Save the Last Bullet for God (31 page)

My curiosity had been satisfied. I beheaded
the old man.

I asked the prisoners where the Alamut
Fortress was and who lived there. I grew tired of those who got
excited when they told me about it and killed those who spoke too
much. Finally, I found someone who could tell me about it
simply:

The Alamut Fortress was an aerie in the
western mountains ruled by Hassan Sabbah and his successors. Even
the great Turkish Empire known as the Seljuks were unable to
conquer it.

The next target of the campaign was defined
now. We advanced toward the steep mountains and narrow paths for
days. Those who heard that we were coming united and made the
mistake of attacking us in the open air. Finally, after a
treacherous journey, we crested a ridge and suddenly faced the
fortress. As an enemy fortification, it was a nightmare, but before
morning, the fortress fell, and we were inside.

I had someone ask after the old man’s son,
and a frail young man was brought before me. He had respect and
fear in his behavior but rage in his eyes. He bowed in front of me,
and when he approached me, I, again to everyone’s surprise, drew my
sword and cut off his right hand. The hand fell to the ground with
a metallic clang and a hidden dagger rolled out of its fingers.

“I brought you the compliments of your
father,” I said. Before he could reply, I cut off his head. It is
said that when the head of a man is cut off, he stays alive for the
period of time that he can hold his breath. The head of that young
man spent all that time staring at me in bewilderment.

Sobutay turned to me with a questioning
look.

“An old and sly man found a way to get his
revenge and give a lesson to the Mongols,” I said. “He directed us
to a fortress which had never been defeated in the hopes we would
get our deserts.”

I turned to my soldiers. “Kill everyone, but
leave three alive. They will tell what they have witnessed. Don’t
let a single goat or cat live. Destroy the fortress so totally that
no one will have a reason to settle here again,” I commanded.
“Legends are like that. They grow in the head and live on the
tongue of a man until a Mongolian comes and smashes him.”

We thought about where to go next, but, with
the news that they had established a new army using all their
country’s resources, the Georgians made the decision easy for us.
With half of our forces, Sobutay and I marched toward the city of
Ardabil where the enemy was waiting. After a short engagement, we
rapidly retreated before the giant army. As they chased us, Cebe
and his soldiers, who were lying in ambush, surrounded them from
behind. We stopped running, turned around, and slayed all the
Georgian forces. We smashed their bodies with our horses and buried
them in the soil.

Next, we entered the Terek Valley from the
north through the Derbent passage. There we found an ancient
community of Persian Christians . They fought better than the
Georgians. But what was the good of it? Before we left the valley,
we had erased them from history.

After fighting with a nation called Alans
without knowing where their territory was, we continued north and
were again welcomed by wide steppes, our favorite climate and
geography. Like a hurricane, we tore through the land of the Jewish
Cumans and loomed over their fate like a nightmare. We recruited
their enemy, the pagan Pechenegs, to come along with us. We
massacred the Kipchak people, and then, we turned around and killed
the Pechenegs.

The news of our merciless wrath stirred
those who lived in the faraway land of Crimea, the principalities
of Kiev, and the Russians. These nations united their armies and
marched toward us. We sent them a messenger with a spurious
reproach.

“We have no dispute with you; we don’t even
know you. Why do you advance on us?” the messenger asked.

During our withdrawal, we passed through the
lands of the Kipchaks—a shamanist Turkish tribe brought up in the
steppes bearing similar culture to our own—and slaughtered the
people there. Meanwhile, a huge, fully equipped Russian army of one
hundred thousand soldiers continued to pursue us. We led them a
great distance, wearing them out for three weeks. Finally, we
welcomed them in a river region called Kalka, near the Sea of
Azov.

We caught them off-guard, this
multi-national army, and divided them in two around a hill. The war
lasted for three days and nights and was a complete massacre.
Without exception, we put everyone to the sword and crushed those
who surrendered by squashing them under wooden boards. We gave the
commander, Mstilav, Prince of Kiev, special treatment by crushing
him on a carpet so that his blood would not mix with the earth.

By then, our appetite for war was satiated.
Just as we had wanted, we headed toward our headquarters by
crossing over the Caspian Sea to the north.

As we passed through more lands we didn’t
know, we needed permission to pass through a big and powerful
Turkish country known as the Kama Bulgarian Kingdom. We were done
with war; however, they objected to our offer, saying that they
wouldn’t allow us through. They even killed our messenger. So a new
war began and, as always, we chased after the runaways and their
supporters and crushed them. We invaded their capital city of
Bolgar, and, after the spoils were collected, we set off to join
our comrades.

We had traveled more than twenty-thousand
miles, fought with countless forces, superior to our own, won every
battle, destroyed two great kingdoms without even knowing their
names, and changed the destinies of all the nations we
encountered.

Once when Sobutay and I were looking over
the main camp from some distance, I asked him, “Did you like your
reward?”

Sobutay grinned.

“I do not like long speeches and farewells,”
I continued. “You know what I would say, anyway. I wish you and
Selen long life and happiness.”

“Cuci, but...”

“The best guest is the one who goes when his
visit is over,” I said.

I quickly turned my horse and rode away.

I never looked back.

Limbo

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On a remote corner of a Crimean harbor next
to rippling waves blown by the north wind, a dead body of a haggard
man lay in ragged clothes, his dead eyes still on the horizon.

A piece of a wolf pelt was in one hand and,
in the other, a red handkerchief.

…
[STOP]

I suppose I regained my consciousness first.
My first perceptions were a feeling of lightness, a sweet sense of
happiness, and a combined sense of ease...

“Hey! What’s going on?” I yelled in my mind
“How did this happen?” I reached for my sword, but it wasn’t there.
Neither was my hand. I looked around for shelter. But then
everything melted away as awareness slowly returned.

“Wow!” I said. “Was that all a simulation?
It was so real. I can still smell the salt air.”

“It is beyond a simulation, sir, but it’s
something like that. It is an advanced memory program formed and
configured by the data of your previous life.”

“How long did it take me to experience that
entire life again?”

“Time does not exist here, sir. However,
through the entire process, we haven’t even completed one
revolution around the earth, if that makes any sense to you.”

“Did I have other lives like that? How many
did I have? Why is it like this? What’s the aim?”

“Sir, calm down. This was the first phase.
It is the beginning of the process of you becoming yourself again
by going through the data. First of all, you are going to adapt to
your previous selves so that your consciousness can be integrated
without causing any harm to you.”

“How many more stages do I have?” I
asked.

“At least two. If necessary, there might be
a third. First, we will formulate and integrate the memories you
just recalled. We will give explanations, if necessary.”

“Sobutay. What happened to Sobutay?”

“Sir, he lived for a long time and shared
happiness with Selen as you wished. When he died, he was almost
ninety years old. He was remembered as history’s greatest
commander. Napoleon recorded only two or three victories. Alexander
had six or seven. But both tasted defeat. Sobutay won sixty wars
and never lost a battle. He brought all existing communities to
their knees. He was the only commander who ever beat two different
armies on two different fields at the same time.”

“It sounds like the tactics we worked on as
children helped,” I continued. “What about my father, the empire,
my family?”

“Your father established the greatest empire
in the world and forced submission from all the civilizations
within its physical borders. He died older than eighty, in his own
lands, in peace. Of course, Cagatay didn’t replace him. Ogheday
became the Khan and pushed the empire to its widest borders. It is
an odd coincidence that the name Ogheday has evolved in time and
has been changed to Oktay in recent Turkish. The Mongolian empire
reconfigured the lifestyle and behavior of the entire world. Just
like Noah and the Flood, it changed everything by defining power
through death and exile.”

“
How so?”

“Sir, you must know of the ‘Butterly
Effect.’”

“Of course: A butterfly flaps its wings on
one side of the world, and a storm breaks out on the opposite
side…But, did we really change that much?”

“
Do you remember entrusting a few
surviving children to a Turkish tribe?” the program
asked.

“Yes, I remember something like that,” I
said.

“They escaped from their camp that night and
ran away from your torture. They moved to the east of Anatolia and
found fertile lands to settle. They established a dynasty that
would be known as the Ottoman Empire. After you altered the fate of
the entire world, Ottoman rule followed and had the widest dominion
of any empire for 500 years.”

“Wow. So, that young man was Osman
Ghazi?”

“Yes, indeed. Additionally, you destroyed
the Georgian empire as they were about to become the rising power
in the land. You also erased the Bulgarian Kingdom, which was about
to become another great power. Those are small examples. If you
want to look at it from a broad perspective, you brought China to
its knees, dominating a civilization that had existed for five
thousand years. You also jailed them in their own lands, causing
most of the population to perish. Your empire decimated nearly half
of the population on the lands it ruled and integrated its own
population. Those who are from the blood of Genghis Khan form
one-fourth of the living population today. It’s impossible to fully
comprehend the Khan’s influence on the world’s genetic map.”

“Okay, okay, I understand, but why did it
all happen? What’s the purpose?”

“Think of wheat, sir. When it was first
grown in Mesopotamia, it was of a tiny grass variety, insignificant
and weak. Even its seeds were impossible to see. However, the
grasses with high nutritional value and those with coarse grains
grew taller while others were destroyed. Over time, the coarse
grasses adapted to people’s tastes, and in return, people planted
them all over the world and destroyed their rivals. The products
with useful mutations were allowed to develop. As a result, a very
different plant that had nothing to do with its first form was
developed.”

“What do you mean? Is this a process like
breeding? Do you mean breeding the desired human race, and
eliminating those who aren’t desired? Do you expect me to believe
this? Men waited for their fate like sheep, and we selected the
useful ones and shut our eyes to the deaths of others. And
I—we—slaughtered them. Is this what you mean?”

“Have you ever seen a sheep that doesn’t
produce milk and whose meat is not eaten, sir? Have you ever heard
of taming such a thing and making an effort to continue its blood
line? Have you ever worked for the survival of a living being that
would do you no good?”

“Dogs were the first animals that were
tamed, right? I had a wolf, and it was loyal to me. It always
protected me. And I didn’t eat its flesh, although it was rumored
that it breastfed me when I was a baby. But no one would breed a
dog for its milk.”

“Sir, there are sheep dogs around flocks of
sheep to protect them. They serve the shepherd.”

“But the wolf...”

“The wolf was always around you, protecting
you. Let’s say it prevented you from dangers you weren’t aware
of.”

“This is too much for me to digest. You’re a
computer program, so if you tell me that I’m hanging out in space,
I’ll believe it. But it’s too much.”

“Sir, have you ever noticed the common
history of the Turks and Mongols? The same story is always told. A
race was locked somewhere behind the iron and a bluish wolf fell
down from the sky and led them as they passed through the iron and
spread their rule all over the world.”

“That is just a legend, right?” I asked.

“Truth exists under everything. The sequence
is beyond coincidence, sir.”

“Is it something like my father’s name,
Temüjin? ‘The one of iron.’ And my name, Cuci, ‘The one from
outside?’”

“It is more than this, sir. As you may know,
there is a story similarly told in the major holy books. Judaism
and Christianity have Gog and Magog. Islam has Yecüc and Mecüc:
beings that passed over high walls, attacked all of humanity, and
flooded and wiped out everyone. It was unknown where they came from
nor what they wanted. They would kill and destroy. They passed over
the walls of iron that the prophet Zulkareyn Ilyas had built. It is
more than just a coincidence that the same tale has been told in
every civilization and in most legends.”

“So, were Gog and Magog mentioned in the
ancient beliefs of the Mongolians?”