Orion o-1

by Ben Bova

  My own horse had swung around away from Ogotai’s, trying to avoid the boar’s rush, so that I could not shift the lance I carried in time to spit the charging animal. It was heading straight for Ogotai’s pony. Without even thinking, I dove from my saddle, pulling the dagger from my belt as I hit the boar’s flank like a football linebacker trying to stop a galloping fullback. We rolled over each other, the boar squealing and squirming, as I drove the dagger into its hide again and again, my left arm wrapped around its throat. I could hear the thudding of hooves around me — my own pony or Ogotai’s, I did not know which. I remember thinking, ludicrously, how foolish it would be to be killed by a horse’s kick while I thrashed around on the ground wrestling with a maddened boar.

  Finally the tusker shuddered and went limp. I yanked my dagger from its hide with an effort and got slowly, shakily to my feet. A dozen Mongol warriors surrounded me, swords and lances ready to attack the now-dead animal. More warriors sat on horseback behind them, bows at the ready. Among them was Ogotai.

  For long moments no one spoke. I spat grass and dirt from my mouth. My shoulder ached, but otherwise I seemed to be all right.

  “Man of the West,” called Ogotai from his saddle, “is that the way you hunt boars in your country?”

  The tension broke as they all laughed. I joined in, feeling suddenly foolish. If I had been a better horseman, I could have speared the animal and been done with it. Ogotai was right: I had made my kill the hard way.

  A servant led my pony back to me and I swung into the saddle. Kassar grinned at me humorlessly; the wolf he had killed was tied behind his saddle. I saw that Ogotai’s nephews had returned, and began to lead my pony to my usual station, between the nephews and Kassar.

  “No,” said the High Khan. “Stay here, beside me.” He reached out and gripped my arm. “You will ride at my side now — in case we meet more boars.”

  I bowed my head at his compliment, then turned and gave Kassar a self-satisfied smile. He glowered at me.

  Like friendships forged in the heat of battle, the bond between Ogotai and me became firm and lasting that day. We rode together for the rest of the hunt, and during the terrible day of carnage at the end, when we killed and killed and killed again until we were all delirious with blood lust, we never left each other’s side.

  We rode side by side at the head of the troop on the return to Karakorum. Behind us stretched a mile-long column of mounted warriors and oxdrawn carts piled high with dead game — every kind of animal from squirrel to deer, from boar to wolf.

  I was anxious to see Agla, to tell her of the adventure of the hunt, to hold her in my arms once more and feel her body against mine.

  Ogotai became quieter as we neared Karakorum, more somber with every step we took. He looked almost as if he were in pain, and by the time we could see the dust clouds from the corrals that marked the city’s outskirts, he was obviously gloomy and depressed.

  I began to think of Ahriman, and grew as downcast as Ogotai. The two of us had thrown off our problems and run away for more than a week, like schoolboys playing truant. But the problems were still there in Karakorum, waiting for us.

  “My lord High Khan,” I said, swinging my pony so close to his that they almost touched, “it is time for me to deal with Ahriman.”

  “What would you do, kill him?”

  “If I must.”

  Ogotai shook his head. “No. I will not allow blood to be shed, not even by you, my friend from the West. Ahriman has his place in Karakorum, as all men do.”

  “He ministers to you,” I said.

  If Ogotai was surprised to learn that I knew of Ahriman’s medications, he did not show it. “The man gives me a draught that helps me to sleep, nothing more.”

  “Have you thought. High Khan, that his purpose may be to help you to sleep — permanently?”

  “Poison?” Ogotai turned in the saddle, his eyes wide with surprise. Then he laughed. He did not answer my question; he merely laughed as if I had told the funniest joke in the world.

  I puzzled over his reaction and tried to draw him into further conversation, but Ogotai was finished discussing the matter. He had made up his mind that Ahriman and I would not come into conflict; he had thrown his protection over us both and produced a stalemate between us.

  At least that is what I thought as we rode into Karakorum.

  It was almost nightfall by the time we had dismounted in the wide open area between the High Khan’s pavilion and the rest of the city to unload the tons of meat from the carts. A huge throng gathered, oohing and ahhing over the immense catch we had brought home. Ye Liu Chutsai appeared at Ogotai’s side, carrying a scroll from which he read to the High Khan. The affairs of state were already being poured into Ogotai’s ear, even before he had shaken the dust of the hunt from his shoulders.

  I searched through the crowd and could not see Agla. She must be waiting at the house, I told myself. The boar that I had killed had been given to me by the High Khan, and now servants were hauling it off to be skinned and preserved. It would feed the two of us for many weeks.

  Ahriman was nowhere to be seen, but I did not expect to find him rubbing shoulders with the mob. He was a creature of shadows and silences; he would seek out the High Khan later, when almost everyone else was asleep.

  Finally the High Khan gave permission for his hunting companions to go off to their own quarters. I fairly sprinted for the house. I opened the door, expecting Agla to be waiting at the threshold for me.

  She was not. I searched the two small rooms in vain. Agla was gone.

  CHAPTER 20

  I did not hesitate an instant. I knew what had happened as certainly as if I had witnessed it with my own eyes. Dashing out of the house, I ran through the dark, narrow, twisting pathways of the city toward the stonetempleofAhriman. Thunder rumbled overhead and streaks of lightning flicked across the dark sky. People were rushing to get indoors before the rain started. I pushed past them, seeing in my mind’s eye the filthy way he had murdered Aretha. My right hand tightened on the hilt of my dagger as I ran.

  Even in the darkness I found Ahriman’s stone temple, as if an invisible beacon guided me to it. The night air smelled damp and crackled with electricity as I raced toward its low, dark entrance. A bolt of lightning cracked the sky in half, silhouetting the stone building for an eye-flash of a moment. Then thunder growled and rumbled across the heavens, ominously.

  I burst inside, into the deeper darkness of Ahriman’s lair. He stood at the stone altar, his hands raised as if in prayer, his back to me. Without an instant’s hesitation, without even a thought, I launched myself at him.

  He swung around, as fast as I drove at him, and batted me away as easily as a man swats at an annoying gnat. The blow sent me reeling across the stone floor. I thudded against the wall painfully and the dagger clattered out of my grasp.

  “You are a fool,” Ahriman hissed at me, his eyes glowering in the shadows.

  “Where is she? What have you done to her?”

  He drew in a deep breath and eyed me calmly. “She is out on the grassland somewhere, searching for you. Someone told her that you had not come back with Ogotai and the others.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “But she believed it. She is out there now, in the dark, trying to find you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He shrugged his powerful shoulders. “She is alone. Her brave escort of Mongol warriors are terrified of thunderstorms and have left her. They fear lightning, you know. Sitting atop a pony in a wide treeless plain while wearing a steel helmet — it makes them natural lightning rods.”

  I had heard tales of warriors throwing themselves into rivers or lakes during lightning storms. And drowning.

  “I have not harmed her, Orion,” said Ahriman, his back to the altar and the symbols carved into the stone wall above it. “I have no need to.”

  I got slowly to my feet. “No, you’ve merely sent her out into the storm alone.”

 
“Then why don’t you take a pony and go out and find her? She will be overjoyed to see you once again.”

  “That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want me to leave the city, so that you can go to Ogotai and finish your work.”

  He did not answer.

  “You’re poisoning him,” I accused. “And you want me out of the way so that you can kill him.”

  For a long moment Ahriman made no reaction whatever. Then he lifted his face toward the ceiling and began to laugh — a harsh, labored, wheezing sound that was utterly without joy. It sounded as if he were in pain; it grated on my ears and made me wince.

  “I was more right than I knew,” he said at last, gasping for breath. “You are a bigger fool than I thought. Kill Ogotai? Kill him?” He laughed again, and the sound was like fingernails rasping across rough stone.

  Finally he grew serious and pointed to the door. “Go, find your woman. She is unharmed — by me. What may happen to her in this storm is another matter.”

  I had no choice. I could not fight him; he was too powerful for me. And even though I did not trust his words, the thought of Agla alone out on the steppe in the storm drove me out of his temple and toward the horse corral at the city’s edge.

  It began to spatter rain as I commandeered a horse from the old man tending the nearest corral. My clothing told him I was of high rank, and even in the lightning-punctuated darkness he could see that my size and strange skin color marked me as the strange emissary from the West. Theft was virtually unknown among the Mongols. If I failed to bring back the pony in a reasonable time, warriors would be sent after me. There was no place in the known world where I could hide from their relentless justice.

  “But this is no time to ride out into the open land,” the old man insisted as I saddled the pony. “The storm can kill a man…”

  I ignored him and swung up into the saddle. The rain was coming down strong now; we were both already soaked. Lightning forked down like fingers searching for prey. The thunder was shattering the night now, as the storm marched toward us.

  “You’ll kill the pony!” the old man shouted at me. True Mongol that he was, he saved his strongest argument for last.

  But he was too late. I kicked at the mount’s flanks and we galloped into the wild night.

  It was utterly foolish, I knew. Riding out into that storm to find Agla was like searching for a particular flower in a jungle the size of Africa — blindfolded. Yet I had to do it. I had to find her before one of those probing fingers of lightning blasted the life out of her. Strangely, I was not afraid at all of my being hit by lightning. I should have been, but I was not.

  My pony was skittish, frightened, and almost bolted when a flash of lightning flicked across the sky. The thunder did not seem to bother it, though; probably it had been trained to bear up under the noise of battle. The rain became torrential, and I could barely see beyond the pony’s mane. Squinting into the darkness, hunched against the icy, wet wind, I urged the animal onward, farther into the night and the storm.

  But the back of my mind was churning, digesting information, sifting data. Overriding all else was my mission to prevent Ahriman from achieving his goal. But how could I stop him if I didn’t know what he was trying to accomplish?

  Over and over again, as I rode through the blinding rain, I tried to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. Ahriman had seemed genuinely surprised when I had accused him of attempting to murder Ogotai. Yet I knew he was giving the High Khan a potion of some kind, almost every night that Ogotai was in his ordu. If it was not slow poison, what could it be?

  The pony’s pace slowed to a trot, and then to a slow walk, as we pushed on against the wind and rain. Not even the bravest Mongol warrior would try to ride through this storm, I knew. But I had to. I had to.

  What was Ahriman trying to achieve? If he wanted to kill me, he could have done it right there in his temple. Why send me out into this maelstrom? So that I could be killed by a lightning bolt, rather than slain by his own hand? That seemed far-fetched.

  To keep me away from the city? Yes, that made some sense. Keep me away from Ogotai. But why, if Ahriman had no desire to murder the High Khan? Why would he want to keep me away?

  I closed my eyes, not so much against the driving rain, but to focus my memory on the bits and scraps I had read in the twentieth century about the Mongol empire. With the clarity of perfect recall I saw page after page of history. I could read the words just as clearly as if the books were in my hands. Yet I could not remember what I had never read! How much history had I studied in my earlier life? I knew that the Mongols had never conquered Europe ; Subotai had crushed the armies raised by Bela, true enough, but he had never gone further into Europe. Why?

  The answer flashed before my eyes like a bolt of the lightning that was shredding the darkness of the night. I saw the line from a book I had read in the twentieth century:

  “No victory in battle saved western Europe from inevitable disaster. Its armies, led by reigning monarchs as incapable as Bela or Saint Louis of France, were utterly incapable of standing against the rapidly maneuvering Mongols led by Subotai. But the war never came to a final issue. A courier from Karakorum caused Subotai to halt his victorious sweep westward and turn back toward the Gobi. The courier brought the tidings of Ogotai’s death.”

  Ogotai’s death! When the High Khan dies, all the Orkhons and generals return to Karakorum to elect a new High Khan. Genghis Khan’s death had halted the Mongol expansion, for a year or so. Ogotai’s death stopped the Mongol invasion of Europe — permanently.

  Ahriman was not out to murder Ogotai; he was in Karakorum to protect him, to keep him alive, so that Subotai could finish the work of conquering all of Europe. Because after Subotai would come the mandarins of Ye Liu Chutsai, bringing peace and order and the law of the Yassa to the enslaved inhabitants of Europe. Bringing the same immobility and eventual stagnation to Europe that their bureaucracies had brought to China itself and the Middle East.

  Europe would be homogenized by the mandarins, under the sword arm of the Mongol conquerors. The petty, boisterous states of Europe would be stamped out of existence and blended into the iron despotism of the East. The great cities would wither — or be destroyed. The Renaissance would never happen. Europeans would never discover science, never build the high technology that allowed democracies and human freedom to flourish.America would be discovered by Chinese navigators, if it all.

  At last I saw Ahriman’s plan clearly. By allowing the Mongols to conquer all of Eurasia, he guaranteed that the human race would stagnate and slowly, slowly die away, crushing itself under the changeless heel of Oriental tyranny. What Ye Liu Chutsai believed to be the highest civilization in the world was in fact a trap in which humankind would extinguish itself.

  If Ahriman could achieve that, he would have altered the space-time continuum to such an extent that its very fabric would be ripped asunder. The continuum would shatter. Ormazd would be overthrown. The human race would perish utterly. The forces of darkness would win the long, eternal struggle.

  If Ogotai lived. That is what Ahriman was trying to accomplish. That was what I had to prevent. My mission in this time and place was not to kill Ahriman. It was to kill Ogotai.

  Cursing, crying out into the thunder-racked night, I turned my pony back toward the haphazard capital of the Mongols, leaving Agla alone and defenseless in the storm, heading back toward Karakorum to murder the man who had befriended me.

  CHAPTER 21

  I tethered the pony under the projecting eaves of the house the Mongols had given Agla and me. The rain still fell heavily, sweeping across the cleared space around the ordu in blustery waves. The twin bonfires were dark and cold. No one was in sight. Ogotai’s tent swayed and billowed in the gusting wind. I could hear the tent ropes creaking.

  Every conscious thought in me urged me to ride back into the grassland to find Agla. She was searching for me there, risking her life to save mine, and I was here on a mission of murder wh
ile I left her to wander alone through the raging storm.

  But something stronger than my conscious will was directing me now. Like a warrior who marches numbly into battle even though every fiber of his being wants to run away to safety, I walked toward Ogotai’s sleeping tent, stiff with the icy cold of the night, hunched over against the slashing rain and wind.

  I was a clever assassin. Instead of heading straight for the sleeping tent, I crossed the open space surrounding the ordu on the far side of the High Khan’s main tent, away from the blackened embers of the two bonfires, where there would be no guards posted to observe my approach. I entered the big, swaying, creaking tent. It was dark and empty. The long silver table had been cleared. The cushions where the Mongols lounged while their slaves attended them had been removed.

  Crossing the darkened tent swiftly, I crept along the shadows of the silken hangings that shielded the entrance which connected it to the High Khan’s sleeping tent. Two warriors stood at the entrance, erect, awake, and fully armed. I slid back behind the hangings and tried to gather my thoughts.

  Whether Ogotai was awake or asleep, he would no doubt have those six deaf and dumb guards in his sleeping tent with him. My only chance to kill him would be to rush in and strike him down before the guards could react. What happened afterward did not matter. I told myself that several times, and I knew that I was prepared to do it. But the other side of my mind was begging me to run away, to find Agla and go far from here, find a place where death and murder were unknown, a place where we could live together in peace and love forever. While the Mongols conquered the rest of the world and inexorably snuffed out the flickering lights of learning and growth, I heard myself answer. While the human race sank into decay, despotism, and despair. While Ahriman won his eons-long battle and watched all of humanity wither away into extinction.