As he rode with his tumans, Mongke felt himself shedding the weight of the years. It was hard not to think of his trek with Tsubodai, facing Christian knights and battering foreign armies into submission. Tsubodai would have given fingers from his right hand for such an army as the one Mongke now commanded. Mongke had been young then and being back in the saddle with armed ranks before and behind was rejuvenating, an echo of his youth that filled him with joy. His horizons had been too small for too long. Chin lands lay to the south and he would see this new city Kublai had created on the good black soil. He would see Xanadu and decide for himself if Kublai had overstepped his authority. He could not imagine Hulegu ever turning away from the great khan, his brother, but Kublai had always been independent, a man who needed to know he was watched. Mongke could not shake the suspicion that he had better not leave Kublai too long alone.
Hulegu’s letter to him under personal seal had been the only sour moment in months of preparation. Mongke told himself he did not fear the Assassins his brother had stirred from their apathy, but what man would not? He knew he could hold his nerve in a battle, with everything going wrong around him. He could lead a charge and face men. His courage was a proven thing. Yet the thought of some masked murderer pressing a knife to his throat as he slept made him shudder. If there were Assassins dedicated to his death, he had surely left them behind for another year or two.
Arik-Boke had come to Karakorum to take over the administration while he was away. Mongke had made sure he too understood the risk, but his youngest brother had laughed, pointing to the guards and servants that scurried everywhere in the palace and the city. No one could get in unseen. It had eased Mongke’s mind to know his brother would be safe - and to leave the city behind him.
In just fourteen days, his tumans were in range of Xanadu, less than two hundred miles north of Yenking and the northern Chin lands. Half his army were barely twenty years old and they rode the distances easily, while Mongke suffered from lack of fitness. Only his pride kept him going when his muscles were ropes of pain, but the worst days came early and his body began to remember its old strength after nine or ten in the saddle.
Mongke shook his head in silent awe at the sight of a new city growing on the horizon. His brother had created something on the grand scale, turning fantasies into reality. Mongke found he was proud of Kublai and he wondered what changes he would see when they met again. He could not deny his own sense of satisfaction in bringing it about. He had sent Kublai into the world, forcing his younger brother to look beyond his dusty books. He knew Kublai was unlikely to be grateful, but that was the way of things.
They stopped in Xanadu long enough for Mongke to tour the city and work his way through the dozens of yam messages that had gone ahead or reached him while he travelled. He grumbled as he dealt with them, but there were few places he could ride where the yam riders couldn’t find him eventually. The khanates did not remain still simply because Mongke was in the field. On some days, he found himself working as hard as he had in Karakorum and enjoying it about as much.
He stripped Xanadu of food, salt and tea in the short time he was there. The inhabitants would go hungry for a while, but his was the greater need. So many tumans could not scavenge as they went. For the first time in his memory, Mongke had to keep a supply line open behind him, so that there were always hundreds of carts coming slowly south in the wake of his warriors. The supplies backed up while he rested in Xanadu, but when he left, they spread out again, paid for thousands of miles away in Karakorum and the northern Chin cities. Mongke grinned at the thought of his shadow stretching so far. Their food would catch them up whenever they stopped and he thought bandits were unlikely to risk raiding his carts, with the khan’s scouts never too far away.
He pushed the tumans south, revelling in the distances they could travel, faster than anyone but a yam rider able to change horses at every station. For the great khan, the tumans would ride to the end of the world without complaint. On minimum rations, he had already lost some of the flesh that clung to his waist and his stamina was increasing, adding to his sense of well-being.
Mongke crossed the northern Sung border on a cold autumn day, with the wind blustering along the lines of horsemen. Hangzhou lay five hundred miles to the south, but there were at least thirty cities between the tumans and the emperor’s capital, each well garrisoned. Mongke smiled as he rode, kicking in his heels and enjoying the rush of air past his face. He had given Kublai a simple task, but his brother could never have succeeded on his own. The twenty-eight tumans Mongke had brought would be the hammer that crushed the Sung emperor. It was an army greater than any Genghis had ever put in the field and as he galloped along a dusty road, Mongke felt his years in Karakorum slowly tear into dusty rags, leaving him fresh and unencumbered. For once, the yam riders were behind. Without the staging posts, they could make no better time than his own men and he felt truly free for the first time in years. He understood at last the truth of Genghis’ words. There was no better way to spend a life than this.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Kublai and Bayar sat with their backs against the same massive boulder of whitish grey stone. Uriang-Khadai watched them, his face unreadable. The twin of the huge stone loomed nearby, so that between them was a sheltered area that local sheep must have used every time it rained. The ground there was so thick with droppings that no grass showed at all and everyone who walked through it found their boots getting heavier and heavier as they went.
The sheep had gone, of course. Kublai’s tumans had rounded up eighty or so, and for some lucky warriors there would be hot meat that night. The rest would have to make do with blood from their spare mounts, along with a little mare’s milk or cheese, whatever they had.
Ponies grazed all around them, whickering and snorting as they cropped grass that grew in clumps so thick that it made progress slow over the hills. They could not even trot on such an uneven surface. The horses had to be walked slowly, their heads drooping with weariness.
‘We could circle back to the last site,’ Bayar said. ‘They won’t expect that and we need those arrows.’
Uriang-Khadai nodded wearily. Though he had gone with Tsubodai into the west, he had never known such a constant run of battles before. There had been a time when he had scorned reports of swarming Sung cities, but the reality was every bit as bad as he had been told. Kublai’s tumans had run out of gunpowder, shot and arrows, the sheer numbers of the enemy overwhelming them. Uriang-Khadai could still hardly believe they had been forced to retreat, but he had lost track of the armies they had beaten, and the one struggling to reach them was fresh and well armed. The tumans were down to swords for the most part, with even their lances broken and thrown away. Faced with new regiments racing towards them, Kublai had withdrawn at speed, seeking out the high ground.
‘Are they still there?’ Kublai asked.
Bayar stood up with a groan on aching legs, peering past the boulder. Below, he could see Sung regiments in ragged squares, seeming to inch their way up the slopes of the mountain.
‘Still coming,’ Bayar said, slumping back. Kublai swore, though it was no more than he had expected. ‘We can’t fight on this ground, you know that?’
‘I know, but we can stay ahead of them,’ Kublai said. ‘We’ll find a way out of the hills and when it’s dark, we’ll ride clear of them. They won’t catch up, not today anyway.’
‘I don’t like leaving the main camp unprotected for this long,’ Uriang-Khadai said. ‘If one of those armies comes across them, they’ll be slaughtered.’
Kublai tensed his jaw, irritated at Uriang-Khadai for reminding him. Chabi and Zhenjin were safe, he told himself again. His scouts had found a forest that stretched for hundreds of miles. The families and camp followers would have headed for the deepest part of it, as far from a road as they could get. Yet it only took one enemy tracker to spot smoke from a fire or hear the bleating of the herds. They would fight, of course. Chabi’s calm courage made his ch
est grow tight in memory, but he agreed with Uriang-Khadai about the outcome. A small voice within him worried as much about the stocks of arrows held in the camp. Without them, his tumans were a wolf whose teeth had been drawn.
‘You find me a way to make this Sung bastard vanish and I’ll ride back and see how they are getting on,’ Kublai said irritably. ‘Until then, we’ll just stay ahead of them and hope we aren’t riding into the arms of another noble out hunting for us.’
‘I would like to send a small, fast group for arrows,’ Uriang-Khadai said. ‘Even a few thousand shafts would make a difference at this point. Twenty scouts riding fast should be able to get past the Sung forces.’
Kublai multiplied numbers in his head and blew air out slowly. He didn’t doubt his scouts could survive the ride out, but coming back, with a quiver under each arm, one on their back, two tied to the saddle? They would be defenceless, easy prey for the first Sung cavalry to spot them. He needed more than two thousand arrows. He needed half a million at a minimum. The best stocks of fletched birch shafts lay on battle-fields for fifty miles behind them, already warping from damp and exposure. It was infuriating. He had prided himself on his organisation, but the Sung armies had just kept coming, giving his men no time to rest.
‘We need to find another city, one with an imperial barracks,’ he said. ‘They have what we need. Where are the maps?’
Bayar reached inside his tunic and pulled out a sweat-stained sheet of goatskin, dark yellow and folded many times, so that whitish lines showed as he opened it out. There were dozens of cities shown on the map, marked in characters painted by some long-dead scribe. Bayar pointed to one that lay beyond the range of mountains where the tumans sprawled in exhaustion.
‘Shaoyang,’ he said, jabbing a finger at it. Sweat dripped as he leaned over, so that dark spots appeared on the material. With a curse, he wiped his face with both hands.
‘That’s clear then,’ Kublai said. ‘We need to reach this city, overcome their garrison and somehow get to their stores of weaponry before the army behind catches up, or the population turns out and finishes us.’ He laughed bitterly to himself.
Uriang-Khadai spoke as Kublai leaned back. ‘There is a chance the garrison is already out,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘For all we know, we may have already beaten them. Or they could be out looking for us, like every other Sung soldier in the region.’
Kublai sat up, struggling to think through his exhaustion.
‘If they’re in place, we could draw them away. If we sent a few men into the markets with information to sell, maybe. Rumours of a Mongol army fifty miles in the wrong direction would surely bring the garrison out. We know by now there are standing orders to attack us on sight. They could not remain in the city with the right bait.’
‘If they are there at all,’ Uriang-Khadai agreed.
‘If they ignore the news, we will be waiting to enter a hostile city, with another army coming up fast behind us,’ Bayar pointed out. He was surprised to be the one urging caution, but Uriang-Khadai seemed to be caught up in the idea.
Kublai stood up, stretching his aching legs and looking down the mountain to the Sung regiments plodding after them. The ground was so broken with its clumps and hillocks of grass that they could not move any faster than those they chased. He could be thankful for that at least. He felt his head clear with the movement and gave a low whistle to the closest minghaan officers, jerking his head in the direction of travel. It was time to move on again.
‘You know I’d love to get into their stores,’ he said, ‘but even if the garrison is already out, the prefect of the city won’t let us just walk in and take what we need.’
‘The citizens of Shaoyang won’t know how the war is going,’ Uriang-Khadai said. ‘If you gave them the chance, he might surrender to you.’
Kublai looked closely for some sign of mockery, but Uriang-Khadai’s face was like stone. Kublai grinned for a moment.
‘He might,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll think about it as we go. Come on, the ones following are getting too close. What do you say to a fast ten miles over the peak to put some distance between us?’
All those who heard made some groaning noise at the prospect, but they lurched to their feet. With the ground so broken, it was all they could do to stop the Sung regiments below snapping at their heels.
Mongke hated sieges, but without a massive force of catapults and cannon, he faced the same problems Genghis had once known. Cities were designed to keep out marauding armies such as his, though for once they were not his main objective. Somewhere to the south, Kublai was engaging the Sung armies. Mongke would have liked to smash down the walls of the cities he passed, but his primary aim was to reach Kublai. It suited his purposes well enough if every city barred its gates against him - and the garrisons stayed safely inside. His problem lay in the supply line, which grew more and more vulnerable with every mile he rode south. Cities who hid from a quarter of a million warriors would not mind sallying out against a long line of carts, guarded by just a few thousand. When the line broke somewhere behind him, he had been forced to reduce the rations. He had sent scouts out for well over a hundred miles to report any herds he might snap up. It was one resource the Sung cities could not protect behind their walls, and as he entered a region of rich grassland Mongke saw so many cattle that his supply lines became unnecessary. For a glorious few days, his men feasted on charred beef still dripping with blood, putting back some of the body fat they had lost in hard riding. In its way, the problems of a campaign were equal to anything Mongke had dealt with in Karakorum, but he took more satisfaction in simple obstacles he could face and overcome.
As he went on, Mongke noted the cities he would return to when he had finished sweeping through the south with Kublai. He looked forward to seeing his brother more and more, imagining Kublai’s face when he saw the host Mongke had brought to support him.
Towns were easy prey compared to the great cities. Mongke’s tumans could fell trees and leave stubs of branches in just a morning, using them as rough ladders to climb lesser walls. Yet even then, Mongke had let hundreds of towns survive intact while his tumans swept on. They would keep until his return.
A little more than a month had passed since entering Sung lands when his outlying scouts reported a huge Sung army marching south with banners flying. The news spread through the tumans as fast as Mongke heard it himself, so they were ready to move when he raced to his horse. No infantry alive could stay ahead of them for long and his tumans were eager to fight.
His twenty-eight tumans followed the scout’s directions at full speed, sighting the enemy at evening three days later. Mongke was pleased to see they were less than half the size of his force. For once his generals would not have to think their way around an army that outnumbered them. It had always been his plan to bring a bigger hammer to the Sung than anyone had managed before. The Sung emperors had survived Genghis, Ogedai and Guyuk. They would not survive his own khanate.
As night fell, the tumans herded their spare mounts behind them. If the enemy attacked in the dark, the animals were likely to panic and stampede, or at the least get in the way of a counter-charge. They chewed sticks of dried beef to a soft mush and washed it down with airag or water, whichever they had to hand. The warriors wrapped reins around their boots and lay down on the damp grass to sleep. Every man there knew they would be off before dawn and fighting at first light.
As the camp settled, Mongke’s servants created a ger for him, taking the felt and spars from half a dozen packs. While they worked in the moonlight, he lay out a thin blanket and knelt on it, pulling his deel robe closer over his armour to keep him warm. He could see his breath as mist and he slowed his heart, letting the cares of the day ease from him. With the stars achingly clear overhead, he spent a moment praying to the sky father for the battle to go well, for Kublai to be safe, for the nation to prosper. Even in his private prayers, he thought as a khan.
He did not want to enter the ger they had prepar
ed for him. Sleep was very far away and he felt strong and at peace. The dew had frozen on the grass so that he could hear every whispering footstep from his guards as they walked their shift. Mongke was surrounded by his people. He could hear them snoring, calling out in their sleep and mumbling to themselves. He chuckled as he stretched out on the blanket, deciding to spend the night under the stars like the rest of the warriors.
He woke in silence, with his head hidden in the crook of his arm. The cold ground seemed to have reached into him so that he could hardly move for stiffness. He felt his neck crunch as he sat up and rubbed his hands over his face. A shadow moved nearby and Mongke’s right hand darted for his sword in the scabbard, half-drawing the blade before he realised whoever it was held out a bowl of tea to him.
He smiled ruefully at his own nerves. The camp was coming to life around him, though dawn was still some way off. Horses suckled waterskins held high for them, though they would have found moisture in the frozen dew. There was movement everywhere and Mongke sipped his tea, letting the anticipation grow within him. He could not leave anyone alive from the Sung force marching ahead of his tumans. As tempting as it was to spread terror with a few survivors, he needed to use the speed he could bring to the battlefield. His task was to push the men and animals to their limits, crushing a vast track south and running ahead of the news until he had Hangzhou in sight. The Sung would have no time to entrench and prepare for him. Kublai had cannon, two hundred good iron weapons. Mongke would use those to smash down the emperor’s city.
He rose to his feet and stretched, wondering at the strange mood that had led him to sleep on the frozen grass. There was still frost in his hair and he rubbed at the strands with one hand while he finished the tea. He could feel the salt and heat hit his empty stomach and he sighed at the thought of cold meat to break his fast.
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