Conqueror (2011)

by Conn Iggulden

  The knowledge should have filled him with joy, but he could not shake the feeling of disappointment that weighed on him, as if all his years at war had won him only echoes of memories. He tried to dismiss the sensation as nostalgia, but the reality hung in the thick summer air, already sweet with the smouldering herbs that were said to ward off disease.

  With an effort, he turned away from the window looking out over the streets below. If Karakorum was flawed, it was still the first city of his people, the boundary marker that Ogedai Khan had built to take them from nomadic tribes to a settled nation. It had been a grand dream, but he would do better in Xanadu. He would do better as emperor of China, with all the wealth of those vast lands at his disposal. Kublai realised he would have to appoint a governor for Karakorum, someone he could trust to make the city bright and clean again. Uriang-Khadai sprang to his mind and he considered the idea carefully, finally nodding to himself.

  The place Kublai thought of as home had become a city of strangers. His place was in Xanadu, a bridge between the lands of the Chin and the Mongol homeland, exactly as he had planned it. From there, he would send out the tumans to dominate the Sung for all time. He clenched his fist as he stood in the silence. They had almost fallen to a Mongol general. They would fall to the great khan.

  He heard footsteps approaching the polished copper doors that closed off the room from the rest of the palace. Kublai gathered his will once again, ignoring the weariness that made his legs and arms feel leaden. He had ridden and fought all day. He stank of horses and blood and the summer sun was setting at last, but there was still one thing he had to do before he could bathe, eat and sleep.

  There were no servants there to answer the fist thumping on the outer door. No doubt they had all vanished as the conqueror came into the city, expecting slaughter and destruction. As if he would harm a single one of his people, the nation of his birth. He crossed the room swiftly and heaved open the copper doors. He was not aware of how his right hand dropped to his sword hilt, an action that had become part of him.

  Uriang-Khadai and Bayar stood there, with his brother between them. Their expressions were grim and Kublai did not speak, gesturing for them to enter. Arik-Boke was forced to shuffle forward, his feet tied so he could take only the smallest of steps. He almost fell and General Bayar gripped him by the shoulder to keep him upright.

  ‘Wait outside,’ Kublai said softly to the two men.

  They bowed briefly without protest, sheathing their swords as they went. Uriang-Khadai pulled the doors shut and Kublai watched the gap close on the orlok’s cold eyes.

  He was alone with his brother, for the first time in many years. Arik-Boke stood with his arms behind his back, straight and strong as he looked around the room. The only sound was the hissing wheeze from the old scar across his nose. Kublai looked for some sign of the boy he had known, but the face had coarsened, grown heavy and hard, as Arik-Boke’s eyes glittered under the inspection.

  It was difficult not to think of the last time they had met in that place, with Mongke full of life and plans and the world before them. Much had changed since then and Kublai’s heart broke to think of it.

  ‘So tell me, brother,’ he said, ‘now that the war is over, were you in the right, or was I?’

  Arik-Boke turned his head slowly, his face growing mottled as he flushed in slow anger.

  ‘I was in the right …’ he said, his voice grating, ‘but now you are.’

  Kublai shook his head. To his brother, there was no morality beyond the right of strength. Somehow the words and everything they revealed infuriated him. He had to struggle to find calm once again. He saw some gleam of triumph still in Arik-Boke’s eyes.

  ‘You gave an order, brother,’ Kublai said. ‘To butcher the women and children of my men in the camps around the city.’

  Arik-Boke shrugged. ‘There is a price for all things,’ he said. ‘Should I have allowed you to destroy my tumans without an answer? I am the khan of the nation, Kublai. If you take my place, you will know hard decisions in turn.’

  ‘I do not think it was a hard decision for you,’ Kublai said quietly. ‘Do you still think it was carried out? Do you believe the captain of the Guard would murder defenceless women while their children hung around their legs?’

  Arik-Boke’s contemptuous expression faded as he understood. His shoulders dipped slightly and some of the spite and anger seeped out of him, making him look worn and tired.

  ‘I trusted the wrong man, it seems.’

  ‘No, brother. You were the wrong man. Even so, it is hard for me to see you like this. I wish it could have gone another way.’

  ‘You are not the khan!’ Arik-Boke snapped. ‘Call yourself whatever you want, but you and I know the truth of it. You have your victory, Kublai. Now tell me what you intend and don’t waste my time lecturing me. From you, scholar, I have nothing to learn. Just remember that our mother held this city and our father gave his life for the nation. They are watching you as you put on your false expression of regret. No one else knows you the way I do, so don’t preach to me. You would have done the same in my place.’

  ‘You’re wrong, brother, but it doesn’t matter now,’ Kublai replied. He walked to the copper doors and thumped on them with his fist. ‘I have an empire to rule, one that has grown weak under your hand. I will not fail in strength or will. Take solace in that, Arik-Boke, if you care about the nation at all. I will be a good master for our people.’

  ‘And bring me out each month to parade me in my defeat?’ Arik-Boke said, his face flushing once again. ‘Or shall I be exiled for you to show the peasants your famous mercy? I know you, brother. I looked up to you once, but no longer. You are a weak man and for all your fine talk, for all your scholarship, you will fail in everything you do.’

  In the face of his brother’s spite, Kublai closed his eyes for a moment, making the decision with a wrench that felt like ripping the scab from a wound. Family was a strange thing and even as he felt Arik-Boke’s hatred battering at him, he still remembered the young boy who had swum in a waterfall and looked at him in simple adoration. They had laughed together a thousand times, grown drunk and shared precious memories of their parents. Kublai felt his throat grow thick with grief.

  Uriang-Khadai and Bayar entered the room once more.

  ‘Take him outside, general,’ Kublai said. ‘Orlok, stay for a moment.’

  Bayar took his brother into the corridor, the shuffling steps somehow pitiful.

  Kublai faced Uriang-Khadai and took a deep, slow breath before he spoke.

  ‘If he hadn’t ordered the death of the families, I could spare him,’ Kublai said.

  Uriang-Khadai nodded, his eyes dark pools. His own wife and children had been in the city, at his home.

  ‘The tumans expect me to have him killed, orlok. They are waiting for the word.’

  ‘But it is your decision, my lord. In the end, it is your choice.’

  Kublai looked away from the older man. There would be no comfort from him, no attempt to make it easier. Uriang-Khadai had never offered him the weak way and he respected him for it, as much as it hurt. Kublai nodded.

  ‘Yes. Not public, Uriang-Khadai. Not for my brother. Put aside your anger if you honour me and make his death quick and clean, as much as it can be.’ His voice grew rough as he spoke the last words.

  ‘And the body, my lord?’

  ‘He was khan, orlok. Give him a funeral pyre to light up the sky. Let the nation mourn his passing if they will. None of that matters. He is my brother, Uriang-Khadai. Just … make it quick.’

  The summer sun was warm on the back of his neck as Kublai sat in the gardens of the palace, his son Zhenjin beside him. In the distance, a black plume of smoke rose into the sky, but Kublai had not wanted to stand and watch his brother’s funeral. Instead, he rested with closed eyes, taking simple pleasure in his son’s company.

  ‘I will be going on to Xanadu in a few days,’ Kublai said. ‘You’ll see your mother again there.�
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  ‘I’m glad I had the chance to see this city first,’ Zhenjin replied. ‘It is so full of history.’

  Kublai smiled. ‘It isn’t history to me, boy. It’s my family and I miss them all. I rode with Genghis when I was younger than you, barely able to stay on a saddle.’

  ‘What was he like?’ Zhenjin asked.

  Kublai opened his eyes to find his son watching him.

  ‘He was a man who loved his children and his people, Zhenjin. He took the Chin foot off the throat of the nation and made us look up from the struggles of tribes. He changed the world.’

  Zhenjin looked down, playing with a cherry twig in his hands, bending it this way and that.

  ‘I would like to change the world,’ he said.

  Kublai smiled, with just an edge of sadness in his eyes.

  ‘You will, my son, you will. But no one can change it for ever.’

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  There are few surviving details of Guyuk’s khanate. It is true that he brought an army to attack Batu in his own lands, after Batu failed to give his oath at a quiriltai, or gathering. We know that Batu was warned by Sorhatani and then Guyuk died in a manner unknown, with the armies in sight of each other. People do just die at times, obviously, but as with the death of Genghis’ son Jochi, some endings are a little too fortuitous to believe the official record. I should add that there is no evidence that Guyuk was homosexual. I needed to explain how he fell out with Batu on the return from Russia - a detail missing from the historical record. As he was khan for only two years and died conveniently early, I was thinking of him as a similar character to England’s Edward II, who was homosexual. The development came naturally. Guyuk achieved nothing of note.

  Guyuk’s death cleared the way for Mongke to become khan, beginning a conflict within the Mongol nation as the forces of modernisation, as represented by Chin influence, struggled against traditional Mongol culture and outlook. Mongke was supported by Batu, who owed Sorhatani his life.

  Mongke was about thirty-six when he became khan, strong and fit, with good years ahead of him. It is true that he began his reign with a gathering at Avraga, then a slaughter of the opposition as he cleared house, including Guyuk’s wife, Oghul Khaimish. She was accused of sorcery.

  Mongke began his khanate with a push outwards, reestablishing the Mongol war machine in all directions. He ruled from 1251 to 1259, eight years of expansion and slaughter. His brother Hulegu went west to crush the Islamic world, while at Mongke’s order, Kublai was sent east and south into Sung China. Their mother Sorhatani died in 1252, more than seventy years old. In her life, she had ruled Mongolia in her own right and seen her eldest son become khan. A Nestorian Christian herself, she had her sons taught Buddhism and established mosques and madrasa schools in Islamic regions. For the breadth of her imagination and reach, she was simply the most extraordinary woman of her era. It is a pleasure of historical fiction that I sometimes come across people who deserve books all to themselves - Julius Caesar’s uncle Marius was one. Sorhatani is another. I have almost certainly not done justice to her.

  If it had not actually happened, a fictional account of Kublai’s attack on Sung lands would be ludicrous. He had no experience in battle and had lived a mostly scholarly life. At that time, just one city in Sung territory held more people than the entire Mongol nation. It was, to put it lightly, an immense task, even for a grandson of Genghis. As a side note, home-made sheepskin rafts of the sort I have described were used by Kublai and are still used today to cross rivers in China.

  Mongke did give Kublai experienced generals. For plot reasons in previous books, I wrote Tsubodai as childless. In fact, Uriang-Khadai was Tsubodai’s son and a renowned general in his own right. Mongke gave Kublai the best for his first campaign, as well as a minor first objective that he could accomplish with ease. There again, Genghis showed the way. As Genghis had attacked the Xi Xia kingdom first, to establish a back door into Chin territory, Mongke saw the Yunnan region with its single city of Ta-li as the way in to the Sung. Kublai’s army would have been outnumbered, but that would not have been too worrying. They were always outnumbered. It is interesting to note that the popular idea of a Mongol horde overwhelming smaller armies is almost completely false.

  Mongke offered Kublai a choice of two vast estates in China. In the history, Kublai had time to ask Yao Shu for advice and the old man recommended Ching-chao in the north as it had rich soil. In time, Kublai would establish thousands of farms there that produced a vast fortune and led to trouble with his brother over his income. It was on those lands that he began his ‘Upper Capital’, known as Shang-du, or in the more common English form, Xanadu. It may not have had a ‘pleasure dome’, as in the poem by Samuel Coleridge, but it did have an immense deer park within its walls, where Kublai could hunt.

  The Assassin fortress in Alamut came under attack by Hulegu’s forces around 1256. The head of the Muslim sect that held the fortress of Alamut was, in fact, Ala Ad-Din. I avoided his true name because of the similarity to ‘Aladdin’ and because I’d used one too similar in a previous book. Here I have used Suleiman. The Ismaili Shia Muslim Assassins were extremely powerful in the region at this time, with at least four major fortresses, though Alamut was the strongest, an impregnable eyrie in the mountains south of the Caspian Sea. Interestingly, the storyline around Hasan and the leader comes from the record of the Mongols written by Ata al-Mulk Juvaini, a Persian writer and historian who accompanied Hulegu both to Alamut and Baghdad, later becoming governor of that defeated city. We do not know it was Hasan who murdered his master, but he seems the most likely candidate. Hasan had been tortured over years for amusement, even to the point of being abused with his wife in the bedchamber. It is one of those interesting events in history that the leader of the Assassins was killed at exactly the wrong moment, making Hulegu’s task simple. The Assassins were compelled to surrender and their new leader, Rukn-al-Din, was kicked to death on Hulegu’s orders - a great honour from the Mongol point of view as it did not shed blood and therefore recognised his status as leader of the sect.

  The fall of Baghdad to Hulegu is one of the most shocking slaughters ever to occur in the line of Genghis. Hulegu did insist on disarming the city, then went on to butcher at least 800,000 of the million population. The Tigris is said to have run red with the blood of scholars. The caliph was allowed to choose 100 of his 700 harem women to save, then Hulegu had him killed and the women were added to Hulegu’s gers.

  I have tried to contrast Hulegu with Kublai, as they had such differing styles. In many ways, Hulegu struggled to be like Mongke and Genghis, while Kublai became as Chinese as the most tradition-bound Chin lord - and greater. Baghdad was ransacked and looted, as Hulegu seems to have had a greed for gold that Genghis would never have understood. In comparison, it is true that Kublai spared cities if they surrendered, making it a central part of his style. He forbade his men indiscriminate killing of the Chin and Sung, on pain of their own execution if they disobeyed him. His character must be set against the traditional ruthlessness of his culture to understand what an unusual man he was. He was certainly influenced in that by Yao Shu, a man still revered in China for his Buddhist principles and the lives he saved.

  Mongke still felt the need to join the Sung attack on a different front in the end. One source puts the size of the army he brought into Sung lands as sixty tumans - a true horde of 600,000 men, though a smaller figure is much more likely. Enemies of the khans always had trouble estimating Mongol army sizes because of the vast herd of remounts they kept with them. We do not know if Kublai had stalled, or whether Mongke had always agreed with his brother that a two-pronged attack would be necessary to unite the Chinese empires.

  The manner of Mongke’s death en route to Sung China is disputed. It was either an arrow wound that became infected, or dysentery, or cholera: such a wide range of possibilities that it allowed me to work with the idea that Hulegu’s attack on the Assassins could well have earned their final vengeanc
e. Kublai knew he had to pull back when the news reached him of the death of Mongke. It was an established tradition, and even Tsubodai’s conquest of western Europe had been abandoned on the death of Ogedai. The Sung generals would have heard almost as soon as Kublai himself and their relief can only be imagined. Yet Kublai refused to leave China. He had already begun to divorce himself from the politics of home. China was his khanate, his empire, even then.

  Mongke’s army had no such reluctance and immediately abandoned their progress south in Sung lands. When Hulegu heard the news, he too returned from the Middle East, loyal to the end. He left only some twenty thousand men under General Kitbuqa (who did indeed insist on holding Christian Mass in conquered mosques). Without the other tumans in support, they were destroyed by resurgent Muslim forces, using, of all tactics, the feigned retreat so beloved by Mongol armies. However, Hulegu had won his own khanate, which eventually became modern-day Iran. Only Kublai ignored the call.

  At home in Karakorum, Arik-Boke made a decision that would affect all the generations of his family to come. He had ruled the capital in Mongke’s absence and was already established as the khan of the homeland. With the return of Mongke’s army, he convinced himself there was no better candidate and declared himself great khan. The youngest son of Sorhatani and Tolui had come to rule.

  In the same year, 1260, his brother Kublai declared himself khan while standing on foreign soil. Kublai could not have known that he was sowing the seeds of a civil war between brothers that would bring the empire of Genghis to its knees.