“Those are good horses,” he said. “I will have the first choice of them when we are done.” Those who heard him laughed, then as one, they kicked their weary mounts into a canter, leaning low over the saddles. They left Tsubodai alone to hold the ground around the pass and slid into a gallop on their ponies just before the two forces crashed together.
The Chin cavalry commander died in the first instant of meeting the Mongol horsemen. Over the thunder of hooves, his men were cut from their saddles. Those who could strike back swung on empty air as the Mongols ducked or swayed aside. They had practiced for this all their lives. Genghis galloped on, deeper and deeper into the ranks of horsemen, his sword arm burning. There was no end to them and he took a fresh cut above his hip where the armor had broken away. Another impact knocked him back so that he saw the pale sky swinging above before he could recover. He did not fall; he could not. He heard screams as Kachiun’s mounts hit the Chin riders from behind and wondered if he would meet his brother in the middle or die first. There were just so many enemies. He no longer expected to survive and that brought a lightness to his mood that made the gallop through his enemies a moment of pure joy. It was easy to imagine his father riding with him. Perhaps the old man would be proud at last. His sons could not have chosen a better end.
Behind him the tree was finally rolled back in three pieces. The Mongol army rode slowly out onto the icy flats, grim and poised to avenge their khan. Jelme and Arslan rode at the head and both father and son were ready. They looked out at the Chin flags and banners that swirled into the distance.
“I would not change my life, Jelme, if I could go back,” Arslan called to his son. “I would still be here.”
“Where else would you be, old man?” Jelme replied with a smile. He set an arrow on the bowstring and took a deep breath before loosing the first shaft into the enemy ranks.
Zhi Zhong watched in frustration as the pass opened and twenty thousand warriors came storming out, ready to fight. The gods had not given the khan into his hands. Zhi Zhong’s own cavalry was engaging the khan’s small force, while another group cut into the Chin like a tiger ripping at the belly of a running deer. The Mongols did not seem to communicate, yet they worked together across the battlefield, while his was the only center of command. Zhi Zhong rubbed his eyes, staring into the dust clouds as they fought.
His pikemen were in chaos and some had left the plain, the figures already distant specks among the hills. Could he yet save the battle? All the tricks were finished. It came down to a fight on a flat plain, and he still had the numbers.
He gave fresh orders to his messengers and watched as they galloped across the battlefield. The Mongols from the pass were hammering his men with shaft after shaft, cutting a trench right through the center of the army that waited for them. The relentless accuracy was forcing his ranks back on themselves, making them bunch up where they should have stayed apart. Zhi Zhong wiped sweat from his brow as he saw riders ripping through his pikemen as if they were unarmed. He could only watch frozen as they split into groups of a hundred, attacking from all angles with their shafts, cutting his army to pieces.
It seemed only a moment before one of the marauding groups spotted him standing there, directing the battle. Zhi Zhong saw their faces light up as they saw the massive war banners around his command tent. As he stared he saw a dozen bows bent in his direction and others yanking at reins to turn their mounts. Surely the range was too great? Hundreds of his personal guard lay in their path, but they could not stop the arrows and the general was suddenly terrified. They were demonic, these men from the plains. He had tried everything and still they came. Many of them had been cut in the fighting, but they seemed to feel no pain as they drew their bows with bloody hands and kicked their horses at him.
A half-spent arrow thumped into his chest, sticking out of his armor and making him cry out. As if the sound released his fear, his nerve failed completely and he yelled for his guard, pulling his horse around by brute strength and hunching low in the saddle. Other shafts whistled over his head, killing men around him. General Zhi Zhong was mindless in the face of his own death, his confidence shattering. He dug in his heels and his horse bolted, galloping through the ranks to leave his guard behind.
He did not look down at the wide-eyed faces of his soldiers as they saw him desert them. Many threw down their weapons and simply ran, following his example. Some were knocked aside by his horse as they moved too slowly. His eyes blurred in the frozen wind and he knew nothing except the need to escape the cruel-faced Mongols at his back. Behind him his army crumbled in complete rout and the slaughter went on. The army of Genghis rolled over the Imperial soldiers, killing until their arms were exhausted and the mouths of their horses were white with frothy spit.
Senior officers tried three times to rally their men, each attempt failing as Genghis was able to use the wider ground to send charges in to smash them. When the last of Jelme’s arrows were gone, the lances worked well at full speed, taking men off their feet with the impact. Genghis had seen the Chin general run and no longer felt the terrible wounds he had taken. The sun rose higher on the killing, and by noon, the forces of the emperor lay in bloody mountains of the dead, the remainder scattered in every direction and still pursued.
As Zhi Zhong rode, his mind lost the numbness that had unmanned him. The sounds of battle faded into the distance as he galloped along the road to Yenking. He looked back only once at the great roiling mass of fighting men, and shame and rage were bitter in his throat. Some of his personal guard had taken horses to follow their general, loyal despite his failure. Without a word, they formed up around him, so that a grim phalanx of almost a hundred riders approached the gates of the emperor’s city.
Zhi Zhong recognized one man riding abreast, a senior officer from Baotou. At first he could not recall his name and he could only wonder at his spinning thoughts. The city grew quickly before them and it took a huge effort of will to steady himself and calm his thumping heart. Lujan. The man’s name was Lujan, he remembered at last.
The general sweated in his armor as he looked at the high walls and the moat surrounding the city. After the chaos and bloodshed, it looked sleepily peaceful, waking slowly for the new day. Zhi Zhong had outraced any messengers and the emperor remained unaware of the catastrophe only twenty miles away.
“Do you want to be executed, Lujan?” he said to the man at his side.
“I have a family, General,” the man replied. He was pale, understanding what they faced.
“Then listen to me and follow my orders,” Zhi Zhong replied.
The general was recognized at a distance and the outer gate was lowered over the expanse of water. Zhi Zhong turned in the saddle to shout orders to the men with him.
“The emperor must be told,” he snapped. “We can counterattack with the city guard.” He saw the words have an effect on the defeated men, straightening them in their saddles. They still trusted their general to salvage something from the disaster. Zhi Zhong made his face a mask as he passed into the city, the sound of hooves on paved streets loud in his ears. He had lost. Worse, he had run.
The Imperial palace was a huge construction inside the city, surrounded by gardens of great beauty. Zhi Zhong headed for the closest gate that would take him to an audience room. He wondered if the young emperor was even awake at that hour. He would be alert soon enough, when he received the news.
The guards were forced to dismount at the outer gate, striding inward along a wide road of lime trees. They were met by servants, then passed through a chain of halls. Before they could come into the emperor’s presence, soldiers from the emperor’s own guards blocked their way.
Zhi Zhong showed nothing as he handed over his sword and waited for them to step aside. His soldiers would remain in the outer halls while he went in. He imagined Emperor Wei being woken at that very moment, his slaves fussing around him with the news that the general had returned. The palace would be awash with rumor, but they knew n
othing yet. The full scope of the tragedy would come later, but the emperor had to know first.
It was a long time before Zhi Zhong saw the doors of the audience chamber open before him and strode across the wooden floor to the figure seated at the far end. As he had thought, the emperor’s face was puffy from sleep, his hair braided hurriedly so that wisps of it were out of place.
“What news is so important?” Emperor Wei said, his voice strained. The general felt calm at last and took a deep breath as he knelt.
“His Imperial Majesty does me honor,” he said. He raised his head then and the eyes that looked out from the heavy brows made the young emperor clutch at the front of his robe in fear. There was madness there.
Zhi Zhong stood slowly, glancing around the hall. The emperor had dismissed his ministers to hear the private communication from his general. Six slaves stood around the room, but Zhi Zhong cared nothing for them. They would carry the news to the city as they always did. He let out a long breath. His mind had been confused for a time, but at last it was clear.
“The Mongols have come through the pass,” he said, at last. “I could not hold them.” He saw the emperor pale, his skin turning waxy in the light coming through the high windows.
“The army? Have we been forced to retreat?” Emperor Wei demanded, rising to stand before him.
“It has been broken, Imperial Majesty.”
The general’s eyes bored into the young man who faced him and this time they did not look away.
“I served your father well, Imperial Majesty. With him, I would have won. With you, a lesser man, I have failed.”
Emperor Wei opened his mouth in amazement. “You come to me with this and dare to insult me in my own palace?”
The general sighed. He had no sword, but he drew a long knife from where it had been hidden under his armor. The young emperor gaped at the sight of it, suddenly frightened.
“Your father would not have let me come to him, Imperial Majesty. He would have known not to trust a general who returns from a defeat.” Zhi Zhong shrugged. “In failing you, I earned my death. What choice is there for me, but this?”
The emperor took a deep breath to scream for his guards. Zhi Zhong lunged at him and clamped a hand around his throat, stifling the cry. He felt hands batter at his armor and his face, but the boy was weak and his grip only tightened. He could have strangled him then, but it would have been a dishonor to the son of a great man. Instead, he found a place in the emperor’s chest as it writhed and twitched, pressing the blade into the heart.
The hands fell away and only then did he feel the sting of the scratches on his cheeks. Blood stained the robe around the blade and the general lifted him up to place him back in his seat.
The slaves were screaming and Zhi Zhong ignored them, standing before the body of the young emperor. There had been no choice, he told himself.
The outer door swung open as the emperor’s guards burst in. They raised their weapons and Zhi Zhong stood to face them, seeing the figures of his men fill the corridor behind. Lujan had followed the orders he had been given, and he was already bloody. It did not take long to finish the last of them.
Lujan stood with his chest heaving, staring in wonder at the white face of a dead emperor.
“You have killed him,” he said, awed. “What do we do now?”
The general looked at the exhausted, bloody men who brought the stink of the battlefield into such a place. Perhaps later he would weep for everything he had lost, everything he had done, but now was not the time.
“We tell the people the emperor is dead and that the city must be closed and fortified. The Mongols are coming here and we can do nothing else.”
“But who will be emperor now? One of his children?” Lujan said. He had gone very pale and he did not look again at the sprawled figure on the throne.
“The eldest boy is only six,” Zhi Zhong replied. “When the funeral has been held, have him brought to me. I will rule as his regent.”
Lujan stared at his general. “Hail the new emperor,” he whispered, the words repeated by those around him. Almost in a trance, Lujan lowered himself until his forehead touched the wooden floor. The other soldiers followed suit and General Zhi Zhong smiled.
“Ten thousand years,” he said softly. “Ten thousand years.”
CHAPTER 25
THE SKY BURNED BLACK OVER THE MOUNTAINS, the oily smoke reaching for miles. Many of the Chin had surrendered at the end, but the tribes had lost too many of their own to consider mercy. The killing had gone on for days around the pass, those who still wanted to seeking out every last one of the fleeing soldiers and slaughtering them like the marmots of home.
Great bonfires had been built of the pike poles and flags, leaving only food and the dead. The families had come slowly through the pass behind the warriors, bringing carts and forges to melt down the pike heads for their steel. The Chin supplies were dragged into snowbanks where they would remain fresh. There was no tally of the Chin corpses, nor need for one. No one who saw the mountains of broken flesh would ever forget it. The children and women helped to strip the bodies of their armor and anything else of value. The stench was awful after only a day, and the air was rich with flies that crackled and burned in the swirling smoke of the bonfires.
On the edge of it, Genghis waited for his generals. He wanted to see the city that had sent such an army against him. Kachiun and Khasar rode out to join him, staring back in awe across the field of blood and fire that stretched into the distance. The bonfires threw flickering shadows on the mountains of the valley, and even the tribes were subdued as they sang in low voices for the dead.
The three brothers waited in silence as the men Genghis had summoned trotted up, their backs stiff. Tsubodai came first, pale and proud with ugly black stitches running the length of his left arm. Jelme and Arslan rode together, dark against the fires. Ho Sa and Lian the mason came last of all. Only Temuge remained behind to move the camp to a river ten miles north. The flames would burn for days yet, even without the tribes to feed them. The flies were getting worse and Temuge was sickened by the constant buzzing and the rotting dead.
Genghis could hardly drag his gaze away from the plain. It was the death of an empire he was seeing, he was certain of it. He had never come so close to defeat and destruction as in the battle through the pass. It had left its mark on him and he knew he would always be able to close his eyes and summon the memories. Eight thousand of his own men had been wrapped in white cloth and taken up to the mountains. He glanced up to where they lay like fingers of bone in the snow, far away. Already, hawks and wolves tore at their flesh. He had stayed only to see them sky buried, to honor them and give their families honor.
“Temuge has the camp,” he told his generals. “Let us see this Yenking and this emperor.” He dug in his heels and his horse jerked into a run. The others followed him, as they always had.
Built on a great plain, Yenking was by far the largest construction any of them had ever seen. As it grew before him, Genghis recalled the words of Wen Chao, the Chin diplomat he had met years before. He had said that men could build cities like mountains. Yenking was such a place.
It rose in dark gray stone that was at least fifty feet from bedrock to the crest. Genghis sent Lian and Ho Sa around the city to count the wooden towers that rose even further. When they returned, they had traveled more than five miles around and reported almost a thousand towers, like thorns along the walls. Even worse were the descriptions of huge bow weapons on the battlements, manned by silent, watching soldiers.
Genghis studied Lian for some sign that the mason was not intimidated, but the man visibly drooped in the saddle. Like the Mongols, he had never visited the capital and could not think of a way to break walls of that size.
On the corners of the immense rectangle, four forts stood apart from the main walls. A wide moat ran between the forts and the walls and yet another girdled them on the outside. A huge canal was the only breach in the walls the
mselves, running through an immense water gate of iron that was in turn protected by platforms for archers and catapults. The waterway stretched into the south, as far as any of them could see. Everything about Yenking was on a scale too great for the imagination. Genghis could not begin to think of a way to force the gates.
At first Genghis and his generals kept as close as they had to Yinchuan, or some of the other Chin cities to the west. Then a hammer blow sounded on the evening air and a dark blur shot past them, staggering Kachiun’s horse with the power of its wake. Genghis almost lost his seat as his own mount reared and could only gaze in amazement at a shaft half-sunk in the soft ground, more like a smooth tree trunk than an arrow.
Without a word, his generals retreated past the range of the fearsome weapon, their spirits sinking even lower as they understood another part of the defenses. To come closer than five hundred paces was to invite more of the great poles with their iron tips. Just the thought of one of them striking a mass of his riders was appalling.
Genghis turned in the saddle to the man who had broken lesser walls.
“Can we take this place, Lian?” he demanded. The mason would not meet his stare and looked over the city. At last he shook his head.
“No other city has a wall so wide at the top,” he said. “From that height, they will always have more range than anything I can make. If we built stone ramparts, I might be able to protect the counterweighted catapults, but if I can reach them, they can certainly reach me to smash them to firewood.”