Queen of the Eight Banners

Part 2, Scene 5 - Past

The next day, Ilha arose early to ride with Dorgide and a select group of his hunters to show him where she'd left Ligdan's body.  She rode with Ojombi strapped to her back again. She had glanced to her husband to see his expression, wondering what he thought of it. He had simply smiled in amusement--and kissed her as he'd helped her secure their baby to her back.  Perhaps by the time Ojombi was too big to carry this way, she would know enough Gui to leave her son behind to Nomin's care, but until then, she wanted him with her.  It wasn't that she mistrusted Nomin; Ilha simply could not understand her, but….

The Hu's propensity to keep servants still made her uneasy.  Especially Gui servants. Yet according to her father, the border-Gui had turned coat and volunteered to join the growing Hu nation, which only made her unease worse.  Why had they done that? Who would volunteer to be a servant?

And yet, hadn't her father done just that? He had volunteered his people to serve the Hu as warriors, but the Kharachin Gols were highly skilled and had much to offer the Hu. Was this the reason her people were free and treated as equals? The Hu had not even divided them among the Banners but left her entire people together and their old leadership intact, an enormous gesture of trust. Or was it because she had purchased their loyalty with her marriage? Or had it been Dorgide's goodness alone?

She would have to observe carefully the treatment of Hu, Gol, and Gui in each of the Banners--and if she could figure out the words to shape her question, she would have to ask him.

She pushed aside the waiting images of Ligdan's death bleeding out beneath her arrows, and thought instead of Nomin, her father, and the Eight Banners as they crossed the rolling, green country toward the Qinghai lands, so she was silent as Dorgide bantered with his men.  They arrived on the scene just as true dawn broke the last of the dark sky. Ilha exhaled sharply when she found nothing had been touched, relieved that the Chakhar Gols had not sent anyone to investigate why Ligdan had not returned. Perhaps they were not expecting him for a few days.

Dorgide drew his horse beside hers. "I will take Ligdan's body and his lieutenants' to his people."

Ilha nodded. "Do you want…I come?"

"Could you interpret?"

Could she? Dorgide had not brought his dragoman on his annual hunt but had left the man behind.  As long as she could understand her husband--and he was a patient man with a unique gift for simplicity in his speech when he addressed her--then she could interpret his words, at least. Interpreting from Gol into Hu would be another matter entirely.

"Yes," she said, with more confidence than she felt.

He gave her a smile and a nod, then dismounted with a gesture for two of his hunters to do the same.  Together they extracted Ligdan from under his dead horse, wrapped his stiff body in a rug, then roped him to the back of one of the pack-horses they'd brought for the purpose. They retrieved the lieutenants' bodies next, securing their corpses in a macabre manner that reminded Ilha too much of the rabbits she'd shot and tied to her own saddle only an hour before she'd killed these men. Even rolled up in rugs, she could not help but stare at them, bound stiffly, uncomfortably to the horses' backs.  Their sightless eyes and ashen skin burrowed into her imagination, grew roots in her memory.

She startled at the touch of warm skin against hers and looked up into Dorgide's eyes. There was a crease in his brow--not from squinting into the sun. "Are you all right?" he seemed to ask.

Ilha nodded, but the gesture was automatic. She felt Ojombi's weight on her back, could hear the breathing only an infant deeply asleep could make. She nodded again, this time more certain. Yes, she would be all right. She had him, she had their son, her father, her people--their people.

Then their hunters mounted up, Dorgide gave the word, and they set out toward the Chakhar lands.