“Harass it, bleed it even, if that allows us to trap it, but I must kill it. That is what the spirits want. I must deliver the killing blow so that I can take in its spirit. How else will the spirit of the Great Bear know who it must fill?
Namkhai shook his head. “You have a great challenge before you, O Great Khagan,” he said. “May the Blue Wolf favor you.”
?gedei felt his blood surge in his ears, a sudden pounding as his heart beat more heavily in his chest. Just like Chucai, he thought wildly, he doubts that I can do it. His hands tightened on his reins, and he felt his neck muscles tense in preparation of the shout that was beginning to swell from his belly. With a great deal of difficulty, he swallowed his ire. He has no faith, he realized, and instead of letting his anger out, he shoved it back down, deep into his belly. I will show him. I will show them all.
In his mind, he could see himself wrestling with the bear, armed only with a curved sword. Towering on its hind legs, foam flecking its enormous jaws, it raged and snarled at him. He stabbed it, over and over, ignoring its ineffective swipes at his armor with its giant paws. It tried to pin him, tried to bite his throat with its sharp teeth, but he plunged his sword deep within that open mouth, ramming the blade back and up and into the bear’s brain.
Let them doubt me, ?gedei thought. I can—I will—do this.
On the last stroke, his hand had been steady. He did not waver. He did not hesitate.
Gansukh rode on the right rear flank of the hunting party, his eyes scanning the forest. A beast as old and venerated as the Darkhat spoke of would have terrorized this area for so long that it would make little effort to hide itself. He watched the groupings of smaller saplings for signs that some of them had been rudely forced aside. He read the patterns on the bark, looking for the white scars left by claws being sharpened. Would it hide its kills? Gansukh doubted so, and he kept an eye out for the carrion birds that would circle around the rotting carcasses of the bear’s prey, picking at the dead until there was nothing left.
He also kept watch for Munokhoi. The ex–Torguud captain was not part of the hunting party. He had carefully examined every face of the forty-plus men the Khagan had brought with him. Nor had he expected that Munokhoi would have joined the group. Too many of the men would have noticed the ostracized ex-captain’s presence and said something. No, Munokhoi was in the woods, though he did not know how close.
As the hunting party made its way through the woods, Gansukh drifted farther and farther away from the main host. If Munokhoi was trailing them, waiting for an opportunity, then it would be best if he was out of sight of the Khagan’s host. Offering himself as bait.
Sometimes the easiest way to catch a predator was to pretend to be prey.
As the morning wore on, he found his vigilance flagging. There were too many shadows under the trees. Hunting in the woods was much more tiring than hunting on the steppes.
His horse shifted its gait, dancing around the moss-covered hump of an old log, and Gansukh squirmed in his saddle. He was no stranger to riding long distances with a full bladder, but that didn’t make the experience any less uncomfortable. He had pissed from saddleback often enough, but it was easiest when he could look ahead and see that his horse wouldn’t need to change its gait. Here, in the forest, the ground was uneven and the occasional branch tried to grab his horse. Performing the necessary contortions and managing his horse was a little more complicated. Stopping to relieve himself would be simpler.
He pulled his horse to a halt, dismounted, and looped his reins around a low branch of a nearby sapling. He opened one of his saddlebags and retrieved a handful of dried berries. His horse snorted as he offered the treat, its breath warm on his palm. “I’ll be right back,” he said with an affectionate pat between its ears.
He walked a few paces away, adjusting the bow slung over his shoulder. He undid his sash to make water over the gnarled roots of an immense oak. The tree leaned crookedly, an aged malingerer that refused to point in the same direction as its surrounding brethren. Gansukh let out a sigh of satisfaction as the pressure of his bladder lessened.
He was, not unlike other wild animals in the forest, marking his territory. If the hunting party was anywhere near the bear’s cave—and the lack of bear sign suggested they weren’t very close—he would have been more circumspect in his pissing. It wasn’t so much that such behavior was rude—one animal to another; it was that four-legged predators had a much better sense of smell than the two-legged kind. Urine carried a very distinct odor, and leaving such a stain would only alert them of his presence.