Empire of Silver

by Conn Iggulden

  The khan’s body was slick with sweat. Ogedai had not said a word since his collapse at the Sung border two days before. He had no wound, but his breath was as sweet as rotting fruit and it was that smell that filled the ger and made Khasar want to gag. The Chin healers had lit tapers of soothing incense, saying the smoke would help him to heal. Mohrol had allowed such things, though his disdain was poorly hidden.

  The shaman had already worked on Ogedai for a full day, dipping his flesh into icy water, then pummelling his body with coarse cloth so that the blood bloomed under the surface. The khan’s eyes stared throughout and sometimes they moved, but he did not wake. When he was turned to the side, he drooled long tendrils of spit, his lips slack.

  Ogedai would not survive if he stayed like that, Khasar realised miserably. Water, even warm blood and milk, could be forced into his stomach with a thin bamboo tube, though he choked and bled from the mouth as it scored his throat. Cared for like a helpless baby, he could be kept alive almost indefinitely. Yet the nation was without a khan and there were other things that could kill a man.

  Khasar had refused all permission to leave the camp. As messengers came in, they were unhorsed and put under guard. For a short time, the news could be contained. Chagatai would not yet be readying his forces for a triumphant return to Karakorum. Even so, there were ambitious men in the tumans who knew only too well how they would be received if they brought that news. Chagatai would reward them with gold, promotion and horses, whatever they wanted. Sooner or later, one or more would be tempted to slip away in the night. If nothing changed before that moment, even if Ogedai still lived, he was finished. Khasar winced at the thought, wondering how long he had to stay in the khan’s ger. He did no good sitting there, shifting about like an old man with piles.

  Ogedai’s face seemed even puffier than before, as if fluid was building up underneath the skin. Yet he was hot to the touch, his body burning its reserves. Time crept slowly in the ger while outside the sun rose and passed noon. Tolui and Khasar watched as Mohrol took each of Ogedai’s arms and pierced them at the crook of the elbow, letting the blood flow into a brass bowl. The shaman peered closely at the colour of the liquid, pursing his lips in disapproval. Putting aside the bowls, he chanted over the khan, suddenly striking his chest with an open palm. Nothing changed. Ogedai stared on, blinking rarely. They did not know if he could even hear them.

  At last, the shaman fell silent, tugging irritably at his chinbeard as if he wanted to yank it out. He laid Ogedai’s head back on the coarse blankets and rose. His servant moved in to bandage the cuts his master had made, silent with awe at treating the khan of the nation.

  With the unthinking authority of his calling, Mohrol gestured to the two watching men to follow him out into the clean air. They joined him, breathing deeply in the breeze to clear the foul sweetness from their lungs. Around them, warriors of the khan stood with hope on their faces, waiting for good news. Mohrol shook his head and many of them turned away.

  ‘I have no medicines for this,’ the shaman said. ‘His blood flows well enough, though it seems dark to me, without the life spirit. I do not think it is his heart, though I am told that is weak. He has been using Chin syrups.’ He held up an empty blue bottle with distaste. ‘He took a terrible risk in trusting their potions and filth. They use anything, from unborn children to the penis of a tiger. I have seen it.’

  ‘I don’t care about any of that,’ Khasar snapped. ‘If you can do nothing for him, I will find others with more imagination.’

  Mohrol seemed to swell with anger and Khasar responded by stepping in instantly, deliberately standing too close and using his height to advantage.

  ‘Watch yourself, little man,’ Khasar murmured. ‘If I were you, I’d try and remain useful.’

  ‘You do Ogedai no service by arguing out here,’ Tolui said. ‘It does not matter what has gone before, or what potions or powders he has taken. Can you help him now?’

  Mohrol still glowered at Khasar as he replied. ‘Physically, there is nothing wrong with him. His spirit is weak, or made weak. I do not know if he has been cursed, brought to this by some enemy, or whether it is something of his own doing.’ He blew air out in a gust.

  ‘Sometimes, men just die,’ he said. ‘The sky father calls and they are snatched, even khans. There is not always an answer.’

  Without warning, Khasar’s hand shot out and grabbed the shaman’s robe, twisting the cloth as he yanked him close. Mohrol struggled in reaction before his instinct for survival made him drop his hands. Khasar was a man of power and Mohrol’s life hung on the single thread of his goodwill. The shaman mastered his outrage.

  ‘There is a dark magic,’ Khasar snarled. ‘I have seen it. I have eaten a man’s heart and felt the light bursting in me. Do not tell me there is nothing to be done. If the spirits demand blood, I will spill lakes of it for the khan.’

  Mohrol began to stammer a reply, but then his voice steadied. ‘It will be as you say, general. I will sacrifice a dozen mares this evening. Perhaps it will be enough.’

  Khasar let go and Mohrol stumbled back.

  ‘Your life rests with his, do you understand?’ Khasar said. ‘I have heard too many of your kind with their promises and lies. If he dies, you will be sky-buried with him, staked out on the hills for the hawks and foxes.’

  ‘I understand, general,’ Mohrol replied stiffly. ‘Now I must prepare the animals for sacrifice. They must be killed in the right way, their blood for his.’

  There had been a city on the site of Jiankang for almost two thousand years. Fed by the immense Yangtze river that was the lifeblood of all China, it had been the capital of ancient states and dynasties, made wealthy on the back of dyes and silk. The sound of looms was always present, clicking and thumping day and night to provide Sung nobles with clothing, shoes and tapestries. The smell of frying grubs was heavy in the air as they fed the workers at every meal, tumbled golden brown with herbs, fish and oils.

  In comparison to the small city of Suzhou to the north, or the fishing villages that fed the workers, Jiankang was a true stronghold of power and wealth. It was visible in the colourful soldiers who stood on every corner, in the palaces and bustling streets of a million workers, their lives revolving around a moth grub that made a cocoon of thread so perfect it could be unwound and made into extraordinarily beautiful sheets of cloth.

  At first, Xuan had been treated reasonably well as he left the border miles to the north. His wives and children had been placed in palaces away from him. His soldiers had been moved further south, where they could not be a danger. He had not been told the location of their barracks. Sung officials had shown the bare courtesy due his rank, and the emperor’s own son had deigned to receive him and use words of honeyed sweetness. Xuan controlled the spasm of anger that threatened to engulf him as he remembered the meeting. He had lost everything and they let him know his status by the most subtle insults. Only a man used to perfection could have detected the faint tinge of age in the tea they offered him, or the fact that the servants they sent to him were coarse of feature, even clumsy. Xuan did not know if the emperor intended to humiliate him, or whether the man’s soft and perfumed son was simply a fool. It did not matter. He was already aware that he was not among friends. He would never have come to Sung lands if his situation had not been desperate.

  His weapons had caused some excited interest at first as Sung soldiers began to catalogue his baggage and supplies. That too brought a moment of irritation as Xuan recalled their sly grins. His most precious possessions had been laid out in a vast courtyard that dwarfed the remnant of his father’s wealth. Even then, Xuan was not certain he would see any of it again. Chests of gold and silver coins had vanished into some hidden treasury, perhaps not even in the city. In return, Xuan had only a sheaf of ornate papers, stamped with the marks of a dozen officials. He was completely in the power of men who thought of him at best as a weak ally, at worst as an obstacle to lands they claimed as their own.

&
nbsp; As he stared out across Jiankang, Xuan ground his teeth silently, the only sign of his tension. They had scorned his fire-pots and hand-cannon. The Sung had such things in their thousands and of more advanced designs. It was clear they thought themselves untouchable. Their armies were strong and well supplied, their cities wealthy. Some bitter part of him almost wanted the Mongols to reveal the folly of such arrogance. It made his stomach churn to see the way the Sung officers glanced at him and whispered, as if he had just given Chin lands away to herdsmen. It was a peculiar thing to take pleasure in the image of the Mongol khan riding his warriors into Jiankang, sending the Sung armies running in disarray.

  Xuan smiled at the thought. The sun had risen and the silk looms could be heard tapping like insects deep in a beam of wood. He would spend the day with his senior advisers, talking endlessly and pretending they had some purpose while they waited for the Sung emperor to notice their existence.

  As Xuan looked over the roofs of Jiankang, a bell sounded nearby, one of a hundred different tones that rang across the city at different times in the day. Some signalled the changing hours or announced the arrival of messengers, others called children to school. As the sun set, the words of a poem from Xuan’s youth came back to him and he murmured the lines, taking pleasure in the memories.

  ‘The sun grows dim and sinks in the dusk. People are coming home and the bright peaks darken. Wild geese fly to the white reeds. I think of a northern city gate and I hear a bell tolling between me and sleep.’

  Tears sprang into his eyes as he thought of his father’s kindness to the thin little boy he had been, but he blinked them away before someone could see and report his weakness.

  The horses Mohrol had chosen were all young mares, capable of bearing foals. He had taken them from the herd of spare mounts that followed the tumans, spending half a day selecting each mare for perfection of colour and unblemished skin. One of the owners stood in mute misery as two of his best white mares were marked for sacrifice, the product of generations of careful selection and breeding. Neither had borne foals and their bloodlines would be lost. Ogedai’s name made all resistance vanish, despite the near-sacred relationship between herdsmen and their beloved mounts.

  Such a thing had never been seen before on the plains. The tumans pressed so closely around the ger where Ogedai lay that Mohrol had to ask for them to be kept away. Even then, the warriors crept forward with their wives and children, desperate to see magic and great sacrifice. The life of no other could have been worth such a price and they watched with fascination and dread as Mohrol sharpened his butcher’s knives and blessed them.

  Khasar sat close to where Ogedai lay on a silk-covered pallet in the setting sun. The khan had been dressed in polished armour, and at intervals, his mouth opened and shut slowly, as if he gasped for water. It was impossible to see his pale skin and not think of Genghis laid out for death. Khasar winced at the thought, his heart beating faster at an old grief. He tried not to stare as the first white mare was brought forward with two strong men holding her head. The other horses were kept well back where they would not see the killing, but Khasar knew they would smell the blood.

  The young mare was already nervous, sensing something in the air. She pranced, jerking her head up and down and whinnying aloud, fighting the tight grip of fingers in her mane. Her pale skin was perfect, unmarked by scars or ticks. Mohrol had chosen well and some of the watching warriors were tightmouthed at such a sacrifice.

  Mohrol built a bonfire taller than himself in front of the khan’s ger, then lit a branch of cedar wood, snuffing the flames so that the wood gave off a trail of fragrant white smoke. The shaman walked to Ogedai and held the smoking branch over his body, cleansing the air and blessing the khan for the ritual to come. With slow steps, he made a path around the supine form, muttering an incantation that made the hair on Khasar’s neck stand up. Khasar glanced at his nephew Tolui and found him rapt, fascinated by the shaman. The younger man would never understand how Khasar had once heard Genghis speaking an ancient tongue, with the blood of enemies fresh on his lips.

  The darkness seemed to come quickly after looking into the flames of Mohrol’s fire. Thousands of warriors sat in silence and even those who had been injured in the fighting had been moved far away so that their cries of pain would not disturb the ritual. The quiet was so perfect that Khasar thought he could hear their keening cries even so, thin and distant, like birds.

  With great care the mare’s front and rear legs were bound in pairs. Whinnying in distress, she struggled briefly as warriors pushed at her haunches, rolling them so that she could not remain upright. Unable to take a step, she fell clumsily, lying with her head raised. One of the warriors took her muscular neck in his arms, holding her steady. The other gripped the back legs and they both looked up for Mohrol.

  The shaman would not be rushed. He prayed aloud, singing and whispering in turn. He dedicated the life of the mare to the earth mother who would receive the blood. He asked again and again for the khan’s life to be spared.

  In the middle of the ritual, Mohrol approached the mare. He had two knives and continued to sing and pray as he chose a place below the neck, where the smooth white skin began to sweep down into the mare’s chest. The two warriors braced themselves.

  With a quick jerk, Mohrol jammed the blade in to its hilt. Blood streamed out, pumping rich and dark, covering his hands. The mare shuddered and whinnied in panic, snorting and struggling to rise. The warriors sat on her haunches and the blood continued to gout with every beat of her heart, covering the warriors as they struggled to hold her slippery flesh.

  Mohrol placed a hand on her neck, feeling how the skin grew cold. The mare was still struggling, but more weakly. He pulled back her lips and nodded at the sight of the pale gums. In a loud voice, the shaman called once more to the spirits of the land and reached out with his second knife. It was a heavyhilted block of metal, as long as his forearm and fine-edged. He waited until the blood flow was sluggish, then sawed quickly, back and forth across the mare’s throat. The blade disappeared into the flesh. More blood rushed and he watched her pupils grow large and infinitely dark.

  Mohrol’s arms were red as he walked over to the khan. Unaware of all that was being done in his name, Ogedai lay unmoving, pale as death. Mohrol shook his head slightly and marked the khan’s cheeks with a red stripe from his finger.

  No one dared to speak as he returned to the dead mare. They knew there was magic in sacrifice. As Mohrol brushed a biting insect from his face, many of them made a sign against evil at the thought of spirits gathering like flies on carrion.

  Mohrol did not look discouraged as he nodded to the men to drag away the dead animal and bring in the next. He knew the mares would struggle as they smelled the blood, but he could at least spare them the sight of a dead horse.

  Once again, he began the chant that would end in sacrifice. Khasar looked away and many of the warriors drifted off rather than witness such wealth being ruined with a blade.

  The second mare seemed quieter than the first, less spirited. She allowed herself to be walked in, but then she sensed something. In just a moment, she was panicking, whinnying loudly and using all her strength to pull the rein away from the man holding her. As they heaved in opposite directions, the halter snapped and she was free. In the darkness, she cannoned into Tolui, knocking him to the ground.

  She did not get far. The warriors spread their arms and herded her, turning her around until they were able to get a new halter on and lead her back.

  Tolui rose to his feet with no more than bruises, dusting himself off. He saw Mohrol was looking strangely at him and he shrugged under the shaman’s stare. The chanting began again and the second mare was hobbled quickly, ready for the knives. It would be a long night and the bitter smell of blood was already strong.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The ground around the khan was sodden red. Blood from a dozen mares had soaked into the earth until the soil could take no more and it
pooled. Fat, black flies buzzed and dipped all around them, driven to frenzy by the smell. Mohrol was dark with it, his bare arms and deel still wet as the torches guttered out and the sun began to rise. His voice was hoarse, his face filthy. Mosquitoes had gathered in clouds in the warm, damp air. The shaman had exhausted himself, but the khan lay motionless on the pallet, with eyes like shadowed holes.

  The warriors were sleeping on the grass, waiting for news. They had not taken the mares for meat and the bodies lay sprawled in a heap, their thin legs outstretched as their bellies began to swell with gas. No one knew whether the sacrifice might be lessened if they consumed the meat, so it would be left to rot untouched as the camp moved on. Many of them had left the scene of the slaughter for their own gers and women, unable to watch such fine mares being killed any longer.

  In the dawn, Mohrol knelt on the wet grass and his knees sank into the soft ground. He had killed twelve horses and he felt leaden, weighed down by death. He refused to let his despair show while the khan lay helpless, his face marked with a script of dry blood. Mohrol felt light-headed as he knelt and his voice began to fail completely, so that he whispered the ancient spells and divinations, rhythmic chants that rolled over and over until the words blurred into a stream of sound.

  ‘The khan is in chains,’ he croaked. ‘Lost and alone in a cage of flesh. Show me how to break his bonds. Show me what I must do to bring him home. The khan is in chains…’

  The shaman could feel the weak dawn sunlight on his closed eyes. He had grown desperate, but he thought he could sense the whisper of spirits around the still figure of Ogedai. In the night, Mohrol had taken the khan’s wrist and checked for a pulse, he was so still. Yet without warning Ogedai would jerk and twist, his mouth opening and closing, his eyes bright for a few moments with something like awareness. The answer was there, Mohrol was certain, if he could only find it.