Following his injury, time ceased to exist for Baraat Buriyat. His waking moments were few and precious, his own perceptions slowed down to a geological crawl, the world passing by him at blinding speed.
When he first woke up to the sound of his myangan-brothers chanting his name, he only saw the clear-blue sky, ringed by the furry tops of his comrades’ caps. Feeling the numbness in his extremities, Baraat chanced a look down at his legs. Shock mercifully knocked him out before he could scream at the sight of the broken bone jutting out of his shin.
“Baraat Buriyat! Baraat Buriyat! Baraat-” his name echoed in the distance.
The second time he woke, Baraat found himself inside a great tent, the sound of a battery-powered EKG greeting him with its metronome-call. Beep, beep, beep, it sang, but he was unable to appreciate the melody. His thoughts were sluggish, coarse things, as viscous as tar. Slowly, Baraat attempted to rise but his arms only flapped around uselessly, striking at the EKG machine and the sides of the tent.
“Shhh. It’s alright now.” spoke the voice, softly. Delicate fingers reached out and grasped his. They felt like fine silk stretched over hewn soapstone. He ceased his struggling.
“Rest now, young wolf.” the voice spoke again and Baraat turned toward it, seeing only a pair of slanted eyes that held within them irises the color of funerary smoke. Baraat struggled to capture the face they were set upon, before oblivion claimed him once again.
He dreamt that he was looking through the eyes of a wolf, hot on the heels of a terrified rabbit, speeding across the tundra. He was perched in the hunter’s skull, lounging on its forebrain, the static electricity of its thoughts coursing through his displaced mind. He gorged on the tangy taste of adrenaline, intoxicated by the primeval promise of blood on his tongue, when a great shadow obscured the sun and a miniature eclipse shed brief night over his eyes. Baraat turned the wolf’s eyes to look and saw legs like redwood trunks, saw skin pockmarked with meteoric scars. Something inside him writhed, squirmed, screamed; the monkey in his brain took the reins and pulled them hard, away from the vision.
He woke up, his body ridden by the phantom of fatigue. As the great tent coalesced into view, he found himself looking into a face of a man that seemed hewn out of rock, with green-jade eyes. The insignia on his shoulder - that of a wolf, clutching an AK-47 automatic in its jaws - betrayed his nature and intent to Baraat in the blink of an eye.
“The boy is awake” said a voice beside him, endlessly weary, haunted by efficiency.
“Can he speak?” said Gansukh Kiryat, not once taking his eyes off Baraat.
“Yes, but don’t expect too much of him. We unhooked him from the morphine drip only two hours ago.”
“Good. Now go.” Gansukh dismissed the man, who came into Baraat’s view, his blood-flecked medical shirt stained with his patients' bounty.
“They call you the young wolf.” Said Gansukh Kiryat, the myangan-lord, producing a tobacco-pouch from a pocket on his flack jacket. “Tank-buster, too. Heard a man say you drove a mount head-first into T-72 and won. Mind you, the man was drunk.” Gansukh paused to lick at the gum of his rolling paper and finished his cigarette with a dramatic flick of his fingers, before placing it in his mouth in the same, fluid motion.
“You saved an entire zuun - and yourself - in the process. Destroyed the last thing the Kazakhstani could throw at us. Now, we are free to ride the A353 without facing any resistance and meet with the rest of the Horde in Volgograd. Do you have a light?” the myangan-lord asked, patting himself down, reaching his fingers into the dozen front-pouches of his flack-jacket.
Baraat feebly nodded no. The myangan-lord went on, dejected.
“Ai! To cross half of bloody Asia and not find a man with matches at hand! To lay waste to Jinghe and not find a single lighter in its warehouses worth a rat’s ass!” placing the rolled cigarette on top of his ear, Gansukh continued: “In short, Baraat of the Buriyat, you have won us Kazakhstan. When we meet the Batu-Khan, you might very well find yourself commanding your own myangan! Can you imagine that? You, a boy of sixteen summers, head of a thousand mounts, with two thousand men under your command? I can bet you that it does sound overwhelming.”
Baraat nodded yes. Gunsakh grinned a grin that belonged on a rabid wolf. His fingers clenched tightly around something in his topmost flack-jacket pocket and he produced a box of matches with the same care that one would handle a Ming vase.
“Which is why you will deny this honor. When you come before the Batu-Khan, you, Baraat of the Buriyat, will fall to one knee and you will offer proper praise to the Horde-Master and when he does present you with your myangan, this myangan, my myangan, you will softly speak no and deny his offer, because you are a child still, of few years and little experience, your ferocity untempered by the grasp of tactics. You will proclaim that you are perfectly happy to command your zuun, the zuun that I will provide you and then leave his exalted presence.
“Do this, young wolf, and I will provide you with the choicest loot and a woman of your very own, when we have taken Russia. Obey and I will let you drive my own mount, when we cross the Caucasus. It will be the highest honor any Buriyat has ever known.” Gansukh said, striking the match and connecting it to the cigarette that was dangling from his lips. Producing the smoke in great, contented puffs, he said:
“Deny me this and I will have you flayed and quartered.” The myangan-lord said matter-of-factly.
Thus, the myangan-lord left the tent, without a look at the young wolf, whose body was still numb and ailing, but his mind was afire with impotent fury. Baraat thrashed in the bed uselessly for a while, before pure sleep, borne from exhaustion, finally took him.
