Conqueror (2011) c-5

by Conn Iggulden

  ‘A little more, master?’ the servant asked, holding up a jug.

  Hulegu waved him away, trying not to think of how good airag would cut the sweetness and make his throat burn. He felt an ache begin in his abdomen and he massaged it with short, blunt fingers. He strained for a time, but there was no wind and the pain increased, sweat breaking out on his face.

  ‘Bring me water,’ he said, scowling.

  The servant smiled. ‘It is too late for that, master. Instead, I have brought you a greeting from Alamut and a peace you surely do not deserve.’

  Hulegu gaped at him, then tried to rise. His legs felt weak and he staggered, but he had the strength to shout.

  ‘Guards! To me!’

  He slumped against the table. The door slammed open and two of his men entered with their swords drawn.

  ‘Hold him,’ Hulegu snarled.

  A wave of weakness washed over him and he slid to his knees, pushing two of his fingers deep into his throat. As his men watched in horrified confusion, Hulegu vomited up the contents of his stomach in a great flood. He had eaten well and he heaved again and again, the bitter smell filling the room. Still the pain increased, but his head cleared a little. The servant had not resisted and merely stood between the warriors, watching closely with a worried frown.

  Hulegu was a bull of a man, but his heart was pounding and his face poured with sweat as if he had run all day. It dripped off his nose onto the wooden floor as he sagged.

  ‘Charcoal,’ he growled. ‘Grind up as much as you can find … in water. Take it from the fireplaces. Fetch my shaman …’ He struggled through a wave of dizziness before he could speak again. ‘If I pass out, force charcoal slurry into me, as much as you can.’ He saw the guards hesitate, neither man willing to let go of the servant. Hulegu snapped, anger rising in him with the pain.

  ‘Kill him and go,’ he shouted, falling back.

  He heard a choking sound as they cut the man’s throat and then raced out of the room. Hulegu tried to vomit again, but his stomach was empty and every dry heave made lights flash before his eyes. His head felt enormous, fat with pounding blood. His heart was racing too fast, making him dizzy and weak. He was dimly aware of men clattering into the room and a wooden bowl being pressed to his lips, full of swirling blackness that he took in and immediately vomited in a gritty flood over his clothes. He forced himself to drink again, bowl after bowl until he felt his stomach would burst. His teeth grated against each other as he tried to clear his mouth and throat, gasping between gulps. There were a dozen men in the room by then, all working to reduce chips of charred wood to dust with any tool they could find. After a time, he fell into blackness, covered in his own bitter acids.

  When he woke again, it was dark. His eyes were covered in something, so that his eyelids stuck together. He reached up and rubbed one of them, feeling his eyelashes tear away. The gesture was noticed and voices called that he was awake. Hulegu groaned, but the biting pain was gone from his stomach. His mouth felt raw and he could still feel the grit between his teeth from the charcoal that had saved him. The same filth had once saved Genghis and Hulegu gave silent thanks to the old man’s spirit for lending him the knowledge he needed. The Assassin had been confident at first, he recalled. It would have been a close thing, a certain death without the charcoal to soak it up. If the man had kept silent, Hulegu would have died without knowing why.

  He could not believe how weak he felt. General Kitbuqa was looming over him, but Hulegu could not rise. He felt himself lifted up and saw he was in another room of the roadhouse, propped up on thick blankets under his head and shoulders.

  ‘You were lucky,’ Kitbuqa said.

  Hulegu grunted, unwilling even to think back to the appalling moments before unconsciousness. It had come so suddenly: from eating a good meal to fighting for his life with his killer watching him complacently. He thought his hands were still trembling and he bunched his massive fists in the blankets so that Kitbuqa would not see.

  ‘The charcoal worked, then,’ he muttered.

  ‘You are too stubborn to die, I think,’ Kitbuqa said. ‘Your shaman tells me you will be shitting black for a few days, but, yes, you gave the right orders.’

  ‘Have you been praying for me?’

  Kitbuqa heard the mockery and ignored it.

  ‘I have, of course. You are alive, are you not?’

  Hulegu tried again to sit up straight, his thoughts suddenly sharpening.

  ‘You must warn my brothers, especially Mongke. Send a dozen fast scouts along the yam lines.’

  ‘They have already gone,’ Kitbuqa said. ‘It happened yesterday, my lord. You have slept since then.’

  Hulegu slumped back. The effort of rising and thinking had exhausted him, but he was alive and he had expected death. He shuddered as he lay there, flashing memories disturbing his peace. Had the leader in Alamut sent men to kill him even before he saw the fortress? It was possible. Yet it was more likely that he had men out already doing their work, men who would have returned to Alamut and found it in ruins. Hulegu could imagine them swearing vengeance against those who had broken their sect and killed its leaders. He closed his eyes, feeling sleep come swiftly. How many more could there be? Perhaps there was only one, now just another corpse in the road.

  Kitbuqa looked down, pleased to see some colour return to his friend’s face. He could only hope that the attack had been the last spasm of a dying clan. Even so, he knew it would be years before Hulegu went anywhere without a troop of guards around him. If even one Assassin still survived, there would always be danger. Kitbuqa only wished the poisoner had lived, so that he could have taken him out into the woods and questioned him with fire and iron.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Kublai had given strict orders that the workers in the mine town were not to be touched. For once, Uriang-Khadai had nothing to say on the subject. Someone had to continue to drag the ore out of the ground and none of Kublai’s men understood the processes involved, even when they had seen the smelters and the sacks of strange powders in the buildings around it. A huge heap of black lead and slag metal was part of the sprawling site and the smell of bitter chemicals was always in the air, somehow drying the throat so that warriors coughed and spat as they searched it.

  Bayar brought the news himself when they found the silver ready to be taken out. Kublai had seen from his face that it had been worthwhile and the reality astonished him. Refined metal filled a long stone building, behind an iron door that had to be broken in when no one could find the key. Inside, slender bars were set out on trestle tables, black with tarnish and ready to be loaded into carts and taken to the emperor’s capital city.

  Bayar had not even counted them and Kublai had the pleasure of making the first estimate. He counted two hundred and forty on a table, then multiplied it by eighty tables to reach a total that was dizzying. Each bar could be melted and pressed into at least five hundred small coins if he found the right equipment. For a time, Kublai just stood in the silent room, then a smile appeared and Bayar laughed. The contents of the room came to almost ten million coins, enough to pay his army at their current rate for two years in the field. He frowned at the thought of sending a tithe back to Mongke in Karakorum, but it was long overdue. Bearing in mind Ong Chiang’s response to his offer, Kublai wondered if there was a way of reducing the monthly pay without losing the trust of his men. He could hardly claim hardship after such a find. The news would already be winging its way around the camp.

  ‘Find the most senior man in the town, whoever runs the mine,’ he said to Bayar. ‘I need to know if this is the product of a month or a year. I’ll need to leave men to defend this place and keep it working.’

  ‘The emperor will fight to get the mine back, if it’s worth this much,’ Bayar replied, still looking around him in a kind of awe.

  ‘I hope so. I want him to send his best, general. At the rate I’ve been going, I’ll be an old man by the time I reach his capital. Let them come and
we will add rich new lands to the khanate.’

  For a moment, he felt a pang that everything he won, everything he accomplished, would be for the glory of Mongke in Karakorum, but he stifled the thought. Mongke had been generous: with men, with his generals, with cannon and even with lands. Kublai realised he no longer missed the life of a scholar in Karakorum. Mongke had set out to change him and in one important way he had been successful. Kublai could not go back to the man he had been. He had even grown used to the scale armour. He found he looked forward to the battles to come, the tests and trials that he would face with the elite tumans of his nation. Kublai clapped Bayar on the shoulder.

  ‘A mining town will have something to drink, I am certain. We had better move quickly before the men run it dry.’

  ‘I put guards on the inns in town, first thing,’ Bayar said.

  Kublai grinned at him. ‘Of course you did. Very well, show me.’

  Both men turned at the sound of running footsteps. Kublai felt his mouth go dry at the sight of one of his scouts, sweat-stained and dusty. The man was close to collapse and he leaned on one of the tables, barely noticing the wealth it held as he gasped out his message.

  ‘There is a Sung army, my lord, force-marching in this direction.’ He went white for a moment as if he might vomit. Kublai gripped him by the shoulder.

  ‘How far away?’ he demanded.

  The scout took gulping breaths, his body shuddering under Kublai’s touch.

  ‘Maybe fifty miles, maybe less. I did it in one long reach.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘More than the tumans. I don’t know for certain. I caught sight of them and then rode clear as fast as I could.’ His eyes looked for approval, worried that he should have stayed longer.

  ‘You did well,’ Kublai assured him. ‘Get yourself food and find a place on a cart to sleep. We won’t be staying here.’ He turned to Bayar, all the lightness gone from his manner. ‘It won’t stop now, general. I’d hoped for a little more time, but we have stuck a hand into the wasp nest and they will throw everything they have at us, every army they can raise and march.’

  ‘We’ll destroy them,’ Bayar said.

  Kublai nodded, but his eyes were shadowed. ‘We have to win every battle. They only have to win one.’

  ‘I’ve known worse situations,’ Bayar said with a shrug.

  Kublai blinked at him and then laughed, some of the tension going out of him.

  ‘We have entered the heartland of the Sung, Bayar. You have not known worse situations.’

  ‘Our people beat the Chin emperor,’ Bayar replied, unabashed. ‘City by city, army by army. Have faith in your men, my lord. We will not let you down.’

  For a moment, Kublai was unable to speak. He had led the tumans at first as an intellectual exercise, enjoying the challenge of manoeuvres and tactics, of finding ways to confound his enemies. Bayar’s words made him think it all through again. He would ask them to die for him, for his family. It was madness of a sort that they would follow him at all. Kublai found himself touched by what he saw in the faces of Bayar and the scout. He stopped himself from explaining, remembering almost too late that he had to keep a distance. He had not yet managed to codify the skill of leading men. It happened around him like a strange form of alchemy. It was more than rank or discipline, more than the structure of the army his family had built, more even than the legend of his grandfather. Some of them followed for those things, or just because they enjoyed the life of the tumans. Others, the best of them, would risk it all for Kublai because they knew him. They had measured him and gave their lives freely into his hands. For once, Kublai was unable to express what it meant to him and he chose refuge in gruff orders.

  ‘Get the silver packed up, general. I will send scouts back to the camp to let them know they are on their own for a while longer. Have your men find a good place for us to stand and face these Sung. We will walk over them all.’

  Bayar grinned, seeing the fire kindle in Kublai once again.

  Chabi was outside her ger as Kublai came riding in. She put down the goatskins she had been cutting and sewing when she saw him. Zhenjin spotted his father at the same moment and darted to the wall of the ger, where he had placed a stool. As Kublai reined in and dismounted, his son climbed onto the felt roof and clung precariously over the door. All around them, women were gathering for news. They would not interrupt the khan’s brother, but Chabi knew they would press in with questions the moment he left.

  ‘Another army on the way,’ Kublai said. He was panting slightly as she handed him a skin of airag and he took a long pull at it. ‘I need to change clothes and it’s time to break camp.’

  ‘There’s a threat to us?’ Chabi asked, trying to remain calm. Kublai shook his head.

  ‘Not so far, but if the tumans have to move fast, I don’t want to leave you vulnerable. I must keep the families in range.’

  Chabi looked up as a ger suddenly collapsed nearby, going from a home to spars and felt rolls in an instant. Kublai had not come in alone and she could hear shouts all over the camp as it went from peaceful stillness to rapid dismantling. Everything was designed to be moved quickly and she had servants for the task. She saw two of them coming with reins and harness over their shoulders for the ox-cart.

  ‘Come down, Zhenjin,’ Kublai called to his son. He knew the boy had been waiting to jump on him as he passed, but there was no time for games. Zhenjin scowled at him, but clambered down.

  ‘You look worried,’ Chabi said softly.

  Kublai shrugged and smiled at her.

  ‘We have better men, but the numbers, Chabi! If the Sung lords band together, they can put an army in the field that makes mine look like a raiding group.’

  ‘They don’t have anyone like you,’ she said. He nodded.

  ‘There is that,’ he replied with a smile. ‘I am an unusual man.’

  Chabi could sense his distraction as Kublai’s gaze flickered around the camp, taking in every detail.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about us,’ she said.

  Kublai turned slowly, trying to listen to his wife at the same time as solving some other problem and failing at both.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘We are not defenceless, Kublai. There are, what, three hundred thousand in the camp? It’s a city, Kublai, and everyone is armed.’ She drew a long blade from her belt. ‘Including me. There must be enough maimed men to make a few tumans more. Many of them can still ride or use a bow.’

  Kublai dragged his attention back to his wife. He saw she was trying to ease his mind and stifled his irritable impulse to describe the savage terror of an attack on a camp. It would do no good to make her afraid. Thousands of lives rested on his ability to protect them. Words and promises meant nothing in the face of such a burden. In the end, he just nodded and she seemed relieved.

  ‘There’s cold mutton and some spring onions in the pot. I’ll cut you some slices. I have flatbread you can use to wrap it and eat it as you go.’

  ‘And garlic,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll get it, while you talk to your son. He’s been waiting to jump on you for three days. A man can’t ride past the ger without him scampering up the roof to be ready.’

  Kublai sighed.

  ‘Zhenjin! Come out here.’

  The boy reappeared, still sulking. Kublai gestured at the ger.

  ‘Go on then, I don’t have long.’

  Chabi snorted with laughter as Zhenjin’s face lit up. The boy scrambled up the felt wall and once again waited like a spider above the door.

  ‘I thought I could see my son,’ Kublai said. ‘Perhaps he is inside.’ He ducked to enter and Zhenjin leapt at him, his weight sending Kublai staggering backwards as Kublai roared in mock surprise. After a moment, he let the boy down to the ground.

  ‘That’s enough now. Help your mother and the servants. We’re moving camp.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’ Zhenjin asked.

  ‘Not this time. When you’re older, I promise
.’

  ‘I’m older now.’

  ‘That’s true, but older still.’

  Zhenjin began to complain in a high voice as Chabi came out with two wrapped packages of food. In the time since his arrival, hundreds of gers had come down and been loaded onto carts, as far as they could see in any direction.

  ‘You will beat them all, Kublai. I know it. You will show your brother he was right to send you against the Sung.’ She reached up and kissed her husband on the neck.

  Kublai watched in strained silence as his tumans formed up ahead of him. The Sung would seek him out wherever he chose to stand, so he picked a grassy plain overlooked by a small hill and watched the gleaming regiments crawl across the land towards his men. Every one of his warriors knew he was there, the hand that held a sword over them. They would fight well in his sight.

  The sun was shining, but his mood remained sour. He could not fathom the enemy tactics. His scouts reported more than one army heading towards his main camp, but they did not join together. Each one came in as if they were not part of a greater nation. He thanked the sky father for it, even as he cursed the numbers they could bring against him.

  Kublai nodded to a boy seated on a camel near him, watching as the lad raised a long brass horn to his lips and blew a wailing note. It was answered by Bayar and Uriang-Khadai, taking four tumans each and advancing on the enemy squares. Twenty thousand men remained behind as the reserve, mounted and patient as they strained their eyes into the distance. Kublai took a stone from his pocket and rubbed his thumb along the curved lines. Yao Shu had said it would relax him.

  His generals split up to ride along the flanks of the Sung force, finding the perfect distance just outside the range of crossbows. As Kublai watched, a sudden blur of shafts crossed the open air between the forces, like a cloud shadow moving across the open land.