The Mongoliad: Book One

by Neal Stephenson

  Gansukh had not sought out the Khagan’s advisor since the day they had last spoken—that day when everything had changed—nor had he felt any urge to. He should have reported Ögedei’s behavior that night, as well as confronted Chucai about their unfinished conversation from the throne room—not to mention the issue with the lacquered box (which he had not been able to open)—but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. It was much simpler—like a rabbit hiding—to simply avoid Master Chucai until he could decide what to do.

  Which had also meant staying away from Lian, and that had been harder to do.

  Still… Seemingly by accident, he nudged his horse closer to hers. Taking advantage of their proximity, as well as the privacy the open plain offered—inside the Khagan’s compound, it was impossible to have any real privacy—he reached out and laid his hand over hers where they gripped the saddle.

  Lian bowed her head but didn’t pull her hands away. The wind-whipped hair made it impossible to read her expression—another way for a rabbit to hide—and then, just as Chucai’s hat again rose into view, Lian raised the little finger of her left hand and wrapped it around Gansukh’s thumb. Before he could react, she slipped free and tugged at the reins. Her horse exhaled noisily and took several prancing steps sideways, moving Lian out of reach. Only a few aid away.

  “Young Gansukh!” Chucai called as his horse topped the rise. “Lian told me she had seen you ride out earlier. I am most pleased we have found you.” His face was bright with windburn and exertion, and his voice was brisk and cheerful, as if the events of the past few days did not weigh in the slightest. As if he had not presided over the torture and execution of a defenseless woman.

  “Master Chucai,” Gansukh returned. “Indeed, it is a surprise that we must meet so far from where we pass our days.” He was trying for the same sort of cheer, even levity, but judging by the flat response in Chucai’s eyes, his tone did not convince.

  Chucai brought his horse around in front of Gansukh and Lian, blocking their view. Making sure he could keep an eye on both of them. “Had I been able to find you, we could have spoken this in the city.”

  “I have been—” Gansukh started.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Chucai cut him off. “It is what you haven’t been doing that concerns me.”

  Gansukh flushed. Was this all that Chucai worried about? “Do you mean, learning how to simper and preen at court? To what end? Ögedei is blind to everything and everyone around him.”

  Chucai’s face was impassive and his eyes still flat, but he nodded. “You are plain spoken, Gansukh. It is, as Lian has mentioned to me on more than one occasion, one of your best traits, and most dangerous. I had hoped that she could teach you how to wriggle your tongue like a snake’s rather than shoot it out like an arrow. A devious tongue would allow you to more readily gain the Khagan’s ear. But that skill is still beyond you, and you do not yet rise above his lobes…and penetrate…with soft words, do you?”

  Gansukh glanced at Lian, who was looking down at her horse’s flank, not embarrassed by this metaphor, but not affording it the dignity of a response.

  “Does the fault lie with your tutor?” Chucai said, noticing Gansukh’s glance. “Is she incapable of teaching you the ways of the court?”

  “She teaches well enough,” Gansukh growled.

  “Is he not an able student?” Chucai asked Lian.

  “Able enough,” Lian replied.

  Chucai peered at Gansukh. “Then what is distracting you from your education?”

  Neither answered, and Gansukh dared not glance at her this time. His heart beat quickly, and he wiped his hands on his pants. Is she thinking the same thing?

  “I see,” said Chucai, leaning back and tugging at the few long hairs on his cheek. “Perhaps you need to refocus your efforts. Both of you.”

  Gansukh controlled his breathing. As stung as he was by Master Chucai’s words—as well as by the implication therein—he couldn’t so easily forget what he had witnessed in the throne room.

  “Master Chucai—” Lian began, but Gansukh cut her off.

  “What goals are those?” he demanded. “Yours? The empire’s? Ögedei’s? Chagatai Khan sent me to help the Khagan, and I thought my mission was simply to stop his drinking, but now I am confused. Now I wonder if the assistance the Khagan needs is far greater than taking away his drink…” His words stumbled to a stop. He found himself unwilling to say more, fearing he had already said too much. Arrow for a tongue…

  A tiny muscle twitched in Master Chucai’s cheek, making the corner of his mouth lift, as if he might smile. Or he might have been trying to suppress a roar of outrage. Gansukh wasn’t sure which, but like a standoff with a wounded predator, he knew it was best to show no fear. To give no ground until his adversary made the next move.

  Master Chucai almost seemed to deflate a little in his saddle. “Plain speech,” he sighed, allowing his gaze to rove out across the land of grass. “In the court, the more refined refer to this as the ‘country eye,’ and they whisper of it as if they fear its coming. The horrible day when the horsemen would follow this longing gaze back to the plains of grass, back to chasing the endlessly migrating herds. Back to…oblivion.” A thin smile creased his lips. “The court, however, would be vastly improved if there were more men like you, young Gansukh, and fewer of the two-faced creatures that surround Ögedei now.”

  This caught Gansukh off guard. Lian was surprised by Chucai’s candor as well.

  “I need to speak plainly with you, Gansukh—that is why I followed you out here.” Master Chucai sounded tired. “It is possible that even if you succeed in reducing the Khagan’s drinking, we will still have accomplished nothing.”

  “I do not…” Gansukh met Chucai’s gaze, and in the older man’s small, dark eyes Gansukh saw conflicting emotions: hope and resignation, elation and exhaustion. He said “we.” Chucai did understand his confusion. Gansukh had witnessed Ögedei’s frustrated outburst, the Khagan’s desperate cry for someone to share his view of the world, to understand his country eye, and while he hadn’t confided that information to Chucai, it was apparent such information would not be news to Chucai.

  Gansukh was startled. If we accomplish nothing, then what has been saved? Was Chucai suggesting the very thought he had been turning over in his head before they arrived? The idea felt like a betrayal, not just of the Khagan, but of the whole of the Mongolian Empire, and he immediately wished he could undo it, that he could wipe his mind clean and go back to the innocent naïveté he had been full of on the first day he had rode into Karakorum.

  Was Ögedei Khan worthy of leading the empire?

  “The Khagan is great,” he muttered, trying to muster some enthusiasm for what those words meant, but he felt off balance, his mind and spirit fractured by the revelation he had seen—reflected—in Chucai’s expression.

  Chucai was still looking at him. “The empire must be great, Gansukh. Not just the Khagan. You have seen what lies beneath the mask, haven’t you? Not just the Khagan, but everything—and everyone—around him. It is our duty to help him. It is our duty to help the empire. Your duty.”

  “Why me?” Gansukh asked.

  Chucai laughed. “Why not?”

  “But it is…too great…”

  “Of course it is,” Chucai snorted. “No one person can change the course of the empire, and yet one man created this very empire.” He swept an arm out to indicate the open steppe. “Before Temujin brought the clans together, this was just grasslands. Before Ögedei inherited the empire, Karakorum was nothing more than a few tents clustered around the river. Look at it now. All change happens because one man wants something different. Ögedei has forgotten this; most of the men who cluster around him and dog his steps don’t want the world to change—as much as they claim otherwise.

  “You are not special, Gansukh,” Chucai continued. “When you came to Karakorum, you were nothing more than a bumbling warrior from the steppe, regardless of all the glory heaped on your shou
lders from your exploits on the edge of the empire. You were nothing to the court; you still may account for nothing. But…” Chucai stopped with a shrug.

  “But what? Is your speech supposed to inspire me?” Gansukh asked.

  “The anniversary of Tolui’s death approaches.” Chucai pointed toward Karakorum, ignoring Gansukh’s question. “A grand festival is planned, to distract the Khagan from the depression that always falls upon him at this time. Caravans arrive each day bearing gifts from every corner of the empire. Games will be conducted—wrestling, riding, shooting, fighting. There will be minstrels, acrobats, dancers, poets—every sort of entertainment possible. The festival grows every year, but Ögedei attends to less and less of it, as he drowns himself in drink.”

  Tolui. The younger brother of both Ögedei and Chagatai. Chagatai had spoken briefly of his younger brother’s death, and Gansukh tried to recall the details: Ögedei had fallen ill during a campaign in Northern China—a disease caused by angry spirits. The dead had demanded blood, payment for what had been taken from them.

  Gansukh shivered. “You didn’t answer my question,” he said, pushing aside the thoughts of ghosts.

  “I didn’t think I needed to,” Chucai said with a grim smile. “What we taught you about court protocol and practice was meant to open your eyes—and it has, has it not? I’ll ask you a question in return: what is worth saving?”

  Gansukh rubbed his arms, feeling chilled even under the gaze of the sun. A sacrifice, he thought, to save the empire.

  “You don’t need inspiration, Gansukh,” Chucai said. “You simply need permission, and not from me or the Khagan.”

  CHAPTER 23:

  A CHANGE OF PLANS

  For several days, they traveled east through a seemingly endless landscape of broken marsh and straggling forest. Even with Yasper’s discovery of Mongolian arkhi—a drink Cnán knew well enough to avoid—the pall of Taran’s absence refused to lift. The nights when they made a fire were oppressively dark, and the awareness of higher, greater things—the soughing of the wind, the haze of cold, sharp stars—brought no comfort, even to her, though she loved the wilderness.

  When the quiet of an evening was broken, it was more often than not by Istvan, who rambled on at length of Mongol myths he’d once heard, or perhaps dreamed up in the magic haze of his freebuttons—barely coherent stories of endless seas of horses and of a banner, tall and terrible, from whence the Khans drew their power. The Brethren paid him little heed; most turned away, rolled over, tried to ignore the Hungarian. None were inclined to speak with him while the sting of Taran’s death was still so fresh.

  Never had Cnán seen a man so alone and so blissfully unaware of his isolation.

  In the aftermath of the departure, Roger’s anger at Istvan did not waver or lessen and was echoed, Cnán saw, in the eyes of the others, though none of them were so bloodthirsty. She later heard Feronantus and Roger privately arguing the matter. Given what chaos had been caused by Istvan’s insanity and bloodlust, Cnán was inclined to sympathize with the Norman’s point of view.

  “We need him,” Feronantus had said with gentle firmness. “He is mad, he is dangerous, yes. But he is also a fine horseman and, next to Rædwulf, the best archer we have. Furthermore, he is a veteran of Mohi. Few know better how the Mongols fight.”

  “Are you certain,” Roger responded testily, “that you’re not remembering a debt to his teacher? The younger boy may have had potential. The man is deranged, and he is not one of us.”

  After that, they spoke more often in the Frankish tongue, of which Cnán had less knowledge, but she did not forget what she’d heard. Though Istvan had never been a member of the Order, he’d been trained by a member, or one at least known to them, a man important to Feronantus. The arguments of the Brethren’s leader seemed sound, if overly forgiving, but Roger’s words made her uneasy, and now she wondered, was it wisdom that kept Istvan alive or sentimentality?

  The matter of where their road took them next was not broached for several days, until Feronantus spoke, addressing Illarion.

  “You must guide us through Kiev,” he said.

  “Are you mad?” Roger said from where he sat. The Norman was sharpening one of his axes with a whetstone, the rhythmic scraping sound coming to an abrupt halt as he spoke. “Don’t let me be the one to affront our prowess, but it was as much fortune as skill that left only one of us dead just days ago.” At this, he cast a dark glance at Istvan.

  “We have a duty,” Percival calmly asserted. His words, however, lacked conviction. The loss of Taran and his horse had shaken the Frank and left him uncertain in a way Cnán had never thought to see him. It was unsettling to witness, and there again was the memory of the sound of his voice in the woods, alone but for her—and Raphael—unknowingly bearing witness.

  When he looked her way, she could not meet his eyes.

  “We have been seen,” Feronantus said, not ignoring Percival’s statement, but not standing by it either, Cnán noted. “And not by some stripling fool of a Mongol scout, who alone would have been enough to raise alarm. Enough well-blooded warriors have crossed my path to make knowing a wise one easy when I see him. Word of us will travel back to the greater horde, and they will watch us. We need an excuse to be traveling east, so arrayed, one that does not alarm our enemy.”

  He leveled world-weary eyes at Percival and for a moment seemed unable to continue. “Percival has spoken to me, of a role required of us in that city, and while I am unable to fully explain the task”—he glanced at Raphael, who nodded slightly, and then looked over at Cnán as if to dare her to speak—“there is another purpose that visiting Kiev may serve; for there, we may learn something of what has been going on in the world as we kept to the wilderness.”

  “What task?” Roger asked of Percival.

  The knight shook his head. “I do not know,” he said softly, “but I have been given a sign of what it is that I seek.”

  “In Kiev?” Roger pressed.

  Percival smiled at him, and Cnán’s breath caught in her throat. How could the Norman not see the light shining from his face?

  “I still say it’s a mistake,” Roger murmured, still too caught up in his own disillusionment and anger. “If we’ve been spotted, better to put as many miles as we can between them and us. Mongols and their lackeys run thick here, like flies on a corpse.”

  “And that will not change from here to the heart of the Khan’s empire,” Eleázar replied in his accented Latin. He had spoken very little since their journey had begun, and Cnán had not gotten used to the quiet way in which he spoke. It was so unlike everything else about him. “I am with Feronantus and Percival—eleven visiting Kiev will be less strange to their eyes than eleven riding east with no reason. Whether or not they guess our errand means nothing. If they follow us closely—and likely they will—we will be slowed regardless of our motives. We must attempt to shake undue suspicion.”

  “I can take you there, though I do not know how much we will find,” Illarion said in his low, sad voice. “I have heard only rumors about the fate of Prince Alexander’s city. If they are to be believed, then the city will be little more than a ruin filled with ghosts.” Suddenly a light came to the Slav’s face, and he actually smiled, then nodded toward Feronantus. “I can think of no better place to shake off pursuit.”

  They changed their course the next morning. The fresh horses acquired from the fight made travel a little easier, though heat and the humidity evened their score of misery. As day by day they drew imperceptibly nearer to the city, they passed many tributaries and branches of the great Dnieper as it wound along its southern track, toward the Axeinos, as the people of Rus called it. The Unlit Sea.

  The heat bore down during the days and only sometimes relented at night. Cnán found herself more than once thankful that she was unburdened by the armor the Brethren wore, weighing down their bodies and damping both energy and patience as they rode. Watching them, she thought of men traveling in their own ovens
, slowly steaming to death, all unawares, like the legendary frog in a witch’s cauldron.

  At times, the heavens would show mercy, and the skies would darken with rain clouds that poured down some relief. The armor actually steamed afterward, as did the horses, and the riders trailed a thin haze of mist. The water certainly brought welcome coolness, but then they had to deal with the frustrating tendency of steel to rust and with bedrolls soaked completely through. Despite their best efforts, the armor was slowly tarnishing, and rusty streaks even marred Feronantus’s greaves and mail.

  Gradually farmsteads, hamlets, and finally villages became more numerous. Many had been burned, however, and most lay abandoned. The absence of people from even the larger villages gave the landscape a ghostly feel, like riding through a place left behind by all who cared, to be observed again only by those foolish enough to pass through forsaken lands.

  Eventually they began to see people, stragglers moving along the goat paths and game trails Finn had found. Small families dispossessed by conflict, some with little more than the rags on their backs, and others with an animal or two, packs of possessions, and downcast eyes hollowed by what they had seen. Most fled at the sight of the armored company, abandoning their animals with an alacrity born of desperate practice.

  Here and there, as signs of civilization increased so did signs of atrocity. Hundreds of victims of Mongol plank-crushing lay in shallow, dug-out ditches, the planks long since retrieved for structures or firewood, the corpses left naked, worm-eaten, and shriveled under the sun, their jaws and sunken eyes lost in half-amused, unending screams. Once, they passed an astonishing pyramid of skulls, stacked carefully atop a kurgan—a burial mound of the ancients—to give testament to the power of the conquerors.

  The Khans were the masters of Rus, and the Shield-Brethren were riding headlong into its greatest city. Yet Illarion seemed to think, for all the foreboding that hung about him, that they stood a chance therein. Cnán could not help but remember the way Illarion had frightened off a group of Mongols when they had first found him by pretending to be a ghost, back from the dead.