Bones Of the Hills c-3

by Conn Iggulden

  Genghis breathed out slowly in relief he could not show. It would do. The sun was merciless and such a run could kill a man, but they were young and strong and it would serve as a punishment.

  ‘I will be there to watch you come in,’ he said to the dumbfounded pair. Chagatai glared at Kachiun for the suggestion, but as he opened his mouth to object, Genghis reached down and picked him up in one smooth motion. His father’s fist rested just under his chin as he spoke again.

  ‘Remove your armour and go,’ he said. ‘If I see you fighting again, I will make Ogedai my heir. Do you understand?’

  Both brothers nodded and Genghis stared at Jochi, incensed that he had thought the words were also for him. His temper flared again, but Kachiun deliberately chose that moment to call the men into ranks for the ride to Otrar and Genghis let Chagatai go.

  For the benefit of all those who could hear and repeat the words a thousand times, Kachiun forced a smile as Jochi and Chagatai began to run in the vicious heat.

  ‘You won such a race when we were boys, I remember.’

  Genghis shook his head irritably.

  ‘What does that matter? It was long ago. Have Khasar bring the families back to Otrar. I have debts to settle there.’

  Shah Ala-ud-Din Mohammed reined in as he saw the thin trails of cooking smoke rising from the Mongol camp. He had ridden slowly east, covering many miles since the first grey light of predawn. As the sun rose to burn off the morning mist, he stared at the filthy gers of the Mongol families. For an instant, the urge to ride among the women and children with his sword was overwhelming. If he had known the khan had left them so vulnerable, he would have sent twenty thousand to kill them all. The shah clenched his fists in frustration as the light grew. Warriors clustered on the edges, the heads of their ponies peacefully snuffling the dusty ground for grass. For once, there were no warning horns blown from the cursed Mongol scouts.

  With a snarl, the shah began to turn his mount away from the camp. They bred like lice, these Mongols, and he had only his precious four hundred to see him safe. The sun was rising and his guards would soon be seen.

  One of his men shouted something and Ala-ud-Din turned his head. The sun’s light revealed what the shadows had hidden and he grinned suddenly, his mood lifting. The warriors were no more than straw dummies tied to the horses. The shah strained his eyes as the light grew, but he could not see a single armed man. Around him, the news spread and the noble sons laughed and pointed, already loosening their swords in the scabbards. They had all taken part in punishment raids on villages, when the taxes had been late. The sport was good in such places and the desire for revenge was strong.

  Jelaudin did not share the men’s laughter as he rode to his father.

  ‘Would you have the men waste half a day here with our enemies so close?’

  In response, his father drew a curved sword. The shah glanced at the sun.

  ‘This khan must be taught the price of his arrogance, Jelaudin. Kill the children and burn what you can.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Slowly, almost ritually, Chakahai wrapped her hand in a length of silk, tying it to the hilt of a long dagger. Borte had told her to beware of the shock of impact, that a woman’s hand could be jarred loose, or sweat enough to slip. The process of winding the silk around her fingers and biting one end to hold a knot was somehow calming as she looked out through the gers at the shah’s riders. The knot of terror in her stomach was not under her control.

  She, Borte and Hoelun had done what they could to prepare the camp. They had been given little warning and the more elaborate traps were still unset. At least they had weapons and Chakahai murmured a Buddhist death prayer as she readied herself. The morning was cold, though the air seemed heavy and promised another day of heat. She had hidden her children as best she could in the ger. They lay in perfect silence under piles of blankets. With a vast effort, Chakahai put her fear for them aside, leaving it in a separate place so that her mind was clear. Some things were fate, what the Indian Buddhists called karma. Perhaps all the women and children would be killed that day; she could not know. All she desired was the chance to kill a man for the first time, to fulfil her duty to her husband and her children.

  Her bound right hand was shaking as she raised the blade, but she enjoyed the feeling of holding the weapon and took strength from it. Genghis would avenge her, she knew. Unless he too had been killed. That was the thought she tried most to crush as it reared in her mind. How else could Arabs have come to the camp if not over a dead nation and the body of her husband? If Genghis still lived, he would surely have moved mountains to protect the camp. For a Mongol, the families were everything. Yet there was no sign of the khan on the horizon and Chakahai struggled against despair, seeking a calm that came and went in flashes.

  At the last, she took a deep breath and felt her heart settle to a slow, heavy thump, her limbs strangely cold as if her blood had chilled in her veins. The riders were trotting towards the city of gers. Life was just a restless fever dream, a short breath between longer sleep. She would reawaken and be reborn without the agony of memory. That at least was a blessing.

  The herds of Mongol ponies stirred nervously as the shah rode in with his men. He could see ripples running through the animals and, in the strange silence, he felt a sense of foreboding. He looked to the others to see if they too had a premonition of danger, but they were blindly eager for the hunt and leaned forward in their saddles.

  Ahead, threads of cooking smoke lifted lazily into air. It was already growing warm and the shah felt sweat trickle down his back as he reached the first gers. His guards spread themselves into a wide line as they rode into the maze and the shah felt his nerves tighten. The Mongol homes were high enough to conceal anything behind them. Even a mounted man could not see what lay beyond the next, and that made him uneasy.

  The camp seemed deserted. If not for the cooking fires, Ala-ud-Din might have thought the place empty of life. He had intended to ride through in one great sweep, killing anyone who ran across his path. Instead, the lanes and paths were silent and the Arab horses drove deeper and deeper without seeing a living soul. Far above his head, an eagle circled, its head twitching back and forth as it searched for prey.

  He had not appreciated the sheer size of the Mongol encampment. Perhaps twenty thousand gers were in that place, or even more, a true city sprung from nothing in the wilderness. They had claimed the land on the banks of a nearby river and Ala-ud-Din could see drying fish tied to racks of wood as he passed. Even the flies were quiet. He shrugged to himself, trying to throw off the dark mood. Already some of his men were dismounting to enter the gers. He had heard the older men talk of threatening the children to make the women more pliable. The shah sighed in irritation. Perhaps Jelaudin had been right. Once they were in the gers, the morning would be lost. The Mongols could not be far behind and he did not intend to be caught in that desolate place. For the first time, he wished he had simply ridden past the camp.

  Ala-ud-Din watched as one of his son’s friends ducked low to push open the door to a ger. The entrance was almost too small for his massive shoulders. The Arab soldier stuck his bearded face through the opening, squinting into the gloom. Ala-ud-Din blinked as the man suddenly shuddered, his legs quivering as if he had begun a fit. To his astonishment, the soldier dropped to his knees, then fell flat into the ger, his body still twitching.

  As he took a breath to give orders, Ala-ud-Din caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and brought his sword round in a sweeping blow. A woman had been creeping up on him and the tip caught her across the face, gashing her jaw and breaking teeth. She fell back with blood pouring from her mouth, then to his horror leapt at him and sank a dagger into his thigh. His second blow took her head off cleanly, then the silence shattered into chaos all around him.

  The gers erupted and his warriors were instantly fighting for their lives. Ignoring the pain from his wound, the shah spun his horse and used its bulk to shoulder
down a woman and young boy who raced towards him, screaming and brandishing heavy knives. His men were veteran cavalry, used to defending their mounts from men on foot. Yet the Mongol women seemed to have no fear of death. They ran in close and cut either the horse or a man’s leg before vanishing behind the nearest ger. Ala-ud-Din saw more than one hacked down, then stagger in before death took them, using their last breath to plunge a blade into flesh.

  In heartbeats, every man of his four hundred was fending off more than one, sometimes four or five different women. Horses bolted wildly as their haunches were cut and men cried out in fear as they were pulled from their mounts and stabbed.

  The Arab guards held their nerve. More than half of them rode without care to surround the shah and the rest drew into close formation, each man watching for attacks on the others. The women darted at them from the side of every ger, appearing and disappearing like ghosts. The shah felt hemmed in, but he could not ride free and let the khan tell the world he had run from women and children. One ger had collapsed as a horse crashed into it and he saw an iron stove broken open. He snapped an order to his servant, Abbas, watching eagerly as the man tore a great strip of felt and lit it from the scattered fire.

  The attacks became more desperate, but his men had the rhythm by then. The shah could see some wild fools had dismounted to rape a young woman on the ground and he rode furiously to them, using his horse to knock them aside.

  ‘Have you lost your minds?’ he roared. ‘Get up! Up! Fire the gers!’

  In the face of his fury, they drew a knife across the throat of the struggling woman and stood, abashed. Abbas already had one ger aflame. The closest guards took up pieces of the burning material in their hands, riding away with them to spread the terror as far as they could. Ala-ud-Din coughed as he breathed in thick grey smoke, but he exulted at the thought of the khan coming back to a field of ashes and the cold dead.

  Jelaudin was the first to spot the running boys. They darted through the gers near the river, weaving between paths, but always coming closer. Jelaudin could see hundreds of the devils, running bare-chested with their hair flying. He swallowed nervously when he saw they carried bows, like their fathers. Jelaudin had time to shout a warning to his men and they raised their shields and charged down the paths at this new threat.

  The Mongol boys held their ground as the Arabs thundered towards them. Jelaudin’s men heard a high voice shout an order, then the bows bent and arrows were flying in the breeze.

  Jelaudin yelled a curse as he saw men knocked down, but it was just a few. The boys were as accurate as the adults, but they did not have the power to batter shafts through armour. The only deaths came from an arrow in the throat and those were good odds. As Jelaudin drew close, the boys scattered before his men, vanishing into the labyrinth. He cursed an arrangement that meant they had to turn only one corner to be lost to view. Perhaps that was how the Mongols had intended it when they laid out their camps.

  Jelaudin cantered around a ger and found three boys in a huddle. Two loosed a shot as soon as they saw him, the arrows passing wide. The other took a heartbeat longer and released his shaft just as Jelaudin’s horse crashed into him, shattering the boy’s ribs and tossing him away. Jelaudin roared in pain, looking down in disbelief at the arrow that had ripped along his thigh under the skin. It was not a bad wound, but he raged as he drew his sword and killed the dumbfounded pair before they could react. Another arrow whirred past his head from behind, though when he spun his mount round, he could see no one.

  In the distance, smoke rose in thick billows as his father’s men set fires. Already the sparks would be landing on other gers, burying themselves deeply in the dry felt. Jelaudin was completely alone, yet he sensed movement all round him. When he had been a very young boy, he had once been lost in a field of golden wheat, the crop taller than he was. All around him, he had heard the scuttling, whispering movement of rats. The old terror surfaced. He could not bear to be alone in such a place, with creeping danger on all sides. Yet he was not a boy. He roared a challenge to the empty air and hammered along the closest path, heading for his father and where the smoke was thickest.

  The shah’s men had killed hundreds of the Mongol women, yet they still came and died. Fewer and fewer of them managed to draw blood from the guards, now that they were prepared. Ala-ud-Din was astonished at their ferocity, as fierce as the men who had ravaged his armies. His sword was bloody and he burned with the need to punish them. He breathed heavy smoke and choked for a moment, delighting in the destruction as the fire spread from ger to ger. The centre of the camp was aflame and his men had developed a new tactic. As they saw a Mongol home burn, they waited outside the door for the inhabitants to come rushing out. Sometimes, the Mongol women and children cut their way through the felt walls, but more and more were slaughtered as they rushed armed and mounted men. Some were already on fire and chose to die on swords rather than burn.

  Chakahai ran on bare feet towards a warrior with his back to her. The Arab horse seemed huge as she approached, the man on its back so far above her that she could not see how to hurt him. The crackle of flames hid the sound of her steps as she raced across the grass. Still he did not turn and, as he shouted to another man, she saw he wore a leather tunic decorated in plates of some dark metal. The world slowed as she reached the hindquarters of his mount and he sensed her. He began to turn, moving as if in a dream. Chakahai saw a glimpse of flesh at his waist, between his belt and the leather armour. She darted in without hesitation, ramming the blade upwards as Borte had told her to do. The shock of it thrilled along her arm and the man gasped, his head snapping back so that he stared at the sky. Chakahai yanked the blade and found it had wedged in him, trapped in flesh. She pulled at it in a frenzy and did not dare look at the Arab as he brought his sword arm up to kill her.

  The blade came loose and she fell backwards, her arm covered in his blood. The Arab slumped and fell almost beside her, so that for an instant their eyes met. She struck out again in panic, but he was already dead.

  She stood then, her chest heaving as she was filled with a dark pleasure. Let them all die in such a way, with their bowels opening and their bladders darkening the ground! She heard galloping hooves and looked up dazedly as another Arab stallion came to smash her from her feet. She could not move in time and the exhilaration of the kill left her, to be replaced by a vast weariness.

  Facing the Arab soldier, she saw Yao Shu before he did. The Buddhist monk shot across the face of the horse, aiming a heavy stick at a foreleg. She heard a crack and the animal went down hard. As she watched in a daze, it turned right over in front of her, crushing the man on its back. Chakahai could only stare at the kicking legs, seeing that one of them hung at a vicious angle. She felt Yao Shu’s hands pulling her between gers and then the world came back in a rush and she began to retch weakly.

  The little monk moved as jerkily as a bird, looking for the next threat. He caught her staring at him and only nodded, raising the stick he had used in salute.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, bowing her head. She would reward him, if they survived it, she promised herself. Genghis would honour him before them all.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said, letting his hand rest briefly on her shoulder before he led the way through the gers away from the fire.

  Chakahai looked at the blood staining the wrap on her right hand and felt only satisfaction at the memory. Genghis would be proud of her, if he still lived.

  Ala-ud-Din turned his head as he heard a series of short, hard sounds. He did not understand the words, only that men were coming. His stomach twisted in panic that the khan had tracked him down already. He bawled new orders for his men to leave the gers and face the enemy. Many of them were lost to him in an orgy of destruction, their faces wild with fanatic madness. Yet Jelaudin heard as he raced in and two more of his sons repeated the orders, shouting until they were hoarse.

  The smoke was thick and at first Ala-ud-Din could see nothing, hear nothing but appro
aching hooves. The sound echoed through the encampment and his mouth went dry. Surely there were thousands coming for his head?

  Out of the smoke, horses came at full gallop, the whites of their eyes showing clearly as they ran. They had no men on their backs, but in that confined place, they could not stop for the shah’s men. With Jelaudin, Ala-ud-Din was fast enough to dodge behind a ger, but others reacted too slowly. The horses ran like a river bursting its banks through the camp and many of his guards were knocked down and trampled.

  Behind the Mongol mounts came the maimed men. Ala-ud-Din heard their battle cries as they raced by in the host of horses. They were both young and old, many without limbs. One of them turned to kill the shah and Ala-ud-Din saw that the man carried only a heavy stick in his left hand. His right was missing. The Mongol warrior died swiftly under Jelaudin’s sword, but some of them held bows and the shah shuddered at the song of arrows. He had heard it too often over the previous month.

  The smell of blood and fire was in the air, too thick to breathe as more and more gers took flame. Ala-ud-Din looked for his officers, but they were all defending themselves. He felt surrounded, helpless in the confining maze of gers.

  ‘With me! To your shah! With me!’ he roared, digging in his heels. He had barely been able to hold his horse. Released, the animal moved as if it had been shot from a bow, careering across the camp and leaving the smoke and terror behind.

  Jelaudin repeated his order and the survivors followed, as relieved as their master to be away from the fighting. The shah rode blindly, standing high on his stirrups for some sign that he was heading the right way. Where was the river? He would have given a second son for an elephant’s height to let him see his way out. Even as his men fought free of the stampeding horses and the maimed men, he saw lines of children, boys and girls alike, rushing along the gers on either side. Arrows flew at his men and knives were thrown, but none fell and he did not stop until the river was in sight.