Empire of Silver

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 first. '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. The 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.

Ogedai drew his father's sword in one swift gesture, bellowing defiance as he held it up. His bondsmen saw his recklessness and it lit their blood. They came with him as he kicked his mount forward, already grinning at the maniac khan, charging the enemy on his own. They were all young men. They rode with the most beloved son of Genghis, marked by the sky father, khan of the nation. Their lives were not worth as much as his and they threw them away as carelessly as they would a broken rein.

The explosions came faster as more of the black balls were flung sputtering into the air to land around Mongol feet. As he thundered forward, Ogedai saw one unhorsed warrior pick one up. The khan shouted, but the man was blown into a bloody mass. The air was suddenly full of whining flies. Horses and men screamed as needles of iron tore into them all around.

Ogedai's bondsmen plunged into the fray, protecting their khan at the centre. Lowered pikes stopped the horses, but more and more of his men had been unhorsed and they killed the pike-wielders with knives and swords, clearing a path as horses shoved and sweated at their backs. Ogedai saw another black ball drop almost at his feet and one of his men threw himself on top of it. The whump of sound was muted, though a small red crater appeared in the man's back and a piece of bone jumped out, almost to the height of a man. Those around Ogedai flinched, but they stood immediately straight, ashamed that the khan might have seen their fear.

Ogedai realised he had seen some sort of answer to the weapons. He raised his voice to carry across the lines.

'Fall on them as they land, for your khan,' he shouted.

The order was repeated down the lines as the next wave of missiles were thrown high. There were six of the flying iron balls, each fizzing with a short fuse. Ogedai watched in pride as warriors struggled to reach them, smothering the threat so that their friends might live. He turned back to the enemy and saw fear in the Chin faces. There was only vengeful fury in his own.

'Bows!' he roared. 'Clear a path and bring up lances. Lances here!'

There were tears in his eyes, but not for those who had given their lives. There was joy in every waking, breathing moment. The air was cold and bitter in his throat, filled with the strange smell of burning powder. He breathed it deeply, and for a time the band across his face and head seemed to ease as his men ripped a gash in the Chin ranks. Khasar beat his fist against his armour in unconscious approval of Ogedai's manoeuvres. The two Mongol tumans had been rocked back by the explosions, moving instinctively away from the source of such sound and snaps of light. Khasar had seen the khan's own bondsmen overcome their fear and hack open the Chin lines. The thumps of explosions were suddenly muffled and he no longer saw the spray of stones and dirt each time one of them went up. It was as if they dropped into the Mongol army and were swallowed. He grinned at the thought.

'I think the khan is eating those iron balls,' he said to his men. 'Look, he is still hungry. He wants more to fill his stomach.' He hid his own fear at such a reckless charge from Ogedai. If he died that day, Chagatai would rule the nation and everything they had struggled for would have been in vain.

His experienced eye ran over the battlefield as he trotted his horse south, keeping them in range. In that at least, the Chin emperor had not wavered. His men moved as quickly as they could, struggling over the dead as they marched. Such an army could not easily be stopped by half its number. It was a tactical problem and Khasar struggled with it. If he ordered thinner lines spread like a net, the Chin could break through with a spear thrust. If he kept the depth of men, they could be passed on the flanks as the emperor forced each dogged step towards the border. It must be an agony for him, Khasar thought, to be so close and yet have an enemy boiling around him.

His own minghaans killed almost at their leisure in the enemy rear, leaving a trail of bodies on the rough grass. The Chin would not turn, so intent were they on reaching the border. As he trotted south behind them, Khasar came across one soldier draped on the limbs of a low thorn tree. He glanced at the man and saw his face twitch and the eyes open in sightless agony. Khasar reached out with his sword and flicked the tip across the throat. It was not mercy. He had not killed that day and he longed to be part of the battle.

The action bit away a piece of his control and he snapped an order to the two thousand warriors with him.

'Ride forward, with me. We do no good here and the khan is in the field.'

He cantered to just a hundred paces behind the enemy, looking for the best place and opportunity to strike. He sat as tall as he could in the saddle, staring into the distance in the hope of seeing the emperor's own bannermen. They would be somewhere close to the heart of the massed ranks, he was certain, a barrier of men, horses and metal to bring just one desperate ruler to safety. Khasar wiped his sword clean on a rag before sheathing it. His men picked their targets and sent shafts into the Chin soldiers with pitiless accuracy. It was hard to hold himself back and his control was wearing thin. Ogedai's charge had brought him past the outer lines of pikemen. The Chin regiments were disciplined, but discipline alone could not win the day. Though they did not break, they were cut down by the marauding horsemen. Their lines were sundered, driven back or reduced to cores and knots of struggling men to be spitted on shafts.

Horns sounded in the Chin ranks and ten thousand swordsmen drew their blades and charged, screaming defiance. They ran into a constant barrage of arrows, shot from close range. The front lines were ground down and trampled. They ran forward as a mass, then each rank found themselves in twos, threes and lonely dozens, facing the swords of horsemen. Seeing such a slaughter, those behind hesitated as the Mongols came lunging forward in a line. In a few heartbeats, they accelerated to a full gallop and struck the charge cleanly, unstoppably. The Chin lines crumpled further back.

Tolui saw his brother had gone deep into the enemy formations, the khan's wedge of bondsmen killing as if they thought they could win right through to the other side. He was in awe of Ogedai then. He had not expected to see him go insane on a battlefield, but there was no holding him back and his bondsmen were hard-pressed to keep up. Ogedai rode as if he was immortal and nothing touched him, though the air was filled with death and smoke.

Tolui had never before seen smoke on a battlefield. It was a new element and his men hated to see it drifting towards them. He was becoming used to the strange odour, but the thunderous cracks and thumps were some of the most terrifying moments he had ever known. He could not hold back, not with Ogedai moving into the mass. The frustration of being unable to prevent the drift south was telling on all of them. It was close to becoming a chaotic brawl, with the Mongol advantages of speed and accuracy sacrificed to vengeful fury.

Tolui directed his minghaan officers to protect the khan, moving swiftly to bolster Ogedai's flanks and widen the wedge he pressed into the Chin army. He felt a surge of pride as his son Mongke passed on the order to his thousand and they followed him without hesitation. There had been few occasions when Genghis rode to war with his sons. Amidst the fear for Mongke's safety, Tolui could grin with pleasure at seeing such a strong young man. Sorhatani would be proud when he told her.

The rolling smoke cleared again and Tolui expected another wave of thunder to follow. He was closer by then and the Chin army was spiralling around his men, moving south, always south. Tolui cursed them as a Chin soldier passed almost under his horse's head blindly, trying to stay in marching rank. Tolui killed him with a brief thrust from above, choosing a point on the neck where armour did not protect him.

He looked up and found hundreds more marching rapidly towards his position. They were armoured like common soldiers, but each carried a black iron tube. He saw they struggled with the weight, but they strode closer with a strange confidence. Their officers barked orders to load and brace. Tolui knew instinctively that he should not give them time.

Tolui bawled his own orders, his voice already hoarse. A thousand of his men turned to charge the new threat, letting Ogedai's wedge move on without them. They followed their general without hesitation, swinging swords and loosing arrows at anything in his path.

The Chin soldiers were hacked down as they struggled with fuses and iron tubes. Some were crushed by horses, others died as they pressed a spluttering taper to the weapon. Many of the tubes fell to the ground and, in response, Mongol warriors yanked their mounts away or even threw themselves on top with their eyes tightly shut.

They did not catch them all. A rattle of lighter cracks sounded, rippling across the lines. Tolui saw a man snatched away from him, torn from his saddle before he could even cry out. Another horse crashed to its knees, its chest running with blood. The sound was appalling and then the smoke rolled in a great grey wave and they were blind. Tolui laid about him with his sword until it snapped and he stared at the hilt in disbelief. Something fell against him, whether an enemy or one of his own men he did not know. He felt the life go out of his mount and staggered clear before it could roll on him. He drew a long knife from his boot, holding it high as he limped across the smoking ground. More of the strange cracks sounded around him as the tubes fired their load of stone and iron, some of them spinning uselessly on the ground as their owners lay dead.

Tolui did not know how long they had been fighting. In the thick smoke, he was almost overwhelmed with fear. He calmed himself with calculations, forcing his mind to work amidst the noise and chaos. The Chin army could reach the border by sunset. It lay no more than a few miles to the south by then, but they had suffered and died for every step. As the smoke cleared, Tolui darted one look at the sun, seeing it closer to the horizon as if it had dropped while he was wreathed in smoke. He could hardly believe it as he grabbed a riderless horse and held the reins while he searched the ground for a good sword. The grass was slick and bloody as he walked. His stomach heaved at the stench of bowels and death mingled with burnt black powder, a bitter combination he never wanted to know again. Xuan, the Son of Heaven, rode untouched by bloodshed, though he could smell the odour of gunpowder in the evening air. Around him the Mongol tumans tore and screeched at his noble soldiers, ripping at them with teeth and iron. Xuan's face was cold as he stared south above their heads. He could see the border, but he did not think the Mongols would hold back as he passed the simple stone temple that marked the boundary between two nations. By some chance, the Chin army had wound its way back onto the main road. The white stone building was a distant speck, an oasis of peace with clashing armies converging on it.

Xuan sweated in his armour, shamed by the thought that he could race his mount alone along that road. His horse was a fine, cut stallion, but Xuan was not a fool. He could not enter Sung lands as a beggar. His army protected his body, but also the last wealth of the Chin kingdoms, in a thousand sacks and bags. His wives and children were there as well, hidden by the walls of iron and loyal men. He could not leave them to the mercies of the Mongol khan.

With his wealth, he would be welcomed by his cousin. With an army, he would have the Sung emperor's respect. He would have a place at the table of nobles as they planned a campaign to take back his ancestral lands.

Xuan winced at the thought. There was little love for his bloodline in the Sung court. The emperor, Lizong, was a man of his father's generation who viewed Chin territory as his own, claiming a mere error of history that it was not already his by right. There was a chance that Xuan was putting his hand into a rat hole by placing himself in Sung power. There was no other choice. Mongol goatherders strode his lands as if they owned them, peering into every storehouse, tallying the wealth of every village for taxes they would never know how to spend. The shame of it should have been overwhelming, but Xuan had never known peace. He had grown used to the humiliation of losing his kingdom piece by piece to an army of locusts and seeing his father's capital burn. Surely his Sung cousin would not underestimate the threat. Yet there had been conquerors before, tribal leaders who raised an army and then died. Their empires always fell apart, broken by the arrogance and weakness of lesser men. Xuan knew Emperor Lizong would be tempted to ignore them and simply wait for a century or two. He wiped sweat from his eyes, blinking at the sting of salt. Time cured so many ills in the world, but not these cursed tribesmen. The Mongols had lost their great conqueror at the height of his power and simply carried on, as if one man did not matter. Xuan did not know if it made them more civilised, or just a pack of wolves, with another taking the lead.

He clenched his fist in pleasure as he heard the rippling snaps of his gunners. He had so few, but they were wonderful, fearsome weapons. That too was something he took to the Sung: vital knowledge of the enemy as well as ways to destroy him. A wolf would not stand against a man with a burning brand. Xuan knew he could be that weapon, if he had the time and space to plan.

He was jerked from his reverie by the shouting of his officers. They were pointing to the south and he shaded his eyes from the setting sun to look into the distance.

An army was approaching the border, barely two miles away. He could see huge fast-moving square formations pouring over the hills. Like wasps, the Sung regiments were reacting to the threat, he thought. Or answering the arrogance of a khan who had dared to enter their lands. As Xuan watched, concentrating, he began to realise that it was no minor force, no regional governor. The emperor himself would never leave his capital for the filthy business of warfare. It had to be one of his sons, perhaps even his heir. No one else could command so many. The squares layered the ground like a cloth pattern, each at least five thousand fresh men, well trained and supplied. Xuan tried to count them, but it was impossible with the dust and distance. The men around him were already jubilant, but he narrowed his eyes to think, staring around him at the Mongol forces who still growled at his heels.

If his cousin closed the border, he would not survive. Xuan scratched irritably at a line of sweat on his face, leaving a red mark from his fingernails. Surely they would not stand by and watch him killed? He did not know. He could not know. The tension made bile rise in his stomach as his horse brought him closer and closer, the calm centre of a whirling storm.

Taking a deep breath, Xuan summoned his generals and began to bark orders to them. The commands rippled out and the edges of his army hardened. Men carrying heavy shields raced into position, setting up a strong defence that would hold the Mongols long enough to reach the border. It was his last-ditch plan, just to survive, but at that point, it might also serve to keep as many soldiers alive as possible. He had fought a defensive battle for days. If the border was closed, he would have to turn at bay and strike down the khan. He had the numbers still and his men were hungry to give back the blows they had taken.

The thought was intoxicating and Xuan wondered if he should attack even if the border army opened to let him through. All he had wanted was to find safety with enough men to make him a powerful voice in the councils that would follow. Yet the Mongol khan remained outnumbered. The grubby Mongol shepherd would be dumbstruck and unnerved at the sight of so many pristine regiments.

The first Sung ranks had reached the border and halted, perfect lines of coloured armour and Sung banners streaming. As Xuan stared at them, he saw a puff of smoke in the line and heard a crack as a rock ball came flying over the grass. It hit no one, but the message was not for him. The Sung prince had brought cannon to the field, huge metal tubes on wheels that could smear a line of horses and men with a single shot. Let the khan digest that little detail.

Xuan's army marched on, his heart beating like a bird's as they approached the dark lines.