“It could be another chance to surprise them from behind,” Khasar replied, staring into the distance. The path was lost to sight in no more than twenty paces as the wind and snow swirled.
“Genghis wants us behind the Chin as fast as possible,” Kachiun reminded him.
Taran watched the exchange in fascination, but they both ignored the boy.
“He didn’t know there could be another path right up behind the forts,” Khasar said. “It’s worth a look, at least.”
Kachiun shook his head, irritated. “We have one more night in this dead place, then he moves at dawn. If you get lost, you could freeze to death.”
Khasar looked at his brother’s worried face and grinned. “I notice how you are certain it would be me. I could order you to take the path.”
Kachiun sighed. Genghis had not put either one of them in charge, and he considered that an error when dealing with Khasar.
“You could not,” he said patiently. “I am going on, with or without you. I will not stop you if you want to try the other way.”
Khasar nodded thoughtfully. For all his light tone, he knew the risks. “I’ll wait here and take the last thousand. If it leads nowhere, I’ll double back and join you in the night.”
They clasped hands briefly, then Kachiun and Taran moved off again, leaving Khasar there to hurry the others along.
Counting nine thousand slow-moving men took a lot longer than he had thought it would. When the last thousand came into sight, it was already growing dark. Khasar approached a stumbling warrior and took him by the shoulder, shouting over the wind.
“Come with me,” he said. Without waiting for a reply, he stepped onto the other path, sinking almost to his hips in fresh snow. The weary men behind him did not question the order, each one numb from misery and cold.
Without his brother to talk to, Kachiun spent many of the remaining hours of daylight in silence. Taran still led them, though he knew the path no better than any of the others. The way down was a little clearer on the far side of the mountains, and after a long time, the air seemed less thin. Kachiun realized he was not gasping quite so fiercely to fill his lungs, and though he was exhausted, he felt stronger and more alert. The storm died out in the darkness and they could see the stars for the first time in several days, bright and perfect through the drifting clouds.
The cold seemed to intensify as the night wore on, but they did not stop, eating dried meat from their pouches to give them strength. They had slept the first night on the slopes, each man digging a hole for himself as wolves did. Kachiun had managed to snatch only a few hours then, and he was desperately tired. Without knowing how close they were to the Chin army, he did not dare allow them to rest again.
The slope began to ease after a time. Pale birches mingled with black pines, growing so thick in places that they walked on dead leaves rather than snow. Kachiun found the sight of them comforting, proof that they were close to the end of their journey. Yet he did not know if they had made their way past the Chin soldiers, or still walked parallel to the Badger’s Mouth.
Taran too was suffering and Kachiun saw him windmill his arms at intervals. It was an old scout trick to force blood back into the fingertips so that they would not freeze and go black. Kachiun copied him and sent the word back down the line to do the same. The thought of the line of grim soldiers flapping like birds made him chuckle, despite the pain in every muscle.
The moon rose full and bright above the mountains, illuminating the tired column as they trudged onwards. The peak they had climbed was high above them, another world. Kachiun wondered how many of his men had fallen on the high passes, to be left behind like Vesak. He hoped the others had had the sense to take their quivers of arrows before the snow covered them. He should have remembered to give the order and muttered irritably to himself as he walked. Dawn was a long way off and he could only hope he would find his way to the Chin army before Genghis attacked. His thoughts drifted as he strode through the snow, fastening on Khasar for a moment, then on his children back in the encampment. At times, he dreamed just as if he were in a warm ger, and it was with a start that he surfaced to find himself still walking. Once, he fell and it was Taran who hurried back to help him up. They would not let the khan’s brother die on the side of the path, his quivers of arrows taken for the others. For that, at least, Kachiun was grateful.
He felt as if he had been walking forever when they passed out of the treeline and Taran fell into a crouch ahead. Kachiun copied the boy before creeping forward on protesting knees. Behind him, he heard muffled curses as his men bumped into each other in the moonlight, woken from their drifting trances by the sudden halt. Kachiun looked around him as he wormed his way forward. They were on a gentle slope, a valley of perfect whiteness that seemed to go on forever. On the far side, the mountains rose again in cliffs so sheer he doubted anyone would ever climb them. To his left, the pass of the Badger’s Mouth ended in a great flat area no more than a mile away. Kachiun’s vision seemed sharper than usual in the moonlight and he could see right across the emptiness, beautiful and deadly. A sea of tents and banners lay across the end of the pass. Smoke rose above them to join the mist from the peaks, and as Kachiun’s senses came alive, he could smell woodsmoke on the air.
He groaned to himself. The Chin had assembled an army so vast he could not see the end of them. The Badger’s Mouth gave way to flats of ice and snow, almost the bottom of a bowl of high peaks before the road that led to the emperor’s city. Yet the Chin soldiers filled it and spilled further and further back onto the plain beyond. The white mountains hid the full extent of them, but even so, they had more men than Kachiun had ever seen before. Genghis did not know how many and he would be riding slowly down the pass in just a few short hours.
With a sudden stab of fear, Kachiun wondered if his men could be seen from the camp. Chin scouts had to be patrolling the area. They would be fools not to, and there he was, with a line of warriors stretching back into the white fastness of the hills. They needed surprise and he had almost thrown it away. He clapped Taran on the back in thanks for the warning and the boy smiled in pleasure.
Kachiun made his plans, passing word down the line. The men behind would retreat far enough for dawn not to reveal them to sharp-eyed enemies. Kachiun looked up at the clear sky and wished for more snow to cover their tracks. Dawn was close and he hoped Khasar had made it to safety. Slowly, painfully, the line of warriors began moving back up the slope to the trees they had left behind. A memory came to Kachiun of his childhood as he climbed. He had hidden with his family in a cleft in the hills of home, with death and starvation always close. Once more he would hide, but this time he would come roaring out and Genghis would ride with him.
In silence he sent up a prayer to the sky father that Khasar too had survived and was not freezing to death on the high slopes, lost and alone. Kachiun grinned at the thought. His brother was not easy to stop. If anyone could make it out, it would be him.
Khasar whipped a hand back and forth over his throat, signaling for silence from the men behind him. The storm had died at last and he could see stars overhead, revealed through drifting clouds. The moon lit the sterile slopes and he found himself on a sharp edge over a sheer drop. His breath caught in his throat as he saw the black tower of one of the Chin forts below him, almost under his feet, but separated by a plunge into blackness over rocks so sharp that only a little snow had settled on them. Great drifts humped themselves around the fort where they had slid from the crags, and Khasar wondered if his men could make the final descent. The fort itself had been built on a ridge overlooking the pass, no doubt filled with weapons that would smash anyone coming through. They would not expect an attack from the cliffs at their back.
At least there was moonlight. He went back to where his men had begun to cluster. The wind had dropped to no more than a gentle moan, and he was able to whisper his order, beginning with a command for them to eat and rest while they passed their ropes forward. This last
thousand had come from the tuman of Kachiun, and Khasar did not know them, but the officers came forward and only nodded as they heard his orders. The word spread quickly and the first group of ten began tying ropes together, coiling them near the edge. They were cold and their hands were clumsy with the knots, making Khasar wonder if he was sending them all to their deaths.
“If you fall, remain silent,” he whispered to the first group. “Or your shout will wake the fort below us. You might even survive if you hit the deep snow.” One or two of them grinned at that, looking over the edge and shaking their heads.
“I will go first,” Khasar said. He removed his fur gloves, wincing at the cold as he took hold of the thick rope. He had climbed worse cliffs, he told himself, though never when he was this tired or cold. He forced a confident expression onto his face as he jerked on the line. The officers had tied it to the trunk of a fallen birch, and it seemed solid. Khasar backed to the edge and tried not to think of the drop behind him. No one could survive it, he was certain.
“No more than three men on a rope,” he said as he went over. He hung out as far as he could, beginning to walk down the icy rock. “Tie some more together or it will take all night to get down.” He was giving orders to conceal his own nervousness, forcing the cold face to hide his fear. They gathered around the edge to watch him until finally he was past the edge and clambering down. The closest men began tying more ropes together to allow a second descent, and one of them nodded to his friends and lay on his stomach to take hold of the quivering rope that held Khasar. He too vanished over the edge.
Genghis waited impatiently for dawn. He had sent scouts down the pass as far as they could go, so that some of them returned with crossbow bolts buried in their armor. The last of them had come back to the camp as the sun set, two bolts sticking out of his back. One had penetrated the overlapping iron and left a streak of blood that smeared his leg and his pony’s heaving flanks. Genghis heard his report before the man could have his wounds tended, needing the information.
The Chin general had left the pass open. Before the scout was driven back by a storm of bolts, he had seen two great forts looming over the strip of land below. Genghis did not doubt the soldiers in them were ready to pour death on anyone trying to force their way through. The fact that the pass had not been blocked worried him. It suggested the general wanted him to try a frontal assault and was confident the Mongol army could be funneled into his men and smashed where they were weakest.
At its opening, the pass was almost a mile wide, but under the forts, the rock walls narrowed to a pinch of no more than a few dozen paces. Even the thought of being hemmed in and unable to charge brought a sick feeling to Genghis’s stomach that he crushed as soon as he recognized it. He had done everything he could and his brothers would attack as soon as they could see well enough to aim. He could not call them back, even if he found a better plan in the last moments. They were lost to him, hidden by the mountains and the snow.
At least the storm had eased. Genghis looked up at the stars, whose light revealed the huddled mass of prisoners he had herded to the mouth of the pass. They would go ahead of his army, soaking up the bolts and arrows of the Chin. If the forts poured fire oil, the prisoners would take the brunt of it.
The air was frozen in the night, but he could not sleep and took deep breaths, feeling the chill reach into his lungs. Dawn was not far away. He thought through his plans once more, but there was nothing else to do. His men were well fed, better than they had been in months. Those he would lead into the pass were veteran warriors in good armor. He had formed the first ranks of men with lances, in part to aid them in herding the prisoners forward. Tsubodai’s Young Wolves would come behind him, then the warriors of Arslan and Jelme, twenty thousand who would not run, no matter how vicious the fighting.
Genghis drew his father’s sword, seeing the wolf’s-head hilt shine in the starlight. He lunged with it, grunting as he did so. The camp was silent around him, though there were always eyes watching. He put his body through a routine Arslan had taught him that stretched his muscles as well as strengthening them. The monk Yao Shu was teaching a similar discipline to his sons, hardening their bodies like any other tool. Genghis sweated as he whipped his sword through the sequences. He was not as lightning quick as he had once been, but he had grown in strength and sheer power and he was still supple, despite the scarring of so many old wounds.
He did not want to wait for dawn. He considered finding a woman, knowing it would help to burn off a little of his nervous energy. His first wife, Borte, would be sleeping in the ger, surrounded by his sons. His second wife was still nursing their baby daughter. He brightened at that thought, imagining her pale breasts heavy with milk.
He sheathed his sword as he strode through the camp to Chakahai’s ger, already aroused at the prospect. He chuckled to himself as he walked. A warm woman and a battle to come. To be alive on such a night was a wondrous thing.
In his tent, General Zhi Zhong sipped a cup of hot rice wine, unable to sleep. The winter had closed over the mountains and he thought he could well spend the coldest months in the field with his army. It was not such an unpleasant thought. He had eleven children with three wives in Yenking, and when he was at home, there was always something to distract him. He found the routines of camp life restful in comparison, perhaps because he had known them all his life. Even there in the darkness, he could hear the murmured passwords as the guards changed and he knew a sense of peace. Sleep had always come slowly for him and he knew it was part of his legend amongst the men that he sat up night after night, the lamps showing through the heavy cloth of the command tent. Sometimes he slept with the lamps still burning, so that the guards thought he needed no rest as they did. It did not hurt to encourage their awe, he believed. Men needed to be led by one who showed none of their weaknesses.
He thought of the vast army around him and the preparations he had made. His sword regiments and pikemen alone outnumbered the Mongol warriors. Simply feeding so many had stripped the storehouses of Yenking. The merchants could only wail in disbelief as he showed them the documents the emperor had signed. The memory made him smile. Those fat grain sellers thought they were the heart of the city. It had amused Zhi Zhong to remind them where true power lay. Without the army, their fine houses were worth nothing.
To keep two hundred thousand men fed all winter would beggar the farmers for a thousand miles east and south. Zhi Zhong shook his head at the thought, his mind too busy to consider trying for sleep. What choice did he have? No one fought in winter, but he could not leave the pass unguarded. Even the young emperor understood it could be months before battle was joined. When the Mongols came in spring, he would still be there. Zhi Zhong wondered idly if their khan had the same supply problems he had. He doubted it. The tribesmen probably ate each other and considered it a delicacy.
He shivered as the cold night seeped into his tent, pulling his blankets close around his massive shoulders. Nothing had been the same since the old emperor died. Zhi Zhong had given his loyalty utterly to the man, revering him. Truly, the world had been shaken when he died at last, taken in his sleep after a long illness. He shook his head, sadly. The son was not the father. For the general’s generation, there could only ever be one emperor. Seeing a young, untried boy on the throne of the empire ate at the foundations of his entire life. It was the end of an era and perhaps he should have retired with the old man’s death. That would have been a fitting and dignified response. Instead, he had hung on to see the new emperor established and then the Mongols had come. Retirement would not come for another year, at least.
Zhi Zhong grimaced as the cold worked its way into his bones. The Mongols did not feel cold, he recalled. They seemed able to stand it as a wild fox can, with nothing more than a single layer of fur over bare skin. They disgusted him. They built nothing, achieved nothing in their short lives. The old emperor had kept them in their place, but the world had moved on and now they dared to threaten the g
ates of the great city. He would not show mercy when the battle was over. Nor would he let his men run wild in their camps, lest the blood of the tribes survive in a thousand ill-born children. He would not let them breed like lice to threaten Yenking again. He would not rest until the last of them lay dead and the land was empty. He would burn them out, and in the future, if another race dared to rise against the Chin, perhaps they would remember the Mongols and slink away from their plots and ambitions. That was the only response they deserved. Perhaps that could be the legacy he left as he retired, a vengeance so bloody and final that it would echo through the centuries ahead. He would be the death of an entire nation. It would be immortality of a sort and the idea pleased him. His thoughts whirled as the camp slept. He decided to leave the lamps burning and wondered if he would get any sleep at all.
As the first light of dawn appeared behind the mountains, Genghis looked up at the clouds that wreathed the high peaks. The plains below were still in darkness and he felt his heart lift at the sight. The army of prisoners he would drive through the pass had fallen silent. His people had formed up behind his bondsmen, hands tapping on lances and bows as they waited for his order. Only a thousand would remain behind to protect the women and children in the camp. There was no danger. Any threat on the plains had already been met and crushed.
Genghis clenched his hands tight on the reins of a dark brown mare. At the first sign of dawn, the drummer boys had begun to beat out a rhythm that was the sound of war to his ears. A thousand of them waited in the ranks with the drums strapped to their chest. The noise they made echoed back from the mountains and made his pulse thump faster. His brothers were somewhere ahead, half frozen after their trek across the high trails. Beyond them lay the city that had spilled Chin seed among his people for a thousand years, bribing them and slaughtering them like a pack of dogs when they saw the need. He smiled to himself at the image, wondering what his son Jochi would make of it.
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