Not daring to show any sign of fear, Chaka felt like a fawn left alone with a hungry lion. She had sometimes wondered what her master of a spouse was capable of when he felt betrayed. Something in the intensity of his gaze told her to remain perfectly still.
Rage seemed to have consumed Temujin’s soul. She sensed a tremor in her backbone. Her self-confidence was threadbare in the face of this unfolding calamity. Temujin had told her that Hoelun’s necklace that she wore had warded off danger from his mother in many instances. Chaka put her hand over the talisman and hoped that it would protect her now in her hour of need.
The gravity of the situation made Chaka’s earlier suggestion seem all the more impudent. She knew he would not tolerate it. Minutes went by as they both stood still. The lapse of response exacerbated Chaka’s horror, unleashing the seething emotions within her. Revulsion against a fate not chosen but imposed came to surface in an instant; a revolt that had surged through her veins like the tides of an uneasy ocean, threatening the veneer of her pretended calm. Her soul could no longer endure it. Her body shook uncontrollably. Strong ethics and a solid upbringing had helped her maintain the pretense of civility and submissiveness to this point but now, her voice reaching fever pitch, she found herself confronting the Khan brazenly.
“You say the King of Khwarazm has robbed you. You have robbed me of my life. You have deceived my family and trampled upon my happiness for too many years,” she said, uttering the words without restraint.
“I have lived,” he said, his voice quivering with the intensity of his rage, “through great turmoil, through hunger and thirst. We lived on the flesh of rodents and used their skin as our garb when our tribe betrayed us. I had no one to help me. I bore the shame, the pain for years. I waited. But today, I do not want to wait. I can’t stand it. I want to put an end to this right now.”
He then added as if talking to himself, “It teaches me to trust a woman. I gave you all the beautiful things that you had ever wanted. I shared with you my wealth and glory and power, and you . . . you have betrayed me!”
“I had wealth and glory and power as a Tangut Princess,” she retorted far more angrily than she intended, “before I was dragged like a beast to your tent.”
“I will give you a choice,” he said, hissing his words through his teeth like a snake, “either a quick, honorable death without anyone knowing of your deceit or full disclosure of it in the Khuriltai.”
The Khuriltai was the assembly of elders where Mongol chiefs engaged in all essential consultations and made crucial decisions. Chaka could not stand such humiliation. With a gesture toward his dagger, she conveyed her preference.
“I give my life gladly rather than be party to this never-ending carnage,” she said and felt a sharp pain in her stomach as the dagger tore through her. His once loving hands stabbed her with such ferocity that it took her breath away. The piercing edge of the dagger cut deeper than her delicate skin and flesh; it severed forever the ties of the Tangut and Mongolian nations.
Blood stained her attire until it was the color of the hanfu she wore on the day of the kidnapping. He tore off her necklace, avoiding her gaze, her questioning eyes, and the tears that rolled down her cheeks as life began to drain slowly out of her body. You never take back a gift you have granted someone. Those who do so are less than a thief. For a thief steals out of necessity, but a wealthy person who does so is dishonorable. Those were her mother’s words told to her often when she was but a child.
As she rolled down onto the floor, bleeding but still alive, the Khan walked out into the open air swearing loudly, “The sky is my witness, I will bring the Khwarazm Dynasty to its knees through all means at my disposal, be it violence or deceit.”
With what little strength she had left, Chaka dragged herself to the adjacent ger where she did her writing. There, she lifted herself onto a large cedar chest where she kept her manuscript, hidden underneath a pile of clothes, and etched the final words of the journal with an ink that had mixed with her blood.
Baako had rushed to her side. She turned to him saying, “I have honored my promise to serve my nation. I have done my utmost to save the lives of others in faraway lands, and I have bravely confronted a warmongering ruler when even the bravest of men did not dare do so.”
Uttering her last words with difficulty, she handed the manuscript to Baako. “I trust you with its safekeeping,” she said and closed her eyes forever.
Genghis remembered the first time he hunted a wolf cub at twelve years of age. They had stared into each other’s eyes, deep into each other’s souls, and each one knew what their fate would be. When he thrust his spear into the animal’s throat, he felt the thrill of the kill, although the blood that spilled repulsed him. He had the same sensation when he aimed his arrow at his own half-brother and watched him succumb to death. He had endured his abuses far too long and the time had come to end them.
He now had to take on his powerful foe, the Shah. The method had to be an unconventional one to ensure victory. He chose a venue for the attack that no other army had threaded before, the barren desert of Kyzyl Kum. An attack from that region was unprecedented, for no living army had ever crossed such treacherous terrain.
Genghis had brought order and discipline to the ranks of his army and had them divided into units of ten, with ten being the smallest component and ten thousand or a Tumen being the largest corps in the army. He had then placed each interdependent unit under one command. A unit of ten Mongolian soldiers under one commander he dispatched to Kyzyl Kum, seeking a desert dweller who could guide the army through the desert in a frontal assault on Bukhara. Over the course of several days, they had quietly kept watch from a distance, monitoring a lone desert dweller’s every move, in order to approach him at the right moment.
Book II
The Persian Invasion
Chapter One
The Jackal
Winter of 1220 C.E.
The Syr River quenched the thirst of the inhabitants of the busy region of Otrar. An abundance of fish swam in its waters as its currents sang a note of tranquility for those dwelling nearby. Otrar was strategically located along the Silk Road. Caravans roaming the trade route that extended from the East to the West frequently stopped there for supplies. Local businessmen traded woven baskets or clay pots for the silk and cotton fabrics of China. Silk was expensive, but a small scarf could win a woman’s heart.
From this oasis Jamsheed was banished. He had to spend the rest of his days in Kyzyl Kum desert, a no man’s land of some fifteen thousand square leagues. He was now a fugitive who passed his time sitting on top of a high hill; the sturdiest sand dune in the entire desert. It was also home to a magnificent palm tree that had become his shelter and source of sustenance when he could find no other.
On a few occasions, when he dared set foot in a town or village near the borders of Kyzyl Kum, he used a fake name and tried not to get any attention. He stole goods when he could and engaged in honest labor when robbery was not an option. People called Jamsheed “Shoaghol” meaning “the Jackal.”
Life in the desert wasn’t so terribly bad after all. Things could have been worse, he thought. They might have hanged him. He could have been married, with a wife now crying over him. He had a camel for a companion and camels don’t cry, thank God. The camel was an old one and older in camels, as in humans, means wiser.
Jamsheed’s aging dromedary knew every nook and cranny in the desert. By instinct, she helped him find every water hole and desert route during his three years of intermittent exile. Intermittent that is, because he broke the rules occasionally by seeking provisions in the city and escaping before they discovered him. The animal provided companionship and served as a means of survival to the poor robber. From the tree would fall a date or two on lucky days. A water hole nearby that the camel had first spotted sustained them through the hot days.
Unlike the backstabbing cha
racters Jamsheed had known throughout his life, the camel was a harmless creature and a very good listener indeed. So he had developed a habit of telling the overgrown mammal tales of his childhood experiences, often adding imaginative details to which any human would have raised an eyebrow. But the camel moved her tail in seemingly great satisfaction, for the sound of a master is sweeter than a lullaby to a pet.
Jamsheed’s beard, that at times he had tried to cut short with sharp stones, reached his collar bone. His hair, once a lustrous brown, had turned the color of desert sands. His skin, scorched by the hot sun, fared no better than that of his camel. The passing of occasional caravans, lonely camel herders, or a rider on horseback became his sole source of entertainment at night. Tradesmen preferred to cross the desert on moonlit nights to escape the sweltering daytime heat and use the stars as tools of navigation.
Jamsheed wondered what would become of him if his luck ran out, if the water in the hole depleted, if he could no longer find a prey, or if the palm tree dried out. But at night the breathtakingly beautiful desert sky put its spectacular stars on display and melted away his worries.
He embraced the barren environment, and nature in turn welcomed this out-of-place creature, displaying before him a kaleidoscope of colors and contours. During the day, his companion would munch on thorny desert vegetation, and Jamsheed would hunt desert animals of all sorts, sharing the camel’s food when no other means of sustenance was available.
Barely twenty-nine-years-old, he had already gained infamy for his robberies. Yes, he had robbed a place or two in his younger days, but what really got him into trouble and branded him with his nickname was the fact that he had dared to raid the treasury of the municipality of Otrar.
The governor of Otrar had placed a bounty of five hundred dinars on the Jackal, captured alive or dead. But the caravans that passed through the desert needed the knowledge of the fugitive for safe passage through the rough terrain, so no one bothered to turn him in for the money. Preserving life in that barren land meant more than getting one’s hands on gold coins. In time, he had turned into a sort of hero. People despised the governor and knew him as a greedy, devious fellow who would never meet his end of the bargain. No one wanted to deal with him for he had a reputation of hanging subjects for petty reasons.
The governor occasionally boasted that he was of royal blood. After all, being a relative of Khwarazm Shah who now ruled the territories of Persia and Transoxiana had its advantages. Greedy like the rest of that clan, the governor had his eyes on a recently arriving caravan from Mongolia to pillage its bounty.
One evening at sunset, the sands took on a scarlet hue. Dust rose in plumes of yellow and orange and descended in red upon the ever-changing landscape of the desert. The fugitive, sitting on a hill like a king upon his throne, pierced the tender skin of the heavenly fruit with his overgrown fingernail. It was a ripe pomegranate which among other things he had gained days ago as a reward for hard labor at a blacksmith shop.
Jamsheed imagined the fruit to be the forbidden one from the Garden of Eden, for it tasted too sweet to be considered the produce of the arid lands surrounding him. And like the one bitten by Adam, he believed it would change the circumstances of his existence. Jamsheed tried to entertain his idle mind with this idea. As he licked the juices dribbling from his mouth, for a second or two the enormity of exile and constant deprivation placed its heavy footprint upon his lonely heart.
As the sky above darkened, Jamsheed remained seated under the night sky’s shimmering blanket of stars and an incredibly bright moon. He suddenly heard the ringing of camel bells, a sign that a caravan was passing by. He could distinguish silhouettes of riders in the moonlight. Treasures of silver and gold were also visible on the backs of camels that moved in their graceful ways, carrying an enormous fortune fit for a king. From a distance, it had looked as if the stars of heaven were visiting the earth. Gems of every color blinked at him from under what seemed to be layers of rugs and furs.
He had robbed lone desert travelers before but seeing the multitude of riders and the length of the caravan that stretched to the horizon, he decided that the dagger he had as his only weapon would not suffice to trap and loot the travelers. Sweet temptation came and went in a blink of an eye as it usually did.
The fact is that he was no longer considered a threat. So much so, that travelers had learned to seek his aid in finding the safest routes out of the desert and in return, they shared their meals and provisions with him. Traders knew he lacked the means to rob them, and they formed a sort of kinship with him over the years. Jamsheed the Jackal, now completely subdued, had in time turned into a road sign, a monument by the lonely tree, for traders who sought him during their long journey from scorching lands into prosperity.
The trader, who had features Jamsheed had never seen before and obviously came from an alien land, approached him. In broken Persian, he announced his intention of finding Otrar and a safe passage through the desert. Apparently aware of the Jackal’s desert vocation, he then offered Jamsheed a plate of dried beef jerky. Jamsheed happily obliged his request for information, beef jerky being a rare treat.
What seemed like a mirage, Jamsheed later learned was actually the ill-fated trade delegation from Mongolia that had moved at the speed of a tortoise through the rough terrain, in hopes of reaching Otrar. The leader of the caravan, known as “caravansalar,” was a Mongolian Muslim who had been intentionally dispatched by Genghis Khan to soften the heart of the Shah and encourage him to agree to mutually beneficial trade.
This benevolent act of the Jackal, meaning the assistance he provided to the Mongol convoy, was related to Genghis Khan by the spies he had dispatched to find desert dwellers willing to cooperate with the Mongol army. The Mongols had chosen the desert for their venue of attack, and the man of the desert to guide them was no other than the Jackal. He could lead the Mongols to their destination safely, and the armies of the Shah would be taken by surprise. The Shah had already made the fatal mistake of dividing his army in two, dispatching one division to Bukhara and keeping the other to defend Samarkand. He must not have been anticipating an attack through the barren desert, leaving that frontier unguarded.
Chapter Two
The Beast
Unaware that he was being watched, the Jackal waited in hopes of finding prey as hours turned into days. Occasionally, he had been able to hunt a hare or gerbil but luck was not on his side this time. The endless sea of caramel-colored sand kept changing shape before his eyes, and he had an urge to raid a nearby town or village again. Even a few hours away from the tiring landscape would have been enough to renew his spirits. The endless silence of the barren land weighed heavily upon his ears. His eyes were tired of staring at the ever-moving sand dunes. Of course, he still had the luxury of imagination, as if his mind had found a blank canvas to write on. Hallucinations became real and he had to pinch himself back to reality each time he thought he saw a horseman, a beautiful desert dwelling girl or a child carrying a basket of fruit above his head.
He had eaten no food for at least three days now. He shook the palm tree with all his might, hoping for its sweet fruit to fall before his feet but to no avail. The tree was too tall for him to climb. Solitude and hunger had already worn him down. He knew he had to wait until the break of dawn to find something to eat and gain enough strength to put his plan into action.
Soon a blanket of gray silk covered the creamy dunes of the desert in darkness. Then, like magic, the desert gradually turned black and the sky, lit with the light of the crescent moon, became a slightly paler color than the earth. Everything above the ground, although still distinguishable, appeared as black specters. Pangs of hunger made sleep an impossible exercise.
Dawn was near, and silence filled the air. Suddenly behind him, Jamsheed heard a beastly cry. He reached for his dagger. Swiftly turning, he plunged it into the apparition before him, using all his remaining strength. Sheer
terror filled his heart as the beast breathed down his neck. The smell of fresh blood filled Jamsheed’s nostrils, warm liquid splashing across his face. The beast’s claws scraped down his chest as it slowly succumbed to death, rolling to the ground.
Jamsheed could hear the pounding of his heart. He had come within inches of death. From what he could distinguish, the beast before him was large and ferocious. It lunged and bit his foot but failed to clamp down as life was drawn out of it before it could carry out this final act. The break of dawn revealed it to be a hyena.
Jamsheed’s face and body felt wet with the blood of the animal. He stared, stunned to see a group of foreigners approaching him. They threaded the sandy path toward him. A warrior who appeared to be the commander of the group began to speak with the aid of a translator who accompanied them, “We are Mongolians, here to rid your nation of an evil Shah. Are you not Jamsheed, a fugitive sought by the armies of the Shah?” the alien officer asked. Jamsheed noticed the officer’s dust-covered boots; a dagger hung by the belt of the leather outfit he wore. His rugged features were proof that he was indeed from a faraway land.
“Let’s say I am. What good would that do for you?” the Jackal replied, realizing that these soldiers, whoever they were, were not spies of the Shah.
“You are a man of great bravery and competence,” the officer said, adding that he had been surveying the desert and had seen and admired Jamsheed’s heroic earlier performance. The slain beast, barely visible in the dark, lay still as blood flowed from its wound. The rays of the sun painted the scene in vivid colors.
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