Conqueror (2011)

by Conn Iggulden

  His horse was made ready by servants, already fed and watered with its coat brushed to a gleam. Mongke walked over to inspect the animal’s hooves, though it was just old habit. Some of the men were already mounted and waiting, sitting idly in the saddle and talking to their friends around them. Mongke accepted a thick wedge of stale bread and cold lamb, with a skin of airag to wash it down his throat.

  ‘Do you want to discuss tactics, my lord khan, or shall we just ride right over them?’

  His orlok, Seriankh, was smiling as he spoke. Mongke chuckled through a mouthful. He looked up at the brightening sky and breathed deeply.

  ‘It will be a fine morning, Seriankh. Tell me what you have in mind.’

  As befitted a senior officer, Seriankh responded without hesitation, long used to making quick decisions.

  ‘We’ll ride their flanks at the limit of their arrow range. I don’t want to surround them and make them dig in. With your permission, I’ll make a three-sided box and match their pace. The Sung cavalry will try to break out and stay mobile, so we’ll take them first with lances. For the infantry, we can cut them from behind, working our way up to the front.’

  Mongke nodded. ‘That will do. Use the bows first, before the young men go in hand-to-hand. Keep the hotheads back until the enemy is reeling. There aren’t so many of them. We should be finished with this by noon.’

  Seriankh smiled at that. It was not so long ago that a force of a hundred thousand would have been a battle to the last man, a bloody and desperate struggle. The force of tumans Mongke had brought had never been seen before and all the senior men were enjoying themselves with such strength at their backs.

  Somewhere nearby, Mongke heard a jingle of saddle bells and he cursed softly. Another yam rider had caught up. Without the way stations to change his horse, he would have ridden to exhaustion to bring his letters.

  ‘I am never left alone,’ Mongke muttered.

  Seriankh heard.

  ‘I could lose a yam rider at the rear until the battle is over,’ he said.

  Mongke shook his head. ‘No. The khan never sleeps, apparently. Isn’t that what they say? I know I sleep, so it is a mystery to me. Form the ranks, orlok. Command is yours.’

  Seriankh bowed deeply and strode away, already issuing orders to his staff that would ripple down to every warrior in the tumans.

  The yam rider was so caked in dust and mud as to appear almost one with his horse. As he dismounted, fresh cracks appeared in the muck that covered him. He wore only a small leather pack across his shoulders and he was very thin. Mongke wondered when the man had last eaten, without yam stations to keep him going in Sung lands. There would have been little or nothing to scavenge in the wake of the tumans, that much was certain.

  Two of the khan’s guards approached the rider. He looked surprised, but stood with his arms outstretched and his palms visible as they searched him thoroughly. Even the leather pack was opened, its sheaf of yellow papers handed to the rider before it was tossed down. He rolled his eyes at such caution, clearly amused. At last they were finished and turned away to mount with the rest. Mongke waited patiently, his hand outstretched for the messages.

  The yam rider was older than most, he saw, perhaps approaching the end of his career. He did indeed look exhausted through the grime of hard riding. Mongke took the sheaf from him and began to read, his brow creasing in puzzlement.

  ‘These are stock lists from Xanadu,’ he said. ‘Have you brought me the wrong pack?’

  The rider stepped closer, peering at the pages. He reached for them and Mongke didn’t see the thin razor he had kept concealed between his outstretched fingers. It was no wider than a finger itself, so that just the very edge of it glinted as he drew it sharply across Mongke’s throat, forward then back. The flesh opened like a seam under tension, a white-lipped mouth that spattered them both with blood.

  Mongke choked and raised his right hand to the wound. With his left, he shoved the man away so he fell sprawling. Shouts of rage and horror went up and a warrior threw himself from the saddle at the khan’s attacker as he tried to scramble up, pinning him to the ground.

  Mongke felt the warmth pouring out of him, leaving his flesh like stone. He stood, his legs locked and braced against the earth. His fingers could not hold the wound closed and his eyes were desperate. Men were shouting everywhere, racing back and forth and calling for Seriankh and the khan’s shaman. He could see their open mouths, but Mongke could not hear them, just a drum pulsing in his ears and a rushing sound like water. He eased himself down to a sitting position, showing his teeth as the pain grew. He was aware of someone binding a strip of cloth around his neck and hand, pressing hard on the wound so that he could not breathe. He tried to fight them off, but his great strength had deserted him. His vision began to constrict and he still could not believe it was truly happening. Someone would stop it. Someone would help him. His skin grew pale as blood left him in a pulsing stream. He sagged to one side, his eyes growing dull.

  Seriankh stood over him, his eyes wide with shock. He had spoken to the khan only moments before and he stared in disbelief at the twisted figure with the right hand bound into bloody bandages tied tightly around the throat. Blood was sinking into the grass, making it black and wet.

  Seriankh turned slowly to see the yam rider. His face had been smashed in by fists while Mongke died. His teeth and nose were broken and one of his eyes had been speared by a thumb. Even so, he laughed at Seriankh and spoke in a language the orlok did not know, his slurred speech sounding triumphant. His cheeks were pale under the dirt, Seriankh saw, as if he had shaved a beard and revealed skin long hidden from the sun. The Assassin was still laughing as Seriankh had him bound for torture. The Sung army was forgotten as Seriankh ordered braziers and iron tools made ready. The Mongols understood both suffering and punishment. They would keep him alive as long as they could.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Kublai stared as he trotted along the road to Shaoyang. The city was deep into the Sung heartland and he suspected it had not been attacked in centuries. Instead of a solid outer wall, it sprawled over square miles, a central hub surrounded by smaller towns that had grown together over centuries. It made Xanadu look like a provincial town and even Karakorum would have been lost in it. He tried to make an estimate of the numbers of people who must live in such a vast landscape of buildings, shops and temples, but it was too much to take in.

  His tumans were drooping with exhaustion, having forced themselves to trot and walk, trot and walk for seventy miles or more, leaving their pursuers as far behind as possible. He had sent light scouts to the city, but he doubted they were more than a day ahead of him, such was the pace he had set. Both his men and their mounts were close to collapse. They needed a month of rest, good food and grazing before they went back to the fighting, but they would not find it in Shaoyang, with enemies all around.

  As the first of the tumans walked their horses into an open street, there was no sign of the inhabitants. Such a place could not be defended and he could only wonder at a society where walls had been torn down to build new districts. It was hard even to imagine such a settled life.

  There was no sign of a garrison riding out to meet them. Kublai’s scouts had already questioned the inhabitants, alternating between bribery and threats. He had been lucky, but after months of hard fighting, he was due a little luck. The garrison was apparently in the field, ten thousand of the Sung emperor’s finest sword and crossbowmen. Kublai wished them a long hunt, many, many miles away.

  He heard Uriang-Khadai give a horn signal that sent two groups of three tumans on wider paths to the centre of the city, so that they would not all approach along the same road. Kublai supposed Shaoyang had a centre, that its oldest places would have been swallowed in the rambling districts. He did not enjoy riding along streets where the roofs loomed over him. It was too easy to imagine archers appearing suddenly, shooting down into men who had little room to manoeuvre. Once again, he was glad of
the armour Mongke had made him wear.

  Shaoyang seemed deserted, but Kublai felt eyes on him in the silence and he could see the closest officers were nervous, jerking their heads at the slightest hint of movement. They almost drew swords when a high voice sounded nearby, but it was just a child crying behind closed doors.

  The tumans who rode with Kublai carried his banners, hanging limp in the windless roads. He was marked by them as leader for anyone who might have been watching and he felt his heart beating faster, convincing himself in the silence that it was a trap. As he passed each side street, he tensed, craning his neck to see down it, past the stone gutters and roadways to shuttered shops and tall stone buildings, sometimes three or four storeys high. No one came rushing out to drag his men from their horses. When he heard hooves clattering ahead, he assumed the sound came from some of his own men. He had single warriors out as scouts, but the streets were a labyrinth and there was no sign of them as he saw a small group of horsemen ahead.

  The strangers were not armoured. They wore simple leggings and tunics and two of them were bare-armed, guiding their horses easily. Kublai took in the details as he looked around him once again for an ambush. The roofs remained clear and nothing moved. The Sung horsemen just sat and stared at them, then one of them spoke to the others and they began to walk their mounts slowly forward.

  Around Kublai, swords came out of scabbards with a silk whisper. Bows creaked as they were made ready. The strangers moved stiffly under that close attention, very aware that the street could become their place of death with just one wrong step.

  ‘Let them come,’ Kublai murmured to those near him. ‘I can’t see any weapons.’

  The tension grew as the small group closed on the line of Mongol warriors. One of the Sung men sought out Kublai in the ranks, assuming his identity from the bannermen on both sides of him. As if he had heard Kublai’s voice, he raised his arms very slowly and twisted in the saddle, first one way and then the next so they could see there was nothing on his back.

  ‘Ease off,’ Kublai said to the warriors.

  Arms grew tired holding drawn bows; fingers could slip. He did not want the man killed when he had gone to so much trouble to speak to him. Around Kublai, bows and swords lowered reluctantly and the Sung men began to breathe again.

  ‘That’s near enough,’ Kublai said when they were just a dozen paces away.

  The Sung group looked to the one who had ridden closest. His bare arms were heavy with muscle though his cropped hair was white and his face was deeply seamed.

  ‘My name is Liu Yin-San,’ the man said. ‘I am prefect of Shaoyang. I am the one who met your scouts.’

  ‘Then you are the one who will surrender Shaoyang to me,’ Kublai replied.

  To his surprise, Liu Yin-San shook his head, as if he were not facing thousands of armed men stretching from that point to the outer towns of the city. Kublai had a sudden vision of a knife plunged into Shaoyang, with himself at the head. No, three knives, with Bayar and Uriang-Khadai. At the edges behind him, there would be warriors who had yet to enter, waiting impatiently for news from the front.

  ‘I have come unarmed to say I cannot,’ Liu Yin-San said. ‘The emperor has given orders to all his cities. If I surrender to you, Shaoyang will be burnt as a lesson to the others.’

  ‘You have met this emperor?’ Kublai asked.

  ‘He has not visited Shaoyang,’ Liu Yin-San replied.

  ‘Then how does he command your loyalty?’

  The man frowned, wondering if he could explain the concept of fealty to men he had been told were little better than wild animals. He took hope from the fact that Kublai spoke in perfect Mandarin to him, the language and dialect of the Chin noble classes.

  ‘I took an oath when I was made prefect of the city,’ he said. ‘My orders are clear. I cannot give you what you want.’

  The man was sweating and Kublai saw his dilemma clearly. If he surrendered, the city would be destroyed by a furious master. If he resisted, he expected Shaoyang to suffer the same fate from the tumans. Kublai wondered if Liu Yin-San had a solution, or whether he had ridden towards them expecting to be cut down.

  ‘If I became the emperor, would your oath of loyalty extend to me?’ he asked.

  Liu Yin-San sat very still as he considered it.

  ‘It is possible. But, my lord … you are not my emperor.’

  He tensed as he spoke, aware that his life hung in the balance. Kublai fought not to smile at his reaction. The prefect would have made different decisions if he’d known a Sung army was marching towards the city as they spoke. Kublai would not allow himself to be trapped in Shaoyang. He glanced up at the sun and thought he would have to ride clear soon.

  ‘You leave me with few choices, Liu Yin-San,’ he said. The man paled slightly, understanding his own death in the words. Kublai went on before he could reply. ‘I did not intend to stop in Shaoyang. I have other battles. From you, I merely needed supplies for my men, but if you will not surrender the city, you force me to give this order.’

  Kublai turned in the saddle and raised his hand. Once more his men drew swords and raised their bows.

  ‘Wait!’ Liu Yin-San called, his voice strained. ‘I can …’ He hesitated, making some inner decision. ‘I cannot lead you to the barracks that lie less than a mile down this very road.’

  Kublai turned slowly back to him, raising an eyebrow in silent question.

  ‘I will not surrender Shaoyang,’ Liu Yin-San said. Sweat was pouring from him, Kublai noticed. ‘I will order my people to barricade themselves in their homes. I will pray that the storm passes the city without bloodshed, that you take whatever you need and leave.’

  Kublai smiled. ‘That would be a wise decision, prefect. Ride home past the barracks and be sure to fight if you are attacked. I do not think you will be, not today.’

  Liu Yin-San’s hands were trembling as he turned his horse and began to walk it away. His men were driven before the Mongol army so that they rode awkwardly, expecting arrows in their backs at any moment. Kublai grinned, but he followed closely, taking his column in further until they reached the barracks of the city garrison. An open square eased some of the tension in the Mongol warriors. At the edges, double-storey buildings stretched, enough to house thousands of men.

  Liu Yin-San halted then and Kublai could see the prefect was still expecting to be cut down.

  ‘There will come a time,’ Kublai said, ‘when I stand again before you and ask you to surrender Shaoyang. You will not refuse me then. Now go home. No one will die today.’

  Liu Yin-San left with his small group, many of them looking back over and over as they dwindled into the distance, finally vanishing into the streets of the city. No one else was in sight, Kublai realised. The people of Shaoyang had indeed hidden themselves behind locked doors rather than face the invader.

  His men began throwing open the buildings of the Shaoyang garrison, revealing vast stables, armouries, dormitories and kitchens. One of them put his fingers to his mouth and whistled sharply, drawing Kublai’s attention. He walked his horse over the training ground and saw Uriang-Khadai’s column enter the other side as he went. Kublai turned to the scouts that were always at his side.

  ‘One of you run to the orlok and tell him to report to me. Another to general Bayar, wherever he has gone to.’

  They galloped away over the stones, a pleasant clattering that echoed back from the buildings around the open space. Kublai dismounted and walked into a long hall that had him grinning in the first few steps. He could see pikes by the thousand in racks, then as he walked further, he found shields stacked against each other in wooden frames. He walked past bows that could not match the range of his own. Rooms opened onto rooms and by the time Uriang-Khadai had reached the outer ones, Kublai was standing in a fletchers’ hall, with the smell of glue and wood and feather strong in the air. Dozens of benches showed where men worked each day and the results could be seen in the stacks of perfect quivers on every side.
He pulled out a shaft and inspected it, rubbing the flights with his thumb. The Sung regiments were served by master craftsmen.

  Kublai removed his bow from its loop over his back and strung it with quick movements. He heard someone enter behind him and he turned to see Uriang-Khadai standing with a rare expression of satisfaction on his face. Kublai nodded to him and drew the bow, sending an arrow at the far wall. It punched through the wood and vanished beyond it, leaving a visible spot of light as the flights fell to the wooden floor. For the first time in days, Kublai felt his weariness lift.

  ‘Have your men gather them up quickly, Uriang-Khadai. Get the scouts out looking for a place where we can sleep and eat, somewhere clear of the city. Tomorrow is soon enough to begin fighting our way clear.’

  Kublai smiled as he looked around the hall. Someone would have to work it out, but there had to be a million shafts in new quivers, perhaps even more.

  ‘We have teeth again, orlok. Let’s use them.’

  Xuan, Son of Heaven, had never seen the Sung at war. The sheer scale of it was impressive, but he thought the pace was dangerously slow. It had taken them a month to escort him to a meeting of Sung lords in the city. More than a hundred had been in attendance, placed according to their ranks in tiered seating, so that the most powerful had positions on the actual debating floor and the least were leaning over the upper balconies to listen. They had fallen silent as he’d walked in, flanked by Sung officials.

  His initial impression had been of a mass of colour, staring eyes and stiff robes of green and red and orange. There were as many different styles as men in the room. Some wore simple tunics beaded in pearls, while others sweltered in high collars and headgear decorated with anything from peacock feathers to enormous jewels. A few of the younger ones looked like warriors, but many more resembled ornate birds, hardly able to move for the layers of silk and finery.

  Xuan’s presence had flustered servants with no clear instructions. In terms of his nobility, he outranked all the men in the room, but he was the nominal ruler of a foreign nation and commanded a tiny force of ageing soldiers. The servants had found him a place on the lower floor, but towards the back, a typical compromise.