There were four men around the fire, three of them taunting the fourth. He was a small figure in a robe of dark red. His shaven head shone with sweat in the firelight. The others wore no armor, but they carried knives in their belts and one had a short bow leaning against a tree. Their faces were cruel as they continued their sport, darting in and out again to strike the small man. His features were bruised and swollen, but one of the men bled freely from his nose and did not join in the laughter with the others.
As Khasar watched, the one with the bloody nose hit out with a stick, making the small man stagger. The thump of the blow could be heard across the clearing, and Khasar grinned wolfishly as he strung his bow by feel. He wormed his way back to Ho Sa away from the light, his voice the barest whisper.
“We need their horses. They don’t look like soldiers and I can take two with the bow if you rush the last. There is another young one with a head like an egg. He’s still fighting, but he hasn’t a chance against all three.”
“He may be a monk,” Ho Sa said. “They are hard men, for all they spend their time begging and in prayer. Do not underestimate him.”
Khasar raised his eyes, amused. “I spent my childhood learning weapons from dawn till dusk. I’ve yet to see one of your people who could stand against me.”
Ho Sa frowned, shaking his head. “If he is a monk, he will be trying not to kill his attackers. I have seen them show their skills to my king.”
Khasar snorted softly. “You are a strange people. Soldiers who cannot fight and holy men who can. Tell Lian to get his hammer ready to crack a head when I shoot.”
Khasar inched forward once more, coming slowly up to a kneeling position. To his surprise, he saw the man with the bloody nose was lying on the ground, writhing in agony. The other two had fallen into grim silence. The young monk stood straight despite the bruises he had taken, and Khasar heard him speak calmly to his tormentors. One of them sneered, tossing aside his stick and pulling a wicked-looking dagger from his belt.
Khasar bent his bow, and as it creaked, the monk looked through the fire at him, suddenly light on his feet as if ready to leap away. The others hadn’t noticed and one of them rushed the monk, the dagger held to punch into his chest.
Khasar let out a breath and loosed an arrow that took the bandit in the armpit, hammering him off his feet. The other swung round as Lian and Ho Sa shouted, leaping up. As they moved, the monk stepped very close to the remaining man and landed a blow to his head that knocked him into the fire. Ho Sa and Lian came roaring in then, but the monk ignored them, dragging his attacker out of the flames and patting him down where his hair had begun to smoke. The man was limp, but the weight did not seem to trouble the monk at all.
When that was done, he stood to face the newcomers, nodding to them. The one with the bloody nose now moaned in fear as well as pain. Khasar nocked another arrow as he walked, Temuge following at his heels.
The monk saw what Khasar intended and darted forward, so that Khasar’s view of the writhing figure was blocked. The bald skull made him look little older than a boy.
“Step aside,” Khasar told him.
The words were received blankly, but the monk did not move and only folded his arms to stare down the arrow.
“Tell him to step away, Ho Sa,” Khasar said, gritting his teeth against the strain of holding the drawn bow. “Tell him we need his mule, but otherwise he can go on his way once I’ve killed this one.”
Ho Sa spoke and Khasar saw the monk’s face light up as he heard words he recognized. A blistering exchange followed, and when it showed no sign of ceasing, Khasar swore in the Chin language and eased off the strain.
“He says he did not need us and the man’s life is not ours to take,” Ho Sa said at last. “He also said he will not give up the mule, as it is not his, but only loaned to him.”
“Does he not see the bow I am holding?” Khasar demanded, jerking it in the monk’s direction.
“He would not care if you had a dozen pointed at him. He is a holy man and without fear.”
“A holy boy, with a mule for Temuge,” Khasar replied. “Unless you want to ride double with my brother?”
“I do not mind,” Ho Sa said immediately. He spoke to the monk, bowing three times in the course of the conversation. The boy nodded sharply at the end, glancing at Khasar.
“He says you may take the ponies,” Ho Sa said. “He will remain here to tend the wounded men.”
Khasar shook his head, unable to understand. “Did he thank me for rescuing him?”
Ho Sa looked blank. “He did not need rescuing.”
Khasar frowned at the monk, who stared calmly back.
“Genghis would love this one,” Khasar said suddenly. “Ask him if he wants to come with us.”
Ho Sa spoke again and the boy shook his head, his eyes never leaving Khasar.
“He says the work of the Buddha may take him onto strange roads, but his place is amongst the poor.”
Khasar snorted. “The poor are everywhere. Ask him how he knows this Buddha didn’t want us to find him here.”
Ho Sa nodded, and as he talked, the monk looked increasingly interested.
“He asks if the Buddha is known among your people,” Ho Sa said.
Khasar grinned. “Tell him we believe in a sky father above and an earth mother below. The rest is struggle and pain before death.” He chuckled as Ho Sa blinked at hearing the philosophy.
“Is that all you believe?” Ho Sa asked.
Khasar glanced at his brother. “Some of the foolish ones believe in spirits as well, but most of us believe in a good horse and a strong right arm. We do not know this Buddha.”
When Ho Sa relayed the speech, the young monk bowed and strode to where his mule was tethered. Khasar and Temuge watched as he leaped into the saddle, causing the animal to snort and kick.
“That is an ugly beast,” Khasar said. “Is the boy coming with us?”
Ho Sa still looked surprised as he nodded. “He is. He says that no man can guess his path, but perhaps you are right that you were guided to him.”
“All right,” Khasar said. “But tell him that I will not let my enemies live, that he must not interfere with me again. Tell him if he does, I will cut his little bald head right off.”
When the monk heard the words, he laughed aloud, slapping his thigh as he sat astride the mule.
Khasar frowned at him. “I am Khasar of the Wolves, monk,” he said, pointing to himself. “What is your name?”
“Yao Shu!” he replied, thumping a fist twice into his own chest like a salute. The action seemed to amuse the monk and he chuckled until he had to wipe his eyes. Khasar stared at him. “Mount up, Ho Sa,” he said at last. “The brown mare is mine. At least the walking is over.”
It did not take long for them to mount. Ho Sa and Temuge rode together once the saddle had been unstrapped and thrown down. The surviving bandits had grown quiet amidst the talk, aware that their lives hung in the balance. They watched the strangers go, only sitting up to curse when they were sure they were alone.
♦ ♦ ♦
The pass that separated the Xi Xia kingdom from the southern edge of the desert was empty as the party of five men reached it. In the Khenti mountains a thousand miles north, the winter would be deepening, gripping the land for many months to come. Even at the pass, a freezing gale roared through as if in pleasure at its release. There was no fort to make the pass a place of stillness any longer. Instead, the wind always blew and the air was full of sand and grit.
Khasar and Temuge dismounted as they reached the pass, remembering the first bloody efforts to take the fort that had stood there. Genghis had been efficient in having it dismantled. A few large blocks lay where they had fallen in the sand, but every other stone had been dragged away. Only a few square holes in the cliffs showed where timbers and braces had been anchored, but otherwise it was as if the fort had never existed. There was no barrier to the tribes coming south any longer, and that fact alone gave Kha
sar a feeling of pride.
He strolled with Temuge along the pass, looking up at the high cliffs on either side. The monk and the mason watched them without understanding, neither having known the place when it boasted a fort of black stone and the Xi Xia kingdom ruled in splendid isolation.
Ho Sa looked south, turning his pony to gaze over the bare fields of his home. Dark spots in the distance showed where the rotten crops had been burned and the ashes returned to the land. There would be starvation in the villages, he was certain, perhaps even in Yinchuan. He shook his head at the thought.
He had been away for almost four months and it would be good to see his sons and his wife once again. He wondered how the army had fared after the crushing defeats at the hands of the great khan. The tribes had shattered an ancient peace and he winced as he recalled the destruction. He had lost friends and colleagues in those months, and the bitterness was never far from the surface. The final humiliation had been to see a royal daughter handed over to the barbarians. Ho Sa shuddered at the thought of such a woman being forced to live in their stinking tents among sheep and goats.
As Ho Sa stared into the valley, he realized with some surprise that he would miss Khasar’s company. For all the man’s crudity and easy violence, Ho Sa could look back on the journey with some pride. No one else from the Xi Xia could have stolen into a Chin city and returned alive with a master mason. It was true that Khasar had almost got him killed in one village where he had drunk too much rice wine. Ho Sa rubbed a scab on his side where a soldier had scraped a knife along his ribs. The man had not even been posted there and was visiting his family. Khasar could not recall the fight when he sobered up and seemed to think nothing of it. He was in some ways the most irritating man Ho Sa had ever known, but his reckless optimism had affected the Xi Xia soldier and he wondered uneasily if he would be able to return to the rigid discipline of the king’s army. The annual tribute would have to be carried across the desert and Ho Sa decided then that he would volunteer to lead the guards on that trip, just to see the land that could give birth to the tribes.
Khasar walked back to his companions. He felt elation at the thought of seeing home again and bringing their quarry back to Genghis. He grinned at the others in turn, showing his pleasure. To a man, they were dust covered and filthy, with dirt lining every crease of their faces. Yao Shu had begun to learn the speech of the tribes from Ho Sa. Lian had no ear for language, but he too had picked up a few useful words. They nodded back to Khasar uncertainly, unsure of the reason for his good mood.
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.
CHAPTER 16
GENGHIS 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.
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