"John Dalmas - Yngling 4 - The Yngling in Yamato" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dalmas John)

"I am the Northman," he boomed, "come from the sky to find my anda,2 Achikh,"
A woman had emerged from the khan's ger with a bow and quiver, a broad heavy woman of perhaps fifty years.
Nils recognized Dokuz, the khan's mother.
"Achikh is not here," she shouted. "Go away!"
He answered her in the formal style: "Then I will speak with his brother Kaidu, the khan. Achikh s brother, the
Great Khan Kaidu, who was my friend. Noble Kaidu, the Great Khan who hosted me and gave me rich gifts, and asked
me to be his shaman."
She didn't answer at once, squinting upward, afraid but brave, her wide mouth slightly open. It wasn't necessary to be a
telepath like Nils to see her mental wheels spinning. "Kaidu is hunting," she called at last, "with a large party of
warriors. Achikh is with him."
"Hunting where?"
"In the Changajn Nuruu, far to the southwest. He will be impossible to find."
"I will be back," Nils answered, then switched off the hailer and turned to Matthew. "Rise and go north."
Ted Baver, the junior ethnologist, spoke then. He knew Buriat, and had understood Dokuz. "North?' he asked. "She
said southwest."
"She lied. He is hunting, all right, but in the mountains southeast of Baikal."
Matthew didn't question. Presumably the Northman had read her mind. Releasing the vector lock, he began to
climb, swinging northward. At 5,000 meters, the planetologist leveled off, called a map onto the screen, then on it set
and locked cross-hairs over the general area Nils had asked for. That done, he set the pinnace on auto-pilot.
Ted Baver looked curiously at the Northman. "Lied? Why?'
"She was afraid for Kaidu. Since we left, Achikh killed Fong,

--- 2Anda, in the Mongol dialects, means blood brother or soul brother, someone to whom special loyalty is given.
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the Chinese ambassador-drew his sword and cut him down inside the khan's ger, which is a serious violation of the
yassa. The usual punishment for that would be suffocation, or exile in special cases, but Kaidu has made him a slave,
instead, adding the humiliation of wearing a yoke."
The fifth person on board, young Hans Gunnarsson, stared at Nils, his angular juvenile face shocked. "Kaidu did that
to his brother? When he could have exiled him instead? Achikh would much rather be exiled than wear a yoke."
"Fong had long since put a spell on Kaidu," Nils replied. "Also, Kaidu fears the Chinese emperor."
"Just a minute," Nikko said. "The woman you spoke to is Kaidu's mother, right? And Achikh is his brother. Doesn't
that make her ..."
"Dokuz is not Achikh's mother; Kaidu and he are half-brothers. The Buriat do not differentiate."
Matthew held the pinnace to subsonic speed to avoid sonic boom, but even so, in half an hour they were over the
Jablonovyj Chrebet, land claimed by the Yakut-Russ but often encroached upon by Buriat hunting parties. These
were low but intermittently rugged mountains, their forest interspersed with lobes and islands of grassland. The AG
generators raised the pinnace to twelve kilometers then. From there Nils panned the land with the viewer, while the
others watched a monitor. If this failed to find the Buriat hunting party, they could fly a search pattern.
They spotted the camp in an open draw, not far above a broad grassy valley. Seventy or eighty leather shelter tents
had been set up in the orderly rows typical of Mongol hunting camps. A creek ran past it at a little distance. Nils
examined the camp at increasing magnifications; numerous horses grazed in the vicinity, remounts and pack horses.
There were also men, not a lot of them. Slaves they'd be. Some tended fires, and large racks where meat dried and
smoked. Others, perhaps camp keepers, seemed to have little to do. Some fished with spears, and those who worked,
worked leisurely.
One of them wore a yoke. Achikh, Ted decided, though from twelve kilometers, image waver precluded
recognizing the face. "Shall we go down and get him?" he asked.
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 Nils shook his head. "We'll wait for Kaidu to return. I don't want to steal Achikh from him. Let him be released
formally. That way, at some future time, Achikh can come home if he'd like."
Nils began to scan the country round about. Soon enough he found a large party of horsemen, slowly