Lords of Grass and Thunder by Curt Benjamin Page A

a song in which I have a far greater part than the facts would tell.”
    “I think you are exactly hero enough.” Clasping his cousin’s shoulders between his hands, Prince Tayy kissed him first on his right cheek, then on his left. “If it truly would displease you to hear a song in which we appear side by side as legendary heroes, I’ll forbid it.” He smiled slyly then. “But I think it would please you very much. And it would certainly please Bekter to write it!”
    “Then it is decided,” Bekter announced. “ ‘Prince Tayyichiut the brave against the terrible mad bear, with Qutula his strong right arm at his side.’ I will build my history around this moment when the fate of the clans hung in the balance!”
     
     
     
    W hen the fate of the clans hung in the balance indeed. Little did Bekter know how truly he spoke. It will be better this way, Qutula promised the lady. No one will suspect a thing when I kill him.
    Her token subsided, waiting, he knew, to inflict pain or pleasure as he did her will or crossed it. Feeling much better, he brushed the leaves from his clothes and offered his prince a false grin.
    “I’m sorry that in rescuing me you lost the roebuck you had within your grasp,” he said.
    “A bear will serve the pots as well,” Tayy answered with a laugh.
    Jumal had taken up the direction of the skinning, and at the prince’s signal he divided the prize according to custom. “Skin to the prince, for the arrow that brought him down,” he said. “Qutula had the first strike, so the meat is divided between them. As for the liver—”
    “A gift to my uncle,” Tayy was quick to say, adding only after, “in both our names, as is fitting. I might not have stopped him with my arrow if Qutula had not already wounded him with the spear.”
    “A gift suited to a khan,” Qutula agreed, careful to claim no closer relation to his father.
    The liver was large as a saddlebag and nearly didn’t fit, but Jumal wrapped it tightly in a piece of doeskin for carrying game and bound it with strips of hide used for that purpose. “We’ll stay to finish the butchering and carting,” he said, and slung the liver over the haunch of Prince Tayyichiut’s horse. “Mergen-Khan will want to hear the tale from your own lips.”
    “One should never keep a khan—or a poet—-waiting,” Tayy agreed, summoning Bekter to return to camp with them.
    “Jumal, too,” Bekter insisted. “It was his spear, in Qutula’s hand, and so the khan will want to show his gratitude to Jumal as well.”
    Qutula would have hit him if they’d been alone. The last person he wanted in his company just then was Jumal. It seemed the guardsmen felt the same. He would have stayed behind with the others of his guard, but Tayy agreed with his cousin.
    “Bolghai will want to hear about this design worked into the shaft for luck,” he said, “and my uncle will want to thank you for your part in the adventure.” He did not say, “For saving the life of his son,” but the unspoken meaning hung in the air like the clinging golden sunlight.
    “Of course,” Qutula agreed, though it pained him almost as much as the lady’s mark to say it. “If I have to suffer the outrage of my brother’s song-making, then so should he who carved the spear!”
    They all laughed at his mocking display of indignation, which gave Jumal no choice but to join them, leaving the bear in the hands of their lesser companions. When they sorted themselves out for the return to camp, Jumal rode at Bekter’s left, as far from Qutula on Tayy’s right as he could be. And somehow, Duwa had joined the company with a watchful eye on Jumal as they rode.

Chapter Five
     
    A S THEY MADE THEIR WAY home to the great tent city, Duwa and Jumal regarded each other with suspicion across the backs of their champions. Each had mis trusted the other since some childhood prank—Tayy couldn’t remember what had happened—which had set them eternally at odds. They usually