The Mongoliad: Book Three

by Neal Stephenson

  He wondered which one was Munokhoi.

  He could wait until the caravan was in range, and then he could solve his problem with a single arrow. It would be so much easier.

  Gansukh sighed and shook his head. While an arrow was efficient, it would have consequences that could be as equally disastrous. No, he had to find another way. A less disruptive way.

  Patience, he told himself as he walked back to his horse. A true hunter knows to wait until his prey shows itself.

  When the caravan reached the Kherlen River, it was greeted by a contingent of twenty horsemen. Each rider carried a pole with a sky-blue banner that snapped and whipped in the wind as the party galloped toward the caravan. The Torguud parted for the riders, and they swept through like a sudden squall of rain. As they reached the dense cluster of mounted guard near the Khagan’s ger, they reined as one and dismounted in near-unison, each landing swiftly on the ground and dropping to bent knee. Sky-blue arrowheads woven into their robes marked them. Darkhat. Guardians of the lands sacred to Genghis Khan—his birthplace, his tomb, and region beyond. Burqan-qaldun.

  Some of the Torguud shuffled nervously, attempting to keep their horses at ease. The Darkhat remained still, waiting for Ögedei to emerge from his ger. The tableau remained frozen for what seemed to be an inordinately long time, and then the flaps of Ögedei’s ger were thrown back, and the Khan of Khans emerged.

  Ögedei leaned against the railing of the narrow platform, and stared thickly at the Darkhat host as if he could not account for their sudden appearance in his camp. Just as he seemed about to lose interest in their presence, one of the Darkhat shot to his feet and raised both arms in salute to the Khagan.

  “Hail, Ögedei Khagan,” he said. “I, Ghaltai, welcome you to the lands of your father.”

  “Hail, Ghaltai, faithful and eternal servant of my father’s legacy,” Ögedei replied. He waved an arm to encompass the other Darkhat. “Hail, faithful servants.”

  Ghaltai was not a tall man, but he was stocky, with thick weather-beaten skin. His eyes were thin, almond-shaped slits in his face. “What brings you to these lands, O Khagan, with so mighty a retinue?” he asked.

  “A pilgrimage,” Ögedei replied. “We will need your guides to take us through the mountain passes.”

  “That we can gladly provide,” said Ghaltai with a bow.

  “Oh, yes,” Ögedei said as if the idea had just occurred to him. “My father’s grave. I wish to see it.” His gaze roamed over the assembled Torguud until he spotted Munokhoi. “The caravan will continue without me,” he instructed. “I will catch up with it by nightfall.”

  “My Khan—” Munokhoi began.

  “You have your orders, Captain.”

  Ögedei shuddered slightly, surprised by the voice at his elbow.

  Chucai stood a respectful distance behind the Khagan, but with his height, he still seemed to tower over the slumped figure of the Khagan. “Your task is to ensure the safety of the caravan,” he explained. “Namkhai and a few others will accompany the Khagan. As will I.” He inclined his head toward Ögedei. “With your leave, of course, Khagan. I too would like to pay my respects to your father, my late friend.”

  “Of course,” said Ögedei thickly, a grimace twisting his mouth into an ugly sneer.

  The windswept plain between the Kherlen and Bruchi Rivers was filled with wild grasses. Closer to the rivers, ash and cedar trees grew, leaning toward the flowing water. A rounded boulder, taller than a man seated on a horse, lay in the center of the plain. It was such an anomaly in the landscape that Chucai’s gaze was drawn to the distant crag of Burqan-qaldun, and he wondered how far the massive rock had traveled to end up in this field.

  The stone was the only marker of Genghis Khan’s interment. There were no pavilions of gold and silver, no field of banners, no sculptures or monuments. Just the rock, in an untouched plain of wild grass, at the confluence of the Kherlen and Bruchi Rivers. As Genghis had wished.

  Chucai, Ghaltai, and the rest of the honor guard remained at a respectful distance as Ögedei dismounted and approached the boulder. The Khagan sank to his knees, head bowed in prayer.

  Before he had become Genghis Khan, Ögedei’s father was a simple man named Temujin. When he was nine, he was promised to Borte—daughter of Dei-sechen, of the Onggirat tribe—and he eventually married her six years later. Their marriage was interrupted by Merkit raiders who had never forgiven a theft by Temujin’s father. He had stolen Hoelun, a woman intended for their clan leader, and the Merkits saw the theft of Borte as due compensation for their loss. They also intended to kill Temujin, but after three days of searching for him among the woods and bogs surrounding Burqan-qaldun, they gave up. Temujin, as the stories went, stood in this valley and swore in the presence of Burqan-qaldun, the great mountain that had kept him safe, that he would rescue Borte.

  Not only did he rescue his wife, but with the assistance of friendly clans he defeated the Merkits, beginning what was to become the unification of all the Mongol peoples under his rule.

  The empire started here, Chucai reflected. One man. One promise. He shivered slightly, dismissing the chill as nothing more than an icy gust of wind finding its way inside the collar of his jacket. He recalled the vision thrust upon him in the wake of the Chinese attack on the caravan: the endless herd of wild horses, their manes flowing like clouds—the never-ending empire. Born out of Temujin’s love for Borte.

  “Your tribe has dwelled in these lands for some time, have they not?” Chucai asked Ghaltai, pushing aside these idle, and yet troubling, thoughts.

  “For many generations,” the Darkhat rider replied.

  “After Temujin became Genghis Khan, he came back to Burqan-qaldun,” Chucai said. “What did he find here?”

  Ghaltai made a show of looking around the wide plain, and then shrugged. “Open sky.”

  Chucai gave him the look that normally withered visiting dignitaries who presumed to be important enough to warrant disturbing the Khan. Ghaltai, nonplussed, met his gaze.

  “Tell me about the banner,” Chucai said. And when Ghaltai pretended to not understand, Chucai leaned toward the Darkhat and lowered his voice. “It was old when Genghis raised it as the standard for the empire, and it is older now. It should be a dead piece of wood, but why does it thrust forth new growth?”

  Ghaltai’s weather-beaten face paled. “I—I do not know of what you speak,” he said.

  “You know something,” Chucai hissed, unwilling to let the Darkhat’s reticence get in the way of learning something about the history of the banner. “Tell me.”

  “There is a legend,” Ghaltai began after a moment of reflection. “Before Borte Chino mated with Qo’ai Maral, when Tengri walked this land—”

  Chucai snorted derisively before he could stop himself, and seeing Ghaltai’s expression, he offered an apologetic nod.

  “The people who lived here taught the birds to fly in formation and the bees to gather in swarms. When the Wolf and the Doe mated, these wise men gave this knowledge as a wedding gift. Teach your children, they said, so that they may grow to become the strongest clans under the Eternal Blue Heaven.”

  “But the clans did not unite until Genghis brought them together,” Chucai pointed out. Ghaltai’s story sounded like yet another fable that had become truth, another fanciful explanation for Genghis’s rise to power. He had heard so many of these stories over the years; in fact, he and Genghis had laughed together about a number of them. They were the idle stories that belonged to the uneducated—the superstitious who would flock to a passionate visionary and follow him anyway.

  “The clans were waiting,” Ghaltai said with an unsettling fervor. “They were waiting for someone to claim the legacy of Borte Chino and Qo’ai Maral. My father’s father led the Darkhat when Genghis returned to Burqan-qaldun. He told his father, who, in turn, told me when I was old enough to take his place, that Genghis was visited by Tengri in a vision. Tengri told him where to find the sacred grove, the place where
Wolf and Doe first laid together. Beyond the mountain. Genghis went there alone, and—”

  “And when he returned, he had the banner,” Chucai said, filling in the last detail of Ghaltai’s story. “But you don’t know where or how he found it.”

  Ghaltai nodded. “We guard the way to the grove, but we do not venture onto the path.”

  Squinting, Chucai raised his face toward the mountain. “Ögedei Khan has had a vision as well,” he said. “He has come to hunt a bear in the sacred grove.” When Ghaltai did not respond, he lowered his gaze and looked over at the Darkhat rider.

  Ghaltai sat rigidly in his saddle, and he would not meet Chucai’s gaze. “It is a place of powerful spirits,” was all that he would say.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  In the Aftermath

  After the death of the Rose Knight, Hans remembered very little. He had managed to avoid the tumultuous press of bodies throwing themselves out of the arena, mainly by virtue of his size, but the streets had been so chaotic, filled with so many Mongol warriors with bared weapons, that he had gone to ground. Like a frightened rabbit. He knew a half dozen routes back to his uncle’s brewery and the safe haven of the tree, and most of those paths could only be traversed by a boy his size or smaller, but he hadn’t felt safe.

  Nowhere was safe.

  And so he hid. Beneath the southern stands of the arena, he found a corner of the foundation where the Mongol engineers, in their haste to assemble the edifice, hadn’t quite closed off the foundation. The hole was narrow and dark, and he managed to rip his shirt and scrape his shoulder, but he got in. Crawling around in the dark until he felt stone and wood behind him on two sides, he curled up in a ball. Only then did he let himself cry, and he bawled until he had no tears left.

  He must have fallen into an exhausted stupor—not quite sleep, but not quite consciousness either. When he came to his senses, wiping the crust of dirt and dried tears from his stiff eyelashes, he heard nothing. No pounding feet. No screams. No shouting, nor clashes of steel. Stiffly, he pried himself out of his corner sanctuary and gingerly crawled back toward the dim light of his entry hole. Distantly, he heard the raucous screams of angry crows, the sort of cries the black birds made when they were trying to intimidate each other. When they were trying to drive other birds away from a prize of putrescent carrion.

  Hans cringed at the thought of what lay outside, scooting back on his hands and rear until he was pressed into his safe corner again. It wasn’t Hünern outside any more, it was Legnica—the day after the Mongolian engineers had breached the city gates and the mounted warriors had streamed into the city.

  He wasn’t old enough to fight with the rest of the men in the defense of the city, but he was old enough to understand what the women were planning should the walls fall. He was old enough to know that he should hide, someplace where no one could find him. Not even his own family. Their children would not become slaves, the mothers of Legnica vowed, and when the Mongols came, the women took their children to the wall.

  He was not the only boy to survive the hammer and hilt, blade and knife, that took every boy and girl child of Legnica, the frantic solution laid upon each child by their parents to keep them safe from the ravenous pillaging of the Mongol Horde. They were all marked for having been cowards—a darkness each could easily read in the eyes of the others; bound by this shadow, they swore oaths to one another beneath the cracked branches of the old tree in Hünern. Never get caught. Never betray one another. Never give succor to the enemy. Think of the living.

  He had survived the fall of Legnica. Days after the Mongols had finished plundering the city, he had crept out of his hole, shivering and weak from hunger. The city stank of death, and the stone walls of those few buildings still standing were smeared and stained with blood. There were corpses everywhere, bloated and stinking with maggots and flies. The sky had been dark with crows and vultures.

  He forced himself away from the stone wall and crawled toward the hole in the arena’s foundation. It can’t be as bad. Hünern was silent, daring him to find out.

  The arena was empty, but some sense—that same animal cunning that had kept him sane and safe while hiding in Legnica—warned him to stay hidden. He crept slowly along the edge of the stands, eyes and ears alert.

  Wood creaked overhead, and he froze, pressing himself against the wood. Barely daring to breathe, he listened intently for the sound to be repeated, and after a few moments, he heard the weak groan of the timber as it was forced to support a heavy weight once more. Voices followed, guttural snatches of conversation, and Hans listened intently, trying to discern what the pair of Mongols was discussing.

  They hadn’t seen him: that much was clear. The men were both bored and on edge—guard duty, Hans guessed, watching the arena. But why was the unanswered question. Satisfied that he wasn’t in danger of being spotted, Hans crept toward the back of the arena, a dangerous curiosity tugging at him.

  Each of the arena’s numerous exits was typically sealed by a heavy wooden gate, but they were all an after-thought, and their timbers were the leftover scraps from the initial construction. There were gaps in the gate, and most of them didn’t quite marry with the well-worn path. There was a gap large enough to squeeze through beneath the gate nearest Hans’s hiding place, and he—gingerly, carefully—eased through the hole.

  Once through the gate, he lay flat on the ground, trusting that dirty dinginess of his clothing and hair would make him blend in with the rough and knotted wood of the gate. Raising his head not much more than the width of two fingers from the ground, he let his gaze roam around the open field outside the arena for any movement.

  There were a few huddled shapes. Corpses, he assumed, judging by the interest being shown by numerous crows. A few sported the familiar fletching of Mongol arrows, and after examining the position of these bodies in comparison with the others, Hans was able to discern a history of what had played out in the field.

  Most of the dead had probably died in the riot, cut down by Mongol swords or trampled in the madness that had followed Andreas’s valiant attempt on the Khan’s life. The remainder—the ones sporting arrows—were closer to the wall, grouped in a cluster, almost as if they died trying to reach a specific spot on the arena wall.

  Curiosity dared him to look, and he crawled belly down along the gate until he reached the wall. The gate was inset slightly, and with a final, nervous glance around, he pushed himself up to his hands and knees. Leaning forward, he peered around the corner, directing his attention up.

  At first he couldn’t quite understand what he was seeing. A leg. An arm. The ragged edge of a maille shirt. And then a horrible realization hit him: a body had been nailed to the wall. It was in pieces, the limbs hacked from the torso, and little effort had been applied in putting the pieces back in their proper position. Hans leaned out farther, trying to spot some identifying mark, and he finally spied the head.

  “No,” he sobbed, sinking back against the wall, and as soon as the word had slipped free of his lips, he wanted to take it back. He wanted to grab the sound with his hands and shove it back into his mouth, as if by swallowing the word, he could reverse time and erase the image burned into his brain.

  Andreas.

  Overhead, the timbers creaked as the guards reacted to his tiny cry. They began jabbering at one another, and before they could investigate, Hans was on his feet. He sprinted away from the arena, his feet flying across the dusty ground. Behind him, the guards shouted, and he heard the whistling hiss of an arrow as it flew past him. Dodging the dead, he kept his head down and his eyes forward. His whole body—lungs aching, heart pounding—was solely focused on reaching the welcoming embrace of the nearest alley and the shadows that would hide him from the arcing arrows of the Mongols guards atop the arena walls.

  He didn’t look back. He had seen enough.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The Gift of the Spirits

  In other circumstances, Chucai might have marveled at the sce
nery of the valley at the foot of Burqan-qaldun. He might have stood quietly in a reflective qi pose, and let his breathing become one with the gentle sighing sound of the northern wind. If he didn’t have the responsibility of managing the entirety of the Khagan’s vast empire, he might have lain down on the ample grasses and watched the white clouds chase one another across the vault of Blue Heaven. It was a hard man who was not moved by the beautiful simplicity of the site where Genghis Khan lay entombed, and the austerity of the Great Khan’s grave only furthered the myth that Genghis truly understood his place within the endless expanse of the known world.

  However, Genghis was dead, his empire was nearly double the size it had been during his life, and his third son—while perhaps the most capable of his children—was a drunk. Chucai did not have the luxury of admiring the unspoiled beauty of this sacred place. The empire, if it was to survive, needed leadership. It needed a strong Khagan.

  Chucai ran his hand through his long beard and let his gaze bore into Ögedei’s back. The Khagan had been kneeling at his father’s gravesite for an interminable time now. At first, the Khagan had been speaking in a low voice, offering a solemn prayer to his father’s spirit and the spirits of this valley; now, the Khagan was still—so still, in fact, that Chucai wondered if Ögedei had fallen asleep.

  Gansukh’s impetuous actions had touched a long-slumbering part of Ögedei’s spirit, and for all the administrative headache the trip to Burqan-qaldun had caused, Chucai had been pleased at the initial elevation of the Khagan’s attention to all matters concerning the empire. But the delays and the constant presence of the court—even as diminished as it was on this journey—had mired the Khagan again. The siren lure of the drink was too strong, and Ögedei loved it too much.