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Jaghatai Khan had been growing dubious about this meeting even before the Wolf King brought in his half of their exchange of gifts, revealing not gems or gold or the fine horse Jaghatai had hoped for but a chained and kneeling man.
A pity. He had hoped…
He would say, later, that he had hoped for an ally. But that was not all. Here before him was a man as tall and strong as he—two heads above any ordinary warrior— with strength and speed to match: another of the scattered descendants of the ancient god-king in whom his power woke. More than that: another so-called barbarian ruler, pushed to the fringe by the cities and the empires. An ally against those foes, a rival to test himself by, a brother in arms…
There was no point in allying with one who understood him so poorly.
Still. The alliance might have died in its cradle, but that did not mean Jaghatai wished open war in its place. He would have to go through the motions today, at least.
When the Wolf King’s captive rose to his feet, he was startlingly tall—even more so than the Wolf or Jaghatai himself—with ruddy brown skin, hair a shade duller than blood, and a single eye whose color seemed at one moment to be gold, the next blue, the next gray. He was festooned with golden rings—on his hands, in his ears, in his hair, in his nipples and his lower lip—and his shackles and collar were marked with gilded runes.
Jaghatai had heard that the Russ used strange restraints to bind the powers of sorcerers. He wondered how much truth there was in those rumors—were the runes for show, or did they truly hold power?
But between those shining, almost beautiful shackles were ordinary, heavy chains—between his ankles, just long enough that he could walk but not run; between his wrists, a shorter span. A third chain ran from his collar through the wrist-chain to the hand of a wolf-warrior; there was little slack in it, and the captive—the sorcerer—held his hands carefully to avoid putting pressure on his neck.
Compared to the ostentatious jewelry and the loud clank of chains it was easy to overlook his clothing—particularly as it was nearly invisible, trousers of far-trade silk slashed waist to ankle, so thin as to be transparent, the captive’s muscled legs and member visible through them.
Jaghatai realized that he was staring.
So was the captive, a frightened, wide-eyed expression that seemed ill-suited to his face. Worse—he’d paused in his slow approach, long enough to annoy the man who still held his leash.
The Russ warrior yanked him forward and he fell, hands clutching at the chain, sprawled on his knees.
Jaghatai might have said that he kept still because Leman of the Russ was watching—watching for any sign of weakness. But truth was bitterer than that. He, the swiftest warrior of the Endless Steppes—he hesitated out of shock and disappointment, that a man he had hoped to find common cause with had more in common with his oldest foes.
And then it was too late, or perhaps the moment of danger was past. The warrior hauled the captive to his feet and then threw him at Jaghatai’s.
“My gift to you,” said the Wolf King, with a wolf’s smile. “He was the king of a city of sorcerers, once.”
“I am well pleased,” Jaghatai said, and to suggest that this was true he put a hand on the captive’s head. The captive—his captive, now—shivered and pressed his brow against Jaghatai’s knee.
With his free hand Jaghatai gestured for his own men to bring forth the elaborate saddle and bridle that were to be his gift to the king of the Russ.
It was good, he reflected, that he had not prepared a living gift for his rival.
The Great Khan held Magnus’s chain as if he did not want it, but he walked quickly enough that Magnus struggled to keep up.
(It wouldn’t have been a problem, without the chains. His legs were longer. But with his stride so curtailed—)
Within the fine tent—ger, that was the word, though he knew few others of the language—the Khan relaxed. He sat on his bed—wide enough for two, long enough for for even Magnus to stretch out, with a high sideboard on the side that met the curved wall of the ger—and Magnus knelt obediently before him.
The Great Khan took hold of the leash-chain first, drawing it out from the one that bound his wrists, then breaking the single ill-soldered link that connected it to the collar. He wound the chain and set it on the ground, and Magnus felt something almost like hope, that that was the first thing he’d done.
Perhaps the Great Khan’s tastes didn’t run to pulling his concubines about by the neck, at least.
But he could think no more of that, because the Great Khan had taken his chin in hand and was staring intently at his face. If he didn’t like what he saw, Magnus was in trouble.
“Open your mouth,” he said. Magnus obeyed, forcing himself to keep still as his new owner felt the ring that joined his tongue to his lower lip.
The Khan was frowning. Had he not believed Leman had given him a sorcerer until now, or was it Magnus’s missing eye that offended him? He wasn’t even sure that Leman of the Russ hadn’t meant him as an insult, maimed as he was.
He was certain he’d meant him as a boast, a threat: the sorcerer-king of Tizca, brought low, humbled, broken. See to what I can reduce my rivals.
None of which required Magnus himself to as much as survive this night. Leman had enjoyed the process, yes—but he’d grown bored of the result. In the course of “preparing” him for Jaghatai Khan he’d paid more attention to him than he had in months.
For the Khan, he was a new amusement—or not an amusement at all. He wasn’t sure which would be worse.
“Go to bed,” said the Great Khan, so Magnus did. He didn’t pull the blankets over himself, but put his still-bound arms around his knees and waited.
The Great Khan didn’t pause to get a bottle of oil, or anything of the kind—Magnus stretched out his legs, trying to make the movement casual, trying to keep his body relaxed, if that was the only way he’d get to mitigate the pain.
But before the Khan got into bed he pulled the soft inmost blanket up—over Magnus’s legs, up to his chest—and then sat beside him, on top of it, to pull the outer felts and furs over them both
“Try to sleep,” he said.
Once Magnus would have found that impossible, frightened as he still was. But these days—he was asleep before the Khan.
They broke camp early the next morning, the two warlords and their entourages returning from this gray zone to their own undisputed territories.
Jaghatai lent the sorcerer some of his own clothing—no one else’s was large enough. Some of the Russ saw. Well, let them; he wasn’t about to let the man freeze, and riding was hard enough for one unaccustomed without having to do it in those flimsy trousers.
The sorcerer rode one of Jaghatai’s own remounts, tied into place after the first time it nearly threw him. Jaghatai wondered, before long, if he should have loaded the man in the wagon that carried his bed and yurt—but that seemed the greater insult, and he would be able to recognize it as one sooner or later.
Insult. He’d left the chain around his wrists, only taken the other from his ankles so he could ride, and he was worried about insulting him. Jaghatai shook his head at his own folly.
And then there was the ring in the sorcerer’s tongue. Was it a bit of petty cruelty, or a greater chain than the rest? Without it, would this man be a threat—or a powerful ally—or as helpless as he was now?
Part of him wanted to risk taking it out here and now. But he knew nothing of this man, save that Leman of the Russ had defeated and then abused him. There were a dozen southern cities, and some of their rulers…
He would ask Yesugei, he told himself. His old mentor was the wisest shaman on the steppes. Surely he would know the best course.
Until then, he would leave the chains as they were.
The journey lasted five nights and six days. Each evening Jaghatai Khan made a separate bed for Magnus, in arm’s reach of his own; each morning Magnus woke alone, frost in his hair.
Was it mercy, or simple disinterest? If the former, he couldn’t count on it lasting. If the latter…
Magnus told himself that if it was truly disinterest, someone else would have made his bed. But he couldn’t keep himself from worrying that he would soon be discarded, gifted to some other master who could well be even worse than the king of the Russ.
Magnus wasn’t hobbled at night, as he had more than half expected to be. But anyone could see that he was too weary to run, even if a man on foot and saddle-sore could outrun the Great Khan’s finest horses. He scarcely had the energy to eat before crawling into his bedroll.
At least that exhaustion made it easier to avoid flinching when the Great Khan touched or spoke or looked at him, or when one of the warriors cast a shadow from behind his back.
It might be different when they reached their destination—but then again, how did he know they had one? He knew almost nothing of the nomads. Perhaps the Great Khan spent every day like this, except when he fought a battle.
He was learning more words of their language, at least. Though those who spoke to him did so in the tongue of the Russ, among themselves they used their own. He was learning the warriors’ names, the greetings they used to each other, the words for food eaten on the trail. It was something.
He wished he could speak to them, ask questions. Which of these words means horse? Does the river we crossed yesterday have a name? Do you always change mounts so often, or only when men as large as the Great Khan are in the party?
What will become of me?
But the Russ ring bound his tongue, and he was silent.
The first thing Jaghatai did when they reached the main camp was to order the construction of a wax tablet and stylus, the kind the southern city people used to write ephemeral messages, and hand it to the sorcerer. It was clear he recognized what it was; he looked more animated than Jaghatai had seen him yet.
The first line the sorcerer wrote Jaghatai barely recognized as writing—a bird, weapon, two strange loops and an abstract single eye, all framed as with rope.
He shook his head. “I can’t read that.”
The sorcerer looked down, shaking hair across his face as he rubbed out the symbols—the Tizcan writing—from the tablet. Jaghatai thought, for a moment, of promising to learn.
Next he tried the runes of the Russ. How had he learned that, when the northerners held them sacred and forbade all save their wisest priests from learning? Certainly Jaghatai himself had not.
He wondered if the sorcerer could read the runes on his shackles.
Rather than think further of that Jaghatai leaned in, taking the stylus to write in his own language—Do you read Korchin? But the sorcerer only shook his head, frustrated.
No very great surprise; few outside the plains spoke Korchin, let alone wrote it. Jaghatai returned the tablet and stylus to his—say it—his captive.
The sorcerer tried a dozen scripts. Faster and faster he wrote and erased, until Jaghatai had to catch his hand to keep him from erasing the angular letters of the Baalite tribes.
“Magnus of Tizca,” he read aloud, and saw relief transform the sorc—Magnus’s face.
“Keep that,” Jaghatai said. “No one in the camp reads Baalite but me, and Yesugei when he gets here. But better to be able to talk to two of us than no one.”
Magnus nodded, and then—with an impulsiveness that Jaghatai found reassuring; he wasn’t broken yet—he took the slate back, erasing the words and replacing them with new ones, written deep and confident, before he let Jaghatai see again.
I can learn, he had written in Baalite, and following that the first word of the Korchin question Jaghatai asked earlier—almost perfectly formed, despite how briefly he’d seen it.
A clever man—and that might be underestimating him.
“Yes,” Jaghatai said. “You’ll learn.”
For the first time, Magnus smiled—a warm, incongruously confident expression.
Jaghatai found himself hoping to see it again.