Horselords

by David Cook

  “But I must have the bodies. I must touch them,” protested Koja.

  Jad mulled over the lama’s words. “Very well, but it must be done in secret, and it cannot be done here.” The prince got to his feet and paced back and forth as he gave his commands. “Goyuk, have one of the nightguards—not the dayguards—go to Sechen the Wrestler’s yurt and order him to come with us. Issue a proclamation: all khans are to assemble their men this evening for a review by their prince. That will keep the curious occupied and out of our way.”

  “By your will, it shall be done,” Goyuk declared as he left.

  “Thank you, wise counsellor,” Jad replied as the tent flap fell closed. Exhausted, the son turned back to his father. Spotting Koja, Jad stopped. “And you, priest, go and get yourself ready.”

  Koja bowed and then left. There was little he needed to prepare, but he obeyed all the same. Yamun would manage without his care for a little while. As he walked back to his yurt, Koja could feel the gloom that had settled on the camp. The warriors were tense, uncertain of the future.

  Back in his tent, Koja quickly gathered the few things he would need. Hodj prepared him a hot meal, the priest’s first in days. The food revived Koja, bringing him back from the edge of exhaustion. The meal finished, the priest opened his scrolls and once more reviewed the sutras he needed to know for the upcoming rite.

  He was still reading when Sechen brought horses. Packing up a small pouch, Koja joined the others. They rode silently across yesterday’s battlefield. Most of the dead men were gone, taken by relatives or friends to be properly buried. A few still lay where they had fallen, their bodies looted. Still, the battlefield was far from clean. Littering the field were the bodies of horses. Nearly all the dead animals had been left to rot. The victors had taken what saddles, bridles, and tack they could carry, but the carcasses were left undisturbed. Only a few horses had been butchered for their meat. Most were puffy and bloated after many hours in the sun. Vermin were feasting on the carcasses. Vultures squawked at the riders as they went by. Jackals yipped when the men ventured too close.

  Jad worried that they were being watched as the group rode along. The prince had forgone his fine white stallion with the black and red saddle for a plain black mare and a saddle borrowed from one of the dayguards. He did not want to attract undue attention. Several of the dayguards had asked to ride along, since the prince was almost certain to be their new khahan, but he had firmly refused them.

  Ahead of the prince, Koja, too, rode quietly, thinking of what was to come. He was worried. When he’d made the offer to summon up the spirits of the assassins, he hadn’t considered the possible results. What if he were wrong and the assassins were paid by Prince Ogandi? The farther they rode, the less confident Koja became.

  “Down there,” said Sechen, interrupting the thoughts of both men. “We hid the bodies down there.” He pointed to a small overhang that projected from the other side of the gully. “That way there would be no questions.”

  “Good,” Jad said. “You have served my father well. He will see that you are rewarded.”

  “To serve him is my only reward,” answered the wrestler. Koja had no doubts the man meant every word.

  Stopping at the edge of the gully, the group dismounted in the shade of the trees. Sechen hobbled the prince’s stallion so it could not wander. The rest slipped off the bits and bridles so the mares could graze comfortably. The mares would naturally stay near Jad’s stallion, so there was no need to hobble them. Leaving their mounts, the men slid and stumbled down the bank to where the bodies were hidden.

  If the battlefield hadn’t already stank of death, they would have smelled the bodies some distance away. With so much death around, the smell of the corpses was only a minor thing. The heat of the day had not been kind to the dead. Drawn by the decay, flies buzzed thickly around the small shelf where the bodies were tucked. Sechen reached in, brushing the cloud of insects away, and pulled the corpses out.

  The bodies had already started to rot, and something had been gnawing at them. A noxious, poisonous wind exhaled from their inner cavities as the two corpses came tumbling out of the crack. They flopped and rolled down the slope until they jammed up on a small pile of rocks. Koja felt a quick squeeze of queasiness and resolutely choked it back. This was all his idea; he couldn’t be sick now. Goyuk and Jad stepped back, well away from the bloated remains. Sechen quickly hurried away as soon as his job was done.

  Koja was not as fortunate as the others, for the spell he meant to cast required him to touch the bodies. However, he was slightly prepared. He pulled a spice-infused cloth and pressed it over his face. The heady smell made him dizzy, but at least now his nostrils weren’t filled with the odor of rotten flesh.

  “Get started,” Jad said impatiently.

  The priest thrust a small stick of incense into the ground, then waved to Sechen. Reluctantly, the tall fellow shambled over with a small metal cage hung from a chain. In it glowed a hot ember. Taking the chain, Koja picked out the ember with silver tongs and touched it to the incense. Within seconds, a thin stream of sweetly scented smoke rose up from the little stick. As the incense filled the air around him, Koja settled back and began chanting sutras. He had never used these prayers before, but knew they were the words needed to summon back spirits.

  The others watched him silently. Still suspicious of the priest, Jad signaled to Sechen, making like he was drawing a bow. The wrestler nodded in understanding. Quietly he took up his bow and held it ready, just in case the priest attempted to cast a spell on the prince.

  Everyone waited nervously for Koja to finish his chant. It seemed that the priest droned on forever. The words were hypnotic, seductive.

  Koja was oblivious to the strange sound of his chant. All his concentration was spent in uttering the words Furo poured into his mind. Simply saying the chant required an effort that cramped the muscles of his face. His upper lip trembled, and the back of his neck tingled. He could sense forces swirling about him, called by the musical quality of the words. His vision narrowed to a single point.

  Then, abruptly, the words stopped. Koja leaned forward and touched the cold, blue forehead of the dead wizard. A pale red light swelled out of the late Afrasib’s slack mouth, winding slowly around the dead wizard’s face. Gradually, the orb rose, trailing tendrils of light that continued to play over the cold face. As the orb moved, it elongated and increased in size.

  Koja sat back in surprise. Summoning up dead spirits was new to him; he had no idea what to expect. No one at the Red Mountain Temple ever mentioned a glowing light like this. As he watched, the light shimmered and expanded, slowly forming into something—a wispy, transparent form of Afrasib. The spirit opened its eyes, black voids, and stared directly at Koja. The lama shuddered as he looked into the dark pits.

  The priest spoke over his shoulder to the others, behind him. “The spirit is bound here for a short time,” Koja whispered, afraid he might disturb the thing that hovered over Afrasib’s body. “Quickly, what are your questions? I can only ask a few, so choose them carefully.”

  “Ask who it worked for,” Jad hissed, sitting stiffly upright, concealing his fear.

  Koja turned back to the spirit. “Who ordered you to kill Yamun?”

  “The one who wanted it done,” the spirit answered. Its voice came from midair, somewhere in the vicinity of its former mouth. It was Afrasib’s voice, but cold and monotone.

  “Ask the name,” urged the prince.

  “What is the name of the person who ordered this killing?”

  “Ju-Hai Chou.” The words drifted softly throughout the gully.

  “Who is Ju-Hai Chou?” Jad wondered aloud. “No, don’t ask that. Ask about Bayalun.”

  “Did Eke Bayalun know of the attack?”

  The spirit languorously replied. “Mother Bayalun knows many things. Would she not know this?”

  “Now the spirit questions us,” the prince muttered in disgust.

  “I cannot hold
him much longer, Prince Jadaran,” cautioned the lama. Sweat had broken out on his brow, and the strain of keeping the spirit bound was telling on him.

  “Who is Ju-Hai Chou?” Goyuk broke in, taking up Jad’s previous question. “This may tell us more.”

  “Who is Ju-Hai Chou, the one who ordered you to kill Yamun?” Koja strained to keep the spirit from slipping away. The light wavered and dimmed, then returned.

  “The hu hsien,” the voice echoed faintly. The image started to dwindle.

  “What was his plan? Quickly, priest, ask!” Jad shouted, sensing that the contact was fading.

  “Afrasib, what was Ju-Hai Chou’s reason?” Koja blurted out.

  “He was sent to help,” the spirit intoned.

  “Who sent him?” Koja quickly asked, before the spirit could fade.

  “The Minister of State,” was Afrasib’s cryptic reply.

  “Who was Ju-Hai Chou help—” Koja didn’t finish the question. The light had shrunk in on itself, leaving only a small point that hung in the air for a few more seconds and then disappeared completely. The priest slid back from the dead bodies, thankful to Furo that it was over. “I am sorry. The spirit escaped me. It was very strong.” He pulled off the scented cloth and bowed to the prince in apology.

  Jad grunted, sounding a little like his father. “What about the other? We can learn more from him.”

  Koja rubbed his shaven head, and looked at the body of the fox-man. The gaping gash that shattered the creature’s chest was black and thick with flies. “I do not think it will work. He is not a man. His spirit is not the same.”

  “Then we’ve learned nothing,” Yamun’s son said in disgust, brushing the dust from his kalat as he stood.

  “We have a name—Ju-Hai Chou,” the priest pointed out. He was relieved that no names from Khazari had come up.

  “And we have a mandarin’s title,” Goyuk added. “Big herds grow from small sheep.”

  “Perhaps,” Jad conceded as he climbed back up the bank. “Still, I don’t see anything useful in it.” The rest of the group got up and followed.

  They rode back to the khahan’s camp with little conversation. The midday sun beat heavily on the corpses covering the battlefield. The stench grew stronger. Koja never before realized that war left behind such death and decay. He knew that some men died in the battle and others often suffered hideous wounds, but the aftermath was always something forgotten, ignored. Nobody ever told of the horses’ screams or the bloated bodies of the unburied that covered the ground.

  The group reached the camp without any interruption, detouring only a few times to avoid some packs of jackals that refused to flee from their approach. As they wound their way back through the warriors’ tents, the men came out to greet them. The troopers stood quietly with their heads downcast as the prince passed. At first, the men seemed mournful for the loss of Jad’s father, their khahan. Watching them line the way, the priest could sense an uneasiness among the men. The mourners fixed their gaze on Jad, as if waiting for him to do something.

  From the back of the crowd, a man suddenly broke into an anguished chant, improvising a lament to the fallen khahan.

  “The winds of heaven are not balanced.

  The body of birth is not eternal.

  “Who drinks the sacred water of life?

  In our short lives, let us enjoy.

  “The winds of heaven are beyond touch.

  The lives of men are not eternal.

  “Who drinks the sacred water of life?

  In our short lives, let us enjoy.”

  The singer’s voice cracked as his lyric soared and trembled. Quickly the other men took up the chant, repeating the singsong verses, embellishing on them. Voices broke above the mass to carry the words higher.

  The song spread ahead of the prince, greeting him at every turn on the way to the khahan’s tent. It seemed that every trooper turned out along their march. Khans knelt in respect as the prince rode by. Men, even the horribly wounded, struggled to get to the front of the press, where they could make themselves seen. Koja watched as a crippled trooper, his foot lost in yesterday’s battle, was carried forward by his companions, his pallet hoisted over their heads. It seemed to take all his effort to sing the simple lyric, but sing he did, hoarsely bawling out the words.

  A surging mass of men followed them up the hill to the khahan’s tent. As their numbers grew, the tension increased. “Let us see the khahan!” someone screamed. “Let us see his body!” There was a grumbling swell underneath the song as more and more men called out to see the khahan’s bier.

  “Guards, keep them out!” Jad shouted over the noise as he entered Yamun’s compound. The dayguards dashed forward, forming a triple line around the gate. Their weapons glinted in the sun, a bristling line of sword points. Officers on horseback shouted commands, their steeds prancing behind the line. The menacing black forms of the dayguards pushed forward, forcing the crowd back. Jad and the rest of his party disappeared into Yamun’s tent, Sechen at the rear.

  Koja hurried to check the khahan. Yamun was still alive and breathing, a victory for the day. The blankets were soaked in sweat and his color was still like that of the ice high in the mountains of Khazari. Hastily, Koja stripped off the coverlets and demanded new ones. A quiverbearer hastened to fulfill the request.

  Jad came to the sickbed and watched for a moment, saying nothing. The khahan was asleep, and there was little the prince could do. Satisfied that Koja was attending to Yamun, he turned back to Goyuk. The old khan had just finished offering a prayer to the small felt idols that hung over the door. Reaching into a bucket of kumiss by the sill, Goyuk dipped his fingers in the brew and sprinkled it on each idol. He kowtowed to the little red cloth figures and then turned to join the others.

  “You should remember the old ways, Jadaran Khan,” chided Goyuk. “Teylas be angry with you.” He pointed to the doorway, leaving no doubt what he wanted the prince to do.

  Jad held his tongue. Although Goyuk was presumptuous to speak that way to him, the prince knew that the old man was right. Obediently, he knelt down at the door and offered up his prayer, going through all the motions to make the ablution. Outside the doorway, he could hear the muffled chanting of the men. Jad wondered how long they would be satisfied to wait.

  Goyuk beamed a toothless smile as Jad finished the ritual. “You are a good son. Maybe you make a good khahan, too.”

  The suggestion caught the prince by surprise. “My father isn’t dead yet,” he snapped. The weight and pressure of the day were catching up with him, and Goyuk’s intimation only added to his rage and frustration.

  “No, no, of course not,” Goyuk quickly agreed. “But the time may come.”

  The prince let himself relax slightly, accepting Goyuk’s explanation. “If it comes to that, I hope I’ll have your support. There are many things I don’t know, much I need to learn. You’ve always served father well, and I’d like you to do the same for me.”

  “Of course,” said the old man, following Jad back to the sickbed.

  “Lama, how is the khahan?”

  Koja frowned. “The sweating may have driven the poison out of his blood.”

  Jad nodded impassively. “Are you certain?” he pressed.

  Koja bit at his lip, then replied honestly. “No, Prince Jadaran. I think that he will live. I cannot promise that he will live.”

  Jad walked to the yurt’s door and beckoned Koja to his side. The prince pulled open a corner of the door flap as Koja joined him. “Hear the men, lama?” he asked, putting his hand on Koja’s shoulder. “They fought for him. If his assassins were alive, that crowd would rip them apart with their hands and then feed the guts to the jackals. If he dies in your care, I could not stop them.”

  “I still cannot promise you anything,” Koja insisted. He stepped away from the door and looked Jad firmly in the eye. “I do not want to fail.”

  “Nor do I,” echoed Jad. He looked back out the doorway and coldly murmured, “I
wish I could give them the ones behind all this. Especially Bayalun.”

  “This you cannot do,” consoled Goyuk, his sharp ears picking up Jad’s softly spoken words from across the tent.

  Jad let the tent flap drop. “Why not? Her wizard struck down my father,” he argued. “The men would believe me.”

  “You have no proof she do this,” Goyuk said, tapping the carpet where he sat to emphasize his point. “Think like your father. She has many relatives, many friends. You must have proof, not suspicions. Besides, the wizards and shamans protect her.”

  “Then what do I do?” Jad cried in frustration. “I need proof before I can act, but this viper works freely against us. I need to find Yamun’s killer!”

  “Wait, Jad. Be like the tiger hunting for the deer. Whoever it is will make a mistake. It will happen soon,” Goyuk advised. “Ambition will cause them to blunder. We must wait until that happens.”

  “How long can we keep the army together, just waiting? We need to do something.” Jad squatted beside Goyuk, looking to the old khan for guidance.

  It was Koja, however, who spoke, from the side of Yamun’s sickbed. “A funeral. If the khahan is supposed to be dead, there must be a funeral.”

  Jad glared over at the lama. “What good will that do, priest? It will only remind them the khahan is dead.”

  Koja stood and moved to where the two men sat. “It will keep the khans busy—and keep them following your orders. And it may give your father time to get well.”

  Jad stopped and considered Koja’s words. He glanced to Goyuk, and the old khan nodded in agreement.

  “If you give orders for the funeral,” Koja continued, “the khans still listen to your words. They will grow used to following your commands. It will keep them from grumbling and give the men an outlet for their pain.”

  Jad, chin sunk to his chest, watched Koja while the priest explained his plan. As he finished, the prince raised his head and spoke. “You are much more than a simple lama. I see why father has seen fit to name you his anda.”