Bones of the Hills (54 page)

“I should have known my father would never let me go,” he said almost in a whisper. “I gave him everything and he still haunts my steps.” The weary smile he turned on Tsubodai almost broke the general’s heart.

“What is one life, after all, Tsubodai? Even my own.” Jochi straightened his back and rubbed his hands roughly over his face so that Tsubodai would not see the glistening of his eyes.

“This is a good place, Tsubodai. We have even begun trading in furs, selling them to other places. My men have found wives in raids, and in just a short time, there will be children here who have never heard the name of Genghis. Can you imagine that?”

“I can. You have made a good life for them, but there is a price for it.”

Jochi stared at him in silence for a long time. At last he closed his eyes.

“Very well, General. It seems my father sent the right man to bring me back.”

He rose once more, recovering some of his poise as he opened the door and let the wind rush into little room.

“Collect your weapons, General,” he said, pointing to the pile on the snow. Around it, many men had gathered. When they saw Jochi, their faces lit up. Tsubodai came out, ignoring the hostile men as he stooped to pick up his sword and daggers. He left the broken scales of armor where they were as he belted on the blade and shoved the daggers into his boots. He did not watch as Jochi spoke to the senior men. He did not think he could bear it. His horse was ready for him, its reins held by a stranger. Tsubodai nodded to him out of habit as he mounted, but the man was looking past him.

Tsubodai turned to see Jochi approaching. The younger man looked tired and smaller somehow, as if something had been taken from him.

“Return to your tuman, General. I will come to you in three days. There are things I must say here.”

Tsubodai bowed in the saddle, shame eating at him. “I will wait for you, General,” he said.

Jochi jerked slightly at the term, but then he nodded and turned away.

Snow still fell as the light faded on the third evening. Tsubodai was not sure that Jochi would come as he had promised, but he had not wasted the time. His men were ready for an attack as they froze and waited. His scouts were out in all directions and he could not be surprised. He stood on the edge of his men, watching the trail as it vanished under the falling snow. He wished his memories could disappear so completely, made fresh and clean rather than torturing him with what he might have done. He still remembered how it had felt to receive the gold paitze from Genghis’s own hand, with the
world
before them. He had devoted himself to the khan, striving always to show that he was worthy of the honor. Tsubodai sighed. The khan was a man to follow, but he would not have wanted to be his son.

His scouts reached him before Jochi, reporting a lone rider making his way through the woods. For a time, Tsubodai hoped it was not Jochi, that the man would throw his men’s lives away for his freedom. Genghis would have done just that, but Jochi had lived a different life and Tsubodai knew him too well.

When he saw it was Jochi, Tsubodai sat still in his saddle. Even then he hoped that Jochi would change his mind, but he came closer and closer until he stopped his horse facing the general.

“Take me home then, Tsubodai. Take me and let them go.”

Tsubodai nodded and Jochi guided his mount among Tsubodai’s staring warriors, who hardly understood what he had done. The tuman turned in place to go home and the two generals rode through them to take the lead.

“I am sorry,” Tsubodai said.

Jochi looked at him strangely, then sighed. “You are a better man than my father,” he said. He saw Tsubodai’s gaze fall to the wolf’s-head sword he wore at his waist. “Will you let me keep it, Tsubodai? I won it fairly.”

Tsubodai shook his head. “I cannot. I will hold it for you.”

Jochi hesitated, but he was surrounded by Tsubodai’s men. He grimaced suddenly, sick of all the struggle he had known in his life.

“Take it then,” he said, unbuckling the belt and scabbard. Tsubodai reached over as if to accept the sword. Jochi was looking down at it when Tsubodai cut his throat in one swift movement. The younger man was unconscious before he fell from the horse, his blood spattering bright on the snow.

Tsubodai sobbed as he dismounted to check the body, each breath torn from him.

“I am sorry, my friend,” he said. “I am your father’s man.” He knelt by the sprawled body for a long time, and his men knew better than to speak. At last he had regained control of himself and he stood, breathing the frozen air deeply as if it could scour away the blood on his hands. He had followed his orders, but there was no comfort in it.

“At dawn we will ride back to their camp,” he said. “They will come, now he is dead.”

“What shall we do with the body?” one of his minghaan officers asked. He too had known Jochi when he was just a boy, and Tsubodai could not meet his eyes.

“We will take him with us. Treat him gently. He was the khan’s son.”

GENGHIS REINED IN AT THE VALLEY OF PANJSHIR
. A howling wind swirled dust across the emptiness, and on one side of the river, hosts of carrion birds leapt and bickered, calling amongst themselves. Genghis grunted at the sight before digging in his heels and riding down. Jebe led those with him, including the tumans commanded by his youngest sons. Ogedai’s men had seen the aftermath of battles and raids before, but most of Tolui’s tuman were still young, some of them barely fourteen years old. They followed with wide eyes, until more senior men jabbed the most obvious gawkers in the ribs with a sword hilt.

Forty thousand men followed Genghis into Panjshir, dusty and thin after a hard ride. Only Chagatai’s tuman had remained to guard the families and move them to new grazing. Genghis had taken every other man he had available, with two spare horses for each of them. Laden with waterskins and supplies, the vast tail of mounts trotted after the warriors, with just a few men at the rear to herd them.

As Genghis rode across the dusty ground, the heat increased until it seemed to beat directly onto their heads. The river ran on his left, the one source of life in a place of desolation. Genghis could see trampled banners as he approached the battle site, and in the distance, people ran from the town of Parwan to the safety of the fortress on the other side of the river. Genghis did not pause as he rode to the fighting birds,
scattering ravens and vultures before the horses of his men so that they shrieked and wheeled angrily around them.

Two men still remained on that side of the river, sitting their horses like statues as the khan came in. Kachiun had left them to guide Genghis into the mountains, but they were pale with tension as the tu-mans approached. Surrounded by birds, they decided as one that it would be a good idea to dismount and prostrate themselves. Genghis saw the movement and angled his mount toward them, Ogedai and Tolui following. In comparison to their father, they stared at everything, and Tolui looked faintly ill, though he tried to hide it.

Genghis dismounted, showing his temper only when a raven came swinging in too close to him and he batted furiously at it, sending the bird tumbling in the air. Many of the carrion crows were almost too full to fly and merely hopped from body to body, opening their black wings and beaks as if in warning.

Genghis did not look at the corpses, except to estimate their numbers. What he saw did not please him. He stood over the two scouts and felt his patience fray in the heat.

“Get up and report,” he snapped. They leapt to their feet, standing as if at an execution. No one knew how Genghis would react to a defeat.

“General Kachiun has followed the enemy into the mountains, lord. He said he will leave other men behind to bring you to him.”

“You are still in contact?” Genghis asked. Both men nodded. It used valuable warriors, but the practice of establishing a line from one site to another was nothing new. Barely five miles lay between scouts and they could pass information for twenty times that distance in just a short time.

“There were false trails, lord, but the tumans are searching every valley,” a scout said. “I have no news of a true sighting, not yet.”

Genghis swore and both scouts tightened their faces in fear.

“How do you lose sixty
thousand
men?” he demanded.

Neither scout was certain if the question required an answer and they looked at each other in desperation. Their relief was obvious when Jebe rode up to join Genghis, looking around him at the battlefield with an experienced eye. As well as the slabs of stone placed to break a charge, he could see trenches, some with dead warriors and horses still in them. Wooden stakes bound together had been broken or knocked to one side, but the rusty stains of blood could still be seen
on some. There were hundreds of bodies in Arab robes, lying in pitiful heaps as birds and other animals tugged at their flesh. It was not enough, not nearly enough, and Genghis could hardly control his indignation. Only the thought that he must not criticize his generals aloud held his tongue. He knew Jebe could see the truth, but with Ogedai and Tolui within earshot, Genghis remained silent. Jelaudin’s army had fortified a position, just as a city or town. Kachiun had tried to break the defenses by force, instead of standing back and waiting for them to starve. Genghis glanced at the sun beating on the back of his neck. Thirst would have killed them first, no matter how well they had prepared. To attack such a position was reckless, though he supposed he might have done the same. Still, his brother’s wits had deserted him. Genghis grimaced as he turned to Jebe, seeing the same thoughts reflected in that dark face.

“Discuss the weaknesses of strategy with my sons when we make camp, General,” he said. “This prince should have been stopped here. Now we have to hunt him.”

He turned back to the scouts who still stood, swallowing nervously.

“There is nothing else to see here, nothing that pleases me. Show me the way to my brother and the next scout in the chain.”

Both men bowed and Genghis rode with them, his tumans coming after him in perfect order as they crossed the valley of Panjshir and entered a narrow crack, almost invisible in the brown rocks. It was barely wide enough for the horses to go through.

It took eight more days before Genghis reached Kachiun’s tumans. In that time, he had not allowed his men to stop long enough to cook food, even if they had been able to find wood for a fire. The mountains in that region seemed bare of life, populated only by lizards and high nests of birds. When warriors came across a stunted tree, they chopped it down with axes and tied the wood to spare horses to be used later.

As he went, Genghis rolled up the line of scouts Kachiun had left behind, bringing each man with him as the tumans traveled deeper into the maze of canyons and valleys. At times, they rode their mounts over slopes of rock, almost too steep to remain in the saddle. There were no tracks left there. Genghis and Jebe began to appreciate the difficulty of the task for Kachiun. It was hard even to know which direction they faced at times, especially at night, but the line of scouts knew the way and they made quick progress. When they came upon the rear of
Kachiun’s tumans, Genghis took Jebe and his sons through to the front, looking for Kachiun. He found him on the morning of the eighth day, at a brackish lake surrounded by towering peaks.

Genghis made a point of embracing Kachiun, letting the men see that he held no grudge for their defeat.

“Are you close?” he said, without preamble.

Kachiun saw the banked anger in his brother and winced. He knew better than to explain himself, having no doubt at all that Genghis would discuss his errors in great detail when they were alone.

“Three false trails headed east, brother, but the main force is going south, I am certain of it.” Kachiun showed Genghis a piece of horse dung, teasing it apart in his hands.

“Still moist, even in this heat. We cannot be more than a day behind them.”

“Yet we have stopped,” Genghis said, raising his eyebrows.

“I am running low on water, brother. This lake is salt and useless to us. Now you are here, we can share skins and move faster.”

Genghis gave the order immediately, without pausing to see the first waterskins brought up. He had thousands on his spare horses and the animals were used to sucking at them as if they had never forgotten their mother’s teats. He felt every delay as a spur to his growing irritation. It was hard not to berate Kachiun with so many watching the exchange. When Khasar and Jelme came to greet him, Genghis could barely look at them.

“Tsubodai has orders to join us when he returns,” he said to the three generals. “What is past is past. Ride with me now and redeem yourselves.”

A flicker of movement caught his eye and Genghis squinted up against the sun. On a peak, he saw a distant man waving a banner above his head. He looked back at Kachiun, incredulous.

“What is
that?”

“The enemy,” Kachiun said grimly. “They have watchers on us all the time.”

“Send six good climbers up and kill him,” Genghis said, forcing himself to remain calm.

“They choose places one man can defend. We move past them too quickly to waste time getting them down.”

“Has the sun softened your head, brother?” Genghis demanded. Once more he had to struggle to control his temper. “Those are Jelaudin’s eyes. Have more men ride ahead and pick them off with arrows as they
find them. It does not matter if some of the warriors fall trying to reach them. When our enemy is blind, we will find him more easily.”

Jelaudin stared into the distance, watching the flag signal as it rose and dipped four times.

“The khan has taken the field,” he said. His stomach clenched as he spoke, and suddenly all the strength of his army seemed insubstantial. This was the man who had destroyed his father’s regiments, sent elephants mad with pain, and carved his way through the golden cities. Jelaudin had known he would come, the knowledge tainting their victories. The khan’s pride demanded his presence and Jelaudin had known he would not be slow to follow.