“Ride!” he cried, and dropped his arm in a grand sweeping motion of the pike with the prize ribbon in his hand. At his signal, guardsmen let go of the silken cord that held back the riders.
Like a whirlwind the horses dashed away in a plume of dust. Their young riders clung to their backs as they thundered down the wide avenue, leaving the white-and-silver palace for the open grassland beyond the camp. They would follow the markers of silk fluttering on stakes that laid out the course; the sun would crest the zenith before the first of them appeared again, returning, on the horizon.
When only the dust they had raised remained to tell of the child riders’ passing, the crowd settled for the next call to arms. So many of their youths had achieved their blooding during the recent wars that few remained to play at jidu now. But the number sufficed to make two lines of fifty or so youths holding their mounts at the first yellow stake that marked out the playing field. Too old to ride with the children, they had been too young to travel with the armies whom honor had called to Thebin. Now that he thought about it, there seemed to be more of them than he’d expected. Many had just moved up from the simpler games of childhood and still played with blunted spears, but—
At such a distance, and dressed as they were in training garb, he couldn’t be certain. But he guessed the tales out of Pontus had made an impression among this group as well. Many of the new warriors in training were girls. A season ago he would have laughed at the notion. A season ago, his armsmaster would have done the same. Since then, they’d fought side by side with swordswomen and taken orders from a mortal goddess of war. So Mergen-Khan modified his prepared speech.
“Qubal clans, I give you your Qubal young! Judge their skills and welcome them as the warriors of your future!” He’d taken out the word that specified adolescent boys for one that made no distinction by sex and waited to see if the criers would pick up the change. The nearest of them delivered his words correctly; he could only hope that those farther back in the crowd would do the same. His audience responded with jubilation.
Mergen had escaped a reckoning this time, but would speak with his weaponsmaster later about changing customs held by the clans since they first climbed the tree at the center of the universe. With that thought, he exchanged the ribboned pike for a spear which he raised over his head. “To the winner a spear from the khan’s own store!” he cried, “Now ride, young warriors, for honor and for glory!”
When he dropped his hand to set the game in motion, the first line of players galloped forward with a roar.
At its heart, jidu trained players in close-order team-work. Each player worked and trained with a partner who would catch and return the throw of a blunted spear while galloping at high speeds across the playing field. The most skilled of the catchers reached out and snatched a thrown spear out of the air, escaping unharmed. Those who missed the catch, or were unhorsed by a strike, stayed behind with their partners while their more skilled opponents wheeled around in the dust and noise of screamed battle cries and the thunder of horses to repeat the pass.
So it went, until just one team remained. The taller of the two players in the final team might have been a girl. Mergen wasn’t exactly surprised. He remembered the ferocity of the women at whose side he had lately fought, and wondered how long his armsmaster had been training girls on the sly before the recent war. The winners came forward, in their pride unmindful of the grime of the competition that covered them. Mergen did not press the girl to identify herself but handed her the spear as the eldest of the team. She stepped forward to touch her forehead to the back of the khan’s hand while her younger partner, a brother by the look of him, hung back, unaware that his mouth gaped open.
“Bravely done,” he praised them in his most regal voice, keeping his demeanor stern with an effort. They would not appreciate the laughter that struggled to escape. “Keep this spear as a mark of your hard work. When you come of age, I will look for both of you in the armies of the khan.”
The girl grinned, her eyes alight with the promise of a warrior’s future. Well trained in the courtesies, however, they each made a bow and backed away, the eldest nudging her partner to remind him to close his mouth. That one’s face suffused with embarrassment, but he kept his head and didn’t turn and run. Someday, when he captained a thousand, he would laugh about the day. He wondered what the girl would say from such a distance, and what a warrior’s life would bring her. To say more would unmask her deception, however, so he let them go.
With the games of jidu decided, it was time to return the field to the more serious sport of the blooded warriors. At the farthest end, targets were set up for the archers on horseback while in a protected area out of the range of flying hooves, swordsmen demonstrated their arts. In front of the khan himself, platforms were laid for the wrestlers.
While this was being done, the throngs settled in with lunches they had brought with them in pouches. Servants brought out yogurt and hard cheese and pies of minced meats and the fat tail of a sheep for the khan’s party. From his saddle, Mergen washed his mouth with kumiss handed up to him in a bowl by a fresh-faced young girl who blushed and ran away when he looked at her.
“Brazen thing,” Bortu muttered around her own meal of yogurt and cheese.
General Yesugei said nothing, but his gaze wandered over the crowd, looking for Sechule with a bitter set to his mouth. Obsessions seemed contagious this season. If only they could have caught it for each other, Mergen would have been well rid of the problem. As it was, he had a sterner cure in mind for his general, though well sweetened as all medicine ought to be. It would mean losing Yesugei’s subtle wit in the matter of Prince Tayy and the girl. Better that than lose the man altogether in his madness for Sechule.
Qutula already watched the prince for his father. He might find a way to use Bekter to find out more about the girl. No need to reveal her paternity; he could keep his secret yet. But the platforms were ready. Mergen turned his attention to the wrestlers.
Chapter Eleven
“EVERY MATCH COUNTS!” Tayy exhorted his teammates as they waited to the right of the wrestling platform that now covered a broad swath of the playing field. He settled his wrestling leathers more comfortably across his shoulders and slapped Altan on the arm in passing.
“You’ll do fine,” he assured his friend.
“I’ll do my best,” Altan dolefully assured him.
The prince moved to the next wrestler with a word of encouragement. He had no worries about Jumal, who strode beside him as he passed up the line with a word of support or a friendly punch for each of his hundred. Altan, however, neither excelled at wrestling nor consented to leave his companions for the more likely competition among the archers. He kept hoping to improve, which never happened.
Tayy had learned enough from the Shannish captain, Kaydu, to know Altan should compete where his skills might shine. Since losing his lifelong friend Yurki in the first of many long battles for the Cloud Country, however, he hadn’t the heart to deny their presence at his side to any of his closest companions. In deadly combat he would choose differently, but it seemed pointless to turn Altan away in the friendly contest of a festival. He wasn’t the worst wrestler on the team, after all—just not as good as he might be at other games.
But the handlers had completed the platform. Tayy made his way up to the front of his line. He had prepared his team, and his mind, for the bouts to come. Now he watched his uncle attentively for the formal call to the matches.
“ubalpeople,” Mergen-Khan cried. The crowd returned his salutation with cheers of “Mergen-Khan! Mergen-Khan!” for their leader.
Mergen waited until an expectant silence descended. “Welcome your sons and brothers as men,” he invited them with arms flung wide to take in the hundred young warriors on either side of the platform.
At this signal, the captains led their teams onto the platform. On his right, Prince Tayyichiut marched out with his hundred wrestlers following. From the opposite side Qutula
stepped forth, his team of the same number behind him.
Each contestant had earned his blooding during the recent wars. The ceremony accepting them into the ranks of the army as seasoned soldiers had come while the heat of battle was strong in their stink and their blood. But Bolghai had argued that the old and the timid, the weak and the women held by tradition in the rear would yearn to celebrate the rite of passage into adulthood of their youths as well.
As he gave the call for the contestants to stand before him, therefore, the khan invited the gathered throng to join him with their praise. “See how they return to your tents and your camps as warriors, with the blood of your enemies on their hands!”
Mergen’s words, traveling back through the crowd on the tongues of his criers, were met by clapping and whistling and stamping of feet. But he was not finished and the crowd, knowing this, quickly settled.
“Grandmothers!” the khan commanded them with a sly smile, “do your work among your granddaughters—your grandsons yearn for the comforts due a new husband!”
The little flocks of silken butterflies scattered through the crowd answered this exhortation with a comely squeal as the teams of wrestlers, two hundred souls to face each other, moved forward in cadenced step on the platform. The ground shook with the appreciation of the clans and the khan added his smile to acknowledge the maidens’ eagerness to serve the khanate with their romances. Now, however, it was Yesugei’s turn to take the part that Mergen had played so often as Chimbai-Khan’s right hand.
Eluneke expected the khan to say something to the wrestlers gathered in two lines before him. Instead, the famed general Yesugei nudged his horse a step closer to the platform, putting himself between the contestants and Mergen-Khan. The crowd, more experienced at royal festivals than she was herself, hushed to hear the general’s challenge.
“Who stands before the khan in honorable contest?” Yesugei asked, letting his voice roll deep and sonorous from the bottom of his belly.
“The Nirun, Sons of Light.” Their captain stepped forward to speak for his team. “Come to do battle for the glory of the khan!” With that he led his hundred in a deep bow, first to the khan and the khaness, Lady Bortu, then to the crowd, which roared its approval of such courtly manners. When he rose from his bow, the breath caught in Eluneke’s throat. She had known her future husband to be highly placed, but a captain among the nobles? It seemed so . . . unlikely. Bolghai must surely know the young captain’s history, however, and after today, she would have a name to give him: Nirun. But no, that was a new hero-tale. “The bright shining one.” Nirun was the name of his team. She’d heard snatches of the song as she’d wandered through the crowd and now she heard voices around her taking up the refrain, “Sons of Light! Sons of Light!”
The captain puffed his chest out and the leather worked with gold of his wrestling vest stretched open to his waist, revealing well developed muscles slashed by a ragged scar across his belly, still red from recent healing.
“The prince,” voices whispered around her. “Prince Tayyichiut.”
“The dead khan’s son—”
“—Nearly killed in the wars for the Cloud Country—”
The prince? They had to be wrong. How would she win an introduction to the khan’s heir, let alone marry him? Little more could she imagine the prince’s grandmother arranging such a match. The vision must be wrong. Glancing that way, Eluneke felt herself run through by the Lady Bortu’s fearsome gaze. A shaman’s eye, that was, though the mother of two khans had never taken training. At least, Eluneke had never heard so. A khaness, however, would have ways of hiding such things from the far-scattered clans.
“And who would best this challenger?” General Yesugei asked, while the criers carried his words to the back of the crowd.
Darkness. The word drifted through her mind a moment before a second youth strode forward to accept the challenge.
“The Durluken, Sons of Darkness, come to do battle for the glory of the khan.” When the captain stepped forward, a superstitious shudder ran through the gathered audience. He wore a bit of jade pinned to the open breast of his wrestling costume and, on his back, the markings of a snake worked in green and black seemed to writhe across the leather.
Lady Bortu’s intense gaze had fallen on the challenger. Though she hid her thoughts well, Eluneke could see trouble ghosting across her face like the distorted image in a flawed mirror.
“What do you think of that, girl?”
“What . . . ?” The skills of a shaman in training sometimes swept her on their own course without her bidding. So Eluneke was dismayed, but not completely amazed, when the voice of the khaness echoed sternly in her head. Suddenly, her perspective tilted. Eluneke looked down on the young warrior as if from the back of a horse, with the age-dimmed eyes of the Lady Bortu. Terrified, but hoping she could hide it from the old woman riding in her head, Eluneke looked where she was told.
On the challenger’s breast, with the jade talisman pinned so that it seemed to rest just within reach of the inky jaws, a tattoo of the emerald-green bamboo snake coiled on oiled muscle. The tattoo would have troubled her enough; such a snake had murdered the former khan and his khaness, the Lady Temulun, after all. A green mist seemed to hover around the young man, however, and in its insubstantial depths, she saw eyes looking back at her. Terrible, deadly obsidian eyes. The murderous spirit of the demon-snake enfolded the young warrior. Qutula, the khaness supplied, regret leaking between their minds. An unacknowledged grandson. There was more to that sorrow, something the lady hid much deeper in her mind than the thoughts she shared by choice, but Eluneke had no intention of pursuing it.
Next to her, in the Lady Bortu’s perspective, the khan spoke.
“You take this naming of your team too close to the heart,” he muttered softly.
Qutula’s head snapped back as if he’d been struck. “I serve my khan,” he insisted with forced dignity. “I didn’t sing the song or choose the names.”
“You chose the mark on your breast and on your wrestling clothes.”
“To remind me that nothing is certain,” Qutula answered with a bow. “I did not mean to offend.”
A lie, but covering what, Eluneke couldn’t tell. She would have liked to see his eyes—you’re not the only one, girl, she heard in her head—but he kept his lids downcast in proper demonstration of contrition.
Qutula seemed on the point of saying something more, but with an open palmed gesture to let it go, he led his team in the same formal bows that the prince had given, first to khan and khaness, then to the crowd. It seemed for a moment that his glance lighted on the place where her body remained standing in the crowd. A little frown marred his brow, but he withdrew into the form of the contest with no sign that he had resolved whatever had troubled him.
At her side, Mergen took a beautiful many-layered bow with silver chasings that General Yesugei handed to him and raised it over his head. “To the winner, the honor of the battle and the khan’s own bow, a family treasure since the age of the first khan!” No worry that the bow might leave the family, the wry voice of the khaness commented in her mind. It remained a mystery which captain might win the day, but not that one of them would do it. And each shared blood with the khan.
Eluneke suddenly found herself alone, looking up at the wrestling platform from her own place in the crowd. She staggered with the shock and righted herself, aware out of the corner of her eye that the woman she had seen earlier watched her with wary curiosity. Sechule, the woman’s name was, though Eluneke hadn’t known that before. She didn’t have time to think about it, though. The matches were about to begin.
As Mergen raised the prize over his head, the newly tested warriors raised their own competing shouts, some calling, “Nirun! Nirun!” for the Sons of Light and “Prince Tayyichiut!” their captain. From the other end of the platform came the answering cry, “Durluken! Durluken!” And, “Qutula!” his own blanket-son’s name, who was captain of the Sons of Darkness.
Soothed by his own assurances, Mergen let the bow sweep a glittering curve in the sunlight as he drew his hand down, the signal to begin.
“Qutula!Qutula!” His heart swelled in his chest as he stood at the head of his team. For many years he had listened to the crowd call for Tayyichiut, the khan’s heir, but now followers called his own name as well. He knew he was a good wrestler, had seldom lost a play-match when they were counted boys together. Qutula did not intend to disgrace himself now that they were men and contended before the khan and the greatest of the Qubal clans. With that thought, he raised his head with princely bearing and glared at his first opponent across the neutral space that separated them, waiting for the sign that would let them begin.
There, like a glittering bird, Mergen’s bow carved an arc out of the air. Qutula took a step forward. He didn’t know the name of his opponent, but he’d seen him fight and hadn’t been impressed. Wasn’t now either. Easily done, the fool went down like a sack of dung and blinked up at Qutula in confusion.
“Next!” the referee called up another from the prince’s team who had defeated one of Qutula’s. Again they matched off. He could hear, from the continued cries, that Prince Tayyichiut had likewise won his round and went on to the next. Half as many left. Fewer now . . .
Lords of Grass and Thunder Page 12