“He says the work of the Buddha may take him onto strange roads, but his place is amongst the poor.”
Khasar snorted. “The poor are everywhere. Ask him how he knows this Buddha didn’t want us to find him here.”
Ho Sa nodded, and as he talked, the monk looked increasingly interested.
“He asks if the Buddha is known among your people,” Ho Sa said.
Khasar grinned. “Tell him we believe in a sky father above and an earth mother below. The rest is struggle and pain before death.” He chuckled as Ho Sa blinked at hearing the philosophy.
“Is that all you believe?” Ho Sa asked.
Khasar glanced at his brother. “Some of the foolish ones believe in spirits as well, but most of us believe in a good horse and a strong right arm. We do not know this Buddha.”
When Ho Sa relayed the speech, the young monk bowed and strode to where his mule was tethered. Khasar and Temuge watched as he leaped into the saddle, causing the animal to snort and kick.
“That is an ugly beast,” Khasar said. “Is the boy coming with us?”
Ho Sa still looked surprised as he nodded. “He is. He says that no man can guess his path, but perhaps you are right that you were guided to him.”
“All right,” Khasar said. “But tell him that I will not let my enemies live, that he must not interfere with me again. Tell him if he does, I will cut his little bald head right off.”
When the monk heard the words, he laughed aloud, slapping his thigh as he sat astride the mule.
Khasar frowned at him. “I am Khasar of the Wolves, monk,” he said, pointing to himself. “What is your name?”
“Yao Shu!” he replied, thumping a fist twice into his own chest like a salute. The action seemed to amuse the monk and he chuckled until he had to wipe his eyes. Khasar stared at him. “Mount up, Ho Sa,” he said at last. “The brown mare is mine. At least the walking is over.”
It did not take long for them to mount. Ho Sa and Temuge rode together once the saddle had been unstrapped and thrown down. The surviving bandits had grown quiet amidst the talk, aware that their lives hung in the balance. They watched the strangers go, only sitting up to curse when they were sure they were alone.
♦ ♦ ♦
The pass that separated the Xi Xia kingdom from the southern edge of the desert was empty as the party of five men reached it. In the Khenti mountains a thousand miles north, the winter would be deepening, gripping the land for many months to come. Even at the pass, a freezing gale roared through as if in pleasure at its release. There was no fort to make the pass a place of stillness any longer. Instead, the wind always blew and the air was full of sand and grit.
Khasar and Temuge dismounted as they reached the pass, remembering the first bloody efforts to take the fort that had stood there. Genghis had been efficient in having it dismantled. A few large blocks lay where they had fallen in the sand, but every other stone had been dragged away. Only a few square holes in the cliffs showed where timbers and braces had been anchored, but otherwise it was as if the fort had never existed. There was no barrier to the tribes coming south any longer, and that fact alone gave Khasar a feeling of pride.
He strolled with Temuge along the pass, looking up at the high cliffs on either side. The monk and the mason watched them without understanding, neither having known the place when it boasted a fort of black stone and the Xi Xia kingdom ruled in splendid isolation.
Ho Sa looked south, turning his pony to gaze over the bare fields of his home. Dark spots in the distance showed where the rotten crops had been burned and the ashes returned to the land. There would be starvation in the villages, he was certain, perhaps even in Yinchuan. He shook his head at the thought.
He had been away for almost four months and it would be good to see his sons and his wife once again. He wondered how the army had fared after the crushing defeats at the hands of the great khan. The tribes had shattered an ancient peace and he winced as he recalled the destruction. He had lost friends and colleagues in those months, and the bitterness was never far from the surface. The final humiliation had been to see a royal daughter handed over to the barbarians. Ho Sa shuddered at the thought of such a woman being forced to live in their stinking tents among sheep and goats.
As Ho Sa stared into the valley, he realized with some surprise that he would miss Khasar’s company. For all the man’s crudity and easy violence, Ho Sa could look back on the journey with some pride. No one else from the Xi Xia could have stolen into a Chin city and returned alive with a master mason. It was true that Khasar had almost got him killed in one village where he had drunk too much rice wine. Ho Sa rubbed a scab on his side where a soldier had scraped a knife along his ribs. The man had not even been posted there and was visiting his family. Khasar could not recall the fight when he sobered up and seemed to think nothing of it. He was in some ways the most irritating man Ho Sa had ever known, but his reckless optimism had affected the Xi Xia soldier and he wondered uneasily if he would be able to return to the rigid discipline of the king’s army. The annual tribute would have to be carried across the desert and Ho Sa decided then that he would volunteer to lead the guards on that trip, just to see the land that could give birth to the tribes.
Khasar walked back to his companions. He felt elation at the thought of seeing home again and bringing their quarry back to Genghis. He grinned at the others in turn, showing his pleasure. To a man, they were dust covered and filthy, with dirt lining every crease of their faces. Yao Shu had begun to learn the speech of the tribes from Ho Sa. Lian had no ear for language, but he too had picked up a few useful words. They nodded back to Khasar uncertainly, unsure of the reason for his good mood.
Ho Sa held his gaze as Khasar approached him. He was surprised at the tightness in his chest at the thought of leaving that strange company and struggled to find words to express it. Khasar spoke before he could think of anything.
“Take a good look, Ho Sa. You won’t be seeing home again for a long time.”
“What?” Ho Sa demanded, his peaceful mood vanishing.
Khasar shrugged. “Your king gave you to us for a year. It’s been less than four months, with perhaps two more before we are in the mountains. We’ll need you to interpret for the mason and to teach proper speech to the monk. Did you think I would leave you here? You did!” Khasar seemed delighted at the bitter expression that flitted across Ho Sa’s face.
“We’re going back to the plains, Ho Sa. We’ll attack a few hills with whatever the mason can teach us, and when we’re ready, we’ll go to war. Perhaps by then, you’ll be so useful to us that I’ll ask your king to lend you for another year or two. I should think he’d be willing to take your price out of the tribute if we asked for you.”
“You are doing this to torture me,” Ho Sa snapped.
Khasar chuckled. “Perhaps a little, but you are a fighting man who knows the Chin. We will need you close when we ride to them.”
Ho Sa stared furiously at Khasar. The Mongol warrior slapped him cheerfully on the leg as he turned away, calling over his shoulder.
“We’ll need to collect water from the canals. After that, it’s the desert and home to women and spoils. Can a man ask for more? I’ll even find you a widow to keep you warm, Ho Sa. I’m doing you a favor, if only you had the eyes to see it.”
Khasar mounted once more, bringing his pony up to where Temuge was being pulled into the saddle by Lian. He leaned close to his brother.
“The plains are calling us, brother. Can you feel it?”
“I can,” Temuge replied. In fact, he wanted to return to the tribes as much as Khasar, though only because he now had a greater understanding of what they could win for themselves. While his brother dreamed of war and plunder, Temuge saw cities in his imagination and all the beauty and the power that came with them.
CHAPTER 16
GENGHIS STOOD IN FULL ARMOR watching the destruction of the city of Linhe. The rice fields had been churned into wet, brown muck for a dozen mile
s in any direction as his army encircled the walls. His standard of nine horse tails hung limply without a breeze as the setting sun beat down on the army he had brought to that place.
On either side of him, bondsmen waited for orders, their horses pawing at the ground. A servant stood at his shoulder with a chestnut mare, but the khan was not yet ready to mount.
Close by the waiting column, a tent of blood-red cloth fluttered in the wind. For fifty miles around, his army had crushed resistance until only the city stood untouched, even as Yinchuan had once sheltered the Xi Xia king. Garrisons and road forts were found empty as Chin soldiers retreated before a host they could not hope to match. They carried the fear of the invasion before them and rolled back the edges of Chin control, leaving the cities naked. Even the great wall had proved no obstacle to the catapults and ladders of his people. Genghis had taken pleasure in seeing vast sections of it broken into rubble as practice for his new machines of war. His men had swept away the defenders for as far as they could reach, burning the wooden post houses with something resembling spite. The Chin could not keep them out. All they could do was run or be destroyed.
There would be a reckoning, Genghis was certain: when a general rose who could command the Chin, or when the tribes reached Yenking itself. It would not be today.
Xamba had fallen in seven days and Wuyuan had burned in only three. Genghis watched the stones from his catapults knock chips from the walls of Linhe and smiled to himself, satisfied. The mason his brothers had brought back had shown him a new way of warfare, and he would never again be stopped by high walls. Over two years, his people had built catapults and learned the secrets and weaknesses of the Chin high walls. His sons had grown tall and strong and he had been there to see the eldest reach the edge of manhood. It was enough. He had returned to the enemies of his people and he had learned well.
Though he stood back from the catapult lines, he could hear the thumping strikes clearly on the still air. The Chin soldiers within would not dare march out to meet his host, and if they did, he would welcome the quick end. It would not help them now the red tent had been set. Piece by piece, the walls were hammered down, the catapult stones lofted into the air by sweating teams of his men. Lian had shown him designs for an even more fearsome weapon. Genghis pictured it in his mind, seeing again the huge counterweight Lian said would send boulders hundreds of feet with crushing force. The Chin mason had found his calling in designing the weapons, for a ruler who appreciated his skill. Genghis had discovered he could grasp Lian’s diagrams as if the knowledge had always been there. The written word was still a mystery to him, but force and friction, levers, blocks, and ropes were all instantly clear in his mind. He would let Lian build his great machine to attack Yenking.
Yet the Chin emperor’s city was no Linhe to be pounded into submission. Genghis grunted at the thought, imagining the moats and immense walls Lian had described, as thick at the base as seven men lying head to foot. Xamba’s walls had collapsed into tunnels dug beneath them, but the fortress towers of Yenking were built on stone and could not be undermined. He would need more than catapults to break the emperor’s own city, but there were other weapons at his disposal and with every victory his warriors grew more skilled.
Genghis had thought at first that they would resist their new role as workers of machines. His people had never made good infantry before, but Lian had introduced the idea of engineers to them and Genghis had found many who could understand the discipline of forces and weights. He had shown his pleasure in having men to break cities, and they stood proud under his gaze.
Genghis bared his teeth as a section of wall fell outwards. Tsubodai had a thousand of them working before the walls of Linhe. The main host had formed columns outside the four gates of the city, waiting to spear into it at the first sign of an opening. Genghis saw Tsubodai striding among the catapult teams, directing the blows. It was all so new and Genghis felt pride at how well his people had adapted themselves. If only his father could have lived to see it.
In the distance, Tsubodai ordered wooden barricades forward, protecting his warriors as they pulled at weakened stones with long hooked pikes. The city archers could not take a shot without risking their own lives, and even when they were successful, their arrows thumped into wood and were wasted.
As Genghis watched, a group of defenders showed their heads to tip an iron pot over the crest of the wall. Many of them fell to arrows, but there were always more to take their place. Genghis frowned as they succeeded in drenching a dozen pikemen in black liquid. The warriors ducked down behind their wooden shield, but only moments later, torches were thrown onto the oil and flames exploded, louder than the choking screams as their lungs charred.
Genghis heard men curse around him. Tsubodai’s burning pikemen went stumbling into the other groups, fouling the smooth rhythms of the attack. In the confusion, Chin archers picked off anyone who stepped from his shield to fend them off or put an end to their agony.
Tsubodai roared fresh orders and the shield groups moved slowly back, leaving the writhing men until they were consumed. Genghis nodded in approval as the catapults began to whistle once more. He had heard of the oil that burned, though he had never seen it used in such a way. It took flame much faster than the mutton fat in Mongol lamps, and he decided to secure a supply. Perhaps there would be some left in Linhe when it fell. His mind filled with the thousand details he needed to remember each day until his head felt swollen with plans.
Dark, smoking bodies lay under the wall and he could hear thin cheering inside the city. Genghis waited for Tsubodai to make a breach, his impatience growing. The light would not last much longer and at sunset Tsubodai would have to order his men to retreat for the night.
As the catapults sang again, Genghis wondered how many they had lost in the assault. It did not matter. Tsubodai commanded the least experienced of his warriors, and they needed to be hardened in war. In the two years he had spent in the Khenti mountains, another eight thousand boys had reached their adult growth and mounted to join him. Most of them rode with Tsubodai and called themselves the Young Wolves to honor Genghis. Tsubodai had almost begged to be first in the assault on Linhe, but Genghis had already planned to have those boys lead the attack. Along with their new general, they had to be blooded.
Genghis heard the cries of wounded men carry on the wind and tapped his wrist guard unconsciously against the lacquered plates of his thigh. Two more sections of wall fell. He saw a turret of stone collapse, spilling a nest of archers almost at the feet of Tsubodai’s gleeful warriors. The walls of Linhe now resembled broken teeth, and Genghis knew it would not be long. Wheeled ladders were rolled up as the catapult teams stood down at last, exhausted and triumphant.
Genghis felt the excitement build around him as Tsubodai’s Young Wolves swarmed over the defenders, darkening the pale gray stone with their scrambling bodies. His best archers covered the assault from below, men able to pierce an egg at a hundred paces. Chin soldiers who showed themselves on the walls were fat with quivering arrows by the time they fell back.
Genghis nodded sharply to himself and took the reins of his mare to mount. The animal snorted, sensing his mood. He looked to his left and right, seeing the patient faces of his bondsmen and the ranks and columns in a great circle around the city. He had made armies within armies, so that each of his generals commanded a tuman of ten thousand men and acted on his own. Arslan was lost to sight behind Linhe, but Genghis could see the horse-tail standard of Jelme fluttering in the breeze. The sunlight cast them all in burnished gold and orange, throwing long shadows. Genghis looked for his brothers, ready to ride into the east and west gates if they opened first. Khasar and Kachiun would be keen to be first in the streets of Linhe.
At his shoulder, the huge figure of Tolui who had once been bondsman to Eeluk of the Wolves was worth only a glance, though Genghis saw the man stiffen with pride. Old friends were there, responding with nods. The front line of the column was only twenty horses wi
de, men approaching thirty years of age, as he was himself. It lifted Genghis’s spirit to see the way they strained forward, watching the city hungrily.
Smoke spiraled into the air from a dozen points within Linhe, like the distant threads of a rainstorm on the plains. Genghis watched and waited, his hands shaking slightly with tension.
“May I bless you, great khan?” came a voice he knew, interrupting his thoughts. Genghis turned and gestured to his personal shaman, first among the men who walked the dark paths. Kokchu had thrown away the rags from his days serving the Naiman khan. He wore a robe of dark blue silk, tied with a sash of gold. His wrists were bound in leather hung with pierced Chin coins, and they chimed as he raised his arms. Genghis bowed his head without expression, feeling the cool touch of sheep blood as Kokchu striped his cheeks with it. He felt a rush of calm settle on him, and he kept his head lowered as Kokchu chanted a prayer to the earth mother.
“She will welcome the blood you send into her, my lord, as much as if the rains themselves ran red.”
Genghis let out a slow breath, pleasantly aware of the fear in the men around him. Every one of them was a warrior born, hardened in fire and battle from the first years, but still they closed their mouths of idle chatter when Kokchu walked amongst them. Genghis had seen the fear grow and he had used it to discipline the tribes, giving Kokchu power by his patronage.
“Shall I have the red tent taken down, my lord?” Kokchu asked. “The sun is setting and the black cloth is ready for the frame.”
Genghis considered. It had been Kokchu himself who suggested this means to sow terror in the cities of the Chin. On the first day, a white tent was raised outside their walls, its very existence showing that there were no soldiers to save them. If they did not open their gates by sunset, the red tent went up at dawn and Genghis sent the promise that every man in the city would die. On the third day, the black tent meant that there would be only death without end, without mercy, for anyone alive within.