“They might take you prisoner, my lord prince, and then we would have to bargain for your release.”
“We have sworn oaths, an agreement.”
“People are tricky,” Gyasi said, still without opening his eyes. “One man may promise life to his brother and after this stab him in the back.”
“What protection should I take?”
One of the nephews eased out from between the slitlike entrance. He dropped to one knee before Sanglant in the gesture of obedience common to the Quman, then slipped out into the night with his bow case bobbing on his back.
Because of the way the light cast shadows, Sanglant could not see Gyasi’s face distinctly, but he knew when the shaman opened his eyes. That stare could be sensed even when it could not be seen, as a man can feel the glare of the sun on his back or the appraisal of an interested woman.
“We protect you, great lord. Bulkezu had one time a brother who is like me a shaman. Now he is dead.”
“He is the one whose magic killed Prince Bayan.”
Gyasi shrugged. Bayan’s fate held little interest for him. “Many seasons ago I am driven out of the tribe like a sick woman with no sons to protect her. My cousins know I hold no love for them in my heart after they have beaten me with sticks and burned my tent. No shaman walks with the Pechanek tribe who is so powerful that he can walk the shaman’s path beside me. Do not fear them. They fear me. If they kill you, I will eat their flesh and grind up their bones to feed the dogs.”
Sanglant laughed. “Then I shall walk into their camp without fear. I’ll go alone, Fulk, with Breschius and Hathui. They can’t kill me in any case, even if they try, and it’s better if they continue to fear me because I do not fear them.”
“I do not like this, my lord prince.”
“I have made up my mind.”
Fulk nodded unhappily. He was the most valuable of captains: a good man in all ways, including knowing when his protests might receive a hearing and when it was better to shut up.
Gyasi shut his eyes, humming in a singsong voice as though he had forgotten them.
Sanglant stepped out into the full blast of the wind and took hold of the rope. As they trudged across the open ground, the lamp sputtered and went out despite its glass casing, but with a hand on the rope it was possible to move with reasonable certainty across the uneven ground. A dark figure ghosted past—one of Gyasi’s nephews, scouting the perimeter. They and their uncle guarded the camp at night and slept by day on horseback. The cold never seemed to bother them.
Was it wise to leave his life in their hands? Or was he becoming more reckless? This long journey chafed him, thrown on the mercy of others without being able to choose direction or speed. Once upon a time he had ridden at his father’s behest and never questioned, but he had lost the habit of obedience; he could no longer bear to be ruled by another, and he knew that he put himself at risk every time he pushed at the boundaries of what seemed possible.
He had forged out into a wilderness of his own making. He did not know what he would find at the end of his journey.
Before the winter, he could have smelled the stink of the Quman camp long before he reached it, but ice and snow had their mercies. Sooner than he expected, he came to the end of the rope, which was tethered to a slender line hung with tiny bells that encircled the entire Quman camp. The bells chimed in counterpoint to the whine and thrum of the wind among the tents. Only as the sentry stepped back to let him pass, ducking under the line, did he catch a hint of the familiar rank stench of rancid grease compounded with offal, sweat, and farting horses.
The Quman laid out their tents in a curving windbreak behind which most of the herd sheltered and a handful of dung fires burned. Men squatted around them, although he couldn’t imagine how they did not freeze to death. He had already lost feeling in his toes, and his fingers stung as though he had rubbed them with ice. Although common sense and his own observations argued against it, maybe it was true that they weren’t fully human. How else to explain their unnatural resistance to cold?
The tent of the mothers was constructed of white felt, spanning two wagons, the fabric blending into the snow swirling around it. Its entrance was turned to the south, away from the prevailing wind. Two sentries stepped aside to let him climb the steps that led into the interior.
“Beware the threshold,” murmured Breschius as Sanglant ducked through the opening.
Inside, smoke hazed the air, sated with a sour-sweet incense that did not cover the nauseating stink of rancid oil. Two musicians sat beside the center pole of the tent; one tuned a spiked fiddle while the other arranged a collection of rattles and scraps of bark around a pipe. Although several braziers placed up on tripod legs made it pleasantly warm, here where they need not lie down directly on the frozen ground, the sight of the little pipe chilled him with the cold breath of memory: Bloodheart had tormented him with such an instrument—a bone flute carved from the remains of one of Sanglant’s own men.