Lords of the Bow Read Free

the blow, closing his eyes.
    With a wrenching effort of will, the shaman shut out the wind on his skin and the cold fear that ate at his belly. He murmured the words his father had beaten into him and felt the calm of a trance come sharper and faster than even he had expected. The spirits were with him, their caress slowing his heart. In an instant, he was somewhere else and watching.
    Genghis opened his eyes wide as Kokchu touched the dagger to his own forearm, the slim blade entering the flesh. The shaman showed no sign of pain as the metal slid through him, and Genghis watched, fascinated, as the tip raised the skin on the other side. The metal showed black as it poked through, and Kokchu blinked slowly, almost lazily, as he pulled it out.
    He watched the eyes of the young khan as the knife came free. They were fastened on the wound. Kokchu took a deep breath, feeling the trance deepen until a great coldness was in every limb.
    “Is there blood, lord?” he whispered, knowing the answer.
    Genghis frowned. He did not sheathe his sword, but stepped forward and ran a rough thumb over the oval wound in Kokchu’s arm.
    “None. It is a useful skill,” he admitted grudgingly. “Can it be taught?”
    Kokchu smiled, no longer afraid. “The spirits will not come to those they have not chosen, lord.”
    Genghis nodded, stepping away. Even in the cold wind, the shaman stank like an old goat and he did not know what to make of the strange wound that did not bleed.
    With a grunt, he ran his fingers along his blade and sheathed it.
    “I will give you a year of life, shaman. It is enough time to prove your worth.”
    Kokchu fell to his knees, pressing his face into the ground. “You are the great khan, as I have foretold,” he said, tears staining the dust on his cheeks. He felt the coldness of whispering spirits leave him then. He shrugged his sleeve forward to hide the growing spot of blood.
    “I am,” Genghis replied. He looked down the hill at the army waiting for him to return. “The world will hear my name.” When he spoke again, it was so quiet that Kokchu had to strain to hear him.
    “This is not a time of death, shaman. We are one people and there will be no more battles between us. I will summon us all. Cities will fall to us, new lands will be ours to ride. Women will weep and I will be pleased to hear it.”
    He looked down at the prostrate shaman, frowning.
    “You will live, shaman. I have said it. Get off your knees and walk down with me.”

    At the foot of the hill, Genghis nodded to his brothers Kachiun and Khasar. Each of them had grown in authority in the years since they had begun the gathering of tribes, but they were still young and Kachiun smiled as his brother walked amongst them.
    “Who is this?” Khasar asked, staring at Kokchu in his ragged deel.
    “The shaman of the Naimans,” Genghis replied.
    Another man guided his pony close and dismounted, his eyes fastened on Kokchu. Arslan had once been swordsmith to the Naiman tribe, and Kokchu recognized him as he approached. The man was a murderer, he remembered, forced into banishment. It was no surprise to find such as he amongst Genghis’s trusted officers.
    “I remember you,” Arslan said. “Has your father died, then?”
    “Years ago, oath-breaker,” Kokchu replied, nettled by the tone. For the first time, he realized he had lost the authority he had won so painfully with the Naimans. There were few men in that tribe who would have looked on him without lowering their eyes, for fear that they would be accused of disloyalty and face his knives and fire. Kokchu met the gaze of the Naiman traitor without flinching. They would come to know him.
    Genghis watched the tension between the two men with something like amusement.
    “Do not give offense, shaman. Not to the first warrior to come to my banners. There are no Naimans any longer, nor ties to tribe. I have claimed them all.”
    “I have seen it in the visions,” Kokchu replied