The Mongoliad: Book Three

All of which would make Chucai’s job more difficult.

His conversation with Alchiq buzzed around the corners of his mind too. The idea that the Khagan might be in danger. If the Chinese raiders had been trying to kill the Khagan, that night would have gone very differently. The Chinese-outnumbered several times over by the Khagan’s Torguud escort-had managed to get far enough into the camp to steal the banner. How safe was the Khagan?

And the constant confusing complication of the banner. Where had it come from? Why was it important to the Chinese?

Chucai noticed a pair of men returning from the feast, and realized one of the two was more heavily attired than the other. As they approached the ruddy glow of the cooking pits, he noted the blued shadows of the second man’s cloak. Ghaltai.

“They are bringing out the fighters,” the Darkhat commander said as he came up to Chucai. “I told the Khagan I needed to take a piss.”

Chucai nodded sagely at the other man’s duplicity. “I appreciate you coming to see me,” he said. “I have a matter which I would discuss privately with you.”

Ghaltai grunted. “I do need to piss,” he said gruffly, making as if he was going to walk past Chucai.

“Do,” Chucai said, laying a hand on the Darkhat’s arm. “I wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable while on your horse.”

Ghaltai looked at Chucai’s hand. “I am an honored guest of the Khagan,” he said softly.

“He’s been drinking,” Chucai said, “Plus the fights will have started. He won’t notice you are gone.”

“Where am I going?”

“I want you to take me somewhere.”

Ghaltai shook off Chucai’s hand. “You presume much, Master Chucai. I am not one of your servants.”

“No, you serve the Khagan. And the empire.” Chucai nodded toward the noise and light of the feast. What had Alchiq said? I’ve never stopped wanting to serve. “Surely you’ve noticed the empire isn’t what it used to be,” Chucai said to the Darkhat leader.

Ghaltai looked in the opposite direction, his face suffused with shadows. “He may be the only one who doesn’t see it,” he murmured.

“I want to know where Temujin went,” Chucai said. “I want you to take me to that place.”

“There is nothing there,” Ghaltai hissed, whirling on Chucai. “Nothing but spider webs and dust.” His eyes were wide, filled with firelight.

“Then what harm is there in showing me?” Chucai asked. When Ghaltai didn’t answer, he shrugged. “What harm is there in helping the Khagan see what he has lost?”

Ghaltai spat into a nearby cooking pit, his spittle sizzling as it was vaporized by the heat. “No,” he laughed hollowly, “What harm ever came from knowledge?”

Shortly after the Khagan had announced the feast celebrating the hunt, Gansukh had started to hear snatches of the news as it passed among the Torguud: Munokhoi was no longer commanding the Imperial Guard. There was no official announcement-he knew there wouldn’t be-but like a shadow flitting across the sun, something changed at the camp.

As the day waned and the feast got underway, Gansukh sensed a presence near him, like a predator slowly stalking its prey. Unlike a nervous deer, he did not stand still and stare about him, wondering from which direction his death would come; he kept moving, wandering and weaving through the maze of tents. He doubled back on his trail-sliding underneath wagons and ducking through the open framework of the half-erected ger. A merchant hollered at him to assist with carrying rugs, and he happily agreed to the task, using the long tube as a shield as he went back and forth along the same route for a half hour.

On the third trip, he caught sight of Munokhoi. The ex-Torguud captain paced him on the other side of the row of ger on his right. When he dropped off his armload of rugs and returned to the merchant’s wagon, Munokhoi was no longer there. But Gansukh had seen enough of his stormy expression to know he wouldn’t be far away.

When the crowd started to gather for the fights at the feast, he worried momentarily about the press of bodies. It would be easy to slip up next to a man in the confusion and slip a knife in his back, and so he made sure he stayed on the western side of the gladiator ring where the light from the bonfires was brightest. As the audience grew more excited about the fights, he sidled toward a cluster of Torguud who were clustered around a pair of busy moneylenders.

“Ho, Gansukh! I hear the blond one is fighting.” The mountain clan archer, Tarbagatai waved him over to the cluster of guards. “Did you bet on him last time?”

“I did,” Gansukh replied, “And when we return to Karakorum, I believe someone owes me twenty-five cows.”

“Twenty-five?” Tarbagatai scoffed. “Who was such an idiot to bet that many?” The Torguud standing next to the young archer elbowed him roughly, and Tarbagatai paled as he realized what he had said.

“Yes, well, that idiot was me,” Gansukh mused, glancing about. “But thankfully someone took my bet. I suppose that makes me clever, doesn’t it? And the other one the idiot-”

“You boast rather mightily for a man who not only didn’t kill any of the Chinese raiders but also managed to be captured by them.”

Gansukh looked for Munokhoi and found him standing much too close on the left. The ex-Torguud captain’s eyes were bright, and his head glistened with sweat.

“Captured?” he laughed at Munokhoi. “I was infiltrating their ranks. My plan was working fine until you rode by, slaughtering anyone who wasn’t on a horse-including fellow Mongol citizens. What was your final tally? More or less Chinese?”

The crowd shrank as people surreptitiously found excuses to be elsewhere, giving the two rivals ample room for anything that might happen. Not here, Gansukh thought. Not now. There hadn’t been enough provocation-or enough drinking-to warrant drawing his knife.

“Twenty-five cows are nothing,” Munokhoi sneered, ignoring Gansukh’s question.

“I am glad you think so because it was more than I had last time,” Gansukh said. “Though, I am happy to have them now. I am going to send them to my father; he’ll be very pleased. That many head will provide nicely for my family all winter,” Gansukh said. “Though if I had double that number, I could marry that girl from the Sakhait clan whom my father always wanted me to.”

“And your Chinese whore?” Munokhoi spat.

Gansukh stroked his chin. “She has expensive tastes, doesn’t she? Maybe I will need more than fifty cows,” he said, a touch of alarm in his voice.

Tarbagatai and several of the Torguud guffawed. One of the moneylenders waved his hands at Gansukh. “Are you placing a wager or not?” he cried.

“Fifty cows,” Munokhoi snapped.

Gansukh spread his hands. “I only have the twenty-five,” he apologized.

Munokhoi’s teeth flashed in the firelight as he grinned. “Pray your man doesn’t lose.”

This was how differences were settled at court-by wagers and proxies. It was not the way of the steppe, and as he watched the pale Northerner square off against the lean Kitayan, Gansukh reflected on what he had learned about being civilized since he had come to the Khagan’s court. Had he become a better man based on what he had learned?

He hadn’t slipped up behind Munokhoi and slit the other man’s throat. Yet. Though he wasn’t entirely sure Munokhoi wasn’t still planning on doing the same to him. Would he be remembered as the better man if he didn’t stoop to such a debased level of violence? He wouldn’t care; he’d be dead. Was there any consolation to be found there?