Lords of the Bow c-2

by Conn Iggulden

  Ho Sa held his gaze as Khasar approached him. He was surprised at the tightness in his chest at the thought of leaving that strange company and struggled to find words to express it. Khasar spoke before he could think of anything.

  "Take a good look, Ho Sa. You won't be seeing home again for a long time."

  "What?" Ho Sa demanded, his peaceful mood vanishing.

  Khasar shrugged. "Your king gave you to us for a year. It's been less than four months, with perhaps two more before we are in the mountains. We'll need you to interpret for the mason and to teach proper speech to the monk. Did you think I would leave you here? You did!" Khasar seemed delighted at the bitter expression that flitted across Ho Sa's face.

  "We're going back to the plains, Ho Sa. We'll attack a few hills with whatever the mason can teach us, and when we're ready, we'll go to war. Perhaps by then, you'll be so useful to us that I'll ask your king to lend you for another year or two. I should think he'd be willing to take your price out of the tribute if we asked for you."

  "You are doing this to torture me," Ho Sa snapped.

  Khasar chuckled. "Perhaps a little, but you are a fighting man who knows the Chin. We will need you close when we ride to them."

  Ho Sa stared furiously at Khasar. The Mongol warrior slapped him cheerfully on the leg as he turned away, calling over his shoulder.

  "We'll need to collect water from the canals. After that, it's the desert and home to women and spoils. Can a man ask for more? I'll even find you a widow to keep you warm, Ho Sa. I'm doing you a favor, if only you had the eyes to see it."

  Khasar mounted once more, bringing his pony up to where Temuge was being pulled into the saddle by Lian. He leaned close to his brother.

  "The plains are calling us, brother. Can you feel it?"

  "I can," Temuge replied. In fact, he wanted to return to the tribes as much as Khasar, though only because he now had a greater understanding of what they could win for themselves. While his brother dreamed of war and plunder, Temuge saw cities in his imagination and all the beauty and the power that came with them.

  GenghisLordsoftheBow

  GenghisLordsoftheBow

  CHAPTER 16

  G ENGHIS STOOD IN FULL ARMOR watching the destruction of the city of Linhe. The rice fields had been churned into wet, brown muck for a dozen miles in any direction as his army encircled the walls. His standard of nine horse tails hung limply without a breeze as the setting sun beat down on the army he had brought to that place.

  On either side of him, bondsmen waited for orders, their horses pawing at the ground. A servant stood at his shoulder with a chestnut mare, but the khan was not yet ready to mount.

  Close by the waiting column, a tent of blood-red cloth fluttered in the wind. For fifty miles around, his army had crushed resistance until only the city stood untouched, even as Yinchuan had once sheltered the Xi Xia king. Garrisons and road forts were found empty as Chin soldiers retreated before a host they could not hope to match. They carried the fear of the invasion before them and rolled back the edges of Chin control, leaving the cities naked. Even the great wall had proved no obstacle to the catapults and ladders of his people. Genghis had taken pleasure in seeing vast sections of it broken into rubble as practice for his new machines of war. His men had swept away the defenders for as far as they could reach, burning the wooden post houses with something resembling spite. The Chin could not keep them out. All they could do was run or be destroyed.

  There would be a reckoning, Genghis was certain: when a general rose who could command the Chin, or when the tribes reached Yenking itself. It would not be today.

  Xamba had fallen in seven days and Wuyuan had burned in only three. Genghis watched the stones from his catapults knock chips from the walls of Linhe and smiled to himself, satisfied. The mason his brothers had brought back had shown him a new way of warfare, and he would never again be stopped by high walls. Over two years, his people had built catapults and learned the secrets and weaknesses of the Chin high walls. His sons had grown tall and strong and he had been there to see the eldest reach the edge of manhood. It was enough. He had returned to the enemies of his people and he had learned well.

  Though he stood back from the catapult lines, he could hear the thumping strikes clearly on the still air. The Chin soldiers within would not dare march out to meet his host, and if they did, he would welcome the quick end. It would not help them now the red tent had been set. Piece by piece, the walls were hammered down, the catapult stones lofted into the air by sweating teams of his men. Lian had shown him designs for an even more fearsome weapon. Genghis pictured it in his mind, seeing again the huge counterweight Lian said would send boulders hundreds of feet with crushing force. The Chin mason had found his calling in designing the weapons, for a ruler who appreciated his skill. Genghis had discovered he could grasp Lian's diagrams as if the knowledge had always been there. The written word was still a mystery to him, but force and friction, levers, blocks, and ropes were all instantly clear in his mind. He would let Lian build his great machine to attack Yenking.

  Yet the Chin emperor's city was no Linhe to be pounded into submission. Genghis grunted at the thought, imagining the moats and immense walls Lian had described, as thick at the base as seven men lying head to foot. Xamba's walls had collapsed into tunnels dug beneath them, but the fortress towers of Yenking were built on stone and could not be undermined. He would need more than catapults to break the emperor's own city, but there were other weapons at his disposal and with every victory his warriors grew more skilled.

  Genghis had thought at first that they would resist their new role as workers of machines. His people had never made good infantry before, but Lian had introduced the idea of engineers to them and Genghis had found many who could understand the discipline of forces and weights. He had shown his pleasure in having men to break cities, and they stood proud under his gaze.

  Genghis bared his teeth as a section of wall fell outwards. Tsubodai had a thousand of them working before the walls of Linhe. The main host had formed columns outside the four gates of the city, waiting to spear into it at the first sign of an opening. Genghis saw Tsubodai striding among the catapult teams, directing the blows. It was all so new and Genghis felt pride at how well his people had adapted themselves. If only his father could have lived to see it.

  In the distance, Tsubodai ordered wooden barricades forward, protecting his warriors as they pulled at weakened stones with long hooked pikes. The city archers could not take a shot without risking their own lives, and even when they were successful, their arrows thumped into wood and were wasted.

  As Genghis watched, a group of defenders showed their heads to tip an iron pot over the crest of the wall. Many of them fell to arrows, but there were always more to take their place. Genghis frowned as they succeeded in drenching a dozen pikemen in black liquid. The warriors ducked down behind their wooden shield, but only moments later, torches were thrown onto the oil and flames exploded, louder than the choking screams as their lungs charred.

  Genghis heard men curse around him. Tsubodai's burning pikemen went stumbling into the other groups, fouling the smooth rhythms of the attack. In the confusion, Chin archers picked off anyone who stepped from his shield to fend them off or put an end to their agony.

  Tsubodai roared fresh orders and the shield groups moved slowly back, leaving the writhing men until they were consumed. Genghis nodded in approval as the catapults began to whistle once more. He had heard of the oil that burned, though he had never seen it used in such a way. It took flame much faster than the mutton fat in Mongol lamps, and he decided to secure a supply. Perhaps there would be some left in Linhe when it fell. His mind filled with the thousand details he needed to remember each day until his head felt swollen with plans.

  Dark, smoking bodies lay under the wall and he could hear thin cheering inside the city. Genghis waited for Tsubodai to make a breach, his impatience growing. The light would not last much longer and at sunset Tsubod
ai would have to order his men to retreat for the night.

  As the catapults sang again, Genghis wondered how many they had lost in the assault. It did not matter. Tsubodai commanded the least experienced of his warriors, and they needed to be hardened in war. In the two years he had spent in the Khenti mountains, another eight thousand boys had reached their adult growth and mounted to join him. Most of them rode with Tsubodai and called themselves the Young Wolves to honor Genghis. Tsubodai had almost begged to be first in the assault on Linhe, but Genghis had already planned to have those boys lead the attack. Along with their new general, they had to be blooded.

  Genghis heard the cries of wounded men carry on the wind and tapped his wrist guard unconsciously against the lacquered plates of his thigh. Two more sections of wall fell. He saw a turret of stone collapse, spilling a nest of archers almost at the feet of Tsubodai's gleeful warriors. The walls of Linhe now resembled broken teeth, and Genghis knew it would not be long. Wheeled ladders were rolled up as the catapult teams stood down at last, exhausted and triumphant.

  Genghis felt the excitement build around him as Tsubodai's Young Wolves swarmed over the defenders, darkening the pale gray stone with their scrambling bodies. His best archers covered the assault from below, men able to pierce an egg at a hundred paces. Chin soldiers who showed themselves on the walls were fat with quivering arrows by the time they fell back.

  Genghis nodded sharply to himself and took the reins of his mare to mount. The animal snorted, sensing his mood. He looked to his left and right, seeing the patient faces of his bondsmen and the ranks and columns in a great circle around the city. He had made armies within armies, so that each of his generals commanded a tuman of ten thousand men and acted on his own. Arslan was lost to sight behind Linhe, but Genghis could see the horse-tail standard of Jelme fluttering in the breeze. The sunlight cast them all in burnished gold and orange, throwing long shadows. Genghis looked for his brothers, ready to ride into the east and west gates if they opened first. Khasar and Kachiun would be keen to be first in the streets of Linhe.

  At his shoulder, the huge figure of Tolui who had once been bondsman to Eeluk of the Wolves was worth only a glance, though Genghis saw the man stiffen with pride. Old friends were there, responding with nods. The front line of the column was only twenty horses wide, men approaching thirty years of age, as he was himself. It lifted Genghis's spirit to see the way they strained forward, watching the city hungrily.

  Smoke spiraled into the air from a dozen points within Linhe, like the distant threads of a rainstorm on the plains. Genghis watched and waited, his hands shaking slightly with tension.

  "May I bless you, great khan?" came a voice he knew, interrupting his thoughts. Genghis turned and gestured to his personal shaman, first among the men who walked the dark paths. Kokchu had thrown away the rags from his days serving the Naiman khan. He wore a robe of dark blue silk, tied with a sash of gold. His wrists were bound in leather hung with pierced Chin coins, and they chimed as he raised his arms. Genghis bowed his head without expression, feeling the cool touch of sheep blood as Kokchu striped his cheeks with it. He felt a rush of calm settle on him, and he kept his head lowered as Kokchu chanted a prayer to the earth mother.

  "She will welcome the blood you send into her, my lord, as much as if the rains themselves ran red."

  Genghis let out a slow breath, pleasantly aware of the fear in the men around him. Every one of them was a warrior born, hardened in fire and battle from the first years, but still they closed their mouths of idle chatter when Kokchu walked amongst them. Genghis had seen the fear grow and he had used it to discipline the tribes, giving Kokchu power by his patronage.

  "Shall I have the red tent taken down, my lord?" Kokchu asked. "The sun is setting and the black cloth is ready for the frame."

  Genghis considered. It had been Kokchu himself who suggested this means to sow terror in the cities of the Chin. On the first day, a white tent was raised outside their walls, its very existence showing that there were no soldiers to save them. If they did not open their gates by sunset, the red tent went up at dawn and Genghis sent the promise that every man in the city would die. On the third day, the black tent meant that there would be only death without end, without mercy, for anyone alive within.

  The lesson would be learned by cities to the east, and Genghis wondered if they would surrender more easily as Kokchu said. The shaman understood how to use fear. It would be difficult not to allow the men to loot them as savagely as the cities that resisted, but the idea appealed to him. Speed was everything and if cities fell without a fight, he could move all the faster. He inclined his head to the shaman, giving him honor.

  "The day is not yet over, Kokchu. The women will live without their husbands. Those who are too old or too plain for us will take the word further and the fear will spread."

  "Your will, my lord," Kokchu said, his eyes gleaming. Genghis felt his own senses kindle in return. He needed clever men if he was to take the path his imagination drew for him.

  "My lord khan!" an officer called. Genghis snapped his head round, seeing the north gate heaved open by Tsubodai's young warriors. The defenders were still fighting and he could see some of Tsubodai's men fall as they struggled to keep the advantage they had won. On the edge of his vision, Khasar's ten thousand kicked into a gallop and he knew the city was open in at least two places. Kachiun was still stationary on the east gate and could only watch in frustration as his brothers moved in.

  "Ride!" Genghis bellowed, digging in his heels. As the air whipped past him, he recalled racing across the plains of home in distant days. He hefted a long birchwood lance in his right hand, another innovation. Only a few of the strongest men had begun to train with them, but the fashion was growing amongst the tribes. With the point held upright, Genghis thundered across the land, surrounded by his loyal warriors.

  There would be other cities, he knew, but these first ones would always be sweetest in his memory. He roared with his men, the column galloping at full speed through the gates, scattering defenders like bloody leaves in their wake.

  Temuge walked through pitch darkness to the ger of Kokchu. As he passed the door, he heard the muffled sound of weeping from within, but he did not stop. The moon was absent from the sky and Kokchu had told him that was when he would be strongest and most able to learn. Fires still burned in the gutted shell of Linhe in the distance, but the camp was quiet after the destruction.

  Close by the shaman's ger was another, so low and squat that Temuge had to go down on his knees to enter. A single shuttered lamp cast a dim glow and the air was thick with fumes that made Temuge dizzy after just a few breaths. Kokchu sat cross-legged on a floor of wrinkled black silk. All the things inside had come from the hand of Genghis, and Temuge felt envy mingling with his fear of the man.

  He had been called and he had come. His place was not to question, and as he sat and crossed his legs to face the shaman, he saw Kokchu's eyes were closed and that his breath was no more than a slight flutter of the chest. Temuge shuddered in the thick silence, imagining dark spirits in the smoke that filled his lungs. It came from incense burning on a pair of brass plates, and he wondered which city had been looted for them. The gers of his people were host to many strange objects in these bloody days, and there were few who could recognize them all.

  Temuge coughed as the smoke came too thickly into his lungs. He saw Kokchu's bare chest shudder and the man's eyes opened blindly, looking for him but not seeing. As the focus returned, the shaman smiled at him, his eyes in deep shadow.

  "You have not come to me for a full turn of the moon," Kokchu said, his voice hoarse from the smoke.

  Temuge looked away. "I was troubled. Some of the things you told me were… disturbing."

  Kokchu chuckled, a dry hacking in his throat. "As children are wary of the dark, so are men wary of power. It tempts them and yet it consumes them. It is never a game to play lightly." He rested his gaze on Temuge until the younger man looked up a
nd winced visibly. Kokchu's unblinking eyes were strangely bright, the pupils wider and darker than Temuge had ever seen them.

  "Why have you come tonight," Kokchu murmured, "if not to plunge your hands into the darkness once more?"

  Temuge took a deep breath. The smoke no longer seemed to irritate his lungs and he felt light-headed, almost confident.

  "I heard you found a traitor while I was away in Baotou. My brother the khan spoke of it. He said it was wondrous how you picked the man out of a line of kneeling warriors."

  "Much has changed since then," Kokchu said with a shrug. "I could smell his guilt, my son. It is something you could learn." Kokchu summoned his will to keep his thoughts focused. He was used to the smoke and could take a great deal more of it than his young companion, but still there were bright lights flashing at the edges of his vision.

  Temuge felt all his worries dissolving as he sat there with this strange man who smelled of blood despite his new silk robes. Words tumbled out of him and he did not know he slurred them.

  "Genghis said you laid your hands on the traitor and spoke words in the oldest tongue," Temuge whispered. "He said the man cried out and died in front of them all without a wound."

  "And you would like to do the same, Temuge? There is no one else here and there is no shame between us. Say the words. Is that what you want?"

  Temuge slumped slightly, letting his hands drop to the silken floor so that he could feel it slide under his fingers with extraordinary clarity.

  "It is what I want."

  Kokchu smiled wider at that, showing dark gums as his lips slid back. He did not know the identity of the traitor or even if there had been one. The hand he had pressed against the man's scalp had held two tiny fangs and a venom sac embedded in wax. It had taken him many nights of hunting the vicious little pit viper he wanted, risking being bitten himself. He began to chuckle again at the memory of the awe on the face of the khan as the victim writhed from just a touch. The dying man had gone almost black in the face before the end, the twin spots of blood hidden by his hair. Kokchu had chosen him because of the Chin girl he had taken to wife. She had roused the shaman to lust as she passed his ger to draw water, and then she had refused him, as if she were one of the people and not a slave. He laughed harder as he remembered the knowledge coming into her husband's eyes before death stole it away with everything else. Since that moment, Kokchu had been feared and honored in the camp. Not one of the other shamans of the tribes dared challenge his position, not after that display of power. He felt no guilt at the deception. His fate was to stand with the khan of the nation, triumphant over his enemies. If he had to kill a thousand to do so, he would count it worth the price.