Bones Of the Hills

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Genghis reined in at the valley of Panjshir. A howling wind swirled dust across the emptiness and on one side of the river hosts of carrion birds leapt and bickered, calling amongst themselves. Genghis grunted at the sight before digging in his heels and riding down. Jebe led those with him, including the tumans commanded by his youngest sons. Ogedai’s men had seen the aftermath of battles and raids before, but most of Tolui’s tuman were still young, some of them barely fourteen years old. They followed with wide eyes, until more senior men jabbed the most obvious gawkers in the ribs with a sword hilt.

Forty thousand men followed Genghis into Panjshir, dusty and thin after a hard ride. Only Chagatai’s tuman had remained to guard the families and move them to new grazing. Genghis had taken every other man he had available, with two spare horses for each of them. Laden with waterskins and supplies, the vast tail of mounts trotted after the warriors, with just a few men at the rear to herd them.

As Genghis rode across the dusty ground, the heat increased until it seemed to beat directly onto their heads. The river ran on his left, the one source of life in a place of desolation. Genghis could see trampled banners as he approached the battle site and, in the distance, people ran from the town of Parwan to the safety of the fortress on the other side of the river. Genghis did not pause as he rode towards the fighting birds, scattering ravens and vultures before the horses of his men so that they shrieked and wheeled angrily around them.

Two men still remained on that side of the river, sitting their horses like statues as the khan came in. Kachiun had left them to guide Genghis into the mountains, but they were pale with tension as the tumans approached. Surrounded by birds, they decided as one that it would be a good idea to dismount and prostrate themselves. Genghis saw the movement and angled his mount towards them, Ogedai and Tolui following. Unlike their father, they stared at everything and Tolui looked faintly ill, though he tried to hide it.

Genghis dismounted, showing his temper only when a raven came swinging in too close to him and he batted furiously at it, sending the bird tumbling in the air. Many of the carrion crows were almost too full to fly and merely hopped from body to body, opening their black wings and beaks as if in warning.

Genghis did not look at the corpses, except to estimate their numbers. What he saw did not please him. He stood over the two scouts and felt his patience fray in the heat.

‘Get up and report,’ he snapped.

They leapt to their feet, standing as if at an execution. No one knew how Genghis would react to a defeat.

‘General Kachiun has followed the enemy into the mountains, lord. He said he will leave other men behind to bring you to him.’

‘You are still in contact?’ Genghis asked.

Both men nodded. It used valuable warriors, but the practice of establishing a line from one site to another was nothing new. Barely five miles lay between scouts and they could pass information for twenty times that distance in just a short time.

‘There were false trails, lord, but the tumans are searching every valley,’ a scout said. ‘I have no news of a true sighting, not yet.’

Genghis swore and both scouts tightened their faces in fear.

‘How do you lose sixty thousand men?’ he demanded.

Neither scout was certain if the question required an answer and they looked at each other in desperation. Their relief was obvious when Jebe rode up to join Genghis, looking around him at the battlefield with an experienced eye. As well as the slabs of stone placed to break a charge, he could see trenches, some with dead warriors and horses still in them. Wooden stakes bound together had been broken or knocked to one side, but the rusty stains of blood could still be seen on some. There were hundreds of bodies in Arab robes, lying in pitiful heaps as birds and other animals tugged at their flesh. It was not enough, not nearly enough, and Genghis could hardly control his indignation. Only the thought that he must not criticise his generals aloud held his tongue. He knew Jebe could see the truth, but with Ogedai and Tolui within earshot, Genghis remained silent. Jelaudin’s army had fortified a position, just as a city or town. Kachiun had tried to break the defences by force, instead of standing back and waiting for them to starve. Genghis glanced at the sun beating on the back of his neck. Thirst would have killed them first, no matter how well they had prepared. To attack such a position was reckless, though he supposed he might have done the same. Still, his brother’s wits had deserted him. Genghis grimaced as he turned to Jebe, seeing the same thoughts reflected in that dark face.

‘Discuss the weaknesses of the strategy with my sons when we make camp, general,’ he said. ‘This prince should have been stopped here. Now we have to hunt him.’

He turned back to the scouts, who still stood, swallowing nervously.

‘There is nothing else to see here, nothing that pleases me. Show me the way to my brother and the next scout in the chain.’

Both men bowed and Genghis rode with them, his tumans coming after him in perfect order as they crossed the valley of Panjshir and entered a narrow crack, almost invisible in the brown rocks. It was barely wide enough for the horses to go through.

It took eight more days before Genghis reached Kachiun’s tumans. In that time, he had not allowed his men to stop long enough to cook food, even if they had been able to find wood for a fire. The mountains in that region seemed bare of life, populated only by lizards and high nests of birds. When warriors came across a stunted tree, they chopped it down with axes and tied the wood to spare horses to be used later.

As he went, Genghis rolled up the line of scouts Kachiun had left behind, bringing each man with him as the tumans travelled deeper into the maze of canyons and valleys. At times, they rode their mounts over slopes of rock almost too steep to remain in the saddle. There were no tracks left there. Genghis and Jebe began to appreciate the difficulty of the task for Kachiun. It was hard even to know which direction they faced, especially at night, but the line of scouts knew the way and they made quick progress. When they came upon the rear of Kachiun’s tumans, Genghis took Jebe and his sons through to the front, looking for Kachiun. He found him on the morning of the eighth day, at a brackish lake surrounded by towering peaks.

Genghis made a point of embracing Kachiun, letting the men see that he held no grudge for their defeat.

‘Are you close?’ he said, without preamble.

Kachiun saw the banked anger in his brother and winced. He knew better than to explain himself, having no doubt at all that Genghis would discuss his errors in great detail when they were alone.

‘Three false trails headed east, brother, but the main force is going south, I am certain of it.’ Kachiun showed Genghis a piece of horse dung, teasing it apart in his hands. ‘Still moist, even in this heat. We cannot be more than a day behind them.’

‘Yet we have stopped,’ Genghis said, raising his eyebrows.

‘I am running low on water, brother. This lake is salt and useless to us. Now you are here, we can share skins and move faster.’

Genghis gave the order immediately, without pausing to see the first waterskins brought up. He had thousands on his spare horses and the animals were used to sucking at them as if they had never forgotten their mother’s teats. He felt every delay as a spur to his growing irritation. It was hard not to berate Kachiun with so many watching the exchange. When Khasar and Jelme came to greet him, Genghis could barely look at them.

‘Tsubodai has orders to join us when he returns,’ he said to the three generals. ‘What is past is past. Ride with me now and redeem yourselves.’

A flicker of movement caught his eye and Genghis squinted up against the sun. On a peak, he saw a distant man waving a banner above his head. He looked back at Kachiun, incredulous.

‘What is that?’

‘The enemy,’ Kachiun said grimly. ‘They have watchers on us all the time.’

‘Send six good climbers up and kill him,’ Genghis said, forcing himself to remain calm.

‘They choose places one man can defend. We move past them too quickly to waste time getting them down.’

‘Has the sun softened your head, brother?’ Genghis demanded. Once more he had to struggle to control his temper. ‘Those are Jelaudin’s eyes. Have more men ride ahead and pick them off with arrows as they find them. It does not matter if some of the warriors fall trying to reach them. When our enemy is blind, we will find him more easily.’

Jelaudin stared into the distance, watching the flag signal as it rose and dipped four times.

‘The khan has taken the field,’ he said. His stomach clenched as he spoke and suddenly all the strength of his army seemed insubstantial. This was the man who had destroyed his father’s regiments, sent elephants mad with pain and carved his way through the golden cities. Jelaudin had known he would come, the knowledge tainting their victories. The khan’s pride demanded his presence and Jelaudin had known he would not be slow to follow.

‘How many men?’ Nawaz asked at his shoulder. He had not taken the time to learn the flag signals, but Jelaudin did not upbraid him.

‘Four tumans, that is forty thousand more warriors in the hunt. They will move faster now.’

For twelve days, they had led the Mongols into blind canyons and false trails, losing just a few men while they wound their way through the Afghan hills. The sudden withdrawal from Panjshir had always been a gamble, but Jelaudin knew the word would spread almost as fast as he could move his army. Cities waited for a thousand miles to hear that the khan’s men had been defeated. Jelaudin thought of them as he stared at the setting sun. They would rise when they heard. Those places where Mongol garrisons kept the peace would be at war again. Every day he remained alive weakened the khan’s grip on Arab lands. Jelaudin swore a silent oath as he stood there. He would shake it loose.

Men rode ahead of him, leaving the hills far behind to take the news. Jelaudin knew if he could hold off the khan for just a season, his army would swell with every man and boy able to hold a sword. He would set the land on fire with the chance to strike back at the invader. If he survived. He smiled at Nawaz, standing at his side like a faithful servant. He was weary and his feet hurt. He had walked for many miles that day, but now the khan had come. It was time to ride, fast and far away from the mountains.

Genghis could find no fault with the way Kachiun moved his tumans through the labyrinth of passes. His brother had men out in all directions, linking back to the generals like the threads of a delicate web spreading over the hills. There were few mistakes once the routines had been learned, and while Genghis was there, they avoided two more dead ends and one false trail that would have taken them ten miles out of their way. Genghis developed a grudging respect for the prince he hunted. He would have liked to ask Tsubodai about the pursuit to the Caspian Sea. It occurred to Genghis that Jelaudin may well have been the mind that kept his family safe and not his father, as they had supposed.

It was strange how often Tsubodai’s name came up in conversation between the generals. Genghis deflected their interest with curt replies or silence, not wanting to discuss the task he had set. Some things were not meant to go into the histories Temuge was writing. As he rode, Genghis wondered if he should keep a tighter rein on his brother’s record of the tribes. Part of him still thought it was foolish to trap words in such a way, for all you could control it. Though he recalled Arslan’s quiet scorn for fame, Genghis quite enjoyed the idea of shaping his own memory. In Samarkand, he had mentioned the possibility of doubling enemy numbers in Temuge’s account of battles and left his brother open-mouthed at the idea.

The tumans moved faster through the hills, leaving the worst part of the maze behind them. Genghis pushed them on and they found new depths to their endurance under his gaze. No one wanted to be first to call a halt and they survived on just a few hours’ sleep, sometimes dozing in the saddle as those who were still awake led them on.

Beyond the rocky slopes and valleys, they now followed a true trail, the marks of any large force of men and horses. As well as lumps of drying horse dung, the excrement of men buzzed with flies feasting on the moisture, fresher every day. The tumans knew they were drawing close to the enemy. In the khan’s presence, they were hungry to revenge the defeats at Panjshir: they would not fail again, not with Genghis watching. Privately, Genghis thought Kachiun could have taken them through the hills without him, but he led the nation and he could not trust another with the task at hand.

Each day brought news from the chains of scouts he maintained for a thousand miles. The old days of an army moving alone and out of touch had gone with his subjugation of the Arab lands. It was a rare day that did not bring two or more dusty messengers from as far back as Samarkand and Merv as well as deep into the west. The Mongol nation had made deep prints in the dust of Arab lands.

Genghis both enjoyed and was disturbed by the stream of information. He had grown to manhood in a time when a raiding band might move unseen across the land, answerable to no one. Now, he had problems coming to him that he could do nothing about, and at times he wished he had brought Temuge with him to handle the details of the reports. He heard that the Afghan city of Herat had expelled its Mongol garrison, leaving them alive. Another stronghold, Balkh, had closed its gates and refused to send another year’s tribute. The cracks were widening and he could do nothing about it. His task was to find and annihilate the enemy who had caused such a rush of confidence in once-beaten cities. In time, he would remind them of their obligations to him.

The seven tumans moved on at increasing speed, pushing the men and spare horses. Jebe organised fresh mounts every second day and each change brought a surge of new energy as the warriors felt an eager horse under them again. Small boys rode with the supplies behind the army and Genghis took no note of them until Jebe brought two tiny urchins up on his saddle, riding right to the khan. They were so black with dirt that at first Genghis did not recognise them. Boys always accompanied the army, though these were very small. They ran errands for warriors and the largest were allowed to beat drums as they formed for battle.

One of the little boys grinned and Genghis pulled up, astonished. Mongke sat before Jebe and Kublai peeked from behind his back. With the boundless energy of young boys, they were both thin as rats and burned dark by the fierce sun. Genghis scowled at them and the grins disappeared instantly. His expression softened slightly, remembering a time when the whole world was an adventure. They were too young to come on such a journey and he suspected their mother, Sorhatani, would take the skin off their buttocks when they reached the families once more. He wondered if their father Tolui had any idea they were there. Genghis doubted it.

‘What do you want to do with them?’ Jebe asked.

His eyes were bright as he looked at Genghis and the two men shared a moment of humour. The boys had not been told to stay with their mother. It had not occurred to anyone to give such an order to ones so young. They had no inkling of the danger around their grandfather. Genghis lowered his brows, making his face stern.

‘I have not seen them, general,’ he said.

Kublai’s eyes gleamed with sudden hope. Genghis chose to ignore the little face, complete with a crust of snot between the nose and upper lip. Jebe nodded, a smile lifting one side of his mouth.

‘My lord khan,’ he replied, dipping his head as he went off to lose the boys once more in the herd of spare horses behind them.

Genghis smiled to himself as he rode on. He suspected he was a better grandfather than he had ever been a father, but he did not let the idea trouble him unduly.

The tumans rode on doggedly as they reached the edge of the mountainous region. Genghis thought they could not be more than a couple of hundred miles from Panjshir valley, though they had ridden far further along the twists and turns. He did not know if Jelaudin had hoped to open up a gap between the armies. He had almost done so in the first days, but the tumans had gained on his army, pulling them in day by day. By the time the mountains came to an end, the dung of horses and men was barely cooling. Genghis rode with his generals at the head of the host, among the first to feel the rocky ground give way to packed earth and scrub grass. From his maps, he knew the grassy plain led south into India. It was not a land he knew, but he cared nothing about that. His scouts were riding in at shorter intervals and he knew where the enemy lay.

Jelaudin’s men ran before those who hunted them. Genghis had driven his army hard for more than a month and they were tired and thin, the meagre rations of milk and blood towards the end hardly sustaining them. The river Indus lay ahead and Jelaudin’s host flowed towards it, desperate to escape the storm they had brought down on their heads.