The Mongoliad: Book Three tfs-3

by Neal Stephenson

  “I know where it is,” Zug growled. “But my naginata is stored over there.” He pointed. “I want my skullmaker.”

  Tegusgal’s leg was slick with blood, and some of it dripped off the heel of his boot, spattering Hans’s hair. Hans hooked one hand around Tegusgal’s boot, and flailed with his feet, trying to get purchase on the stakes in the wall. Tegusgal shouted, jerking his leg, and as Hans felt the dagger slip, he swung he swung himself to the right, throwing his hand out to grab at Tegusgal’s other foot.

  He hung there for a moment, suspended between both of Tegusgal’s legs. The dagger tumbled past his face, falling out of Tegusgal’s leg, and he watched it bounce off the dusty ground. His hands were sweaty, slowly slipping off Tegusgal’s boots, and the blood from the dagger wound was making his grip even more tenuous. He wiggled his legs, trying to reach the spikes in the wall, and Tegusgal made a different sound-a scream of panic rather than rage-as he let go of the wall.

  They both landed hard on the packed dirt at the base of the wall, and the breath was knocked out of Hans. His hip hurt from where Tegusgal had landed on him, and he tried to extricate himself from beneath the Mongol captain. His right shoulder ached, and when he tried to use his arm, his wrist complained.

  Tegusgal groaned, responding sluggishly. He sensed Hans moving beneath him, and he tried to stop the young boy from escaping, but his grip was weak.

  Hans spotted Maks’s dagger and twisted his body in order to reach it. His fingers could almost touch the bloody blade when Tegusgal grabbed his leg with much more conviction this time and held him tight.

  “You-” Tegusgal snarled, but his words were cut off when Hans kicked him in the face. He fought back, managing to get a grip on Hans’s pant leg and, from there, gain control of the boy’s flailing leg. He grinned, blood running from his nose.

  Hans grinned back. All of this struggling had allowed him to grab Maks’s dagger. He sat up and thrust the dagger with all his strength at Tegusgal’s face.

  The Mongol tried to cover his head with his arms, twisting out of the way, and Hans missed Tegusgal’s head. The dagger slid into the gap at the top of Tegusgal’s armor, hitting the soft flesh beneath. Tegusgal shrieked and let go of Hans’s legs. This time, Hans scooted back on his rump as quickly as he could, putting some distance between him and the wounded Mongol captain.

  Shivering with pain, Tegusgal yanked the dagger out of his neck, and a squirt of blood spattered across the dirt. Gritting his teeth, the Mongol captain started to push himself upright. “I am going to kill you slowly,” he coughed. On his knees, he fumbled for his sword, his fingers slipping off the hilt. He tried again, getting it half drawn, when a rock bounced off his chest.

  He stared at it stupidly, wondering where it had come from. Hans glanced over his shoulder and saw a flash of movement in the rubble behind him. The Rats, he realized giddily.

  Tegusgal shook off his confusion and finished drawing his sword. A second rock struck him in the face, and he shouted in pain, his attention finally going to the wreckage behind Hans. More missiles followed, most of them not much bigger than a bird’s egg, but many of them were thrown with precision, battering Tegusgal.

  Hans’s Rats-the cadre of boys who had carried messages time and again into the Mongol compound-were shouting now as they threw rocks at the Mongol captain. Jeering and taunting. Fighting back.

  Tegusgal raised his sword, trying to protect his face with the blade, and several stones rang off the blade. He was still trying to get to his feet, though Hans could sense that his intent was now to flee.

  Hans scrambled for the dagger.

  A particularly well-thrown rock caught Tegusgal in the center of the forehead, and the Mongol captain swayed, momentarily stunned.

  The fusillade of rocks subsided as the Rats paused to check their handiwork. Tegusgal shook his head, spattering blood, and then he grinned at the urchins watching him from the wreckage. His face was dark with cuts and bruises, and his teeth were stained red. He wasn’t beaten. Not yet.

  Hans found himself thinking about Andreas, and he didn’t hesitate. He jumped at the Mongol commander, stabbing with the dagger.

  Tegusgal’s mouth changed shape, and his eyes got big.

  Styg and Eilif had not been able to follow the conversation between the three escaped prisoners, but after a moment of firm hand gestures, the stern-looking one simply shrugged and started walking. Away from the fluttering flags they could see over the tops of the tents.

  “He’s not going toward the Khan’s tent,” Styg said.

  “Does it matter?” Eilif asked, clapping him on the arm.

  The camp was in an uproar, not because the prisoners had been freed but because Rutger and the other Shield-Brethren had commenced their assault on the gate. As Styg hesitated, listening to the sound of battle, he heard horses as well. The reinforcements had arrived.

  “Come on,” Eilif said. “We’re going to lose them.”

  Styg jogged after Eilif and the escaped prisoners. He didn’t know where they were going, but he trusted they were going to end up at the Khan’s tent.

  Don’t stop, Rutger had instructed all of the Shield-Brethren shortly before Styg and Eilif had split off on their special mission. Kill every Mongol you meet. That is the only order you must remember. Kill them all.

  It really didn’t matter how he got there, did it?

  A group of panicked slave girls came running around the corner of a tent, and Styg darted to his right to avoid them. For a moment, he lost sight of the others, and when he was trying to spot them again, he caught of a quartet of Mongols trying to control a towering figure with dark skin and thick black hair.

  The man was the largest human Styg had ever seen in his life, and the Mongols were trying to tie him to a post, but the man’s massive arms were like tree trunks and he was not cooperating readily. One of the Mongols was trying to lash his hands together while the others jabbed him with their spears. Each time he resisted the spears would prick him, though none so deeply as to do more than make him hesitate.

  Styg glanced around for the others one last time, and then changed course.

  The first Mongol never saw Styg coming. Styg’s blade cut his spine, and he collapsed immediately. The second turned in time to catch Styg’s pommel on the side of the head. One of the remaining Mongols swung his spear sideways, and Styg blocked the shaft easily with his sword, but the man yanked the spear back as soon as there was contact and darted the spear point back again, on the inside of Styg’s guard!

  Styg slapped his left hand around his blade and yanked his sword toward him as he twisted his body away. He felt the spear point catch on his maille as it trailed across his side. Off balance, his sword half caught between his body and the spear, Styg realized there was no easy way to extricate himself from this situation without giving the man an opening. He simply let go of his sword and grabbed the Mongol’s spear with both hands.

  The Mongol warrior stared at him, dumbfounded at Styg’s foolishness, and then he remembered what he and his companions had been doing before Styg’s interruption. His eyes widened as he struggled to yank his spear out of Styg’s grip, and after a second he let go of the spear and tried to pull his sword out of its scabbard, but he was too late.

  The Mongol was suddenly-and very violently-smashed to the ground by the body of the fourth Mongol.

  In the frenzied moment, everyone had forgotten the muscular giant. He had yanked on the ropes the fourth Mongol clung to, and before the hapless soul could disentangle himself, the giant had swung him like a club into the other still standing Mongol.

  With a wordless yell, the giant advanced on the two sprawling men, and Styg got out of the way as he grabbed up a fallen spear and drove it through the chest of one man, through the leg of the other, and finally lodging the point deep in the ground. The Mongols struggled, pinned by the spear, and with a bellow of rage that Styg could swear shook the ground, the behemoth kicked each of the downed men in the head. The second on
e’s neck snapped at a horrific angle with a cracking nose that made Styg wince in sympathetic agony.

  The immense man turned toward them, and Styg stared, open mouthed, up at the towering man. The giant stared at the Styg, chest heaving, eyes shining with murderous fire. He touched his hands to his chest, said one word-Madhukar-and held out his hands, still bound with rope.

  “I think you and I share the same enemy,” he said. He grinned as he cut the man’s bonds with his bloody sword.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  The Cave of the Great Bear

  Ogedei could not remember the last time he had been awake before anyone else. In Karakorum, the servants knew to let him sleep as late as he desired, though invariably Chucai would send a frightened messenger with some poorly veiled excuse of a crisis that demanded his attention. Some days, the desire for drink woke him; he had either drunk too little or too much the night before, and the spirits that lived in the wine would tug him away from sleep. His mouth would be dry, and they would whisper incessantly in his ear about how easy it would be to rinse out the dust with a mouthful of wine. During the long journey to Burqan-qaldun, he would wake to the sound of the camp preparing for another day: wood being chopped, meals being prepared, ger being disassembled, pack animals being loaded again.

  It had been many years since he had slept away from the constant commotion of civilization, and many years before that since he had slept outside with only a sleeping roll between him and the ground. It was not surprising, in that case, that he had slept poorly.

  It had been the constant mention of his father that had put him in a foul mood as he had laid down to sleep the previous night. He had stared up at the stars for a long time, lost in thought, as more and more of the men around him surrendered to their dreams.

  All spoke of Genghis Khan as if they knew him, as if they were anything more than lap dogs and lackeys to him, but none of them knew the Great Khan as well as he did. And he would never confess to them that the man had been an enigma to him.

  He never understood why Genghis had chosen him over his brothers to lead the empire. Jochi had been stronger and Chagatai was smarter; even Tolui-dear sweet Tolui-had been better suited to lead than he. And yet, Genghis had ignored all of the evidence and chosen him-the middle son who no one believed was capable.

  Late the night before, he had recalled a dream from months earlier, during the late summer at Karakorum. He had dreamed of abandoning the empire-just he and Toregene. They shared one horse and rode west until they reached the endless sea where the sun doused itself every night. There, on the beach, they had built a shelter out of driftwood and palm fronds. He had learned to fish from the shore, and she haunted the rock ledges where the noisy birds nested, harvesting eggs. It had been a simple life, unlike any he had ever known, and it had been satisfying. When they had gotten hungry, he fished; when they had been tired, they slept. The sun fell down from the sky, boiled the sea, and went out; the next day, it was there in the sky again. Nothing ever changed. The dream hadn’t been a vision; it was nothing more than the idle spark of a desire that he fueled enough to become a tiny flame, lurking in his heart.

  The previous night, sleeping on the ground, beneath a sky filled with bright stars, was a small taste of what that life would be like. Now, with the sky obscured by the predawn fog, the ground wet with dew, he discovered that the burning desire for a simple life had been extinguished. That dream was nothing more than cold ash in his mind, a fantasy that belonged to someone else.

  Ogedei rolled his dry tongue around the inside of his mouth, and his attention drifted to the nearby bundle of his gear. Nestled deep inside one of the bags were two flasks of wine. He’d only need one to quench the worst of his thirst. He could save the other one for after he slew the Great Bear.

  He rolled over, turning his back on the bag and its secret contents. His knees and back complained as he got to his feet, and he used this soreness as an excuse to walk away from his sleeping roll. A little exercise would get his blood flowing. They had camped near a stream; he could get a drink from there just as easily, and the clear, cold mountain water would wash away the cobwebs of the night.

  Under a nearby tree sat a pair of Torguud, and one slapped the other as Ogedei limped past, trying to rouse the sleeping guard. He should have stopped and berated them for failing to both stay awake, but he found himself sympathizing: the hard ground was no substitute for a warm ger.

  As he made his way to the river, his head was filled with thoughts of Karakorum-the comforts of home, the ease and luxury that he had earned after many years of crisscrossing the steppe in pursuit of his father’s dream. Why did he need to kill this bear, anyway? What did he really have to prove? Genghis had given him the empire, and it had expanded under his rule. It was so large that it took all of Genghis’s sons and their sons to rule it. Wasn’t that enough?

  Ogedei knelt at the edge of the stream and cupped his hand in the rushing water, wincing at the frigid temperature. He scooped water into his mouth, and gasped as the cold water made his teeth ache. He scooped several more handfuls into his mouth, feeling cold rivulets of water stream down his throat. Bracing himself, he splashed water on his face and rubbed his skin vigorously.

  It didn’t help his mood.

  He heard someone approach, and he turned in acknowledgment. It was Alchiq. The gray-haired hunter knelt by the stream, his knees popping, and dipped a small bowl into the water. He stood, sipped from it slowly, and then he offered it to Ogedei.

  Ogedei dismissed the offer. Why hadn’t he thought to bring a bowl to the river? How dare Alchiq embarrass him like this? Why hadn’t he stopped him from getting his hands wet? He glanced down, noticing how much water had splashed on his shirt from his own actions, and his annoyance increased. He was Khagan, and here he was slurping water from a river like a mongrel dog, sleeping out in the open like some herder’s sheep. This was all beneath him.

  “You’re thinking about going back,” Alchiq said.

  Ogedei glowered at him.

  “They’ll go, if you order it, but do you think they will forget what you did? What you didn’t do?” Alchiq shrugged, taking another sip from his bowl. “You’ll have to kill all of them. Including the big one, and the young one, the one who knows how to hunt.”

  Ogedei held out his hand for the bowl, and after Alchiq handed it over, he drank from it, peering over its rim at the gray-haired hunter. “Would you kill them all for me?”

  Alchiq lifted his shoulders and calmly let his gaze swing across the camp, almost as if he was marking how he would accomplish that task. “I am yours to command, my Khan.”

  “Would you kill the Great Bear for me too?”

  Alchiq brought his gaze back to Ogedei. “You won’t ask me to,” he said.

  “But would you?”

  “Would you help me kill all of these men?”

  “What? That is a ludicrous question.”

  “Is it?” Alchiq asked. He knelt by the river again, refilling his bowl, allowing Ogedei the luxury of not answering the question. He stood and took another drink from his bowl. “A man earns those things that he carries with him his entire life. Both his victories and his secrets. What he doesn’t earn haunts him, always.” He clapped Ogedei on the arm, a surprisingly familiar motion, and gave the Khagan a rare smile. “Kill the bear, my Khan,” he said. “Accept your destiny.”

  Ogedei did not know what to say, and after Alchiq left him, he stood for a long time at the edge of the stream, staring at the water.

  Gansukh tugged at the hem of the shirt, wishing-once again-that Munokhoi had been slightly taller. Though, if he had been, events in the woods might have gone differently. He sighed and wriggled his shoulders one final time before relenting to the constant confinement of the ex-Torguud captain’s extra shirt.

  He could have returned to the hunting party the previous day covered in blood, but when he calmed down after killing Munokhoi, he had realized that the less said about the fight in the woods, the
better. Namkhai had noticed when he had caught up with the Khagan’s party, as had Alchiq and Chucai, but the different clothes and horse had gone unnoticed by the others.

  He had caught Ogedei staring at his ravaged ear after the evening meal, but the Khagan had said nothing. Even though the cold water from the stream had given him a headache, he had dunked his head into the stream three times, scrubbing his hair, his face, and both ears between each immersion. He was surprised-and a little pleased-that he had slept at all, given how much his ear had been throbbing in the night.

  This morning, though, most of the stinging was gone, reduced to a dull ache that would, he suspected, persist for several weeks while the wounds healed. He would be marked for the rest of his life, carrying the visible scar of the fight in the woods.

  At least he was alive. Missing part of an ear was an acceptable sacrifice.

  After the men had taken care of their horses the day before, the Darkhat had drawn the Khagan a map in the dirt. The valley forked, and the northern fork became a narrow rocky vale. Somewhere up there, hidden in the boulder-strewn hillside at the end of the valley, was the bear’s cave. The southern fork was rocky as well, though it was filled with a dense forest of evergreen trees. The bear hunted in those woods, but it always returned to its cave in the northern fork. In some ways, it didn’t matter in which fork the bear was, because once they entered the valley, there was no way out except past them.

  When they reached the valley, the Torguud became the rearguard, and the hunters spread out to the side and in front of the Khagan as the hunting party rode toward the northern fork. The sky was clear of clouds, and the morning mist had already burned off the floor of the valley. Thin wisps of fog still clung to some of the rocky knobs on the surrounding hillsides.

  Gansukh was surprised by the variety of trees. He recognized ash, alder, oak, and cedar, but there were several other evergreens that he did not know. The trees hugged the edges of the valley, growing thicker the farther they ventured into the valley. The trees were tall too, as if they had never known fire or ax. Gansukh heard numerous birds singing and calling to each other, and he saw signs of small animals-squirrels, rabbits, and other rodents and scavengers.