From Saryozek to ruined Almaty, to Shu (which did not burn, but was trampled), the myangan joined forces with the 62nd myangan that was besieging the city of Taraz where its citizens had fortified the positions of their precious solar panels around makeshift walls, barricades built from the remains of buildings and held together by sheer tenacity and luck rather than any feat of architecture.

It was then that Baraat Buriyat suggested to the myangan lord Nasan Adai that the wall could be easily torn down from its foundations, should explosives be dug inside from below (without first consulting Gansukh Kiryat, who seethed with rage as he saw the diggers work on the foxholes of the hard-packed earth, planted the explosives and tore down the barricade in a moment’s notice). Baraat was swept up by the men of both myangans as soon as the sacking was done, his name chanted over and over above the screams of the dying and the roaring of the flames. And yet, Ganuskh did not take his bullwhip or call a tribunal. Instead, he seethed impotently as he watched the boy get drunk with Nasan in the company of his zuun-lords, rubbing shoulders and singing war-songs with the same men who, until Saryozek, considered the boy little better than a practical joke played on their expense, an amusing oddity among the heads of the Horde.

He liked Baraat better when he was silent and brooding, clumsily clutching at the gear stick, as he grappled it with three fingers, as he clumsily took turns or avoided looking into his eyes. There was powerful, but directionless, rage there; the kind that only the young and the foolish can muster that seethed within the confines of his skull, ready to burst out and choke them at a moment’s notice. Gansukh had fed that red-hot anger, had made sure to push the boy’s buttons by parading Heng, the Ogtbish he was lusting over before him as his own woman. He had made him his designated driver and forced him away from the troops and had had the boy perform every menial task possible for him, expecting Baraat to make a wrong move at any moment.

Perhaps, Gansukh had thought, as he slept each night with a knife stashed beneath his pillow, the boy will come for me with his saber drawn as I sleep. And so he slept fitfully, with an ear out for the slightest sound, to disarm him with one motion and sink his blade hilt-deep into Baraat’s neck. Or maybe, he thought as he handed the boy his loaded rifle as he made his way among the men, his back turned to Baraat, the boy will attempt shoot me in cold blood. He had watched out for the slightest sound of a safety going off, of the familiar sound of shaking hands lining up the sights with the back of his head. He kept his handgun on him just for this occasion, so he could turn lightning fast and put a bullet through Baraat’s eye, killing him outright. Maybe the boy will try to choke me with a length of wire, he said, as he strapped on the leather band around his neck. He could try to set the RV on fire he thought and so he pumped the fuel in it himself. He could have poisoned my food, or my drink he thought, making Heng sample every single meal or drink that was handed to him. He could always run me over, Gansukh considered and so he never left the RV and on and on it went, with Ganuskh locked in his RV, safe from danger and Baraat’s rage slowly fading, fading, his constant scowl turning into worrying indifference and then infuriating cockiness. Gansukh would often find himself imagining driving his knife into the boy, snapping his neck or choking him as he slept, watching him die in degrees. But he knew he could not, not unless he wanted to turn his own myangan against him.

By then, of course, it had already been too late. Because as Gansukh remained in his RV, his flak jacket and bulletproof vest constantly strapped to his body, every inch of his skin protected by Kevlar fiber, Baraat had been outside and he had been talking to the men and above all, to all the right people, to whom he had been sent to relay messages on Gansukh’s behest. And when he was done delivering those messages, regarding the readiness of the myangan, the service and repair of the Tngri, the division of loot, these men of all ranks and standings (from the grounds to the shamen-engineers to the jailers in the coward’s stockade to the zuun-lords) would ask:

Aren’t you the god-killer?

You’re the boy that blew up the T-34.

You cut up the belly of that monster!

You took Saryozek with just thirteen men!

You’re no longer a zuun-lord? That’s a good thing.

Staying close to the myangan-lord, that will prim you for leadership.

Is it true, you’re the Batu-Khan’s bastard?

And Baraat did his best not to let these things get to his head (for what good they did) and they helped to change his anger; to transmute it, in that cauldron of his mind into that other very useful drive that is no less destructive than wrath: ambition, with just a dash of arrogance. It made the beating of his heart slow to a steady crawl, it arranged the red-black jumble of his thoughts in order, reorganized them in a jagged scab-brown line. There were men that chanted his name and there were dirty songs about him. He had gotten drunk with his fellow zuun-lords and had been allowed to inspect his former zuun. Ganbold the shaman-engineer had called him ‘the wolf’ and had anointed his forehead with the fuel-mark.

He would not have to kill Gansukh, unless he really needed to. But when it came to this, he would enjoy it immensely.

Nergui had watched these events unravel closely, from his own place in the fringes of the myangan. He had not been allowed a place in the myangan-lord’s side and he was shunned by the other Mongols, but he had seen and heard enough among his fellow torghud, who had devoted themselves almost completely to the act of spying on Baraat Buriyat. He had learned of the boy’s rise among the myangan with indifference: the boy would have been a fool not to take advantage of it, to rise among the ranks and get his tenth of the bloody profits. But Nergui feared that Baraat was getting too comfortable in his own position too soon, adapting to it. Pretty soon, he would forget about his promise to the Chinese madman and would condemn him to live and serve at his side, perhaps even dispatching him if Nergui pushed him too hard to make good on his agreement.

But Baraat had thankfully not approached him yet. He had left him alone and well enough away from the machinations taking place among the Mongols. And Nergui had spent his time instead observing the little gods that had infested the myangan, following them from Saryozek first by clinging in the underside of the mounts, the most tenacious among them rising on the roofs, invisible and hungry, their long tongues flapping at the wind. Some had even made their way on the shoulders of the Mongols or his fellow Ogtbish and were whispering words of rebellion or caution in their ear, injecting the sleepers with their divine bile, perhaps offering them visions of grandeur or promises of doom. They had stayed well enough away from Nergui, knowing that he could sense their presence, that he could dispel them with a flick of his wrist of slap them away from his body, squashing them like flies and brushing them off him.

It was as the combined myangan stopped to make camp in what was left of the city of Uralsk, that Ganuskh Kiryat called him from the confines of his RV. Nergui felt his heart sink at the sound of his name. He saluted the sweating, fearful, Kevlar-cocooned officer.

“I want you to kill Baraat Buriyat.”

“Myangan-lord?”

“You will find him, when he is drunk or sleeping or helpless tonight. I want you to smother him with his own pillow.”

“Myangan-lord, I am not sure I can do this…”

“Then choke him. Or cut his throat. Make sure you hold his down until he is good and dead. Better do both, just to be sure.”

“Myangan-lord. Baraat Buriyat is your designated driver. Of what crime is he accused?”

“I did not make you torghud so you could question me, Ogtbish.”

“But you did not make me torghud so I could kill a man without a reason. Nevermind an officer.”

“A former officer. Do I not have authority of life and death in this myangan? Am I not its lord?”

“You are, myangan-lord, but…”

“Then take your gun. Find Baraat Buriyat and pump him full of holes.”

“And what will become of me after this is done, myangan-lord?”

“You will be given a Mongol’s funeral. An officer’s funeral, at that.”

“I do not believe a funeral is adequate compensation for laying down my life, myangan-lord.”

“And what if you died in the field of battle, Ogtbish? Would you turn that down too?”

“I would have very little say to death in a battlefield, myangan-lord.”

There was silence for a while. Nergui hovered between exiting the RV and maintaining his composure, as Gansukh Kiryat snapped his fingers and the woman called Heng stepped in from the shadows, handing him a tiny bottle that the myangan-lord grabbed and offered Nergui with a single motion.

“What if you could get away with it? What if you could kill him in a way that no-one would find out?”

“Poison, myangan-lord?”

“Two drops will be enough to leave him helpless, paralyzed. Three will kill him in minutes. Use five. Put them in his drink or spike his food.”

Nergui stood there, looking at the little brown bottle, imagining the yellow fluid that sloshed around it. He didn’t quite know how he knew it, but he could tell it smelled a lot like almonds. He chanced a look at Heng, who quickly retreated back into the shadows. Her belly was bigger, even under her baggy clothes. She beamed, pest her look of utter misery.

“What would you ask, in exchange for the death of Baraat Buriyat?” Gansukh Kiryat asked, making Nergui snap back to attention.

“My freedom, myangan-lord.”

“When he is dead, I will provide you with quarters and a woman in Volgograd. I will personally ask the Batu-Khan to make you a free man.”

Nergui took the bottle, placed it in his pocket and turned. He was halfway out of the RV, when Gansukh Kiryat called out:

“Use the entire thing, just to make sure.”

And Nergui stepped out into the night, returned to his tent and removed from him his badges of office. From his duffel bag, he took his old, tattered camo uniform (still stained with blood in places) and put on his hat, pulling it way down to obscure his eyes. The tiny bottle, he placed in the crease of his rolled-up sleeve, making a makeshift pocket from the bunched up torn fabric.

Nergui stepped out among the Mongols, who drank and brawled and crossed swords with one another, swept up by the frenzy of the mukhomor mushrooms. He did not check Baraat’s tent, because he knew the boy would not be there. Instead he headed for myangan-lord Asai’s RV and the surrounding tents of the zuun-lords. There were no guards posted around the entrances; on a day like this, even the torghud were given leave, though they were instructed to take their festivities elsewhere, at the fringes of the camp, where they would be less likely to lash out at their captors.

Nergui moved past the myangan-lord’s tent, which was little more than a tarp on stilts, growing out of the RV. Beside it, fires were lit where vegetables stewed and skewered meat was seared on jury-rigged grilles, made out of spare mount parts. A buck-toothed soldier was serving the meat on a pilfered silver platter, licking his lips. Nergui caught him just as he was about to take a very discreet bite from his bounty.

“I wouldn’t do it, if I were you” Nergui said. The Mongol jumped, as soon as he felt the hand on his shoulder, his head bent low.

“I wasn’t going to do anything. I was only…”

“Hand me the tray.” Nergui commanded and the Mongol complied, before returning back to his post. Reaching into his pocket, Nergui removed the small brown bottle, placed it on the inside of his armpit and unscrewed the cap while moving to the tent’s entrance, so as not to draw attention to himself. He sprinkled the entire bottle’s contents in it, just to make sure, watching the clear liquid as it was lost in the meat’s grease.

Then he stepped inside the tent were the great heads of the two myangans were drunk and tipping over, their hands crashing on the short tables to the rhythm of the rat-faced zuun-lord’s twanging at the chords of the horse-head fiddle:

“You need coolin’ baby” the zuun-lord would go.

“I’m not foolin’” the others would echo, spitting their drink and bits of food all around.

“I’m gonna send you back to schoolin’” the zuun-lord would hoarsely say, as Nergui scanned the gathered men, looking for Baraat. He found him playfully trading blows with a scar-faced zuun-lord, his face split right down the middle.

“Way down inside-ah- honey you need it”

“I’m gonna give you my love”

Nergui made his way among the shoving, thrusting men and kneeled next to Baraat, just as the man had gotten him in a headlock, pouring vodka down his hair. Nergui slid the plate on the table and turned to leave.

“I’m gonna give you my love-oh”

“I’m gonna give you my love, oh!”

“Oi! Serving boy!” scar-face said. Nergui froze, about to turn, thinking how long perhaps it would take a quartered man to bleed to death. Deciding it probably wasn’t that long, he turned…

“Wanna whole lotta love!”

“Wanna whole lotta love!” the zuun-lord echoed, just as Baraat’s fist got him straight in the ear and laid him flat on his back. Nergui sighed and then made his way outside, sparing only a glance back into the tent. In the split second before he ran for it across the camp and to the other Torghud, he saw the boy bite into the tender, juicy meat.

He did not know how long it would take Baraat to die. He hoped it would be a while, just enough for them to make it to Volgograd. Just enough for Gansukh make good on his promise. What was the penalty, he wondered, for a myangan-lord to conspire to assassinate one of his subordinates? Perhaps the execution of the man who performed the deed. He was certain that Gansukh Kiryat would make a scene, as Nergui was flogged to death or flayed alive. Perhaps he would try to put out the flames just as they were about to dunk him into the vat of boiling water. He would hate losing a man like Nergui, he thought; a man who killed for absolutely nothing.

Nergui did not touch the bounty of left-overs that was passed around in the Ogtbish Tupperware or touch a drop of the mukhomor-infused piss of the soldiers. He preferred to be alone and sober with his nightmares that night, to weigh the weight of his own life. After many, careful hours of deliberation, he discovered that he truly did not have that much to lose, just as dawn was breaking.

***

Gansukh was a paranoid fool and Baraat was a fearless little monster, Heng knew that well. To aid the one in the destruction of the other would be disastrous at this point: Ganuskh could kill Baraat, but the boy was already well-known in both his myangan and Asai’s. By the time they reached Volgograd, the rumours surrounding the young wolf would have reached the Batu-Khan’s ears and he would ask for the boy brought to him, to be showered with honors. But when he would find out the boy was poisoned, the Batu-Khan would not rest until the culprit was found and brought to justice. Had the killer perhaps been a solider or an Ogtbish, his death would have been entirely his own; a violent but quick affair that would perhaps end up with his body nailed on the fender of the coward’s stockade. But should it have been an officer that had killed this promising young boy, then his destruction would have been far more thorough and all-encompassing. The Batu-Khan, Heng knew (who followed the decrees and ways of Temujin to the letter when it suited him) would find the culprit, strip him of his belongings, take his women and slay his children.

And Heng was, at the moment, heavy with Gansukh’s child. The prospect of being handed over to another barbarian, living under the constant threat of harm and going back to sleeping with a knife tucked under her mattress was not a welcome prospect for her. Baraat may have scared her, but his advances were boyish and crude, naïve even. Baraat would not beat her to within an inch of her life or until she aborted. He would not kill her child if a misstep on her part made him mad or drive her out of the myangan, to let her fend for herself (and most probably die) in the wastes.

Heng knew that she did not love Gansukh (poor, mad Ganuskh, with his layers of flak jackets and his neck-guards and his poison-testing tabs in his pockets) but she knew she could not do without him. Not now, not just yet. She had let him take her after Saryozek, his hands slick with Baraat’s blood, because she was scared. But then, as the dust settled, she found that she could have done, in fact, worse. Heng was living the life her mother could not have, had built for herself a safe haven among the wolves, when all around her there was nothing but blood and fire. Ganuskh, she knew, was easy to control. And the only way to keep things the way they were, was by making sure that Baraat would stay alive and well, at least as far as Volgograd.

Which is why Heng had taken great pains to reduce the potency of the cyanide she had handed Nergui, working in secret for many nights, as Gansukh slept. She had made sure to saturate the thing in glucose, to thin it out as best as she could to reduce its potency. Without a laboratory for a full chemical analysis, she knew that this was little more than a shot in the dark, but she could also count on Baraat’s young age, that would allow his body to fight the poison as best as it could. Perhaps he would fall ill for a couple of days or be debilitated for a week or so, but she was well aware that it would not kill him. The dosage would, of course, be fatal for anyone else over his age and would perhaps kill an older man outright. But she could not control every facet of Gansukh’s little conspiracy.

So Heng prayed, as Gansukh took her in his arms and kissed her neck, to a God she had been very much convinced from a very young age that wouldn’t listen, that nothing would go wrong.

Make Nergui lose heart, she prayed, as Gansukh’s hands travelled all over her, stripping her of her clothes.

Make the boy not take it she thought between moans, as he took her.

“Let him make it through this. Let me make it through this” she whispered as she saw Gansukh leave the bed and wear his layers of protective gear once again.

And the little gods listened, from their nests in the corners.