The Mongoliad: Book One

CHAPTER 4: THE YOUNG PONY

“This is a task for a fool.” Gansukh paced back and forth in the long hall outside the throne room. Sunlight streamed through windows covered in intricate latticework, and dust danced in the wake of Gansukh’s pacing. “I fought at the siege of Kozelsk. I was handpicked by General Subutai himself, to help infiltrate the city. This…this mission is not—”

“Protecting the Khagan is not important?” Chucai interrupted dryly.

Gansukh stopped and peered at the tall minister through the shafts of sunlight. “Of course it is,” he said. “My bow and my sword are his to command. I would lay down—”

“It is easy to die for your Khagan,” Chucai said. He glanced down at the floor, shrugging his shoulders gently. It was a tiny motion, but it quelled Gansukh’s outburst as easily as if he had punched the younger man in the chest. “Perhaps that is why Chagatai Khan chose you for this mission. When Great General Subutai picked you to go over the wall of Kozelsk, was it because he needed a wild-blooded fool who would die for him?”

Gansukh shook his head.

“Do you think less of Chagatai Khan, then? Is his vision not as clear and far-seeing as the Great General’s?”

“I…I do not know,” Gansukh said.

“These Khans are proud men,” Chucai said. “Stubborn too. It took me many years to convince Genghis to tax rather than slaughter. This…this is a negotiation, not a battle.” A brief smile flickered across Chucai’s face. “Warriors fight, Gansukh; that is their purpose in life. But eventually, there is no one left to fight, and they must learn how to think.”

“Your words are filled with wisdom, Master Chucai,” Gansukh said, bowing his head. “I will reflect on them.”

“Do,” Chucai said as he began walking down the corridor. “Stay and rest a few days while you reflect, and partake in the pleasures of Karakorum.”

“I have my ger…” Gansukh eyed the rafters as he followed Chucai down the halls. Surrounded by stone and wood, he felt as if he were inside a tomb. At any moment the high ceilings could collapse and bury him, and he would never see the sky again.

Chucai shook his head. “You will stay in the palace,” he said. He eyed the young emissary, and the skin at the corners of his eyes wrinkled, as if he were hiding a laugh. “You cannot hope to understand the Khagan if you do not stay close to him.” He stopped beside a door panel, his hand resting on the wooden frame. “When you hunt a deer, do you not place yourself in the animal’s world? Do you not follow in its footsteps, see what it sees, smell what it smells?” When Gansukh nodded, Chucai slid open the door.

The room was small, not much bigger than the large sleeping platform covered with furs and skins. Sheer yellow silks hung from the ceiling, falling like frozen sunlight around the bed. Behind the bed were screens, painted with red flowers. On the leftmost one, a heron—its long neck extended—was taking flight.

“Is it to your liking?” Chucai asked.

Gansukh struggled to find some appropriate words, and the only thing he could muster felt totally inadequate. “It is a magnificent chamber, Master Chucai.”

Chucai nodded. “It is yours.” He held up a hand to forestall Gansukh’s objection. “There’ll be a dinner in honor of Governor Mahmud Yalavach later this evening. Perhaps you might wish to observe the Khagan when he is in a better mood. Have you sat at a formal court dinner before?”

Gansukh shook his head. “Around the fire, we gather each night to make boodog or horhog.”

“I think you’ll find table manners are somewhat different when you’re not eating greasy roast goat with your hands. I’ll send along some scrolls so you can learn how to behave in civilized society.”

“Master Chucai…” Gansukh put his left hand over his closed right fist. The combination formed a double prison, one wrapped around the other. The ceiling and the walls of the palace preventing him from seeing the sky and the horizon. This mission—even with the insight offered by Ögedei’s advisor—was another cage. He was trapped. And yet, looking at his hands and imagining what it would be like to be trapped inside—a carrion fly or a moth—he realized that no matter how tightly he squeezed, he could never quite close the narrow gap where his index finger dug into his palm, even if he moved his thumb. “Master Chucai,” he said, “on the steppes, the opportunities to read are few, and I…”

Chucai gave him a look of paternal reassurance. “I could send someone to read them to you, if you wish. Perhaps as you take your bath?”

Gansukh opened his hands and stared at his palm. Would the moth be crushed by the pressure of its prison before it could escape? “My gratitude is endless, Master Chucai.”

Gansukh drifted in a cloud. The walls of the room were obscured by the steam from the pool, and he floated in the hot water. The pool was larger than the interior of a chieftain’s ger, and initially he had balked at soiling so much water.

His clothes, stiff with dried sweat and dust, had been taken away by pale-robed servants. He had sat naked at the edge of the pool for a few minutes, the steam from the water opening his pores. Eventually he had put his feet in, and the temperature of the water had made his skin tingle. He had then allowed himself the luxury of complete immersion, and it felt good.

He wasn’t alone. Gansukh jerked out of his reverie, splashing the water around him as he found his footing on the bottom of the pool. She was kneeling at the pool’s edge, the light-blue silk of her robe darkening at the knees from the water. Her long hair was unbound from the twisted coiffure most Chinese women wore, and it fell across half of her face like a sheet of black water. He could only see one of her eyes and half her mouth, but it was enough to tell she was amused.

“Who are you?” he demanded, more strenuously than he intended. He felt exposed in the water, and not just because he was naked. The servants had taken everything, and he hadn’t even thought to keep the small knife he usually carried. He slapped the water as if the noise might scare her away, but the woman didn’t even flinch. Fool, he thought. All it took was the offer of a bath and he had dropped his defenses.

“My name is Lian,” the woman said. Judging by the smooth paleness of her skin and the shape of her face, her life prior to Karakorum had been one of indolence and wealth.

“Did Master Chucai send you to attend to my needs?” Gansukh asked. He made the water ripple with his hands. “If so, you should be in the pool.” It wasn’t that he desired the company of a woman; it was more that he didn’t like her sitting there on the edge. There was something on the floor beside her, and Gansukh stood on his tiptoes, trying to see what it was.

“No,” she said, the humor leaving her face. “As I tell every other Mongol, I’m a tutor, not a whore.” She picked up the bundle beside her, and Gansukh realized it was a thick scroll. She unrolled it and proceeded to read.

Once his confusion had passed, Gansukh listened for a few minutes as Lian read to him about the practices of civilized behavior. Her enunciation and diction were flawless, and her voice was pleasing to his ear. However, the material she was reading was the most tedious recitation Gansukh had ever heard—even more so than the countless reiterations of his ancestry recited in celebration after a victorious battle. “‘A son should not occupy the southwest corner of the home, nor sit in the middle of the mat, nor walk in the middle of the road, nor stand in the middle of the doorway. He should be as if he were hearing his parents when there is no voice from them and as if seeing them when they are not actually there.’”

He could hold his tongue no longer. He flicked water, interrupting her. “I am to act as if I were haunted by the ghosts of my ancestors?”

Lian sighed. She pushed her hair back over her shoulder and stared at him. “You have very little imagination, don’t you?” she asked. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You are, after all, just an itinerant horseman.”

Gansukh growled and chopped his hand into the water, throwing a much larger gout of water at her. She adroitly protected the scroll from the spray of water, but the rest of her wasn’t as fortunate. Gansukh admired the shape outlined by the wet cloth and momentarily forgot what he was angry about.

“It is a metaphor,” Lian said. She uncurled from her kneeling position and dipped a foot in the pool. “Do they not have metaphors on the steppes?” she asked as she kicked water at him.

Gansukh ducked instinctively, even though the water was harmless rain against his already wet skin. “What does a warrior need with a metaphor?” he grumbled. “Can a metaphor keep me alive? Can it slaughter my enemies?”

Lian danced back from the edge of the pool, avoiding his next splash. “Consider the swallows,” she said. “They dart through the air at their prey, then wheel around to retreat and strike again. Now consider how a group of horsemen approach their enemy. Do they not present themselves as one unit: riding in and firing their arrows, and then swooping away? Is that not the Mongol way? If you were a general and you told your men to ride in Swooping Bird Formation, would they not know what you meant? How is that not using a metaphor to slaughter your enemies?”

Gansukh let his tongue lie quietly in his mouth, and he acknowledged Lian’s point with a gentle inclination of his head.

She appeared to not notice, or perhaps she was feigning ignorance of his gesture. Her attention returned to the scroll and she unrolled it again, searching for the place where she had left off. “Let us continue then,” she said. “‘A man should not ascend a height, nor approach the verge of a depth; he should not indulge—’”

Gansukh slipped under the surface of the pool, letting his legs collapse until he was sitting down. Lian’s image wavered through a layer of water and steam, and her pale skin seemed to glow as if she were a ghost. He closed and opened his eyes a few times, but she didn’t vanish. Finally, his lungs burning, he pushed up and emerged from the water.

Lian stood like a statue—one eyebrow raised, one finger poised on the scroll—waiting for him to catch his breath. When he finished wiping the water from his eyes, she continued. “‘He should not indulge in reckless reviling or derisive laughing.’”

Gansukh let one of those laughs fly, and he slapped the water. “This is nothing but a book of rules telling me how to live my life!” he complained. “I already know how to live! Are the Chinese so stupid that they need instructions telling them how to do everything?”

“Are the Mongols so stupid they do not recognize the value of moral rectitude?”

Gansukh raised his gaze toward the ceiling. “Put the scroll aside,” he said. “This is wearying and useless. Come join me in the water instead.”

“Master Chucai instructed me to teach you how to behave in polite society.” She lowered the scroll and gave him a dismissive look—the sort an aristocratic lady might have given to an ignorant servant. “Behavior that includes learning how to respect women.”

“I respect fighters. I respect those—men and women—who prove their worth to their clan. You Chinese women sit around in gardens all day reading books and eating… I don’t know what you eat. Flowers, I suppose. Mongol women ride and hunt and fight until their skin is rough and tanned. What good is ‘culture’ if it makes you weak?”

“Were I a less cultured woman, I would not have fared so well when I was captured,” Lian pointed out. “Master Chucai recognized my value, at least, even if the Mongols never appreciate the things I have to teach.”

“And if you were a stronger woman, perhaps you wouldn’t have been captured at all.”

She looked away, and Gansukh felt a strange thrill in his belly. It wasn’t the same sensation he got on the battlefield when he killed a man, but it was similar—close enough that he felt both elation and confusion. But we aren’t fighting. Glancing down, he realized his body was also reacting to this commingling of emotions, and he pawed the water, disturbing the pool.

Her robe still clung to her body. It was distracting.

“How long have you been in Karakorum?” she asked.

“Not even a day,” he admitted, glad to talk about something else.

“You have much to learn,” she said, and her tone had none of the brittleness he would have expected from such a statement. “There is more to life than fighting.” She swallowed heavily and went to hug the scroll to her body, but demurred at the last second, sparing the scroll contact with her wet clothing. “Yes, I will admit there is value in knowing how to fight, but not all combat is with spear and arrow. The court can be as dangerous as the battlefield, if you don’t know how to conduct yourself.” She plucked at her robe, pulling it away from her skin.

Gansukh mulled this over, ignoring a twinge of disappointment at her ministrations to her clothing. Master Chucai had said that he had had to teach both Ögedei and his father how to conduct themselves. Did he respect them any less because they knew how to behave at court? Would he not follow them into battle without reservation? “Yes,” he said, nodding slightly. He walked backward until the edge of the pool pressed against his back. “So I am naked at court.” He raised his arms and rested them on the edge. “I have no armor. I have no weapons. I am like you were, once upon a time. Teach me how to survive. Teach me what I need to know to be strong.”

Lian regarded him, her head cocked to one side. She bit her lower lip as she lowered the scroll and let it fall to the ground. She walked forward and, to Gansukh’s surprise, didn’t stop at the edge of the pool. She disappeared under the water with a small splash, and he watched her slim shape glide through the water toward him. She surfaced not far from him, and he held himself still as she floated closer. She stopped when she was close enough to reach up and put her hand on his forearm. He felt her legs, constricted by the wet drapery of her robe, caressing his. Her breath was on his face, and he found himself staring at her mouth.

“You prefer your women strong, don’t you?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he muttered, the word getting caught in his throat.

“But you don’t think I am strong.”

It wasn’t a question, but Gansukh felt like he should answer anyway. He shook his head, not trusting that he could form the word.

“Teach me,” Lian said. “Teach me to be like your Mongolian women. In return, I can teach you how to survive here at court.” She moved closer to him. “A warrior does not learn from reading; a warrior learns from action, from using his hands and his heart. Can you show me that?”

Gansukh stared at her slender neck. Her pulse was visible under her pale skin. She was frail, and he wondered if she’d ever had a violent thought in her life. There was little chance this delicate Chinese flower could become the equal of a Mongolian woman, but it would certainly be amusing to watch her try. She and Master Chucai were right, though: he did not understand the ways of court, and if he had any hope of succeeding at his mission, he needed Lian’s help. It was better to submit to the offer of this strange and alluring Chinese woman than run back to Chagatai like a whipped dog.

Gansukh nodded. “I will teach you how to fight.”

She nodded curtly and pushed away from him. He grabbed for her, but his hands found nothing in the warm water. She swam to the edge of the pool, and in a smooth motion that suggested she was more fish than woman, she levered herself to the platform. He caught a quick glimpse of her breasts, outlined quite distinctly against her wet robe, and then she swiveled around, curling her legs around her like a flower closing for the night. Her back to him, she picked up the heavy robe that lay on the platform and slipped it over her wet clothing.

She retrieved her discarded scroll. “We will begin our lessons tomorrow,” she said with a final appraising glance over her shoulder.

It was only after she left that Gansukh realized she had taken the robe the servants had meant for him.