Swords From the East (15 page)

Even the hunt was a scene set for intrigue. Mingan felt as if he stood on a quicksand, not knowing in what direction to take the next step.

His torch died out, and the darkness seemed to close in threefold. Wraiths of gray mist were forming in the hollows-smoke, the Mongols said, that rose up to the surface of the earth from the halls of Erlik, the lord of the lower regions.

In fact the mist veiled the rider that Mingan heard coming toward him from the plain. Not until horse and man were within arm's reach did he recognize Temujin.

The Mongol for once moved slowly. He was dragging at the bamboo pole of the lasso, and at the other end of the rope the body of the sixth Taidjut slid over the grass.

"Leave the chariot," said Temujin quickly. "It will avail not where we are going."

"Where?" asked Mingan.

"Not far; to the forest line of the highest of these hills. The three Taidjuts guarding the rear fled when they heard the music of weapons. They saw this one die. They will spread the word in our rear that Mongols are raiding. We cannot go back through the Taidjut country to the Gobi; we must seek a safe place and spy out where our enemies gather."

"On your right hand, high on the slope of the mountain Pisgah, overlooking the Kinghan Range is the shrine of Kwan-ti, the god of war," Min gan observed. "In the week of the great hunt no one makes the pilgrimage to the place of Kwan-ti. Are you afraid to go there?"

"Why?" Temujin leaned down to study the face of his comrade.

Satisfied, he took the saddles from four of the riderless horses and left them on the ground. Leading up a pony for Mingan to ride, he instructed the Cathayan to go ahead to point out the way, while he gathered up all his arrows and rounded up the scattered ponies-no easy task in the darkness.

"Keep the Cathayan sword: you cannot use a bow," he ordered. "Light no more torches to guide our enemies to us. In whose tent have you passed your days that you know no more than that?"

"In the palace of the emperor," said Mingan frankly. "My name is Ye Lui Kutsai Mingan."

"Min-gan, the Bright One," Temujin grunted. "You cannot drive horses; can you ride one?"

"Yes," declared the prince.

As a matter of fact he had not sat in a saddle since childhood, but he would have been ashamed to admit that to Temujin.

Under the tall firs of the higher slope of Pisgah the lane of Kwan-ti overlooked the brown plain of the Gobi, behind the green hill country that formed the heart of the Taidjut lands. As Mingan said, the shrine was deserted, for no one would have presumed to enter the lines of the beaters that drove game from the plain and the ravines, to be killed by the courtiers.

It was a clear day, and the two boys sat comfortably on the stone steps leading up to the pagoda, watching the panorama of the hunt. So vast was its extent that they could observe only the lines of riders out toward the plain and the cavalcades of bright-robed Cathayans who, with their slaves, rode out to the rendezvous of the kill each day. Temujin's ponies grazed and rested in the open glades of the forest, and Temujin himself shot down quail and hares for the pot, and kindled the cooking fire in among the trees after darkness when the smoke would not disclose their presence. He never asked Mingan's help, although he always shared what food they had fairly.

"How long will your emperor hunt?" he asked.

"For three days more." Mingan thought this would impress his companion. "Each day they will kill twenty stags, thrice as many boar, and hundreds of antelopes."

Temujin looked up impassively.

"When the orkhons of the Horde hunt in the Gobi, they slay each day a thousand deer, and load a hundred camels with the skins. When the hunt is ended the prairie cannot be seen for the wolves that gather about, nor the sun in the sky for the vultures that flock to our trail."

This was hard for the Cathayan to believe. He had seen the gray wolves of the northern forests harry villages in Liao-tung unhindered. He had heard that the Mongols of the Three Rivers lived by hunting and raiding-by eating the horses of their herds and wearing the skins of animals, and he thought that must be a miserable existence.

"Some of the Horde," went on the chief's son, "ride deer-reindeer, and wear their hoofs for heels on their boots. They are the Tungusi who dwell in the frozen prairies of the north. They have red hair and are good fighters."

Now Mingan smiled, believing that Temujin jested, but the Mongol was occupied with his own thoughts.

"Could a horse jump your Great Wall?" he asked abruptly.

"Can a horse jump five times the height of a man?"

"When I am Khan of the Horde I will send my warriors to break through it.,,

Looking at the restless boy whose ragged sheepskin barely covered his brown limbs, Mingan did not take his words seriously. Later, he had cause to remember the boast of the chief's son.

"You have no siege engines," he pointed out, "and we have many stoneand arrow-throwers on the Wall. Besides, you have not men enough."

"Kai-it is true. The tribes fight among themselves, and turn not upon their enemies." Temujin nodded, rubbing his iron sleevelets thoughtfully. "The Cathayans slew my grandsire's sire foully. It is also true that the strength of a wall is not in the stones that built it."

"In what, then? " Mingan was a little proud of his learning, and was not minded to be corrected by a herd boy-as he considered Temujin to be.

"In the men on top of it. If they are weak, the wall is useless, though high as a hundred spears." He pointed down at the plain. "Look-who is that Khan, riding on the shoulders of his men?"

Temujin had the eyes of a hawk. Only after a long peering did the prince make out a yellow speck among other dots moving out toward the beaters.

"It must be Chung-hi, who someday will be emperor. He is sitting on the hunting platform, carried by slaves, so that no beast can harm him when he casts his spear."

The Mongol grunted.

"The jackal! He kills when others drive in his game-" He yawned and lay back. "I could take a wall that Chung -hi defended."

"How?" Mingan was interested, for the heir-apparent was Keeper of the Great Wall.

"By making the jackal afraid. Then he would run away. That is a jackal's nature."

Now, because it troubled him and because he fancied that after a day or so he would see no more of the chief's son, Mingan told Temujin of the plot against him, the deaths of his cousins, and the peril that stood in wait for him if he should return to the court. The memory of the overthrow of the Taidjuts in the ravine was strong upon him, and perhaps he wished to show the Mongol that he, also, was not without enemies.

But Temujin, watching the Cathayans on the plain, seemed not to heed his words. As a matter of fact he listened carefully, as Mingan discovered on the morrow.

"I could escape from you, 0 Temujin," he pointed out, annoyed by the other's silence, "and disclose your hiding -place to the emperor, thus winning his favor."

"You are free to go."

Two things restrained Mingan. After all, the Mongol had saved his life, and there was truce between the Horde and Cathay. Besides, he had a suspicion that if he led a pony to the shrine of Kwan-ti, the boy and his herd would be found there, for Temujin would take a chance with his enemies on the plain rather than be cornered by the Cathayans.

Temujin observed him, and looked away, satisfied. If Mingan meant to betray him, the prince would not have spoken his mind.

"You are a usenin-a teller of tales. Is that how you pass the time when you are shut up in the houses of Yen-king?"`

To the Mongol it seemed strange that the Cathayans chose to dwell under a roof. Mingan, falling in with his mood, told of the tens of thousands of mailed warriors that drilled under the generals' eyes in the fields within the walls of the city-walls that a rider on a swift horse could not circle between sunrise and sunset-and of the myriad junks that came up the river from Zipangu, the island of savages, and other places of the sea.

"It is time for me to go forth with my bow," Temujin observed, "and seek out meat for our eating. Will you watch the horses?"

This was the first time he had asked Mingan to do anything for him, and the prince was surprised. He waited a long time after the other had disappeared into the forest, but Temujin did not return. The sun went down-a red ball that sank into the golden prairie out of the purple vault of the sky. A whippoorwill began its evening plaint, and somewhere behind the bulwark of the mountains the moon rose. Mingan could make out the dark blur of the ponies that clustered together with the coming of night.

He felt the chill touch of damp air and turned toward the pagoda of Kwan-ti, god of war, drawing in his breath sharply upon beholding the dark form of the god outlined against the pallid sky in the east-for the temple was no more than a roof, set upon bamboo pillars.

"What shall I do?" he thought. "Harm may have befallen Temujin. If I am absent from the hunting pavilion another night, they will search for me, and when I return the emperor will look at me with a darkened face. O Kwan-ti, to whom all things are known, send me a sign to show the path that I must follow."

No sooner had he said that than he was frightened. Here were no priests to frighten away the evil spirits that dwelt on the mountain summit, and the deserted shrine seemed to be peopled with shadowy forms. If he had not promised his companion to watch the horses, Mingan would have fled.

The whippoorwill ceased its song abruptly, and the boy sprang up, grasping his heavy sword. From the edge of the forest a rider was moving toward him soundlessly. Mingan knew that no Cathayan noble would seek the shrine of Kwan-ti without attendants with lights and cymbals to drive away the mountain devils, and no one but a noble would possess a horse.

The newcomer halted at the foot of the steps, almost within reach of the boy, who, feeling the hot breath of the horse's nostrils, knew that it was no apparition but a living being.

He lifted the long blade, and the rider moved. "Stand and stir not. I have an arrow fitted to bow, and if you bring down your big sword I will loose my shaft." The words were Mongol, and Mingan, straining his eyes, could make out in the treacherous light what seemed to be a child, muffled in a fur cloak, a child with tresses of dark hair bound by a silver fillet. Surely the voice was a girl's.

"Do you understand, Cathayan? Where is Temujin?"

Mingan lowered his sword.

"I do not know."

"Ahai! Does the kite not know where the dead hare lies? Here are his ponies-I have felt of the tanga, the brand on their flanks. Have you slain him, Cathayan, for a sacrifice to your god?"

Mingan explained that the chief's son had gone in search of game and had not returned. By now he could see the delicate features and dark eyes of the girl, and the arrow that she still held on her bow.

"What man are you? What are you doing here?" Her voice, soft, with a quick lisp that Mingan found hard to understand, made the harsh gutturals musical.

He told her, not without some pride, his name and how he had met with Temujin; and she was not satisfied until she had heard the story of the fight in the ravine. Then she laughed, under her breath.

"Kai-it is true. You are the fool."

"How?"

"So your Cathayan warriors said-they who are camped in the ravine of the Taidjut road. They said that you were witless and blind with pride in your new finery."

She stopped to gaze, wide-eyed, at the yellow robe and the peacock feather, then continued: "Kai-it is true that you are like a wood-pheasant, fair to look at. But the talk at the Cathayan fire was that your enemies would put out your life like a candle in the wind."

"How did you understand our speech? Are you a Mongol?"

"Nay, I know many things. The night speaks to me, and the raven sits on the ridge-pole of my tent-"

"Daughter of Podu, the Gipsy-" Temujin's deep voice came from beside them although neither had heard him approach-"you have the tongue of the cat-bird that is never still. Peace!"

The girl unstrung her bow and perched sidewise in her saddle with a little sigh of relief.

"Son of Yesukai, have you become a Cathayan house dog, to think only of food, while the wolves gather around you, sitting on their haunches-"

"Peace, I said." The Gipsy fell silent. "Little Burta, has the smoke of Podu's tent fire died away, that you seek me in such a spot?"

At this the corners of her small mouth drooped and she lowered her eyes.

"Nay, Temujin, it is your tent fire that grows cold. Yesukai, your father, is dying, and asks for you."

The Mongol threw down the brace of quail he was carrying and his eyes went out over the moonlit plain.

"He has been poisoned," she went on. "The Taidjuts who came to his yurt as guests put poison in his drinking-cup. May they be torn by the dogs of Erlik! Because you had passed our camp, when you pursued them, the Mongols who went in search of you took me with them to point out your trail. When we came to the lines of the Cathayan hunters, they could approach no nearer, but I went among the Taidjut fires at night and heard of the death of their khan at your hand in the ravine. I was glad, and from the place of the slaying I followed your trail to this mountain, and at sunset saw the horses."

"The slayers of Yesukai have already gone to give greeting to Erlik," the Mongol said slowly.

Burta's teeth flashed in a smile, then she glanced at Mingan coldly.

"Why do you suffer him near you?"

Temujin, sunk in thought, seemed not to heed her.

But Mingan started, remembering the words of Chung-hi spoken several days ago at the Western Gate:

"By giving gold to the Taidjuts-nothing failed and no one suspects-will not trouble your hours of pleasure."

The party of the horse thieves had returned from the Mongol prairie to the road to the hunting pavilion: Chung -hi had sent a messenger to them. Surely the Taidjut khan had been acting under orders from the Warden of the Western Marches.

And this messenger had given the Taidjuts the command to slay him- Mingan-if they found him alone.