Empire of Silver

CHAPTER FOUR

Kachiun walked his pony across the churned grass of the encampment, listening to the sounds of the nation all around him. Despite the stillness of the night, he did not ride alone. Thirty of his personal bondsmen went with him, alert for any attack. No one travelled alone in the camps any more, not with the new moon almost upon them. Lamps and mutton fat torches spat and fluttered at every intersection of paths, revealing dark groups of warriors watching him as he passed.

He could hardly believe the current level of suspicion and tension in the camps. At three points, he was challenged by guards as he approached Khasar's ger. In the night breeze, two lamps cast writhing yellow shadows at his feet. Even as Khasar came yawning out onto the cart, Kachiun could see bows drawn and sighted on him.

'We need to talk, brother,' he said.

Khasar stretched, groaning. 'Tonight?'

'Yes, tonight,' Kachiun snapped.

He didn't want to say more, with so many listeners nearby. For once, Khasar sensed his mood and nodded without any more argument. Kachiun watched as his brother whistled softly. Men in full armour walked in from the outer darkness, hands near their swords. They ignored Kachiun and walked to their general, standing close by his feet and looking up at him for orders. Khasar crouched and murmured to them.

Kachiun mastered his impatience until the men bowed their heads and moved away. One of them brought Khasar's current mount, a gelding near black in colour that whickered and kicked out as they saddled it.

'Bring your bondsmen, brother,' Kachiun said to him.

Khasar peered at him in the dim light, seeing the strain in Kachiun's face. He shrugged and gestured to the officers nearby. Another forty warriors trotted to his side, long woken from sleep by the presence of armed men near their master. It seemed that even Khasar was taking no chances on those nights while they waited for the new moon.

Dawn was still hours away, but with the camp in such a state, the movement of so many men woke everyone they passed. Voices called out around them and somewhere a child began wailing. Grim-faced, Kachiun trotted his mount beside his brother, silent as they headed towards Karakorum.

Torches lit the gates in dim gold that night. The walls were pale grey shadows in the darkness, but the western gate gleamed, oak and iron, and clearly shut. Khasar frowned, leaning forward in his saddle to strain his eyes.

'I haven't seen it closed before,' he said over his shoulder. Without thought, he dug in his heels and increased his pace. The warriors around him matched him so smoothly it could have been a battlefield manoeuvre. The noises of the camp, the calling voices, all were lost in the thump of hooves, the breath of horses, the jingle of metal and harness. The western gate of Karakorum grew before them. Khasar could now see ranks of men, facing outwards as if challenging him.

'This is why I woke you,' Kachiun replied.

Both men were brothers to the great khan, uncles to the next. They were generals of proven authority, their names known to every warrior who fought for the nation. When they reached the gate, a visible ripple ran through the ranks of men there, vanishing into the darkness. The bondsmen halted around their masters, hands on sword hilts. On both sides, the men were strung as tightly as their bows. Kachiun and Khasar glanced at each other, then dismounted.

They stood on dusty ground, the grass long since worn away by traffic through the gate. Both men felt the sullen gaze of those who faced them. The men at the gate bore no marks of rank, no flags or banners to identify them. For Kachiun and Khasar, it was as if they looked upon the raiders of their youth, with no allegiance to the nation.

'You know me,' Khasar roared suddenly over their heads. 'Who dares to stand in my way?'

The closest men jerked under a voice that could carry across battlefields, but they did not respond, or move.

'I see no signs of tuman or minghaan in your ranks. I see no flags, just dog-meat wanderers with no master.' He paused and glared at them. 'I am General Khasar Borjigin, of the Wolves, of the nation under the great khan. You will answer to me tonight.'

Some of the men shuffled nervously in the lamplight, but they did not flinch from his gaze. Khasar guessed the best part of three hundred men had been sent to close the gate and no doubt it was the same on the other four walls of Karakorum. The bondsmen snarling at his back were outnumbered, but they were the best swordsmen and archers he and Kachiun could field. At a word from either of them, they would attack.

Khasar looked at Kachiun once again, controlling his anger at the dumb insolence of the warriors facing them. His hand dropped to his sword hilt in unmistakable signal. Kachiun held his gaze for a moment and the warriors on both sides tensed for bloodshed. Almost imperceptibly, Kachiun moved his head a finger's width left and right. Khasar frowned, showing his teeth in frustration for an instant. He leaned in to the closest of those before the gate, breathing into his face.

'I say you are tribeless wanderers, without marks of rank or blood,' Khasar said. 'Don't leave your posts while I am gone. I am going to ride into the city over your bodies.'

The man was sweating and he blinked at the growling voice too close to his neck.

Khasar remounted and he and Kachiun swung away from the pools of light and the promise of death. As soon as they were clear, Kachiun edged his mare over and tapped a hand to his brother's shoulder.

'It has to be the Broken Lance. Ogedai is in the city and someone does not want us riding to his aid tonight.'

Khasar nodded, his heart still hammering. It had been years since he had seen such a show of rebellion from warriors of his people. He was raging, his face flushed.

'My ten thousand will answer the insult,' he snapped. 'Where is Tsubodai?'

'I have not seen him since he went to Ogedai today,' Kachiun replied.

'You are senior. Send runners to his tuman and to Jebe. With them or without them, I am going into that city, Kachiun.'

The brothers and their bondsmen split up, riding different paths that would bring forty thousand men back to the gates of Karakorum. For a time, the noises on the other side of the door died almost to nothing. With silent gestures, Tsubodai and Tolui lifted a heavy couch, grunting with the effort. It took both of them to shove it across the entrance.

'Are there any other ways in?' Tsubodai murmured.

Ogedai shook his head, then hesitated.

'There are windows in my sleeping chamber, but they open onto a sheer wall.'

Tsubodai cursed under his breath. The first rule of battle was to choose the ground. The second was to know the ground. Both had been taken from him. He looked around at the shadowy gathering, judging their mood. Mongke and Kublai were wide-eyed and thrilled to be part of an adventure. Neither realised the danger they were in. Sorhatani returned his gaze steadily. Under that silent stare, he took a long knife from his boot and passed it into her hands.

'A wall won't stop them tonight,' he said to Ogedai, pressing his ear to the door.

They fell silent as he strained to hear, then jumped at a crash that made Tsubodai leap back. A thin trail of plaster dust curled down from the ceiling and Ogedai winced to see it.

'The corridor is narrow outside,' Ogedai muttered, almost to himself. 'They don't have room to run at it.'

'That is good. Are there weapons here?' Tsubodai asked.

Ogedai nodded. He was his father's son. 'I'll show you,' he said, beckoning.

Tsubodai turned to Huran and found the senior man ready at the door. Another crash sounded and voices rose in anger outside.

'Get a lamp lit,' Tsubodai ordered. 'We don't need to stay in the dark.'

Sorhatani set about the task as Tsubodai strode through to the inner rooms. He bowed formally to Ogedai's wife, Torogene. She had lost her sleepy look and smoothed down her hair with water from a shallow bowl, placed there ready for the morning. Tsubodai was pleased that neither she nor Sorhatani seemed to be panicking.

'Through here,' Ogedai said ahead of him.

Tsubodai entered the sleeping chamber and nodded in appreciation. A small lamp still glowed there and he saw the wolf's-head sword of Genghis on the wall above the bed. A bow gleamed on the opposite side, each layer of horn and birch and sinew polished to a rich colour.

'Do you have arrows for it?' Tsubodai asked, bending the hooks open with his thumbs and hefting the weapon. Ogedai smiled at the general's evident pleasure.

'It is not a decoration, general. Of course I have arrows,' he replied. A chest produced a quiver of thirty shafts, each the product of a master fletcher and still bright with oil. He tossed it to Tsubodai.

Outside, the crashing went on. Whoever it was had brought up hammers for the task and even the floor trembled with the blows. Tsubodai crossed to the windows set high in the outer wall. Like the ones in the outer room, they were barred in iron. Tsubodai could not help thinking how he would break in, if he were attacking the rooms. Though they were solid enough, they had not been designed to withstand a determined enemy. That enemy was never meant to get close enough, or to have time to hammer out the bars before Ogedai's Guards cut them to pieces.

'Cover the lamp for a moment,' Tsubodai said. 'I do not want to be visible to an archer outside.' He pulled a wooden chest to the window and crouched on it, then rose suddenly to the barred space, ducking back just as quickly.

'There's no one in sight, lord, but the wall to the courtyard below is barely the height of two men. They will come here, if they can find it.'

'But first they'll try the door,' Ogedai said grimly.

Tsubodai nodded. 'Have your wife wait here, perhaps, ready to call if she hears anything.' Tsubodai was trying to defer to Ogedai's authority, but his impatience showed with every thump from the corridor outside.

'Very well, general.'

Ogedai hesitated, fear and anger mingling, swelling in him. He had not built his city to be torn screaming from life. He had lived with death for so long that it was almost a shock to feel such a powerful desire to live, to avenge. He dared not ask Tsubodai if they could hold the rooms. He could see the answer in the man's eyes.

'It is strange that you are present for the death of another of Genghis' sons, don't you think?' he said.

Tsubodai stiffened. He turned back and Ogedai saw no weakness in his black stare.

'I carry many sins, lord,' Tsubodai said. 'But this is not the time to talk about old ones. If we survive, you may ask whatever you need to know.'

Ogedai began to reply, bitterness welling up in him. A new sound made them both whip round and run. An iron hinge had cracked and the wood of the outer door splintered, a panel yawning open. The lamplight from the room spilled out into the darker corridor, illuminating sweating faces. At the door, Huran speared his blade into them, so that one at least fell back with a cry of pain. The stars had moved part-way across the sky by the time Khasar roused his tuman. He rode at the head in full armour, his sword drawn and held low by his right thigh. In formation behind him were ten groups of a thousand, each with their minghaan officers. Each thousand had its jaguns of a hundred men, led by officers bearing a silver plaque. Even they had their structures: ten groups of ten, with equipment to raise a ger between them and food and tools to survive and fight. Genghis and Tsubodai had created the system, and Khasar hadn't given it a thought when he issued just one order to his quiriltai, his quartermaster. The tuman of ten thousand had formed on the plain, men running to their horses in what looked like chaos before the ranks coalesced and they were ready. Ahead lay Karakorum.

Khasar's outriders reported other tumans on the move all around him. No one in the nation slept now. To the smallest child, they knew this was the night of crisis, so long feared.

Khasar had his naccara drummers sound a rhythm: dozens of unarmed boys on camels whose sole task was to inspire fear in an enemy with a rolling thunder. He heard it answered ahead and on the left, as other tumans took up a warning and a challenge. Khasar swallowed drily, looking for Kachiun's men ahead. He had the feeling that events were slipping from his control, but he could do nothing else. His path had been set when men at the gate had dared to refuse a general of the nation. He knew they were Chagatai's, but the arrogant prince had sent them out without his unit markings, to do his work like assassins in the night. Khasar could not ignore such a threat to his authority – to all the stages of authority that he represented, down to the youngest drummer on a sway-backed beast. He dared not think of his nephew Ogedai trapped in his own city. He could only react and force his way in, hoping there would be someone still alive to save.

Kachiun joined him, with Jebe's Bearskin tuman and Tsubodai's ten thousand. Khasar breathed in relief as he saw the banners stretching away into the dark, a sea of horses and flags. Tsubodai's warriors knew their general was in the city. They had not disputed Kachiun's right to order them in his place.

Like a mountain slowly falling, the vast array of four tumans drew close to the western gate of Karakorum. Khasar and Kachiun rode forward, hiding their impatience. There was no need for bloodshed, even then.

The men at the gate remained still, their weapons sheathed. Whatever their orders had been, they knew that to draw a blade was to invite instant destruction. No man wanted to be first.

The tableau held, with just the snorting of horses and fluttering banners. Then out of the darkness rode a new group of men, their passage lit with burning torches held by bannermen, so that in an instant, every man there knew that Chagatai had arrived.

Kachiun could have ordered Khasar to block Genghis' son and had his own tumans cut a way into the city. He felt the weight of the decision hang on him, time running slowly as his pulse raced. He was not a man to hesitate, but he was not at war. This was not the desert of Khwarezm or the walls of a Chin city. He let the moment pass, and as it went, he clutched at it desperately, almost throwing away his life when it was too late.

Chagatai rode in like a khan, his bondsmen surrounding him in square formation. Some of the men at the gate went sprawling as horses knocked them down, but he did not look round. His gaze was fixed firmly on the two older generals, his father's brothers, and the only men who mattered in the camp that night. He and his horse were armoured and the air was cold enough for Kachiun to see plumes of mist from man and beast alike. Chagatai wore an iron helmet, with a horse'smane crest whipping through the air as he came in. He was no longer the boy they had known and both men tensed under his flat stare.

Khasar made a hissing sound under his breath, signalling his anger to his brother. They knew Chagatai was there to prevent them entering Karakorum. They were not yet sure how far he would go to keep them outside.

'It is late to be training your men, Chagatai,' Khasar snapped, his voice loud.

They were separated by less than fifty paces, closer than he had been allowed to the man in a month. Khasar ached to reach for his bow, though the armour would likely save his target and then there would be a blood-letting on a scale unseen since they had destroyed the Xi Xia. The prince shrugged as he sat his horse, smiling with cold confidence.

'I am not training, uncle. I am riding to see who threatens the peace of the camp in darkness. I find it is my own uncles, moving armies in the night. What am I to make of it, eh?' He laughed and the men around him showed their teeth, though their hands never left the bows, swords and lances with which they fairly bristled.

'Be careful, Chagatai,' Khasar said.

The prince's expression went hard at the words. 'No, uncle. I will not be careful when armies ride through my land. Return to your ger, your wives and children. Tell your men to go back to theirs. You have no business here tonight.'

Khasar took a breath to roar an order and Kachiun shouted before he unleashed the tumans.

'You have no authority over us, Chagatai! Your men are outnumbered, but there is no need for blood to be spilled. We will enter the city tonight, now! Stand aside and there will be no strife between us.'

Chagatai's horse sensed his surging emotions and he had to turn it on the spot to stay in position, sawing its mouth with the reins. They could read the triumph on his face and, privately, both men despaired for Ogedai in the city.

'You misjudge me, uncle,' Chagatai shouted, making sure he was heard by as many ears as possible. 'You are the ones trying to force your way into Karakorum! For all I know, you are planning bloody murder in the city, a coup, with my brother's head as the prize. I have come to stop you entering, to keep the peace.' He sneered at their surprise, his face savage as he waited for the arrows to fly.

Kachiun heard movement on his right and jerked in the saddle to see vast ranks of men moving into position around him, their officers lit with torches. He could not judge the numbers in the starlight, but his heart sank as he saw the banners of those loyal to Chagatai. The two sides glowered at each other, roughly equal, but Chagatai had done enough and he knew it. Kachiun and Khasar could not begin a civil war in the shadow of Karakorum. Kachiun looked east for the first signs of dawn, but the sky was dark and Ogedai was on his own.