Bones of the Hills (58 page)

For the nation in the gers, life went on around Herat, punctuated by the crack of catapults through each night and day. The families watered their animals at the river, content to leave the destruction of the city to the warriors. The rains had brought sweet grass, though it was already withering in places as the sun beat down. Such concerns were old to them, and if the city did not fall quickly, they would send the herds out to the furthest grazing, leaving the closest hills to be cropped last.

Genghis rested, his wounds having faded to pale scars on his legs and arms. He did not think of Jochi, except with relief that the betrayal had been brought to an end. After Tsubodai had left, the khan had seemed invigorated, willing to fall on Herat with the nation and begin again. His shoulder had healed over time and he rode every day to strengthen his body, ignoring the aches and pains of age. He had sent Chagatai and Kachiun to besiege the city of Balkh in the east, but the main strength of the nation had come with him to the fortress and he took heart from the sight of the encampment. His wife Borte had not spoken to him since she heard the fate of Jochi, but he was oblivious to that. The world lay at his feet and he was strong as he waited for Herat to fall.

In the fourth month of the siege, Genghis was hunting with senior officers around the base of the city. After so long in one place, there were few living things that had escaped the pots of the families. Just a few rabbits remained and they were wary survivors, long used to running from the sound of horse or man.

Balkh had fallen two months before and his tumans had slaughtered the inhabitants, pulling down the stones of the city walls. Only Herat still held out and Genghis was tired of the siege and the hot lands. He had become hopeful of a quick ending when Kachiun and
Chagatai returned, but the fortress at Herat was one of the strongest they had ever tried to break.

As the season passed, Genghis had moved his catapults three times, concentrating their stones on flat sections of the walls. Cracks had appeared to great jubilation in the camp, but he sometimes felt he was assaulting a mountain, with as much effect. The walls stood, battered and marked in a thousand places. By then Genghis knew starvation and thirst would break the city, but he kept his siege weapons working.

“When this is done, we will go home,” Genghis muttered to himself, looking up at the walls. Kachiun and Khasar had heard it a hundred times before from their brother and merely exchanged a glance. A rabbit darted out from cover far ahead of them, and all three kicked in their heels to chase it down. Over the noise of hooves, Genghis heard a sharp cry above his head and looked up. There was always someone staring down at his camp from the walls, but this time, he saw a man had leaned out too far. The luckless watcher had barely caught himself and now clung to the outer edge by his fingertips. Genghis whistled to his brothers, pointing as the man shouted for help above their heads.

Khasar and Kachiun returned, staring up with interest.

“A wager?” Khasar asked. “Two horses that he will fall?”

“Not from me, brother,” Genghis replied. There were others reaching down to drag the man back to safety, but he gave a cry of despair as he felt his hands slip. Genghis and his brothers watched in fascination as he tumbled, shrieking as he went. For an instant, it seemed as if an arched stone window might save him. His hands caught on its ledge, but he could not hold on. The brothers winced as he struck the wall again, falling outward onto the rock base of the fortress. The body spun loosely and came to rest not far away from Genghis. To his astonishment, Genghis saw an arm flail.

“He’s alive!” he said.

“For a few heartbeats, perhaps,” Khasar replied. “That fall would kill anyone.”

Genghis and his brothers trotted over to where the man lay. One of his ankles was clearly broken, the foot twisted. His body was a mass of scrapes and cuts, but he blinked in terror at the generals, unable to believe he had survived.

Khasar drew his sword to finish the man, but Genghis held up a hand.

“If the spirits won’t kill him after that, we won’t be the ones to do
it.” He looked up in awe at the distance the man had fallen, before addressing the man in halting Arabic.

“You have incredible luck,” Genghis said.

The man cried out as he tried to move, and he too stared up at the walls above his head. “It does not… feel like luck,” he replied.

Genghis grinned at him. “Get him to a healer, Khasar. When his wounds are bound, give him a good mare and whatever else he wants.” More men could be seen now on the walls as they stared and leaned out, some of them almost as far as the man who now lay at Genghis’s feet.

“When the city falls, you will know how lucky you truly are,” the khan said in his own tongue. The man looked blankly at him as Khasar dismounted to help him into the saddle.

The walls of Herat slumped and fell in the sixth month of the siege. One of the towers collapsed with the section, crashing to the rocks below and leaving a gaping hole into the city. The tumans gathered quickly, but there was no resistance. As they entered Herat, they found the streets and buildings already choked with the dead and dying. Those who still lived were brought out onto the plain and made to kneel for binding. That task alone took many days as the fortress had been packed with men, women, and children. Temuge gave his servants the task of numbering the prisoners on wax slates, putting the total at a hundred and sixty-three thousand, with almost half as many dying of thirst or hunger in the siege. In their fear and despair, they cried and moaned as they were bound for execution, the sound traveling far across the gers. The warriors of the khan searched every room, hall, and basement of the city until it was just an empty shell filled with the dead. The smell of a city after a siege was like nothing else, and even hardened warriors gagged as they brought out rotting bodies.

It was sunset by the time Temuge was satisfied with his tally, and Genghis decreed the killing would begin at dawn. He retired to the khan’s ger to eat and sleep, but his wife Chakahai sought him out as the darkness gathered. At first she said nothing and he welcomed her presence. She worked the iron stove, making tea and heating pouches of unleavened bread, mutton, and herbs that she had prepared that morning. He did not see the strain she hid from him, though as she passed him a plate of the pouches, he took her hand and felt her quiver.

“What is it?” he asked.

She bowed her head. She knew he would respond best to blunt-ness, but her heart beat so quickly that she could barely breathe. She knelt before him and he put aside his hunger, intrigued.

“Husband, I have a favor to ask,” she said.

Genghis reached out and took her hand in his. “Ask, then,” he replied.

Chakahai forced herself to take a slow breath. “The women and children,” she said. “Let them go free. They will take word of the city falling. They—”

“I do not want to speak of this tonight,” Genghis snapped, letting her hand fall.

“Husband,” she said, begging, “I can hear them crying out.” He had listened when she held the key to Kokchu’s treachery. He had listened when she urged him to name Ogedai as heir. Her eyes implored him.

Genghis growled deep in his throat, suddenly furious with her. “You cannot understand, Chakahai,” he said. She raised her head and he saw her eyes were bright with tears. Despite himself, he went on.

“I take no pleasure in it,” he said. “But I can make this killing a shout that will spread further than I can ride. Word will go out from here, Chakahai, as fast as any bird. They will say I slaughtered every living thing in Herat, that my vengeance was terrible. My name alone will bring fear to those who would stand against me.”

“Just the men…” Chakahai began.

Genghis snorted. “Men always die in war. Their kings expect it. I want them to know that if they resist me, they are putting their hand in the mouth of a wolf. They will lose
everything
and they can expect no mercy.” He reached out once more and took her face in his hand, so she could feel the hard callus of his palm.

“It is good that you weep for them, Chakahai. I would expect it from a wife of mine and a mother to my children. But there
will
be blood tomorrow, so that I do not have to do it again, a hundred times and more. These Arabs do not send me tribute because they recognize my right to rule. They bow their heads because if they do not, I will visit fury on them and see all they love turned to ashes.”

Tears streamed from her and Genghis stroked her cheek gently.

“I would like to give you what you want, Chakahai. Yet if I did, there would be another city next year and a dozen more after that. This is a hard land and the people are used to death. If I am to rule them,
they must know that to face me is to be destroyed. They must be afraid, Chakahai. It is the only way.”

She did not reply and Genghis found himself suddenly aroused by her tearstained face. He put the plate of food on the floor of the ger for the morning and lifted her onto the low bed beside him, feeling his shoulder creak. She shuddered as his mouth found hers and he did not know if it was from lust or fear.

At dawn Genghis left Chakahai in the ger and went out to watch the killing. He had given the task to the tumans of his sons Ogedai and Tolui. Twenty thousand warriors had cleaned and sharpened their swords for the work, but even so many would be exhausted by the time it was done.

The prisoners sat huddled together in the morning shadow of the broken city as the tumans surrounded them. Many of them prayed aloud and those who faced the grim warriors held out their hands and screamed until the blades fell. It was not quick. The warriors moved amongst them and had to bring the swords down many times as the prisoners writhed in their bonds and struggled to get away. Men and women clambered over each other, and the warriors were drenched in blood. Many of the blades were ruined on bone, the steel edges cracked or bent. Noon came and the killing went on, the smell of blood strong in the still air. Warriors left the mass of living and dead, gasping as they drank warm, sour water before walking in again.

The afternoon sun was powerful as they finished at last and the plain fell silent. The tumans of Genghis’s sons were staggering with weariness, as if they had fought a long and bitter battle. Their officers sent them to the river to wash away the blood and clean and oil their weapons. The city stood silent above them, empty of all life.

The man who had fallen from the walls had wept for part of the day, though his tears dried quickly in the heat until he sobbed dryly and no more came. His broken ankle had been splinted and he was given a horse and supplies by a nameless Mongol officer, following the orders of the khan. The man rode away as the flies and birds gathered above Herat. Genghis watched him go, knowing he would take the news to all those who had ears to hear.

Genghis thought of Chakahai’s tears as he stood in the shadow of Herat. He had not told her where he would take the nation. The
families knew he intended to go home, but one other place had long ceased to send tribute and he would take his army there before he saw those hills and rivers again. Xi Xia was where he had first met the pale daughter of a king, the region a stepping stone that had led him to an emperor’s capital. Like the elders of Herat and Balkh, Chakahai’s father had thought the khan would not survive the Arab armies sent against him.

Genghis smiled lightly to himself as he gave orders for the nation to break camp at last. He had been too long away from the Chin lands, and Xi Xia would be the bloody example to bring them to heel.

THE NATION TRAVELED EAST TOGETHER
, burning a trail of fire and blood through the Arab cities and towns. The tumans went ahead of the families, riding against cities that were still little more than ruins from their first experience of the Mongol khan. As survivors began to rebuild their lives and homes, the tumans came sweeping in again to slaughter and burn.

For those who traveled on the carts of the nation, the landscape was marked in plumes of dark smoke, growing as they came closer and finally left behind while fresh black threads appeared in the distance. They moved through desolation and Genghis was well pleased at the sight. He had no more use for Arab cities, nor those who lived in them. The destruction he brought would make the land a desert for a generation or more, and they would not rise again in challenge. Only Samarkand and Merv were left intact, for others to rule in his name. Even then Temuge had been forced to beg for a garrison to keep Samarkand safe, with its libraries and palace. Genghis was leaving Arab lands and it was not long before the least of those in the gers knew they were heading back to war with the Chin. Twelve years had passed since the fall of Yenking, and Genghis longed to see his ancestral enemies once more. The nation had grown in strength, and this time nothing in the world would stop him placing his foot on the Chin throat.

Six moons grew from crescents to full by the time they skirted a great desert to the south. The Mongol homeland lay north over mountains and Genghis hungered to see his own land, but pressed on. The nation traveled more than two thousand miles into a cold winter that only refreshed families who had grown sick of the endless heat. Xi Xia lay further into the east, but Genghis reveled in the changing landscape, taking delight in the waterlogged fields of green rice almost as if he were coming home. The hunting improved and they swept the land clean of anything that moved, taking herds of yaks and goats as easily as they fired villages on the edges of Chin land.

On a warm evening, with the sun setting in a cloudless sky, Chakahai came once again to the khan’s ger. He looked up in pleasure to see her, and she felt the strength of the new vitality that infused him. He wore a tunic and trousers that left his arms bare, and she could see the web of scars on them, right to the fingers.

He smiled as he saw the platter of food she had brought and took it from her, breathing in the aroma of fresh meat with pleasure. She did not speak as he ate with his fingers, relaxing visibly after a long day. The peaceful sounds of the families could be heard around them as thousands of warriors ate and rested with their wives and children, ready for another day of riding.