I’ve killed a man. The thought swelled in her head, and she could hear the individual words growing louder and louder inside her skull. She couldn’t make them stop. A terrible voice-hers, hoarse and ragged with utter despair-was shouting the words, and a multitude of echoes answered, chirping and shrieking the words in response, kill kill kill killed a man…
“Drop it,” Gansukh barked, and her hand opened of its own accord like a startled bird taking wing from a bush. Then, freed from the dagger, she recoiled from the sticky thing lying on the ground, stumbling and tripping over her own feet.
Clumsily, Gansukh dragged himself toward the dagger, falling onto his side and blocking her view of it. He stared at her, moonlight making his swollen and pulpy face a hideously grinning mask. His shoulders moved as he struggled to pick up the dagger with his bound hands and orient the blade so that it could cut his bonds, but he didn’t give up. With dogged, unblinking persistence he kept trying to free himself, all the while without saying a word-without admonishing her to help him in any way.
She regarded him with fascination as if she were watching a wild animal try to chew its way out of a snare. A tiny part of her still wept and shrieked within, but mostly she found herself fixated on Gansukh, staring uncomprehendingly at this being who fought with every iota of his body to live. Who would kill in order to live. He had done so, and would again. And it wouldn’t bother him. It was part of who he was, a real part of the world in which he lived.
It wasn’t her world. She had strayed into it. He had warned her. He had tried to protect her, but she had gone anyway. Was she like him now? Would she fight and claw for her own life? Would she kill again in order to survive?
She shivered, not wanting to know the answer to those questions, but as the voices in her head fell silent, there was no avoiding the knowledge.
Gansukh could barely see. One eye was swollen shut, the result of a brutal clubbing from one of the Chinese guards, and his nose was broken. His other eye was nearly glued shut with sand and blood and tears. His lower back ached-he was sure he would be pissing blood in the morning-and his shoulders shook as he tried to move his hands up and down. He gasped heavily, breathing through his mouth, and his tongue pressed against his lower teeth. He could still feel pain. It is enough, Gansukh thought.
It had been enough at Kozelsk, when he had been pinned down behind a barn with arrows in his gut and his leg. He hadn’t died then. Narrow-faced Jebe, an old boyhood rival, laid out in the city street, pinned to the mud by arrows. Still alive, each breath a gasping torment. He had sat there, hiding behind the worn barrels, and watched Jebe die, ashamed that he was hoping that his death would be quicker. That he’d never see it coming.
But as long as could still feel pain, death wasn’t coming for him at all.
His hands slipped, and he thought he had missed the blade of the dagger, but as he tried to reseat the cloth that bound his hands behind his back against the sharp blade, he realized his work was done. The cloth had separated, sawed through by his dogged determination. By his denial of death.
His shoulders quivering with exhaustion and strain, he tried to pull his hands apart. Slowly, he felt the rope stretch and come apart around his wrists, and with a last, shuddering tug, he split his bonds. His hands flopped around, his shoulders sighing with relief at no longer being restrained. The skin along his upper arms and across the top of his back prickled fiercely, a thousand needles being shoved under his skin. Grimacing, he rolled over.
Behind him lay the crumpled corpse of the Chinese commander. The earth around the man’s head was darkened with blood. There was no movement of his chest, and his gaze remained fixed and unblinking. Just like Jebe.
Gansukh struggled to sit up. “Lian?”
Unlike the Chinese commander, she was still breathing, though judging from the manner in which each breath rattled out of her body, she was deep in shock. She could hear him, but she wasn’t present.
The ground vibrated, the sound of hooves against the packed earth. Gansukh recognized the rhythmic beat, the noise of steppe ponies. Friendly riders. With a lingering glance at Lian, he struggled to his feet so as to not be mistaken for a Chinese raider, trying to flee. He brushed the last few strands of rope from his wrists and tried to summon the breath-and presence of mind-to speak.
Lian. He walked, his legs stiff and slow to respond, over to her. He made no effort to touch her; he just positioned himself between her and where he thought the approaching riders were coming from.
Short-legged horses emerged from the gloom, and they quickly shifted their course to converge on Gansukh and Lian. The man on the lead horse was much too large for the frame of the horse, making him seem all that much more like a giant in comparison, and Gansukh felt his throat relax when he recognized the man. The wrestler, Namkhai.
Namkhai pulled his horse up short-deliberately blocking the advance of the riders behind him-and Gansukh stood still as other riders flowed around Namkhai like a stream diverting around a large stone. Out of the corner of his field of vision, Gansukh saw a pale flicker as moonlight glanced off a rider’s naked head. Munokhoi. He inclined his head toward Namkhai, acknowledging what the wrestler had just done for him.
Respect. Hard won and easily lost. But still very much the coin of the realm among the true men of the steppes.
Horses continued to flow around them, and by the time the Torguud captain managed to bring his horse around, a ring of Mongolian riders had formed. Freezing the tableau of recent events into an image that would now be assessed.
Gansukh. Lian. The dagger. The dead Chinese commander.
Munokhoi pushed his mount through the throng, his sword raised above his head. “I said to cut down anyone on foot,” he shouted, his voice breaking. “Why are these dogs still standing?” He refused to look at Gansukh and Lian, staring at his men with a wild ferocity, daring any of them to question his order. His face was streaked with soot and blood, which made his bulging eyes only that much more deranged.
“Because they are not dogs,” replied Namkhai evenly.
Munokhoi jerked his horse’s head back, and the animal nearly reared. Its nostrils flared and it showed its teeth. “They are dogs if I say they are dogs,” he retorted, still not looking at Gansukh or Lian.
Namkhai stared at the aggravated Torguud captain with the same calm mien that Gansukh had seen when they had wrestled. Appraising. Waiting. Confident. Unafraid.
Munokhoi knew the gaze as well, and he looked away. He finally looked down at Gansukh and Lian, his lips curling into a sneer. “She’s Chinese,” he pointed out as if no one had ever noticed. “The Chinese attacked us. They are her people. She must have told them where to find us.”
“Was the Khagan hiding?” Gansukh found his voice, and in the silence that followed his words, he cleared his throat and explained his question. “If she had to tell them where we were, that would suggest that they couldn’t have found us with their own eyes.” He rolled his shoulders and straightened his back. “Are you saying that the Khan of Khans was traveling in stealth? That he was afra-”
Munokhoi kicked his horse, and it lunged forward while simultaneously trying to avoid running into Gansukh. Gansukh shuffled to his right, but not so much that he abandoned Lian, and the horse’s shoulder bumped into his chest. He stepped back, not out of fear of being hurt by the horse, but to get out of range of Munokhoi’s sword. His hand, reaching back, brushed Lian’s arm and he felt her shiver.
“They are no danger to us, Munokhoi,” Namkhai said. “There is no danger to the Khagan here.” Namkhai’s voice was clipped and tight, somewhat impatient. With a hint of a challenge. “We should be guarding the Khagan. Not riding around in the dark, chasing ghosts.”