Of Battles Past (Amgalant #1)

mouth.”

  “Kiyat, Qongdaqor. His Kiyat.”

  Qongdaqor wiped specks off the cuirass. “He had several cares in the world. His Kiyat. His staff he gave a thought to now and then, I am certain. His most treasured, treasured Hoelun. A spirit cannot always have his way. A ghost has his frustrations, who can’t be hands-on.”

  “You are a wise one, Qongdaqor. Do you have time to think while you stand by the door?” Next she said, “Tomorrow. Tomorrow, you and his other staff, lay his tuq with me, on Dolion Tor.”

  “Aye, and half our hearts.” He had a spasm of horror. Cleanly killed means bones clean-picked, but did the birds and beasts shy off his poisoned flesh?

  She saw his thoughts. “If you are not afraid of his remains.”

  She wasn’t. They had laid his horse beside him, too, as Jorkimes had with Bartan in Buzzard’s Gorge on the road to China. “The last of the ba’aturs,” his thoughts went on aloud. “I hope I live to hear a shout for ba’atur. Have we left behind the heroic age, Hoelun?”

  “You have children. So does Yesugei.”

  “Aye. I hope I live to see mine serve his as I served him.”

  “I hope I live to see mine deserve such service.”

  “I never grew tired of his door.”

  “Nor I of the least joint of his little finger.”

  “Tomorrow’s an opportunity to tell him. In case he doesn’t know.”

  Hoelun glimmered a smile. “But he does. That was the trouble with him.”

  There were negotiations – not face to face – between Daritai and Tarqutai on the manslaughter of Jaraqa of Alip, otogu slave of the family. Hoelun, face to face, met with Daritai. “Tarqutai, we hear, offers payment. The son of the slain wishes for blood.”

  “Does he? Exacted by whom?”

  “Monglig says, himself.”

  “Which isn’t possible.”

  “No. I have striven to prevent him. Likewise Qongdaqor and Ubashi.”

  “Prevent him? I’m afraid we won’t see Todoyan enter into duel with a slave.”

  “The slave doesn’t think to dignify Todoyan with a duel. To Monglig this is a matter for criminal feud and not for feud of honour.”

  “So he threatens to walk into Tayichiut headquarters and shoot him out of hand?”

  “To him, murder, murder witnessed by a crowd, has given us the license.”

  “Prevention is sensible, then. They’d tear him limb from limb.”

  “With his status Monglig cannot fight the case, even if he grants Todoyan feud of honour. That is much to grant. It is to grant him his chance to slay a second after the first. Has he the right to strike back, the right to equal fight? Is this an affair of honour?”

  “To be pragmatic: Tayichiut offer to pay. To turn down payment and take blood is without doubt to incur retaliation. They won’t see our license. That’s a course you have to justify to your victim’s chief, and guess who the Tayichiut chief is?”

  “I too say we have to be pragmatic, given who the culprit’s chief is.”

  “Marvelous. I thought you were about to ask me to walk up and shoot him.”

  “Are you in mind to agree to payment?”

  “Yes, I am. What else? You want me to challenge, don’t you?”

  “No. I ask you to demand of them feud of honour, for me to undertake.”

  Daritai arched his brows. “You?”

  “Me.”

  “Is this to get me laughed at again, Hoelun? First you won’t do me the honour, and next, you do the honours for me. Is this to amuse the neighbours?”

  “This is because they won’t have Monglig, while you are the otchigin with a camp of widows and children who do not want to risk you, and I am happy to.”

  “Do you acknowledge that the family domestics are in my charge?”

  “Yes. That is a fact.”

  “And that the case is in my hands?”

  “Yes.”

  “As otchigin I have duty towards my dead brother. Duty of shelter to his dependants. To permit you to fight the case is scarcely to shelter you. I don’t believe my dead brother can dissent from my answer. My answer is no.”

  “Then Todoyan pays so-and-so heads of livestock. Perhaps he can steal them.”

  “Neither he nor I set the price.”

  “Those who can’t fight, or those who won’t fight, take payment for murder.”

  “Now I am a coward?”

  “No-one expects the otchigin to fight, who has been kept from combat.”

  “I must point out your own want of expertise.”

  “My competence to stand to Jaraqa’s slayer is for me to judge. On the subject of his temper I have heard Yesugei say, a temper isn’t altogether bad but is there to be lost at the right time. Rarely though he challenged, when he did, his temper was what won for him.”

  “Yes. Along with his wrist action, I venture to suggest.”

  “Your answer is no?”

  “It hasn’t altered since I told you. Mind, I cast no aspersion on your temper, or its competence to kill at twenty paces, nor on your temperament in general. My brother coped with you, but then he was fifty times the man I am.”

  “If you were the last man on earth, Daritai.”

  “If you were the last woman, Hoelun, believe me, I’d share a ger with my mare.”

  “Your mare might understand you. Your mare might find you sufficient to her emotional life.”

  “Tiger’s teeth and claws of bear,” emitted Daritai, mildly. “And this, now, is an attempt to bait me into a challenge? You want to fight me now, Hoelun? Quite happy to come at me with a sabre, instead?”

  Yes. I want to fight. I want to gut an Oirat the way I gut a trout. I want to conquer the Orqon. I want, I want.

  I want Yesugei. I want to be with him, and what years are there to wait?

  Have patience, my wife, my love. I am patient.

  You are a ghost.

  True, the time is nothing to me, the time until we are together again. Our amgalant, our jargalant: at one, and in our joy.

  I am not as religious as you are, Yesugei.

  No, but you have faith in me.

  Can I have a heaven, just you and me alone?

  “Hoelun,” interrupted Daritai, concern undisguised in his voice. “Things get easier. Things get easier with time.”

  “I know they do,” she whispered. She stood up, and she smiled at him. “Let us be honest, as we have already been childishly rude. Yesugei must be perplexed to hear us, to hear how shabby we are without him. You don’t need me, Daritai, and I don’t need you. I am going to camp alone.”

  Yesugei’s staff sat and digested the information from Daritai that they weren’t Yesugei’s staff, and weren’t his widow’s – they were his. “Her ladyship the she-marshal can come or go as suits her. Family staff, I’m sorry to say, came to me with the furniture. I need a quartermaster. I need a flock watch. And you, Qongdaqor, won’t stand like a tin soldier, I’ve plenty for you to do. But you can sleep at home, how’s that? We aren’t a military headquarters, we’re the home help brigade. I’m the butler.”

  Of the four brothers, Daritai had always been least likely to blow up in your face – Daritai, notorious for a detached, sardonic nonchalance. But Hoelun had got under his skin. Perhaps Monglig felt the worst, for they knew she had had a row with him over his father. Or else Ubashi felt the worst. Or else Qongdaqor.

  Monglig sniffed into his sleeve, “The last he said to me, he said he had entire trust in me.”

  Qongdaqor upped this. “He reminded me I don’t leave his wife’s door.”

  “The door’s about to leave you,” Ubashi told him bleakly. “And your new owner has new orders and you’re not allowed to follow.”

  Qongdaqor thought he detected insurgency abubble. “Follow, you’re a runaway, and he can slit your heels and drop in hair to lame you.”

  “He won’t do that.”

  “No. Not to otogu. Even in a mood. But that’s what obedience is. No ifs and buts. As if I’
m holy writ, said Yesugei. He always was to me. But I can’t split hairs and say I don’t owe obedience to his otchigin. It’s not, obey the one you loved.”

  “I love Daritai,” declared Ubashi. “He’s being a cock right now. You love your family, even the cocks.”

  Qongdaqor went on with his correction of rebel tendencies. “The fact is, Yesugei was very soft on us. As tin soldier by his door he put a hat on me for ornament, that’s meant to be for noyons. To abuse his great humanity to us isn’t gratitude. I know what I am. The hat hasn’t gone to my head. Prove disobedient and he’ll wear half the blame, they’ll talk about his laxity. Now, there’s Noikon, his widows and orphans here we oughtn’t to forget. And Hoelun...”

  “What, Hoelun?” truculently from Ubashi.

  Stoutly he said, “She has her rights here, if she wants them. Come or go is up to her.”

  “Up to her, to stomach Daritai or not?”

  “And as to where he sleeps, he can’t insist.”

  Ubashi gnashed.

  “How is she to manage?” asked Monglig. “Heavy work with the animals. The wagons.”

  “Just watch her.”

  “A maxim to keep in mind, Ubashi.”

  That was Qongdaqor. “What?” He gaped, he opened his arms. “What is this?”

  Qongdaqor justified himself. “Yesugei used to tease you.”

  “It’s highly indecent. Yesugei used to get away with a lot.”

  Hoelun and Suchigu were twisting new hair into old baggage ropes. Ubashi, who loitered in the great tent lately, came in as Suchigu said, “There’s the two high-wheeled carts, and there’s the ger wagon, but what of my tent? We won’t be on the flats, that we can go tandem with the heavy vehicles.”

  “A boy can drive your tent-cart, since a boy can drive, I suppose. Can a boy drive, Ubashi?”

  He ducked his head. “And why