It irritated Kublai that Uriang-Khadai was so obviously right. Before hearing the news of his brother’s death, he knew he would have ridden round the Sung regiments, forcing them to come after him and leave their guns behind, or make such slow progress with them that they would never catch up. He could then choose the best ground to attack.
It was the merest common sense not to let an enemy have his main advantage. All Kublai’s cannon, both captured and brought from home, lay rusting on fields hundreds of miles away. The weapons were terrifyingly powerful in the right place and time, but until someone found a way to move them quickly, they were more often a hindrance to fast-moving cavalry. The Sung commander did not seem to understand that, at all.
Yet under the stillness, Kublai felt a part of him clamouring and clawing its way out. It was red-mouthed in savagery, demanding that he attack just where the enemy were strong. He wanted to take all the grief and pain of his brother’s death and dash it out against those iron guns. He wanted to show Mongke that he had courage, whether his brother’s spirit knew it or not.
‘Sun Tzu said there are seven conditions for victory,’ Kublai said. ‘Shall I list them for you?’
‘Sun Tzu never saw gunpowder used in war, my lord,’ Uriang-Khadai said stubbornly.
‘One. Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with Moral Law? Who is in the right, orlok? It matters to the men. The Sung are defending their lands, so perhaps they must take that first point. Yet I am the grandson of Genghis Khan and all lands are mine.’
Uriang-Khadai stared at him in worried silence. He had never seen Kublai so intensely focused. The scholar had been burnt out of him and Uriang-Khadai feared the effects of his grief.
‘Two. Which of the generals has most ability? I give you that one, Uriang-Khadai, and you also, Bayar. These Sung have made a house that cannot move, with walls of guns. Three. With whom lie the advantages of Heaven and Earth? I call that equal, as the land is flat and the skies are clear.’
‘My lord …’ Uriang-Khadai tried to interrupt.
‘Four. On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced? That would be ours, orlok, men who live hard lives from birth, men who endure. They have not grown soft in Sung cities. Five. Which army is stronger? In numbers, perhaps the Sung, but we have beaten their armies before. I will have that one, I think.’
‘Six. On which side are the officers and men more highly trained? That is ours. Every man here has fought and won many times. We are veteran soldiers, Uriang-Khadai. We are the elite tumans of the nation. The Sung have had peace for too long.’ He paused. ‘The last is a strange one. Which army is most constant in reward and punishment? Sun Tzu valued good leadership, I think, if I have understood it correctly. Without knowing the Sung, I cannot be certain, so I will call that one equal. The balance is with us, orlok.’
‘My lord, the guns …’
‘The guns must be swabbed down between shots,’ Kublai snapped. ‘The barrels must be cleaned of burning scraps of cloth or embers. A new powder bag must be jammed down and carefully pierced by a hollow reed filled with black powder. The ball must be lifted into the barrel and shoved down. It all takes time, orlok, and we will not give them time. They will have one shot and then we will be in range to kill the cannon teams. We can face one shot.’
He had been staring out to the Sung regiment waiting for them, but he turned to face Uriang-Khadai, his yellow eyes blazing.
‘Should I treat them with respect, these Sung men who know nothing of war? Should I fear their weapons, their black powder? I do not, orlok. I will not.’
‘My lord, please reconsider. Let them stand and run dry for a few days without water. Let them grow hungry while we forage the land and remain strong. They cannot remain for ever in one place, leaving us to ride unchecked around them. Let me burn the closest towns to us and they will be forced to answer, to come out.’
‘And by then, there will be another Sung army on its way to support them,’ Kublai said bitterly. ‘Have you not learned yet that there is no end to these people? Today, I think I will answer their arrogance with arrogance of my own. I will ride down the mouths of their guns.’
Uriang-Khadai was horror-struck.
‘My lord, you must stay clear of the battle. The men look to you. If you are killed …’
‘Then I will be killed. I have made my decision, orlok. Stand with me, or join the ranks under the orders of others.’
Uriang-Khadai slowly bowed his head, understanding at last that he would not move the younger man from his choice. He looked again at the Sung guns, in the new light of knowing he would ride into them.
‘Then, my lord, I suggest wide-spaced ranks as we go in, coming back after the first shot for massed arrow volleys and a lance charge. If I may, my lord, I would also hold back two groups of five hundred heavily armoured riders to strike as gaps appear in their lines.’
Kublai grinned suddenly.
‘You are an interesting man, Orlok Uriang-Khadai. I hope you live through today.’
Uriang-Khadai grimaced.
‘As do I, my lord. With your permission, I will pass on those orders to the minghaans, telling them to target the cannon teams first.’ When Kublai nodded, he went on. ‘The Sung have not placed as many cannon at their rear, my lord. General Bayar is reasonably competent. He should swing out with a tuman and attack them from behind.’
Bayar chuckled at the grudging description of him.
‘Very well,’ Kublai replied. He felt lighter now he had made the decision. It was done. He would ride against the guns with his men, the bones of his fate tossed high into the air.
Uriang-Khadai passed on the new orders to the minghaan officers. Through them, the news reached the jagun commanders of a hundred and the most junior officers in charge of just ten men. The sun had hardly moved before every warrior there understood what Kublai intended them to do. He made no speeches to them. Even if he had, only a small number would have heard the words. Though he watched them, they seemed unsurprised by the orders and simply readied themselves, checking their mounts and weapons one last time. Kublai sent a silent prayer to his brother’s spirit. Men would die that day who might have lived if he had made different choices.
He stopped, the moment stretching in his head. It felt as if a veil had lifted, as if the sun shone through his grief for the first time. He could almost hear Mongke’s voice speaking in anger or mockery. For just an instant, it was as if his brother was standing behind him. Kublai dug in his heels and rode to where Uriang-Khadai and Bayar were discussing the battle plan with a group of other men. Kublai did not dismount.
‘I have new orders, Orlok Uriang-Khadai. We will ride round this army and head for Hangzhou. If the enemy leave their guns to chase, we will turn and tear them to pieces. If they bring them, we will attack while the cannon are still attached to oxen.’
‘Thank God,’ Uriang-Khadai said.
The men around him were grinning and Kublai could suddenly see how much strain they had been under before. Yet they had not baulked at what he had asked of them. His heart filled with pride.
‘We are the tumans of Mongke Khan,’ Kublai said. ‘We move, we strike and we move on again. Mount up. Let us leave these Sung fools behind.’
There was laughter in the ranks as the news spread and Kublai’s words were repeated hundreds of times. The tumans surged forward into a trot and the Sung regiments less than a mile away watched in confusion as they swung clear of the battlefield, leaving only dust, manure and cropped grass in their wake.
General Salsanan had not expected it to be such a task when he volunteered to leave the khan’s tumans and come south. Though he did not know exactly where Kublai was, he expected to track him down by following a trail of burnt towns and cities. Instead, the Sung countryside seemed hardly to have been affected by the passage of armies. It was true that there were few animals grazing and the peasants ran to hide from his soldiers as they searched for anything they could eat. Even so, it was a far cry from th
e trail of devastation he had thought to see.
His eighty thousand had not even brought the usual supplies. Each man had only two spare mounts, and as they pushed on, Salsanan’s tumans lost a few ponies each day to lameness. Unable to keep up, the mounts were quickly butchered, providing enough meat to give two hundred men a hot meal. The tumans left only bones and often split those for the rich marrow before moving on.
After a month of searching, Salsanan would spend much of each day wishing Mongke Khan was still alive. The land was wide and the endless stream of small towns tempted him to stop and loot. Only his sense of duty kept him going. His men were disciplined, but he was beginning to wonder where Kublai had gone. It seemed impossible to lose a hundred thousand men, even in the vastness of Sung territories. He questioned every village leader and town official who trembled before him, but it was not until he reached the city of Shaoyang that the prefect gave him a solid lead. As he rode, Salsanan reminded himself that the man he went to fetch home could be the next khan. He would have to tread carefully with the scholar prince.
On the road east, Salsanan’s scouts had him riding up ahead of the tumans to confirm the strange sight they reported. Hundreds of heavy cannon lay overturned in the road, their draught animals slaughtered. The carcases had been expertly butchered, with most of the meat taken. In many cases, flies swarmed over just a head and hooves and bloody ground. There were dead men with them, unarmed peasants with dead hands still clutching at whips and reins. Salsanan smiled to see it, recognising the work of his own people.
Just a few miles further on, he found the first remnants of a shattered army, bodies lying in the dusty road. Over the crest of a hill, the corpses grew thicker, as if a stand had been made on that spot. Salsanan walked his mount slowly through them, then reined in as the full battle site was revealed. Dead men lay everywhere, scattered in heaps like shrivelled insects.
Salsanan saw distant figures walking amongst the dead, stopping and staring in terror as his warriors came into sight. He knew some men always survive a battle. In the chaos of fighting, they are knocked unconscious, or pass out from a wound. There will always be a few to rise the following day, limping home while armies and the war move on without them. As he rode further through the field of the dead, Salsanan watched battered Sung survivors raise their hands, their faces slack as his men began to round them up.
He nodded in fascination as he read the battle that had taken place. It had been hard. There were many Mongol bodies and he could discern the pattern of their charges in the corpses and broken lances. Kublai’s tumans had been beaten back more than once, he could see, perhaps almost flanked. The Sung commander had known their tactics and answered them without panic.
Salsanan picked up a broken arrow and scratched his head with the tip. He would speak to the bruised and battered survivors, but first he walked the field, learning from the bloody script the sort of man who might one day rule the nation.
He found a place where the grass had been churned into mud, just a short way from the main battle lines. A tuman had been rallied there and sent back in. Salsanan could almost see the line of their attack in his mind’s eye. He frowned as he walked through the echoes of the battle, revising his opinion of Mongke Khan’s brother. The charge had been tight, discipline excellent. The Sung lines had bowed back and Salsanan could see the broken and bloody spears where they had tried to stand. His years of training made him look right and left for the second charge that he would have sent in at the right moment. There. He led his horse by the reins over the corpses, moving carefully as they slid and shifted under his boots.
He found the spot where the battle had been decided. Crossbow bolts and pitted iron balls littered the ground and there was still a taste of gunpowder in the air. Kublai’s men had ridden through heavy fire to circle out and back at full gallop. Salsanan could read their confidence and he nodded, satisfied. There had been no hesitation, no doubts from the man who commanded them.
One of Salsanan’s men signalled and he mounted to ride over to another section.
‘What is it?’ he said as he rode up.
His man gestured to the bodies that lay all around them. The smell of spilt guts was appalling and flies buzzed into Salsanan’s face, making him wave them off. Even so, he bent to look.
‘They are so old,’ the scout said.
Salsanan stared around him, confirming it. All the faces were lined and the dead men closest to him looked thin and wasted.
‘Why would the Sung go to battle with such elderly soldiers?’ he muttered. His foot was on a yellow banner and he reached down and picked up the torn cloth. Part of a painted symbol was revealed, but Salsanan did not recognise it. He let the crumpled cloth fall.
‘Whoever they were, they should not have fought against us.’
His gaze fell on the centre of the dead, a corpse with short-cropped grey hair surrounded by a ring of many others, as if they had died trying to protect him. A much younger man lay almost across the body, the only youthful face Salsanan could see. Arrow and sword wounds marked them all, the shafts themselves wrenched out from their flesh.
Salsanan shrugged, letting the small mystery go. ‘We cannot be far behind them now. Tell the men to make a good pace. And make sure the scouts show themselves early. I do not want to be attacked by my own people.’
Salsanan caught up with Kublai’s tumans on the outskirts of Changsha city. Like wolves entering another’s territory, both sides were cautious at first. The outer scouts overlapped and raced back with messages for those who led them on both sides. The armies halted far enough away for there to be no sense of threat. Kublai rode out with Bayar and Uriang-Khadai, breaking off his negotiations with the prefect of Changsha almost in mid-sentence when he heard.
He and General Salsanan met on a spring afternoon, with just a few mare’s tails of cloud in the sky above and a warm breeze blowing. Between them, sixteen tumans faced each other. On Kublai’s side, they were veterans, fierce and grubby with old blood and dirt. On the other, they were fresh, their armour shining. Both forces looked at the other side in astonishment and there were many jeering calls.
Kublai was flushed with pleasure at the sight of so many tumans of the nation. He let Salsanan dismount first and bow before he climbed down from his horse.
‘You do not know how welcome you are,’ Kublai said.
‘My lord, it seems to have fallen to me to bring the worst news,’ Salsanan said.
Kublai’s smile vanished. ‘I already know my brother is dead. Yam riders found me, two of them.’
A crease appeared on Salsanan’s brow.
‘Then I do not understand, my lord. If they found you, why have you not begun the journey home? The nation is gathering at Karakorum. The funeral of the khan …’
‘My brother Mongke gave me a task, general. I have made the decision to finish it.’
Salsanan did not respond at first. He was a man used to authority and comfortable in a chain of command. With the khan dead, it was as if a vital support beam had been removed and his habitual certainty was gone. He stammered slightly as he tried again, unnerved under the pale stare of the khan’s brother.
‘My lord, I was given the task of escorting you home. Those are my only orders. Are you saying you will not come?’
‘I am saying I cannot,’ Kublai snapped, ‘until I have brought the Sung to heel. The sky father has sent you to me, Salsanan. Your tumans are a gift, when I thought there could be none.’
Salsanan saw Kublai’s assumption and spoke quickly to head him off before he gave orders that could not be undone.
‘We are not reinforcements, my lord. My orders were to bring you home to Karakorum. Tell me where your camp is and I will begin the preparations. The khan is dead. There will be a gathering in Karakorum …’
Kublai had flushed again as he spoke, this time in anger.
‘Are you deaf? I have said I will not come back until my work is finished. Until I have the Sung emperor’s head. Whatev
er your orders were, I countermand them. You are my reinforcements, sorely needed. With you, I will complete the khan’s wishes.’
Salsanan clenched his jaw, seeking for calm and finding it difficult to grasp. He found his own anger rising and his voice hardened as he replied.
‘With respect, I am not yours to command, my lord. Neither are the tumans under me. If you will not come home, I must leave you here and make my way back. I will carry whatever messages you want me to take to Karakorum.’
Kublai turned away, taking a moment to wrap his reins around his hand. He could see Salsanan’s tumans in silent ranks stretching into the distance. He hungered to have them with him, doubling his forces at a stroke. At his back, his veterans were waiting in good spirits, certain that this new army had come to bolster their strength. To see them march away would be a small death, abandoned at the moment of triumph. Kublai shook his head. He could not allow it. Every mile to the east had brought a greater density of towns, better roads and teeming people. Hangzhou was barely five hundred miles on, but already he could see the wealth and strength of the outlying cities. He needed Salsanan’s men. They were the answer to prayers, the sign of benevolent spirits bringing him aid when he needed it most.
‘You leave me no choice, general,’ Kublai said, his eyes glinting with anger. He mounted his horse easily, leaping into the saddle. ‘General Bayar, Orlok Uriang-Khadai, bear witness.’ Kublai raised his voice, making it carry to both sides of waiting warriors.
‘I am Kublai of the Borjigin. I am grandson to Genghis Khan. I am eldest brother to Mongke Khan.’
‘My lord!’ Salsanan said in shock, as he realised what was happening. ‘You can’t do this!’
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