Until the Sun Falls (23 page)

“Did I not?” He smiled. “I said things to your Ancestor, Quyuk, that should have gotten me killed. Temujin let me live. A mistake, maybe. The habit’s strong from overuse.”

“If Temujin didn’t kill you, I’d be less than he if I did.”

“You could say so.”

“Hunh.”

Ana returned and served Psin, and he ate. Quyuk drank half the wine in the jug. At last, he said, “My father said when he exiled me here that I would learn to serve or die.”

“Well,” Psin said. “You’ve not learned to serve, and you’re still alive. The Kha-Khan underestimates you.”

Quyuk was pleased; his eyes narrowed to slits. “My wife and my mother will take care of the rest. All I need is to be alive and in Karakorum when my father dies.”

“Siremon is alive, and your father’s choice.”

“Siremon is a child.”

“Kaidu’s age. He grows older, too—that seems to be the natural way of living. Your father might outlive your hopes.” Ogodai was strong. The drink had riddled him through with small weaknesses, but he was strong. “And besides, child, you have us all to contend with. Every man who casts a vote.”

“I can handle the Altun.”

“Can you, now.”

Quyuk’s neck swelled. “I will deal with you all, when I am the Kha-Khan.”

“Kill me,” Psin said softly. “And kill Tshant and your brother and Mongke, and do what you can to kill Batu and his brothers. Kill the khans of all the clans from the Caspian to the China Sea. In the end you’ll have nothing to be Kha-Khan of but black sand.”

“Not all of you. Just… a few.”

“You’d better learn to compromise with us now, Quyuk. If you kill one of us you’ll have to kill us all. Do you think we would let you be Kha-Khan if we thought you’d break the Yasa?”

“I am—”

“No worth, until you start to make bargains.”

The door opened, and Tshant came partway into the room. He stopped; Psin glanced at him. Quyuk had heard him enter. He said, “Psin, I’ll bargain with you.”

“With that look in your eyes, no. The Ancestor was a subtle man, Quyuk. He fenced the Khanate so that no one like you will ever come to it. Tshant, what do you want?”

Quyuk got up and charged out of the room. Tshant sank down into the chair he had left. “What were you talking about?”

Psin leaned back, surprised that he was almost dizzy. “His chances to be Kha-Khan.”

Tshant was coiled up, set to spring, and his eyes burned. “Do you think he will?”

“Maybe.”

“He’s too dangerous.” Tshant tried to loosen his muscles and could not. Psin saw the effort. “How can we protect ourselves?”

“We’ll consider that when we come to it. I haven’t been marrying off your sisters to half the tribes in the north to keep myself amused through the cold winter nights. He says you have Tver and Yaroslav invested but not taken.”

“Tver is too far away, and Yaroslav is too strong. I have two tumans—both understrength. I’ve been to Yaroslav…. But I have some captives, and if I could only make them talk, maybe we’d learn something worth knowing.”

“Where are they?”

“Down in the basement. Do you want to see them?”

“Later. What does Yaroslav look like?”

Tshant shrugged. “It’s on the Volga, where another river flows into it, and they’ve cut a ditch between the two, so that it’s actually on an island. A wide ditch. The walls are of logs, like all the rest, but these have little houses built into the wall at each corner. There aren’t many people there, but they’re determined.”

“All right. Now let me see the prisoners.”

They went down the corridor to the stair. Psin’s legs wobbled at the knees. He breathed deeply, and that made his heart beat in a broken rhythm. Going down the stair, he held onto the railing so tightly that he caught a splinter in the ball of his thumb.

“Most of them were in a party from Yaroslav that tried to get into Tver,” Tshant said. He cocked his finger at a sentry, who followed them. They were in a damp stone hall stinking of cobwebs and rats. “We always let them out of the cities and try to ambush them when they’re in the open.”

Psin pulled the splinter out. “Good.”

“The horses of the last party out of Yaroslav were gaunter than the ones before. But not ribby. They’re not starving yet.”

Two sentries saluted and Tshant nodded. “Open the door for us.”

One of them said, “It’s good to see the Khan well again.”

“The air down here might make the Khan very ill very shortly.”

They laughed. Tshant said, “The guard here changes eight times a day.”

They walked into a lightless room. The air in the hall had been sweet compared to the stench in here. Psin wrinkled his nose. Something ran splashing across the floor. A light flowered, and Tshant waved the torch back and forth to spread the flame all around the head. In the light Psin could see almost all the room. Puddles of water covered the floor. Half a dozen Russians sat on a bench at the far end, their feet hobbled. Two had shaggy beards down to their belts, but the others were reasonably trim.

“He’s from Yaroslav,” Tshant said, and pointed to a blond man just out of youth.

The man stood up, throwing his head back defiantly. Psin said, “Come here.”

“No.”

One of the others murmured, “Mother of God, he speaks Russian.”

Psin gestured to the sentry. “Drag him over here.”

The sentry unbuckled his swordbelt and handed it out the door. The blond man set himself. Tshant said, “You see how they are. They won’t talk.”

“Have you tried to persuade them?”

“They die first. They won’t talk. Whip, fire, iron—nothing opens their mouths.”

The sentry grabbed the blond man by the shoulder and hurled him down to the floor in front of Psin. The man groaned in rage. Psin put a boot on his back to hold him down.

“I want a dry room, with a window,” Psin said. “Sentries under the window but out of sight.”

“You were just sick,” Tshant said. “Do you think you could stop this one from killing you before the sentries came?”

Psin’s teeth clenched. He caught Tshant by the wrist and twisted. Tshant whirled around, his free hand jerking toward his dagger. Psin let him go.

“See how weak I am?”

Tshant looked down at the Russian. “You’ll squash him.”

Psin backed away from him. “Go do as I say.”

Tshant went by him. Psin looked at the other Russians. None of them had tried to help the one at his feet. He kicked the man before him lightly in the ribs, and they stiffened but said nothing and did not move their hobbled feet.

“Such courage,” Psin said, in Russian. He left the room.

Tshant was at the foot of the stair, talking to four Kipchaks. They saluted and trotted up the stairs. Psin said, “Where are the other prisoners from?”

“Places I’ve already taken.” Tshant’s mouth twitched. “You are weaker. Before you were wounded I’d have dislocated my shoulder, turning like that against your hand.”

Psin cuffed him hard. “Don’t try my coat on quite yet.”

Tshant looked as if he meant to cuff Psin back, but he only lifted his wrist. The marks of Psin’s fingers were fading like old bruises. “I’m pleased to wear your badge, Khan.” He bounded up the stair, two steps at a time.

Psin swore at him. The stink of the basement made him gag. He felt light-headed, and he waited a little before he tried the climb up to the ground floor.

They brought the Russian in, still hobbled, and thrust him into the chair across from Psin. The window behind Psin opened on the little courtyard, brilliant with sunlight. While the sentries left, the Russian blinked and winced away from the light, but he kept his eyes turned toward the courtyard.

“You are from Yaroslav,” Psin said.

The Russian said nothing. His face was set like iron.

“Everything will go much easier for you if you answer me.”

The Russian’s face contrived disdain.

Psin leaned back. He had put a cushion against the back of the chair. His dagger lay on the table next to the bowl of fruit the Russian was trying not to see. Psin took the dagger and pared his thumbnail.

“Mongols know little about tortures. I hear the captives we’ve tried to force to talk have died first. That’s the trouble with tortures; they tend to kill people. The Chinese are more subtle at it. They have ways of loosening a man’s resolve that don’t kill. But they do tend to send a man mad. The Yasa says we may not kill madmen.”

The Russian looked contemptuous. Psin picked up an apple and rolled it across the table to him. “Eat.”

The Russian had caught the fruit before it fell off the table. He looked up, startled. His hands caressed the apple, stroking the tough, tight skin.

“Go ahead, eat it.”

The Russian put the apple swiftly to his mouth and bit, watching Psin; he obviously thought Psin would try to swat it out of his mouth. He chewed. Before he had swallowed the first bite he was gnawing at the apple again. The fruit vanished faster than Psin had thought possible—the Russian even ate the core.

“I said that if you don’t start talking, things will get harder.”

The Russian shook his head. Psin took another apple from the dish and ate it, slowly, crunching it between his teeth. The Russian licked his lips.

“Horses like apples. Would you eat another?”

The Russian said nothing, but his eyes went back to the dish. Psin rolled an apple across the table, and this time the Russian caught it before it reached the edge. He tried to eat slowly but he couldn’t keep from gobbling. This time he put the core on the table.

“As I said, horses like apples. I saw a horse eat meat once, in the middle of a bad winter.”

The Russian wrinkled his nose.

“You don’t believe me. Well. If you like apples, and horses like apples, maybe if a horse likes meat, you’d like meat. Unh?”

Suspicion flooded over the Russian’s face.

“Maybe you’ll talk better on a full stomach. Kuchuk.”

The door opened at once, and Kuchuk looked in.

“Bring me two bowls of meat. Ask Oktana, she has some set aside for me.”

“The Khan wishes.”

Psin watched the door shut and pared his nails again. He did not look at the Russian. He didn’t care whether the man tried to attack him or not, except that it would look odd to be feeding him afterward. He kept the dagger working. The Russian shifted a little in his chair, and Psin called, “Mulai.”

The door popped open, and Mulai said, “Yes?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to make sure you were there.”

Mulai shut the door again. The Russian relaxed.

The door swung open, and Kuchuk with two steaming dishes walked in. He put them down before Psin and laid spoons next to them. Psin pointed to the door. When the door had shut behind Kuchuk, he shoved one bowl over to the Russian’s side of the table.

The Russian’s nostrils flared. His tongue ran over his lips. The aroma of the meat seemed as visible as the steam. His hand moved toward the spoon.

“That horse,” Psin said. “The one that ate meat. Do you know what it ate?”

The Russian paused, the spoon over the dish.

Psin picked up his own spoon. “He ate the frozen body of a man.” He put a bite of meat in his mouth.

The Russian flinched. He looked down at his bowl. Psin spooned up some gravy and drank it. The meat was good, tender and only lightly cooked.

“Hah hah,” the Russian said. “You make up stories.” He began to eat.

“Sometimes.” Psin finished his meat and pushed the bowl aside. The Russian was eating so fast gravy splashed over his clothes. He was done immediately.

“You are from Yaroslav,” Psin said.

“You’ll have to kill me,” the Russian said.

“I’ve warned you twice. Twice you’ve not listened. Do you want to know what it was you just ate?” 

“Beef.”

“No. It didn’t taste like beef, did it. It didn’t taste like lamb, or goat, or even reindeer. It tasted a little different from—”

The Russian leapt up. “No. It was beef.” The blood left his face. “It was beef.”

“It was another Russian,” Psin said. 

“No.”

“After all, a man must eat something, and if there’s nothing else around—”

“No!” The Russian put his hands to his face. “Oh, God.”

“I warned you before you ate it. You were greedy. You were hungry. You didn’t want to believe me, so—”

The Russian leapt at him. Psin brought both feet up and kicked him in the chest. The Russian fell under the table, and Psin shouted for Mulai.

Mulai and Kuchuk dashed in. They caught the Russian before he could rise and wrestled him up against the wall, one on each arm.

Psin put his feet on the table. “I think we shall take you to Yaroslav, boy. And we shall tell the people inside that you were so hungry you ate stew made of a fellow Russian. We can’t kill you, of course. We aren’t permitted to kill madmen, and you must be mad to do such a thing.” Psin smiled. “I wonder what the people in Yaroslav would think of that. Or maybe we’ll send you back to your friends in the basement—”

“No,” the Russian said. He was sobbing. “I didn’t mean to, I—”

“You seemed to enjoy it. You haven’t even tried to throw it up.”

The Russian tore at Mulai’s grip on his arm, but Mulai only leaned harder against him. The Russian began to scream. While he was struggling Psin scratched the lip of his bowl with the dagger. Tears were rolling down the Russian’s cheeks. Psin had expected him to vomit, especially after eating two apples. Tshant fed his prisoners better than Psin had thought.

“I think we’ll throw you back with the—”

“You ate it too, you Tartar dog.” The Russian’s chest heaved.

Psin turned the bowl, so that the scratch was toward the Russian. “The bowls were marked. You’re going back to your friends. Maybe—”

“No. No, don’t. They’ll tear me to pieces.” The Russian’s face worked. He had slobbered into his beard.

Psin wrinkled his nose. “I don’t see any reason not to.”

“Please don’t put me in with them. They’ll murder me.”

Psin rubbed his cheek, scowling. He contrived to make his expression sneaky. “What will you give me?”

The Russian stared, and slowly his mouth grew firm and defiant. Psin let him work up his anger a little and said, “Do you have gold in Yaroslav? Jewels, maybe? After all, I can’t give you something for nothing. What will you give me?”