trust in a violent verdict-by-God, nor trial by athletics neither. But can’t we have an oracle?”
“An oracle?”
“You’d never get I-told-you-so.”
“An oracle means no-one’s disagreed. An oracle means we can’t be wrong.”
“I like an oracle. It’s respect towards him for whom we’re here. His voice, and let the rest be God’s.”
“The geese fly on instinct,” said Heavenly Hair, “in perfect symmetry. It’s an ideal, but beyond us. Nearest we get might be listen to God.”
Bartan came across Mengetu, squeezed in beside him and murmured, “It’s true, for an image of oneness, Tangr has to be the ultimate. Perhaps I am a hard-to-satisfy quibbler. It is right for us to contemplate Tangr and emulate him on the earth. I do not know that it is right to ask of him utterance on an issue of this man or that... Don’t quote me, Mengetu, but I scent Christianity in this. It isn’t quite us.”
“These are high questions for me. But if you have religious scruples, father, I don’t doubt our bagchis are to tell them similarly.”
“The bagchis have more of a sense for these things than I do. The guardians of our religion.”
“Can’t be a ba’atur and a bagchi.”
“I don’t see why not, although one isn’t often. The method doesn’t matter; I am happy with either of our candidates, like most here.”
“Attai’s twenty. It does bother me.”
“Then he has fifty years in him. Imagine had we been blest with his father for fifty years. The lad’s more of a glamour, but that aside, he has the sensibility, the grace of his father. The spontaneous touches. He was exquisite with his coat.”
“You fancy Attai. Eh? Antics with the coat? Winning hearts?”
Bartan maintained his dignity. “I am neutral. Anyway, I’ve heard oracle at every fire.”
“Were you bitten by one of these damned dogs?”
Down he glanced at the twist of wool about his left hand, from that up into his son’s face. “I am my own mongrel dog.”
His first son flickered a frown, inquired, “Blood vows, father?”
“No. No. – What need?” he added slightly wildly.
“We’ll give him his hachi, father.”
“That is hard to do. Justice, Mengetu, justice?” he cried. Dumbly he shook his head. “But he can have my blood.”
Bagchis were to ask by fire a sheep’s shoulderblade, tomorrow at time the sun and the moon were witness.
Cutula and Attai put away maps for the night and wound down over a game of fictive armies on a board. They had thrown their hats off, and Cutula the skins from his blubbery chest.
In flitted a girlish young thing with her hair up and pinned into a tall blue steeple of a hat: a triangle on a sphere, the moon and its shadow. Cutula had been introduced to the hat. “My nephew Yesugei’s new wife?”
“Yes, sir.”
As an uncle he didn’t need head-cover, but Attai snatched for his. “Can I help you, nephew’s wife?”
“Sir, my husband is at the ram’s consecration; I haven’t spoken to him. I have been in the tent of Orboi Queen. From her mouth, into the ear of Unegen Queen, I overheard an outrageous thing.”
Cutula got cumbersomely to his feet, to take a moment for digestion of such a statement. He stooped over his visitor. “Why, and do the widow queens whisper aught to do with me?”
“I thought so, sir. Orboi said to Unegen: there are eight bagchis to examine the bone, Oliji from Uriangqot, Jizighlar from Ongirat, and six are Tayichiut. Leave matters to me. We won’t see Attai khan.”
Slowly Cutula swayed back on his heels. He felt sick and sad and weary at once. His head whipped to the side, and worse than any obscene oath, he spat into his hearthfire.
Attai had risen. Leaden and brusque, much unlike his usual, he told the woman, “Stay silent on this.”
She nodded to him, and retreated. Softly Cutula called after her, “You did right to come to us, Yesugei’s wife.” Alone with Attai he ventured, “It may be misheard.”
“Cutula. The queens hate me. They are jealous for their sons. I am a third wife’s son, and her dead. Her dead, and much suspected to have been Ambaghai’s lamb. And I. Why did he pour attention upon me? Not for my merits. This they teach my half-brothers Tarqutai and Todoyan. It is pity, in a great man’s surrounds. Oh, it is pity. It must not be known.”
“Don’t the silly bats want a Tayichiut khan?”
“That is hatred, Cutula.”
Cutula scratched the shaven crown of his head. “Can the Christian Devil himself hate you?”
“Hah,” he ejected, nearly gay. “I’m afraid.”
“To corrupt a bone interpretation... where do they think they are? The courts of China? Orboi, I tell you, she thinks she lives in the courts of China. We’re in the wild Willows of the Qorqonag, the barbarian north, thank God.”
“I do thank God, and have undamaged faith. Only in Orboi’s self-important brain. Our bagchis aren’t to be corrupted, not for her love nor money.”
“Why are there six Tayichiut?”
“We’re in Tayichiut. They are attuned to the spirits in the water and trees. They have invited two learned guests to participate.”
“Do you know the gentlemen? Yourself, Attai?”
“Yes. Esteemed seniors. None beneath seventy, and deep-versed in ceremonials. Not by any stretch to be thought ill of.”
“Then I don’t think ill of them. But at a hur altai, the hundred tribes in meet, I think we ought to be more intertribal.”
“Cutula, you cannot cast doubt.”
“I won’t cast doubt.”
“The oracle is scheduled for conjunction of the skies, the ram has gone the way of his fathers and the bagchis are doing what bagchis do. You and I can but wait to learn our fate. And for heaven’s sake, comrade, the result? – you and I don’t care.”
Cutula hadn’t finished with the argument. But there they had another interruption, on a gladder note, and Attai seized the opportunity to escape him. Their newest hero came by, tentatively, in Attai’s gilt coat – or not in, still under; he hadn’t had the effrontery to thrust his arms in the ornate sleeves. He asked to enter Attai’s service.
Attai took his hand. “Be companion to me. In the vicissitudes of life we have each other, our joys and our griefs jointly felt. – Excuse me, comrade. The nokod squad want to meet Balaqachi. He’s my first baghatur.”
Cutula squinted at him. “How about our game?”
“Oh, I had you beat.”
At rise of sun a ram’s scapula was scorched on a fire and the cracks scrutinised. They spelt out Cutula.
The Mongols danced him in, on a white felt rug for his throne. It wasn’t gainly, but was uproarious. Attai Taiji pulled a shoulder in the cause. In a quiet interstice Cutula spoke to a few major figures. “When I go, soon or late, of course, we revert to Ambaghai’s other nomination.”
Once they were done with the rug he led them on foot around the ancient, craggy, green-haired King of the Willows, who stood for vigorous life itself and zest. He made you want to dance, the old character in his summer hair. He shook his branches with them, people swore, and no wonder, for they poured ayrag on his strong old roots – ayrag for a twinkle in the eye until the day you go. Khabul had been a twinkle-toes himself.
For the remainder of the day he gave out Ambaghai’s treasury. It was traditional at an ascension, also before a war. Him with empty treasure chests is hungry. Starve a chief of funds: starve a tiger and send him out to hunt. It indicated he had an eye to Tartar treasuries, and a confident eye at that.
Next day was games days. Wrestling in the morning; Cutula was mad keen, and could be heard with Borjigin slogans and the licensed insults of sport as his nephew Buri laboured towards champion of the day. Noon, with its straight light, was for the exact science of archery (It’s an art. It’s a religion. No, wrestling’s the religion). Afternoon, races. Races were for the kids, lightweight, only there to steer, except for the last, twel
ve miles on untamed horses off the steppe – that was for whoever volunteered.
With these short celebrations they remembered what they were there for. Traders had zeroed in on the meet. They were of indeterminate affiliation, half-breeds or from way out west; Chinese keep shop, but it’s a tougher, rougher type that journeys out to barter on the steppe. Besides, Chinese disdain trade, trade’s for the vulgar or for foreigners. Why? It’s Confucius. Know your enemy, and Cutula took his research seriously, but often enough they came up against a baffler and then the answer was, it’s Confucius. It certainly is, said Cutula (often, but a decent line can stand re-use).
Metal? he asked the traders at their mart, tugging out his sword for what he meant. They shook their heads, and by gesticulation he understood blamed the government in China. “No contraband? Hidden compartments?” He eyed their carts in disappointment. Mongols don’t smelt metal, not on any scale – in contrast to the wonder-smiths, the Turks. China was aware, and to transport iron or iron ore over the border was the death and ruination of you, if caught... these days, with their cosy set of alignments, Tangut on-side and the Tartars their source of horses. China was in a pretty situation, these days.
Yet a few cocky Mongols had the idea the emperor paid them tribute, just because he sent annual loads of silk and had done since Khabul Khan and the vasty steppe gobbled up the infinite army of Hu-sha-hu. But you have to wrap your head around China. Bribery is ridiculously cheaper than a war effort. There’s a slippery concept – war is no effort to a nomad. The Chinese themselves