The Son
----------------------------------------
The sun crested past the Khurvan mountains, casting the Valley of Milk in shadow as it sank behind the high peaks. From his vantage on the mountain slopes, the first son of Aqtai-khan watched the lengthening shadows consume the sprawling sea of yurts below, like a serpent swallowing its prey.
The Valley was covered by a boundless city of felt roofs and cloth tents - a chaotic sprawl of tribal camps and market stalls unconfined by walls or gates. The Great Horde took a hundred great cities in its conquest - the marbled desert cities of southern Huwaq, fortress-towns of the eastern Tan Ninh, and the great temple-cities of the western elven republic. But to Nariman, none of the great cities’ ordered opulence could compare to the raw, beautiful vastness of the growing kurultai.
Two dozen tribal banners fluttered in the soft wind, though more and more trickled in every day. Beneath the banners, lanterns and torches awakened to dispel the mountain’s shadow, illuminating a flowing patchwork of different faces, colors, and attire. Sunset Islanders in vibrantly-colored shirts, long-haired Vinh Huo merchants clad in silk robes, ruddy river-farers from distant Newo Gardas, and even pale elven blood-sorcerers from Yllahana accompanied by eunuch slaves - all mingled among Khormchak nomads. The foreign merchants and emissaries buzzed about, seeking to lower tariffs with the tribes whose lands their caravans crossed, or hawking goods from across the known world.
Satisfied with the calm outside, Nariman ducked back into his own yurt nestled halfway up the Khuvan slopes. While the other tribes and their men filled the Valley below, only the Great Khan and his kin were allowed to occupy the sacred Khuvan’s heights from which flowed the Jigai - the greatest of rivers, the lifeblood of the Hungry Steppe. Inside the yurt, Nariman gave a brief nod to father’s keshik guards, who silently withdrew.
Of all the family yurts, Nariman kept his luxuries second only to his father’s, as was the unspoken rule. Patterned carpets from Huwaq adorned the purple hardwood floor imported from Vinh Huo. Gifts from courtiers and merchants lined the shelves: a golden statue of a philosopher from Tan Ninh, a black komuz lute from the southern mountain tribes, and a miniature horse carved entirely from ruby, gifted by an Yllahanan senator. The opulence was all a far cry from his childhood in a plain, drafty yurt, when the Qarakesek was little more than a footnote among the Khormchaks. Now they stood at the top of the world, and the great nations tripped over one another to bequeath their gifts to the Great Khan and his heirs.
Said heirs turned to look at Nariman as took his seat at the head of the dining table. A slave quickly brought a drinking bowl and filled it with arkhi wine, then was dismissed.
“Pace around any longer, and you’ll wear down those carpets you’re so fond of,” remarked Gulsezim, her nose buried in a merchant’s ledger. “The kurultai won’t disappear into thin air when you’re not looking, brother.”
“It’s not the tribes I’m worried about.” sighed Nariman, adjusting his coat. He was fidgeting again - an infuriating habit when nerves overtook him. “Yesugei still hasn’t returned. He hasn’t even sent a messenger.”
Yesugei, the ninth son of Aqtai from his third wife, had always been quiet, blending into the background at court. The number nine held special meaning, and so the shamans, citing the luck of Yesugei’s birth order, had foretold great achievements. But his younger brother’s record had been unremarkable—no great conquests, only the slaying of a ragged Quanli noyan during the war against Naizabai. It baffled Nariman why their father had sent Yesugei and Kaveh, another vanishingly unimpressive sibling - and a Huwaqi half-breed at that - to pursue Dagun-noyan, a man of such importance.
“They’re probably just lost.” Talgat, their father’s second son, quipped. “Watch - Dagun will end up back here on his own before those two fools figure out their heads from their asses.”
Nariman, Talgat, and Gulsezim stood to inherit the lion’s share of their father’s holdings, while younger siblings such as Yesugei, Kaveh, Inkar, and Erasyl would receive minor holdings - certainly not enough to threaten the stability of the greater Qarakesek. But despite all potential for the Qarakesek to fracture into squabbling factions on their father's death, the three true-borns of Aqtai-khan got along well enough - sleeping, hunting, laughing, and crying all together. But with Dagun’s disappearance, it was as if a heavy pall were now hanging over all of them - despite Talgat’s attempts to make light of it.
The Qarakesek emissary going missing would normally be of little consequence. But with the approaching kurultai, any sign that could be misconstrued as weakness would be catastrophic. Their oath-uncle Naizabai’s return to prominence meant tribes would scrutinize how the Great Khan handled the shifting balance of power. Nariman recalled his father’s wisdom: When you break a man, you must offer him a hand to stand back up. Otherwise, you’ll need to take the head of every man who defies you. Such a khan will find no friends—only fearful subjects eager to turn or flee.
Even now, after half the world bowed to the White Khan, Nariman questioned if sparing Naizabai had been the right choice. In the fractured Hungry Steppe of old, spilling blood or even wiping out a tribe required little justification. But under the White Khan’s rule and peace, tribal wars were a relic of the past. Peacetime had brought wealth to all the khans—and stakes too high for unchecked violence.
It was no great crime for a khan to surround himself with friends, nor was it a crime for any khan to put their name forth in the kurultai - the election for the next Great Khan. Yet as much as everything felt legal, it did not feel right. With too few guaranteed votes, Naizabai’s only chance lay in exploiting perceived weakness in their father - perhaps through the disappearance of a protected envoy. As much as his father spoke of loyalty and friendship, friendship to most Khormchak khans was a fickle thing - steadfast allies could take flight if they sensed the winds of change against them.
Frustration gnawed at Nariman - he had grown too complacent, too focused on his lands and succession to notice the Quanli plotting in the shadows. He sighed and turned to Gulsezim.
“What news do your scouts bring of our favorite uncle?”
Gulsezim closed her ledger, giving her brother a sly, questioning look. “You know brother, I’d say with-”
“What do your scouts say?” Nariman interrupted, raising one hand. “I’m not interested in playing your games.”
His sister sighed, frowning bitterly as she replied. “He and his horde were spotted near Balai a day ago - he should arrive here sometime in the evening. Just on time for the feast.”
“And his allies?”
“Traveling with him. The Jalarin joined him at Ongainur, and the Shaprats and Oshkan at Isfalal.”
Nariman rested his chin on his steepled fingers as he thought aloud. “Three tribes. Then I assume the Suyan will be joining him separately. They must be…how many? Twenty, thirty thousand?”
“Thirty-five, pushing forty. My spies say he’s also taken into his company several foreigners - advisors from out west.”
“What’s this interest in our uncle, Nariman?” piped Talgat. “A war just before the kurultai is bad form, you know.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I’d hardly say it's a stupid question when you’re having Gulsezim screening his party every step of the way,” responded his brother, sitting back on his own stool as he studied Nariman. “You think I haven’t noticed you mobilizing your own men? Planting them throughout the camps, the markets? What’s your plan, brother?”
“You’ve spent too much time in Huwaq’s nest of vipers, Talgat.” Nariman sneered, but inside he felt a mix of pride and fear.
It had been a while since he had last spoken with Talgat - before his brother had headed out to govern the southern desert-cities as a noyan. Clearly time spent in Huwaq’s courtly intrigue had imbued his dim-witted brother with a certain perception for cunning. If only Nariman had known sooner, perhaps he could have involved Talgat in what was to come. But it was too late now.
“This is promising to be the largest gathering of Khormchaks in ages. You think all of the men here will leave their grudges back home just because it's a kurultai? My men are out keeping order among the tribes - making sure we don’t suffer a war in camp before the feast.” It was only a half-lie he fed to his brother - the warriors were given orders to keep the peace and punish thieves, but several of his own blood-sworn were given a different task.
Even now they were putting the final touches together - keeping a watchful eye on who clasped hands with whom, who feasted whom, who drank with whom. For seven days now they watched, they recorded, and they learned which tribes and noyans could be relied upon. Who would stand firm by the Qarakesek if chaos were to erupt. Whose throat to slit and whose yurt to burn if violence did take place.
Talgat seemed unsatisfied, but said nothing. Between Gulsezim’s knowing smile and Talgat’s questioning, Nariman felt the walls closing in on him. Looking up through the open crown of the yurt, he saw the skies beginning to darken. Only a few hours remained before the feast and the arrival of Naizabai’s host. His entire plan, so carefully laid out, suddenly felt as though it were built on a foundation of twigs. Doubt cloud his mind - and when he closed his eyes he only saw a thousand different ways things could go wrong. And in all of them, he saw blood. And fire. So, so much fire.
His father often said that, were he not the White Khan’s firstborn son, that Nariman would have made a fine shaman. Unlike this siblings, his Sight did not just allow him to cast his vision across distance - his Sight granted him visions of the future, myriad and confounding. Those visions had guided him, always showing him the path ahead to avoid doom - hidden paths to bypass enemies, places to conceal troops, even uncovering an assassin’s knife at a feast. He had learned to distinguish the likely from the unlikely and had been more often right than wrong. But this time was different.
Every time he tried to focus on how to forge a path ahead, what future lay in store for him and his kin, all he saw was blood and fire. And then nothing. He revised his plans endlessly, checked with spies, and even observed the gathering tribes himself. By now he had rehearsed the plan a thousand times in his mind, and prepared every contingency. Yet why then did the creeping sense of failure refuse to leave him?
Why did his visions of the future never include himself?
Nariman felt himself spiraling. He vaguely heard Gulsezim and Talgat as they spoke of other matters that didn’t concern him - they may as well have been a thousand miles away. Nariman strode out of the yurt, beckoning the two keshiks that stood guard by the entrance.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Fetch my palanquin. I’m heading out.”
***
In the shadow of the Khurvan mountains, two bald slaves led the palanquin’s path with oil lanterns while a dozen more slaves hoisted the long palanquin poles on their shoulders. Ten of Nariman’s own keshiks, clad in gilded suits of steel lamellar plates, flanked their blood-sworn brother.
Through the small window bars of the lacquered-wood-and-gold palanquin, the scents of countless different spices, perfumes, and foods mixed into a single queer smell that was unlike any other in the world. Nariman took in the sight of the yurt-city as it passed him by, silently observing the flowing patchwork of the Horde’s subjects up close.
A Tan Ninh merchant with a long beard nodded in agreement with an Yllahanan elf and his slave translator.
A small Khormchak girl, no older than four, ran past the legs of adults holding a fabric doll.
Two Solarian priests, their heads shaved in the strange manner of their sect, proselytized to traders from Newo Gardas.
A woman with cracked, gray skin stared at him through the crowd with glowing yellow eyes.
Nariman bolted upright as he felt a stab of terror through his heart. He moved up close to the windows of the palanquin, hoping to get another look at the gray woman, but only saw more of the milling, murmuring crowd. His eyes scanned through the shifting sea of bodies, but the gray woman was gone - if she even existed to begin with. Perhaps the sleepless nights were finally beginning to take a toll on him, and he had finally started seeing things in the waking world as well as in his dreams. Nonetheless, he checked the curved knife tucked into his belt.
Soon the palanquin came to a gentle stop, and Nariman drew out into the open air. Before him stood a tall tent marked with the purple and red colors of the Yllahanan Republic - the largest of the elven slave-states to the distant west. The elven folk of the Republic were normally a proud, sneering folk who derided all folk that were not of elven blood - seeing them only as natural-born slaves. Yet the elves hungered for wealth and gold as much as any human, and so they sent out emissaries to trade for spices and slaves, and to spy on the Horde. This particular tent however, was different.
A pair of young, gaunt Klyazmite slave girls opened the tent flap before Nariman. As he stepped inside, he was hit by a wall of sickly-sweet scent. A half-dozen incense burners hung from the poles of the great merchant’s tent, drowning out all other smells from the outside and soaking every piece of furniture with the same sweet odor. A pair of shaved eunuchs bowed forth and offered to take Nariman’s gold-chased shamshir, but he waved them off. He focused his attention on the two stately figures that sat at a large wooden table before him - their faces lit by candle-light.
“I was thinking you’d get cold feet.” said the first of the two - a man with high cheekbones and the light bronze skin of the Huwaqis. The dancing candlelight betrayed the man’s mocking smile - one that did not reach his emerald eyes, which looked on him with disdain.
The other person seated at the table, a middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and a scarred face, quietly pulled forward a chair for Nariman. As he lowered himself to sit, a young slave boy no older than twelve appeared at his side with a tray bearing chilled fruit and wine.
“I had other arrangements to take care of,” said Nariman. He pushed the offered wine and fruit to one side as he carefully eyed his companions. “Naizabai-khan will be arriving soon.”
“Wonderful!” sighed the younger Huwaqi with a clap of his hands. On one long, slender finger sat a golden signet ring bearing the sunburst of the shah’s royal house - the last remnant of that first empire crushed underfoot by the Horde. “As much as I am fascinated by all of this gathered…culture, I would much rather return to my nest as soon as I can.”
“You will want to make yourself scarce soon then,” replied Nariman. “Naizabai brings forty-thousand riders with him to the kurultai. I have my men in place, but there is always the risk of things spilling out into a skirmish. And a Huwaqi-Shah looks much like any other man in the chaos of battle.”
To this, the older gentleman who had remained silent thus far allowed himself a small chuckle. He wore a simple brown kaftan fastened with a wide belt, but underneath it Nariman saw a slip of a maille shirt. A qadi of the Sons of Al-Qadir went about with arms and armor always, and served until death.
“You keep your concerns to yourself,” sniped back the young shah. He gave a sidelong glare at the qadi. “And you, old man…they’ll be hunting after your kind, not mine, if things turn sour.”
“The Sons of Al-Qadir will not fail, princeling,” said Qasim. The aged man was one of the Brotherhood’s qadis, a lieutenant to the Silent Father himself, and under whose direction were two dozen of the cold-hearted, fanatical youths that made up the ranks of the Brotherhood’s hired blades. “And if fortune should seem against us, it is the will of the Silent Father. All paths before a Son of Al-Qadir lead to Heaven.”
Nariman fought off the urge to scoff at the wise babble of Qasim. The lowest ranks might genuinely believe in the powers of their Silent Father to deliver them to paradise, but the qadis who helped their sect leader spin his lies certainly knew better, else their paths to Heaven were queer indeed - paved in so much gold from employers from across the known world who needed the services of the world’s greatest killers. To bring Qasim into his plot, Nariman had spent a mountain of gold almost as large as those upon which the Brotherhood’s fortresses sat.
And yet, there was also an element of vengeance, to be sure. When the Horde burned and trampled its way through the mountain passes west of the shattered Huwaqi Shahdom, it was Naizabai’s vanguard who waged bloody war against the Brotherhood. Ten long years of ceaseless siege had seen the Silent Father's valleys scorched and his people slaughtered in untold numbers, but the mountain fortresses held, and qadis lived to seek their vengeance.
On the other hand, the Huwaqishah’s motivations were more plain. The exiled Huwaqi nobility - those who had the good sense to flee before the Horde’s advance - had been scattered across the world, reduced to mercenaries or merchants trading on the fading prestige of their lineage. Rostam, however, had refused to fade into obscurity. His Huwaqiyya, the last remnants of his father’s personal honor guard, had swollen into a force to be reckoned with, and their incessant fighting and raids into Khormchak territory was an ever-present thorn over their rule of Huwaq.
And yet, raids were all the fading Huwaqiyya could do - Talgat had fortified the region too greatly, and the armies in the south were too vast to be broken by the plucky few. In exchange for his good service, Nariman had promised to restore Rostam to the Huwaqi throne - as a vassal of the Great Khan, naturally - but to an exiled prince, a crown of any sort is better than none at all. And no matter his bluster, it was plain to see how the fruitless years in the saddle had treated the crownless prince. To Rostam, the Huwaqi throne was his world. Talgat could always be sent to rule some other part of the Horde’s domain - he would doubtlessly protest, perhaps even hate Nariman, but in the end he would see reason.
With a small wave of his hand, the qadi summoned a Huwaqi man, perhaps twenty years of age. Flowing dark hair framed a handsome, thin face, and beneath the clothes of a household servant the man had the slender body of a dancer, or perhaps an acrobat. But when Nariman looked into his eyes he saw no light, no hint of life or soul within the slave.
“Your assassin, our tool,” said the qadi. “Hot irons, drowning, the breaking wheel…whatever tortures your men can come up with - this one will endure, for all pains are a trifle to one who knows he will find Paradise in the next life.”
“Are you certain?” asked Nariman as he sized the assassin up. The Silent Father was said to be a sorcerer - one who could show his Sons a glimpse of paradise, and guarantee them a place in it if one was to do his bidding. For the young, impoverished lads the qadis recruited from the mountain villages, that glimpse and promise of heaven was enough to make them as obedient as dogs - and just as vicious.
“You think to question me now?” sighed Qasim. “It’s too late - you either take this one, or you can do the job yourself.”
Nariman studied the man once more, then stood up and pulled his shamshir slowly from its sheath. He felt the qadi’s and Rostam's eyes on him, as well as the scared looks of the other slaves in Rostam's tent. As he drew the sword free, Nariman commanded the Son of Al-Qadir to remove his shirt.
The man did so obediently, exposing a bare, hairless chest. Nariman placed his blade against the slave’s flesh, expecting at least a flinch, but the man continued to stare ahead.
The man didn’t flinch even when Nariman pressed the blade deeper, swelling a droplet of blood from his left breast. The man continued to stare ahead, his breathing remaining slow and steady as Nariman gently drew the biting blade across his chest from left to right - slicing a thin, bleeding gash that cut through his nipple. He remained standing to attention, as unmoving as a corpse - and Nariman felt a chill run down his spine as he averted his eyes from the assassin’s blank gaze.
The qadi’s smile was thin and frightening. “Satisfied?”
Nariman reached into his robe and dropped a sack of coins onto the table “Yllahanan solidi - our man’s pay. Enough for the life of a Great Khan.”
“It’s almost tragic, isn’t it?” mused Rostam with a thin smile as he took a sip from a silver cup of wine. “The oath-brother of the Great Khan killed by a poison meant for his liege, just as they had made amends.”
“The tragedy of this tale doesn’t concern me, only that it is believed.” Nariman said as he wiped the man’s blood from his shamshir with an offered cloth from one of Rostam's other servants.
To poison Naizabai alone would immediately bring suspicion down upon the Qarakesek - suspicion that would ignite a costly, internecine civil war that would only weaken the Great Horde and embolden their conquered subjects to rebel. Yet a treacherous scapegoat - especially one as wealthy as the Yllahanan Republic, whose senators long looked upon the growing Horde with alarm - would provide a convenient external foe to mobilize the Horde's strength against.
Some of Naizabai's allies might find the timing of the convenient failed attempt on the Great Khan's life suspicious, that was certain. But most of those that would doubt the story of the failed assassination would go along with the lie regardless if it meant partaking in the sacking of the wealthy spire-cities of the Yllahanans. And if there were those who would choose to react immediately at the news of Naizabai's unfortunate death - perhaps to take revenge against the blameless Qarakesek - Rosman's Huwaqiyya and Nariman’s own keshiks were scattered throughout the yurt-city, sword sharp and at the ready to cut down any flowers of rebellion before they could bloom.
He studied the clean blade, honed to a razor’s edge. In the polished steel’s reflection, the face of the dutiful first son of Aqtai-khan gazed back - his stare hard and resolute.
“If your pet is ready, then so are my men.” Nariman sheathed his sword as he prepared to leave. His mind spun in anxiety of the growing plot - the reality he had planned for months now crept up on him with every passing moment, and all he could feel was fear. He cast one final glance at his gathered co-conspirators - the ambitious and easy to read Rosman's, and the qadi Qasim. As much as they too had a stake in this plot, he felt nothing but loathing for the two.
“I do not wish to see either of you again - once Naizabai is buried, we are nothing more than strangers.”
Nariman left his half-threat hanging in the sickly-sweet air of the tent as he stepped back out into yurt-city. He felt as though he had just appeared out from the underworld, and took a deep breath of scented air that felt light and crisp in comparison to the oppressive perfumes of the Huwaqishah’s abode. He closed his eyes for a moment, and felt a terrible pain bolt through his skull - the visions flooded his mind as they had never before.
Fire. Fire everywhere. He saw a surging river of flame pour from the Khurvan, consuming the Valley of Milk and the yurts below.
For a lingering moment, Nariman wished he had never come to the divine peaks. He wished the Qarakesek had never risen to its dizzying heights above the squabbling tribes. He wished that years ago, he had the courage to defy his father's commands and slit Naizabai-khan's treasonous throat when he had the chance.
By now, the sun had fully set below the horizon. In the dark skies above, Nariman saw a thousand heavenly eyes staring down on him. Watching. Waiting. Whispering.
Whatever happened next, whatever his visions told him, he could only be certain of one thing. The age of blood-oaths and loyalty, of birthright and security earned on the back of his father's conquests - would soon come to an end.
This would be an age of starving wolves.