Ghost on the Steppe by Cecelia Holland

Author:Cecelia Holland [Holland, Cecelia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
Publisher: Endeavour Press

Chapter Seven

BY NOON OF the next day, both Djela and Makko were itching with boredom. Achad had left before they woke up, and there was nothing to do. They told each other stories for a while, but since all they knew were the ones Psin told, it wasn’t much fun. Neither of them could remember the right words, and it all sounded much different than in the big yurt. Besides, it reminded them of home too much.

Finally they started searching for things to do. They cleaned out the horse pens, a terrible, dirty job, and mended harness and even sewed up little rents in their coats. Djela steamed some grain for lunch, while Makko prowled around the yurt, scowling and spitting.

“Let’s go hunting,” he said. “Surely we need meat.”

“I’m not sure we should leave the camp,” Djela said doubtfully.

“Don’t be silly. There’s nobody here — there’s nothing to do. Let’s go.” Makko was already checking his bow.

“Oh, all right. I don’t know why you’re doing that, you never shoot at anything.”

They saddled horses and rode out to a spring due west of the camp, their bows ready, the sound of the forest in their ears. It bothered Djela that they’d left the station, but he decided that it really wasn’t terribly important to have someone there all the time, or Achad wouldn’t have left two green boys alone in it.

The spring lay in a deep gulley; Djela had hunted there before, and he knew when the antelope and wild horses came down to drink. The high banks of the gulley left only a narrow trail by which the animals could approach the water. Small carp swam quietly in the depths of the pool, and a fat lizard stared glumly at them from an overhanging rock. Makko dozed off, his bow across his knees, shortly after they’d tethered the horses on the rim of the bank and sat down beside the spring.

Djela thought about the stories Achad had told him. He shut his eyes and made up a story, of which he was the hero; he stormed a city and walked his horse down a street flooded with jewels as big as his fist, and the Kha-Khan called him Djela Bahadur and gave him his own division to command; he wore a brocaded coat and leather armor lacquered red and black and sewn with metal plates, like his grandfather’s. He had ten Arghun bows, each with a thousand arrows, and people cheered him in the streets of Karakorum.

Suddenly he remembered his uncles, Tulugai and Kinsit. Maybe they had daydreamed, like him, and seen themselves in brocaded coats and leather armor. He shivered. The feeling swept over him that he was doing something countless other boys had done before, that while he made up stories in the sun the ghosts of countless boys crowded around him and tried to tell him it was all wrong.

He thought, I am a coward.

Tshant wasn’t afraid of dying. Nor Psin — how could they be, they had lived through all the wars and battles.

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