River of Stars Page 16

  Once more across the fire, a high arc, one leg before him this time, one stretched behind. Was he showing off prowess too much, asserting the force and power of the Jeni? Te-kuan stopped smiling. He drank. He looked to his left where his most trusted councillor sat (side of the heart).

  Yao-kan murmured, “It is his first dance, lord of the steppe. He is presenting himself to the other two kaghans. Remember, the Altai moved on them last year, when this one’s father died. There was fighting.”

  The Altai had taken pasturelands from the Jeni and control of a river that had marked a border, shifting tribal boundaries and access to water. It was one of the things Te-kuan was going to have to deal with in the morning. Part of why he was here.

  “His name?” the emperor asked. “This one?”

  “O-Pang. His father was—”

  “I remember the father.”

  Te-kuan felt unhappy again, suddenly. His gaze went from the dancer to where the Altai sat, cross-legged on the ground, bare-chested, their hair in the style they still favoured—shaved in front and on top, long down the sides and the back, never tied. Longer than a Xiaolu woman’s, Te-kuan thought sourly.

  The Altai came from the northeast, towards the Koreini Peninsula, lands known to be among the worst on earth. Savage in winter: snow and ice, ice monsters prowling beyond hall fires in black nights (or so it was said). Broiling hot in summer with driedup streams, vast clouds of mosquitoes, and biting flies that blotted the sun, killed animals, and drove men mad.

  It was no wonder they sought to move south, the Altai. And west, perhaps, thought the emperor of the Xiaolu, sipping his kumiss again. Maybe they also wanted to move west.

  There were not many of them, no large number could live in such harsh lands. That was the one good thing about the Altai, he thought. That, and their furs and amber. Their women were ugly to him, squat. Men and women had black, small, hard eyes. The men rode horses as well as anyone alive.

  O-Pang of the Jeni did a last leap. Te-kuan saw him stumble a little on landing, and smiled thinly to see it. O-Pang turned and lifted a hand to his emperor. Te-kuan, all graciousness, saluted in return. He had not done that for the first kaghan. Give the young man a small gift. Keep him dancing.

  He was still in his black mood. These came over him sometimes. It was possible kumiss had something to do with it. He looked across at the Altai again. Their long-time kaghan was named Yan’po. A scarred, barrel-chested man, older than Te-kuan. Black hair covered his arms and chest like the pelt of an animal. The Altai still worshipped animals in the old way, found totem spirits among them. Their shamans worked magic among those spirits.

  There were tigers in the forests where they came from. The largest in the world, it was said. Their roaring in the night was reported to melt the strength from a man, make him unable to stand upright. Even a brave warrior would fall on the ground, meet his tiger-death blind and trembling.

  It wasn’t Yan’po of the Altai that the emperor was looking at in what he called his black mood. Black mood, he was thinking. Black Altai. He drained his cup. He set it on the ground beside him. He pointed. “We will have that one dance for us,” he said.

  He smiled, a smile none of his own people would ever confuse with amusement. “We would spare our old companion and subject, Yan’po, from dancing tonight. Let a younger man, their war-leader, outdo the kaghan of the Jeni, just as he tried to outdo him with an attack in spring.”

  There had been good-humoured, kumiss-infused talk and laughter within the circle of torches, under stars and sky. Now that stopped. There was no movement, suddenly. Even the men pouring the kumiss stood still. In the silence you could hear the crackle of the fire, the sound of horses in the wide night.

  On the far side of the fire, the war-leader of the Altai stared straight at the emperor. He said softly, barely moving his lips, “I will not do it.”

  His brother, beside him on his left, also staring ahead, said, “He will kill you.”

  “Then he kills me. I will not do it.”

  “Wan’yen—”

  “I will not do it. Take vengeance for me.”

  Someone moved on his other side. Their kaghan stood up heavily.

  He said, “I have not surrendered my title, emperor of the Xiaolu people. This dance is mine to do.”

  “Kaghan, no!” exclaimed the war-leader beside him, quickly looking up.

  “I will speak with you later,” snapped the kaghan. Yan’po’s thin white hair was still long, bright under the nearest torch. He had a diagonal scar down his chest from neck to hip. Two fingers of his left hand were missing.

  Across the space and the flame the emperor could be seen shaking his head. “I said the war-leader, kaghan of the Altai. He led the attack on the Jeni.”

  “Nothing the Altai do is without my deciding it,” said Yan’po. His voice was thin but clear.

  “Is it so? You were by the river then, kaghan, for that battle in spring?”

  Yan’po was silent. Everyone knew he hadn’t been.

  The emperor added, “When did the Altai tribe last go to war without their kaghan leading them? I have historians now at my court, they will wish to know. They write things down.” He said it viciously, like a lash.

  Yan’po shifted uneasily. “I will dance,” he insisted stubbornly. “It is my task and my ... my duty.”

  “Sit down!” said the emperor of the Xiaolu, and it was a command. “I said who I would have dance for me. Guards, if the war-leader of the Altai does not rise, shoot the three men to his left.”

  One of the three would be his brother.

  “I am the kaghan!” cried Yan’po.

  “And I am the emperor!” said Te-kuan.

  He looked across at the Altai war-leader, beside the standing figure of his kaghan. “Do you dance, or do I kill three people and let your kaghan do it, after all? I have decided I am content either way.”

  The emperor’s guards had drawn bows but had not fitted arrows yet. It would take no time at all to do so. These were riders of the steppe.

  Wan’yen stood up.

  Not a big man, but lean and muscled. His face was a mask. There came a sigh from the men gathered.

  “I am honoured to spare my kaghan the need to leap about in the dark,” Wan’yen of the Altai said. Describing it, defining it that way.

  Then he danced.

  It was not a dance such as the others had performed, nor one that anyone had ever seen at a tribute gathering. Wan’yen danced a war. Over and around that fire, in the circle of riders assembled under stars on the grassland by the river.

  He sprang over the flames as the Jeni kaghan had done, but his was not a movement meant to conjure grace or youth but a hard, fierce power. He did not kick back with his heels, or spread his legs like a slave woman hoping to attract a man and make a life out of the ruins of her capture.

  He went over the fire as if over a defensive ditch in a battle. He landed on the far side (towards the emperor) with his feet spread and balanced, and one could—easily—imagine a rider’s sword in his hand, or a bow. Light from behind him and light from the torches played across his body, sliding him into and out of a watcher’s vision as he moved.

  He circled the fire again, towards his own tribe, turning his back on the emperor. His now were the movements of a fighter in feigned retreat: the quick steps designed to draw an enemy to reckless pursuit. And then, from the far side of the fire he leaped over it again, but this time with a high head-over-heels flip, knees drawn up—the sort that the most skilled riders did from horseback to get them over a wall.

  Again he came down near the Xiaolu party and their bowmen, who still held their bows. The fire sparked behind him as he landed, half a dozen paces from the emperor.

  The Altai war-leader looked at Te-kuan, and in the uneven, wavering light, his gaze was not one that could be named submissive, however hard one might try.

  He circled back, spinning and wheeling, crouching and springing high, his right hand extended, and on
e could again imagine a sword there as he approached torches and passed around them, the movements still those of a man in battle, not a dancer. He thrust, he dropped to his knees, he rolled, was up and moving.

  Very calmly, Emperor Te-kuan said (his turn to look straight ahead), “He is to be killed when this stops. Tell the bowmen.”

  And as quietly, Yao-kan, his most trusted adviser, of his tribal group, his boyhood companion, said, “No, my lord. They have done what we asked. He is dancing.”

  “He is not dancing,” said the emperor of the Xiaolu.

  “He is! He is young, great lord, we will need his pride and skill. Remember that the Koreini in their peninsula are aggressive now. They may move west in spring. We have spoken of this. The Altai will be our first defence against them.”

  “Maybe the Altai. Not this one,” said Te-kuan. “Look at his eyes.”

  “His eyes? This is night, my lord, there are torches, we have all been drinking. You have enforced their submission. We must leave the tribes a shred of pride if we are to make use of them. We want them strong.”

  “I want this one dead.”

  “Then we will have war here and no one benefits.”

  “I do. By his death.”

  “Great lord, cousin ... I entreat you.”

  Wan’yen was still on the far side of the flames, still moving and spinning. He was close to where the Jeni leaders sat. There had been fighting between them in spring. It was to be settled, the consequences of that, in the morning.

  The emperor of the Xiaolu looked to his left, at his cousin, his companion. “This is your counsel? We are to permit this?”

  “It is. When you rise to thank the tribes, look at his kaghan only. Don’t even glance at this one when he sits down. Make it seem as if he was an amusement for you, a young man playing at war.”

  “He is not so young.”

  “All the better. He will fight the Koreini for you if they come!”

  The emperor was silent a moment. “We are going to rule in favour of the Jeni tomorrow?”

  “Of course you are,” said his cousin. “And that will show these Altai where power lies. The limits of their defiance.” The cousin smiled. “I have seen the Jeni women. I went this afternoon. I have selected two of them for you tonight, if you wish. They will ease any distress that has been caused.”

  The emperor looked away. He watched as the Altai’s dance ended. There was no applause or laughter. The tribes were waiting. For him.

  “Very well,” said Emperor Te-kuan. “I will be guided by you.”

  Said it on the grass, autumn, under the river of stars.

  He reclaimed his cup from where he had set it down. He stood, to offer his approval of the dances performed for him that night.

  Watching, listening, his adviser drew a deep breath, pleased to have calmed imperial fury, avoided a confrontation that would have—surely—led to the necessity of killing the Altai kaghan and all his party, weakening an entire tribe, altering the balance here in the east.

  One needed, he was thinking, to take a larger view in this game of empires and subject tribes and enemies to south and west and the far east. One needed to give wise counsel to angry, impulsive emperors who lacked, perhaps, one’s own vision. A little selfpityingly, he thought of the burdens of such a role as his.

  Kill the Altai war-leader? At a tribute gathering? Yao-kan shook his head, imperceptibly. We Xiaolu, he thought, have a distance to go before we understand the nature of an empire. He would do what he could, he thought, and then drank (with restraint) from his cup.

  Within a brief span, a short while as such matters go, he and his cousin, the emperor, would find themselves buried to their necks in dry grass at midday, midsummer.

  Sweetened blood would be poured over their heads and into their mouths, which would be forced open for that. Their arms would be trapped, embedded in the packed earth. They would be unable to do more than move their heads from side to side, and scream. There would be fire-ant mounds nearby. Screaming, of course, allowed the ants into their mouths.

  Leaders of the Altai, including their war-leader and his brother, would sit in a circle, much like this one, though in sunlight, watching as the two Xiaolu were devoured, turned into skulls. It took only a little time.

  Succeeding events would also unfold swiftly.

  In times long after, Kitan poets and wits would name the Four Most Calamitous Mistakes.

  Even the greatest rivers, crashing or spreading wide into the indifferent, encompassing sea, have small beginnings, sometimes moonlit.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Two things had changed Daiyan through the wind and cold of the winter now nearly over.

  In their marsh they had shelter and food, though the elements could afflict them. In wooden huts and barracks behind their network of canals and the maze-like watery paths, the outlaws wintered, better off than most.

  Soldiers no longer ventured into the treacherous byways of the marsh. Twice in the recent past they had done so, ordered to clean out the outlaws, and had been driven back, lost and hopeless in the intricate, changing interplay of water and wet earth, dying in numbers, many of them drowning, before the remnant retreated. After the second attempt they hadn’t come again.

  The outlaws of the marsh watched as the land warmed slowly towards spring along the Great River, which was very wide here. The far bank could not be seen on misty days. Songbirds returned, wild geese went north in ragged arrowheads. They saw long-limbed cranes landing, taking off. It was mating season. There were foxes.

  Daiyan liked the cranes but they affected his mood: what they meant in poetry, on wine vessels, teacups, paintings. A symbol. Fidelity. He’d been taught such things once. Another life.

  He observed all of this, sometimes among the others and sometimes apart, seeking space and silence under the sky, along the flat marshland. After so many years he was a leader here now, although still young for that. There was no one better with a bow. They had contests. There was no one better.

  He was good with swords, too, one of the best, though not the very best. They tested that, too, in the marsh. Size made a difference with blades, if quickness was equal, and there were bigger men among them. One man had some arcane skills. He said it was a legacy of the Kanlins, who were a matter of legend.

  Daiyan tried to get this one to train him, but the other was a prickly, difficult person and would not, seeing it as an advantage for himself to be the only one who could do certain things. He was probably right.

  Daiyan offered to teach him archery in exchange, but the other man scorned the bow: a barbarian’s weapon, he declared, a widely held view. “Kills a man you need to kill,” was all Daiyan had said to him.

  He had come to be known as one who needed time alone. He read books when he could get them. It was hard to keep books in the dampness of the marsh. He wrote sometimes, reflections, then destroyed these in fires or in the water.

  You were allowed to be a little different if you were good in a fight and very good at devising plans and implementing them. If you brought in money and good men, dealt with the villages for food and medicine, and killed efficiently when you needed to. He was adept at making people laugh, or deflecting a quarrel, both useful among men living too close together. He grew a beard to look older, sometimes went about with a cloak and hood instead of a hat.

  Thoughts assailed him, darkened his mood, drove him away into twilights, even in winter rain.

  They had continued, over time, to learn the scale of the disaster in the northwestern desert: the end of the long war, aftermath of the wrecked assault on Erighaya.

  Stories kept rippling, even now. The rest of the imperial army, wherever they were posted, had been gutted by the tale of that retreat. Most of the surviving leaders of the expedition had been executed. The overall commander of that army, the eunuch Wu Tong, had survived. Politics of the court, powerful friends.

  Daiyan had images of killing that one himself.

  He also thought: an
army needed leaders, not just men to serve and fight, and the true enemy, surely (surely!) was still the Xiaolu. And the true goal, the deep longing, remained the Fourteen Prefectures. Lost, surrendered, and they still paid tribute north.

  Even as a boy in the west, he had hated the tale of that surrender. He’d dreamed in a narrow bed of swinging a sword and changing everything. Nothing of that had altered for him, though so much else in life had gone differently from what he had expected—beginning with a moment on a country road.

  He didn’t dwell upon that memory. It was difficult. He moved his thoughts away.

  He thought: Why had they been fighting the Kislik in the first place? The Kislik meant nothing that truly mattered. That he brooded upon. No one had yet explained it to him. Not that political insight was easy to come by in the world in which he moved. You couldn’t just stop by a yamen in a market town and have a visit over spiced tea and sweet cakes with the sub-prefect.

  Thinking about that, how cut off he was, would make him restless. Some mornings he’d take three or four of the newest men and go along their side of the river, hunting, gathering tidings, teaching them how to move unseen against a winter skyline. Sometimes he’d treat them to wine and a girl in wine shops at villages they knew were safe. Then they’d come back to the marsh.

  This time, spring coming, the world quickening, he didn’t want to be teaching. He spoke to the other leaders and left the camp one morning. He did this often enough, came home with useful information; it was accepted, even encouraged. Ren Daiyan was, everyone knew it, different.

  Zhao Ziji came with him. Ziji almost always came with him.

  They went east across a warming land. Saw leaves appearing, first blossoms. It rained twice, which was good. They needed spring rain here, always. They slept among trees except for a night with the ferryman who would take them across the river. The man could be trusted. He hated the tax officers and the Flowers and Rocks people, equally.

  He was an old man. This had been his ferry for thirty years, he told them. His son had been meant to take it over, but he’d been claimed for the war eight years ago and died there.