Gansukh shivered slightly, trying to drive away the darkness that had invaded his brain. Which is better? his brain asked, undeterred in its course. To be the bright fire that tried to dispel the darkness, thereby attracting all manner of scavenger and hunter, or to die like that horse back there, lost and forgotten, picked clean by the weather until the very ground itself grew over his bones…
On his right, something bolted, a sudden explosion of pounding feet. Two legs, Gansukh realized in a flash, and he jerked his horse toward the sound, kicking it into a gallop. He leaned low, his head nearly level with the horse’s, straining with all of his senses to pinpoint the runner.
He had found the assassin.
Out in the gloom, he spotted a running figure. The assassin was both larger and smaller than he had expected: bigger because he was now so close to the man, who was smaller than Gansukh had expected him to be. He kicked his horse in the ribs, and the animal lunged forward. The assassin, still dressed in black, twisted like a shadow slipping away from an approaching torch, and Gansukh’s horse bumped him heavily as it passed, sending him sprawling.
Gansukh tried to jerk his horse to a stop, and when it started to buck against his pressure, he threw his leg over its back and jumped off, landing lightly on the hard ground. The assassin was getting up and tried to draw his sword, but Gansukh slammed into him. He got his hand over the assassin’s, and they wrestled for control of the half-drawn sword as they went down on the ground. A knee glanced off Gansukh’s thigh, and as his left arm was pinned beneath the squirming figure, he slammed his head forward and bashed the assassin with the peak of his forehead.
The assassin went limp, and Gansukh extricated his arm as he disentangled himself from the other man. Something sharp slit his right thumb, and he jerked his hand up and back, his fingers finding the hilt of the assassin’s weapon. He scuttled backward on his ass, pulling the sword with him, and the blade rasped noisily against the metal rim of the scabbard. But it came free, and he had control of it.
When the assassin lowered his hands from his bloody face, he found himself staring at the tip of his own sword.
“Don’t move.” Gansukh tried to hide his ragged breathing. The blade trembled in his tight grasp.
The assassin froze, his hands held out in a supplicating position. His chest was moving as rapidly as Gansukh’s, big heavy breaths, and with a sudden shock, Gansukh realized why the assassin was smaller than he had expected, why he had been able to physically dominate the other person. He flicked the tip of the sword toward the wrapped scarf that obscured most of the assassin’s face. “Take it off,” he growled.
Moving very slowly, the assassin complied, and her long hair spilled out of the tight embrace of the scarf.
She reminded him of Lian, and not just because they shared the same elongated face and long black hair. There was a spark in her eyes, a fiery refusal to be tamed, and Gansukh felt both his stomach and groin tighten—a momentary flash of panic and elation—even though he knew that the similarities between Lian and the assassin were merely racial and not familial.
“Who sent you?” Gansukh demanded.
The woman grinned, a mouth full of white, bloodstained teeth. She said something in a dialect he didn’t know, and when he didn’t react, she spat at him.
He flicked the blade, slapping her on the cheek, reminding her of her situation. “Do you speak Mongolian?” he snarled. “If you don’t, then you are no use to me. I’ll just kill you like you did your horse. Let the wolves have you.” He put the tip of the blade against her throat. “Who sent you to kill the Khagan?”
She stared at him for a long moment, daring him to follow through with his threat, and when he didn’t flinch or look away, she swallowed heavily and spoke. Her grasp of the language was rough, her accent clipped, and her words enunciated too clearly as if she had never spoken any of these words more than once or twice before. “You make mistakes. I am not a killer. Your Khagan is alive.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She pursed her lips, defiant, but she didn’t try to convince him. As if it didn’t matter what he thought. The truth would be the same either way.
Gansukh shifted his weight, lowering the tip of the sword so that it rested against her breastbone. Just enough that she didn’t think he was a fool. He didn’t believe her—not entirely—but there were a number of details that were starting to clamor for his attention. If she was an assassin, what had been her tool of choice? Not this sword. It was plain and functional—a horse rider’s sword—and to be used effectively, one had to be bigger and stronger than she appeared to be. Poison? If so, had she discarded the poisoned weapon? There were no visible pockets or pouches on her plain black garments.