Cast of Characters

Spoiler :

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Jungso Husun Khan

Khan of the Husun Horde

Age: 21

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Jaliqui Husun

Twin sister to Jungso Khan, Commander of the Baavgai Moon Bear Cavalry

Age: 21

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Maral Husun

Half-sister to Jungso Khan, Commander of the Windy Zuu Light Cavalry

Age: 16

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Chambui Cetama-Xangai

Jaliqui's lover, second in command to the Baavgai Moon Bear Cavalry

Age: 22

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Arasen Usun Khan

Khan of the Usun Horde, cousin and sworn enemy to Jungso Khan

Age: 26

Chapter One: In Which Maral and Jaliqui Encounter the Bog Men

From the camps the two rode an hour east. White morning fog embraced them in languid sheets. Cold nipped at Maral's nose and cheeks. Her breath misted.

They tied Boo-Boo to a dead oak. The moon bear cried piteously, so they fed him raw steak before entering the wetland on foot.

Even frozen, the bog stank of brimstone. As she and Jaliqui stalked through snow and wilted grass, they passed iced-over pools under which suspended great shadowy forms grasping upwards in petrified death throes. Some were like boars, except too big and with scales. Some looked too much like people.

From somewhere ahead came faint, rolling titters that reminded Maral of cicadas--absurd, in this climate. The noise stopped, then started again. Jaliqui peered around but seemed unconcerned. Maral missed having that confidence.

After a short while, Jaliqui squatted. She slowly pointed and whispered, "There."

Maral had to turn her head too far to see. Her left side was her blind side. She had to get used to that.

The animal was like a hare with small antlers. It hopped lazily between two mounds of dead weeds and nibbled at a speck of mud. A twenty yard shot.

Carefully, Maral slid her recurve bow from the leather scabbard across her back. She drew an arrow from the quiver hanging from her belt and nocked it to the string. Though of a low draw-weight, it was master crafted, and the bamboo and horn yielded silently as she pulled back with her thumb ring. The critter sniffed snow, oblivious.

Jaliqui leaned close until their fur hats touched. "Wait until it moves. And remember what we talked about: use your third eye."

Maral nodded. While her sister was arguably not the best archer in the clan, at twenty-one she had bow-killed over fifty men and led who knows how many hunts. Still, the advice seemed bullshit. If you have one eye, you have one eye; imagining a mystical replacement won't grant depth perception.

But Maral was sick of being a half-blind cripple, and while she had proved far too blade-shy to relearn sword fighting, she vowed she will reclaim competence with a bow.

And so she watched as the hare dug through a patch of snow. With two eyes, she had gotten by on instinct: track and shoot. Now, she had to think to calculate distance and trajectory.

The cicadas waxed, and the hare hopped. Maral released. The string slapped her bracer. The shaft overshot by five feet and arced into fog.

Maral groaned. She almost threw her bow into the snow. "I used to be able to make that shot at three times the range."

Jaliqui hugged an arm across Maral's shoulders. Maral could feel her wiry strength flex through hide and fur.

"Be patient, little sister," Jaliqui said. "You'll get better."

"I may get better, but I'll never be good. Not like before."

Their faces so close, Maral could see the workings behind Jaliqui's brown eyes as she wracked her brain for something else positive to say. That it took so long told Maral all she needed to know.

"No," Jaliqui said finally, "but you don't need to be a master archer. You're not Dugar the Last. You're royalty in a fifty-thousand strong horde. We're family. We look out for each other."

Maral's cheeks burned against the crisp air. She tugged away from her sister's embrace and paced through dead grass and snow. She waved her bow as she spoke.

"You wouldn't be able to stand this if this happened to you. Arasel's left me too skittish to hold a sword, too blind to shoot straight. I'm useless. I'm not . . . I'm not even pretty anymore! Boys avoid me. Even Shiggi!"

Hands on hips, Jaliqui laughed. For a heartbeat Maral wanted to shoot her, but she'd just miss.

"You treat Shiggi like shit," her sister said, "so little wonder. But no, neither he nor anyone thinks you're anything other than adorable. Even I think you're prettier than me, if it makes you feel better."

Maral nearly protested, but decided it might be true. Or had been, anyway. Jaliqui spurned all men's advances, but no one needed to ask why they still tried: she was beautiful with smooth teak skin and a sleek, athletic body. But Maral was more. Maral was exotic. Her mother was Serjan and had bequeathed her ginger hair, a milky white complexion and baby blue eyes as clear as the sky--of which only one was left.

The cicadas ceased. To make a point, Maral lifted her red leather eyepatch.

Jaliqui tried not to flinch, but then sighed. "All right, the empty socket's pretty gross. If you hate the patch so much, we can talk to Jungso when we get back. He can get one of the jewelers to make you a golden eye. Or maybe a silver one. Or how about a sapphire, if we could find one big enough . . ."

"Jungso's too busy with that old foreign priest," Maral said, kicking at a chink in the ice. The taps echoed in the fog. "I mean, I'm glad Youta saved him, but look where he's led us? We should be hunting down Arasel, not chasing dreams to the top of the world."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"What can we do?" Jaliqui said. "He's surrounded himself with fools. He hardly ever sees us anymore. But at the end of the day, he's not only our brother, but our Khan." She smirked and looked away. "Remember, I was born not a quarter hour before him. If I had a cock in my trousers, I'd be leading this horde right now. And let me tell you, I wouldn't put up with all this 'vision quest' mumbo-jumbo. The men think this country's cursed. They're growing restless."

Words almost treasonous, but undeniable. Indeed, this was a strange, unclean land. And though Maral had told no one, she had been getting dreams too. Terrible nightmares that upon waking always slithered from memory.

"Hopefully," Jaliqui continued, "Jungso will find some holy stones or magic beans or whatever and we can finally--" She slapped the side of her neck and tugged away a thin wooden splinter. It was a finger long with a tip smeared in dark goo.

Maral ducked and scanned the white fog. Jaliqui had already drawn her saber and ran shouting towards where the dart shot from. The man leaped out like a phantom. Squat, lumpy and dressed in an animal loincloth, he wielded in one hand a bamboo stick and in the other a big flint knife. Jaliqui's slashed him across the chest and he fell screaming.

Two more closed from opposite sides, one fat, one scrawny, both ape-hairy. They looked to their fallen friend before stopping and eyeing the two women. Apprehension shone in their bearded piggy faces. They gripped ugly stone clubs.

Jaliqui raised her curved sword in a guard position and, keeping both in sight, back-stepped close to Maral. Jaliqui's face snarled, but the blade waved uncertainly in her hand. She wobbled on her feet.

Aside from her bow, Maral's only weapon was a small dagger in her boot. But at ten yards even she should be able to hit the fat one. She pulled an arrow from her quiver.

A bestial roar thundered through the air. Boo-Boo. Boo-Boo in pain. Jaliqui turned and nearly slipped in the ice. The scrawny man hurled a rock with his free hand. It cracked against the back of her fur hat, and she collapsed.

Maral nocked and drew, but the fat man was already charging, already upon her. Her shot flew wild. His club swiped viciously, the stone head cracking her bow in two. She tripped and fell backwards into the snow.

The fat man's growl revealed a crooked, brown maw. His drooped, lopsided eyes leered from a face deformed by boils. Laying on her back, Maral tried to scurry away. He grabbed at her head and tugged off her cap, spilling loose her long red hair. For a moment the fat man stood over her, blinking in bewilderment. Maral snatched out her dagger and plunged the curved blade into his flabby gut.

He howled and punched her cheek. Her head plowed into snow. Stars flashed. In a dizzy undersea world she found herself crawling and searching as the monster screamed behind her. A hand grabbed her boot. She kicked at it.

Somewhere, another Boo-Boo cry.

Maral scampered across the snow on all fours, the quiver at her belt catching on the earth. The right side of her face ached. Her brain bobbed loose in her skull.

Jaliqui lay only a few feet away, her saber by her hand. But the skinny man was already standing astride her, barking curses in a savage tongue. Maral crawled over and gripped the hilt. The scrawny man stomped down on the sword.

But ice is slippery. Maral tilted the blade up and pulled with all her might, slicing open his moccasined sole as she drew the weapon free. He tumbled back yowling.

Behind her, the fat man was doubled over yet still lurching after her as he clutched his skewered belly. He glared with animal hatred. He waved his club one-handed.

Maral rose unsteadily to her feet. She felt faint, and sudden worry about Jaliqui threatened to overtake her. But she remembered her years of training and stilled her soul. Though the saber was a little heavier than she was used to, it was balanced and slender. She stamped forward and extended with a quick slash. The fat man's fingers flew. The club fell from a gushing paw.

He shrieked at his mutilation. She sidestepped and aimed another cut. He flopped into the snow, neck spewing.

Afraid the scrawny man might slip into her blind spot, she twirled around, the movement making her sick. She needn't have worried. He stared crazy-eyed at the blood-soaked saber. Maral raised the blade and bared her teeth. He ran away limping.

Maral was about to reach for the bow strapped to Jaliqui's back when the man screamed. She looked up in time to see him land on the ground, half ripped in two, his viscera splattered as if in a messy sacrifice. The hulking shape of Boo-Boo sauntered out of the fog. A wound bled from the moon bear's side. A snapped rope dragged from his reins.

He spotted Jaliqui and raced over to sniff her. He moaned sadly. Maral bent over, vomited and, after wiping her mouth and spitting, knelt by her sister's side. She was alive and breathing more or less regularly, but she wouldn't wake. Maral prayed to Eju that the poison wasn't deadly. Or the rock wouldn't fever her brain.

The man Jaliqui had slashed whimpered in a curled ball as his blood steamed in the snow. Maral gave him no mercy but spotted a small, curved horn attached to his loincloth. She snatched it away and, after turning it over in her hands, blew into the small end.

Cicadas.

Time to hurry. There might be more on the way. And the sooner she gets her sister to Youta, the better.

After she clumsily slung Jaliqui across Boo-Boo's back and secured her in place, she climbed in the saddle and began the journey back. Maral had a special way with horses, not bears, but her sister's mount seemed to know the way. Which was good because soon Maral's cheek had swelled so much she couldn't see. Amid the headache misery, her mind wandered.

Today she'd killed her first man--if you could call him a man. But moreover, she realized this was the first time she successfully wielded a sword since she tried to defend Jungso from their mad cousin. After that humiliation, every time she sparred, the raw memory of Arasen-Usun swatting her blade aside and plunging his pommel into her eye sent her into a trembling panic.

"A little half-breed girl playing at warrior,"  he'd said."There's a price for such presumption."

Maral knew she had reclaimed something of herself today. She hoped the price wasn't her sister's life.