Snow in the Year of the Dragon Read online

  The creatures circled him now, trotting in a fluid, bipedal gait. Eight red animals easily the size of a man, with thick haunches, long powerful back legs and small forelegs tucked into their chests. They were lean and furred and their large ears alternately pricked then laid flat, pricked and laid flat. Their tails swayed behind them, clearly used for balance as they circled around.

  “Dell,” said Solomon through the wire. “I want you to come back right now.”

  “Don’t worry,” said the zoologist. “Roos eat grass, shrubs, any plant life they can find. Not meat. Not even insects. They’re probably just here for the wichetty bushes. Look! This one has a joey…”

  Solomon narrowed his eyes. Through the haze, he could see a small head peaking out from a large pouch. It should have been adorable but something was wrong with the way the animals were moving.

  “Dell, I mean it. Come back now.”

  “They’re beautiful,” said Dell. “They have no fear of humans. I hate to say it, Seven, but its likely Slab 3 didn’t wake up at all.”

  And he reached out a hand.

  “Make him stop,” said Sengupta.

  “Dell, now!”

  The lead kangaroo ducked low and stepped forward with an elongated hind foot. Dell wiggled his fingers and it shrunk back, hissing, snapped its jaws three times. Dell mimicked it and the pack lashed their tails from side to side.

  “Damn,” said Solomon.

  “I can take it,” said Ward. “Just say the word.”

  “They’re so beautiful...”

  The zoologist reached to touch the furred muzzle.

  “Dell, don’t you dare…”

  And the red clamped its teeth on the outstretched hand.

  “Take it,” said Solomon.

  The young man didn’t even have time to scream as blue light sang from the weapon, cleanly slicing the roo in two. Both halves hit the ground and Dell staggered back, the beast’s head hanging from his arm. The pack scattered but two snapped at the severed haunch, catching it up in their jaws. They shook and tugged until it tore apart under the strain, spraying blood across the thorny branches. A third lunged to catch the dangling head, yanking Dell off his feet. The Helliad sang again, blasting a hole in the animal’s hide and the pack bolted across the plains, dust rising once again in their wake.

  “Cover me,” barked Solomon and he leapt from the steps, racing across the grass toward the zoologist. Dell was on his knees, prying his hand from yellow teeth.

  “They eat grass,” he muttered. “They just eat grass…”

  “Seven.” Ward’s voice from the wire. “They’re regrouping. I can shoot them all.”

  “We’re coming,” he said. “Dell, come on. We’ve got to go. We’ve got to get back to the Griffen.”

  “But they eat grass…”

  Solomon grabbed the young man’s arm, hauled him to his feet as the roos rushed back again, thundering in wide circles around them. They were remarkably adapted, thought Solomon, now that he saw them up close. Narrow, camel-like heads filled with razor teeth, bodies tipped forward for balance, tails straight out like rudders on a ship. He knew about ships. The Plan B had been his home for months before CD missiles had blown it from the water.

  A lean grey lunged but the Helliad’s beam sliced it in two. Blood and entrails sprayed over the plains and the pack’s circle widened.

  It was like dragging a dead weight but within minutes they were climbing the steps to the Griffen’s hatch. Ward pulled the door closed behind them, sealing it as Solomon dropped Dell to the floor.

  “They’re coming,” said Sengupta.

  “Tend him, Seven,” the jian barked. “We’re leaving.”

  And she disappeared toward the cockpit, leaving Solomon with the medkit.

  A thud shook the entire ship, followed by another and Sengupta peered out one of the windows.

  “He’s kicking us,” she said. “He’s sitting back on his tail and kicking us.”

  The Griffen rocked now, echoed with each new thud as the ship’s engine engaged.

  “Sounds like he’s denting it too,” grumbled the physician. He sprayed a thin film across the zoologist’s hand, turned it over to examine the bite. The razor teeth had punctured between the fine bones on both sides. Tendons gleamed white through the red.

  “They eat grass,” Dell mumbled. “Not people. Grass. They’re just here for the wichetty bushes.”

  The Griffen’s engines whistled when suddenly, there was the clang from the hull. Sengupta screamed.

  “They’re on the wing! Jian! Please go!”

  More clanging and the ship rocked wildly as tried it to lift from the ground, its supple wings weighed down by creatures scrabbling across the hull. There was a crack and Ward cursed loudly from the cockpit.

  Solomon pushed the zoologist into a seat and raced forward. Perched atop the Griffen’s nose, a roo gnawed the window plex with razor-like teeth, threatening to crack it with powerful jaws. In the shadows of dark fur and sunset, he could see a joey also actively engaged, leaving tiny scrapes with terrifying infant daggers.

  “Just like the rats of Kandersteg,” he muttered.

  Ward leaned on the stick and the Griffen shot straight up, sliding both mother and baby down the glass. Tiny foreclaws scrabbled, huge hind claws raked, but the force was too strong and the pair tumbled off the nose to disappear over the side. Further back, the hull banged and clanged but soon, there was only the sound of the whistling engines, only the sight of twilight-streaked sky.

  They could hear Persis Sengupta weeping in the cabin.

  “Is Dell going to be alright?” Ward asked, not looking at him.

  “Yah, unless those things are toxic.”

  “The world is better without animals,” she said.

  “Dell was reckless,” he said. “You don’t just go trying to pat a wild animal. Hell, I’d’ve bitten him if he tried that on me.”

  “You’re deflecting.”

  “He didn’t respect his environment. He didn’t consider the threat.”

  “Exactly. The threat. Your word, now. They’re dangerous, and you don’t listen. You never listen.”

  She squared her shoulders.

  “We’re not stopping until we find Kalgoorlie.”

  He rose to his feet. The window had pits from the teeth and claws.

  “We just have to learn where we fit,” he said.

  “Check on Dell, please.”

  He left the cockpit, feeling he’d just lost an important battle in a war that perhaps wasn’t his to fight.

  ***

  The Scales of KhunLun were small compared to his Teeth, thought Yahn Nevye, and he smiled to himself, marveling at how easily he thought in Chanyu now. ‘The Teeth of KhunLun’ was the Chanyu name for the Great Mountains; the ‘Scales’ were foothills. The Language of the People was more poetic than Imperial, more visceral than Hanyin, more descriptive than Hindhi. Setse often surprised him with her phrases and word choices. He could hear her thoughts like his own.

  The night was very cold, the path had grown steep, and he had dismounted to lead aSiffh rather than ride him up the slope. The snow was deep and Setse was light and, therefore, better on the young horse’s back. Besides, he’d told her, if both cat and horse plowed the path, it would make it easier for the weary Oracles that had struggled behind. She hadn’t argued. Of all of them, she was weakening the fastest but it wasn’t her legs or her back that were failing.

  No, he knew. It was her heart.

  “Tuck in together,” he told the old couple as he knelt to pass them one half of a roasted rabbit. “Stay warm for one more night.”

  “You said that last night,” said the old man.

  “Each night leads to a new morning.”

  “Each morning ends with a cold night.”

  “That has been my experience in your land,” he said, and he smiled.

  The old man smiled back. His name was Chinbat Ganzorig but he went by Zorig. He was old for an Oracle, had seen pe
rhaps sixty summers and had a pelt of grizzled grey and tan. The old woman, Temuujin Nergui, was even older and missing most of her teeth. They both had the blue eye that marked them as Oracles but Nergui’s were clouded in age. Nevye wondered if either could see.

  “Only half a hare?” she asked. Her voice was like sandpaper.

  “Yes,” he said. “Silence is hunting from morning to night. There is nothing that the Khan’s Ten Thousand hasn’t eaten.”

  “Give it to the young ones,” said Zorig. “We are yesterday. They are tomorrow.”

  Nevye sighed. Other than these two and himself, the Oracles of Blood were little more than children. Four young girls and three squire-aged boys, huddled together around the faltering fire, wrapped in reindeer-hide and covered in snow. Farther off sat two others – not children but younger than Setse. Dantarin Balmataar, or Balm as they called him, had seen perhaps seventeen summers. There was also a girl known only as Sev who had seen perhaps fourteen. She didn’t talk much except to animals, and he wondered if it were her Oracle gift. She had called rabbits, chukar grouse, and even crows, but there was nothing larger in the area because of the Ten Thousand. The children were thin, haggard and abused, disdained by their people but given hope by the Blue Wolf and Yellow Cat. It was a heart-breaking proposition. The Chanyu did not oblige easily.

  “No,” he said. “I gave them four and a half rabbits. It’s enough. You are all Oracles. Your people need you. Eat.”

  Nergui grinned a toothless grin and pulled at the rabbit, tearing the soft stringy flesh and popping it between her gums. Zorig shook his head however, pulled the yak-hide over his shoulder.

  “Cats,” he grunted. “A wonder you have survived.”

  Nevye rose to his feet, stepping over the children toward the edge of the mountain. He felt the fire crackle as he passed, willed it to leap higher, burn longer, and it struggled to obey. They had found a ledge that was not so exposed but still, the wind was strong, and he found it took all of his skill to keep the fire burning. It was the way he had first impressed the Oracles they had gathered – his claim that the mastery of fire would be theirs if trained. Now, there was little he could do to impress them. Empty bellies made for unappreciative hosts.

  They had stopped halfway up the rise of yet another mountain, smaller than those in the last days, but still it towered over snowy foothills. Most of the Teeth were behind them and now, the Scales rippled before. Yahn Nevye wondered if spring ever came to this bleak, north country. This life of cold and shadow wore away at the soul.

  Smoke rose into the night sky, stars glittering like snowflakes and in the wind, his long white hair reached after them like fingers.

  He remembered a night similar to this, on the road to Shen’foxhindi.

  Loosen your knot, the mongrel had said. Let your hair warm you.

  His hair was free now. Knots of a very different kind had been loosed forever.

  It was cold.

  Every night was cold, if he was honest. Every night since leaving Sha’Hadin and the company of the brothers and once again, he found himself marveling at his journey. He would not trade it, however, because he was traveling it with her. Setse was his life and she was losing heart as she sought to rally her people. Dogs were not like cats, he had learned. Dogs could not be rallied. Looking over the wretched backs of the Oracles, he doubted if they could even be trained.

  He looked over now at aSiffh, the young desert stallion that they had taken as their own, folded down and almost hidden by snow. He wasn’t sure how it had happened. As far as he knew, the horse belonged to the Shogun-General and as such, was Imperial property. But still, the lion had not protested when he and Setse had taken him so many weeks ago. He wondered how such a horse went from hot sun and desert sand to silver moon and mountain snow, and if it grumbled inwardly at the change.

  His life was change. He could barely remember otherwise.

  Balmataar was watching him, staring with his bi-coloured eyes – one blue, one gold. It was a very odd combination for dogs. He was an angry young man and Nevye had already defended one challenge against his leadership. But it hadn’t been about leadership. In fact, it hadn’t been about the Oracles or the Chanyu at all. Balmataar was in love with the granddaughter of the Blue Wolf. One didn’t need to be a Seer to know that.

  Nevye moved to the mountainside, slid down to sit beside her. Jalair Naranseteg, the love of his life. Her arms were across her knees, head buried in them and he ran a hand along her thin back. She was cold too.

  “Setse,” he said. “I have some rabbit for you.”

  She shook her head, did not look up.

  “Setse, please.”

  Now she did look. Gone was the glint, the flash, the life that so characterized her. The brown eye was glassy, the blue little more than cloud on an overcast day.

  “We have failed,” she moaned.

  “We’ve not failed,” he said. “We have barely begun.”

  “We have called them from their homes only to lose them to the elements. The Chanyu are unprepared for the Ancestors and we will be defeated. Tuuv Sarangaral was right. It is madness.”

  He couldn’t help himself. He reached to cup her face in his hands.

  “It is madness,” he said. “But it is our madness. It is all we can do.”

  Silhouetted in the moonlight, aSiffh grumbled, raised his head.

  “There is a woman coming,” Setse said. “She is below the camp, watching us. She has a baby.”

  “The new Oracle, yes,” he said. “You see? Oracles and those who love them know what we are doing is good and right. It is only a matter of time.”

  “I lied today.”

  He sighed.

  “At the camp. The curse.”

  “I cannot curse. I can only see.” Her eyes shone as tears gathered. “I used their fear because I was angry.”

  He nodded.

  “I am no better than the udgan.”

  “Now, that is a lie.”

  “When I die, promise me you will return to Sha’Hadin.”

  “You will not die.”

  “Take as many of them as you can. Your people can train them.”

  “I die, remember.” He tried to smile. “Three times now. You won’t die.”

  “We will lose Nergui tonight.” She blinked at him. “Three in as many weeks.”

  “Less than your Khargan has taken.”

  “Not good enough, Shar. We are not training them. We are collecting them, but not training them.”

  He thought a moment.

  “You’re right, Jalair Naransetseg, Light of the Northern Star, Lover of the White Tngri.” Oh, how he loved the Language of the People. And he kissed first the brown eye, then the blue. “In my kingdom, we had places to train, places that became symbols not only of the training but of those trained. We need a home.”

  She cocked her head, but he could swear there was a flash of something.

  “A home...”

  And she clasped her hands over his.

  “Where? We have no monasteries like those in your kingdom. We have only huts and hovels and gars and iron temples.”

  “But you have mountains,” he said. “We will send Silence to find a place for the Oracles of the Chanyu.”

  “A place for the Oracles,” she repeated, a heartbeat behind him. Their thoughts were frequently one. “Ügsiin Nüür khuudas. A school.”

  “Our own school,” he said. “Our surguuli.”

  “Our surguuli.” And finally, she smiled. “Our home.”

  “I believe in sky and earth,” he began.

  Her smile widened at the words. The poem was one of the first things she had taught him.

  “In blood and birth…” she added.

  “In war and strife...”

  “In moon and life…”

  “And you.’”

  She kissed him now, would likely have done more had not the woman with the baby climbed into the struggling firelight. They both rose to their feet to meet her,
find her a scrap of rabbit to eat and a hide to sleep under. It seemed a good way to end a hard night.

  Nergui was dead before morning and they buried her under rocks and the snow.

  ***

  The cloud of women dispersed, hovering at arm’s length as the Empress and her Seer made their way to her private residence on the uppermost level of the palace. Sireth had never seen any place so splendid – not the Governor’s mansion in KhahBull nor the Magistrate’s palace in Sharan’yurthah. Gold and jewels were everywhere and he found the war of hues in the palace an assault on his aesthetic.

  Then again, it may have been his gypsy pride.

  They approached a doorway that arched from high ceiling to mosaic floor. An ocelot dressed in purple slipped around to work the latch, swinging the doors outward onto a curved balcony overlooking the city. Cool air blew in, but the woman did not move.

  The Empress smiled.

  “I wish to show my Seer and his guardian DharamShallah at dusk.”

  “I shall summon a Leopard, Excellency,” said the woman.

  “Major Laenskaya has successfully protected the Last Seer of Sha’Hadin for over two years,” said the Empress. “I believe she is sufficient to protect me.”

  “Yes, Excellency. But the Chancellor—”

  “Has no jurisdiction in my private apartments.”

  “Forgive, Excellency, please forgive,” said the woman and she clasped her hands to her thighs, bowed her head low to her chest.

  “All is forgiven.”

  And with a brush of silk and tassels, Empress Thothloryn Parillaud Markova Wu swept out and on to the balcony. The cloud of women withdrew, leaving the snow leopard and the mongrel at the door. On his shoulder, Mi-Hahn stretched her wings, hearing the city and yearning for the skies above it. Sireth removed her hood and she launched, riding the winds and becoming little more than a speck in an instant.

  Ursa looked up at him.

  “Go out,” she said. “I will guard the door.”

  “I believe she wants to speak to us both.”

  “You speak. I guard.”

  He glanced up and around at the arches, then out at the slip of a figure silhouetted by Pol’Lhasa’s pale sun.

  “Close this door and come stand by her. You can see all and protect her from every vantage point.”