It was high summer. A slave was tending a band of cattle grazing between two rolling hills near the Tola River. The sun was hot, and he sweated. Just now he watched four men riding eastward toward and past him, along the ancient road. Such traffic was not unusual, but even at some distance, his sharp herdsman’s eyes found more than a little unusual about these four. None were dressed in Mongol garb. One was a giant who rode naked to the waist, as did one of the others; foreigners, obviously. Also, though clearly they seemed to be travelers, they had neither pack animals nor remounts.
A great dark bird rode the withers of the giant’s horse, perhaps an eagle trained to falconry. He’d heard of such.
A long hour would take them to the great encampment at Urga, a buried city site long mined for its steel and copper. There, just now, the four Buriat tribes were gathered in congress, to council, trade, and drink. And perhaps elect a Great Khan who would lead the entire Buriat people.
It seemed to the slave, who was also a Mongol, that his master should be told of these foreigners. Turning his horse, he cantered off over a hill to the freeman who supervised him, and reported what he’d seen. The freeman, in turn, sent a messenger to Urga.
From Urga, a marshal was dispatched with an arban of men—more than enough to deal with four foreigners—and they cantered off westward down the ancient, grassgrown road. Shortly the four came into sight over a rise a kilometer ahead, and two of them did appear shirtless. Foreigners certainly!
The marshal barked an order. His ten men kicked their horses into a gallop, then drew bows from their saddle boots and fitted arrows to them.
Baver felt instant alarm as the group of Mongols charged toward them. Svartvinge raised his broad wings and sprang lightly from the withers of Nils’s horse, wing-strokes making hard whooshing sounds as he rose. Baver turned his attention to Achikh, who led them; seen from behind, the husky Buriat showed no reaction. Nor did Nils seem perturbed, and surely he would know if the oncomers intended to skewer them.
A second later Achikh spoke, and the four stopped to wait. Baver’s guts clenched as the Mongols came on. At some twenty meters the arban drew up before them in a cloud of dust, arrows still nocked but the short, thick bows unbent.
“Who are you, and what are you doing here?” the marshall barked.
“I am Achikh, son of Kokchü. And you are my old friend, Elbek. I have come to see my eldest brother, Kaidu.”
For just a moment the man’s mouth was a round O. Then, “Achikh!” he shouted, and grinning rode his horse up beside Achikh’s, where the two men embraced, both talking at once. The arban’s ferocity and tension were gone; most of them were grinning too. When their leader had completed his greeting, two of the others also rode up and embraced Achikh as an old friend.
Then Elbek assembled his duty face. “And those with you,” he said. “Who are they?”
Achikh had them identify themselves, which they did in Mongol, at once a strong point in their favor. “We are friends, Achikh went on, “who have traveled together for a year now. They were out adventuring when we met. I had already known Nils Hammarsson as a famous fighting man, the most famous in the west.”
Elbek looked at Nils in open appraisal, his glance pausing only briefly on the Northman’s eyes. “I can believe that,” he said. He gestured upward then, at Svartvinge circling and croaking. “That is a strange bird to use in falconry,” he said chuckling, then returned his attention to Achikh. “And now you will see your brother. Well.”
Elbek glanced about and gave an order, then with the four, started down the road eastward, he and Achikh leading off. The arban let them pass, and brought up the rear.
“As I remember it, Kaidu had already been chosen chief before you left,” Elbek said. “He is chief still. Old people say surely the best since Kutula—better even than Kokchü. Old Toghrul says there is something about chiefs whose names begin with K. Your brother does not rage, but sees widely and judges fairly, as he did among us when we were children and he an older boy. Now a great congress of the tribes is being held, and when it is over, it is possible that the Buriat will have a Great Khan again! If they do, I think it will be Kaidu. He is meeting with the clan chiefs and the heads of the great families today, in the Council Grove. It may be he cannot see you till supper. We will find out.”
“Let us not distract him in council,” Achikh said. “We will tend our horses first, and eat and drink. Then perhaps we will sit in the rear of the listeners.”
They were near enough to the great encampment that now there were numerous bands of horses grazing about, along with small bands of cattle and sheep brought to feed the multitude, the thousands who were at the congress. Occasionally men or children would ride near enough to examine the strange-looking foreigners from a little distance. Then they crossed one last rise, and before them, by a river, spread the encampment. Here was no array of leather travel tents. Several thousand greased felt gert, large and not large, lay spread in ordered groups. Most had been whitewashed The broad, flat carts they’d been transported on were drawn up in neat ranks.
Elbek took them to the chief marshal, who was an older cousin of Achikh’s, and he in turn had some lesser members of Kaidu’s retinue turned out of their ger to provide proper lodging for the newcomers. A woman was assignee to cook tor them, a meal consisting of beef boiled and beef roasted, of curds, of airag flavored with beets, and of honey-sweetened tea, which seemed to be regarded as a special delicacy. Achikh explained that honey and tea were produced far to the south; and gotten in trade from the Chinese.
Then Mongol clothing was brought for them—silk for Achikh as the chief’s brother, and woolen for his guests. Clearly they’d been worn by others earlier, and not washed, but Baver was much less fastidious these days. They had nothing that fitted Nils; he would wear what he’d come in, dirt and all. Before they changed, water was brought to them, and bowls, though no soap, and they all stripped and washed. The nearby river invited, but they remembered Achikh’s lessons on taboos and lesser injunctions.
When the council adjourned in midafternoon, the four newcomers were taken to the great ger of Kaidu, the chief, where guards took their weapons before they went in.
They entered bent low, especially Nils; the doorway required it. Svartvinge rode through on Nils’s forearm. Kaidu sat waiting on an actual chair, carved from a single great block of wood. At each side of him, others sat on thick felt cushions, while before him, nearly twenty sat crosslegged on the floor mats.
“Kaidu Long Nose” was the chief’s complete appellation, Achikh had told them. On that basis, Baver had expected someone with a long nose, but on New Home or among the Northmen, Kaidu’s nose would have been considered quite modest. Only by Mongol standards was it long.
He d been told of their arrival, and had prepared for them. A cushion immediately next to him was vacant, and there was room for more to sit on the floor in front of him. Baver kept an eye on both Achikh and Nils, for clues on what to do. Kaidu stood up when they entered. The rest turned to look. For a long moment it seemed to Baver that everyone’s attention was stuck on Nils, his size, physique, and eyes, and perhaps on Svartvinge, whom he’d transferred to his shoulder.
Kaidu beckoned them to the front, where he embraced Achikh, then stepped back to arm’s length, beaming at him. “Little brother!” he said. “You’ve grown. You’ve become a powerful warrior, and I see scars where there were none before.” After they’d embraced again, he looked once more at his brother’s companions. “Who are these others?” he asked.
Achikh introduced them, speaking formally, giving them their appropriate surnames, titles, and group affinities. Kaidu gazed long at each of them, but especially at the giant Northman with the uncanny eyes. Then he in turn introduced the men who sat on cushions. One was Fong Jung Hing, ambassador from the Emperor of China, a calm-seeming, quiet man whose aristocratic, fine-featured face seemed as foreign among the Buriat as Nils’s Scandinavian features. Another was Teb-Tengri, whom he introduced as the principal shaman of Kaidu’s tribe, the Black Stallion Tribe. Baver recognized the name Teb-Tengri as meaning something like “Most Heavenly.” The shaman was a rather tall man of perhaps twenty-five or thirty years, and gaunt for a Buriat, with an arrogant face and bearing. Baver wondered if he was unwell, or if his gauntness was due to fasting; Achikh had once said that shamans sometimes fasted to sharpen their powers.
The introductions over, Kaidu seated his new guests, Achikh on his right, and the three foreigners in the back row among those on the floor. The chief moved his gaze first to Nils, then to Svartvinge, and finally to his shaman, to whom he spoke now. “Tell me, Teb-Tengri, what you see in this great raven and its master.”
The shaman stared long at Svartvinge, then more briefly at Nils. Finally he spoke. Declaimed. “The bird is a great devil, Kaidu son of Kokchü, and the yellow-haired foreigner another. They have come here to do you great ill.”
The ger became silent for a long moment. Baver felt his heart thudding, and realized he d stopped breathing. The chief, however, had lost none of his poise.
“Indeed?” He looked at Achikh beside him. “And what would you reply, brother?”
Achikh had gotten to his feet by then, hand on sword-hilt, voice tight with anger. “Your shaman is alive this moment only because of the yassa against killing inside a dwelling.”
Kaidu’s eyebrows jumped. “Ah? And you, Teb-Tengri—what would you recommend be done with these whom you say are devils?”
Teb-Tengri’s voice was as implacable as before. “Kill the bird first, then its servant, using methods to prevent their souls from escaping their bodies.”
Kaidu still had shown no emotion deeper than very mild surprise. Looking at Nils he said: “And you—” He paused, groping for the foreign name, then gave up on it. “What do you say to this serious accusation?”
Nils bowed slightly without rising, and his voice, when he spoke, was mild. “Most men have something they don’t want others to know of.” He turned his strange gaze toward Teb-Tengri. “Your shaman, for example.” He paused, glass eyes fixed on the gaunt face, seeming to look into and through it. “He fears I will tell what it is.”
The shaman’s face seemed to freeze.
“Actually,” Nils went on, “there is another man in this room, besides himself and me, who knows his secret. Another with wizard powers. As Teb-Tengri already suspects.”
“Um.” Kaidu looked curiously at Teb-Tengri. “I am interested, but perhaps it’s best to pursue this no further. Shaman, if you agree to forget this business of executing the foreigner, I will not ask him what your secret is. For secret or not, your powers are useful to our people and to me.
“As for the foreigner’s bird, it is an owned bird, and not to be harmed.”
Teb-Tengri opened his mouth as if to protest, then clamped it shut. Baver’s thuttering heart slowed a bit.
Kaidu turned to Nils. “Among us, an owned bird has protection, and he who kills one is subject to suffocation. This yassa is intended to protect falcons and other hunting birds, but it states simply birds.” He turned his face to Teb-Tengri again. “Heed me, shaman.”
Once more he stood up. “This audience is now over. Everyone will leave except my brother and—” Again he groped unsuccessfully for Nils’s name. “You,” he said, pointing. “The Northman.”
When the others had left, all of them but Kaidu’s two bodyguards, the chief sat again and spoke to Nils. “You said that someone else in this room was a wizard. I must know who this person is.”
“It is the emperor’s ambassador, Fong Jung Hing.”
Kaidu’s lips pursed, and he nodded thoughtfully. “I believe you in this. I had wondered.” He looked up at his bodyguards, who were also his cousins. “You will say nothing of this to anyone,” he told them, stressing what was already his policy for private meetings. Then he looked at Nils again. “Now you must tell me how you know.”
As he had done before, at critical times, Nils reached to his face, removed his eyes, and held them out in his hand to Kaidu, who stared in shock, first at the empty sockets, then at the pieces of colored glass in the callused palm. An oath breathed from his lips, and he turned to Achikh.
“Brother,” he husked, “did you know of this?”
Achikh nodded. “He is a very great wizard. Also a man who speaks carefully and keeps his word.”
“May I advise the great chief?” Nils asked quietly.
Kaidu nodded, his nerves taut with the shock of what he’d seen.
“Do not judge Teb-Tengri by his secret,” Nils said. “That lies in the past, before he was a grown man, and what he did then, he wishes he had not. Judge him by his character now, the good and the bad, and his shaman skills. Also, can he be trusted? How far? And with what?
“As for those skills—He distrusted me. With eyes like mine, it’s not surprising that someone might take me for demon-possessed. But one who has great shaman powers should see more deeply than that. Teb-Tengri is clever, but his wizard powers are minor.”
While Nils spoke, Kaidu relaxed considerably. Quietly the Mongol chief put one of the glass eyes on the cushion to his left, where Teb-Tengri had sat, and covered it with a kerchief. The other he put in an empty drinking bowl on a stool to his right.
“Part of Teb-Tengri’s usefulness to you,” Nils was saying, “is that your people believe in him. Also he is a Buriat. Beyond his own self-interest, which may or may not rule him in a given instance, he has in mind the interest of his people and his tribe. That is not true of foreigners, however able, however powerful. Fong is a much more powerful wizard, but his loyalties are to his emperor.”
‘And your loyalties?”
“My loyalty is to the Tao.”
“Hmm. I have heard of the Tao, but do not know what it is. It is a very old belief that is lost to us. Do the people of the west have it?”
“A few do. I learned of it from my first teacher, Raadgiver, counselor to chiefs. It had been passed down to him through many generations. At the time I accepted it as an idea. Since then it has become more and more real to me.”
Kaidu had watched Nils carefully while they’d talked. Now he contemplated the Northman at some length, his eyes fixed on the sunken sockets, the collapsed and wrinkled lids. Finally he said, “Tell me, Northman, can you see without your eyes?”
“Easily.” Nils put Svartvinge aside, stood up and stepped forward, taking the one eye from beneath the kerchief, the other from the drinking bowl.
When he’d returned them to his face, he changed the subject. “Your brother has had marvelous experiences and adventures in the west,” he said. “I believe you would find them interesting and enlightening.”