Until the Sun Falls (61 page)

Chan said, “This is just like the steppe, here.”

“It’s the last western steppe.” Psin lowered himself onto the couch and lay back, his feet still on the floor. “I’m tired.” 

“What did you do all day?”

He watched her slaves move around the yurt, dishing out meat for him. In the middle of it all she sat still, her face set and unsmiling. “I talked all morning to a batch of round-eyed merchants, had dinner, and went over to the high pasturage to bring back some cattle.”

“Tshant could have brought back the cattle.”

“Tshant is still sick.” He wasn’t. He was up and roaring, and Psin had left the camp mostly to keep from knocking Tshant’s front teeth through the back of his head.

“You all act as if he’d been mauled by a leopard.” She took the bowl from the slave and brought it to Psin.

“He was very sick for a while.” He hitched himself up on one elbow and ate the meat. Her women gathered up the dirty dishes and took them off. “What did you do all day?”

“Nothing. I sat in the sun. If I had a horse I could ride.”

“I don’t want you riding alone in this country. When I have nothing to do I’ll ride with you.”

“You are always busy.” She was staring at him; her eyes had a fixed look, and her mouth was stubborn. “I’m bored. I want to ride when and where I wish. If I had a slave to carry a bow, I—”

He choked on a bit of meat. “You mean a man? No. You’d turn a eunuch into a wild stag. I’d have to kill him before the next new moon.”

“Kerulu rides alone.”

“Kerulu rides with Djela. Go with her, if you want to ride.”

“I don’t like her. And she doesn’t go where I want to. Give me a male slave. I won’t…” Her mouth twisted. “Betray you.”

“The slave would.”

“Give me the blond knight.”

He started. He opened his mouth to swear at her and clamped it shut again. Her eyes were stony, and while he stared she lifted her gaze so that she looked over his shoulder, dismissing him. He pressed his hands against his thighs, swallowed hard, and rose. She said nothing, and when he left the yurt she did not call after him. At the door he turned and saw her kneeling beside the couch, staring. He went out into the darkness.

Arnulf. But the women had been in the camp only a few days.

His stomach clenched. He saw the knight’s fair hair in his mind’s eye. Chan and the knight. Chan’s slender long legs and smooth arms, and the knight’s broad shoulders. His palms were sweating, and he rubbed them mechanically against his coat. For a moment he could not breathe. The knight’s long-fingered hands, and Chan’s sweet skin. He stopped in the middle of the camp and looked out at the fires glistening all around him. But where he stood it was dark.

Artai and her women were chattering around their fire; when he came in they whirled, and their jaws dropped open. Artai scrambled up. “Khan, what’s brought you here?”

“I live here. Sometimes.” He went into the back of the yurt, where the slaves were. Arnulf and Dmitri were talking in low voices. He put his hand on his belt near his dagger. He could bring him to her one piece at a time…. They leapt up and bowed to him.

He fought to keep all the expression out of his face. Arnulf looked up; his eyes widened, and he glanced at Dmitri and back to Psin. “Have I done something wrong?”

Psin stared at him. The knight seemed to recoil into himself. Wide, blue, his eyes met Psin’s. Psin’s hand dropped to his side. His muscles loosened a little. “Do you want a woman, Arnulf?”

The knight looked more surprised. “It’s not permitted to me, Khan. The rule of my Order forbids it.”

“I didn’t ask that.”

Dmitri murmured, in Russian, “He’s mad.” Psin glared at him.

“Do you want a woman?”

The knight shrugged. “Sometimes. I’m a man. Yes.”

“If I gave you one, would you take her?”

“No, Khan.”

Psin tugged at his mustaches. He glanced at Dmitri, who was grinning, and Dmitri said, “If you’re giving away women, Khan—”

“Be quiet. Arnulf, come with me.”

He led Arnulf out through the front room, under the stares of his wife and her women, and into the twilight. Arnulf said, “Khan, I serve you as well as I can, but I can’t do anything forbidden me.”

Psin halted. Arnulf took two steps beyond him and turned to face him. Psin said, “Knight, all I want is that you keep your vows.” He would know when he saw them together.

He started off again. Arnulf trailed him. Chan’s grey and white cat was sitting beside the door when they reached it. It followed them in and leapt effortlessly onto a cabinet. Chan was sitting behind the fire, so that the light flooded over her face, with another cat in her lap. When she saw Arnulf, she smiled. Psin’s throat closed. He looked at Arnulf, and his hand rose to his dagger.

The knight bowed to her. “Lady,” he said.

Psin looked back at Chan. She was watching him, not Arnulf, and her smile was bright. Her eyes were bright. She said, “Thank you, Khan.” Her rare smile deepened. “He may stay in Artai’s yurt except when I want to ride.”

Inside his ribs Psin’s heart gave an absurd little beat. He looked across the fire into her eyes, amazed. The cat climbed softly onto her shoulder and sat there, watching him. He turned suddenly, aware of the long silence, and said to the knight, “Go. When she sends for you, you will attend her.” The knight bowed and left the yurt.

He heard the soft plop of the cat on the cabinet leaping down. She wasn’t smiling anymore. She lowered her eyes and let her face sink into the stillness she said kept away age lines. He went around the fire and sat down beside her.

“Most women enjoy it if their husbands are jealous of them.”

She shrugged, brushing the cat off her shoulder. He put his hand to her cheek. She moved closer to him and rested her head against his chest; she shut her eyes.

Mongke’s camp sprawled across both banks of a shallow stream, almost dry after the heat of the summer; dust hung over it like a pavilion. Psin had seen it long before they reached it, because of the dust. He remembered what Mongke had said, that he should not expect him to be easy. Tshant, riding next to him, said that if the judgment didn’t please him he would have his revenge against Mongke as well.

“I shouldn’t have let him turn me off, that night,” he said. “I should have kept on.”

“If he doesn’t give us justice, we can overthrow it. He’ll have me stand surety for you, and my authority is higher than his. If he does judge it properly, you’d better like it.”

Tshant shoved him, and Psin shoved him back. Kerulu forced her horse in between theirs. “Don’t fight, it makes me nervous. What do you think of my hawk? Isn’t she good?”

Psin glanced at the hawk on her saddle pommel. “I like the big eagles better.”

Tshant called, “He thinks because you favor him that he can turn a judgment against us. He can oil up Kaidu and Batu without losing us.”

Kerulu hoisted up the hawk, so that its wings flapped in Tshant’s face. “I’ll set her on you if you don’t keep quiet.”

“Damned woman.”

They rode into the camp. The rings were packed with people come to hear the judgment. Batu’s men rode everywhere, shouting, already half-drunk. Psin dismissed the fifty men he had brought with him, and they went whooping off to harangue Batu’s men.

“This is like a kuriltai,” Djela shouted.

They rode toward the center of the camp, past yurts of silk, past crowds of men dressed in their fancy clothes. When they saw Psin and Tshant they cheered and rattled their daggers on anything nearby that was metal. The air was stiff with the smells of food cooking. A woman strode by, leading two white donkeys loaded down with bread, and Djela snatched out a loaf. Kerulu’s hawk began to scream, and a pack of black dogs barked at them.

Batu’s standard stood on the back of a platform built in the middle of the camp. When they came to it, they saw half a dozen men standing guard around it. Tshant said, “We should have brought our standard.”

“It’s in my chest at home.”

“You should have brought it.”

“I mean home by Lake Baikal, damn you.”

Tshant glared at him. “We’ll look like beggars.”

“You’ll look like a beggar. You were born a beggar. I’ve stopped trusting Artai.”

Tshant kicked Psin’s horse in the belly, and when it reared Psin tried to swing its forehoofs around to hit Tshant. Kerulu screamed and pretended to faint. Losing her balance, she slid out of her saddle, and Tshant had to go back to help her. Psin looked for Batu, did not see him, and turned his back on Tshant.

Mongke walked over, smiling. “Now we can get on with this. Batu is here, you know. In force. And Sabotai.”

“Sabotai? Where?”

“In the yurt. When he rode out in the crowds they cheered him so much and blocked his way so heavily he couldn’t move. They are cheering you, too. Batu they only saluted.”

“Let’s start.” Psin dismounted and threw his reins to a young Kipchak standing in front of his horse. “I’m interested. I want to see how you handle this.”

“So am I. Don’t be belligerent. You know it was your grandson who got me into it.” Mongke climbed up on the platform and looked around. He stood with his shoulders thrown back and his chin up; his eyes snapped. He signaled to someone beyond the crowd.

Tshant came up beside Psin and gave his horse to a slave. “What did he say?”

“Nothing much.”

Two men jumped up beside Mongke and blew great snorting blasts on auroch horns. The shouting cut off immediately into a dense silence. Psin looked to his left and saw Kaidu, with Batu and his brothers behind him. The men with the horns yelled orders, and the crowd shoved back away from the platform, leaving a crescent before it where Tshant and his relatives and Kaidu with his could stand. Kaidu’s wife wasn’t there, although Psin knew that she had come in from the Volga camp early in the summer.

Mongke backed up two steps and stood under his standard. He cleared his throat. The silence grew tense and the crowd stirred. Somewhere a baby cried angrily. Mongke said, “In the name of the Kha-Khan, for the glory of the Eternal God, the Mongols, and Temujin Genghis Khan, and by the will of God. If there is a man here who doubts I have the right to judge this dispute, let him speak.”

Silence. The children were quiet, and not even the dogs yapped.

“If there is a man here who will not abide by my judgment, let him speak.”

Psin got one of his mustaches into his mouth and chewed on it. Mongke, so slender, so slight, stood like a totem, and they all listened.

“Let it be so, then. You come to see two princes judged. There are two complaints. First, that Kaidu Noyon the son of Targai the son of Batu the son of Juji the son of Temujin attacked and injured Tshant Bahadur the son of Psin Khan the son of Tseyan Khan. And that Kaidu did this unfairly and without just cause, giving Tshant Bahadur no chance to defend himself.”

Tshant snarled under his breath. Mongke’s eyes flickered toward him. Psin wondered if Mongke could have heard the growl; he thought the wind covered it.

“The second complaint is that Psin Khan attacked the camp of Kaidu Noyon and killed six of his men.”

Now Kaidu murmured. Mongke hunkered. “Psin Khan. Will you stand surety for Tshant?” 

“I will.”

“Batu?”

“I stand surety for my grandson.”

Mongke leapt up. He shouted, “Sabotai Bahadur, do you stand surety for Psin and Batu?”

“I do,” Sabotai shouted, from behind them all.

The crowd screamed Sabotai’s name. Psin couldn’t hear Tshant cursing for the noise. He spat the end of his mustache out of his mouth and glared at Mongke. Mongke smirked back at him. No matter what he did now, his decision would stand. Psin swore.

The auroch horns blared again, and the noise crashed into silence. Mongke had sat down again.

“You have both broken the Yasa,” he said. “The Yasa says no man may make war on another without the permission of the Kha-Khan. I have spoken with both Tshant and Kaidu, and it seems to me that the situation is thus. In the Polish campaign Tshant several times disobeyed Kaidu’s orders, or undertook operations without referring them first to Kaidu for approval. This was entirely within his rights as the commander of the vanguard. But Kaidu is young, and the Polish war was his first important command. He resented Tshant’s ignoring him. He also believes he has reason to dislike Psin Khan. None of this came fully into his mind that day, but when Tshant again defied him he lost his temper.”

“I had reason,” Kaidu yelled.

Batu shook him quiet again. Psin frowned, remembering how Kaidu had looked, back in Russia, when they had mentioned the stigma that lay on Juji and his children. He wondered how Mongke had learned of it.

“In payment for the injury done,” Mongke said, “I order that Kaidu give Tshant two herds of young mares with their spring foals.”

Tshant and Kaidu bellowed in unison, the one that it was too little, the other that it was too much. Psin got one hand on Tshant’s arm and held him back. He could see Batu doing the same thing with Kaidu. Tshant’s face turned dark red with anger. Abruptly all the blood left his skin and he went livid white. He swung his head to scowl at Psin.

“Quiet,” Mongke said. “Such is my judgment. Now, to the second complaint. It is most severely against the Yasa for any man to seek revenge against another without the word of the Kha-Khan. If it were a green youngster, we might excuse it. For a general it is shocking, especially in a territory where we might be at war within a day. Psin Khan, do you have any defense?”

Psin raised his head. “Blood right.”

“Only the Kha-Khan has the blood right. Any other?”

“No.”

Kaidu said, “He is a Merkit. One of the men he killed was a Yek Mongol. It was his arrow—let him die for it.”

Batu wrestled him silent. Mongke said, “This is my judgment. For the injury done to Kaidu, Psin will pay him two herds of young mares with their spring foals.”

Psin clamped his jaws shut. He turned and looked back to where Sabotai stood smiling.

Kaidu said, “I will give up my mares only after I receive Psin’s.”

Mongke shrugged. “If neither of you gives the other anything, I shall consider the judgment carried out.”