Free Lords of Grass and Thunder by Curt Benjamin Page A

a mouth a bit too wide, but her solemn dark eyes seemed lit with complex inner life. Long, straight hair fell thick as a horse’s tail from her maiden’s combs. As he passed with his companions around him, the young prince couldn’t take his eyes off her. For her part, she seemed equally fascinated by the sudden appearance of a prince at her door.
    “Not rabbit, I think, but larger game,” Yesugei amended. He might have meant the doeskin packet strapped to the packhorse. But Mergen, like his hunting party, understood him to mean the girl, and that perhaps the arrow went both ways. The prince seemed spellbound.
    Mergen recognized the look. He’d had the same for Sechule in his time, and Yesugei himself often sported it in her presence now. Unfortunately, he also recognized the girl. But what was she doing here, in a shaman’s tent so close to the grand avenue leading to the palace? Had her fosterers lost their senses? And why, of all the girls in the camp, did Tayy have that look on his face for this one?
    “No lady,” a guardsman sniffed with a nudge of his chin at her bare feet. “But she’ll do for practice.”
    A vein throbbed at Mergen’s temples as he turned his wrath on the man. He’d spent years hiding the very existence of the girl, but in his temper his hand went to the sword at his side. He would separate the man’s head from his body with one stroke and worry about explanations later.
    “Not if he has any sense.” Another of his guardsmen spoke up. Chahar, one of Bolghai’s many sons. Some had followed their father’s path and others had chosen the army. One brother had died with Otchigin, fighting stone monsters in the war for the Cloud Country. But they had all grown up wandering in and out of their father’s bur rowlike tent. Chahar wasn’t looking at Mergen or the sword half drawn from its sheath, but at the broom in the girl’s hand.
    “That broom has seen little enough of sweeping, and she’s holding it wrong way up for earthly chores. She’s a shaman, or practicing to be one, with the raven-lady, Toragana, I would guess. If the boy has any sense, he’ll wait at least until she can control her spells before approaching her with any suggestion he may want to make.”
    “I’d have thought the young prince had seen enough wonders in his short life,” Yesugei mused. “I’m sure he has no more than a passing curiosity about her, but I’ll put a word in Qutula’s ear if you wish, my khan. Sometimes young men will listen to each other before they will take the advice of their elders.”
    Alone of Mergen’s companions, Yesugei knew the identity of the girl and the khan’s plans for her. Mergen wondered, however, if he only pretended to surprise at the shaman business.
    “I’ll talk to Qutula.” It was time, Mergen thought, to start demonstrating to the court his faith in his sons. Bekter was a poet and the favorite of all, so his place in the palace was already secured. The khan’s appreciation of Qutula’s more subtle mind must be carefully introduced, however. He wanted to raise no fear among the clans that he planned to establish his own dynasty on Sechule’s blanket-sons.
    “And I’ll make my feelings clear to the prince myself. He may find his way under whatever blanket he wishes as long as he makes his connections for the clans.” Mergen had no intention of letting Prince Tayy develop any sort of acquaintance with that particular girl, but he would reveal nothing on that score yet. Soon, though. First, he had to put an end to this shaman nonsense.
    The prince led his followers racing the night toward home in a cloud of dust kicked up by their horses’ flying hooves. Mergen slowed his own party to a walk so they didn’t have to make their greetings in front of all the clans. Mergen let his companions think the fading of the light had put him in a pensive mood. His courtiers knew his temper well enough to cease their joking. Content to raise themselves a little higher