The Mongoliad: Book One

by Neal Stephenson

  “He reminded us that our city was at his mercy and that with a wave of his hand he could destroy us like the others.

  “He claimed that, contrary to the terrifying rumors that went before him, he was no monster, but a proud warrior of an old and honorable line.

  “As such, he was presenting us with a choice. Of course, there is always the choice to surrender or fight. But he could see with his own eyes that we had already chosen the latter, for which he respected us. And rather than defeat us and put us all to the sword, he called us to send forth our greatest warriors to do battle in single combat against his own champions, in an arena that he would build before our city gates. If our champions prevailed, his armies would depart and leave us in peace, with one caveat, which I shall explain. If our champions went down in defeat, we would surrender the city to plunder, but the people would be suffered to live.

  “Seeing no alternative, we accepted his offer. I caused a training ground to be cleared in the square before our cathedral. I and the other leading knights of the city spent every day training there—conferring our skills, as best as we were able, on the younger men-at-arms who volunteered to fight in Onghwe Khan’s arena.

  “During the evenings, we would go to the watchtower above the city’s main gate and watch the arena a-building, so close that we could throw stones down into it. A tunnel was dug, leading from our gate directly to the arena’s western entrance. On the other side, a similar entrance was prepared, leading in from the camp of the besieging host, and it did not require great shrewdness to see that Onghwe Khan’s champions would be entering from that direction. There was, however, a third entrance to—or rather, exit from—the arena. It was on the southern side, below a high platform that was prepared for the Khan to sit upon. As we now understood, these competitions were for him a kind of sport, like bear baiting or falconry, and their entire purpose was to give him pleasure. The exit tunnel beneath the Khan’s platform was cloaked by a scarlet veil.

  “Messengers came into the city to acquaint us with the rules and traditions of the contest. They explained that, from time to time, after a bout had been decided, the Khan might gesture to the victor, signifying that he should leave the arena, not through the tunnel by which he had entered it, but by passing through this Red Veil, into whatever fate might await him there.

  “So the thing took shape, and our chosen champions trained as hard as any men could, knowing that the fate of all who lived in the city rested on their feats of arms. In the end, we chose three and sent them down the tunnel to fight their duels before a howling audience of Mongols and the less honorable scum who follow their camp.

  “Our first champion, who I believed to be the best of the lot, was struck down and beheaded in a few moments by a demon with a curved sword. I never heard where that demon came from. I had never seen nor heard of his like before.

  “The second was a wrestler, a Mongol, I think—who, to my surprise, was defeated by our champion. I believe that the Mongol was over-proud of his abilities and that my man took him by surprise and got him down and dazed before he could enter into the full spirit of the battle. He had been a favorite, it seemed, and when our champion won, the crowd was not very pleased.

  “It then came down to me. For I was the third champion. I fought with a lance against a Kitayan man. I will not pretend to make the story suspenseful, since you can see that I am here. He was good with the point, and his weapon was lithe and fast, being hafted with some species of hollow reed. But his insistence upon using the sharp end gave me the idea he might not be so clever in the use of the butt, and so by closing in, I was able to clear his steel out of my way and bring the blunt end of my weapon around smartly and take him along the side of the head.”

  The knights nodded and murmured approval. Cnán rolled her eyes.

  “He fell and did not rise. I turned to regard Onghwe. This was the closest we ever came. I could have hurled my lance at him with even odds of putting it through his chest. While this would have been satisfying, it would have condemned my city to destruction, and so I did not do it. Never have I seen a more villainous face. He considered me for a few moments, then nodded toward the western tunnel from which I had issued a few minutes earlier.

  “I went back into my city. The Mongols tore down the arena, which was cleverly devised so that it could be pitched and struck in a short time, like a tent. They struck their entire camp and went away.

  “Three days later they came back and destroyed us.”

  Illarion took another long draught of ale and allowed that to sink in.

  “I could tell stirring tales of our defense and our defeat,” Illarion said, “and even more stirring ones of what came after.” He reached to his chest and made a fist around a locket that he wore, containing, Cnán knew, a tiny rendering of the wife and child who had been trampled to death next to him, beneath the planks. “But I do not wish to distract you from the main point of the story.”

  “Which is?” Feronantus asked, though it was clear from his expression that he already knew.

  “That I did just what you lot are preparing to do at this very moment…and the place and people I defended were made desolate and slaughtered regardless,” Illarion said. “The invitation to which you have responded is a farce. The only difference is in the stakes. For, unless I have been wrongly informed, you are here as the champions, not just of one town in the middle of Ruthenia, but of Christendom in its entirety.”

  Feronantus spoke: “The offer that Onghwe Khan proclaimed, not just to us, but to every king and bishop and pope of every land not yet fallen to the Horde, was precisely as you have described it. Instead of offering to spare one city, he offers to spare all of Christendom, provided Christendom sends its champions to the arena you saw being erected near Legnica. Because of the great distances involved, he has granted those kings and bishops and popes several months to respond.”

  “And need I tell you,” Illarion asked, “that he has not done so to be fair or merciful? He has done so because this entertainment, the Circus of Swords, is nothing more than a stalling tactic that he and his brother Khans use to divert the attention of their prey, while the Mongol armies are maneuvered and supply lines laid down for the next onslaught.”

  “Did you truly believe it?” asked a voice.

  Cnán and several others turned to find its source: Roger, the Norman who had come up from Sicily with Percival.

  “When you were training in the square before your cathedral, did you believe that Onghwe Khan would honor his word?” His voice was skeptical. He was irritated by Illarion’s tone.

  Illarion bristled at first, but then looked away, conceding the point. “Of course I asked myself that question every day,” he said. “But what choice did we have?”

  “Exactly,” Roger said. “And do you keep in mind that, during those months of delay, it is not only the Mongols who are maneuvering their armies and preparing their supply lines.”

  “Would that it were true!” Taran barked. “But Christendom has nothing like the Mongol’s unity of purpose. Frederick and the Pope are at war over the Italian peninsula. They don’t care what happens farther north.”

  “It is still better to be attacked later than now,” Roger said.

  “Not if the outcome is foreordained,” said Raphael. “It seems that nothing will stop these Khans except the waves of the western ocean lapping against their ponies’ hooves.”

  And here the conversation shattered into at least half a dozen fragments as groups of three or four men fell to disputing one detail or another. But as far as Cnán could make out, all they were doing was finding new ways to agree on the utter hopelessness of the situation.

  “How do they do it?” Feronantus demanded, silencing the table. He groped about with his eyes until his gaze found and fastened upon Cnán. “We know so little about them. Only you, Vaetha, have traveled into the eastern lands from which the Mongols issued. At first, there was only the one—the great one—Genghis. Now there are sev
eral. His son Ögedei in the center. Ögedei’s son Onghwe. His nephew Batu. Others, I suppose, whose names I do not know. How do they coordinate their movements? How can Ögedei control subordinates who are thousands of leagues away?”

  Cnán was impressed by how much Feronantus had already learned. Other Binders may have brought him messages before her, but more likely he had bartered information with traders or captives sent to the Roman Emperor Frederick—perhaps the envoys of the Ismaelis, poor pagan bastards that they were. The Ismaelis, broken remnants of the assassins who had plagued Saladin, Caliphs, and Seljuks alike, had also hired Binders to guide them west.

  “The answers to your questions could fill days,” she pointed out. Perhaps she did have information they needed, after all—information that might suit the purposes of the Bindings, as well as of the Skjaldbræður.

  “Is there nothing else in the minds of these Khans,” Feronantus asked, “other than to go on conquering until, as Raphael put it, the ocean washes their ponies’ hooves?”

  “In large part, they have a free hand, as must be obvious to you,” Cnán said, “but they obey commands from the center, and they compete against each other.”

  “What sort of competition worthy of the name can exist between one Khan and another who is on the other side of the world? Their domains seem to be clearly marked out; one never sees two Khans trying to conquer the same place.”

  “You misunderstand,” Cnán said. “When I speak of competition, I do not mean to say that they compete for the same spoils. For a man of such wealth and power, there is only one prize remaining that is worth attending to, and that is to become the next Khagan—the Khan of Khans.”

  A silence fell around the table as this was considered. “The wisdom of this messenger boots us nothing of consequence,” someone complained. “What good does it do us to know that several Khans dream of succeeding Ögedei upon his death?”

  “I would hear more,” Feronantus demurred. “How is this Khagan chosen? Does he select his own successor? Or is it determined by a law of succession? And if there is any such fixed procedure, do they respect it? Or ignore its dictates and fight amongst themselves?”

  “The Khagan makes his successor known, and upon his death, the choice is ratified by the kuriltai.”

  “And what is that? Some sort of high priest?”

  Cnán shook her head. “They do not have priests like you are accustomed to, much less high ones. The kuriltai is a high council of Khans. They all come together in one place to decide some important issue—in this case, the identity of the next Khagan.”

  “Does the kuriltai happen according to some regular schedule?”

  “No. It happens when the Khagan wills it.”

  Feronantus looked disappointed. “So we cannot predict when the next one might happen?”

  “No.”

  “I beg your pardon, but I’ve a question,” said a new voice. It was Yasper, the Dutchman whom Cnán had seen drinking with Raphael on the day of her arrival. Not a member of the Shield-Brethren, he was respected nonetheless as some sort of alchemist.

  Feronantus nodded assent, and so Yasper went on. “You say that the kuriltai ratifies the successor to the Khag—this Khan of Khans.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you have also said that he is the only one who can summon a kuriltai.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you see the contradiction?”

  Cnán smiled in spite of herself. “There is another rule I neglected to mention,” she admitted, “which is that the death of the Khagan causes a kuriltai to be called immediately.”

  Yasper nodded, satisfied by the answer. Which seemed to settle the matter for everyone, save Feronantus. He mulled it over and held up a hand to silence the next person who tried to speak.

  “And a kuriltai means that all of the Khans must go without delay to the same place?”

  “That is what a kuriltai is.”

  “And can it be convened anywhere, or—”

  “Unthinkable,” Cnán said. “They have a superstitious reverence for certain magic places in their homeland. Only there could a kuriltai be convened.”

  “So you are telling me,” Feronantus said, now staring at her intently in a way that made her not altogether comfortable, “that if Ögedei, the Khan of Khans, were to die, then all of the other Khans—Onghwe, here in Legnica, and Batu, down in Hungary, and all of the others wherever they are—they would all have to drop what they were doing immediately and travel back to Mongolia?”

  “That is correct,” said Cnán, uncertain why Feronantus seemed to be so fascinated by this hypothetical punctilio of Mongol tribal law. “If they wished to become the Khagan. And they all do.”

  Feronantus seemed enormously relieved all of a sudden. A piercing glint came into his eyes, and he clasped his hands in front of his knees. He looked around the room at his smartest tacticians: Raphael, Finn, Rædwulf, Taran. “Well, our path is perfectly obvious, then!” he announced. “We will no longer become one, but two. We will split our group, and our efforts, and teach these Devil’s horsemen to respect the butt as well as the blade.”

  The silence in the room, and the expressions of all who stared at him, made it clear that she was not the only one who failed to see his plan. He threw up his hands, exasperated by their inability to see what, to him, was so obvious.

  “Some will fight in the circus. That will give us cover and diversion.”

  Cnán gaped, but turned her gaze immediately to Haakon, who seemed oblivious. She felt ill again, as if looking at Raphael’s bloody pincers—or smelling the rot around Legnica.

  Feronantus, she knew, had just sealed the young Viking’s doom—Haakon would die first, along with his younger and least experienced brethren.

  The Order was about to throw their children from the walls.

  The Kinyen was still silent, waiting for Feronantus to explain the other half of his plan.

  “And the rest,” Feronantus said, “shall ride into the East, passing over the Land of Skulls and into the sacred heartland of the Mongols, and find the Khagan. And kill him.”

  CHAPTER 6:

  IN THE GARDEN

  “On the field of battle, who has the power?”

  Lian’s tone implied she knew the answer to the question. Gansukh found this habit of hers irritating, but knew if he didn’t answer, she would only repeat the question. She would phrase it differently or seem to ignore his lack of answer for a short time before suddenly returning to the question. She was like a horsefly: always out of reach, buzzing and biting endlessly, and never landing on the same patch of flesh twice.

  “The general,” he replied, mentally swatting her away. “He makes the battle plans and gives the order to execute them.”

  Lian nodded. She was framed by the midmorning sun, and the light tinged her hair red. This was their third time meeting in the eastern gardens. Gansukh liked it much better here, outside, than in his tomb of a room. He could see the sky.

  It was only when he couldn’t see the endless expanse of blue that he realized how much he missed it. Not like a sword or a horse, or even one of the other tribesmen who had survived the siege at Kozelsk. Those were all parts of a Mongol’s life that changed: swords would be broken or lost, horses would fall in battle or grow too old to carry a warrior, friends and comrades would die too. This was all part of the cycle of life under the Endless Blue Heaven, and throughout that cycle, the sky never changed. It was always there.

  Until it wasn’t.

  He hated sleeping in a bed. He was always sore in the morning. Muscles in his lower back and shoulders were knotted in a way that made no sense to him. He had once spent a week in the saddle—riding, sleeping, fighting, pissing, eating—and at the end of the week, he hadn’t been as stiff as he felt after a single night in that bed.

  “And here, in Karakorum…” Lian paused until she was sure she had his attention. “Who has the power?”

  “The Khagan, of course,” Gansukh muttered.
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br />   The east garden had become Gansukh’s refuge, and after the way the first few lessons had left him feeling even more confused and frustrated, he had insisted they take place outside. The grounds were nothing like the open steppe, but there was some room to wander, enough that he didn’t feel quite as caged.

  The garden was huge, extending from the northern wall and the Khagan’s private quarters, along the east wall, to the gate. There were several paths, courses of river stone laid in winding paths through an endless procession of groves and bowers of trees. Gansukh had tried to count the different types of trees one afternoon and had given up after several dozen. If the trees were all taken from various places in the Khagan’s empire, then it must be far greater than Gansukh could ever imagine. And the flowers: swathes of color on raised beds, tiny blossoms strung like beads on vines that embraced the naked trunks of trees, tall stalks that bore flowers that looked like flaming birds, and long stems that craned overhead to look down on him with their mottled faces.

  In the center of the garden was a long pond. Fish as bright as the flowers swam lazily in the clear water. Fat and indolent, they did not fear any predator. Not in the Khagan’s garden. Arranged around the pond were a number of stone benches, carved with animals and flowers.

  Gansukh rarely sat.

  “Yes, of course, the Khagan has power.” Lian snapped her fingers. His answer was obvious—of little value to their lesson. “Who else?”

  Gansukh flushed. He could stand his ground against an approaching enemy without losing his focus, but this tiny woman with her tongue and her dismissive gestures—treating him as if he were an addled child—made him lose his temper so quickly. He kept his mouth shut.