God Within Us

Black for the east, white for the west.”

Those were the words Yesugei murmured to himself as a Baskord warrior adjusted his saddle. The White City, and the Black Mountain…

There came another stab of sorrow to his heart, but no more tears would fall from the nomad’s eyes, which were already raw and red. Running down his face in place of the tears’ trails were fingers of black and gray ash, stretching from brow to chin like the snaking rot of the Apostles’ magic. Though his wounds from the duel had been tended and his crumbling rags replaced, he still must have looked half a corpse by the pitying and disgusted looks the Baskord tribesmen gave him as they packed his saddlebags.

Perhaps he was a corpse, still going through the motions of life and living when it seemed there was nothing to live for. No, corpses did not feel such pain in their hearts as he did - in death, there was release. And there still remained a single, distant reason for life, one which he murmured again and again to himself since the morning’s passage.

“Black for the east, white for the west…”

A burden heavier with every stride…

The Baskord tribesman who fixed his saddle gave Yesugei’s horse a pat on its thick, muscled neck. “That’s a beast too fine to give up to the likes of you, Qarakesek, but it’s done.”

More than the fine dun mare - a gift from Böri’s own stables - the Baskord khan had equipped his Qarakesek prisoner far better than the tribesmen, or Yesugei, had expected. His saddlebags were packed with just enough food and fodder to see him from the Baskord plains, and his rags were replaced with a tough sheepskin robe to ward him from the chill winds. But the khan had also seen fit to arm him with a hunting bow and arrows, and a wide-bladed hunting knife with an ivory handle which Yesugei tucked into his boot alongside a thin pouch of silver coins.

Indeed, once the khan had retired and his retinue were distracted in their departure from the plains, several younger men of the ulus thought to avail him of his possessions. After all, what good was there in giving stout weapons and valuable silver to one who was their enemy? It was only the efforts and horse whip of the girl-shaman Tuyaara that their intentions were limited to heckling and bitter insults - and even as Yesugei made his final preparations to depart the shaman watched off to the side, reluctantly ensuring Böri’s promises were kept.

The look in her eye was baleful as Tuyaara approached him, but instead of throwing a curse his way the shaman pointed to the near west, where Yesugei saw a small creek cutting through the grassy earth. “That is the Nanly, where the summer herders water their sheep. Follow it for twenty miles, and it shall widen into the Charcoal-Burners’ Trail, and guide you north.”

It seemed Aysen had informed his daughter of their plans before his departure in the night - she guided him to the northwest as though she knew where he was to go. However, her father’s faith was clearly absent from the shaman’s own heart.

“My father only sends you because he fears for me, his lone daughter and child, striking out for her own,” Tuyaara had said to him once the duel was over and she tended to his wounds away from the ears of the tribe. “But I know the Klyazmite lands beyond our domain better than anyone in this tribe - so if you play false with my father’s faith, I will find you, wherever you might think to flee.”

Though Tseren’s powers might have weakened, it was known by the tribes that the Modkhai shamans could not only commune with the spirits of the land, but could also speak with animals, and hear whispers on distant winds as few Khormchaks were able. The girl-shaman’s threat echoed in his mind as Tuyaara spoke her directions, and then she gave a light smack of her whip to the rump of Yesugei’s mare. The horse started off at a trot, and just so he took the reins in hand and was riding, free at last.

When he turned to look back at fifty paces, he saw most of the tribesmen talking among themselves whilst others began to mount their own steeds to rejoin the ulus, which had already begun to leave the Baskord plains for the east. Only Tuyaara seemed to linger, watching him for a while longer before she too hopped onto her horse and made to ride for the ulus. Then soon the last of the Baskords slipped past the horizon, and he was alone, riding beneath the gray skies.

The high grasses opened reluctantly before his ride as Yesugei followed after the steady summer creek. The Nanly winded serpentine through the land, occasionally running through deep ditches and grooves in the plains that were obscured by tall grasses all round until a lesser horseman was to trip and break his neck in the fall.

As he continued to ride, passing over low rolling hills and by lonely trees, Yesugei quickly realized he was still being watched even with the Baskord gone from sight. Steppe mice scurried through the grasses and birds occasionally flew overhead, but none lingered long - nor did they appear a second time. He first spied the steppe falcon in the mid-afternoon, its dark silhouette barely visible against the gray ceiling above. However he then spied the same falcon a second time once he had crossed around a treacherous stony ridge, lingering at the same distance as it had earlier, perhaps even closer.

He had half a mind to loose an arrow at the bird as it continued to follow him, but the falcon remained just beyond the reach of his hunting bow. Almost as if it were trained, came the thought.

No matter how fast he rode and how he tried to conceal himself, the falcon followed, though Yesugei could not spot its master. Not that it mattered - Baskords, as all Khormchaks, trained well in the art of falconry, and a skilled tracker could remain hidden beyond the horizon whilst their birds trailed after the quarry at leisure. Soon the day grew dim and dark, and the falcon’s silhouette faded away into the night.

The gray clouds above began to part with the nightfall as Yesugei struck sparks from a flint. Soon a small, crackling flame sprouted from the piled summer grass, sending smoke and embers trailing into the heavens which had by then opened fully to reveal a high, full moon and a sky of twinkling stars. He had made good time and rode well for the day, but the falcon and its master who doubtlessly followed made sleep hard to find, even tired and sore as he was.

The food packed into his saddlebags was mostly an assortment of hard, salted meats, supplemented with a few old flatbreads and a corked bottle of mare’s milk which he sipped sparingly by the fire. On a full stomach and by the warmth of the crackling fire, sleep eventually weighed down Yesugei’s head and eyelids down with leaden exhaustion. As he began to nod off into sleep, he felt a strange, grasping feeling come over him - for a moment, the dry, crisp steppe air felt dreadfully heavy and thick, as though he had suddenly fallen into a mire. He was vaguely aware of voices calling for a name that was not his, but before he could listen in for more the darkness drowned his world.

***

The swirling darkness of sleep consumed him entirely, but then it parted, and Yesugei felt himself drifting, wandering, walking. He was walking uncertainly, and the ground at his feet was not the hard, dry earth of the plains, but sinking, grasping sand.

But though his eyes were closed, he knew where he was. He knew the place well. It had dogged him for years, creeping into the few moments of sleep when he did happen to dream.

The White Pinch.

He opened his eyes, and found himself in that dreadful plain once more. A vast, yawning expanse of dry earth and stinging squalls of sand, dotted with few standing stones and pebbles.

But something did not seem right. He took another step forward, and he realized he was shivering with cold. The entire desert was freezing, for the high pale sun above his head that should have cast the land in sweltering heat as in his memories instead seemed to suck away all warmth.

The cold was somehow worse than the drowning heat and sweat of that day, and the memories flooded to him in fragments as he walked. The pounding hooves, blaring horns, the whistling of arrows...so many arrows, as many as the sands, blanketing the steppe in darkness with every volley. He took another step, and then another - he was walking up along a low dune, trudging to where - he did not know. But he knew that if he stopped, he would not be able to bring himself to walk again, and the terrible, cold sun would bear down upon him like a circling vulture and eat him.

When he reached the top of the dune, he saw the White Pinch stretching ever on before him, lifeless, barren, and cold…so cold. Why? Down below he saw arrow shafts jutting out from the ground, so many in number that for a moment they seemed like grasses sprouting from the barren waste. But nothing could grow in the White Pinch - that he knew. And as he looked on, he saw lying amidst the arrows and beneath the drifting sands were bodies.

Thousands of men and horses lay strewn about the White Pinch, lying just as they had fallen so many years ago. Colorful robes that once bore tribal sigils were bleached pale by the looming sun so that he could not tell who among the dead were of his tribe and who were of the Quanli. Together, Khormchak lay upon Khormchak, kin slain by kin for the follies of khans and spurned blood-brothers. The bodies and the arrows were strewn all around, but as Yesugei made his careful descent from the dune he spied a winding path that seemed clear of rotting dead, bordered on either side by broken arrow shafts like stones along a road.

Seeing no other way forward nor back, he slowly strode along the path beneath the chilling sun, which seemed to grow colder and colder the longer he roamed. As the path took him down another treacherous rocky slope, a great cloud of dust suddenly rose up from the ground below. The tiny grains lifted into the air cut like a thousand tiny knives into his exposed hands and face as he tried to pull his collar high to shield himself from the squall. He wanted to cry in surprise, but the sands would only fill his mouth and choke him.

Blinded and harried by the cutting storm, he also realized he was losing his footing - then he felt a part of the rocky slope crumble beneath his boots, and he fell, tumbling down the rocky ridge. He did not know for how long he fell, nor where, but when he finally rolled onto a patch of sand covered in scratches and bruises he felt blood in his mouth, warm and tasting of iron.

This was the end, he thought. Now that he had fallen he felt the cold sands beneath him draining the last tinges of warmth from his body, and with it the strength to rise again.

“Back on your feet, Yesugei,” growled a voice somewhere off to his side. He thought it might have been Nariman’s, but he paid it no mind. Nariman was dead, and perhaps he would be dead as well. Hundreds, no, thousands had died at the White Pinch - thousands under his command, his first and his last. They died all around him beneath the stinging arrows and in the clash of lances, and more had died after, screaming and howling beneath the open sun.

He stared up at that same sun, now cold but just as unforgiving as it had been then. But someone was shaking his shoulder, not letting him die.

“Get up,” the voice said, but this one was different, and tinted with urgency. “Yesugei, get up. You can’t sleep here. Get up. The war is not over. Get up.”

No, I am not sleeping. I am remembering.

Yesugei turned to look for whoever was disturbing him, and saw no one. But the voices still echoed all around, and when he slowly rose to his hands and knees, he saw them - footprints in the sand, too many to count, trailing further and further into the swirling storm, and fading fast.

He crawled after them, shuffling on all fours through the sands. He could only see a foot in front of himself, just far enough to see the next set of fast-fading prints in the ground. The voices trailed ever further, dancing just out of reach.

“Leave him,” spoke the first growling voice. Nariman - there was no doubt. His eldest brother, cold and unfeeling - the one who was destined to inherit it all. “Leave him. If he can’t get up on his own, he’s finished. Leave him, and we can go home.”

Home…home…where was home? Home had been his yurt, his ulus, his tribe. But they were all gone, swallowed by the maw of the Hungry Steppe, with only drifting ashes left to tell the tale.

The creeping cold was freezing his mind, his wits. He could scarcely think clearly, and his eyes were barely open. If this was a dream, then why did it feel so real? So exhausting?

“He’ll get up,” spoke another, gentler voice. Kaveh, the only brother he felt he could truly call such. “You’ll get up, won’t you, Yesugei?”

He heard more voices, but they were all swirling around with the storm, too many and too hushed for him to make out their words. Some of them were harsh, some of them were gentle, but as Yesugei felt himself slowing down their voices began to grow louder. They were calling his name. No, not calling. Cheering.

Yesugei, they called. Get up. The war is not over. Remember your oath! Remember our oath!

It was his father he heard. It was his brothers and his sisters, it was his keshiks and his sworn men. It was their footprints he was following, crawling after them. But in the howling storm, he saw the footprints growing fainter and fainter. One by one, they grew fewer and fewer in number until Yesugei found himself crawling after a single set, the stride uneven and staggering.

And then he was walking - stumbling, really, but on his feet. He staggered forward with his head down, trailing after the footprints as the blowing sands continued to bite at his face, and the ground beneath his feet became like mud, sucking his own feet into the earth. He let the ground claim his boots and continued on barefoot, wandering on and on.

Eventually, he spotted in the swirling clouds a figure, hunched over cross-legged in the swirling, freezing sandstorm. When he drew closer, he saw the man was wearing tarnished lamellar, and bleeding from half a dozen wounds. The man traced a finger daubed with his own gore over a patch of barren earth, tracing a symbol into the ground - that of a clawed hand, which seemed to shimmer with a strange and terrible power.

Murat-noyan, who had died so long ago, then whispered an incantation under his breath. But he had died long ago, this Yesugei knew.

He did not know from where and when the sword came into his hands, but the silver shamshir’s handle and blade were freezing cold to the touch. As the dead man continued to whisper his prayer, Yesugei staggered forward and thrust the freezing blade out before him, half-blind. Then he heard a terrible howl, and the Quanli noyan’s armor suddenly transformed into stone and black, greasy muscle. The blade in his hand was no longer one of steel, but of dark, hungry crystal - blacker than the night.

The form of the thing before his eyes wavered between the form of Murat-noyan and the Apostle, but when it hit the ground both noyan and monster exploded into a great cloud of ash that cast Yesugei’s world in darkness once more.

But still, there was the cold. And the voices.

They spoke to him still, and into his silent heart poured their strength, their dreams, their oaths old and new. He felt a fire kindle in his heart, and the swirling voices sank deep into his chest, warming the crystal whose magic kept him walking, kept him breathing, and kept him fighting.

The war was not over. It was only beginning. And he would not die until it had come to an end - this, Yesugei knew.

***

When he opened his eyes he saw gray, looming clouds above. Morning had come, the sun had risen, and he was still alive. The morning chill no longer felt as cold - for deep within his chest, he felt a strange, buzzing radiance flowing from the crystal, sending snaking tendrils of warmth throughout his whole body. It filled him with life of a kind it felt he had not known for an age.

In the half-light of the hidden sun, he saw that he had ridden near to the edge of the Baskord plains, for the horizon had finally broken to reveal deep, verdant woodlands some many miles off.

No trails ran through the Baskord plains, but further on past a low, rocky precipice marked by another squat stone marker of the Baskords, Yesugei could spy a winding pair of ruts in the dirt - cut by many a heavy traveling wagon. He saw the path ran alongside a wide, roaring stream into which the Nanly flowed, and both waters and path of the Charcoal-Burners’ Trail twisted around scattered trees and standing stones - eventually plunging deep into the maw of the waiting woods where they disappeared.

Yesugei looked on at the verdant sea that awaited ahead, and felt himself seized by a strange feeling. He walked over to the thin flowing waters of the creek, and crouched to dip his hands in. The clear Nanly lapped cool and soothing against his scarred and weathered hands, and he cupped the coolness to drink. He recalled the Jigai river flowing along the border of the Devil Woods as he drank, his mind reaching for a memory that seemed from a life long past, long ended.

He took another sip, and then he cupped more of the water and peered into his wobbly reflection. He saw the faint ash marks running down his face, making him seem half a ghoul of the steppes. Then he splashed the chill water onto his face, sending a jolt through his whole body - he endured, and wiped his face clean of the ash, letting the dread memories and whispers of the east drift along the Nanly before dissipating into nothing. He watched the ashes disappear, and lingered for a while longer by the waters. Somewhere, he knew the Nanly and the Charcoal-Burners’ Trail would flow into the Cherech, and where the Cherech flowed, that was where the city of the west would lie with its tolling bell. And where the city lay, so too would he and Vasilisa meet once again, and oaths sworn amidst steppe grasses and beneath sullen skies would be fulfilled, and madness would give way to answers.

“Well then, you’d better get started.” He heard a familiar voice come from behind, but when he turned to look all he saw was the expanse of the Baskord plains. For a moment, he thought he saw a splash of green and a burst of hair red like fire playing among the high, swaying grasses, but the spirits lay quiet.

After she drank her fill from the creek, Yesugei saddled his mare and put his heels to her sides, riding deeper on towards the woods.