Much Fall of Blood: Chapter Six

    “His suns soul roams the lands of Erleg Khan, my daughter,” said the shaman, calmly. “I must call it back to join his other souls here under the bowl of heaven.”

    Wherever Kildai’s soul was, it was nowhere pleasant. Bortai’s younger brother muttered, but his eyes did not open. If you opened them, the pupils remained wide, even if you took him out into the brightness of mother-sun.

    The shaman of the White Horde smiled comfortingly. “The windhorse of this boy is strong. His souls are strong too. It will return. It may take time. Erleg Khan’s world below is wide, far wider than this.”

    Bortai sighed and looked at the doorway. “Parki Shaman, you know as well as I do that the one thing that we do not have is time. Gatu calls for the election of a new khan now.”

    The shaman shrugged. “It may take greater skills than mine. My master Kaltegg, who was your father’s shaman, had more –”

    Two warriors bundled in through the door. The blade of the leader’s sword embedded itself into Parki’s neck. The target was in itself more shocking than the deed. Once, no-one would have dared to raise a hand to the shaman of the White Horde. Now, with the old ways dying, someone had killed him. But Bortai had no time for horror.

    She had time for a knife instead. The killer had no opportunity to free his blade before she cut his throat. Her father had believed that it was time the people returned to the path set by Chinggis Khan. To the traditions of the Mongol. That meant that she knew how to use a knife, a lot better than some low half-Vlachs scum.

    Her father’s insistence on a return to the secret history and the Yasa had gotten him killed. Her, it had kept alive.

    Alive for the moment, at least. She was still armed only with a knife, and dressed in a deel, facing a foe with a sword and wearing a leather and steel mailcoat. He swung, the blade passing through the flames. She could not restrain her gasp of horror. Even those who had given up the old faith for Islam or Nestorian Christianity would not do something like that. A Mongol knew that it would mean their death.

    Belatedly, that occurred to her attacker also. He looked at the fire, and that instant of distraction was enough for her. He died, as she’d intended, quietly. She cut the felt at the back of the tent, and, picking up her unconscious brother, slipped out into the darkness.

    Already the kulurtai encampment was noisy with the sound of drunkenness. Kildai was only fourteen, but he was a solidly built boy. She knew that she could not carry him far or fast — but that now was time to follow the ancient maxim of Chinggis Khan to the letter. She must flee, and survive. There would be time to gather others to their standard if they lived. But Gatu had obviously decided that they would be better quietly dead.

    Kildai was a problem in his unconscious state, though. He would have to travel in a cart, and that would be difficult. There were of course many carts in the section of the kulurtai that was devoted to her Hawk clan. But, by the action taken, their getting back there was unlikely. Even if they did, if they broke camp now it would be noticed and would lead to a confrontation that they could not afford at this point. Gatu’s men would be waiting, patiently, for the last of the White horde, the clan of the hawk, to flee the boundary markers of the kulurtai. The guard-duty for the camp worked according to a strict rota, and the clan on guard tonight were no friends to the Hawk clan. She could not go back. They would be waiting, she was sure.

    Instead, she made her way across the camp, keeping in the darkness between the gers, until she came to the Fox people. They were Blue horde, but their grazing was poor, and they had a constant raiding warfare with the Bulgars. She put Kildai down in the deep shadow, and stripped off most of her jewelry, and left it next to him in her sable muff. It would not do to appear too wealthy. She took a deep breath and walked forward between the fires they had set for visitors and traders. The small group drinking kumiss were silenced by her arrival.

    She put her hand on heart and bowed. “Respect to the hearth and the Fox clan.”

    They still drank qumiss and set up guest fires, so they probably still held to tradition. Tradition would require a greeting and an offer of sustenance before any form of business could be discussed. The delay irked her, but it could be used to her advantage.

    The Fox Clan elders would assume she was avoiding being stolen by her intended groom. That was a game they would revel in. Being hard to capture was still honorable. Chinggis Khan had declared an end to wife-stealing, and while he lived that had been strictly observed. But he was centuries dead and, like drinking, wife-stealing was a much beloved Mongol custom.

    Eventually, the niceties having been observed, they got down to negotiation. Bortai was terrified that her brother might wake, alone and in the dark and as confused as people were, after a blow to the head. But she kept a steely calm. “I need three fine horses, such horses as the great Fox clan ride.”

    The clan elder shook his head sorrowfully. “Alas. Horses… We could offer you a pony. For twenty dirhan in silver.”

    She shook her head equally sorrowfully. “A prince’s ransom. I am a poor woman. What of a gelding and mare?”

    The bargaining went on. She dropped some comments about the leader of the Jaghun her father wanted her to marry. She was afraid that even the small piece of jewelry she offered might be too much, or a piece they might recognize. But at length she got what she wanted — which was anything but three horses — and they got a good price on a covered cart that had seen better days, with an ox. The cart would be in bad repair, and it was most likely the ox was young and still balky and undertrained, or close to its deathbed. But they expected her to be caught in fairly short order, so there was no point in parting with the best. There was a fair chance that the ox would either be left on the plain or become part of her new husband’s property.

    Now she had to deal with the delicate matter of getting Kildai into the cart, unseen. She really had no idea how to manage that. But fortune favored her. No sooner had the beast — young and balky, as she’d predicted — been poled up, than a loud fight broke out. Her Fox clan helpers hurried off to watch. They were fairly drunk by now and entertainment at night in kulurtai was scanty. She went back to find Kildai and found that he had moved. Rolled over, or been rolled over.

    Her heart was in her mouth as she felt for her fur muff that she’d left the rest of her jewelry in. It wasn’t there!

    Anger blossomed like fire in her. What had they come to, the great Golden Horde? She assumed that someone had thought the boy drunk, maybe a thief himself, and had robbed him. She cursed furiously. Kicked something. It was the muff… but there was no jewelry in it.

    Feeling around she found a solitary bangle that the thief must have dropped. Maybe there was more, but time conspired against her. She slipped the bracelet onto her wrist, carried Kildai to the cart, loaded him into it, and led it off. There would still be sentries to pass. But discipline was fairly lax. She’d planned to bribe a night-watch sentry. Now… she might have to kill one.

    She made her way to the edge of the vast encampment. Once outside those limits, the rules of conduct for the kulurtai would no longer apply. She could see a sentry on horseback, silhouetted against the night sky. There might be foot patrols, as well. It had not occurred to her to find out before the kulurtai. Like the problem of how to deal with a mounted guard, that had not been something she had ever given any thought to.

    The sentry was mounted, and had a lance, a bow, a sword. She had a knife and a bullock-cart.

    And he was not going away.

    She led the cart forward. Sometimes boldness was the only approach.

    The guard rode over. “Where are you going, woman?”

    She bowed. “Greetings.”

    “I asked you a question.” He leaned over and grabbed her by the hair.

    She grabbed his wrist and jumped, and then hung. “Hellcat!” he swore, struggling to keep his balance. But he was a Mongol horseman, not easily dislodged from the saddle. She kicked off two footed from the pony he was riding. It whinnied in protest, and he lost his grip on her hair — well, mostly; some stayed in his hand — as she fell free. She rolled under the cart.

    Then the fool committed the cardinal sin of any cavalryman in combat. He dismounted. And fortune, or the tengeri, favored her. He dived under the cart too, to try and catch her, startling the ill-trained young bullock. She rolled out of under the far side of the cart while the heavy wheel rode over his arm. He screamed, but she already had her foot in the stirrup, and swung up onto the pony. She had the advantage now, as he staggered to his feet, clutching his arm.

    Mongols train their horses to be weapons too. And the guard had much that she and her brother would need to survive. She rode him down. Then she used his own lance, which had been strapped to the saddle, to make sure that he was dead. Only when she was certain did she dismount, tie a rope to him and drag him to the cart. That took nearly all of her strength to get him onto it, to lie next to her stentorianly breathing little brother.

    She tied the pony to the tail of the cart, and then led the bullock off into the darkness, following the heavily worn and rutted track to the southwest, away from the lands of the White Horde and the Hawk clan. In short, away from the direction of safety — but that was also where Gatu’s men would search first. By mingling her tracks with those of the other clans who had come from the southwest she would make it harder for them to track her.

    A bullock cart could not move very fast or very far. And they only had one pony. A family needed at least ten, and a hundred sheep, just to survive. They would have to eat plants. The thought was enough to make her blench, despite all she had been through that night. The shame and disgust would simply have to be borne.

    It was a long night. When she stopped to rest and water the bullock and the pony at a copse next to a small stream, she had time to check on her brother, and to examine the dead man.

    He carried the typical gear of an ordinary horseman. Knife, sword, a small hatchet and a leather surcoat, varnished and sewed with iron bosses. His captargac had some boiled horsemeat, a small bag of millet, a small clay pignate and grut — four or five days food for them before she would have to resort to roots, berries and leaves, and whatever game she could kill.

    She left the body in the copse, covered with leaf litter. She would have given him a better burial, but time pressed. A bullock-cart does not move very fast and distance was her only friend, tonight. In the morning — or sooner — the body of the shaman Parki would be discovered. Then there would be a hue and cry. Gatu’s men too would be out looking for both her and Kildai.

    Thinking about it now, she was sure it had been Gatu’s intention to present the murdered bodies of both her and Kildai and a couple of dead scapegoat killers, to the clan. With no leadership the Hawks and their adherents, would have fallen in behind Gatu. Now… his plans too were awry. The death of shaman Parki added to that. Many had fallen from the old religion, but shamans were still revered and respected.

    It was possible that the great kulurtai might break up, with no decision on the khanship reached, and with clan fighting clan. She could only hope the Hawk clan survived. The clan was in a very poor position — without leadership, the subclans might desert to join others. There were some cousins with a claim to the clan-head, but, thought Bortai, none whom would do more than to enable the Hawk clan to survive, at best.

    In the pale light of dawn, Bortai found a small fold in the landscape and hid the cart in among the scrub oak. She tethered the ox and pony where they could graze and reach the stream. Then, too exhausted to do more, she lay down next to her younger brother. His face was pale, but he was still breathing. She put an arm around him, and she slept.

    She woke briefly as a party of horsemen rode past on the lip of the hill. She could hear their voices carried on the breeze. They were angry voices, but the words were indistinct. She held the hatchet, and waited. One whicker from the pony and they were lost.

    But the riders rode on, and lady sun shone down from father blue sky.