Kingdom River

her forearm, too. She didn't remember that happening at all. Blood was running dripping, and she could see a piece of polished bone deep in there… It looked dreadful, but only stung her as if wasps were at it, didn't hurt as much as her hip. But that hand hung empty and white, and her dagger was gone.

'Floating Jesus.' The Queen tugged her long scarf off, bound it around Martha's arm, and knotted it tight.

The few Kipchaks at the ladders only stood watching. It seemed to Martha they were all – the tribesmen, too – very tired already, though only sudden time had passed.

Then, one of the horsemen shouted something to the others, and they came running – so the Queen had to snatch her second assag from where it stood on the deck, her other apparently lost, stuck in some man's bones…

Everything seemed to go slowly and strangely, so Martha felt she almost knew the name of the next man who attacked her – slashing, slashing – he became so closely familiar, his face almost a friend's, though twisted with effort, fear, and rage. She guarded and struck with her ax, missing her left arm and her dagger. Then that man went away or was down, which was just as well, since she was feeling sick. A fever's dream-sickness, it felt like. Tribesmen were standing by the ladders, blood on their furs.

She heard the Queen say, 'Probably better on their horses. Cree would have chopped these people to pieces.'

'No doubt.' Master Butter, at the Queen's other side, sounded out of breath. 'Embarrassing… but I've been taken in the belly, dear. I thought the son of a bitch was dead… Martha?'

'Yes?' Martha saw Master Butter was standing hunched as an old man.

'My… last lesson. Man worth killing once… is worth killing twice.'

'Yes,' Martha said, 'I will.'

She heard Master Butter catch his breath and say, 'And how do you, my dear?'

'Still standing, Edward.' The Queen sounded oddly pleased, though Martha saw she was trembling, and had been cut hard across the side of her face. Strands of her long hair, come down, were stiff with freezing blood. ' – Still standing, though bleeding like a pig… and my knee cut by some fucker so it flops.' She turned to look at Martha, and smiled. 'Dear girl?'

'I'm with you.' Martha looked down to be sure she still held her ax. 'I'm with you.' Then, though feeling so sick, she footed a corpse away for room to fight as the Kipchaks shouted and came again, now more of them pouring up the ladderways from left and right, all steel and fur, frost trailing from their mouths like smoke.

Martha called, 'Ralph,' as if her sergeant might come to her, his armor green as spring leaves.

CHAPTER 25

'Good?… Sufficient?'

The Khan Toghrul, lying at cushioned ease in his camp yurt by lamplight, scattered a few more grains of feed down the front of his yellow over-robe, and watched a small blue-and-white pigeon strut on his chest, pecking. He felt the little steps the bird took as it fed.

Apparently sufficient feed for this bird of best luck – a pigeon to live, from now on, a life of reward and no message flights where birds of prey might strike it down, the Sky's winter storms freeze it in flight. A lucky bird, a bird that had brought luck, the news of a baby boy. A boy… and an end to uneasiness in certain Uighur and Russian chieftains. Men who, so mistakenly, thought the succession their business.

But politics – wonderful Warm-time word – the usual political triumph didn't occasion joy. Not the joy that had a Khan lying cooing to a pigeon, sprinkling pinches of seed for it on his breast. A boy – Bajazet, for the old Khan – and reported healthy as his mother was healthy. There was no pretending the wife's life wasn't dear as the child's, or nearly. This fondness for her a weakness, no question, and as a weakness, best admitted to.

Toghrul blew gently to ruffle the bird's feathers, and the pigeon glanced at him, startled.

'Only fondness,' the Khan said to it, cupped the pigeon gently in both hands… then got up, crossed piled carpets to a small cage-roost, and ushered the bird in. 'Soon, once we're finished here, a silver cage for you. A silver cage, but big, with room to fly.'

Toghrul closed the roost's little wooden door. Happiness a danger in itself, a sort of drunkenness, so that everyone seemed a friend and all seemed possible.

As, of course, it seemed impossible that an experienced commander – granted Shapilov had not been a vital intellect – still it seemed impossible that an experienced commander, left with his dispositions in the north carefully ordered, and careful warnings given of the River's ice-ships, their strengths and limitations… that the man would still prove fool enough to keep tumans in mass formations, unwieldy, and perfect prey for those vessels.

Fortunately for him, the ass had died in his own disaster – where, supposedly and by third-hand information come just this evening, the Kingdom's so-rude Queen had also died. That news, as copybooks had it, likely 'too good to be true.'

So, even the happiest of men, of fathers, was left with work to do. A catastrophe – with truly catastrophic losses – to be balanced now by victory… Toghrul went to his yurt's entrance, paged heavy felt hangings aside, and stepped into darkness and a freezing wind that made the guard-mount's torch flames flutter.

'Senior officers,' he said.

'Great Lord.' The officer stationed there went to only one knee in the snow – the Guard Regiment's privilege – then rose and ran for the commanders' camp.

The other sentries stood still, eyes front.

'Uncomfortable,' Toghrul said to them. 'This damp cold, here. Not like our prairie air.' And it was uncomfortably dank amid deep-snowed stands of hardwood trees and thorn-bush thickets, on ground that always sloped away down tangled draws.

The guards seemed to have stopped breathing, apparently frightened by being spoken to. And, of course, they didn't answer him. Stupid creatures… Toghrul stepped back through the curtains, went to the near brazier to warm his hands, then bent to warm his face. He opened his eyes to the coals' bright blazing till they watered as though he wept.

Bajazet. A name chosen before the boy was conceived. A name both ancient and noble… What lessons must the boy be taught? Weapons and war, of course. And should be given treacherous ponies, difficult horses as he grew older, so distrust became natural to him, despite his father's love. He must be given young companions, as well – of good blood, but none quite his equal. One boy might be stronger, another more clever, a third luckier or more handsome. But none as strong and clever and lucky… The best of virtues must be his: endurance, unswerving purpose, patience – and cruelty, of course, that tedious necessity. He would have to be taken from his mother early – by four, perhaps by five – or Ladu's gentleness would suit him only for defeat.

So, treacherous ponies for the boy, and difficult horses. But not dangerous…

'As you commanded, lord.'

The four trooped in, breathless, bowing. Murad Dur – and three competent nonentities, interchangeable brutes with at least veteran notions of giving and obeying orders.

'Oh, Lord of Grass, and now – father,' Dur led the others in more bowing.

'So,' Toghrul said, foolishly pleased, 'good fortune follows ill.'

'Still,' Murad said, and bent his head so his face – harsh, hook-nosed, very like a red-tailed hawk's – was shadowed by a hanging lamp. 'Still… some illness lingers.'

The other three said nothing, stood dripping melting snow onto the carpets.

'So?'

'Sled savages, lord.'

'Sleds?'

'As reported, Great Lord. Savages – though only a very few. Archers from North Map-Texas, driving dog-sleds over deep snow, attacked a remount herd. Eight hundred horses.'