Lords of the Bow (34 page)

“They will bring back gold for the khan, I do not doubt it,” the spy went on. He began to pummel the heavy muscles of Temuge’s back, before finding another knot to work with stiff fingers.

“We do not need more of it,” Temuge muttered. “There are already carts of coins and only the Chin recruits seem interested.”

The spy paused for a moment. This was one aspect of the Mongol mind that confused him. Temuge was already relaxed, but he continued to work, trying to understand.

“It is true, then, that you do not seek wealth?” he asked. “I have heard it said.”

“What would we do with it? My brother has collected gold and silver because there are some who look greedily on such hoards. But what use is it? Real wealth is not found in soft metals.”

“You could buy horses with it, though, weapons, even land,” the spy persisted. Under his hands, he felt Temuge shrug.

“From whom? If a pile of coins will make another man give us his horses, we take them from him. If he has land, it is ours anyway, to ride as we please.”

The spy blinked in irritation. Temuge had no reason to lie to him, but bribery was not going to be easy if he spoke the truth. He tried again, suspecting it was hopeless.

“In Chin cities, gold can buy huge houses by a lake, delicate foods, even thousands of servants.” He struggled for more examples. For one who had been born into a society that used coins, it was difficult to explain something so obvious. “It can even buy influence and favors from powerful men, lord. Rare pieces of art, perhaps as gifts for your wives. It makes all things possible.”

“I understand,” Temuge replied irritably. “Now be silent.”

The spy almost gave up. The khan’s brother could not grasp the concept. In truth, it made him realize the artificial nature of his own world. Gold
was
too soft for any real use. How had it ever been seen as valuable?

“What if you wanted a man’s horse in the tribes, master? Let us say it is a horse better than all the others.”

“If you value your hands, you will not speak again,” Temuge snapped. The spy worked in silence for a time and Temuge sighed. “I would give him five horses of lesser breed, or two captured slaves, or six bows, or a sword made by a skilled man, whatever he wanted, depending on my need.” Temuge chuckled, drifting toward sleep. “If I told him I had a bag of valuable metal that would buy him
another
horse, he would tell me to try it on some other fool.”

Temuge sat up then. The evening sky was clear and he yawned. It had been a busy day, arranging the departure of so many.

“I think I will take a few drops of my medicine tonight, Ma Tsin, to help me sleep.”

The spy helped Temuge into a silk robe. The man’s pretensions amused him, but he could not escape the frustration he felt. The power of the small khans had been strangled when Genghis gave the order for the tumans to form. It was no loss. None of them had real influence in the camp. The spy had cut his losses and worked quickly to replace the servant killed by the assassin. Moving at such a speed brought many dangers, and he felt the strain grow daily. He still thought Temuge a vain and shallow man, but he had not found a lever that might tempt him into a betrayal, nor any better candidate. The black tent had to come down, but Genghis could not know the agony of Yenking. The spy considered the lord regent had set him a near-impossible task.

Lost in his own thoughts, the spy prepared the draught of hot airag and added a spoonful of the shaman’s black paste, scraping it out of a pot. When Temuge wasn’t looking, he sniffed at it, wondering if it was an opiate. The nobles smoked opium in the cities and seemed attached to their pipes, much as Temuge was to the drink.

“We are almost at the end of the supply, master,” he said.

Temuge sighed. “Then I will have to ask for more from the shaman.”

“I will go to him, master. You should not be troubled with small things.”

“That is true,” Temuge replied, pleased. He accepted the cup and sipped at it, closing his eyes in pleasure. “Go to him, but tell him nothing of what you do for me. Kokchu is not a pleasant man. Make sure you do not tell him anything you have seen and heard in this ger.”

“It would be easier if you could buy the paste from him with gold coins, master,” the spy said.

Temuge replied without opening his eyes. “Kokchu does not want your gold. I think he cares only for power.” He drained the cup, grimacing at the bitter dregs, but still tipping it back to catch every drop. The thought of the empty pot troubled him strangely. He would need it again in the morning.

“See him tonight, Ma Tsin. If you can, try to discover how he makes the paste, so that you can prepare it yourself. I have asked him before, but he hides it from me. I think he enjoys the fact that he has some hold on me still. If you can find the secret, I will not forget.”

“Your will, master,” the spy replied. He was due back at the wall that night, to report. There was time to see the shaman before he went. Anything and everything could be useful, and as things stood, he had achieved little in the camp, while Yenking starved.

CHAPTER 30

T
HAT SUMMER WAS THE MOST PEACEFUL
Genghis could remember. If it had not been for the looming presence of the city that filled the eye every day, it would have been a restful time. The khan’s attempts to rebuild his fitness were hampered by a persistent cough that left him gasping and only worsened as the year turned cold. Kokchu had become a regular visitor to his ger, bringing syrups of honey and herbs so bitter that Genghis could barely swallow them. They brought only temporary relief and Genghis lost weight alarmingly, so that his bones showed white under skin that looked sallow and ill.

Throughout the cold months, Yenking sat on the edges of his vision, unchanged and solid, mocking his presence in that land. It was almost a year since he had won the battle at the Badger’s Mouth. There were times when he would have given anything to be able to travel home and regain his strength in the clean hills and streams.

In the grip of the lethargy that affected them all, Genghis barely looked up when Kachiun darkened the door of the great ger. When he saw his brother’s expression, he forced himself upright.

“You’re bursting with news, Kachiun. Tell me it’s something that matters.”

“I think so,” Kachiun replied. “The scouts from the south say there is a relief column heading this way. As many as fifty thousand soldiers and a huge herd of prime cattle.”

“Khasar missed them, then,” Genghis replied, his mood lifting. “Or they came from somewhere off his path.” Both men knew armies could pass each other only a valley apart. The land was vast beyond imagining, coloring the dreams of men forced to stay in one place for longer than they ever had before.

Kachiun was relieved to see a spark of the old pleasure in Genghis. His older brother had been weakened by the poison running in his blood, anyone could see that. Even as he tried to reply, his wind was stolen by a fit of coughing that left him red-faced and clinging to the central spar of the ger.

“The city will be desperate for them to get through,” Kachiun said over the hacking sound. “I wonder if we will regret sending half our men away?”

Genghis shook his head mutely before pulling in a clean breath at last. He strode past Kachiun to the door and spat a wad of phlegm on the ground, wincing as he tried to clear his throat.

“See this,” he said hoarsely, picking up a Chin crossbow they had captured at the Badger’s Mouth. Kachiun followed his brother’s gaze to a straw target three hundred yards away along a path. Genghis loosed arrows for hours every day to restore his strength, and he had been fascinated by the mechanisms of the Chin weapons. As Kachiun watched, he took careful aim and pulled the carved trigger, sending a black bolt whipping through the air. It fell short and Kachiun smiled, understanding immediately. Without a word, he picked up one of his brother’s bows and selected an arrow from a quiver, drawing it back to his ear before sending it unerringly into the center of the straw shield.

The blood had faded from Genghis’s cheeks and he nodded to his brother.

“They will be slow with supplies for the city. Take your men and ride up and down the lines, never close enough for them to reach you. Thin them a little and I will do the rest when they arrive.”

♦                  ♦                  ♦

As Kachiun galloped through the camp, word from the scouts traveled even faster. Every warrior there was ready in just the few moments it took to race to his pony and grab his weapons from the walls of the gers.

Kachiun shouted orders to his senior officers and they spread the word, halting many men in their tracks. The new form of warfare was still only a veneer over the raiding bands, but the command structure was solid enough for groups of ten to gather and receive their instructions. Many had to return to their gers for another quiver of fifty arrows on Kachiun’s order before racing to form up in the great square of ten thousand. Kachiun himself marked the farthest line by riding his pony up and down, a long war banner of gold silk streaming out behind him.

He conferred once more with the scouts who had sighted the relief column and passed the fluttering standard to a messenger in the front rank, a boy of no more than twelve. Kachiun looked along the ranks as they formed and was satisfied. Each man carried two heavy quivers looped over his shoulders. They needed no supplies for a lightning raid and only bows and swords slapped on their thighs and saddles.

“If we let them through to the city,” he bellowed, turning his horse in place, “it will take another year to see it fall. Stop them and their mounts and weapons are yours, after the khan’s tithe.”

Those who could hear roared their appreciation of this, and Kachiun raised his right arm and dropped it, signaling the advance. The lines moved forward in perfect formation, the product of months of training on the plain in front of the city when there were no enemies to fight. Officers shouted orders out of habit, but in fact, there were no flaws in the lines. They had at last thrown reins on their enthusiasm for war, even after so long a wait.

The column had been forty miles south of Yenking when the scouts crossed its path. In the time it had taken Kachiun to return, the slow-moving mass of men and animals had shortened the distance to only twelve. Knowing they had been seen, they had pushed the herds as fast as possible, but there was only so much they could do before they saw the dust cloud of approaching warriors.

The senior officer, Sung Li Sen, hissed under his breath as he saw the enemy for the first time. He had brought almost fifty thousand warriors north and east from Kaifeng to relieve the emperor’s city. The column was a massive, ponderous thing, with carts and bullocks stretching back along the road. He squinted at the squares of cavalry guarding his flanks and nodded to their commander over the heads of the men. This was a battle long in coming.

“First position!” he snapped, his command repeated up and down the trudging lines. The orders he had been given were perfectly clear. He would not stop until he reached Yenking. If the enemy engaged him, he was to fight a running battle all the way to the city and avoid being bogged down in skirmishes. He frowned at the thought. He would have preferred a blanket order to crush the tribesmen and worry about resupplying Yenking when they were bones.

All along the vast snake of men, the soldiers raised long pikes like bristles. Crossbows were cocked by the thousand and Sung Li Sen nodded to himself. He saw the lines of Mongol riders more clearly now, and he braced himself in the saddle, aware that his men looked to him for an example of courage. Few of them had ever traveled this far north, and all they knew of these wild tribesmen lay in the emperor’s demand for support from his southern cities. Sung Li Sen felt his curiosity swell as the riders split along an invisible line, as if his own column was a spearhead they did not dare approach. He saw that they would pass on either side of him and smiled tightly. It suited his orders that they do so. The road lay open to Yenking and he would not stop.

Kachiun held back the gallop to the last possible moment before leaning into the wind and yelling for his mount to stretch its gait. He loved the thunder that sounded around him as he stood in the stirrups. Over such a distance, they seemed to close slowly, then everything was rushing toward him. His heart pounded as he reached the Chin column and sent his first arrow snapping through the air. He saw the Chin bolts streak out, falling uselessly into the grass. To ride along that endless line was to be untouchable, and Kachiun laughed aloud at the joy of it, sending shaft after shaft. He hardly had to aim with five thousand men on either side of the column, pinching it between them in whipping strikes.

The Chin cavalry hardly managed to reach full gallop before they were annihilated to a man, smashed from their mounts. Kachiun grinned when he saw not one of the enemy horses had been killed. His men were being careful, especially now they had seen how few riders the Chin had brought to the field.

When the cavalry were broken, Kachiun chose his targets with precision, aiming at any officer he could see. Within sixty heartbeats, his tuman loosed a hundred thousand shafts at the column. Despite the lacquered Chin armor, thousands were felled in their tracks, with those behind stumbling over them.

Kachiun could hear the cattle lowing in distress and panic, and to his pleasure, he saw the herd stampede, crushing more than a hundred of the Chin soldiers and breaking a hole in the column before they lumbered off into the distance. He had reached the end of the tail and swung in a little further, ready to double back. Crossbow bolts rattled off his chest, near spent. After the months of tedious training, it was simply wonderful to be riding against an enemy, and better, one who could not touch them but only die. He wished he’d known to bring more quivers. His grasping fingers found the first one empty and began his last fifty shafts, taking a Chin bannerman off his feet with the first.

Kachiun blinked wind-tears out of his eyes. He had thinned the column enough to see through it to the second five thousand on the eastern flank. They too were riding with impunity, striking at will. Another sixty heartbeats and a hundred thousand arrows followed the rest. The Chin soldiers could not hide and the neat column began to disintegrate. Men who trudged near carts threw themselves under them for protection while their colleagues died around them. A great wail of fear went up from the pikemen, and there were no officers left alive to rally them or keep them on the road to Yenking.

Kachiun began his second run, this time too far from the column to waste a shot. The lines reversed with the ease that comes of ceaseless hours of drill, and fresh quivers were emptied quickly. Kachiun galloped flat out along the lines, glancing back at the trail of dead they left behind as the column pushed onwards through the storm. The soldiers had kept their discipline, though the pace was slowing. Other men bawled orders in the place of dead officers, knowing that to panic was to invite complete destruction.

Kachiun grunted to himself in grudging admiration. He had seen many forces who would have broken before this. He reached the head of the column and swung back to the inside line once more, feeling his shoulders burn as he bent the bow again at full speed. He imagined his brother’s face when the straggling remnants reached the welcome they had prepared at Yenking. Kachiun barked a laugh at the thought, his fingers growing sore as he scrabbled in the fast-emptying quiver. Ten more at most, but the column seemed to shudder as panic spread again through the ranks. The crossbow bolts had not stopped and Kachiun had to make a decision. He could feel his men looking to him for the order that would have them draw swords and carve the column to pieces. They were all running low on shafts, and when the last massed volley was fired, their work was over. They knew the orders as well as he did, but still they watched him, hoping.

Kachiun tensed his jaw. Yenking was far away and Genghis would surely forgive him if he finished the column on his own. He could feel how close they were to breaking. Everything he had learned over the years of war made it something he could almost taste.

He grimaced, chewing his own cheek as the moment swelled around him. At last he shook his head and drew a wide circle in the air with his fist. Every officer in sight repeated the gesture and the lines fell back from the shattered remnants of the column.

Kachiun watched his men form up in panting lines, exhilarated. Those who still had arrows loosed them with enormous care, taking men as they pleased. Kachiun could see their frustration as they reined in behind the column and watched it move away from them. Many of them patted the necks of their mounts and stared at their officers, furious at being called back from the killing. It made no sense and Kachiun had to be deaf to the shouts of complaint from all quarters.

As the column put distance between them, many of the soldiers looked back in terror, convinced they were going to be attacked from behind. Kachiun let a gap open, then walked his pony forward. He ordered the right and left wings to move up, so that they cupped the rear of the column and herded it onwards to Yenking.

Behind them, they left a trail of dead men over more than a mile, with fluttering pennants and pikes in piles. Kachiun sent a hundred warriors to loot the bodies and dispatch wounded men, but his gaze didn’t leave the column as it made its way to his waiting brother.

It took until late afternoon for the battered column to sight the city it had come to relieve. By that point, the Chin soldiers who had survived the slaughter walked with their heads down, their spirits broken after so long with death at their backs. When they saw another ten thousand barring their way, fresh men with lances and bows, they sent up a moan of utter misery. The column shuddered again as they hesitated, knowing they could not fight their way through. Without a signal, they halted at last and Kachiun raised a fist to stop his men riding too close. In the gathering gloom, he waited for his brother to approach. He was pleased he had not denied Genghis this moment when he saw him ride apart from the tuman of warriors and come cantering across the grass.

The dull-eyed Chin soldiers watched him, panting and exhausted at the pace they had been forced to set. The carts of goods had drifted back through the hurrying ranks, left behind while Kachiun peeled men off to investigate the contents.

In a deliberate show, Genghis judged the mood of the column and rode right along the edge of it. Kachiun heard his men murmur in pleasure at the khan’s display of courage. Perhaps there was still a risk that crossbows might take him from the saddle, but Genghis did not look at the Chin soldiers as he passed, seemingly unaware of the thousands of men turning to watch him from under lowered brows.

“You have not left me with many, brother,” Genghis said. Kachiun could see he was pale and sweating from the ride. On impulse, Kachiun dismounted and touched his head to his brother’s foot.

“I wish you could have been there to see the faces of their officers,” Kachiun replied. “We are truly wolves in a world of sheep, brother.”