The Mongoliad: Book Three

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Ogedei could not remember the last time he had been awake before anyone else. In Karakorum, the servants knew to let him sleep as late as he desired, though invariably Chucai would send a frightened messenger with some poorly veiled excuse of a crisis that demanded his attention. Some days, the desire for drink woke him; he had either drunk too little or too much the night before, and the spirits that lived in the wine would tug him away from sleep. His mouth would be dry, and they would whisper incessantly in his ear about how easy it would be to rinse out the dust with a mouthful of wine. During the long journey to Burqan-qaldun, he would wake to the sound of the camp preparing for another day: wood being chopped, meals being prepared, ger being disassembled, pack animals being loaded again.

It had been many years since he had slept away from the constant commotion of civilization, and many years before that since he had slept outside with only a sleeping roll between him and the ground. It was not surprising, in that case, that he had slept poorly.

It had been the constant mention of his father that had put him in a foul mood as he had laid down to sleep the previous night. He had stared up at the stars for a long time, lost in thought, as more and more of the men around him surrendered to their dreams.

All spoke of Genghis Khan as if they knew him, as if they were anything more than lap dogs and lackeys to him, but none of them knew the Great Khan as well as he did. And he would never confess to them that the man had been an enigma to him.

He never understood why Genghis had chosen him over his brothers to lead the empire. Jochi had been stronger and Chagatai was smarter; even Tolui-dear sweet Tolui-had been better suited to lead than he. And yet, Genghis had ignored all of the evidence and chosen him-the middle son who no one believed was capable.

Late the night before, he had recalled a dream from months earlier, during the late summer at Karakorum. He had dreamed of abandoning the empire-just he and Toregene. They shared one horse and rode west until they reached the endless sea where the sun doused itself every night. There, on the beach, they had built a shelter out of driftwood and palm fronds. He had learned to fish from the shore, and she haunted the rock ledges where the noisy birds nested, harvesting eggs. It had been a simple life, unlike any he had ever known, and it had been satisfying. When they had gotten hungry, he fished; when they had been tired, they slept. The sun fell down from the sky, boiled the sea, and went out; the next day, it was there in the sky again. Nothing ever changed. The dream hadn’t been a vision; it was nothing more than the idle spark of a desire that he fueled enough to become a tiny flame, lurking in his heart.

The previous night, sleeping on the ground, beneath a sky filled with bright stars, was a small taste of what that life would be like. Now, with the sky obscured by the predawn fog, the ground wet with dew, he discovered that the burning desire for a simple life had been extinguished. That dream was nothing more than cold ash in his mind, a fantasy that belonged to someone else.

Ogedei rolled his dry tongue around the inside of his mouth, and his attention drifted to the nearby bundle of his gear. Nestled deep inside one of the bags were two flasks of wine. He’d only need one to quench the worst of his thirst. He could save the other one for after he slew the Great Bear.

He rolled over, turning his back on the bag and its secret contents. His knees and back complained as he got to his feet, and he used this soreness as an excuse to walk away from his sleeping roll. A little exercise would get his blood flowing. They had camped near a stream; he could get a drink from there just as easily, and the clear, cold mountain water would wash away the cobwebs of the night.

Under a nearby tree sat a pair of Torguud, and one slapped the other as Ogedei limped past, trying to rouse the sleeping guard. He should have stopped and berated them for failing to both stay awake, but he found himself sympathizing: the hard ground was no substitute for a warm ger.

As he made his way to the river, his head was filled with thoughts of Karakorum-the comforts of home, the ease and luxury that he had earned after many years of crisscrossing the steppe in pursuit of his father’s dream. Why did he need to kill this bear, anyway? What did he really have to prove? Genghis had given him the empire, and it had expanded under his rule. It was so large that it took all of Genghis’s sons and their sons to rule it. Wasn’t that enough?

Ogedei knelt at the edge of the stream and cupped his hand in the rushing water, wincing at the frigid temperature. He scooped water into his mouth, and gasped as the cold water made his teeth ache. He scooped several more handfuls into his mouth, feeling cold rivulets of water stream down his throat. Bracing himself, he splashed water on his face and rubbed his skin vigorously.

It didn’t help his mood.

He heard someone approach, and he turned in acknowledgment. It was Alchiq. The gray-haired hunter knelt by the stream, his knees popping, and dipped a small bowl into the water. He stood, sipped from it slowly, and then he offered it to Ogedei.

Ogedei dismissed the offer. Why hadn’t he thought to bring a bowl to the river? How dare Alchiq embarrass him like this? Why hadn’t he stopped him from getting his hands wet? He glanced down, noticing how much water had splashed on his shirt from his own actions, and his annoyance increased. He was Khagan, and here he was slurping water from a river like a mongrel dog, sleeping out in the open like some herder’s sheep. This was all beneath him.

“You’re thinking about going back,” Alchiq said.

Ogedei glowered at him.

“They’ll go, if you order it, but do you think they will forget what you did? What you didn’t do?” Alchiq shrugged, taking another sip from his bowl. “You’ll have to kill all of them. Including the big one, and the young one, the one who knows how to hunt.”

Ogedei held out his hand for the bowl, and after Alchiq handed it over, he drank from it, peering over its rim at the gray-haired hunter. “Would you kill them all for me?”

Alchiq lifted his shoulders and calmly let his gaze swing across the camp, almost as if he was marking how he would accomplish that task. “I am yours to command, my Khan.”

“Would you kill the Great Bear for me too?”

Alchiq brought his gaze back to Ogedei. “You won’t ask me to,” he said.

“But would you?”

“Would you help me kill all of these men?”

“What? That is a ludicrous question.”

“Is it?” Alchiq asked. He knelt by the river again, refilling his bowl, allowing Ogedei the luxury of not answering the question. He stood and took another drink from his bowl. “A man earns those things that he carries with him his entire life. Both his victories and his secrets. What he doesn’t earn haunts him, always.” He clapped Ogedei on the arm, a surprisingly familiar motion, and gave the Khagan a rare smile. “Kill the bear, my Khan,” he said. “Accept your destiny.”

Ogedei did not know what to say, and after Alchiq left him, he stood for a long time at the edge of the stream, staring at the water.

Gansukh tugged at the hem of the shirt, wishing-once again-that Munokhoi had been slightly taller. Though, if he had been, events in the woods might have gone differently. He sighed and wriggled his shoulders one final time before relenting to the constant confinement of the ex-Torguud captain’s extra shirt.

He could have returned to the hunting party the previous day covered in blood, but when he calmed down after killing Munokhoi, he had realized that the less said about the fight in the woods, the better. Namkhai had noticed when he had caught up with the Khagan’s party, as had Alchiq and Chucai, but the different clothes and horse had gone unnoticed by the others.

He had caught Ogedei staring at his ravaged ear after the evening meal, but the Khagan had said nothing. Even though the cold water from the stream had given him a headache, he had dunked his head into the stream three times, scrubbing his hair, his face, and both ears between each immersion. He was surprised-and a little pleased-that he had slept at all, given how much his ear had been throbbing in the night.

This morning, though, most of the stinging was gone, reduced to a dull ache that would, he suspected, persist for several weeks while the wounds healed. He would be marked for the rest of his life, carrying the visible scar of the fight in the woods.

At least he was alive. Missing part of an ear was an acceptable sacrifice.

After the men had taken care of their horses the day before, the Darkhat had drawn the Khagan a map in the dirt. The valley forked, and the northern fork became a narrow rocky vale. Somewhere up there, hidden in the boulder-strewn hillside at the end of the valley, was the bear’s cave. The southern fork was rocky as well, though it was filled with a dense forest of evergreen trees. The bear hunted in those woods, but it always returned to its cave in the northern fork. In some ways, it didn’t matter in which fork the bear was, because once they entered the valley, there was no way out except past them.

When they reached the valley, the Torguud became the rearguard, and the hunters spread out to the side and in front of the Khagan as the hunting party rode toward the northern fork. The sky was clear of clouds, and the morning mist had already burned off the floor of the valley. Thin wisps of fog still clung to some of the rocky knobs on the surrounding hillsides.

Gansukh was surprised by the variety of trees. He recognized ash, alder, oak, and cedar, but there were several other evergreens that he did not know. The trees hugged the edges of the valley, growing thicker the farther they ventured into the valley. The trees were tall too, as if they had never known fire or ax. Gansukh heard numerous birds singing and calling to each other, and he saw signs of small animals-squirrels, rabbits, and other rodents and scavengers.

The bear never had to go far to find food, and for a little while, Gansukh wondered if the Darkhat had been wrong and the bear had been dead for many years. The proliferation of life in the valley was, instead, a testament to the lack of predators.

The sun moved overhead as they reached the rocky spur that signified the split between the two ends of the valley. The hunting party paused briefly-some dismounting to piss, others chewing a quick snack of dried meat-and then continued to the left, moving past the outcropping of rock that split the valley into two forks.

The forest thinned out, and the trees gave way to fields of rocks and the scraggly bushes of the steppe. They started to come across piles of bear scat; after the first one, everyone sat up a little straighter in their saddles, and bows were strung and readied. As the hunting party approached the end of the valley, the hillsides forced them to ride closer together, and there was some confusion among the riders as to who would lead.

Ogedei finally pushed his horse to the front, silencing Namkhai and the chief hunter’s arguments with a curt shake of his head. The Khagan readied his spear, and the hunting party crept forward.

One of the Darkhat pointed out the dark hole of the bear’s cave, and the hunting party came to a halt. A hushed conference was held, debating the best way to approach the bear’s cave, and Gansukh sat a little ways off. His opinion wasn’t needed, and he would only be in the way of the Khagan’s triumphant kill. It was his job to watch now, to be a party to Ogedei’s triumph.

Alchiq’s horse ambled up to his. The gray-haired hunter was peering intently up at the dark cave. He grunted, catching Gansukh’s attention, and then pointed.

Gansukh looked, shading his eyes from the sun to see what Alchiq was pointing at. There was a clear trail up the slope, the route the bear took time and again, and it looked like there was a flat shelf in front of the cave where something caught his eye.

Gansukh looked at Alchiq, who shrugged as he slid off his horse. Carrying his bow ready, the gray-haired hunter darted forward, leaping from cover to cover as he approached the cave. Swearing under his breath, Gansukh glanced over at the clustered hunting party, wondering if anyone had noticed Alchiq. No one had, and with a final curse, he climbed down from his horse and followed the gray-haired hunter.

They were too far below the cave to see properly, but Gansukh had seen what had caught Alchiq’s attention: a wooden spar, jutting up at an angle that didn’t seem natural.

As he ran after Alchiq he heard Namkhai shout behind him. He ignored the Torguud captain’s cry, and dogged Alchiq’s heels as the gray-haired hunter raced toward the cave. They scrambled up the slope together, no longer caring to move silently. The hunting party was making enough noise now to alert anything that might be waiting for them up at the cave.

Breathing heavily, Gansukh reached the flat shelf at the cave a half step behind Alchiq, and he came to a sudden stop as he saw what was waiting for them.

The body of a Great Bear was crucified upon huge crossed logs driven into the ground in front of the cave. Its front legs splayed out, arrows driven into its paws. Its head was held in place by a length of rope. The beast’s tongue protruded from its mouth in an obscene and unnatural twist.

Alchiq slowly walked up to the dead beast. His head was almost level with the bear’s shoulders; directly in front of him was a long shaft jutting from the bear’s chest. Gansukh stared at the object, uncomprehendingly.

It looked like an arrow, but it was the longest arrow he had ever seen.

Alchiq turned around, his eyes restlessly scanning the hillside around them, searching for something that, judging from the savage grin on his face, he had been expecting.

“They’re here,” he said.