“Tarbagatai,” the man supplied. He wiped a hand across his face. “No longer than the nights, I suppose,” he said with a shrug.
Gansukh offered a bark of laughter. “That is true.” He waved a hand at the targets. “It has been a long time since I hunted in the mountains. I found the light to be different there. Night came swiftly, and if you were tracking prey, you had to be quick about making your kill. Otherwise, the sun would vanish and so would your target. Out here, though, the day seems to last forever.”
Tarbagatai squinted at the targets, his tongue working at the inside of his lower lip. He seemed to be wondering if Gansukh was making sport of him, and Gansukh made no effort to guide the younger man’s thinking. After his encounter with Namkhai and the Imperial Guard the other night, he had realized how few friends he had among the Khan’s elite guard. Lian’s schooling and his mission had kept him aloof from the men of the arban, a dangerous situation for a front-line warrior such as himself. If the caravan came under attack again, he needed some confidence that his fellow Mongols wouldn’t see him as an adversary.
“Care to test your skill?” he asked, nodding at the nearby rack of bows.
Tarbagatai laughed. “I have heard the stories about you,” he said. “In the Khagan’s garden. How you felled a deer with one arrow.”
Gansukh shrugged as he wandered over to the rack. He let his hands roam across the bows—stroking the hardwood curves, fingering the sinew of the strings—and he finally selected a likely candidate. Smoothly, he strung the bow, and then offered it to Tarbagatai. “Maybe I was lucky that day,” he said.
Tarbagatai snorted, and dismissed the offered weapon with a wave of his hand. His gaze darted toward his lazy companions. “I’ll use my own,” he said, and he called for one of them to fetch his bow.
Gansukh wandered back to the line, and standing shoulder to shoulder with Tarbagatai—who was slightly taller—he looked out at the scattered targets, counting them, noting their distance. “In the mountains,” he said, “if you have a good position, you can see everything.”
Tarbagatai nodded. “Anyone can shoot one arrow and hit one target.”
Gansukh smiled at the mountain man’s tone. Respectful, and yet slightly challenging at the same time. Tarbagatai had known who he was when he had approached, and he was certain the story of the deer in the Khagan’s garden wasn’t the only story that had been passed around. The cup at the Khagan’s feast. The wrestling match with Namkhai. His ongoing feud with Munokhoi. All of these stories contributed to his reputation among the Imperial Guard, but every member of the Guard had been hand-picked for his own prowess and reputation. Stories meant little; actions counted for more.
The consensus about his match with Namkhai was that it had been a draw, and only because the Khan had allowed them to withdraw from the field. Opinion was split on who would have truly won, but regardless, no one could recall anyone ever besting Namkhai before. And Namkhai, of course, hadn’t spoken one way or the other.
There was some allure to challenging Chagatai’s envoy, then. There were few other opportunities for members of the Imperial Guard to distinguish themselves.
“We could pretend these targets are Chinese raiders,” he offered. “A race to see who can kill more of them?”
The other guards wandered over in the wake of the man who brought Tarbagatai his own bow, eager interest plain on their faces. The pair in the back began to speak in hushed tones, making wagers.
Tarbagatai glared at the pair for a second, and then shook his head slightly, as if he was pushing their wager from his mind. The mountain man looked over the targets once more. “Ten,” he said. “A full arban. Shall we have ten arrows each?”
“I would hope you would not miss that many,” Gansukh said with a laugh. “How about six? That should be enough to warrant a clear winner.”
Tarbagatai agreed, and with a word, sent one of the men to fetch two quivers of arrows. Each archer selected six, and Tarbagatai stuck his in the ground before him—a neat line, waiting to be snatched up.
Gansukh slowly pushed each of his arrows into the dry ground, making sure they were all firmly planted with their fletching pointed straight up. He opted for a tight cluster of shafts, a grouping that his hand fell upon naturally without requiring a look.
Tarbagatai would have to chase his arrows. Each shaft was a little farther away, and eventually, he would have to take a tiny step to his left in order to reach the last few arrows. Such movement wouldn’t take much time, but in this contest, that tiny delay might make the difference.
“Ready?” Gansukh asked, laying his first arrow across his bow.