Toys

A ripple of cruel laughter broke from the riders, along with a chain of jeering comments, obviously at my expense. It grated worse than the jolting I was receiving from the pony. My patience was wearing as thin as the razor-sharp edge of Tazh Khan’s knife.

“What are they saying?” I asked Lucy, who now rode beside me, possibly to keep an eye on me. “Translate for me, please.”

“Let’s just say-in the kindest way-that you remind them of the scared rabbits they hunt.” She seemed somewhat sympathetic, but mostly amused herself. That set me off even more.

“All right,” I said. “Then I’m the rabbit. Keep your eye on this rabbit!”

I swung my leg over the pony’s back and slid down to the ground. What a relief it was to have solid earth under my feet again.

Lucy’s face turned puzzled, as well as concerned. “What are you doing, Hays? Don’t get yourself trampled now.”

“Tell them to hunt me,” I said. “All of them at once. For real. No holding back. Catch me if they can!”

Her eyes widened and actually showed some fear. “Hays, no. They don’t mean it personally-it’s a cultural thing.”

But I cut her short with an upraised palm. “Cultural thing, my ass-it’s a guy thing. They’re questioning my… you know…”

Reluctantly, she spoke a few rushed sentences to the nomadic band, now watching me curiously. When she finished, their laughter chorused again, this time even louder and harsher. Tazh Khan answered her back in his piggish language.

“He says you must be smarter than he thought,” Lucy translated, “to take refuge in the knowledge that their tribal law forbids them from killing a crazy man.”

I smiled tightly. “Tell him that if any of them can hit me, then I won’t take away their cute little bows and arrows and break them over my knee.”

Lucy raised her eyes heavenward, but she swung back around to them and delivered the challenge.

That really pissed them off.

As their laughter turned to brutish scowls, I bounced around in a few goofy bunny hops, waggling my fingers above my head like ears.

Then I took off-moving extremely fast in long leaps but staying low to the ground.

In the blink of an eye, I had a thundering herd of agile horses and murder-bent wild men hot on my little, cotton bunny tail.

The first several riders came in swiftly and close to the ground, and so did their arrows, registering on my vision as dark particles that instantaneously grew in length as they approached.

I danced about a foot or so above them, letting them whir past under my feet.

The Mongol horsemen slowed to a trot and dropped their bows in utter amazement-but also chagrin.

Bunny Rabbit, one; Mongolians, zip.

The rest of the band tried a different tack, galloping around me in a half circle and firing their arrows all at once in a pattern-a grid several feet high and wide, with the shots spaced carefully inside it. If their plan worked, I would look like a frog that crash-landed into a thornbush.

This time I leaped straight up into a somersault, twisting upside down and plucking a few of the arrows out of the air as they shot underneath me. Coming down, I hurled them back, whistling the darts right past the horsemen’s ears.

With exclamations of despair, they tossed their bows onto the refuse pile already started by their comrades. I’d nearly won them all over.

Now only one rider was left facing me: Tazh Khan himself.

For a few long seconds, we locked gazes. Then, without haste, he nocked an arrow, took careful aim, and unleashed it straight at my throat.

I shifted aside just enough to take it in the hollow of my left shoulder. It punched clear through, protruding out my back.

It also hurt like a sonofabitch. Lord, it stung.

I sagged to my knees as Lucy came running up and put her arm around me. “Oh, Hays, you fool. You complete idiot.”

“I’m fine-just like at the lake, I let them win.”

“Tazh Khan’s right-you’re crazy,” she then whispered angrily.

“Tell them they won,” I said. “And if they’ll get this damn arrow out of me, they can drink as much of my blood as they want.”

Chapter 60

Well, it was a small price to pay-I heal quickly-but my Hays the Rabbit act won the horse soldiers over, even Tazh Khan, it seemed.

Toward evening, our merry band of Mongolians arrived at a small city, if you could call it that-a couple of square miles of gray streets and squat industrial buildings that rose up starkly out of the tundra. It was named Vlosk; mainly, it was a transport depot to ship ore from nearby mines, probably to Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Lucy had already arranged passage for us on one of the cargo rockets that made constant flights to North Sea ports.

Then we’d be taken straightaway to England, where the human leaders we needed to meet were based- though Lucy told me there were also leadership councils in Berlin, Madrid, Stockholm, Tokyo, and Beijing. Of course, these were all cities that-according to Elite history books-no longer existed.

At any rate, Tazh Khan’s men obviously weren’t comfortable with Vlosk, or probably even with buildings; they stopped well short of the outskirts.

Khan rode on alone with Lucy and me to where a classic Russian motorcar was waiting to take us to our transport.

I gave my pony an affectionate pat as I jumped down to the ground. I’d become fond of the little brute. It was tough, loyal, gave everything it had, and asked little in return.

Tazh Khan spoke a quick couple of sentences to Lucy, but his gaze was on me.

“He asks how your shoulder feels,” she told me.

“Already better. I’m good,” I said, rotating it easily. He’d taken the arrow out himself, then washed my wound and dressed it with the soothing balm they used on their horses. My own rapid-healing powers had taken over from there.

Looking rather somber, Tazh Khan spoke again.

“He says he knows you deliberately let his arrow hit you,” Lucy said.

“Tell him I mean no disrespect, but he’s mistaken. His shot was so swift and sure that I barely managed to save my life.”

When she relayed this, his grin appeared, even as he spoke. Lucy kept on translating.

“He says you’re a bad liar but he’d be proud to call you his brother.”

“The honor’s mine,” I said, and I actually meant it.

“After this war is over, you must come visit him again,” Lucy said. “He’ll lend you his fattest wives to keep you warm at night, and take you spear hunting for wolves.”

Now it was my turn to grin. “Sounds like a dream vacation. Tell him-no way.”

Tazh Khan clasped my forearm, leaned down from his horse to embrace Lucy, then rode off to rejoin his band-without a backward glance.

“That is some kind of man,” I said. “They all are.”

Lucy nodded sadly. “Exactly the kind of barbarian the Elites can’t wait to exterminate.”