Empire of Silver Read online

  Something in the man’s manner caught Ogedai’s attention and he stopped on a stone bridge over a stream. Lilies floated serenely on the surface, their roots disappearing into the black water.

  ‘I have dealt with Chin lords and traders for many years,’ Ogedai said, holding his cup over the water and watching the reflection below. His mirror soul looked back at him, kin to the shadow soul that dogged his steps in sunlight. Its face looked puffy, he saw, but he drained the cup anyway and held it for another in an action that had become as natural as breathing. The ache in his chest subsided yet again and he rubbed idly at a spot on his sternum. ‘Do you understand? They lie and delay and make lists, but they do not act. They are very good at delays. I am very good at getting what I want. Must I make clear to you what will happen if you do not complete my contracts by today?’

  ‘I understand, master,’ the man replied.

  It was there again, some glint in his eyes that made Ogedai unsure. The little man had somehow moved beyond fear. His eyes were darkening, as if he cared for nothing. That too Ogedai had seen before and he began to raise his hand to have the man slapped awake. The administrator jerked back and Ogedai laughed, spilling more wine. Some of it fell into the water like drops of blood.

  ‘There is no escape from me, not even in death.’ He knew he was slurring by then, but he felt good and his heart was just a distant, thumping pressure. ‘If you take your own life before the agreements are finished, I will have Suzhou destroyed, each brick removed from its companion, then shattered in fire. What is not wet will burn, administrator, do you understand? Heh. What is not wet will burn.’

  He saw the spark of resistance die in the man’s eyes, replaced by fatalism. Ogedai nodded. It was hard to govern a people who could calmly choose death as a response to aggression. It was one of many things he admired about them, but he did not have the patience that day. From past experience, he knew he had to make the choice to die result in such grief that they could only live and continue to serve him.

  ‘Run and make your preparations, administrator. I will enjoy this little garden for a while longer.’

  He watched as the man scurried away to do his bidding. His guards would hold back the messengers that came constantly to him, at least until he was ready to leave. The stone under his bare forearms was very cool. He drained the cup once again, his fingers clumsy.

  In the late afternoon, twenty thousand warriors mounted up outside Suzhou with Ogedai and Tolui. Ogedai’s elite Guard made up half his forces, named men with a bow and sword. Seven thousand of his tuman rode black horses and wore black armour with red facings. Many of the grizzled warriors had served with Genghis and they deserved their reputation for ferocity. The remaining three thousand were his Night and Day Guards, who rode horses of pale brown or piebald and wore more common armour. Baabgai the wrestler had joined them, the personal gift of Khasar to his khan. With the sole exception of the wrestling champion, they were men selected for intelligence as well as force. It was Genghis who had begun the rule that a man had to serve in the khan’s guards before he could lead even a thousand in battle. It was said that the least of them could command a minghaan if he chose to. Princes of the blood held the tumans, but the khan’s Guards were the professionals who made them work.

  The sight of them never failed to please Ogedai. The sheer power he could wield through them was intoxicating, exciting. Khasar’s tuman was to the north, with lines of scouts between them. It would not be hard to find him again and Ogedai was satisfied with the morning’s work.

  As well as warriors, he had brought an army of scribes and administrators to Chin lands, in order to take a tally of everything he won. The new khan had learned from his father’s conquests. For a people to be at peace, there had to be a foot on their necks. Taxes and petty laws kept them quiet, even comforted them somehow, though he found that mystifying. It was no longer enough to destroy their armies and move on. Perhaps the existence of Karakorum was the spur, but he had men in every Chin city, running things in his name.

  He had punished skins of wine and airag that day, more than he could remember. As they rode north, Ogedai knew he was very drunk. He didn’t care. He had his contracts for silk, sealed by the terrified local lord after he was dragged from his town house to witness the deal. The Sung emperor would either honour them or give Ogedai an excuse to invade his territory.

  His buttocks were still rubbed raw each day by the wooden saddle, so that his clothes stuck to the pale fluids that seeped out of the broken skin. He could no longer undress without first soaking himself in a warm bath, but that too was just a minor hardship. He had not expected to live even so long and each day was a joy.

  He saw the dust clouds ahead after just a short ride that cracked his scabs and made them weep all over again. Sung lands were ten miles behind by then. Ogedai knew he would not be expected from the south. He smiled to think of the panic that would follow the appearance of his tumans. In the distance, Khasar was engaging the last remaining army the Chin could field. Outnumbered on an open plain, all Khasar could do was hold them, but he knew the tumans with Ogedai and Tolui were coming. There would be a bloody slaughter and Ogedai began to sing as he rode, enjoying himself.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Khasar’s sharp eyes picked out the banners of Ogedai Khan. The ground was far from perfect, a grassy plain where there had been no herds for years, so that saplings and scrub bushes grew everywhere. He stood on his saddle, balancing casually while his mount cropped the grass.

  ‘Good lad, Ogedai,’ he muttered.

  Khasar had taken a position on a small rise, outside arrow range, but close enough to the enemy to direct his attacks. The army of the emperor was visibly battered after days fending off the Mongol horsemen. Yet the Chin regiments were disciplined and tough, as Khasar had learned to his cost. Time and again, they had held a solid line of pikes against his men. The ground prevented a full charge with lances and reduced him to picking them off with waves of arrows. As the morning passed, his archers had killed dozens, over and over, but all the while the Chin soldiers moved steadily south and the Mongol tuman drifted with them. Khasar saw weary heads turn to see the new threat, staring at the streaming orange banners of the Mongol khan.

  Somewhere in those shining Chin ranks, a particular young man would be raging at the sight, Khasar thought. As a boy emperor, Xuan had knelt to Genghis when the great khan had burnt his capital. Khasar himself had trapped the young man in the city of Kaifeng before being called home. It was like hot blood and milk in his stomach to know the Chin emperor was once again in play, his life in Khasar’s hands. It was an ending long in coming.

  Even then, the emperor had almost reached the southern empire, where his family still ruled in splendid isolation. If Genghis had been given just a few more years, he would have entered those lands, Khasar was certain. He knew nothing of the twists and turns of politics between the two nations, except that the Sung seemed to have armies in the millions. It was enough for the moment to bring death to the emperor of the north. It was enough to ride with his tuman. He was only sorry Genghis had not lived to see it.

  Lost in wistful memories, Khasar half-turned to give an order to Ho Sa and Samuka before he remembered they were both dead, years before. He shivered slightly in the wind. There had been so many dead since he and his brothers had hidden from their enemies in a tiny fold of ground, with winter on the way. From those frightened and starving children a new force had entered the world, but only Kachiun, Temuge and Khasar himself had survived. The cost had been high, though he knew Genghis had not begrudged it.

  ‘The best of us,’ Khasar whispered to himself, watching Ogedai’s forces ride steadily closer. He had seen enough. He dropped back into the saddle and whistled sharply. Two messengers galloped up to his side. They were both bare-armed, black with dirt and wearing only silk tunics and leggings to be fast and light.

  ‘Minghaans one to four to bring pressure on their western flank,’ Khasar snapped to the fir
st. ‘Do not let the enemy drift out of the path of the khan.’

  The messenger raced away across the battlefield, his young face alight with excitement. The other waited patiently while Khasar watched the ebb and flow of men like an old hawk over a field of wheat. He saw hares racing towards him from some burrow, before his delighted bondsmen shot them through with arrows and dismounted to pick them up. It was another sign that the ground was rough and filled with obstacles. A charge would be even more dangerous when a horse could snap a leg in a hole and kill its rider with the impact.

  Khasar winced at the thought. There was no easy victory to be snatched, not that day. The Chin army outnumbered his by more than six to one. Even when Ogedai and Tolui arrived, it would be two to one. Khasar had harried and cut them as they moved south, but he had been unable to force the emperor to stand and fight. It had been Ogedai himself who suggested the vast circle around to come back from the south. Three days had gone past with agonising slowness, until he had begun to think the emperor would find his way to the border and safety before Ogedai even returned.

  Khasar found himself wishing it was Genghis coming from the south. It broke his heart to imagine it and he shook his head to clear it of an old man’s dreams. There was work to do.

  ‘Take this order to Yusep,’ he told the messenger. ‘Grip the east wing, force them into a funnel towards the khan. Use all the shafts if they must. He is to command minghaans five to eight. I have two thousand as a reserve. Acknowledge your orders.’ Khasar waited impatiently as the scout repeated them, then dismissed him to gallop away.

  Staring across the open plain, Khasar wondered how the Chin emperor had grown. No longer a proud little boy, he would be a man in his prime, but denied his birthright. The lands he had known were ruled by Mongolian princes. The huge armies of his father had been crushed. All he had left were these. Perhaps that was why they fought so hard, he thought. They were the last hope of their emperor and they knew it. The Sung border lay tantalisingly close and they were still strong, still many, like multicoloured wasps.

  Khasar rode back to his reserve, where they sat their mounts easily and watched the enemy, resting their elbows on the saddle horns. They straightened as Khasar took his position with them, knowing he would notice every small detail.

  Ahead, they watched the Chin ranks re-form to deal with the new threat, bristling with pikes and spears. As Khasar had expected, they began to manoeuvre away from the direct route south. He would not have minded if Ogedai had not been there. The Chin emperor wanted to reach the Sung border. If he could be forced along its edges without crossing, eventually his army would tire and the Mongol tumans would tear slices off its flanks. Sunset was still some way off and the foot soldiers of the emperor would weaken before the Mongol riders. The Chin cavalry had been Khasar’s first targets, torn away from those they protected over days of blood and arrows. Those who survived were deep in the centre, humiliated and broken.

  When Ogedai reached the Chin, they would be trapped between two foes. Khasar hummed under his breath, enjoying the prospect. Nothing sapped morale like the fear of being attacked from behind.

  He watched as his first four thousand warriors rode slowly through a swarm of bolts, ducking low in their saddles and trusting their armour. Some crashed down, but the rest forced their way closer and closer. Small trees lashed at them and Khasar saw animals stumble. One fell to its knees as the ground subsided, but the rider heaved the animal up by main force and went on. Khasar whitened his own grip on his reins as he watched.

  At fifty paces, the air was thick with whining bolts and the closest Chin ranks were throwing spears, though most fell short or tumbled in the grass. The Mongol lines were ragged over the poor ground, but their bows bent as one. The emperor’s soldiers flinched back, despite their roaring officers. They had faced the same storm too many times and they were desperate. From the rapidly closing range, the Mongol bows could hammer through almost anything. His men heaved with writhing shoulder muscles, holding the strings with bone thumb rings. No other bows had that power, nor men the strength to use them.

  They released with a snap that echoed to where Khasar watched. The volley tore a great hole in the enemy lines, yanking men backwards so that their pikes and crossbows jerked up all along the line. Khasar nodded sharply. Neither he nor Jebe had won the gold at the festival. That honour had gone to Tsubodai’s archers. Even so, this was work he knew.

  Bodies fell with many shafts in them and screaming carried on the breeze to where Khasar sat. He grinned. They had broken through the army’s skin. He longed to give an order to follow with axe and lances, deep into them. He’d seen armies cut into strips in such a way, for all their strength and drums and coloured banners.

  The Mongol discipline held, hardened in battles across the world. His men loosed shaft after shaft, picking their targets from men trying to turn away or hiding behind shields as they were battered to pieces. The outermost fringes met with swinging swords, and more men fell on both sides before the minghaan officers blew a low note and pulled them back, jubilant.

  A ragged cheer sounded from untouched Chin ranks further back, but then Khasar’s men turned in the saddle and loosed a final shaft, just as the enemy stood tall again. The sound choked off and the minghaans whooped as they wheeled to a new position and prepared to come in again. The movement of the Chin army had been slowed over half a mile and the wounded were left behind in wailing, writhing heaps.

  ‘Here they come,’ Khasar murmured. ‘The khan enters the field.’

  He could see Ogedai’s bannermen in the host that trotted across the broken land. The Chin ranks braced to meet them, lowering shields and pikes that could gut a charging horse. As they reached two hundred paces, the Mongol arrows started to come in black waves. The crackle of thousands of bows releasing was like a raging bonfire, a sound that Khasar knew as well as any other. He had them, he was suddenly certain. The emperor would not pass to safety that day.

  Another thump sounded, far louder than the bowstring rattle he had known from childhood. It boomed like rolling thunder and was followed by a breath that washed across his men. Khasar stared at a rising cloud of smoke that obscured part of the lines where Ogedai and the Chin force had clashed.

  ‘What was that?’ he demanded.

  One of his bondsmen answered immediately. ‘Gunpowder, my lord. They have fire-pots.’

  ‘In the field?’ Khasar said. He cursed loudly. He had seen the weapons used on city walls and he knew their effect. Iron pots filled with black powder could rip shards of hot metal through the packed ranks of his men. They had to be thrown far enough for the defenders not to be torn apart themselves. He could not imagine how the Chin were using them without killing their own people.

  Before he could gather his stunned thoughts, another great crack sounded. At a distance, the sound was muted, but he saw men and horses blown back from the explosion, landing brokenly on the grass. The smell came to him then, acrid and bitter. Some of his men coughed in the breeze. The Chin cheered with more energy and Khasar’s face became savage.

  Every instinct urged him to gallop towards the enemy before they could use the small advantage they had won. Ogedai’s advance had lost its momentum and only the edge of the two armies were in contact, like struggling insects over the distance. Khasar forced himself under control. This was no raid against tribesmen. The Chin had numbers and nerve enough to lose half their men just to gut the khan of the Mongols. The sky father knew the Chin emperor had the desire. Khasar felt his men staring at him, waiting for the word. He clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth.

  ‘Hold. Wait,’ he ordered, watching the battle. His two thousand could mean the difference between victory and defeat or just be lost in the mass. The choice, the decision, was his.

  Ogedai had never heard thunder like it. He had been riding well back in the ranks as the armies came together. He had roared as the arrows flew, thousands at a time, again and again before his warriors drew swords and hit. Th
e men around him had surged forward, each man keen to show courage and win the khan’s approval. It was a rare opportunity for them to be within sight of the man who ruled the nation. No one wanted to waste it and they prepared to fight like maniacs, showing no pain or weakness.

  As they went forward, a thumping blast threw men backwards and left Ogedai’s ears ringing. Dirt spattered him as he tried groggily to understand what had happened. He saw a man unhorsed, standing numbly with blood running down his face. A small group lay dead, while many more twitched and pulled at metal stuck in their flesh. The explosion had deafened and stunned those closest. As the ranks surged forward, Ogedai saw one unhorsed man stumble into the path of a rider and go down under the hooves.

  Ogedai shook his head to clear the sound of rushing air, the emptiness. His heart pounded in his ears and a wide band of pressure had grown in his head. He thought of a man he had once seen tortured, a flashing image of leather thongs bound around the head and tightened with a stick. It was a simple device, but it produced appalling agony as the skull shifted and eventually broke. Ogedai’s head felt like that, as if the band were slowly tightening.

  Another booming explosion seemed to raise the ground beneath them. Horses squealed and reared, their eyes wild as the warriors fought savagely to control them. Ogedai could see black specks hurled high into the air from the Chin forces. He did not know what they were, or how to counter them. With a sudden shock that cut through even his drunken state, he realised he could die on that stony plain. It was not a matter of courage or even endurance, but mere luck. He shook his head again to clear it and his eyes were bright. His body was weak, his heart feeble, but above all things, he had luck. Another crack whipped across the field, followed by two more. Ogedai’s men were wavering, shocked into immobility. To his right, Tolui’s tuman had gone further, but they too were stunned by massive explosions that killed men on both sides.