The Mongoliad: Book One

CHAPTER 15: A NOCTURNAL PURSUIT

Gansukh dozed, the rhythmic motion of his horse and the distant sound of the Orkhun River lulling him into a somnambulant state. His lower back and left shoulder still ached—the former having been bruised when he had leaped from the wall and used a ger to break his fall. The structure had collapsed under his weight, preventing him from serious injury, but he had sprawled into a bulky object inside the ger as everything had come tumbling down.

The jump had been the last in a litany of foolish actions undertaken in the last few hours, a list he had had ample time to relive in his mind as he tracked the assassin.

The assassin had fled Karakorum, as Gansukh had suspected he would, via the western gate, though he had opted for a much less traveled route—over the wall instead of through the market gate. A pile of timber and stone—building materials awaiting a location in which to be assembled—had afforded the assassin and Gansukh a shortcut to the outer wall. The assassin had—much more deftly—leaped from the pile of timbers to the crenellations of the wall, clambered up, and leaped again over the far side. When Gansukh—slamming himself against the battlement as if he were a boulder from a catapult—had managed to climb atop the wall, he had seen that the assassin had used a ger to break his fall.

There were many ger to choose from; the population of Karakorum always swelled to a density greater than the walls could hold when the Khagan was in residence. Many a clan pitched their tents in tiny villages along the outside of the walls. What had given Gansukh pause was the height.

He had stared down from a bird’s-eye view as tribespeople began to stir from their tents at the disturbance caused by the assassin landing on—and collapsing—a ger. His muscles had refused to move beyond the wall’s edge, his brain telling him it would be insane to follow, that the chase had to end here.

But he had forced his body to jump, and the rushing air had been exhilarating, so much so that he hadn’t noticed the ache in his back for several hours. Not until the excitement of the chase had given way to the endless drudgery of night tracking. And then his body had threatened to collapse from exhaustion.

The terrain around Karakorum was flat, mostly scrub and pasture; to the west lay the Orkhun River, a broad ribbon of water that bisected the valley. Typically the Khagan stayed at Karakorum for a few weeks during his transition from his summer to his winter residence, and during that time, the population of the city increased a hundredfold. Dozens and dozens of small clans made pilgrimages to the city to pay tribute to the Khagan; long caravans, weighted down with all manner of exotic goods, spilled into the trade district; priests, representing more religious sects than a man could reasonably count, erected shrines—some grandiose, some very austere—as physical manifestations of their spiritual inclinations; princes, courtiers, and displaced nobility sought to curry favor from the Khagan. They all arrived at Karakorum on hooved animals—horses, asses, oxen—and the ground around the city was trampled again and again.

But it had rained a few days ago, driving away the dust and softening the ground, and Gansukh had been able to find a few hoofprints—sharp indentations in the ground pointing away from the city. The river was a natural barrier; the assassin wouldn’t try to ford it at night unless he knew exactly where to cross, and Gansukh doubted the man had that information. The tracks indicated the assassin’s intent: keep the river on his left, the city behind him. Hanging low in the night sky directly ahead were the Seven Gods. A simple route. Gansukh could track the man all night.

He kept his stolen horse pointed at the brightest of the Seven Gods and let it pick its own pace. Even though the ground was very flat, there was no reason to push the animal. It might step in a hole and injure itself, and an exhausted horse would be of no use to him. When he caught up with the assassin, a fresher horse might make all the difference in the final chase.

He would have to answer for taking the mount when he returned. There hadn’t been time to negotiate a loan—not that any true steppe warrior would loan his horse to a complete stranger who had just come running up to him. In some clans, horse thievery was punishable by death. He could only hope that catching the assassin might provide some extenuating circumstances by which the Khagan might grant him amnesty.

Gansukh sat up a little straighter as his horse’s gait changed. He peered ahead, straining to see anything in the near darkness. The sky was clear, and the moon was still in the sky, but he couldn’t see anything distinct on the plain around him. The river called to him and he tried to block out its noise; then the smell hit him and he realized what had spooked his horse.

Tightening his legs, he forced the horse closer until he was sure the large shape on the ground was just a horse and not a horse and rider, and then he let his horse shy away from the dead animal—its blood still wet and fresh on the ground. He kept his horse’s head canted to the left as he made a large circle around the corpse, trying to ascertain which direction the assassin had fled after killing his downed mount.

The assassin had been riding too fast, and the horse had stepped in a divot, breaking its leg. The assassin had killed it quickly to prevent its screams from giving away his position, but Gansukh had been tracking him closely enough that the smell of blood had been enough to betray him.

Wolves howled in the distance as Gansukh pulled his horse’s head around. There hadn’t been any clear indication on the ground of which direction the assassin had gone, and so Gansukh continued north. Behind him, he could make out the distant glow of Karakorum. The Seven Gods, the dead horse, and the city—that was a line easily followed, and there was no reason to think the assassin had changed his course.

He leaned forward as he rode, listening intently to the world around him. Overhead, thousands of stars stared down at him, a multitude of silent observers watching tiny shapes crawl across a wide plain. The hairs on his neck bristled as he was momentarily filled with an awareness of the immensity of the world and the heavens. No matter how big the empire, he thought, there is always a greater world beyond. Ordinarily such a thought comforted him. He loved to be alone on the plains, loved to surround himself in the vast majesty of nature. Tonight, though, that vastness unsettled him. There were things out there in the darkness, things he couldn’t see or hear or feel, and they were ghosts of a world he could never completely understand. Ögedei Khan—and the Khans after him—would spread throughout the world, but the world would spread through them too, and it would change them.

He looked back over his shoulder at the faint bubble of light that was Karakorum—a tiny flicker of fire in a vast emptiness. Gansukh had heard stories of other empires riding out from the steppes, riding out to conquer the world, and he couldn’t help but wonder what happened to them. What happened when their light went out and the darkness rushed in again? He had seen the weathered foundations of their ruined forts. Would Karakorum share the same fate in a thousand years’ time? If the Khagan is dead, Gansukh thought, what will happen to that light? Was the plain already starting to nibble away at Karakorum while he rode through the night? Were the wolves already calling to one another? Fresh meat, brothers. Fresh meat for all of us.

Gansukh shivered slightly, trying to drive away the darkness that had invaded his brain. Which is better? his brain asked, undeterred in its course. To be the bright fire that tried to dispel the darkness, thereby attracting all manner of scavenger and hunter, or to die like that horse back there, lost and forgotten, picked clean by the weather until the very ground itself grew over his bones…

On his right, something bolted, a sudden explosion of pounding feet. Two legs, Gansukh realized in a flash, and he jerked his horse toward the sound, kicking it into a gallop. He leaned low, his head nearly level with the horse’s, straining with all of his senses to pinpoint the runner.

He had found the assassin.

Out in the gloom, he spotted a running figure. The assassin was both larger and smaller than he had expected: bigger because he was now so close to the man, who was smaller than Gansukh had expected him to be. He kicked his horse in the ribs, and the animal lunged forward. The assassin, still dressed in black, twisted like a shadow slipping away from an approaching torch, and Gansukh’s horse bumped him heavily as it passed, sending him sprawling.

Gansukh tried to jerk his horse to a stop, and when it started to buck against his pressure, he threw his leg over its back and jumped off, landing lightly on the hard ground. The assassin was getting up and tried to draw his sword, but Gansukh slammed into him. He got his hand over the assassin’s, and they wrestled for control of the half-drawn sword as they went down on the ground. A knee glanced off Gansukh’s thigh, and as his left arm was pinned beneath the squirming figure, he slammed his head forward and bashed the assassin with the peak of his forehead.

The assassin went limp, and Gansukh extricated his arm as he disentangled himself from the other man. Something sharp slit his right thumb, and he jerked his hand up and back, his fingers finding the hilt of the assassin’s weapon. He scuttled backward on his ass, pulling the sword with him, and the blade rasped noisily against the metal rim of the scabbard. But it came free, and he had control of it.

When the assassin lowered his hands from his bloody face, he found himself staring at the tip of his own sword.

“Don’t move.” Gansukh tried to hide his ragged breathing. The blade trembled in his tight grasp.

The assassin froze, his hands held out in a supplicating position. His chest was moving as rapidly as Gansukh’s, big heavy breaths, and with a sudden shock, Gansukh realized why the assassin was smaller than he had expected, why he had been able to physically dominate the other person. He flicked the tip of the sword toward the wrapped scarf that obscured most of the assassin’s face. “Take it off,” he growled.

Moving very slowly, the assassin complied, and her long hair spilled out of the tight embrace of the scarf.

She reminded him of Lian, and not just because they shared the same elongated face and long black hair. There was a spark in her eyes, a fiery refusal to be tamed, and Gansukh felt both his stomach and groin tighten—a momentary flash of panic and elation—even though he knew that the similarities between Lian and the assassin were merely racial and not familial.

“Who sent you?” Gansukh demanded.

The woman grinned, a mouth full of white, bloodstained teeth. She said something in a dialect he didn’t know, and when he didn’t react, she spat at him.

He flicked the blade, slapping her on the cheek, reminding her of her situation. “Do you speak Mongolian?” he snarled. “If you don’t, then you are no use to me. I’ll just kill you like you did your horse. Let the wolves have you.” He put the tip of the blade against her throat. “Who sent you to kill the Khagan?”

She stared at him for a long moment, daring him to follow through with his threat, and when he didn’t flinch or look away, she swallowed heavily and spoke. Her grasp of the language was rough, her accent clipped, and her words enunciated too clearly as if she had never spoken any of these words more than once or twice before. “You make mistakes. I am not a killer. Your Khagan is alive.”

“I don’t believe you.”

She pursed her lips, defiant, but she didn’t try to convince him. As if it didn’t matter what he thought. The truth would be the same either way.

Gansukh shifted his weight, lowering the tip of the sword so that it rested against her breastbone. Just enough that she didn’t think he was a fool. He didn’t believe her—not entirely—but there were a number of details that were starting to clamor for his attention. If she was an assassin, what had been her tool of choice? Not this sword. It was plain and functional—a horse rider’s sword—and to be used effectively, one had to be bigger and stronger than she appeared to be. Poison? If so, had she discarded the poisoned weapon? There were no visible pockets or pouches on her plain black garments.

“Roll over,” Gansukh said. When she didn’t move, he elaborated. “I want to search you. There must be a knife…”

She shook her head, but complied when that refusal made no impression on Gansukh. Keeping her hands raised, she shifted onto her hips and rolled toward Gansukh, forcing him to pull the blade back or cut her. Silently cursing at himself for not being more explicit, he shuffled a half step in reverse to keep his measure the same. As he moved, he rocked back onto his toes so that he was no longer on his knees. Anticipating her.

She tried to bolt when she got her hands on the ground. Half running/half crawling, she scuttled away from him and nearly got upright before he body-slammed her again and took her to the ground. She gasped as she felt his full weight, and she squirmed until he punched her twice in the lower back with the hilt of the sword. She lay still after that, head turned, cheek pressed against the dirt, glaring at him.

He ran his hands roughly over her body, feeling through the fabric of her clothes. She was thin and angular, more like a bird than a woman, but he felt nothing hard enough to be a knife. And nothing soft enough to be a pouch. He grabbed at her jacket, meaning to pull her over and search her front, but he stopped as his hand encountered something hard. He tried to tug her jacket around without having to roll her over, and she reacted, violently bucking under him. He slammed his elbow against her spine and put the sword blade against the side of her head.

“Lie still,” he hissed when she quieted down.

He continued to yank at her jacket so that he could get his hand inside it, but the angle was all wrong. As he struggled to get the jacket open, he heard the rumbling sound of hooves.

Glancing over his shoulder, he spotted a quartet of lights bouncing across the plain. Torches, held by a search party. His prisoner started to squirm again and he leaned against her body, hissing at her again. Gansukh felt her relax, and together they lay as flat as possible on the open ground, hoping the riders wouldn’t notice them—he, because he wasn’t ready to give up his prize; she, because while she might still escape one captor, more only reduced her chance of success.

There were five of them, riding fast with torches, and they passed on their right, seemingly intent only on what lay directly in their path. Gansukh was about to congratulate himself on remaining undiscovered when one of them suddenly reined in his horse and shouted at the others. Gansukh’s heart sank when he heard the rider’s voice.

Munokhoi.