staring up at the tent’s smoke hole,

at his father’s face.

Then, lying on grass,

wind-shunted clouds overhead,

as his father’s voice

stitched the hours together.

Days before Keng could walk, haltingly,

the length of the row of tents.

Each morning Keng told his father

he’d be fine, to leave him,

to go riding, hunting, shooting.

Each morning King Xau stayed.

And sometimes a sullenness

thickened in Keng’s belly

until he wanted to yell at his father,

wanted his father to yell back,

to blame him, to punish him.

But his father neither yelled,

nor scolded him, only told Keng

that he should apologize to his guards,

then left Keng alone to do so.

A hard thing.

Other than that,

his father barely left him,

and at times Xau’s gentleness—

helping Keng into clean clothes,

checking his shoulder,

replacing the dressings on his hand—

stirred in Keng a longing

for his father to hug him.

Most afternoons,

one or other of the horse lords

returned early to talk to King Xau,

and Keng, however surly his mood,

sat quietly by his father,

shifting only to ease the ache

in his shoulder.

Xau spoke to the horse lords for hours,

loose conversations covering

weather, horses, pastures, sheep;

their wives, sons, brothers;

the number of men in their tribe;

the position and condition

of wells, rivers, iron workings;

tales of raiders from across the border.

A while before Keng understood

that all the conversations

spiraled around war.

Toward the end of the third week,

walking outside with his father,

Keng said, “I’m sorry,

I know this isn’t what you planned,

nursemaiding me.

You came here to gain

the horse lords’ support.”

King Xau shook his head.

“No. That is not why we came.

We gained their support years ago.”

His father hesitated,

played with the buckle of his belt.

He was not a man who fidgeted,

not a man whom Keng had ever seen

struggle for words.

“We are sorry as well,

sorry war may be upon us

before you are ready.”

Unspoken, the risk of death,

his father’s death.

What that would mean for Keng.

Nothing Keng could think to say.

He turned away, saw a huge bird,

an eagle, flying over the hills: “Look.”

Xau laid his hand on Keng’s good shoulder.

Together, they watched the eagle

ride the wind.

JOY

A day of gold,

a day as faultless

as the clear blue sky,

a day that Atun rode beside his king

out of the sunstruck heat of the grasslands

into the shade of birch and larch

to hunt with Subetei Khan.

Not the season to hunt

deer or wolf or lynx or boar,

but the Khan minded to prove the prowess

of his oathsworn warriors,

so they rode to the forest

in search of squirrels.

And Atun outshot the king,

outshot Captain Li,

outshot the king’s other guards,

outshot the Khan and his oathsworn:

each man allowed to loose a dozen arrows,

Atun managing to kill eight squirrels.

Subetei Khan dipped his head to him.