Baraat had just cut off a succulent side of meat and was about to sink his teeth in it, when Quorchi, zuun-lord of the 22nd zuun broke freed from his head lock and punched him square in the chest. Baraat rolled to the ground, the meat dropping into the dust. He managed a laugh through gritted teeth as he watched the bearded man cut a hefty chunk from his plate and chew it slowly, delighting in the taste with exaggerated delight.

Perhaps Quorchi would have noticed the overbearing scent of almonds and the slight sugary aftertaste, had Baraat not just rushed him, the men’s playful trading of blows now turned to a fistfight. Bayar, zuun-lord of the 98th zuun, reached out and grabbed the platter just as his colleagues rushed in to break up the fight, which had already degenerated into a maelstrom of biting and clawing. What had began as playful pusharound between the two youngest zuun-lords had quickly escalated into a fight, but that was not news to the other zuun-lords or even Asai himself (who was hard at work courting his chosen Ogtbish concubine for the night). The boys had gotten for themselves a taste for blood. Unlike the old men in the tent, they had been born into barbarism and had adapted to it. Where he and his generation had reveled in the dissolution of society, the boys had not known a world that was governed by anything other than the pack mentality of the Horde. They were biters, they were clawers, they were hunters. Their rifles and their swords were the natural extensions of their arms, their mounts the extensionof their feet. They needed to be bloodied, or they would turn on each other, simple as that.

Quorchi struck Baraat with a flailing backhand and there was the all-too-familiar cracking of nosebone. Baraat bled fiercely, but he did not scream. He only roared as he kept pounding Quorchi, striking zuun-lord Chinua of the 55th zuun square in the jaw. The old man fell flat to the ground. Bayar bit into the succulent meat and chewed on it, enjoying the sight, just as zuun-lord Qadan of the 42nd zuun sat beside him and helped himself to a couple of bites.

“Was it always like this?” Qadan asked, in between mouthfuls “Were we like that, as boys?”

“No, no. We knew where to strike. For example, if I were Quorchi, I would go for the neck. Would get Baraat right off me and lay him flat on the ground.”

“I’d bite a finger, myself. Then he’ll know not to come back, after this.”

“A finger? What good will that do? Baraat’s already lost two. Two more and he’s useless with a rifle, never mind a mount.”

“You’re missing four fingers and we still keep you around!”

“Because I’m the best man in a crisis. What about you, then, Qadan? You’ve got all your fingers and you still can’t shoot for shit.”

“Your sister says I have a big cock.”

“My sister will say anything for a free meal and a drink. Say, does this meat taste a lot like almonds, or is it just me?” Bayar said, just as his fingers went numb and he fell face-first into his plate.

Qadan nudged the old man and turned to shout for someone to get help when he saw him foaming at the mouth, but by then Quorchi had been coughing up blood. Asai shot up from his place in the tent, looked at his officers as they scurried here and there like rats and then turned to Quorchi.

“What the bloody hell is going on here?”

“I don’t-” Quorchi said and then he spewed bile and dropped to the ground as his heart ceased beating.

***

There was uproar in the myangans. Great fires were lit up across the camp. The men of the zuuns whose lords had been stricken were striking the hoods of their cars in anger, going about the tents of the Ogtbish to tear the sleeping men and women from their beds and drag them out across the dusty ground. Others went to the coward’s stockade, to harass the turncoats and the deserters and the conspirators, to burn them with torches or beat them bloody. A chosen few kindled the fires worse, by openly accusing their fellow Mongols of the other myangan, since, as it appeared, only their zuun-lords had been stricken.

There was a brief maelstrom of executions, of knife-fights and shots fired in the dark. There was screaming. The men in charge of cooking the meat that went into Asai’s tent were given a lightining-quick mob-trial and were then fed the burning embers from their charcoal grilles. There was blood and broken teeth pooling in small puddles close to the movie projectors.

Gansukh Kiryat left his RV for the first time in a long while, locking the door behind him. If there was ever a better time for anyone to lay hands on his possessions (and his woman) now would have been the perfect occasion. But from what it seemed, his myangan was in the process of being torn apart and he knew exactly why.

The idiot hadn’t given Baraat the poison.

As he pushed his way past the brawling, cursing Mongols, he pointed at a group of men that were hard at work kicking a bleeding Ogtbish into the ground. “Oi, you bastards!” he shouted at them above the cacophony. “Come with me!”

If you want a job done right, then do it yourself.

With his posse, Gansukh Kiryat made his way across the masses, shouting obscenities and shooting his rifle to disperse the rioters, some of which were only there for the bloodletting, unaware of the cause of this uproar. Gathering a few of his arbat-lords along the way, he headed for Asai’s tent, where the gathered crowd had coalesced, from a brawling amoeba into a frothing sea of faces, held together only by the voice of a superior, if only barely.

“Aren’t you Mongols?” Asai roared across the gathered men, who suddenly stopped and stood at attention. Even he found himself fighting the urge to strike a salute at this: for these were the words of Temujin, that the Batu-Khan had used to rally the men from their snow-covered villages and their dying hearths out into the world. “This is not conduct fit for you! This is the way of the sheep! Of the hares, who sit themselves and run at the first sign of danger! You are wolves! Wolves do not howl at shadows!”

Gansukh pressed his way across the throng with his men and saw him: Baraat Buriyat, standing behind Asai, his nose cupped in his hands. He was bleeding. Gansukh could not help but feel a spark of elation at the sight. Perhaps he will bleed to death or choke on it, he thought.

“What the hell is this?” Asai said, as soon as he saw the armored mess that was his fellow myangan-lord. Three of my officers drop dead, the myangans are tearing themselves to pieces and now you show up?”

“I was trying to contain the mess that was taking place on my side of the camp. What happened here?”

“What happened, was that three of my zuun-lords, three of my most trusted friends and veterans of China and the meat-grinding shit-hole that is Uzebekistan, men who I called brothers and sacked a dozen cities with just dropped dead in my own tent, poisoned! Poisoned by a piece of meat!” Asai roared and the sea of faces growled with a symphony of curses. Gansukh turned virgin-paper-white, his expression thankfully obscured under his goggles.

“This is not the way of a Mongol, to kill with poison! This is definitely the work of Ogtbish.” Gansukh reassured him. “I suggest we-”

“The Ogtbish are being rounded up as we speak. They will be tried according to the rule of the Horde and, if found guilty, will be executed. But why should an Ogtbish strike at officers of the Horde?”

“Revenge for their homes and families and their countrymen we put to the sword. Revenge for a life of servitude imposed on them.”

“As opposed to what, Gansukh? Starvation and freezing in the winter, dying of thirst in the summer and killing each other with stones for a can of fuel? No, this…this is something else.” Asai said, thoughtfully. Gansukh shot a look at Baraat Buriyat and found the boy staring right back.

He knows, he thought but did his best not to show it.

“But who in their right mind would wish the zuun-lords eliminated, especially when we are so close to Volgograd and the Khan? Why not strike there?” Gansukh retorted.

“A bloody stupid officer, for starters.” Baraat managed. That got a laugh from the crowd.

“This is pointless! We nearly tore each other apart and now we are talking about conspiracies! Let us round up the Ogtbish and I guarantee you, we will find out culprit! I will personally lead a search for any that have not been rounded up yet and bring them to you! And if it was not them who did the terrible deed” Gansukh said, pausing “I will give you a worthy bounty, as compensation for your ill-fated brothers, taken from my personal hoard. I did not suffer a loss as significant as yours, but it did happen under my auspices.”

“I will accept your gift. Now go. I have to keep these wolves from tearing each other apart.

And Ganuskh left, with his men in tow, to the place where he knew the Torghud gathered, to find his culprit and to make quick work of him. Because he had stolen a glance at Baraat, just as he turned to leave the congregation and he could read that look on his face, clear as day and make out the smile under the dried, bloody mess that was his face.

I am on to you, it said. I am on to you, you rat and I will tear you apart the first chance I’ll get.

Gansukih turned and left with his men, heading for their mounts. To his horror, Braat did the same.

***

Baraat gunned it across the camp, tearing down dining tables and honking his horn like mad, hi fingers slick with the blood from his own busted nose. He had a head start from Gansukh’s posse, but he knew it was only a matter of time before they would catch up. And Baraat had caught a glimpse of Nergui in the tent, during his little fight with Quori, who had died choking on his own bile. He couldn’t put it together just yet, but he knew that Nergui was what the myangan-lord was looking for: the Ogtbish who was behind the conspiracy against officers of the Horde, to be killed in order to save face from his own failed assassination attempt.

If Baraat could get his hands on him and get him to testify to Asai before Gansukh could beat him up and force a confession out of him, then the Horde could save him from having to do the deed himself. He was never one for planned assassination or conspiracy, Baraat; but he knew that simply killing of Gansukh in broad daylight wasn’t an option. This way he could kill two birds with one stone.

Three, if you count the poor bastard who’s going to be executed anyway said a little voice in his head. Baraat did his best to ignore it, but the seeds of guilt had already been planted. He’d promised the man his freedom and instead he was going to get him to the gallows, if he was lucky. There was no happy ending to this mess, this he knew.

No happy ending for anyone except for you said the little voice, adrip with venom. Baraat was out of the camp now, the headlights of Ganuskh’s posse glinting off his rearview mirror. He was heading for the bonfire just off the roadside, where he knew the torghud gathered. He’d found out a lot about the Ogtbish and their ways: how they clung to each other to keep themselves as far apart from the Mongols as possible. They had been torn from their homes and thrust into this machine where they found themselves slowly assimilated, digested by it, only to be shat out at the first sign of inconvenience. Staying well away from the main force on happy occasions was their greatest means of defense against this. They would not drink with their conquerors, this way, or be intoxicated by their mushrooms or trade friendly blows with them or share jokes. They would drink their own drink and tell their own jokes and make their own gossip. This way they could pretend that a tiny little bit of home had survived with them.

Baraat saw the men running away from the bonfire as soon as he approached. Perhaps they had heard about the ruckus taking place in the camp and had decided against reporting for duty to their commanding officers, trying their luck by running for the hills or looking for a safe place to hide, hoping they would be forgotten by the time the force moved out. Most of them were very much aware that they would not make it, but still they ran. Wouldn’t you? The tiny voice asked, as Baraat leaned out the window and looked across the scurrying figures, looking for Nergui.

“Nergui! Come back, you bastard, I can fix this! I can fix all of this!”

Some of the figures stopped halfway through their mad dash, turning to look at the bloodied, beaten man that leaned out of the revving mount. Then they ran harder than the rest. Baraat squinted as hard as he could, but the bonfire’s glare turned every man into an sexless, featureless silhouette, indistinguishable from the rest. Turning his head, Baraat noticed the posse’s headlights looming closer, got back into the driver’s seat and went after the first group. He could try his luck, see what happened.

One of the Ogtbish panicked as he was the mount speeding toward him, pulled out his rifle and fired a burst. The bullets poked a half-dozen craters in Baraat’s field of vision, sending shards flying in. Braking as hard as he could, Baraat swerved the mount and opened the driver’s seat door, slamming the man against it, knocking him down. His mount dragged him on for a good two meters, before finally coming to a stop, making the man flop to the ground, groaning in agony. He wasn’t Nergui.

“Nergui! Where is he?” Baraat shouted at the bloodied man.

“Piss off…Mongol…” the man managed. Baraat grabbed the man’s fingers and twisted them, making him scream in agony.

“Men are coming, with guns and with knives!” Baraat said, twisting the man’s fingers until he heard a series of very faint pops “And they’re going to hunt you down like dogs and they’re going to drag you from their fenders all the way across Russia unless you tell me where the hell I will find Nergui!”

“Eaaast!” the man squealed “He went East!”

Baraat let him go and drove away. The man was still writhing on the ground. This one wasn’t going to make it. But if he got Nergui, if her led the posse away from them and back to the camp (as Gansukh was wont to do, the second he saw him head back) then maybe they’d have a fighting chance.

No they won’t. They will die in the cold and their eyes will be picked at by vultures. There’s nothing out there for them, except perhaps a death other than at the hands of the Horde said the tiny voice and Baraat knew it was right. Ahead of him, the group of silhouettes coalesced into distinct human shapes that broke apart the second the headlights hit them. Baraat glanced out the window, looking for Nergui and found him, running as fast and as hard as his legs would take him.

“Nergui! Come back!” Baraat shouted, as he followed. The posse was just getting into view, the half-dozen mounts breaking apart into pairs, to hunt the scattering Torghud. “I can help you! Just come with me!” Darting a glance at the sideview mirror, seeing two mounts breaking from the rest, heading for him, Baraat added “I know what you did! But I won’t punish you for it!”

Nergui froze at that, just as Baraat swerved to his side, opening the passenger door “Get in!”

Nergui jumped inside the car, just as Baraat hit the gas, heading for the opposite direction. Nergui looked up at him, pale and horrified. Switching to fog headlights, Baraat aimed at the mounts heading towards them, making sure the glare would momentarily blind the dirvers. He knew Gansukh was frothing at the mouth behind the driver’s seat in one of the cars, cursing through gritted teeth.

“How did you know?” Nergui asked, as the mounts came closer. One of them turned their own fog headlights in turn, blinding him as well. He heard the grating of tires off-road. Impact was imminent. Gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white, Baraat leaned closer toward the steering wheel. Beside him, Nergui grabbed frantically for his seatbelt and set it into place. The glare saturated the windshield, until the world was nothing but white-hot light. Baraat stepped on the break…

…and felt the mount coming at him swerve at the last second, smashing against his headlight and his door, before veering away and toppling over.

“I saw you in the tent. But I wasn’t sure, not until the others started dropping dead.” Baraat said, heading back toward the road, as the posse scrambled around, some of the men leaving their mounts to help with the toppled vehicle. One of them kept coming after them. Apparently, Baraat thought, Gansukh knows better than to play chicken.

“You are going to get me killed. You are going to give me over to them.”

“No!” Baraat lied “I need you to tell them what happened. I need you to tell them who put you up to this, who gave you the poison. I’ll make sure they put you in the coward’s stockade, just until we reach Volgograd. By then, they will have made me acting zuun-lord again. I will speak to the Batu-Khan, make sure you are granted a pardon, become my Torghud and…”

Nergui had yanked the steering wheel hard to the right before Baraat had time to finish his sentence. The mount skidded, its tires screeching, tipped to the left and then toppled, crashing and tumbling its way into the camp, making both men tumble inside it, banging Baraat against the dashboard and the roof again and again. When it finally stopped, Nergui unclasped his seatbelt and crawled out of the smashed passenger side window and out to the raised crowd of Mongols, with rifles and knives held high. In the cabin, Baraat had been knocked around but he was alive, if a little worse for wear. The commandeered mount bore through the crowd and Gansukh burst out of it, grabbing Nergui by the back of his neck, just as he kicked at the back of his knees, making him fall face-first to the ground.

“Asai! I’ve brought you your assassin!” Gansukh shouted, as he drove his heel against Nergui’s throat, choking his protests. Patting him down, checking his pockets, Gansukh found the makeshift little pouch that Nergui had used to store the bottle, the brown vial undiscarded. He presented this to the myangan-lord.

“This is the vial with the poison! The fol had forgotten to discard it, after he did the deed!” Gansukh grinned as Asai took it in his hands, to look at it under a flashlight. “He was with the other Torghud, Perhaps…”

“Enough. Bring him to me.” Asai commanded “And make sure whoever’s in that mount gets out in one piece.”

And his men dragged Nergui away, while the others picked up Baraat Buriyat, to take to the infirmary, where he lay until the morning, when it was already too late.

***

There was no trial. There were only men shouting themselves horse and rocks thrown at him, as Nergui was dragged in a clearing made where the coward’s stockade used to be. Asai said a few words, not one of them directed to him. When Nergui tried to speak, he was kicked in the stomach.

Around him, the little gods were gorging on the rage and the bloodlust. They reveled in the quickened heartbeats of the Mongols, their tempo increasing as the appointed executioner (a man that was a boy a winter ago) removed the long carving knife from its sheath. It glinted in the dawn light, sharpened almost to a point.

The myangan-lord went on about ‘restoring order’ about such values as ‘the Mongol way, Temujin’s way’. He condemned the underhanded blow against the Horde, made in a manner befitting cowards, fit only for insects of snakes, creatures that were to be crushed underfoot rather than tried for their crimes.

“We will make an example of him” Asai went on to say, bathed in the red light of the dawn. “We will make this Ogtbish the stuff of nightmares for all those that might wish to follow in his stead.”

Nergui thought of the small house in the shadow of a hill. He thought of Volgograd, of Jiquan burning, of faces smashed against windshields, of the gods of Saryozek. He looked at the little gods, who were now swarming around him, chittering like a swarm of cockroaches. He tried to get up, but the executioner’s hand held him fast and the ziplock cuffs on his writs held fast.

“He will become a banner, this Ogtbish; a symbol that proves exactly what happens when the slaves dare to rise up against their masters. And I will personally carry this banner on my mount, so that the conquered will know that there is no greater sin in life, than to cross a Mongol!”

And there was a great uproar, and a banging of fists on hoods and the rattle of boots on dusty ground. Nergui struggled in horror, as the knife’s edge raked across his skin and he saw the trickle of blood and the thin slide of flesh that slid down across its trail and for a moment the pain did not register; it felt like something in a dream, like some sort of nightmare that he could not wake up from, but then the pain returned a great black-red cloud that overcame his senses and he screamed all the way through, well past the point where his voice had turned hoarse and the pain of his tearing nerves as his skin was removed had become an all-encompassing fire that overcame his senses.

He was screaming until the executioner tugged the skin from his body in a single dramatic motion, displaying the mess for all to see. Nergui collapsed to the ground, his muscles exposed to the coarse hell that was the dirt, the tiny pebbles grating on the exposed tissue like shards of broken glass, his blood spreading out across the dirt as he writhed, the screams now stuck in his throat. A wind came from the east and to him, it felt like being caressed by a stream of razorblades. The sun’s light caught him and every iota of his body felt like it was on fire. Nergui turned to see and witnessed the sight of his own skin being taut at the end of the banner that was set on Asai’s RV, flapping in the wind, a gruesome flag.

Baraat had lied to him. Gansukh had used him, but that was his own fault. He had been a fool, a madman. Perhaps, if he had tossed away the bottle, if he had spoken up when he had the chance…

No. Nergui thought, as his body seized up and his senses were overcome by shock, terror slowing down his heart, forcing it to cease its beating. There was no way out of this. He was doomed from the start. He would die now and his death would be a good thing, a painful but short thing. He would be in peace.

It was just as he felt himself slipping into the soft, tender embrace of oblivions, as he was about to become one with the nothing he knew was on the other side, that he heard them. They had swarmed around him, climbing on to his body and holding fast to exposed muscle with pincer, tooth and claw. The Little Gods had come to feast on him, drawn by his pain and horror. Nergui tried to shoo the off, but he could not muster the strength. Feebly, he watched them creatures as they burroed his way inside him, as they slipped in his body through his ears, as they buried themselves in his mouth, as they slipped between the layers of fat that separate muscle.

Nergui heard their voices, their promises, clashing inside him, overwhelming his brain in a cacophony of supplication, snatching him from the verge of death, latching onto his soul and pinning it into the red mess that had become his body, before tearing it apart.

Baraat went to see Nergui as soon as he woke up, despite his better judgement. The tiny voice in his head had ceased, drowned out by the beating of his heart. He left the infirmary and went to the clearing, where the red thing was writhing and screaming, not quite dead yet, every fiber of his body contorting in agony.

Baraat reached out for his saber, hoping perhaps he could give it a nice, clean death. The kind of death he had hoped he could have. But when the thing that was Nergui turned to look at him with unblinking, mad eyes, he froze in place. He had hoped perhaps that he would have seen fear there, or perhaps even rage. He hoped, in his heart, that the red, skinned thing that dragged itself across the dust would point a red finger at him and call him a traitor.

He hoped it would rile him up enough that he would want to kill it.

He prayed that any minute now, it would plead for someone to end it and he would, swooping down like some angel of mercy.

But it only stared at him, eyes wide with horror, writhing, choking, bleeding until finally Baraat’s heart sank and he lost his nerve and he turned his back to it, leaving it to suffer its very last moments in this earthly equivalent of Hell. Baraat tried his best not to think of the vultures that would swoop down on it to pick it clean, or the wolves that would come down to tear at the softest bits, or the insects and the carrion-eaters that would strip the bones clean. But in his mind, he could hear the sound that tiny mouths made, chewing, from then until the day he died.

So he headed back for his place in Gansukh’s RV and made ready for their departure from the camp, his mind abandoned to the blue-black mess of guilt and horror, his every thought overshadowed by those mad eyes, his every waking moment devoted to the red mess that had been the man who had trusted him, only so he could be delivered to this fate.

It was only the self-satisfied grin on Gansukh’s face that gave him respite. He had something to focus on now, something to hate, something to destroy. The trek through the M-32 went by in a breeze, thanks to that.