Authors: Conn Iggulden
“I can, lord.”
Genghis smiled, his gaze far away. He nodded to Tsubodai, seeing his own triumph reflected there.
“Go and sleep, then, boy. Rest and eat until you are full, then sleep again. You will need to be strong to lead my brothers.” He clapped Taran on his shoulder, staggering him.
“Vesak was a good man, lord,” Tsubodai said. “I knew him well.”
Genghis glanced at the young warrior he had promoted to lead ten thousand of the people. He saw a depth of grief in his eyes and understood that Vesak was of the same tribe. Though he had forbidden talk of the old families, some bonds went deep.
“If his body can be found, I will have it brought down and honored,” he said. “Did he have a wife, children?”
“He did, lord,” Tsubodai replied.
“I will see they are looked after,” Genghis replied. “No one will take their flock, or force his wife into another man’s ger.”
Tsubodai’s relief was obvious. “Thank you, lord,” he said. He left Genghis to eat with his wife and took Taran out into the wind once more, gripping him around the back of the neck to show his pride.
The storm still raged two days later when Khasar and Kachiun gathered their men. Each of them had supplied five thousand warriors, and Taran would lead them over the peaks in single file. Their horses were left behind and Genghis had not wasted those two days. The archery dummies had been copied by the thousand, placing men of straw, wood, and cloth on every spare horse. If Chin scouts were able to see the plain at all in the snow, they would not notice the smaller number of men.
Khasar stood with his brother, rubbing grease into each other’s faces in preparation for the hard climb to follow. Unlike the scouts, their men were burdened with bows and swords as well as a hundred arrows in two heavy quivers strapped to their backs. Between them all, the ten thousand men carried a million shafts—two years of labor in the making and more valuable than anything else they owned. Without birch forests, they could not be replenished.
Everything they carried had to be wrapped in oiled cloth against the wet, and they moved stiffly under the extra layers, stamping their feet and clapping their gloved hands together against the wind.
Taran was stiff-backed with pride at leading the khan’s brothers, so filled with excitement that it was all he could do to stand still. When they were ready, Khasar and Kachiun nodded to the boy, looking back at the column of men who would cross the mountains on foot. The ascent would be fast and hard, a cruel trial even for the fittest. If they were spotted by Chin scouts, the men knew they had to reach the high pass before their movements were reported. Anyone who fell would be left behind.
The wind tore through the ranks as Taran started off, looking back as he felt their eyes on him. Khasar saw his nervousness and grinned, sharing the moment of excitement with his brother Kachiun. It was the coldest day yet, but the mood was light amongst the men. They wanted to smash the army that waited for them on the other side of the pass. Even more, they reveled in the thought of coming up behind them and shattering their clever defenses. Genghis himself had come out to see them off.
“You have until dawn on the third day, Kachiun,” Genghis had told his brother. “Then I will come through the pass.”
CHAPTER 21
I
T TOOK UNTIL THE MORNING
of the second day to reach the spot high in the peaks where Vesak had died. Taran dug his friend’s body out of a snowdrift, wiping snow from the gray features in awed silence.
“We could leave a flag in his hand to mark the path,” Khasar murmured to Kachiun, making him smile. The line of warriors stretched down the mountain and the storm seemed to be easing, but they did not hurry the young scout as he took a strip of blue cloth and draped it around Vesak’s corpse, dedicating him to the sky father.
Taran stood and bowed his head for a moment before hurrying up the final stretch of icy ground that led to the downward slope. The column moved past the frozen figure, each man glancing at the dead face and murmuring a few words in greeting or a prayer.
With the high pass behind them, Taran was on new ground and the pace slowed frustratingly. The sun’s light was diffused into a glare from all directions, making it difficult to keep going east. When the wind revealed the mountains on either side, Khasar and Kachiun peered into the distance, marking details of the terrain. By noon they judged they were halfway down the descent, the twin forts of the pass far below them.
A sheer drop of more than fifty feet slowed them again, though old ropes showed where the Chin scout had climbed. After days in the cold, the braided cords were brittle, and they tied new ones, climbing down with elaborate care. Those who had gloves tucked them into their deels for the descent and then found that their fingers grew pale and stiff with alarming speed. Frostbite was more than a worry to men who expected to use their bows. As they jogged along the broken slopes, every warrior clenched and unclenched his hands, or kept them tucked into his armpits so that the deel sleeves swung freely.
Many slipped on the icy ground and those who had hidden their hands fell hardest. They rose stiffly, their faces screwed tight against the wind as other men trotted past without looking at them. Each of them was alone and struggled to his feet rather than be left behind.
It was Taran who called out a warning when the trail split. Under such a blanket of snow, it was barely more than a crease in the white surface, but it snaked in another direction and he did not know which one would take them down.
Khasar came up to him, halting those behind with a raised fist. The line of men stretched almost back to Vesak’s body. They could not delay and a single mistake at that point could mean a lingering death, trapped and exhausted in a dead end.
Khasar gnawed a piece of broken skin on his lips, looking to Kachiun for inspiration. His brother shrugged.
“We should keep going east,” Kachiun said wearily. “The side path leads back toward the forts.”
“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.