and with a word, sent one of the men to fetch two quivers of arrows. Each archer selected six, and Tarbagatai stuck his in the ground before him-a neat line, waiting to be snatched up.

Gansukh slowly pushed each of his arrows into the dry ground, making sure they were all firmly planted with their fletching pointed straight up. He opted for a tight cluster of shafts, a grouping that his hand fell upon naturally without requiring a look.

Tarbagatai would have to chase his arrows. Each shaft was a little farther away, and eventually, he would have to take a tiny step to his left in order to reach the last few arrows. Such movement wouldn’t take much time, but in this contest, that tiny delay might make the difference.

“Ready?” Gansukh asked, laying his first arrow across his bow.

He heard the creak of a bowstring being drawn back, and Tarbagatai grunted.

“One of you,” Gansukh called to the onlookers as he raised his own bow, “Give us a word and we shall start.” He peered along the straight shaft of his arrow at the first target. His right arm quivered for a moment before his muscles relaxed into a well-remembered position, and his breathing slowed. His belly tensed, and his vision shifted. The target-pale thatching stuffed into the ragged end of a log-sprang into greater focus, while everything else softened and dropped away.

“Hai!”

Gansukh loosed his first arrow before the man had finished shouting. He had heard the sudden influx of breath from behind him, and had known the cry was coming. His arrow flew true, burying itself deep in the thatch of the first target, though he did not hear the sound of its impact. Tarbagatai released his first arrow in concert with a horrific battle cry, as if his shout would give the arrow more loft in its flight. The sound was startling, more so for being projected right into Gansukh’s ear, and he hesitated for a split second, caught off guard by the racket. Ruefully, he snatched up his second arrow, nocked it, drew back the bow string, and let it fly.

His second arrow struck a target that already contained one of Tarbagatai’s arrows. His shaft was closer to the center, but the mistake was already made. As he reached for his third arrow, he silently commended Tarbagatai on his clever ruse.

There was no time for further recriminations. The mountain man was quick, and Gansukh lost himself in the rhythm of archery: nock, pull, release. As soon as an arrow was clear of his bow, he would focus on the next target. He tried not to wonder if he was shooting at the same target as Tarbagatai; to worry would be to hesitate, and to hesitate would be to lose.

As he released his last arrow, he heard an echoing twang from over his shoulder, and he released the breath he was not aware he had been holding.

The archers and their audience stared out at the field of targets, watching as the two arrows buried themselves in the thick thatch of the farthest target. The rustling impact of the arrows in the dried stalks was like the fluttering noise of a bird’s wings-two beats so close together that they could be easily mistaken for one sound.

“Every dog is dead,” Tarbagatai announced, clapping Gansukh on the shoulder. “You shot well.”

“Indeed,” Gansukh replied, “As did you.” He looked around and saw no arrows in the ground, and then let his gaze roam across the targets once more. This time he checked every target more closely. “We seem to have shot all our arrows, Brother,” he pointed out.

“Yes, and we did not mark them ahead of time,” Tarbagatai laughed. “Do you remember which ones were yours?”

Gansukh pointed at the nearby target that sported two arrows. “That one was already dead when my arrow hit it,” he said.

Tarbagatai grinned. “But what of the last?”

Gansukh shaded his eyes with his hand and made a show of peering at the farthest target. “It is very far away,” he said, “And I have developed a thirst. Perhaps we can check later.”

Merriment danced in Tarbagatai’s eyes as his grin stretched even wider. He raised his bow and let out a loud whoop of joy. “Yes,” he chortled. “Let us have a drink in celebration.”

As the other men noisily agreed with the resolution of the match and eagerly dispersed to gather skins of arkhi, Tarbagatai put his hands on Gansukh’s shoulders. “I would follow you into battle, brother Gansukh,” he said, and the intensity of his gaze matched the fervor of his words.

Gansukh returned the embrace, and found himself considering a strange idea. Could he lead men like Tarbagatai? To have the Imperial Guard at his command? The idea presented itself with no preamble, and he was surprised to find himself considering it.

And then he remembered the siege of Kozelsk, and the idea was like a black stain in his mind. He wanted to make it go away, but it only spread.

The arkhi, when he shared a skin with Tarbagatai a few minutes later, was incredibly sour in his mouth, and he fought the urge to spit it out.

She shouldn’t have stayed, but she had, and when Gansukh stirred shortly after dawn, she had laid still and kept her breathing as even as possible, hoping he would think she was asleep. With her eyes lightly closed, Lian listened to Gansukh as he rolled out of the tangled mass of furs and blankets that were their shared bed. He stretched, grunting and mumbling to himself, and noisily fumbled his way into his clothing.

Trying to be quiet, and failing miserably. She fought the urge to smile.

Once he was gone, Lian continued to feign sleep, slowly counting to one hundred in her head before she moved.

She had been sleeping in his tent since the night of the Chinese raid, though they had not been intimate that first night. He had given her the bed, and had slept next to the flaps of the tent, letting her know that no one would enter the tent without his knowledge. His protective gesture had been touching; and no less so when, a few hours later, she had prodded him with her foot and found him completely unresponsive. He had become her protector, but he did so without making her feel like property.

She had power over him, whether he realized it or not, and as she rose and dressed, she wondered what she was going to do with that power. A few weeks ago, the answer would have been clear, but she found her resolve wavering. Don’t be a silly girl, she thought angrily as she pushed back the flaps of the tent and stepped outside.

She wandered toward the heart of the caravan, taking note of the increase in activity around the cluster of ger where the caravan masters were quartered. The Khagan and his entourage might move today.

A clump of women came toward her, and Lian recognized Second Wife and her attendants, and she scuttled around the nearest tent, trying to avoid being seen. If spotted, Jachin would insist on hearing any gossip, especially anything about the Chinese raid.

She just couldn’t bear to talk about it. Not with that woman.

The women’s voices followed her, and her heart started to tremble in her chest. They couldn’t be following her, could they? She was being irrational, but that didn’t stop her from quickening her pace and changing her course several times. And when she spotted the flag raised over Master Chucai’s tent, she quickly made a decision and altered her course for his ger.

Jachin would never follow her in there.

She slapped the open flap of Chucai’s tent and waited impatiently, glancing over her shoulder. There was no response, and so she slapped it again, more firmly this time, and jumped back as one of Chucai’s servants suddenly appeared in the ger’s open mouth.

“Oh,” she started. “I… I am here to see Master Chucai,” she finished.

The servant stared at her, one eyebrow partially raised, and made no move to stand aside. His rigid posture made it clear that a shift in power had occurred. Rumors of her relationship with Gansukh were already circulating, and Chucai’s servants were taking advantage of the gossip to remind her that there was a difference between being the slave of a powerful man like Master Chucai and being the kept woman of a horse rider.

Lian sucked in a large breath, using the motion to draw herself up to her full height and to throw out her chest. “At his command,” she amended, with more than a little of regal haughtiness in her voice.

She should have come to see Chucai earlier, but there was no sense in castigating herself about that now.

The servant nodded without blinking, and stepped aside. She swept past him, flicking her hair with mock distain as she did so. Playing her old role, while part of her was certain the man would see right through it. He could see she was filled with nothing but doubt.

“Ah, Lian.”

Chucai’s traveling home was a replica of his small office at Karakorum. He was seated behind a wooden desk, working by candlelight. His travel trunks sat on one side of the ger, neatly arranged in a row; on the opposite wall, his long fur coat hung on a collapsible wooden rack.

“Sit down,” he said, waving a hand toward the stool next to the trunks. If he was surprised to see her, he gave no sign.

Lian sat, placing her hands, right over left, on her lap. She waited while he finished reading the scroll. He read, untroubled and unhurried by her presence, and she did not fidget. Fidgeting was for nervous girls, for scared women who were not in control of their lives. Squirming was what bored slaves did, and she was neither.

“It is a curious situation, is it not?” he asked as he began to roll the scroll up.

“Yes, my Master,” she replied immediately, her eyes downcast. Mainly so he would not spy any of the confusion and frantic wonderment she was experiencing.

“On one hand, I think you may have overcommitted yourself to your assigned task; on the other, I admire the security it has provided you.”

She knew he had seen the terse exchange at the entrance of his ger, and though he wouldn’t admit to having instructed his servant to act that way, Lian knew Master Chucai well enough to read the underlying message in both his words and his servant’s attitude. “Yes, my Master,” she breathed, carefully stressing the last two words without seeming to grovel.

“And of course there is the matter of why you might feel the need for such protection.” Chucai looked at her then, holding her with his piercing gaze. Not accusatorily, but with an air of knowing, as if it was indeed true that he knew everything that went on in this camp, just as the same impression were true within the walls of Karakorum.

Lian blinked. “Munokhoi,” she said, giving name to the true dread that had kept her awake the previous night.

It should have been the dead commander, Luo, but when she closed her eyes, it wasn’t his face, with his staring eyes and accusing mouth and the black tears that dripped from the gash in his neck, that haunted her dreams. It was the cruel visage of the Torguud captain.

“Before the Chinese bodies were even cold, he was here in my tent, standing right over there, railing at me about you being a Chinese spy.”

“What?” Lian spluttered, too surprised to form more words than the one.

Chucai squared up the ends of the scroll with a practiced twist of the cylindrical shape. “Indeed. It is an interesting accusation. And when I thought to ask you myself, you were-”

“I swear to you I am not-I would never-I am not a spy!” Lian tried to quell her rapid breathing, to lessen the feeling she had of being squeezed by a giant hand.

Chucai stared at her, letting the silence stretch between them to an almost unbearable length. “Yes,” he said eventually, releasing her from the penetrating intensity of his gaze. “I do believe that you are not.”

Lian gulped a breath and nodded gratefully. “Thank you,” she managed. Being subject to the gossipy attention of Second Wife and her attendants might not have been such a bad fate after all.

“However, I also believe the Torguud captain’s accusation that you were trying to escape, though he has, in all likelihood, completely forgotten this little detail by now. A fortunate omission in his record, don’t you think?”

Lian made no reply.

“Even though I believe you did not lead the attackers to us, what I think is of little consequence.” Chucai offered her a tiny smile, completely absent of any affection. “At least, in this matter.”

Lian regarded him warily, a serpent of fear slowly twining itself around her lower spine. If she had come to his tent immediately after the raid, would his attitude toward her been better? And yet, he sat here speaking to her as if she had been expected, as if he had, indeed, summoned her to hear this very… obtuse… conversation.

“Your opinion matters in all things, Master,” she said, lowering her gaze to her hands. Her fingers were knotted in her lap, and with some effort, she extricated them from one another.

Chucai chuckled. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it does. In some areas, my opinion is all that is required. What I think is best is what is done. And what is done by my command causes ripples. Like a stone dropped into a pond. The frog, thinking it is safe from predators, may suddenly find its protective lily pad disturbed. Removed from beneath it, even.”

“Am I the frog?” she asked.

“Are you?” Chucai raised his hand and mimed dropping a heavy stone. He leaned forward as if he was examining the results of his action.

“Munokhoi fears change,” Chucai said after staring at the results of his imaginary stone. “He does not like being outside the city walls. Too provincial. Too many wild animals, untamed creatures like… ponies.” Chucai laughed. “Yes, our brave Torguud champion is afraid of a young pony.”

The serpent twisted even higher up Lian’s spine. The young pony, she thought, and in thinking of him, was afraid for his safety. And hers, as well.

“What is to become of me?” she heard herself asking.

Chucai raised an eyebrow as he sat back in his chair, running his fingers through his long beard. “What should become of you?” he asked in a somewhat bored tone.

And she knew, in that instant, that Chucai was done with her. The failed escape attempt, the relationship with Gansukh, the threat of Munokhoi: these were all matters he no longer wished to concern himself with, and he had, in fact, realized a simple solution to all three. When she walked out of Chucai’s ger, it would be for the last time.

She should have been more thrilled. Chucai had, in effect, freed her, but where could she go? They were days from Karakorum, and if she tried to ride off again, Munokhoi would relish the opportunity to hunt her down. And Gansukh. Would he follow her? Would he protect her against Munokhoi?

She put her hand over her mouth to stop a half sob, half giggle from escaping. After all these years, what she had yearned for was being offered her, and all she could think of how to reject this freedom. How could she restore her usefulness to Chucai?

At least until the Khagan’s caravan returned to Karakorum.

“The Chinese,” she started, grasping at a fleeting memory from the night of the attack. “While I was being held captive by the Chinese, I heard one of their commanders talking about…”

The Khagan’s advisor remained slumped in his chair, but his fingers were no longer idly stroking his beard. “Go on,” Chucai said carefully.

“He spoke of a sprout, and… and a banner-”

Chucai leaped out of his chair, startling her into silence. He leaned on his desk, looming over her. “What did he say?” Chucai demanded, his voice sharp.

Lian swallowed nervously, her hands fluttering in her lap. The change in Chucai’s demeanor was not what she had expected, and she squirmed under his intense gaze. Her mind raced, trying to recall the conversation between Luo and the other Chinese man. “They… they said they wanted a sprout-that was why they attacked the Khagan’s caravan, but… but they were not able to find it. And so they tried to steal a banner instead.” She sat up, realizing which banner Luo and the other man had been referring to. “The Khagan’s Spirit Banner,” she breathed.

“Hssssst,” Chucai uttered, slamming himself back into his seat.

Lian fell silent. She kept her gaze on her lap, mentally calming her fingers and her breathing. Now was not the time to speak. Whatever she had heard from the Chinese meant something to Master Chucai; it was best to let him tell her, versus her trying to puzzle it out.

For now, at least.

“A sprout,” Chucai said eventually.

Lian let her gaze flick up, but Chucai was staring into the space over her head and did not notice. “Do you know what he was talking about? Have you seen such a twig?” he asked.

Lian shrugged. “A twig, Master? I have seen many twigs.” She felt unduly coy in saying it, but sensed a change in Chucai’s mood. If there was a way she could benefit from this change, she had to try to take advantage of it. “Perhaps you could enlighten me a little more.”

Chucai snorted and shook his head. “You would know it if you had seen it,” he snapped. “I’m not talking about the sort of branch of flowers that Jachin has her handmaidens bring her. This would be…” He waggled his fingers at her, glowering.

Chucai doesn’t know either, she realized. She dropped her gaze so that he couldn’t read her expression. “I have not, Master,” she said. “Though I would be more happy to keep an eye out for it, while I…” She left her sentence unfinished, hoping he would fill it in for her.

“While you what?” Chucai asked, his demeanor returning to its previous stony state.

The panic returned, squeezing her body. She was like the frog, swimming frantically in an enormous pond, with no shelter in sight. No lily pads. Just open water.

“While I… do nothing, Master,” she ended lamely. Her dreams of freedom were nothing more than childish whimsy.

“Exactly,” he replied with finality.

The frog, waiting for the stone to drop.