Sunlight more richly golden and opulent than the lung, or dragon, embroidery on an Emperor’s robes slanted down on the royal clan’s camp. It thrust its gleaming talons into the shan-yu 's great tent, drawing new splendor from the tumble of rugs and cushions within, and reducing the hearthfire, smoldering imprisoned in its brazier, to seem like no more than a few sullen sparks. Because the day had been so fair, Silver Snow had commanded some of her women to drag rugs and cushions to the flap of the tent, that she and the shan-yu might gaze out over the land as they waited for the evening meal.
Voices raised from within the great tent told her that Willow had entered, to take over Silver Snow’s share of the cooking and, just incidentally, to ensure that Strong Tongue had no opportunity to add harmful herbs and leaves to the meal. From behind the tent came the faint piping of a bamboo flute, played, no doubt, by some child free, just for the moment, from the tasks that children on the grasslands learned to perform almost as soon as they could walk or ride. The wind caught up the song, and it blended, poignant, bittersweet, with the strings of Silver Snow’s lute, and her soft, high voice.
The old shan-yu smiled. For the moment, Silver Snow’s heart was high within her. The old man beside her was called husband, not father; yet, in easing these past months, was she not performing obedient service, as befitted a woman raised in the reverend traditions of Confucius?
The wind blew a descant to her song and brought her the smells of her new home: pungent horses, the dust of the plains, and the tantalizing scents of cooking meat, seasoned with condiments that came from her own supplies.
Then Strong Tongue tramped out of the tent, discreetly trailed by Willow. Silver Snow’s brief moment of satisfaction faded. Instinctively she glanced around. No, Vughturoi rode out to inspect the horse herds and count the foals: that was a shame. Still, he might return tonight, and if not tonight, then tomorrow: he was a free man and could come and go as he chose. Yet, Silver Snow could find some ease in knowing that, only that dawn, Tadiqan too had ridden out with a troop of his followers, declaring his intention once again to overawe the Fu Yu.
The melancholy song of the flute faded, to be replaced by the far-less-sonorous reproof of the musician’s mother, angry at the child’s idleness. Silver Snow finished her song. Khu-janga’s gap-toothed grin and laughter encouraged her to begin another, this time a merry drinking song that she had heard in Ch’ang-an. She ignored Strong Tongue’s sigh of aggravation and the too-obvious tap-tap-tap of her booted foot.
Even as Silver Snow sang, however, that tapping occupied more and more of her consciousness. She dared not glance over to see whether or not Strong Tongue had brought out her spirit drum with its hateful skin cover, but surely that tapping bore some of the same insistent cadence of the drum, set to pulse in rhythm with a beating heart.
Hoofbeats broke her fascination with the sound and ended her song. She glanced at Khujanga, the shan-yu, who would surely know what horsemen might be expected to return to camp this night. He tensed, clearly mustering strength to rise and seize a spear. Then he grimaced.
“Who would ride the grasslands alone?” muttered the shan-yu.
Now that Silver Snow turned all her concentration to the task, she found much in the sound of those hoofbeats to disquiet her. As the shan-yu's more experienced ears had told him, only one man rode toward the camp; the rhythm of the hoofbeats indicated that his mount was in some distress, a severe failing, given the care that the Hsiung-nu took of their favorite horses.
“Brother!” Keen-eyed from a lifetime gazing into the distance, Sable broke the silence that she had maintained and raced forward, her braids and leather garments flapping. Willow lurched to her feet, took a halting step forward, then stopped. Never before had Silver Snow seen such misery, such hatred of her lameness on the girl’s face.
Sable reached the foundering horse just as several of the old warriors did. Seizing its bridle, she tugged it toward the tent and the shan-yu, who now stood, grasping a spear. Silver Snow’s own hand strayed from her lute to her knife. She too turned to watch and gasped as she got her first good look at Basich.
The once-robust warrior was much changed. Clawmarks scored one side of his face, drawing it into scars, and he had one arm strapped against his chest. Silver Snow swallowed against sickness as she noted that the crippled arm ended in a tangle of stained bandages that looked too small to be a full hand.
As Basich spotted her, he jerked his arm free of its strappings as if to hail her. That gesture drained him, and he sagged in the saddle, to tumble off into his sister’s sturdy, waiting arms. Silver Snow leapt forward, followed by Willow. Sable sobbed once, then swallowed her tears.
“Who did this?” she demanded of her half-conscious brother, shaking him before Willow could catch her hands and restrain her. “Who?”
Willow crushed herbs beneath Basich’s nose, and he gasped and choked. “White tiger . . .’’he whispered. “I fled . . . wandered until I found ...” He gasped, a sound that ended with an ominous rattle.
Will he live, do you think? Silver Snow looked at Willow, trusting the maid to understand her thought and hoping that she might reassure her. Willow shrugged almost imperceptibly and bent to unwrap the bandages that confined Basich’s hand. If the man had lived this long after the white tiger’s onslaught, the wounds must not have festered, notoriously foul though the bites of great cats were. But he was still weak, especially for one of the Hsiung-nu, whose endurance was legendary. If Basich could rest, if a fever did not strike him, and his will to live held, then he might indeed survive.
“Ask who did this to him,” she whispered urgently to Willow. The maid headed back toward Basich, her limp making her long, dark shadow dance almost threateningly across the land. Seeing it, several of the Hsiung-nu stepped back, and Strong Tongue’s drum throbbed out, a brief rumbling of thunder before the storm strikes.
“They . . . cast me out,” he rasped.
“They tortured him,” Willow mouthed at Silver Snow, then bent over the warrior who lay against his sister’s shoulder. “Who cast you out?”
“The Fu Yu,” he moaned, then fell silent, his head lolling to one side. Sable let out the wail that she had suppressed throughout all of the weeks that she did not know whether her brother lived or died.
“He is not dead,” Willow told her. “Not yet, and perhaps not for many years.”
And he may have saved all of our lives, Silver Snow thought. She watched as Willow and Sable attempted to make Basich more comfortable. When they tried to lift him, to move him toward Sable’s tents, however, he resisted, content for the moment to stare out at the camp and the familiar faces, sights that he obviously had abandoned all hope of ever seeing again. So, the Fu Yu had succored him, then cast him out. And the Fu Yu were the tribe about which Tadiqan had expressed such concern. She stood toying with the seals of the letter tube until her husband’s voice made her jump up in guilty surprise.
“It is not a call to war,” complained the shan-yu. “Let us call for a feast. Basich, whom we mourned as dead, has come back to us, and my elder son will avenge upon the miserable Fu Yu every injury that he has received. Perhaps I shall demand the skull of their leader and make it into a goblet, as I did with the skull of that Yueh-chih traitor. It is not every day that one of my children returns from the other world. Let us drink to him!” He drank—out of that terrible skull cup, Silver Snow noted with distaste. Then he ended his speech in a spasm of coughing, and Silver Snow darted forward to support him.