The Face of a Dream

The blue smoke layered in sheets of drifting gossamer. Around the motionless form, silence hung like a shroud, stifling even the faint creaking of a leather tent. The space was warm, humid even, and the lethargy induced by the opium pipe had crept into every corner of the darkness, forcing the single torch to gutter rhythmically and unsuccessfully against the night.

Haruchai dreamt. He sat cross legged, transported by the potent smoke to his past, wherein his future lay. He did not understand that as yet. The smoke returned the faces of his friends, his youth, his happiness. Insensate to the world, his lips curled in a frozen smile, marred only by the tear of loss that glistened down his cheek. They were all gone now.

The tribe that he had found after arriving in this alien land, a stranger, weak and lost. The tribe that had welcomed him to a home of sorts, that had restored him to manhood. The tribe that had befriended him, that had brought honour and glory back to him. They had all gone now. Ghosts that had returned to their spirit world, lost once more to him. He was the last. He was alone.

The smoke brought the ghosts back. Wrapped in its seductive coils he could see their faces once again, hear their laughter. There was Ogodei, great Quagan of the tribe, singing the incantation that invoked the Stone Ghost to accept Haruchai once more into the fold. There was Dogei, face red with passion and kumis, drawing his spear from the body of the dragon. Many faces returned in the smoke, and their laughter and words too.

Sometimes, Haruchai let himself drift further back, deeper into his happiness. Before the time he was snatched into this strange, ugly world to when he stood astride the plains of his homeland. He could see the face of his prince and greatest friend, Batu Khan. He could see the endless Horde around him, waiting for his signal to conquer. He could smell the pungent leather of saddles and armour, hear the whisper of bowstrings and swords loosening in scabbards. And faintly, almost beyond perception, he could smell the taint of fear from the waiting defenders of Kiev.His heart sang, as it had done those lifetimes ago on the steppes of the Russias.

Scenes changed. Battle had no sights, only the red mist of death given and received. It had a smell though, the smell of a hundred thousand men in glory, dying and living. Yet no mattered how he strained, the smoke could not give him more than a elusive memory of that smell.

The moment was replaced by sounds of burning. He saw Batu, blackened with soot and stained incarnadine with blood. In the ravaging firelight, he was a demon from the depths of Hell and he grinned widely, his white teeth flashing in the black mask. All around them, Kiev burned its way to oblivion. Its butchered people lay uncaring, staring at the futility of their resistance with glazed and unseeing eyes. Haruchai knew he was grinning too, as filthy and glorified as his lord. Together they had torched this bastion that had dared stand against the Mongol. Together, they would lead the Golden Horde against mother Russia's final champion, the Grand Duchy of Muscovy. She too would fall.

Other triumphs touched his vision. Warsaw burning more fiercely than Kiev. The dark forests of Germany pock-marked by the golden tents of the Horde. The fearsome, endless mountains of Carpathia in whose untouched and wooded depths even a Mongol might doubt his courage.

An observer would have seen Haruchai's shoulders relax. The ghosts had reformed themselves into shades of luxury. He recalled the chatter, the sweet perfumes, the touch of silken robes. In his great tent outside the conquered Moscow, Haruchai the agha held court. Having learned their lesson well, his subjects were compliant. In return he dispensed justice and civility and surprised them. Indeed, he recalled how he had surprised himself, finding happiness in a ruler's throne almost as keen as that he found in the warrior's saddle. Happiness came too, in other ways.

The tears ran more freely but still unfelt as the shade of his wife drifted from the smoke. Beautiful beyond compare, the Russian princess had taught him more about gentleness than he believed it was possible to know. If his new subjects trusted him, it was through her. He loved her as fiercely as he loved glory - more than life. But then the swirling sapphire blue rose beneath his feet and she was lost to him. Everything was lost. And now, its grey replacement had been lost as well. There was naught left but the smoke and the memories it gave back to him.

But this time he did not wake, cold in spite of the hot tent, sweating in spite of the cold. Two faces stayed with him, strong in the drifting greyness. And they spoke, not in half-remembered words that played over again but new, fresh voices. Batu, his friend and Khan, destroyer of Russia, smiled a benison on his old comrade. "Nothing is ever lost, Haruchai," he seemed to say. "It may be found again. You can build it, and having built the foundation, you may lead the Horde home."

Home? There is a way home? The luminous face he had loved so well drifted forward and his heart broke again as it had done when he first realised she was lost. He tried to reach out and touch the silk of her skin, but he could not move in the smoke. She smiled and as it always had done, the smile restored him. She nodded. "Home, Haruchai. You can come back to me. A new land, a place between the worlds has appeared. It is fraught with danger but somewhere, somehow, there is a way home. You cannot find it yourself alone. You must rebuild the Horde, conquer what must be conquered, and it will reveal itself to you." His wife looked at him for a time without speaking. "Find them, Haruchai, find them and bring them all back to their families. Be great again. Be mine again." Only then did the smoke waver.

Wildly, Haruchai tried to force the faces back, grasp the smoke and wring the faces from it. But it slipped through his fingers and the faces slipped into darkness. He was alone again.

He shivered uncontrollably. Through the closed slit of the tent he could see the silvery dawn breaking through. The fire mumbled quietly in its hearth giving no heat. Yet Haruchai still smiled. Through the dried tears and the cold sweat, he smiled. For now he had a purpose, a path to glory worthy of an Agha-Khan. Shakily, he stood and loosened his linen shirt. He unhooked his bow from the tent pole and felt it shiver with anticipation. Suddenly, he could smell battle again - and it smelt of victory.

© 2001 Pól-MichelSeachra AnDaingean