Kingdom River

'Soldier…' Toghrul waited patiently until a grimy, teary face rose from warp-and-weft. 'Soldier, your Khan would never punish a man for obeying his officer's orders, even if the officer has proved a fool and coward. Go then, and report to the commander of the camp for rest, rations, and honorable assignment.'

The teary face, astonished, then turned to a lover's, looked up rich with affection and gratitude. There was a subdued murmur of approval at such generous and lordly justice.

The soldier, turning, began to crawl aside, but Toghrul smiled, gestured him up onto his feet, and waved him away into the rest of his life.

There was an odor of urine; the carpet would have to be cleaned. There was no denying blood.

Thought on a throne was well enough; thought in a summer garden well enough. Thought on a cushion couch with a dear wife by one's side, also well enough. – But none the equal, for a Kipchak, of horseback consideration. Consideration, this sunny, clear, and cold afternoon, of the morning's information: the surprising counterstroke from North Map-Mexico. A counterstroke absolutely Monroe's in conception, though Razumov's people – and an after- the-fact pigeon from the Boston creatures in Map-McAllen – suggested the immediate commander was Colonel (now General) Voss, apparently a very competent officer. Banjar player, also, according to Old Peter's farewell report. Monroe, it seemed, had gone to Middle Kingdom.

Toghrul whipped his stallion's withers, lifting Lively to a lope out into Texas prairie endless as an ocean. A frozen ocean now, brown and yellow with frost-burned grass. He rode as if he flew as New Englanders sometimes flew, and smiled again at what Monroe had managed. Very much – oh, very much what he might have done himself. An enemy, a thief, puts his head into a yurt's entrance, intending mischief. What better response, what more humorous response, than to wriggle under the yurt's fabric at the back, circle round, and kick the fellow in the ass?

So, the Captain-General apparently possessed imagination, and certainly a sense of humor. He also now possessed two thousand fine horses, which would remount his cavalry handsomely, and likely help pay the expenses of the expedition.

Well done, and more than worth killing him for. Worth killing Voss and many of his people, too, for laughing, as they must be, at a Khan's discomfiture. But how sad that the only interesting person in the West must be done away with…

Toghrul reined Lively to the left to avoid a deep runoff ditch half-hidden in the grass. A trace of short summer's melt.

… And of course, the North Mexicans would not go into Blue Sky alone. There were others, a troublesome few of a ruler's own, that in time must join them. Manu Ek-Tam, that so-brilliant young officer. And two or three of his dear friends. All brilliant young officers, perfect at everything but keeping silent. Was there any spy or agent so effective as kumiss in revealing disloyalty, arrogant ambition? Disrespect?

So, the treacherous cut their throats with their own tongues.

And the Uighur tuman, of course. Foolish, grumbling tribesmen, needing to be worn away by enemy lances – as, in the past, the Cuman and Kirghiz had been. So, an army of many differences, many purposes, was shaped and whittled into an army with one purpose only. Obedience.

But was any great man ever brought down except by those closest to him? The generals, the ministers, the great of Caravanserai with their velvet tents, musicians, women, and fuck boys – it had been many months since one of these was peeled and stuck on a stake'. – Now see the result of forbearance. Murmurs, judgments made, requirements of the Khan's wife that she produce a boy.

Expectations impudent in themselves.

The sheriff of the camps was just such an impertinent man. Who, after all, would miss him? Who miss the lesson he presented, perched screeching on a stake?

All so tedious. Was it impossible men could be ruled by reason? Old copybooks claimed, improbably, it had been done – by which they certainly meant not by reason at all, but greed, and its parceled fulfillments…

Sul Niluk, a Guardsman galloping a hundred Warm-time yards away, whistled and pointed. Toghrul saw movement ahead at the side of a slight rise, a stirring through the grasses' tall ruined stems.

Jack the rabbit. And up and away he bounded, already mottling snowy into his winter coat. Toghrul, spurring from a canter to the gallop, lifted his left arm so his hawk's jesses jingled. Reaching over, he tugged the bird's yellow velvet hood away and launched him into the air.

The prairie hawk spiraled high, saw the rabbit going, and slid after it as if the air were ice. Toghrul pulled Lively in to watch.

Jack the rabbit jinked swiftly here and there, going away. Not even wings could carve those sudden angles after him, and the hawk didn't attempt it. It flew, it sailed straight to a place just past the runner – suddenly stooped, and struck as Jack came fleeing to it, sure as if there'd been an appointment.

The rabbit screamed – Toghrul had heard two children screaming just so at Map-Sacramento, when his father took it. He'd been no older than the children, but much safer, sitting on his pony in the midst of the Guard. The children had been put into fires, held there with spears while they blistered and shrieked, burning. The old Khan hadn't been cruel, only very practical, and people frightened by frightful things were easier to manage. A sort of applied reason, after all.

Sul Niluk rode on to bend from the saddle and lift the hawk hissing from its prey, a tuft of fur already bleeding in its beak. Sul bent down again, picked up the rabbit as well, tucked it in his saddle-bag, then rode back to bring Toghrul his hawk.

… And by winter's end, with the campaign against Middle Kingdom completed, then, in just such a way as the hawk's – as Monroe defended his border with quick and clever little strokes and dodges – in just such a way the tumans would sail over the grasslands to meet him where, sooner or later, he was certain to go.

When that was accomplished, of course, the world would become a little less interesting.

***

Well-balanced, her laced, low boots as firmly planted as flooring brushed with oil allowed, Martha grunted with the apparent effort of an ax-swing that was not. Master Butter accepted it for fact, raised a swift sword-parry against it – and was, by surprise, backstroked across the face with her ax's heavy handle.

He staggered away, calling, 'Wonderful!' in a goose's honk, since she'd broken his nose.

Martha came after him fast, mimed a finishing stroke across his belly, then set her ax aside, said, 'Oh, poor Sir,' and went to him with her yellow handkerchief to stop the bleeding.

Master Butter set his sword into the rack, pinched and tugged at the bridge of his snub nose to painfully straighten it, and said, 'Owww!' Then he took her handkerchief and held it to his nostrils. 'No one has had as much blood out of me in months – and that was a West-bank captain quick as a cat.'

'I'm sorry.'

'You would be sorry, if you hadn't so correctly followed to kill me. Never, never let an opponent recover, whether in duel or war. If someone is worth fighting with fist and foot, they're worth kicking unconscious. If they're worth fighting with sharp steel, they're worth killing. Always fight to finish.'

'Yes, sir.'

'I think now 'Butter-boy' will do. It was a hurtful nickname – you know those Warm-time words, 'nick- name'?'

'Yes.'

'Sit down… sit on the bench; I'll get some vodka. Practice is over today; I'm bleeding like a pig.' The handkerchief to his nose, he went to the table, picked up a blue-glazed bottle, pulled its stopper, took several long swallows, then brought it back and sat beside her. 'I have no cups; I apologize… Well, I took the nick-name they'd used to hurt me, and made it my True-name. Master Butter-boy. One deals with insults as one deals with any opponent who possesses a long and punishing reach. You close as soon as possible, grapple him to you – then use the knife.' He took another long drink from his blue bottle, then offered it to her.

'No, thank you. Is your nose alright?'

'It'll be alright, Martha. A good lesson, though, for both of us. Should only the mildest corrective injury be required, the nose is as good a thing to strike as any other. In a more serious case, involving weapons, you will keep in mind that a person struck hard on the nose is blinded for an instant'