No one but Khujanga had seen it, however. And, like it or not, Strong Tongue was the familiar power; she was the tribe’s shaman, and they feared her. No, they would not storm her tent and kill her . . . would they?
She had lived long enough among the Hsiung-nu to judge that the attempt was worth trying. Vughturoi, the sweet, treacherous thought crept into her mind, Vughturoi would expect her to defend herself as she had ever done.
“The best man among you,” Silver Snow said calmly, “brings me Strong Tongue’s head.”
It was no man but a boy who rose, his face alight. Ducking an awkward but profound bow at Silver Snow, he seized a spear and raced from the great tent to the place where, Silver Snow knew, Strong Tongue had ordered her own quarters pitched.
She heard his scream in the same moment that a flare of light, like oil poured on a fire at midnight, burst up with a roar and a stench of burning flesh. Two more boys leapt up, rage warring with terror on their faces, but Silver Snow held up her hand.
“No,” she whispered. “I will hazard no more of you.”
As she had in the Cold Palace, Silver Snow sat and waited as the night wore on, as the drum beats from Strong Tongue’s tent grew louder and more insistent. Chanting rose, then subsided, to rise more hoarsely. The Hsiung-nu watched, as motionless as Khujanga, but far less calm.
And Silver Snow knelt there, deprived even of the comfort of Willow’s presence. At some time during the night, she had disappeared. At this very moment, was a fox with a limp pushing through the grasses toward the Hsiung-nu prince? Perhaps he might hear it, might reach casually for the spear or the bow of which he had such deadly mastery . . . “No!” Silver Snow wrapped arms about herself and rocked back and forth as if she keened in grief over her husband’s body. Sable rose and brought a fur-trimmed cloak. Summer night though it was, Silver Snow was grateful for the cloak’s warmth.
She glanced up at the Hsiung-nu woman who had been first among her people to approach Silver Snow with warmth rather than deference and curiosity. Tonight, she might suffer for that loyalty. It all depended on who won a double race: a summons by magic and a mad ride back to the tents of the royal clan. Even though Tadiqan had ridden among the Fu Yu, he might well have been on his way back; and the herds that Vughturoi inspected ranged over vast areas of grassland.
Darkness waned to gray, and all of the fires in the tents died. Gradually, the drumbeats and chants that had risen from Strong Tongue’s tent faded into silence. At dawn, Willow returned, walking very slowly as if her lame leg hurt even more than usual. With infinite care, she settled herself behind her mistress. When Silver Snow turned to greet her, she answered only with a sigh and a wan smile of gratitude for a proffered cushion.
Dawn brightened into a clear morning. The sun as it climbed toward zenith shone almost white; the day would be hot. It might be, Silver Snow thought, as she knelt beside the rigid body of her dead lord, that neither prince would arrive in time to view his father’s body, which would not keep for long in the heat. Already the sunken features were discoloring; soon the body would swell. Silver Snow sniffed, but could smell nothing beyond ashes, sweat, and tension.
She allowed her furred cloak to slip from her shoulders. Willow, as if grateful for a task that was easy to perform, folded it and laid it aside.
A shadow blocked the sunlight at the entrance to the tent. Slowly, ponderously, Strong Tongue walked through the crowd of staring Hsiung-nu as if they did not exist, stopping only when she stood before the body of the shan-yu. A murmuring arose behind her, and the men and women in the tent appeared to divide as long stalks of grass bent in different courses before the high wind that heralds a vicious storm. Already some of the warriors eyed one another speculatively, wondering on whose side they would fight should Tadiqan and Vughturoi come to blows.
Not deigning to look either at her late lord or at Silver Snow, Strong Tongue knelt too. Bound by a common anxiety, they waited. From time to time, water was brought, and they sipped it. Beyond that, there were no white robes, no hired mourners, no elaborate preparations, yet. The warriors gashed their faces, the women waited. The next shan-yu would give whatever orders would be needed.
Hoofbeats rang out, and half the people in the tent surged to their feet. Silver Snow balled her hands into fists and drove her nails into her palms. The colors of the rugs and hangings spun and blurred, and the folds and billows of the tent seemed to heave up and down, threatening to send her toppling onto her face. Even Strong Tongue, despite that weathered skin of hers, turned gray with apprehension.
.But it was one of the boys who hurled himself from the back of his horse into the tent, where he flung himself down— with superb tact, Silver Snow could not help but observe—at a distance precisely between her and her enemy.
“They come, great ladies!” he gasped, his voice cracking with the attempt to sound like a man, though his weapons and the open cuts on his face were his only signs yet of manhood.
“They, child?” Silver Snow asked.
“Which one comes, boy?” demanded Strong Tongue at the same moment.
“Both princes, mighty queens.” The boy glanced from woman to woman, abased himself to both of them indiscriminately, and fled, evidently preferring the threat of actual war to proximity between two silently warring queens.
“I shall greet the new shan-yu declared Strong Tongue, who surged to her feet as if she had not a doubt in the world that Tadiqan her son would arrive first.
How can I bear to watch this race? Silver Snow demanded of herself.
How do I dare not to? She answered herself a moment later, and thought hard of her father’s last battle with the Hsiung-nu. She too would face her fate without flinching, even if it was to fling herself upon the mercy of her sharp little blade. She rose, straightened a back that had gone stiff from a night and a day spent watching beside the dead shan-yu, and walked outside with conscious grace.
Three riders, not two, raced toward the camp. From the east, rode Tadiqan, bow strung at his back, his usual troop trying desperately to catch up to him. At the sight of her son, Strong Tongue stiffened. Her stern face seemed to catch the light of the sun, and she raised her spirit drum, patched, Silver Snow noted, with a strip of darker hide. Quickly she beat out an insistent, imperious rhythm on the drum, and the pace of Tadiqan’s horse quickened. Even from where she stood, Silver Snow could see how low the beast’s head drooped. It stumbled, but a fast, brutal move by its rider forced it to continue.
Silver Snow glanced at Willow, who nodded and slipped away. A fox, or a number of foxes might frighten that troop of horsemen—or serve as easy, casual prey, should they be too slow in going to ground. Then she turned to look at the rider from the west. It was Vughturoi; had he been twice the distance away, even then Silver Snow thought that she would have recognized him. He was accompanied by only one rider, who lay, rather than sat, in the saddle, his arms flung about his mount’s shaggy neck lest he fall.
“Brother,” whispered Sable from where she stood behind Silver Snow.
Vughturoi was lighter than Tadiqan, less of a burden for his horse to bear; and the animal seemed to be fresher. Silver Snow’s eyes filled with tears, and she blinked to dispel them. When she opened her eyes again, she saw Tadiqan’s horse swerve, then stumble. With superb, brutal skill, the prince controlled it and forced it to a pace that was half gallop, half stagger. Again it swerved, as if to avoid something—a fox, perhaps?—in its path, and again it fell. This time, Tadiqan’s skill availed only to let him roll free of the falling horse. He came up running, a sport at which the Hsiung-nu, who were master horsemen, were totally unskilled.