Chapter Four

 

SQUATTING AMONG THE DOGS and casting lots with the older guardsmen, the companions of lesser rank waited for them at the side of the door. Tayy counted Jumal there, and Mangkut who, with Duwa, had followed Qutula into his service. Their horses lazily cropped the grass at a little distance but, true to their training, did not stray far from their masters.

“Whew!” Bekter exclaimed with a dramatic wiping of his brow. “I wondered how long they would keep us indoors!”

“Too long,” Tayy agreed with an answering grin. His guardsmen never pressed him for his secrets and he’d had more than enough of his grandmother’s keen eye.

“At last!”

“Here they are!”

Their companions at the door rose noisily from their games to greet the cousins.

“Halloo!” Tayy answered, then sought out his own two hounds and accepted their doggy welcome with a vigorous rub. They had just been pups when he left them and he’d had little enough of their company before that. The Lady Chaiujin had claimed to fear them, though he figured, now, that she was afraid they had scented her demon form as an emerald green bamboo snake. He’d doubted they would remember him, but the red bitch whined and butted her nose against his leg, demanding his attention. The black dog snarled a warning.

Meeting the creature’s red-eyed glare with a glower of his own, Qutula took a step back, which satisfied the beast. “Your dog takes affront at my presence,” he said, which all of their companions must surely have noticed. “I don’t know what I’ve done to upset him.”

Tayy gave the dog a reassuring rub, which settled him a little, though he continued to regard Qutula with the intense interest he generally applied only to his dinner. “We’ve been away a long time; he’s probably forgotten you and thinks you’re a stranger.” It had been his own fear, after all. “He’ll get used to you again.”

The dog lapped a slobbery tongue across his cheek and the prince felt the comfort in the gesture settle his troubled heart. With a last ruffling scratch at the thick hair around the dog’s throat he rose from this second homecoming with a challenge for his companions: “Why are you sitting around on your haunches when Great Sun is shining and the warm breezes carry the scent of flowers from the river?”

“Waiting for you, Oh leader of warriors.” Among the guardsmen at the door, Jumal answered with an exaggerated bow and a mocking pucker of his lips that aped Qutula’s disapproval.

“Watch your tongue!” Qutula snapped, “or I’ll cut it out for you.”

Tayy laid a warning hand on his cousin’s arm. “It’s just a joke,” he said. “I was no less a prince the last time Jumal poked fun at my station than I am today. Why reward him now with more than the usual groans?”

He knew the answer even if he didn’t want to admit it. Jumal’s status had fallen with his family’s fortunes while Qutula’s had, indirectly, risen. Though Tayy continued to favor among his followers the friend and partner in the boyish games of childhood, the politics of rank now gave an uneasy precedence to Mergen’s blanket-sons.

Jumal might have meant his joke as an insult to Qutula’s birth, an offense that would surely lead to murder between them. But if his friend resented the brothers for taking his place at the prince’s side, he never showed it. From childhood, however, Jumal had an abrasive sense of humor which seemed a more likely explanation for his joke than some new resentment.

Picking up his follower’s tone like the spear exchanged in a game of jidu, therefore, Tayy answered the jape in a similarly exaggerated style. With all the pomp of his station as Prince Tayyichiut of the Qubal people he issued his edict to enjoy the day.

“Wait no longer, minions, for Great Sun will not wait for you!” Consciously, he mimicked the most imperial tones of Chimbai-Khan as he used to do when his father was alive. He thought it might hurt, the memory of old and loving jokes. But his companions laughed as they were meant to do, and he discovered that he could laugh, too. His father was gone, but he hadn’t taken the joy of his living with him into the underworld. It remained in the clear eyes of his son and his straight arm with a bow or the spear. And it remained in the old jokes from boyhood when they had all aspired to be their own parent.

Bekter laughed as loud as any, but Qutula’s eyes flared briefly in anger. In childhood he had copied his own father’s manner, but with Mergen so raised in station and his own rank still in question, such games were forbidden him.

Tired of picking his way through the nettles of his cousin’s feelings, Tayy thought that perhaps all games were best left to childhood after all. “Are we going hunting, or are we going to stand around and argue?” he asked in his own voice.

“Hunting!” his companions shouted with as much relief to have the brewing quarrel ended, he thought, as pleasure at the chase.

His horse waited among the others and came when he whistled. “Come, sweet,” he murmured in his mount’s ear. In moments he was on her back, flying down the grassy avenue. The dogs knew the hunt and leaped away, barking excitedly, but Tayy called on his uncle’s lesser guardsmen to hold them fast. He would stalk the wood for game today; dogs would be more hindrance than help.

The black dog snarled and strained to follow, his eyes wild with longing, but the guardsman tightened his hold. With a nod of thanks, Prince Tayy ducked his head down at the side of his horse’s neck, urging her forward. His companions followed and soon flanked him protectively, though they made it a race. They left the palace behind quickly.

The khan’s city was huge, tens of thousands of round felt tents with all the women and children and the aged, with the sheep in their pens and the horses who wandered at will both out on the plain and among the camps. But the grand avenue was clear ahead of him and soon the ranks of white tents fell away as well. The companions spread out in the lake attack formation; in close order the young hunters turned in a sweeping curve and headed for the forest that bordered the river.

 

 

 

Qutula preferred hunting from horseback on the open plain, but the heir, Prince Tayyichiut, led them in a hell-bent turn back toward the forest that crowded the banks of the Onga. Just as well. The tattoo on his breast warmed and calmed him to his purpose. Today he would hunt the biggest game of all, and win for himself all that he had wished.

When they reached the line of trees, they leaped from their horses. The prince took only his short bow, a quiver of arrows, and the knife at his belt. A bow could throw an arrow farther than an arm could throw a short spear. It would drive the point of the arrow deeper than an arm might guide a short spear. Close in, however, a spear offered more control for a lethal first strike. Qutula would need that advantage against his human prey.

Satisfaction hummed through his body; warm memories of the mystery woman who had come to him in his sleep clung to his skin. If not for the tattoo over his breast, he might have thought her just a dream. But he had asked for a token and refused to question how she had done it with just the prick of her sharp teeth beneath the fragment of jade he wore around his neck. The mark, in the shape of an emerald green bamboo snake, tingled with the promise of new memories to come if he did just this one thing for her. For himself, really.

Not with his own weapon, however. He fumbled with the ties on his quiver until Bekter raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Are you coming, brother? It’s not like you to lag behind when there’s game to be had.”

“The ties are loose.” Qutula had artfully loosened them, and he showed his brother the quiver, where he was tightening them again. “Go on with the others—I’ll catch up in a few minutes.”

The rest of their party had already entered the wood, leaving the horses to nibble the leaves from the bushes, but Bekter hesitated. “I can wait.”

“No, go.” Qutula looked up from his work on the strings with an indulgent smile. “Think of it as a head start, the way we raced as children. I’ll wager a dozen arrows I will still bring down the first game between us!”

“In that case I’ll match your bet with this bow, and take the advantage!” With a last companionable slap on the shoulder, Bekter headed purposefully into the forest, his clumsy efforts at stealth rustling old leaves as he made his way toward the river.

Qutula watched him go. He wasn’t worried that Bekter would actually win the bet, but he liked that bow. He didn’t think his brother would accept the prince as fair game, but maybe no one would notice Tayy was missing until he had bagged something for the pot and won the bet. It would give greater credence to his own story as well. If only I had stayed closer to the prince, he rehearsed in his head, if not for that stupid bet, I might have saved him. That would work.

When he was certain that no one would see him, Qutula glided up to a horse not his own. Hushing her with whispers in her ear, he took the spear from the sheath on Jumal’s saddle. Jumal’s family had suffered reverses in their fortunes in the years since the prince had made his boyhood friendships. No one would stand up to defend him in the khan’s court.

It seemed to Qutula that Jumal truly loved Prince Tayy, and not only for the place his friendship had gained him at court. In grief for the terrible loss of his beloved prince, he might take his skinning knife to his own gut, saving them all the effort of accusations and denials. And if he didn’t think of it himself, Qutula would be happy to help him along.

A smile lingered on his lips as he followed his fellow guardsmen into the woods, tracking not the buck or doe of his companions, but the huntsman himself. Prince Tayyichiut.

 

 

 

Light, filtered through the highest branches, fell like hangings of gold in the trees. The thick carpet of rotting leaves and pine needles underfoot swallowed the sound of his companions. Tayy wiped a bloom of cold sweat from his forehead and notched an arrow. The last time he’d been alone in a forest, a magician in the shape of a huge bird had sliced his belly open. He’d almost died and some nights the pain of the healed wound still pulled him from his sleep. So did the nightmares.

The magician was dead, however, and the Onga River itself was the most perilous danger lurking in this familiar wood. He had only to stay away from its banks—a rustle of fallen leaves pulled his head around, listening. There it was.

A roebuck, its antlers in full maturity this late in the summer, stepped delicately between the trees almost close enough for him to touch. For a moment he hesitated, thinking of a friend who had traveled in the shape of just such a creature. Only animal intelligence moved behind these eyes, however. He aligned his body with the target and pulled, his bow hand level with his eye.

 

 

 

From the shadows, hidden among the trees, Qutula watched as the prince nocked his arrow. He had grown used to the idea of killing Mergen’s heir. The thought of slipping the point of Jumal’s spear between the princely ribs gave him only the slightest twinge of doubt. He hesitated, however, to end his cousin’s life until after the taking of his prey. He had his father to lead him to the home of his ancestors, of course, and his mother. But it always helped to bring an offering for the spirits with you. Qutula’s hand clenched around the shaft of the spear. He would do it—

A rustle in the underbrush signaled the arrival of his companions. Too soon. If he’d acted, he’d have been caught. Grateful to whatever demons or spirits were looking out for him, Qutula turned to hush whoever had come upon them as they would expect him to do—Tayy still had to take his shot.

“Roooaaaar!”

Oh. Not his fellow guardsmen after all. A great black bear reared on his hind legs. Towering over him, the bear stretched his mouth wide to threaten him with sharp teeth long as his fingers.

Time slowed as it does in battle. Qutula felt the beat of his heart pressing the blood through his veins, heard it pounding in his ears. The tattoo on his breast stirred with anticipation. No time to set an arrow; he pulled back and threw the spear he carried, held his breath as it flew through the air and plunged deeply into the flesh of the bear’s shoulder.

“Roooaaaaar!” The black bear dropped on all fours, limping, and shook his head. Maddened slobber frothed at the corners of an old purple scar that cut across his muzzle. He charged, and Qutula reached for the knife at his waist, knowing there was no time to draw it, that it wouldn’t stop the beast. He’s mad, he thought, looking into beady eyes red with ancient rage. I’m going to die.

An arrow snapped past his shoulder, so close Qutula felt the breath of its passing against his face. It pierced the beast’s eye, penetrating deep into his brain. The power of his dumb limbs kept the bear moving a pace, two, until his body finally realized that he was dead. Then he tumbled forward, crashing over on his side no more than a pace away.

I’m alive, Qutula thought. The terror had gone, leaving a melting lassitude in all his limbs. He hadn’t died after all.

“Qutula! Are you hurt?” The prince stood at the ready, a second arrow set to fly. But the bear was dead. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. He didn’t touch me.”

His voice sounded distant, disinterested even to his own ears. Jumal and Bekter crashed through the underbrush then and for a moment he allowed himself the foolish hope that Bekter had made the killing shot. But the newcomers were both out of breath and he recognized the fletching on the arrow.

“You saved my life.”

“ ’Tula? What’s wrong with my brother?” Bekter was still gasping for air. Later, there would be pointed questions, but now he accepted the prince’s answer, “Shock. He says he’s unhurt.”

Jumal had followed Bekter. His eyes were more for the creature when he asked, “What happened?”

That’s a bear at my feet with the heir’s arrow in its eye. It should be pretty damned obvious what happened.

“ ’Tula?”

Qutula looked at his brother, but he couldn’t quite make sense of what Bekter wanted from him. He’d heard Tayy’s answer, however; it seemed easiest just to repeat it. “Unhurt. Yes, of course.” He’d rather be dead than owing a life debt to the man he planned to murder. But he couldn’t tell Bekter that. As the lethargy of near-death passed off him, he realized it wasn’t really true either. Better the prince had been in his place, and Qutula’s own shot missed—how unfortunate!—but being alive was always better than being dead.

More of their companions had joined them, Mangkut and Duwa adding their worried questions to Bekter’s. Altan, last to arrive, uttered only a muttered curse as he examined the dead beast. Silence descended quickly, however. They seemed to be waiting not just for the obvious explanations but for some outburst of gratitude—effusive thanks, praise for the hunter’s keen eye and steady hand. Death had brushed Qutula too closely for manufactured emotions, however, and his real ones were scarcely fit for public display.

When the silence had stretched beyond enduring, Jumal took a step closer to the bear and examined the fletching on the arrow.

“A fine shot, Prince Tayy. And a fine trophy. Look at his face.” He pointed to the scar on the creature’s muzzle. “He’s fought men before and won. He would have killed Qutula, surely.”

His laugh edged with the danger averted, Tayy responded with bravado. “Better to face a bear than to suffer the wrath of my uncle if I had lost a guardsman within shouting distance of his own tents.” He might have meant any of them gathered there, but they all understood the implication. Mergen would not suffer the loss of his blanket-son easily.

You’re wrong, Qutula thought. That bear’s teeth and claws would have freed my father from the troubling presence of a son he has never wanted. But the fizz in his blood of life or death was calming. He was starting to think more clearly again. He might use this to his advantage.

“My prince.” He dropped to one knee in front of his father’s heir and bowed his head, though it was a hard thing to do with the imagined weight of the prince’s booted foot upon his neck. “I owe you my life. Let me stand between you and your enemies, let my breast be your shield and my arm be your defense.”

A ruse, Qutula thought, as the emerald green bamboo snake painted on his skin bit deep. But pain hot as a brand burned straight through his heart.

“You have always been my strong right arm.” Tayy blushed, and tugged at his sleeve. “Now get up. We’ve been friends too long for so much formality.”

Qutula blinked the sweat from his eyes, saw guilt trouble the prince’s brow. Interesting. He could use the day to his advantage. Qutula would not sully the bond of an anda with a false pledge, but Tayy must surely take him up now as closely as a sworn blood brother. There would be many opportunities to keep his promise, with less risk of discovery. He remained on one knee, therefore, pressing his advantage.

“I would be first at your side,” he insisted with a pointed glance at Jumal, who with the rest of their companions had set themselves to the task of butchering the great beast for its hide and meat. “I would offer my own breast to the arrow meant for yours, my throat to the tooth bared at your throat.” To allay suspicion. The lady was not pleased with him, however. Blood pooled in his vision and he felt a damp trickle from his nose.

Someone squelched a snicker. Qutula had been thinking about the bear, trying to control the pain his lady sent him at his apparent betrayal. He’d forgotten the damned dogs. It wasn’t Tayy who had to worry about the bared tooth. He couldn’t stand and he was making a laughingstock of himself in the eyes of the prince’s followers, and his own. Tayy seemed not to notice, however, only studying with concern the sudden flush that had suffused his features.

I’ll explain, he promised the lady. When he thought he had control over his features, he lifted his head to meet the Prince’s gaze with a gravely sincere one of his own. “You have bought my life with the force of your arm, and I would be first to repay that service.”

Jumal was listening attentively, his skinning knife poised but not moving. “This is my spear,” he noted, his voice neutral. “I carved this device in it myself, for luck.”

 

 

 

“we eneeded it,” Tayy acknowledged, thinking of the spear itself, but also the luck carved into its shaft. “It delayed the bear’s attack until I could steady a killing shot.”

A stray question troubled his thoughts, though. Why Jumal’s spear, when Qutula had a perfectly good weapon of his own? It seemed petty to remark upon the pilfering of a trifle when that trifle had done as much as the arrow to save his cousin’s life, however. Or he thought it had. Qutula was looking decidedly unwell.

“You said you were unhurt!” he accused his cousin as a drop of blood welled from the corner of his eye. Qutula had paled suddenly; Tayy saw him flinch in spite of his effort to hide his weakness.

“You are hurt!” Bekter took a solicitous step toward his brother.

“No—”

Qutula toppled over.

“ ’Tula!” Bekter fell to his knees, his ear pressed to his brother’s chest.

“How is he?” Tayy asked. He should have known sooner. Had known something was wrong, and had dismissed it when he saw no blood. But there was blood now, leaking from Qutula’s nose, and from the corners of his eyes. The last time the prince had seen blood like that from a man with no visible wounds, he had died, murdered by the bite of the venomous Lady Chaiujin in demon form, the emerald green bamboo snake.

“He’s breathing—” Bekter shook his head. “I can’t find a wound on him, but he’s burning up with fever. No. Wait. He’s coming round—”

“What happened?” Dislodging his brother, Qutula rested a hand over his heart, as if it ached there. His eyes were still cloudy with pain, or the memory of a fading misery.

“I thought for a moment you had died,” Tayy answered. He was still shaky, old memories fueling new fears for his cousin.

“I assure you, my lord prince, that I’m not dead. I fainted, that’s all, making more of a fool of myself than I had already.”

“No fool,” Tayy insisted, “but wounded in some way we cannot see. Do you need a litter?”

“I need nothing but my prince’s good opinion and the help of my brother’s arm to regain my feet,” he said.

“Then I’ll get out of your way.” Tayy stepped aside, making room for Bekter who held out his arm to his brother.

“When you feel better, you’ll have to tell me everything,” Bekter insisted. “I’ll make a song about the hunt. The great Prince Tayyichiut will be the hero, and you will be his strong right arm, just as you say.”

Tayy could see the effort he was making to sound normal, just as he saw the worry that creased the round soft face.

“As for the fainting business, it must have been the dying curse of the bear, which is only now releasing you as the bear’s spirit departs. You’ll have to talk to Mother about a charm to protect you until we’re certain the danger has passed, but it’ll make a wonderful song.”

“Don’t be foolish.” Qutula brushed off his brother’s praise, but Bekter could not be stopped so easily.

“Are you well enough to ride?”

“Well enough, though I may die of shame if you say another word.” He seemed to be feeling more himself. Bekter must have thought so, too, because he did what he was told for a change.

Tayy refused to let it go at that. “Sometimes even heroes need help,” he said.

Qutula seemed on the point of making a sharp retort, but then he shrugged a shoulder, dismissing whatever objection he had planned to make. “And sometimes the only hurt is to their pride. I am no hero, though I doubt we can stop Bekter from composing a song in which I have a far greater part than the facts would tell.”

“I think you are exactly hero enough.” Clasping his cousin’s shoulders between his hands, Prince Tayy kissed him first on his right cheek, then on his left. “If it truly would displease you to hear a song in which we appear side by side as legendary heroes, I’ll forbid it.” He smiled slyly then. “But I think it would please you very much. And it would certainly please Bekter to write it!”

“Then it is decided,” Bekter announced. “ ‘Prince Tayyichiut the brave against the terrible mad bear, with Qutula his strong right arm at his side.’ I will build my history around this moment when the fate of the clans hung in the balance!”

 

 

 

When the fate of the clans hung in the balance indeed. Little did Bekter know how truly he spoke. It will be better this way, Qutula promised the lady. No one will suspect a thing when I kill him.

Her token subsided, waiting, he knew, to inflict pain or pleasure as he did her will or crossed it. Feeling much better, he brushed the leaves from his clothes and offered his prince a false grin.

“I’m sorry that in rescuing me you lost the roebuck you had within your grasp,” he said.

“A bear will serve the pots as well,” Tayy answered with a laugh.

Jumal had taken up the direction of the skinning, and at the prince’s signal he divided the prize according to custom. “Skin to the prince, for the arrow that brought him down,” he said. “Qutula had the first strike, so the meat is divided between them. As for the liver—”

“A gift to my uncle,” Tayy was quick to say, adding only after, “in both our names, as is fitting. I might not have stopped him with my arrow if Qutula had not already wounded him with the spear.”

“A gift suited to a khan,” Qutula agreed, careful to claim no closer relation to his father.

The liver was large as a saddlebag and nearly didn’t fit, but Jumal wrapped it tightly in a piece of doeskin for carrying game and bound it with strips of hide used for that purpose. “We’ll stay to finish the butchering and carting,” he said, and slung the liver over the haunch of Prince Tayyichiut’s horse. “Mergen-Khan will want to hear the tale from your own lips.”

“One should never keep a khan—or a poet—-waiting,” Tayy agreed, summoning Bekter to return to camp with them.

“Jumal, too,” Bekter insisted. “It was his spear, in Qutula’s hand, and so the khan will want to show his gratitude to Jumal as well.”

Qutula would have hit him if they’d been alone. The last person he wanted in his company just then was Jumal. It seemed the guardsmen felt the same. He would have stayed behind with the others of his guard, but Tayy agreed with his cousin.

“Bolghai will want to hear about this design worked into the shaft for luck,” he said, “and my uncle will want to thank you for your part in the adventure.” He did not say, “For saving the life of his son,” but the unspoken meaning hung in the air like the clinging golden sunlight.

“Of course,” Qutula agreed, though it pained him almost as much as the lady’s mark to say it. “If I have to suffer the outrage of my brother’s song-making, then so should he who carved the spear!”

They all laughed at his mocking display of indignation, which gave Jumal no choice but to join them, leaving the bear in the hands of their lesser companions. When they sorted themselves out for the return to camp, Jumal rode at Bekter’s left, as far from Qutula on Tayy’s right as he could be. And somehow, Duwa had joined the company with a watchful eye on Jumal as they rode.