The Mongoliad: Book Three

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Afterward they lay together in each other’s arms. Gansukh’s hands, dry and rough as the leather they handled, gently abraded her smooth skin as they brushed over it. That porcelain pale surface had yielded gently in his grasp and the warm pulse beneath traveled from her heart to his fingertips, the rhythms of her body ebbing and flowing, rising and falling. She touched her head to his tanned chest and her breath fell upon him like spring wind, warm with the promise of life. Outside the ger the watch fires still burned, and they made the walls of the ger glow. Her hair was sleek as a midnight stream. Under the thick fur blanket her hand clasped his, and he felt how tender it was, how untouched by work or war.

She was of a different world, a soft world, and here she was in his harsh land. It was shaping her as surely as wind and rain carved the rock. There was the faintest ochre tinge to her shoulders where the sun had begun to tan her as it did him. There was a callus on her finger, just between the knuckles, where the bowstring was held. This hand once had never touched a weapon, this heart once believed violence unthinkable. Now his world had marred her.

And her world had affected him too. She brought him alien customs and manners, philosophy, polite civilization. The ways of the Mongols were ancient, customs passed down through seasons beyond count: births in the spring; nomadic grazing throughout the summer months; harvesting during the fall; surviving through the cold winters. It was an endless hardship, but it was what made a man a Mongol. These men now, who swaddled themselves in silk, sat on jeweled thrones, and never lifted a hand to tend livestock, what were they?

“What do you think will become of the empire?” he asked Lian.

She raised herself up on her arms, hair sliding down perfect shoulders. “You’d ask about history at a time like this?”

“I wasn’t asking about history. I was asking about the future.”

She favored him with a smile as she stretched out a hand for her robe, discarded so frantically some time ago. “History is the future. Its cycles repeat themselves like the seasons.”

“You are always teaching me,” Gansukh grumbled, running his hand down her exposed back. He took delight in how she shivered at his touch. “So what does history have to say?”

Lian elegantly slid her arm into the sleeve of her robe. “Every empire decays, in time. They become old and corrupt, and fall apart, or they become soft and complacent, and are conquered by the young and ambitious.”

“Will the Mongol Empire suffer the same fate?” he asked.

She paused, the sleeve of her robe pulled halfway up her arm, and gave him a raised eyebrow. It was a look she had given him many times during his studies, an expression that said, This question is not mine to answer.

“I think…” he sighed, and lay back to stare at the ceiling of his ger. “It has already begun. The Khagan carries a great sadness within him, and the drink only deepens it. These-” He shook his head. It wasn’t the fights between the foreigners that bothered him. It was… everything they represented. They were not fights for survival or for the glory of the empire. They existed for purely base, selfish reasons: the fighters were there to entertain the Khagan; the Khagan was there to vicariously feel the joy of battle.

“What if he cannot rid himself of his sickness?” he asked, more of himself than of her. “It festers, like an arrow wound that is not properly dressed. The skin may grow back, but the head of the arrow is still inside the body. Eventually, the rot will kill him, and when he dies, the empire will fall as well.” He pointed at the thick pole rising in the center of his tent. “Take that down, and the whole ger collapses,” he said.

“And yet you do not abandon him,” she said as she slid her other arm into her robe. “You still see something worth saving in him.”

“I do,” he said. “I must, because-” He stopped, unwilling to give voice to what lay in his heart. He listened to the whisper of silk as Lian tied her robe. Was she getting ready to leave?

“What if he does heal himself? What happens when the empire spreads across the world, from sea to sea?” He broke the near silence with his questions. Not because he thought she might know the answers, but because he didn’t want unspoken question to become true. “What will we become when there are no more lands to conquer? Will we become civilized, provincial administrators of our new lands? Instead of feeling the wind and rain on our faces, we will throw on more layers of silk and fur and hide inside our new fortresses. Instead of counting horses, we will tabulate numbers on our abaci. We will not chase the seasons across the steppes. We will stay in one place all year, and be neither Mongols nor Chinese. We will be…” What? he wondered. What will we become?

“But what of the people you rule?” Lian said as she knelt beside him, her hair hanging down across her robe and jacket. “They will learn Mongol customs, they will bear half-Mongol children. As they change you, you change them. As I have changed you. As you have changed me.”

Gansukh toyed with the yellow fringe on the lower edge of her jacket, contemplating asking her to take all her clothes off again.

“How old were you when you first killed a man?” she asked.

Gansukh frowned, annoyed at the intrusion of violence into his thoughts. “Ten,” he said.

“So young! How did it happen?”

“We were herding goats to pasture. My father, my uncle, and myself. Five men of the Spring Hawk Clan came down from the hills, thinking they could take our goats. They rode noisily, trying to scare us with their numbers.”

“Five against three. They thought they had an advantage.”

Gansukh nodded. “They were poor shots, though. I was frightened, but my father and uncle did not flee. They calmly took up their bows, and my father admonished me to do the same. My uncle and father each killed one as I was trying to ready my bow. And then we each took one of the remaining three.” Gansukh let go of Lian’s jacket and touched the hollow of his throat. “Right here. That is where my arrow landed.”

Lian’s eyes went to Gansukh’s throat, and she swallowed heavily.

“Even then,” Gansukh said, “I was an excellent shot.”

“Was it easy?” she asked.

“If I hadn’t fired my bow, they might have killed me. As it was, we lost two goats to their arrows.” He shrugged. “The Spring Hawk Clan never challenged us again”

“What did it feel-” She hesitated, and he watched her quietly as she struggled to ask her question. Her shoulders hunched forward and her body shivered slightly.

“He was some distance away,” Gansukh said softly. “He fell off his horse and we left him. I never saw his face.” He reached for her hand. “The first man I killed with a blade was in Volga Bulgaria. To stare into a man’s eyes as he dies is a much different experience. Some enjoy the feeling.” He squeezed her fingers. “I did not.”

“I’m afraid to sleep,” Lian whispered. “I’m afraid that his ghost will be there, haunting my dreams.”

“You took a man’s life to save mine. Would you rather my ghost haunted your dreams?”

She shook her head, and in the weak light, he saw the gleam of a tear tracking down her cheek.

“Then you did the right thing,” he said. He tugged gently at her jacket.

She slid down onto the bedding next to him, burying her face against his chest, and he let his arms fall around her. He held her tight and listened to the ragged sound of her breathing.

How long will this last? he wondered. How long will any of it last?

These questions remained unspoken and unanswered, long after Lian had fallen asleep, and he found their roles reversing. However, when he slipped from the bedding, she did not stir.

Gansukh remembered this too. The exhaustion that comes in the aftermath of the first kill. You cannot sleep for all the thoughts racing around your head, he thought, but your body demands it anyway.

He was dreaming about escaping from his cage again, though this time he did not try to steal a horse and ride out onto the steppe. This time, when he managed to get out of his cage, Haakon stole toward the center of the camp. The Khagan slept in the enormous tent on wheels. It was easy to find, and once he sawed his way through the heavy fabric, it would be equally simple to slay the man inside.

It was all very easy in his dream, but Haakon knew the reality would not be as simple. The Khan of Khans was always under the protection of his elite guard, who would not be blind to his efforts to cut a hole in the tent. He would have to fight at least one man, and the noise of combat would draw others, until he fell beneath a sea of Mongol warriors.

It was a fantasy. Nothing more. A way to pass the time, and while he wished his mind would dwell on more practical matters, he did not fret at the presence of such desires in his head. They meant he had not given up, that he still sought to stay alive.

Haakon stirred, sloughing the weight of sleep. His cheeks and left jaw ached, and his throat ached when he swallowed. The physical reminders of his fight the previous night. All in all, his bruises were slight in comparison to his opponent’s. Eating might be a little more painful, but then, the Mongols hadn’t been feeding him much more than a bowl of watery slop. Very little chewing was required.

He rolled onto his side, opened his eyes, and froze.

A Mongol crouched outside his cage, staring at him with evident curiosity.

Haakon stared back. The man’s jacket and leggings were utilitarian and plain, well-worn and well-traveled, and his face, while not as dark as some of the riders who had traveled with the first caravan, was clearly weathered by the sun and wind. He wore no markings, unlike the white-furred men with cruel mouths and hard eyes who made Haakon think of hungry wolves when they stared at him. This one was different. No less feral. Unlike many of the silk-robed Mongols who had wandered by his cage to gawk, there was clear intelligence in this man’s gaze.

Seeing that he was awake, the Mongol made a noise in his throat and indicated that Haakon should sit up. Haakon considered ignoring the man’s gesture, but after a moment he pushed himself up to a seated position and coolly stared at the Mongol. He kept his face expressionless: if he smiled, he might appear a fool; if he grimaced, it might be taken as a threat.

The man seemed familiar, and Haakon suspected he had been at the fight the previous night. He tried to recall details from the sea of faces that had surrounded the ring of stones, but other than the Khagan and a few of the others who had also stood on the raised platform, he could not remember any of the faces in great detail.

The Mongol tapped his chest. “Ghan-sook,” he said.

Haakon nodded. Easy enough to understand. “Hawe-koon,” he replied, drawing out the syllables much like he had for the general weeks ago.

From somewhere inside his jacket Gansukh produced a strip of dried meat. He tossed it close to the cage and watched as Haakon crawled over to the bars to retrieve the meat. He tore off a piece with his teeth and chewed it slowly, letting the taste linger in his mouth. It was fresher than the strips the guards had been giving him, and Haakon suspected it was from the warrior’s own supply. He raised the remainder to his lips and tipped his head in thanks.

Gansukh grunted and stood up, his knees popping. He began to pantomime, and Haakon quickly interpreted the gestures to mean, You fought another man; other man lost.

Haakon nodded again. “Yes,” he said in Mongol tongue. “I fight.”

Gansukh smiled. “You fight,” he replied, and then he said something else, which was beyond Haakon’s limited vocabulary. Reading Haakon’s shrug, Gansukh took to pantomime again, though this series of gestures was harder to follow. He pointed at Haakon, mimed holding a sword, made mock slashes in the air, and then he pointed to himself and pretended to be…

Haakon shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he said in his native tongue. He tried to think of how to say the same thing in Mongolian. He could say “no,” but that wasn’t what he wanted to tell the warrior.

Gansukh tried the pantomime again, refining his gestures. You fight was easy to read. I… watch. Haakon nodded, following that much. The last part was trickier.

Haakon smiled as he deciphered Gansukh’s signs. He wants to see how I fight, he realized.

Haakon took his time getting up, stretching his stiff limbs as best he could in the cramped space of his cage. He bristled somewhat at the idea that he was expected to perform for this man, but another part of his mind considered the benefit of this man’s interest. At the very least, he might be able to bargain for more dried meat.

Haakon put his hands together as if he was holding a sword and settled into a simple stance. He had to duck his head forward and hunch his shoulders due to the cage, but Gansukh seemed to understand what he was doing.

The warrior mimed drawing a sword of his own and he held it out before him, the imaginary tip pointed at Haakon’s chest.

Haakon responded, twisting his hands up to beside his head. Imagining his own sword point, he thrust his hands forward quickly, and Gansukh clapped his right hand to his left shoulder, crying out in mock pain.

Haakon laughed. The young warrior played the fool well, and his judgment as to where Haakon’s point would have struck was sound. Gansukh left off his playacting and brought his hands together over his head with a sharp clap. He swung them down, a quick overhead stroke of his imaginary sword, and Haakon reacted instinctively.

In his mind’s eye, he saw where the blade would fall, and he brought up his hands to parry as he slid a half step to his right. He barked his knuckles on the rough ceiling of his cage, and he growled lightly in his throat. He knew the appropriate response-he could hear Taran’s voice, telling him to strike quickly and true, making the long diagonal cut from the shoulder to the groin-but there wasn’t enough room to perform that motion.

Haakon lowered his arms and shrugged. “Can’t fight in cage,” he said.

“A horse can’t run when it is hobbled,” Gansukh replied with a nod. He looked down at his hands as if he were examining his imaginary sword, and then with another curt nod, he departed, leaving Haakon to wonder what the young warrior had hoped to learn from their mock battle.

The shaman’s tent squatted on the verge of the caravan, leaning, like an old tree, away from the rest of the tents. The shaman’s horse, a bony gray gelding, quietly cropped a ridge of dry grass nearby, and an unruly pile of colorful blankets lay near the loose flap of the tent.

As Master Chucai approached the tent, the old gelding raised its head, regarded him for a moment, and then resumed its unhurried grazing. Chucai eyed the pile of blankets, and having gotten a whiff of the smell coming from them he decided to keep his distance. He cleared his throat noisily as he peered past the pile into the dim interior of the tent.

There was a rattle of wood and metal, and part of the pile moved. A bony foot extruded, and soon after-from another side-a hand followed. As the pile quivered and shifted, Chucai caught sight of a cracked set of antlers, festooned with bits of dull metal and shards of bone. The antlers rose up like the ghost of an ancient spirit, and a cracked and weathered face emerged from the blankets. There was a bulbous knob of a nose and a ragged hole that Chucai suspected was a mouth; only one of a set of eyelids managed to flicker open.

Chucai bowed, holding his beard against his belly so that it didn’t drag on the ground. “O servant of the wind and sky, I seek your guidance,” he began. “There is a matter that puzzles me greatly as of late.”

The shaman continued to shift around in his expansive layers of clothing as if he were trying to find a more comfortable position. Or perhaps he was simply trying to find something he had lost among the voluminous folds of his robes. Either way, his expression did not change and the gaze of his single eye remained fixed on Master Chucai.

“The great Spirit Banner of the Khagan,” Chucai continued. “Ogedei received it from his father, and I wish to know how his father-Genghis Khan-acquired it.”

“Temujin.”

It took Chucai a moment to realize that the shaman had said something coherent. Temujin. The name by which Genghis Khan had been known before he had become the great leader who had united the clans. “Yes,” he acknowledged. “Temujin.”

“Temujin went into the mountains,” the shaman croaked. “Genghis Khan returned.”

“With the banner?” Chucai asked, trying to interpret what the shaman was telling him.

“The womb of the spirits,” the shaman said. “The belly of Eternal Heaven.”

“Is that where the banner came from? Is there a spirit in it?”

The shaman wheezed and cackled, a nasty barking sound that was strange enough to spook the gelding, which raised its head and snorted noisily at the laughing pile of blankets. “There are spirits everywhere, bearded master,” the shaman explained when the stream of laughter dried up. “If you shatter a rock, do you shatter the spirit too, or does it live in every shard? When you cut down a stalk of grain, does the spirit pass into every seed?”

“I do not know,” Chucai said.

“If you cut off the head, does the body die?”

“Yes,” Chucai admitted. He smoothed down his beard. “I had hoped to learn more about the Spirit Banner, wise one. I have not come to engage in riddles.”

The shaman opened his other eye and stared fixedly at Chucai. “I am talking about the banner,” he croaked. “You are not listening.” A bony finger jabbed forth from the robes. “Why does the body die?” the shaman asked again. “Why? Is it because the spirit has abandoned it?”

“I suspect it has more to do with the head being separated from the body,” Chucai replied, reluctant to play the shaman’s game.

“But you could sew the head and body back together,” the shaman said.

“It’s-” Chucai shook his head and sighed. “I confess the mystery of death is beyond my knowledge.”

“It is not death you should concern yourself with,” the shaman snorted. “Life, bearded master. That is what you should be worrying about. Life.”

“Is the banner alive? Is that what you are telling me in this maddening fashion?”

“The banner is a piece of wood,” the shaman snapped, his voice suddenly harsh and dry. “It is the spirit that is alive.”