The Mongoliad: Book Two

31

She was free.

She clenched the horse’s mane tightly, her fingers aching from the strain of holding on. She had no memory of getting on the horse: one moment she had been crouched among the panicked horses tied to the picket line, her breath fluttering in her throat; then she had been flying, her feet lightly skipping off the ground as she let the horse drag her away from Gansukh.

Part of her wept at leaving him behind, but she had had no choice. If she was going to escape from the Khagan’s camp, this was her only chance. She couldn’t be afraid of the ambushers-they couldn’t be worse than the Mongols. They might even be her own countrymen, and while Lian didn’t hold any illusions that men bold enough to attack the Khagan’s caravan would be any less cruel than the Khagan himself, she was still heartened by the fact that there were still people who fought back against Mongol tyranny.

She bent over her horse’s back, trying to make as small a target as possible. The white blur of tents rushed by as the horse ran. She didn’t try to guide the animal; she let it find its own way, urging it on by beating her heels against its ribs. Run, she pleaded, run as fast as you can.

“Lian!”

She glanced back and spotted another horse and rider pursuing her. Her hair whipped around her face, and she risked letting go to rake her hair out of her eyes. Gansukh. Why couldn’t he let her go?

Or was he coming with her?

Her horse veered to the right, and she grabbed on with both hands, tightening her legs around the horse. She lashed out with her heels, driving the horse faster. Don’t be a fool, she thought. He’s trying to stop you.

Distantly, she heard a rumble of thunder, and she glanced up at the sky. Behind her, the smoke from the burning tents was making the stars blink like fireflies, but up ahead, the sky was filled with a constant sea of stars. Where was the storm? she wondered, looking for some patch of darkness that would indicate clouds. Rain would slow her down, but it would obscure her trail.

On her right, she heard men shouting, and her heart quickened at the voices. They were speaking Chinese! Her horse blew air noisily from its nose and veered away from the voices, panicked enough that it wanted to shy away from any living creature.

Gansukh shouted her name again, and when she looked, he was closer. His horse was bigger and stronger-he was gaining on her.

Her horse stumbled, grunting deep in its chest. Lian tensed her body, clinging tightly to its mane. When the horse stumbled a second time, her heart skipped a beat. It twisted its head to the side, and she saw foam and blood on its mouth, and then it collapsed. For a brief second, she had time to stare at the thin shaft of the arrow jutting from the horse’s neck-if it had been a little higher, it would have struck her instead-and then she was flying again. The sensation was not the same, though, as she clawed and flailed at the air in an effort to grab onto anything.

She hit the ground shoulder first, and she cried out as her momentum flipped her over the point of impact and slammed her hard on her back. She slid and tumbled, and every rock on the ground hit her like a fist-in the small of her back, on the arms and legs, on the cheek. She tried to curl up into a ball-the same way she had when the Mongol soldiers had first beaten her when they had taken her captive-but her arms and legs wouldn’t work.

Her horse screamed nearby, having broken a leg as it had fallen, and the sound was made worse by the bubbling wetness of its pierced throat.

When she stopped tumbling, Lian lay in a heap. She didn’t know if she had broken any bones in the fall, but it didn’t matter. She had failed. Even if she could stand, she was too bruised to run. Her right hand pawed at her face, a motion she couldn’t understand the genesis of, and there was a strange keening noise coming from her throat.

Hooves thundered past her head, and she felt the impact of a heavy weight against the ground nearby. “Lian!” Gansukh tried to put his arms around her, and her right hand-still wriggling like an agitated snake-vainly pushed him away. “It’s me.” He tried to pin her arm, and finding some unknown reserve of strength, she fought him all the harder.

Somehow she extricated herself from his embrace, even though she didn’t think she had the strength to stand. She could crawl, though, and on bloodied knees, she tottered away from him. Her hair was twisted and matted against her face, and she spat out a mouthful.

She meant to scream at him, but her voice died in her throat.

A line of strange soldiers stood in front of her. They wore haphazard armor, some more complete than others, and the scattered markings on their shoulders and chests were Chinese. Several of the soldiers carried spears, and having spotted both Gansukh and Lian, they lowered their spears.

Gansukh had grabbed her ankle, and he hissed at her as she struggled, but she ignored him. Chinese! A new opportunity had presented itself to her, a sudden and unexpected path to freedom.

“I am a prisoner,” she said in Chinese. She raised her hands, showing them her scraped and bloody palms. “Please don’t kill me.”

“What are you saying?” Gansukh hissed in her ear.

She jerked her leg free of his grip and crawled closer to the line of soldiers. Several of the Chinese soldiers lowered their spears slightly, but their general apprehension did not lessen.

“Please,” she whined, making eye contact with the nearest man. “I am captive of the Khagan. I beg you to free me.”

Two of the soldiers exchanged glances, chattering to one another too quickly for her to follow. The one on the left wanted to continue their mission; the one on the right was considering her request. Prisoners were always useful, he argued.

“Is this man your master?” asked the curious one. His helmet had a plume of dark feathers, and there was a precision to his words that spoke of formal education.

She nodded, letting a small sob escape from her throat.

The soldiers surged forward, their spears focusing now on Gansukh, who muttered an oath under his breath. Lian glanced over her shoulder and tried to catch Gansukh’s eye, but he was too focused on the spears to notice her effort.

A hand grabbed her arm, jerking her forward, and she gasped as the Chinese leader dragged her forward. Gansukh edged forward and then stopped, eyeing the threatening spears. She knew that look in his eye, the same sort of frantic stare a cornered animal has, one that knows what comes next but is powerless to stop it.

“Wait!”

The Chinese man wound a hand in her hair and jerked her back. She struggled in his grip, winding herself toward him, while trying to keep the soldiers from thrusting their spears into Gansukh. “He’s…he’s a special advisor to the Khagan,” she cried to the man holding her hair. “He has value.”

The first Chinese man, the one concerned about his mission, grunted and spat. “He doesn’t look like much.” He nodded his head toward the camp. “We don’t have time.”

“No, wait,” Lian said, frantically thinking how to convince these Chinese men without revealing too much. “They don’t look like much,” she said hurriedly, adopting a more haughty tone. “These steppe warriors are all barely one bath away from being animals, but this one is…special.”

“We don’t have time for hostages,” the first man repeated.

The man who held her hair wound his hand another revolution, pulling her closely to him. “Go,” he said to his companion. “A hostage could be useful…” He scratched his chin thoughtfully for a moment and then barked a command at his men: “Tie him up.”

“They want to take you-” Lian started to explain to Gansukh in Mongolian, but the Chinese man jerked her head back, and she cried out in pain.

Gansukh surged forward. The Chinese spears came up, and Gansukh stopped just short of the points. One of the soldiers jabbered at him to back away, lightly flicking his spear point at Gansukh’s chest to make his command clear. Glowering at the man who held Lian’s hair, Gansukh took a step back. His hand remained on the hilt of his sword.

“What were you saying to him?” Lian’s captor demanded.

“I was trying to tell him to not fight,” she insisted, trying to lessen the tension on her hair. “He is a proud man. He will not just lay down his sword because you ask him to.”

Another boom of thunder rolled across the camp, and Lian realized the sound was too slight to be real thunder. It was the concussive sound of Chinese explosives, and she swallowed the lump of fear that had risen in her throat. Fire arrows and explosives, she wondered. What sort of attack is this?

The first man made a cutting motion with his hand. “We did not come for hostages,” he said, and he called to the spearmen. Half of the circle surrounding Gansukh pulled back their spears and made to follow their squad commander. “Kill them both” was his final assessment. His men falling in behind him, he ran toward the tents of the Mongol camp.

Lian’s captor hesitated as Gansukh shrewdly eyed the soldiers still holding their spears on him. He remained still, but Lian could read the subtle change in his breathing. He thought they were going to kill him, and he was readying himself.

“Tell him to lie down,” Lian’s captor hissed in her ear. “Tell him to do it quickly, or my men will kill him.” She heard the sound of a knife being drawn from a sheath, and then the cold touch of blade eased against her throat. “And then I’ll kill you.”

She nodded, trying not to pull away from the man or the knife. “Lie down,” she said to Gansukh in Mongolian. “They want to take you prisoner.”

“Why?” he growled. His face was like a mask-only his eyes moved, tracking back and forth between the soldiers threatening him.

“I’m trying to save your life,” she insisted.

He glanced at her, and she flinched at the wounded look in his eyes-the naked accusation of betrayal.

“Please,” she whispered. “Trust me. If you don’t, we’re both dead.

” Gansukh didn’t reply, but his hand moved slowly away from the hilt of his sword. Putting both hands out in front of him, palms forward, he knelt on the ground. One of the soldiers reversed his spear and hit Gansukh in the lower back with the butt of his weapon. He collapsed on the ground, and as a soldier put a knee in his back and grabbed at his hands to bind them, he kept staring at Lian. He didn’t look away as the Chinese men hauled him up and, with a nod from their leader, dragged him into the darkness of the night.

As soon as the Khagan sat down to eat, Master Chucai made his excuses and left the feast for the solitude of his tent. He had been working nonstop for nearly a week by the time the caravan had left Karakorum, and with the camp established and the Khagan and his entourage seated for the nighttime meal, he was no longer needed. For a few hours, he could meditate or read-he had brought along a new edition of Zhu Xi’s commentary on the Four Books that he had been looking forward to examining for some time. He found, more and more, that it was not sleep that truly recharged his vitality but more spiritual activities. When he lay down at night, parts of his mind churned over the matters of the Empire, and while he found new solutions to problems waiting for him when he awoke, sleep was never particularly restful. Meditation and reflection were his most treasured activities, and there had been a scarcity of both in the last few weeks.

The shouting of the guards stirred him from his meditation, and his eyes snapped open. His ger had been dark but for a single flame in a small brazier and the ambient light from the camp that slipped through the space he had left open at the top of the tent flaps, but there was more light spilling into his ger than he had expected to see. Not sunlight. Firelight.

Master Chucai leaped to his feet and raced to the entrance of the ger. He clawed open the flaps and rushed out. His primary concern was the Khagan’s ger, and he quickly ascertained that it was undamaged and that the figures milling around it were the Imperial Guard. He was too far away to make out individuals among the clustered guards, but he assumed Munokhoi would not tarry long at the Khagan’s ger. He will take the fight to the enemy, Chucai thought as he strode through the maze of tents and wagons. The men guarding the Khagan will be diligent, but they won’t be imaginative.

He had had some reservations about putting the hotheaded jaghun captain in charge of the entire Imperial Guard that was accompanying the caravan to Burqan-qaldun, but Ogedei had ignored his concerns. While he had no doubt Munokhoi would ruthlessly deal with the fools who had mistakenly thought they had stumbled upon a wealthy caravan, it would probably be best to ensure that the Khagan remained safe during the fracas.

Chucai came to a sudden halt. He stared at a nearby tent, watching as a trio of overdressed courtiers struggled to douse the flames slithering across the tent’s roof. Blinking his eyes clear of the dust and ash floating in the air, he slowly turned his head and carefully examined the spread of the fires throughout the camp. An idea swam in the depth of his brain, like an enormous koi in a murky pond, and he tried to remain still so as to not spook it, so that it would come to the surface where he could fully apprehend it. There was a pattern to the fires. They weren’t randomly scattered throughout the camp.

Archers, he noted, firing from an elevated position. He scanned the horizon, trying to spot some sign of where the attack had come from, but the smoke from the fires dirtied the air too much to spot any such sign. This isn’t an accident, he realized, discarding the idea that this attack had been a case of mistaken identity.

Initially, the Khagan had wanted to travel with a smaller entourage-none of his wives, a minimum of supply wagons, and only a single jaghun to protect him. The idea had been ridiculous, and Chucai had dismissed it outright, arguing that the Khagan could travel with no less than a minghan-one thousand men-as his personal security force. And, of course, a thousand men would have required a commensurate increase in supplies, which would have, in turn, increased the amount of time it would take to assemble the caravan. While Chucai thought the desire to travel to Burqan-qaldun was more than a passing fancy on the part of the Khagan, he wasn’t the sort of eager sycophant who would fail to question the ramifications of an idle whim. While the Empire was fairly safe to travel-especially in the heart of territory that had been under Mongol rule for several generations-it didn’t mean that the Khagan’s personal safety wasn’t still of paramount importance. There was always the possibility of attacks by roving bandits-clanless men who would prey on an insufficiently protected caravan or a group of nomadic herders.

But bandits didn’t announce themselves with a volley of flaming arrows. Fire would destroy the very cargo they were hoping to steal.

His own reaction to the attack had been mindless. He had leaped to a conclusion that wasn’t supported by what was actually happening around him. Wasn’t that one of the very lessons Zhu Xi sought to impart in his commentary? This attack was directed at the Khagan; the raiders knew whose caravan they were attacking. The true question-the one he should have been asking earlier-was why?

Chucai heard a distant crump of noise, and he knew at once that it was the sound of black powder igniting. Grimly, he nodded to himself as he began to walk toward the Khagan’s ger again. He wasn’t hurried. He took his time, his gaze sweeping back and forth across the chaos. His height gave him an advantage; while he couldn’t see over the tents, the scurrying frenzy of panicked courtiers and concubines and shouting soldiers did little to block his field of view. Chucai walked and watched, looking for the real reason the camp had been attacked.

If the goal of the attack was to assassinate the Khagan, then why hadn’t they set fire to the Khagan’s ger? Were their archers that unskilled? Chucai doubted that was true. In which case, the fires were a distraction, a means of splitting the Imperial Guard. But why?

Chucai cut to his right, no longer moving directly toward the Khagan’s ger. Something had caught his eye. He wasn’t sure what he had seen, and it was possible he was chasing a ghost, a writhing smoke shadow cast by firelight.

The koi was surfacing in the pond in his mind.

He caught sight of the movement again, and the feeble phantom coalesced into the dim shapes of three men, dressed in dark clothing, skulking between tents. They carried long sticks-spears, though one was longer than the other two.

“Hai!” Chucai shouted, curious to see if these phantoms would bolt like startled rabbits.

The three men froze, dark blots against the dull leather of a tent. If he hadn’t been staring right at them, he might have not seen them. During the day, they would have stood out quite plainly, but in the night-with the haze of the smoke-they were nearly invisible. Which is exactly what the fires were for, Chucai realized. Cover.

“Hai! Men of the Imperial Guard,” he bellowed, directing his voice toward the Khagan’s ger. “To me! There are assassins among us.”

The men moved, two of them sprinting off between the tents; the other man lowered his spear and charged Chucai, hoping to silence the alarm that had given them away.

Master Chucai had but a moment to ready himself. He had no weapon, and briefly he chided himself again for reacting without thinking, but then the man was upon him, screaming at him in Chinese as he thrust the spear.

Chucai flowed like a wisp of smoke, the thick sleeve of his robe sweeping up and around like a fan. Angling his body so that he became a thin reed, he felt his sleeve tug as the spear pierced the silk fabric. His hand kept moving, inscribing the course a bird makes as it dives down on a lake and scoops up an unwary fish. The bird then rises back into the sky, burdened by what it has clutched in its talons. Chucai brought his hand up and turned, feeling the Chinese man struggle to pull the spear out of his sleeve. He clenched his other hand into a fist.

The spearman looked up, a realization dawning on his face that he had underestimated the length of his opponent’s reach, and then Chucai’s fist smashed into his nose. He cried out and fell back, his hands rising to stem the sudden rush of blood.

Simultaneously with the strike to the man’s face, Chucai had closed his other hand around the shaft of the spear and yanked it free of the man’s grip. Dropping his left hand to the spear, he stepped back, whipping the spear around to catch the man under the left arm. As soon as he felt the spear bite into leather, he pulled it back. The man lowered his arms, staggering from the slice, and Chucai stabbed him in the throat.

The other two had vanished among the tents, but Chucai heard shouts coming from up ahead. His alarm had been heard. Pulling the dead man’s spear free, he ran toward the voices.

Soon enough, he caught up with the Imperial Guard. Several had bows, and their arrows had brought down one of the two skulkers. The surviving one stood near the body of his companion, an arrow jutting out of his leg. He held the approaching Mongols at bay with his long spear, and as Chucai approached, he realized the man was holding the Khagan’s spirit banner. The horsehair tassels were matted with blood and dirt, and the point of the shaft was more ornamental than deadly. What stopped the Mongols from attacking the man was a reluctance to damage the spirit banner.

Chucai hurled the spear he had taken from the Chinese man, and it struck the last Chinese man in the hip with such force that he was knocked off his feet. He landed with a thump, and when he struggled to sit up, he was immediately hit by a handful of arrows.

Chucai barked at the guards and they paused, uncertain as to the cause of his anger. Chucai approached the two Chinese men, and a quick glance verified they were both dead. “Look for others,” he snapped at the guards, shaking his head. “Try to capture one alive.”

Dead men were useless to him.

Chucai picked up the spirit banner and ran his fingers through its tassels, trying to untangle them. What did they want with it? he wondered. Why sacrifice themselves for a piece of wood covered with old horsehair?

He had never held the banner, much less examined it closely. It was just an old stick that Genghis had started tying horsehair to. We are horse people, he had explained to Chucai, and wherever we are, the wind will be with us too. Over time, the Khagan had added more strands to it, and Chucai had always marveled at how this simple thing had become symbolic of the prosperity of the Empire.

When he ran his hands over the banner, he noticed the texture of the wood. It felt both rough and resilient, as if it were an intricately carved piece of freshly harvested wood. He raised the staff, trying to get a better glimpse of its surface in the flickering light from the fires. His thumb encountered a rough spot, and he peered more closely at the bump.

It was a tiny scar, scabbed over with dried resin, not unlike the sort of growth that forms after a sprig has been cut from a living branch.

In a narrow depression to the east of the Khagan’s great caravan, Lian and her captor reunited with Gansukh and a few other battered Chinese soldiers. Her Chinese captor left her for a moment as he huddled together with the other soldiers, their voices low and clipped. Gansukh lay nearby, on his side, his hands bound tightly behind his back. His face was a mass of shadows and bruises, and to not look at him, Lian turned toward the Khagan’s camp. All that she could see of the great caravan were the lights of the torches and still-burning fires. The sparse grasses of the gentle slope were limned in orange-and-yellow light, like the edge of an enormous and empty stage.

“What is your name?”

Lian turned her head. The Chinese man who had held her hair was done conferring with the others, and they stood nearby, awaiting further instruction. “Lian,” she said. She inclined her head and raised an eyebrow, an imperious look that had worked well on many a sweaty and nervous official. And you are…?

“Luo Xi,” he replied. His lips pulled into a thin smile, fleeting amusement at her airs. Under the dirt and soot, he appeared to have a strong face-handsome, even, in a Southern way that Lian hadn’t seen in years, with strong cheekbones, piercing eyes, and a complexion unmarred by constant exposure to the sun and wind-the opposite of anyone from the steppes. He took off his helmet, revealing a head of thick black hair, and tucked the cap under his arm. He was trying to appear relaxed, but the way his shoulders remained stiff and hunched forward, and the restlessness of his eyes, betrayed his uncertainty.

What was he waiting for?

“I’m from Qingyuan, originally,” said Lian, sensing an opportunity to distract him. “When the Mongols came, they burned the city and took every woman and child as a slave. Many of them”-she swayed slightly, feigning dismay with little effort-“mercifully died soon thereafter. Others…lingered. I was…fortunate. I had useful skills.” She paused, knowing his eyes were on her body. “I had to teach them about Song culture.”

Luo tore his eyes away from Lian’s body and looked over at Gansukh. The captive Mongol had managed to sit up, and he looked like a hungry wolf that had been caught in a snare. Resentful, tense, and ready for any chance he got. “Did they learn?” Luo snorted.

“I would have made better progress teaching pigs.” She laughed derisively and hoped it didn’t sound forced.

“Pigs are already more civilized than these mongrels.”

Lian turned to the Chinese commander and bowed from the waist. “You have my endless gratitude for rescuing me.”

Luo acknowledged the bow with a nod and a slight, formal smile. “A lady in distress is always worth saving.”

“You are far from home, even for the sake of rescuing a lady. Or am I simply an added surprise to your glorious efforts at striking the Khagan down?”

Luo stroked his chin in an effort to hide a secret smile that wanted to spread across his face. “What is the point of killing a single Khan?” he asked. “Will these mongrels not elect another one?”

“Ah, I see you are a clever man, Commander Luo. Your actions are much too sublime and hidden for a simple girl such as myself.”

“And you are much too silver-tongued to be mistaken as such a simpleton, my lady,” Luo replied.

Lian laughed. An unexpected thrill ran through her body, making her shiver. She was very much in danger, as were these Chinese men, and yet the two of them tarried long enough to engage in trivial wordplay. Gansukh would never dream of participating in such an exchange, and it had been so long since she had been around a civilized man that she had forgotten how pleasant such company was. There was a nobility in Luo’s bearing that was unmistakably refreshing.

Luo turned away. He may have sensed the change in their conversation, and unlike Lian, he was not so starved for such talk-or perhaps the reality of their situation pressed more firmly on him than on her. “This filthy mutt,” he said, waving a hand at Gansukh, “he is a special advisor to the Khagan?”

“Indeed,” Lian replied, showing no sign of disappointment, though she felt a tiny panic in her chest. “The Khagan values him highly.”

“Why?”

“He reminds the Khagan of what he once was.”

“And what is that?”

“A man of the steppe.”

Luo laughed. “And why would the Khagan want to be reminded of that?”

Lian shrugged. “I do not know. They value all manner of strange things.”

Luo nodded, his attention turning toward the camp. “Yes,” he said, “they certainly do.” His face grew troubled, and he strode past Lian to get a better view of the camp. He turned back after a moment, and the softness in his face was gone, replaced by a hard certainty, a look Lian knew all too well.

“They have been gone too long,” he snapped at the other Chinese men. “I do not like this.” He gestured at Gansukh. “If she speaks true, then he may be of use to us. Otherwise”-he glanced at Lian-“we are all dead and our efforts have been for naught.” And the look in his eye told Lian that he would not die alone.

Gansukh saw the apprehension in Luo’s eye too, and a low chuckle rumbled out of his throat. One of the other Chinese soldiers smacked Gansukh with the butt of his spear, and the Mongol warrior fell forward, his face driving into the dirt. He rolled over onto his side, and his teeth were bared, a grimace of both pain and joy.

Lian’s heart pounded in her chest. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. The Chinese would free her and keep Gansukh as a hostage. Given time, she was certain she could convince Luo that the young Mongol would be useful. She knew she was being naive and foolish, but despite everything-the years of captivity, the degradation of being Chucai’s slave, of being forced to teach this savage manners-she found herself reluctant to turn her back on Gansukh. He was something different in an otherwise cruel and barbaric world. She hadn’t lied to Luo; Ogedei did respect Gansukh and might even consider ransoming his return.

Luo roughly grabbed her arm, all pretense of civility gone. “Take her,” he said, shoving Lian toward his men. “And if this dog looks like it might bite, kill it.”