Orion o-1

by Ben Bova

  “There are times when a man in a high place — say, the leader of a warrior clan such as Hulagu — must deal with a thorny problem. Some of those times, such a leader might express the hope that the problem will go away. Other men, loyal to such a leader, might interpret the leader’s words incorrectly and cause injury to the stranger who causes the problem. Do you understand?”

  I could feel my forehead knit into a frown. “But what problem am I causing Hulagu?”

  “Did I say I was speaking of Hulagu? Or of you?”

  “No,” I replied quickly. “You did not.”

  Subotai nodded, satisfied that I understood the delicacies of the situation. “But you yourself are a good example of what I mean. You appear out of nowhere; you are obviously an alien, and yet you speak our tongue. You say you are an emissary from a distant land, and yet you have the strength of ten warriors. You insist that you must see the High Khan in Karakorum. Yet Hulagu fears that you are not an emissary at all, but an assassin sent to murder his uncle.”

  “Assassin?” I felt shocked. “But why…”

  The wiry little general waved me down. “Is it true that you come from a land far to the west of here?”

  “Yes.” I knew that of all crimes, the Mongols hated lying the most. Like most nomadic, desert-honed peoples, their very existence depended on hospitality and honesty among one another.

  He hunched forward, leaning his forearms on his bent knees. “Years ago I led my men west of the larger of two great inland seas into a land where the earth was as black as pitch and so fertile that the people there grew crops of grain that stood taller than a man.”

  “The Ukraine,” I said, half to myself.

  “The men there had pink skin, such as you do.”

  I glanced at Agla, who sat silent and still on her heels at the foot of my pallet.

  “It is true,” I said. “Men of my coloring live there, and throughout those lands, westward to the great sea.”

  “Farther to the west there are kingdoms that no Mongol has ever seen,” Subotai said, eagerness beginning to crack his impassive facade. “Kingdoms of great wealth and power.”

  “There are kingdoms to the west,” I admitted. “The Russians and Poles, and farther westward still, the Hungarians, the Germans, and the Franks. And even beyond those lands, on an island as large as theGobiitself, are the Britons.”

  “You are from that kingdom?” Subotai asked.

  I shook my head. “From farther westward yet. From across a sea as wide as the march from here to Karakorum.”

  Subotai leaned back a little, pondering that, trying to imagine such a vast stretch of water. I estimated, from the scraps of information I had heard so far and from the inner conviction that we were camped somewhere inPersia, that we were more than a thousand miles from the Mongol capital,Karakorum, on the northern edge of the Gobi Desert.

  “I have placed you under my protection,” Subotai said at last, “because I believe that you are speaking the truth. I want to know everything you know about these western kingdoms — their cities, their armies, the strength and valor of their warriors.”

  Agla gave me a barely perceptible nod, telling me that to refuse Subotai’s request, or even debate it, would be a fatal mistake.

  The general gave no thought to my resisting his command. He went on, “But first you must satisfy me that Hulagu’s fears are groundless. Why do you wish to see the High Khan? You have no gifts with you, no tokens of obeisance. You told Hulagu that you have not been sent to offer the submission of your kingdom. What message have you for Ogotai?”

  I hesitated. There was no message, of course. I had merely blurted out that I was an emissary to avoid being killed outright.

  Subotai sat up straighter, and his voice became iron-hard. “I have spent my life serving the High Khans, Ogotai and his father, the Perfect Warrior whose name all Mongols revere. They have trusted me and I have never failed them.”

  The implication was clear. If Genghis Khan trusted this man, who was I to hesitate?

  “I have come,” I said slowly, thinking furiously as I spoke, “to warn the High Khan Ogotai against an evil that could destroy him and the entire Mongol empire.”

  Subotai’s dark eyes searched my face, as if to find the truth by sheer force of will. “What evil is that?” he asked.

  “There is a man, one who is unlike any other you have ever seen, a man of darkness with eyes that burn with hate…”

  “Ahriman,” said the Mongol general.

  “You know him?” The breath caught in my throat.

  “It was he who prophesied our victory over Jelal ed-Din, and who told Hulagu that he will conquer Baghdad itself and crush the power of the Kalif forever.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering from history the tales of Haroun al-Raschid and the fabulous Baghdad of the Thousand and One Nights. All were obliterated by the Mongol tide, the flower of Islam annihilated by the merciless destructive power of the Mongols. Cities burned, gardens trampled by the hardy little ponies of theGobi, millions massacred, an entire civilization gutted. While the knights of Europe fought their skirmishes against Islam in Spain and the Holy Land, the Mongol invaders were obliterating the heartland of the Moslems, turning the irrigated gardens of the ancient plain of Shinar into an everlasting desert.

  “Ahriman is evil,” I said to Subotai. “He will bring destruction to the Mongols.”

  The general gave no sign of alarm. Or belief. “Ahriman has brought us victory and good fortune so far.”

  “He is in the camp, then?” Perhaps it was Ahriman’s men who had tried to kill me, and not over-zealous servants of the Orkhon Hulagu.

  “No,” Subotai answered. “He left two weeks ago.”

  “Where did he go?” I was afraid that I knew what the answer would be.

  Sure enough, Subotai said, “Like you, he wished to go to Karakorum, to see the High Khan.”

  I felt a surge of strength rise in me. “And he left two weeks ago? I must catch up with him.”

  Subotai asked, “Why?”

  “I told you. He is dangerous. I must warn the High Khan against him.”

  The general tugged at the tip of his mustache, the only gesture of uncertainty that I had seen in him. I turned from him to Agla, who had not moved all through our conversation. She was staring at Subotai, waiting for him to come to some decision.

  “I will send you to Karakorum,” Subotai said at last, “under my personal protection.”

  “He cannot travel yet,” Agla interjected. “His wounds are not sufficiently healed.”

  “I can travel,” I insisted. “I’ll be all right.”

  Subotai raised his hand slightly. “You will remain here in camp until our healer is willing to let you go. And during this time I will come to you each day. You will tell me everything you know about the kingdoms of the West. I have a great need to learn of them.”

  Before I could even start to answer, he got to his feet — a little stiffly. It was only then that I realized this man must have been close to sixty years old, if not older, and that most of those years had been spent in the saddle, winning battles and destroying cities.

  Subotai left the yurt. I glared at Agla. “I must leave at once. I can’t let Ahriman reach Karakorum and get to the High Khan.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  There was no way to explain it. “I’ve got to. That’s all.”

  “But how can this one man be so dangerous?”

  “I don’t know. But he is, and my task is to stop him.”

  Agla shook her head. “Subotai won’t let you leave camp until you’ve told him everything he wants to know. And I don’t want you to leave either.”

  “Are you afraid that your reputation as a healer will suffer if I go away?”

  “No,” she said simply. “I… want you to stay with me.”

  I reached out both hands to her and she came over and let me fold her in my arms. I held her gently and she leaned her head against my shoulder. I
could smell the scent of her hair, clean and natural and utterly feminine.

  “What was the name you called me?” she asked in a whisper. “The other name that you said was mine?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “That was far away.”

  “What was it?”

  “Aretha.”

  “There was a woman of that name? You loved her?”

  I took a deep breath and reveled in the luxury of her soft, warm body pressing close to me. “I hardly knew her… but, yes, I loved her. Ten thousand miles from here and almost eight hundred years away… I loved her.”

  “Was she very much like me?”

  “You are the same woman, Agla. I don’t know how it can be, or why, but you and she are the same.”

  “Do you love me, then?”

  “Of course I love you,” I said, without an instant’s hesitation. “I have loved you through all of time. From the beginning of the world I’ve loved you, and I will love you until the world crumbles into dust.”

  She lifted her face up to mine and I kissed her. “And I love you, mighty warrior. I have loved you all my life. I have waited for you since I have been old enough to remember, and now that I have found you, I will never let you go away from me.

  I held her tightly and felt both our hearts beating. Deep in the back of my mind, though, was the knowledge that Ahriman was on his way to Karakorum, where I must go, and that he had been living in this camp, even though Agla had told me that she had never seen him.

  CHAPTER 12

  For three days I told Subotai everything I knew about the Europe of the thirteenth century. Only gradually did I realize that his interest was neither esthetic nor academic, but strictly pragmatic. This general who had led conquering armies for his Khan from the windswept wastes of the Gobi across the grassy steppes all the way to the Ukraine was now intent on pushing farther west. He intended to sweep through Europe and plant the yak-tail standard of the Mongols on the shore of the great ocean that he had never seen.

  “But why?” I asked him, at last. “You already share in an empire that stretches from Cathayto the Caspian Sea. Soon Hulagu’s army will take Baghdad and Jerusalem. Why go farther?”

  Subotai was a plain, direct man, not given to pretenses. I could imagine the answers I would have gotten to that question if I had asked it of Caesar Augustus, Napoleon, Hitler, or any of the other conquerors whom the Europeans called “civilized.” But as he sat inside his own tent, dressed in leather pants, a rough shirt, and a leather vest studded with steel bolts, Subotai gave me the unvarnished answer of a barbarian.

  “Since I was a young man and swore allegiance to the old High Khan, the Perfect Warrior, I have led armies in conquest, it is true. But always for him or for his sons. Now I am an old man and have not many years left. I have seen much of the world, but there is still more that I have not seen. I share in the empire, it is true, but no part of it is my own. The sons of the Perfect Warrior and his grandsons have inherited the lands that I have helped to conquer. Now I wish to have lands of my own, so that my sons will have a place within the empire that is equal to those of Hulagu and Kubilai and the other grandsons of the old High Khan.”

  There was no trace of bitterness in his words, no hint of envy or anger. He was merely stating the situation clearly, and more succinctly than any politician ever would.

  “Would not the ruling High Khan, Ogotai, give you a share of the empire for your own, so that you could pass it on to your sons?”

  “He would, if I asked him for such. But that is not the best way. Better to find new lands and add them to the empire.”

  I thought I understood. “That way there would not be jealousy or conflict among the Orkhons, such as Hulagu.”

  He gave me a patient sigh. “We have no jealousy or conflict among ourselves. We are ruled by the Yassa, the laws of the High Khan. We are not dogs, to fight with one another over a bone.”

  “I see,” I replied, bowing my head to show that I had not meant to insult him.

  “It is necessary to add new lands,” Subotai went on, in a rare mood of explaining things to an outsider. “That is the wisdom of the old High Khan. That is why we have no jealousy or conflict among ourselves. The Yassa that he gave us instructs us to conquer other peoples. As long as we do so, we will not fight among ourselves.”

  I was beginning to understand. The Mongols’ empire was the creation of Genghis Khan, who was so revered by these warriors that they would not willingly mention his name. It was a model of dynamic social stability: as long as it kept expanding, it would remain stable at its core. That was why Subotai was driven westward; everything to the east as far as the Pacific coast was already under Mongol sway.

  “Besides,” Subotai added, as if able to read my thoughts, “it makes me happy to see new lands and strange sights. I yearn to see this western ocean you speak of, and the lands beyond it.”

  It was difficult not to admire him. “But, my lord general, the kingdoms of Europe will raise huge armies to oppose you — thousands of knights and tens of thousands of men-at-arms…”

  Subotai actually laughed, a rare loosening of his self-discipline. “Do not try to frighten me, Orion. I have seen armies against me before. Did I ever tell you the story of the Battle of the Carts? Or our first battle against the host of Kharesm?”

  And so it went for three days and long into each night. In his simple and straightforward way, Subotai was gathering intelligence and planning his next campaign. I felt twinges of conscience in giving him the information he needed, but I knew from my memory of the twentieth century that the Mongols never conquered Europe.

  As our third session seemed to peter out to its natural conclusion, close to midnight, I told him that now he knew as much about Europe as I did, and there was no point in delaying me here further.

  “Ahriman has a long lead on me, and he will arrive in Karakorum to do his evil work before I have a chance to stop him.”

  Subotai seemed unconvinced about Ahriman’s evil, but, practical soldier that he was, he appeared perfectly content to let Ahriman and me fight that battle between ourselves.

  “Ahriman heads toward Karakorum with a treasure caravan,” he told me, “that is only as swift as its most heavily laden camel. How good a rider are you?”

  As far as I knew, I had never been on a horse. But I had seen others ride, and I knew that what they could do I could train myself to do in a day or less.

  “I can ride,” I said.

  “Good. We can send you to Karakorum by the yam.”

  I was unfamiliar with the word. Subotai explained that it was a horse-post system, almost exactly like the Pony Express that would be reinvented in the American West six and a half centuries later. Barbarians the Mongols might be, but their post system was the most efficient communications network in the world. And the safest. The law of the Mongols, the Yassa, ruled the empire with a grip of steel. It was said that a virgin carrying a sack of gold could ride from one end of the empire to the other without being molested. And, I found, it was true.

  When I returned to Agla’s yurt that night and woke her to tell her that I was leaving in the morning, she nodded sleepily and lifted the quilted blanket that was covering her.

  “Get to sleep, then,” she said drowsily. “We’ll have a long day ahead of us, tomorrow.”

  “We?”

  “I am riding to Karakorum with you, of course.”

  “But… will Hulagu allow you to leave?”

  If she hadn’t been half asleep she would probably have been indignant. “I’m not a slave. I can go as I please.”

  “It will be a difficult journey. We’re riding the horse-post. We’ll be on horseback all day, every day, for weeks.”

  She smiled, closed her eyes, and muttered, “I’m better padded for that than you are.” And went back to sleep.

  It was a grueling trip. In the twentieth century, travelers thought themselves rugged to endure the ride across Asia on the Trans-Siberian Railway from Mosco
w to Vladivostok. Agla and I rode horseback the same distance, across a more difficult route, crossing deserts and high, ice-draped mountain passes as we made our way across the Roof of the World and into the vast wilderness of the Gobi. By ourselves, we would have perished in less than a week. But the entire route was marked by a chain of Mongol posts, each a hard day’s ride from the last one, where we could get hot food, good water, and fresh ponies. Old or crippled warriors kept each post, usually aided by a few local youths who tended the corrals of horses. It was a monument to the power of the Mongols that no one ever attacked these posts. There seemed to be no underground resistance to the empire. Probably the people, remembering the terrifying massacres that accompanied the Mongol armies, were cowed to passivity. But perhaps the laws of the Yassa, and the tolerant rule of the Mongols once they had conquered a territory, kept their empire peaceful.

  I had hoped to catch up with the caravan that Ahriman had taken, but the horse-post generally used a different, more direct route. Swift ponies with expert riders could tackle terrain that a camel caravan would never dare try to cross. Here and there we crossed the ancient caravan route. Even from miles away we could see the well-marked path that millennia of camels, oxen, and asses had beaten into the grassland. Twice we met caravans, long strings of beasts of burden heaped with treasures looted from the West, tinkling and jingling as they made their slow, patient way to Karakorum. Only a handful of warriors rode along as guards. No one in his right mind attacked a Mongol caravan; whole tribes could be exterminated for such a crime.

  I asked, I searched for Ahriman, but he was not in either caravan. Which meant that he was even farther ahead of me than I had feared.

  One night, after we had come down from the icy passes of the Tien Shan mountains and were safely housed for the night in the rude hut that passed for guest quarters at one of the post stations, I asked Agla why she had denied seeing Ahriman in Hulagu’s camp.

  “I did not see him,” she said.

  “But you knew he was there, didn’t you? Even in a camp as large as Hulagu’s, the presence of such a man would be known to everyone.”