Выбрать главу

As if it indeed had caused them to appear, Tadiqan and his men rode toward the camp slowly. They too rode silently, a menace whose very quietness made it all the more purposeful. Some were familiar to her; she recognized many faces and horses. Others, though, wore the trappings and arms of the Fu Yu or even the Yueh-chih, chief among them a young man whose eyes immediately sought out Vughturoi. Her glance fell at the wrapped bunch she bore on her saddle. She had been right; like the drum, that cup, which had been the source of such pain and such conflict, must be present.

So many opposed Vughturoi! Dismay stabbed at Silver Snow almost as sharply as the arrow on which she had stepped, but she suppressed it, lest her son absorb her fear before his birth.

Vughturoi drew a deep breath. Then his voice rang out over the grasslands.

“Let Tadiqan, who was once my brother, ride forth.”

22

The discipline of the Hsiung-nu held true, and the lines of horsemen stayed where they were. With a contempt that showed in every leisurely movement of his body, Tadiqan edged his horse closer. So, Silver Snow noted, did the Yueh-chih’s lord. Vughturoi rode out to meet them.

“Brother,” Tadiqan spoke, without the decency of allowing the shan-yu whom he betrayed to speak first. He might as well have spat. One of Vughturoi’s men shouted in outrage, but Vughturoi held up his hand for silence.

“You profane the name,” Vughturoi told him, “and your oath as well. When I was raised to my father’s seat, you bowed yourself before me. Is this how you serve the clan?”

“Yes!” screamed Tadiqan, his face beginning to go crimson with one of his rages. “You will make us into mincing copies of those half men of Ch’in, sell us into slavery for more silks and gems. That whey-faced girl who whispers by night of the splendors of her home will betray us all. Put her aside and ride free! Or, by all that is under heaven, step aside and let a man lead!”

“A man?” Vughturoi asked, his own voice rising with a dangerous anger. “A man who hides behind his mother and wars on ladies? I call such a one not man but boy and traitor. And to that one, I give a choice. Exile or, here and now, before our men, a final submission. And if you betray that, know that my vengeance may not be swift, but it will be painful and utterly sure.”

This time, Tadiqan did spit. “I shall have your place, and my kinsman of the Yueh-chih shall have your head!”

“There is no dealing with a madman,” Vughturoi observed. “We shall speak when you are sane once more. You are worse than the people whom you claim to hate.” Contemptuously he turned his back on the traitor, and rode toward his own line.

Silver Snow drew a deep breath, fully expecting to see a war begin. Stunned by the audacity of the shan-yu in turning his back upon an enemy known to be as deadly as he was treacherous, his men and those of the other side held their places.

Then Tadiqan’s hands flashed to his bow, nocking arrow and drawing with the terrible grace that made the Hsiung-nu feared throughout the world. Before she could control herself, Silver Snow screamed, and the first arrow went awry.

Time seemed to slow then. It seemed that Silver Snow sat her horse amid a field of statues in which only three people moved: Tadiqan, Vughturoi, and herself. Vughturoi, who took such care of his mounts, turned his with such speed that it screamed and reared. For that moment, he was so occupied in controlling it that he had no chance to draw weapon.

He could be killed before he could defend himself!

That shall not he! Silver Snow vowed. Though she was no warrior, she was a huntress of no mean prowess. Only it had been so long since she had ridden out with her bow! That made no difference. Even as she lamented her lack of practice, she seized an arrow without looking at it, nocked, and shot.

A terrible whistling shrieked out and the arrow flew—not a deadly shot to throat or belly—but pinning Tadiqan’s arm. Silver Snow’s eyes widened. By some fortunate chance, she had used the single whistling arrow that she had preserved! Tadiqan screamed, not in pain, but in protest and dreadful fear as, from behind him, that whistling found an answer from the men whom he had trained to shoot upon hearing it.

A hundred shafts whined out in deadly obedience that hurled Tadiqan from his saddle and toppled his horse. Arrows pierced man and horse so many times that some shafts had broken before they could sink into flesh. Blood seeped out from between the shafts and puddled in the trampled grass.

Madly daring, Silver Snow forced her horse forward. “You sought a cup made of a human skull!” her voice rose shrill above the tumult of man and beast as she confronted the Yueh-chih. “Then take this!”

She pulled the cup from its silk wrappings and showed it to the man who had sworn vengeance because that cup existed at all. “As a loyal son,” she told him, “take that and bury it after the custom of your kind.” She replaced it in its shroud and held it out, offering it to his suddenly reverent hands.

“You do not need another such cup,” she added quietly. Her eyes pleaded with him to agree with her even as she hoped that Vughturoi would not race forward and slay him to protect her.

“No,” he muttered, turning the wrapped bundle over and over in his hands. “We do not, now that we have my father’s honor back. Lady, I have heard of you. They hail you as the queen who brings peace to the Hsiung-nu; and now I see that it is true. I will do homage to you," he said, and dismounted.

Even as Vughturoi rode up, his eyes distended, his horse lathered, Tadiqan’s former ally went to his knees, then to his belly. Quick to seize the opportunity, Vughturoi beckoned his own men forward to encircle the others.

From behind his own ranks, however, rose a tumult of horses, shrill screams, and finally the deep-throated death shriek of a warrior.

Silver Snow dared to glance behind her.

“It is Strong Tongue!” cried Sable. “Somehow she freed her hands, slew one of her guards, and seized her drum!”

Silver Snow had heard that great grief, or rage, or fear could make people inhumanly strong. Thus it was with Strong Tongue, who now strode forward, beating the spirit drum to a rhythm more savage and more compelling than any she had ever heard.

Faced with a shaman mad with grief and rage, even the bravest among the FIsiung-nu blanched, and many on both sides hurled themselves from their horses, to cower with their heads to the ground.

“I have it!” screamed the deposed shaman. “And soon I shall have vengeance on you all for my son, I and my demons!”

“Mad,” gasped Willow from where she sprawled on the ground. Silver Snow could see white around her eyes, which glared with the terror of madness that haunted human and beast alike.

A howling wind blew up about Strong Tongue. Even as a guard tried to pierce it with his spear, it seized him and tossed him high and far. They could hear bones shattering as he landed. Still the wind intensified until it drowned out all other sotinds. Mouths worked on prayers or shouts; horses tossed their heads, whinnying in barely suppressed panic; and all anyone could hear was the whining snarl of the wind, a miniature version of the kuraburan, or goblin storms, of the deep desert, a thousand-thousandfold worse than Tadiqan’s whistling arrows . . . until the first of the demons laughed.

Shapes worse than any nightmare out of Taoist magical texts half materialized within the whirling vortex of wind, grit, and sand. They danced and gibbered and held out grasping claws. More and more fiercely Strong Tongue beat upon the spirit drum until Silver Snow thought surely that it would shatter, loosing the demons forever upon an unsuspecting world.