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 Tsubodai 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 tro
ubled. 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 and 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.
He saw Temuge was glassy-eyed as he sat there in the stifling smoke. Kokchu clamped his jaw shut, pressing away his amusement. He needed his mind clear to bind the younger man, so close that he would never tear free.
Slowly Kokchu reached into the small pot of thick black paste at his side, holding up a finger so that tiny seeds were visible in the gleaming muck. He reached out to Temuge and opened his mouth without resistance, smearing the paste onto his tongue.
Temuge choked at the bitter taste, but before he could spit, he felt numbness spreading quickly. He heard whispering voices behind him and he jerked his head back and forth as his eyes glazed, searching for the origin of the sound.
“Dream the darkest dreams, Temuge,” Kokchu said, satisfied. “I will guide you. No, even better. I will give you mine.”
It was dawn before Kokchu staggered out of the ger, sour sweat staining his robe. Temuge was unconscious on the silk floor and would sleep for most of the day to come. Kokchu had not touched the paste himself, unwilling to trust the way it made him babble and not yet sure how much Temuge would remember. He had no wish to put himself in the other’s power, not when the future was so bright. He took deep breaths of freezing air and felt his head clear itself of the smoke. He could smell its sweetness coming out of his pores, and he giggled to himself as he crossed back to his own ger and banged open the door.
The Chin girl knelt where he had left her, on the floor by the stove. She was incredibly beautiful, pale and delicate. He felt his lust swell for her again and wondered at his own stamina. Perhaps it was the remnant of smoke in his lungs.
“How many times did you disobey me and rise?” he demanded.
“I did not,” she said, trembling visibly.
He reached out to raise her head, his hands slipping clumsily from her face and enraging him. The gesture became a blow and he knocked her sprawling.
He stood panting as she scrambled back and knelt once more. Just as he began untying the sash on his deel, she raised her head. There was blood on her mouth and he saw her lower lip was already swelling. The sight inflamed him.
“Why do you hurt me? What more do you want?” she asked, tears shining in her eyes.
“Power over you, little one,” he said, smiling. “What does any man want but that? It is something in the blood of every one of us. We would all be a tyrant if we could.”
CHAPTER 17
THE EMPEROR’S CITY OF YENKING grew quiet in the hours before dawn, though it was more from a surfeit of food and drink in the Feast of Lanterns than any fear of the Mongol army. As the sun had set, Emperor Wei mounted a platform to be seen by the heaving crowds, and a thousand dancers had made a din to raise the dead with cymbals and horns. He had stood with his feet bare, showing his humility before the people as a million voices chanted, “Ten thousand years! Ten thousand years!”, the sound crashing across the city. Night was banished on the Feast of Lanterns. The city gleamed like a jewel, a myriad of flames lighting squares of boiled horn or glass. Even the three great lakes were aglow, their black surfaces covered in tiny boats each carrying a flame. The water gate was open to the great canal that stretched three thousand li to the southern city of Hangzhou, and the boats drifted out like a river of fire throughout the night, taking the light with them. The symbolism pleased the young emperor as he endured the noise and smoke from fireworks banging and echoing from the great walls. There were so many that the whole city was covered in white gunpowder smoke and the air itself was bitter on the tongue. Children would be made that night, by force or for pleasure. There would be more than a hundred murders, and the lakes themselves would claim a dozen drunkards in the dark depths as they tried to swim across. It was the same every year.
The emperor had suffered through the adoring chants, buffeted by the clamor in his name that stretched from the walls and beyond. Even the beggars, slaves, and whores cheered him on that night and lit their ramshackle homes with precious oil. He endured it all, though at times his gaze over their heads was distant and cold as he planned to crush the army that had dared to enter his lands.
The peasants knew nothing of the threat and even the sellers of news had little information. Emperor Wei had seen to it that the gossipmongers were kept quiet, and if their arrest disturbed those who looked for such signs, the festival had gone ahead with all its usual gusto, mad with drink and noise and light. Seeing the revelers, the emperor was reminded of maggots writhing on a corpse. His Imperial messengers brought grim reports as they rejoiced. Beyond the mountains, cities were aflame.
With dawn lighting the horizon, the shouting and singing in the streets died down finally, giving him peace. The last of the little wooden candle boats had vanished out to the countryside, and only a few firecrackers could be heard rattling in the distance. Emperor Wei sat in his private rooms and stared out over the still, dark heart of Songhai lake, surrounded by hundreds of great houses. The most powerful of his nobles clustered around that central mass of dark
water, in sight of the man from whom they took their power. He could have named every member of the highborn families that fought and struggled like jeweled wasps to administer his northern empire.
The smoke and chaos of the festival trailed away with the morning mist on the lakes. With such a scene of ancient beauty, it was difficult to comprehend the threat from the west. Yet war was coming and he wished his father still lived. The old man had spent his life crushing the slightest hint of disobedience to the very edges of the empire and beyond. Emperor Wei had learned much at his feet, but he felt the newness of his position keenly. He had already lost cities that had been part of Chin lands since the great schism that split the empire into two halves three hundred years before. His ancestors had known a golden age and he could only dream of restoring the empire to its former glory.
He smiled wryly to himself at the thought of his father hearing of the Mongol horde on their family lands. He would have raged down the corridors of the palace, striking slaves out of his way as he summoned the army. His father had never lost a battle and his confidence would have raised them all.
Emperor Wei started from his thoughts as a throat was cleared softly behind him. He looked back from the high window to see his first minister bowing to the floor.
“Imperial Majesty, General Zhi Zhong is here as you asked.”
“Send him in and see that I am not disturbed,” the emperor replied, turning away from the dawn and seating himself. He glanced around his private rooms, seeing that nothing was out of place. His writing desk was freed of the clutter of maps and papers, and there was no sign of his anger as he waited for the man who would rid him of the tribesmen. He could not help thinking of the Xi Xia king and the letter he had sent to him three years before. With shame, he recalled the spite of his words and the pleasure he had felt in sending them. Who could have known then that the Mongol threat was more than a few shouting tribesmen? His people had never feared those who could be culled whenever they grew restless. Emperor Wei bit the inside of his lip as he considered the future. If they could not be beaten quickly, he would have to bribe the Tartars to attack their ancient enemies. Chin gold could win as many battles as bows and spears. He remembered his father’s words with fondness and once more wished he were there to offer his counsel.
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