Conqueror (2011)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Hulegu cursed his general’s memory as he galloped along the fighting line. Kitbuqa had been killed years before, but his legacy lived on in the Moslems who had vowed never to accept his khanate. Holding Christian Mass in mosques had turned out to be a terrible idea when it came to pacifying the region, though it was true that many of the tribes also screamed the name of Baghdad as he caught and punished them.

He had never known such a cauldron of trouble as the khanate he had chosen. From the destruction of the city on, men had drifted in from thousands of miles away to fight for the land he had taken. He grinned as he rode. His grandfather had said there was no better way to spend a life and the khanate was never still, never peaceful, as it vomited up new enemies each year. It was good for the tumans he commanded. His men kept themselves sharp against the dark-skinned madmen who died screaming the name of a city or their god.

Hulegu ducked as an arrow whirred somewhere close. The line of enemy horsemen blurred as he ran down its flank. He had only heartbeats before they began to react to his sudden manoeuvre. He could hear their roaring voices and the air was thick with dust and sweat and the taint of garlic under a battering sun.

Hulegu barely gestured and his galloping line angled into the enemy flank, raising lances at the last moment. They plunged through horses and men, spearing a hundred paces into the crush as if they were a knife sinking into flesh. The Persians crumpled before them and Hulegu cut down on his left and right, each blow aimed to break and blind, to leave falling men behind him.

He heard the snap of crossbow bolts and something struck him high in the chest, piercing his armour and thumping his collarbone. He groaned, hoping it had not broken again. As he punched through the lines, he felt only numbness from the area, but the pain would come. His tumans were outnumbered, but they were still fresh and strong and the day had barely begun. His charge had sliced away a great section of their lines and he signalled to his minghaan officers to enclose and cut it free. It was shepherd’s work, separating young rams from a flock and cutting them down. The main force of horsemen and foot soldiers moved on to face the Mongol shafts ahead and there was space for a time.

Hulegu wiped sweat from his face with a damp hand, blinking as his eyes stung with salt. He was thirsty, but as he looked around, there was no sign of his camel boys with waterskins.

Movement drew his attention and Hulegu stared as a dark mass of soldiers came jogging over the crest of a hill. They moved quickly and lightly despite the heat and he could see they were armed with bows and swords. Hulegu trotted out from the main battle for twenty or thirty paces, judging the best response. All his tumans were engaged by then and he had no separate reserves. He began to frown as the Persian soldiers kept coming, as if there were no end to them. They gleamed in the sun, wearing armour of brass and iron. As he watched, horsemen appeared on their flanks, overtaking the walking men.

He had missed an army, hiding in the hills. Whichever local leader had brought them in and hidden them had chosen his moment with care. Hulegu wet his dry lips with his tongue, looking around him and trying to keep a sense of the battle. He would have to detach a full tuman to meet and prevent them from joining up with their brothers.

Sweat ran into his eyes as the men around him finished butchering the hundreds they had cut out from the main force. It was work they knew well and his warriors were confident in their power, well used to battle after years spent fighting.

The flow of men over the hill-crest kept coming, like a spread of oil. Hulegu looked for a tuman he could disengage, but they were all in the thick of the fighting. The Afghans and Persians raised their heads as they saw the reinforcements and fought with more energy, knowing they could waste their strength and fall gasping because the Mongols would have to answer the threat. One of the tumans was pushed back by yelling thousands, forcing them to break free and gain space around them for another charge.

Hulegu cursed. He would have to take the opportunity, but he saw the danger if he pulled them out. The men they had been killing would surge after them and in doing so flank the tuman next in line. For an instant, he pictured the threat.

‘God’s blood,’ he muttered. Kitbuqa’s old habit of blaspheming had rubbed off on him. Hulegu knew he could have done with his friend on the field that day. It had been poor fortune that Kitbuqa had faced a huge army while Hulegu was in Karakorum to see his brother made khan. At least the tribes had paid a harsh price for the life of a Mongol general. He had seen to that in massive organised reprisals.

Hulegu signalled to his bannerman and watched the result as the tuman flag went up and was swung in a great circle, flapping. The tuman answered its personal flag in moments, halting almost as they began to charge back in. Hulegu could see the faces turned towards his position and he tried to ignore the feeling of panic as the enemy began to surge forward.

‘Second flag. Engage enemy,’ he snapped to his bannerman. There were too few signals and he had nothing to point to the new force coming over the hills. Yet his men were experienced and they would know he wouldn’t stop them only to order them back in.

They whirled their horses and began cantering up the rising ground. Hulegu grunted in relief, then his breath caught as he saw the enemy were still coming. Thousands more of them had appeared and he cursed the labyrinth of valleys all around that could hide so many from his scouts.

The Persian lines below ran forward, howling in glee as they appeared to chase the tuman from the field. Their momentum took them along a wing of his personal tuman as he had feared. Hulegu took a deep breath to shout new orders to the single minghaan of a thousand who had come with him.

‘Back in support!’ he bellowed. ‘To the Brass tuman line, in support!’ He repeated the order as he dug in his heels. There were too many of the enemy, but he was not ready to retreat, not from those. The battle could yet turn and they could break. He would wait for the moment, pray for it. The Brass tuman was under pressure at the front and side, close to being overwhelmed. For the first time that day, Hulegu felt a worm of doubt in his stomach. He had never lost a fixed battle against the wild tribesmen, though they challenged him each year with increasing numbers, crying ‘Baghdad’ and ‘Allahu Akbar’ as they came. He showed his teeth as he rode to support his tuman. His men would not break against dog-raping farmers. They could be defeated, but never made to run.

The thousand with him stretched out to a full gallop. Many of them had lost their lances and emptied their quivers in the fighting, but they drew swords and struck into the enemy, seeking to cut through the chaos, roaring their battle cries. Hulegu laid on around him with all his strength, smashing his sword down on helmets as shields were raised against him. From horseback, he could still see the fresh soldiers meet his tuman on the rising ground. The tuman had slid into a wide charging line with lowered lances, but even as Hulegu watched, it began to falter against the sheer numbers. Like a broken fishing net, the charging line was sundered in a dozen places. They could not hold and the screaming Persians were flowing around and through them, losing hundreds of men to reach the main battle.

Hulegu swore, turning his anger into a quick chopping blow that cracked the skull of a bearded man as he showed his red mouth in a wild yell. It was his task to keep a feel for the battle and never to lose himself in the pain and fury. The ranks on the hill were still coming and Hulegu felt a cold chill, despite the heat. The shahs had caught him neatly, making him commit his forces and then springing the ambush with everything they had.

Hulegu had cut himself a space and he was gathering the minghaan back to him for another charge at a weak point when he saw his scouts racing over the bloody grass. They were already pointing into a shadowed valley on his right hand and Hulegu groaned to himself. If there was another army there, he was done.

Even as he formed the thought, the first ranks came out of the shadowed hills, not far from the heels of the scouts they followed. Hulegu rubbed sweat from his eyes, gaping. What he saw was impossible, but he felt his heart lift even so. Solid ranks of Mongol warriors came surging out, lances standing upright like a forest of thorns. He knew them from their banners and he shook his head in a sort of wonder before turning back to see the enemy. Slowly, his lips pulled back to reveal his teeth. It was not a smile.

The tumans in the hills had been riding close, pressed in by the narrow valleys all around. As they hit the open space, they fanned out and Hulegu shouted in joy to see manoeuvres he knew as well as his own body. Two entire tumans jerked into a new path, heading for the force sliding over the hill-crest. Two more increased their speed on the flat ground and came at his position like a hammer swinging down on the Persian ranks.

Hulegu saw arrows soar out from them, bows thrumming their deep note over and over, shafts by the tens of thousand filling the air as the forces closed. The Persian ranks crumpled under the new assault, their battered shields saving only a few. Hulegu stood in his stirrups to see the lances come down. A rank five hundred wide struck his enemies and went over them, crushing and cutting. He bellowed in excitement and snapped new orders to his officers. He had the Persians on two sides, as neat a trap as if he had planned it. One last glance up the hill let him see the new tumans were butchering the Persian reserve, taking on their cavalry and sweeping across their face with black arrows, again and again.

The battle was over, but the slaughter had barely begun. Many of the Persians threw down their weapons and tried to run, or simply held bare hands up to the sky and prayed their last. They were cut down as the tumans rode around them, accepting no surrender and sending arrows in to pick them off at close range.

Hulegu’s tumans lifted their heads, putting aside the weariness they felt as their pride forced them to stand tall in the presence of their own people. They had been hard-pressed and they were merciless as the enemy fell back. The killing went on and on as the sun began to set and the enemy were herded into smaller groups. Wounded men stood among the dead and Hulegu used a broken lance as a club as he rode past one man, snapping his neck with the force of the blow and sending him tumbling.

The single minghaans rode the battlefield like stinging ants, lunging across to find new targets until the last of the enemy were running in terror, hoping only for darkness to hide them. The heat of the sun began to wane and Hulegu removed his helmet, rubbing his wet scalp. It had been a good day. A warm breeze picked up, carrying the smell of blood. Hulegu closed his eyes in relief, turning into it. He thanked the sky father for his deliverance and then on a whim thanked the Christian God as well. Kitbuqa would have enjoyed the scene around him and Hulegu was only sorry he had not lived to see it.

He opened his eyes as Mongol horns sounded victory across the open ground, a low drone that was quickly echoed by every tuman who heard. The sound raised gooseflesh on Hulegu’s arms. He whistled between his teeth to catch the attention of his officers and watched as his banners went up, bringing the senior men to him. The droning noise of victory went on and on, filling the valleys and echoing back from all directions. It was a good sound.

Hulegu’s tumans began to loot the dead, and in the distance more than one scuffle broke out as they disputed their rights over weapons and armour with the newcomers. Hulegu laughed at the sight of men rolling on the ground who had been fighting as brothers just moments before. His people were fierce, wolves all.

As his officers gathered, he saw a group of a few dozen riders detach from one of the tumans and come trotting over to him. Banners fluttered in the breeze as they came, taking their mounts carefully around the dead.

Uriang-Khadai had read the battle as he entered it. As he met Hulegu’s gaze, both men knew Hulegu owed him. Though Hulegu was a prince of the nation and a khan in his own right, he spoke first to honour the older man.

‘I was beginning to think I’d have to take another day to finish them, orlok,’ Hulegu said. ‘You are welcome here. I grant you guest rights and I hope you will eat with me this evening.’

‘I am pleased to be of service, my lord. I do not doubt you would have called the victory in the end, but if I saved you even half a day, that is good.’

Both men smiled and Hulegu wiped sweat from his face once again.

‘Where is my brother Kublai, orlok? Is he with you?’

‘Not today, my lord, though I am his man. I will be happy to explain as we eat.’

The sun had set by the time the tumans left the battlefield. Metal armour long heated in the sun tended to creak as it cooled and bodies twitched, sometimes hours after death. Experienced men could all tell tales of how they had seen dead warriors belch and even sit up in a spasm before they fell back. It was not a place to spend the night and Hulegu knew he would have to send men back to complete the looting. He led Uriang-Khadai and his warriors to a grassy plain a few miles to the west, almost at the edge of the hills. He had a basic camp there and before the moon rose to its highest point, there was simmering stew for them all, with bread hard enough to use as a spoon until it dissolved.

Hulegu was in ebullient mood as Uriang-Khadai’s senior men removed their armour and tended to their horses. His tunic was sweat-stained, but it had been a relief to get out of the armour and feel the night cool on his bare arms and face. He sat opposite Kublai’s orlok, burning with curiosity, but willing to let the man eat and drink before he demanded answers. Nothing tired a man more than fighting and the tumans never missed a chance to eat well after a battle, if they had the opportunity. They were professional men, unlike the dead Persians behind them.

When Uriang-Khadai was finished, he handed his bowl to a servant and wiped his fingers on his leggings, adding to an old patch of dark grease.

‘My lord, I am a blunt man. Let me speak bluntly,’ he said. Hulegu nodded at him. ‘Your brother Kublai asks that you step aside from the battles to come. He has declared himself khan and he will fight Lord Arik-Boke. All he asks is that you remain in your khanate and take no part.’

Hulegu’s eyes widened as the older man spoke. He shook his head in dull amazement.

‘Arik-Boke is khan,’ he said hoarsely, trying to take it in. ‘I was there, orlok. I gave my oath.’

‘I have been told to say this, my lord. Your brother Kublai calls on you to stay away while he settles this with his younger brother. He has no grievance with you, but he would not have you choose between blood brothers in a time of war.’

Uriang-Khadai watched the other man in silent hope. Kublai had given no orders to attack, but Uriang-Khadai’s tumans were already among Hulegu’s forces. At his shout, they could kill thousands. With Hulegu’s men smiling and relaxed among them, Uriang-Khadai knew he could win.

Hulegu’s eyes drifted out over the camp and perhaps he too saw the threat. He shook his head again, his expression hardening.

‘You were useful to me today, orlok. For that I am grateful. I gave you guest rights in my camp, but that does not give you the right to tell me my oath. When the sun rises …’ He stopped, his anger dwindling as confusion swelled in him.

‘How is this even possible?’ he said. ‘Kublai has not been back to Karakorum. I would have heard.’

Uriang-Khadai shrugged. ‘My master is khan, my lord. Your brother Arik-Boke should not have declared. This will be settled in a season and the nation will go on - under its rightful khan.’

‘Why has Kublai not come to me himself? Why did he send you, Uriang-Khadai?’

‘He has a war to fight, my lord. I cannot tell you all his plans. I speak with his voice and everything I have said is true. He does not ask you to break your oath. Out of love for you, he asks only that you remain until it is settled.’

Hulegu rested his head on his hands in thought. Both Arik-Boke and Kublai were his brothers. He wanted to gather them both by their necks and shake them. For the thousandth time he wished Mongke were still alive, to tell him what to do. He had given his oath, but what if Arik-Boke had been wrong to take the khanate? There had been talk even back then, voices wondering why he had not waited for Kublai to come home. This was the result. Hulegu could hardly take it in as the potential for disaster spread and spread in his mind.

At best, he would lose one of his brothers, a pain like a knife in his chest so soon after losing Mongke. At worst, the nation would tear itself apart in the conflict, leaving them vulnerable to the enemies all around. Everything Genghis had created would be destroyed in a single generation. There was no right and wrong to it, no claim that stood above the other in clear sunlight. Yet Arik-Boke was khan. No matter what Kublai said, that stood in stone, unchangeable. Hulegu slumped further.

‘This is my khanate,’ he muttered, almost to himself.

Uriang-Khadai bowed his head. ‘It will remain so, my lord. You conquered it and it will not be taken from you. My master knew you would be troubled. Your pain is his, multiplied a thousandfold. He wishes only for a quick settlement.’

‘He could stand aside,’ Hulegu said, barely whispering.

‘He cannot, my lord. He is khan.’

‘What does that matter to me, orlok?’ Hulegu demanded, his head rising. ‘There are no rules in life. Whether it is written down, or spoken by shamans, nothing binds a man beyond himself. Nothing, save the chains he accepts for himself. Laws and traditions mean nothing, if you have the strength.’

‘Kublai has the strength, my lord. Even as I speak to you here, he will be moving towards Karakorum. It will be settled before winter comes, one way or the other.’

Hulegu made his decision, his mouth becoming a firm line.

‘My brothers are at play, orlok. I want no part of it. There are cities to my north that still hold out against me. I will spend a season bringing them to siege. When that is done, I will come east to Karakorum and see who rules.’

Uriang-Khadai felt a tension leave him at the words.

‘That is wise, my lord. I am sorry to have brought you pain.’

Hulegu grunted in irritation. ‘Find another fire, orlok. I am weary of your face. As the sun rises, you will go from here. You have your answer. I will abide.’

Uriang-Khadai rose to his feet, wincing as his knees protested. He was no longer young and he wondered if he could trust the word of a man who acknowledged no power in the world beyond his own ability to destroy and lead. The honest answer was that he could not.

For an instant, Uriang-Khadai considered shouting his order to the waiting men. They were all ready. At a stroke, he could remove a man of power from the struggle.

He sighed briefly. Or he could accept the words he had been given and perhaps regret it later. Kublai had already lost one brother. Uriang-Khadai bowed and walked to another fire. He would not sleep that night, he knew.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

High in the grey-green hills, Kublai could not rest. He stood and looked out over a wide plains valley, deceptively still and peaceful from such a height. Water trickled from a stream close by his right hand, so that he could reach out and cup freezing water to drink when he felt the urge. The day was hot and the sky was baked blue and empty of clouds. It was land he knew, and after so long in the Sung territories, it still touched some deep part of him to be home.

He could hear one of his men cursing behind him as the warrior clambered over slippery rocks. Kublai didn’t turn, content to stare out into the warm vastness, soaking in the sense of space and silence. He was weary after days and nights of hard riding, but feverish anticipation had him in its grip and his hands trembled. Arik-Boke was somewhere out there, beyond his sight. Kublai had made his plans and prepared his men, but it came down to waiting. If Arik-Boke rode out of Karakorum, they would be ready. If he stayed in the city, they would crush him like a flea trapped in a seam of cloth.

After so long together, it was odd not to have his most senior men around him. Bayar was still in the Russian north, Uriang-Khadai was out in the far hills, having returned from his mission to Hulegu. He missed them both, but neither more than Yao Shu. The old monk had grown too frail to ride with the tumans. Yao Shu had set off for his monastery at last. Time and age stole away even the greatest of flames, Kublai thought. He sent a silent prayer that he might see his friend again.

For the first time in years, Kublai was alone with his warriors. Against him, Arik-Boke would have Mongke’s tumans, sworn to his service. Kublai grimaced at the thought. Strength would not bring his brother to heel, not on its own.

It had been a risk to contact Hulegu. His older brother might have heard what Uriang-Khadai had to say and set out immediately to defend Arik-Boke’s khanate. Uriang-Khadai had relayed Hulegu’s words to him, but Kublai knew better than to trust them. If Hulegu moved to support Arik-Boke, it would add another year and another dead brother to the cost of the war. Kublai had no illusions left. In the silence, as his tumans stretched and rested and ate around him, he prayed his older brother would continue to show a little sense and stay well clear.

Kublai raised his head when he heard the jingling sound of bells, carrying far in the mountain stillness. No yam rider this time, but the small herd he had sent out with a couple of his scouts. On foot, he hoped they would have been able to get close to Karakorum unchallenged. He had not expected them back for another month and had made his camp in the hills, far from his brother’s city. He tried to guess what their early return could mean and then gave up. He looked down the steep slope of grassy rocks below his position and saw the small figures of men driving goats and sheep before them. It would be a while yet before he heard whatever they had to say.

Kublai turned to see his son leaning precariously over the rocks to take a mouthful of water.

‘Careful,’ he said. ‘It’s slippery there.’

Zhenjin looked scornful at the idea of falling. He sucked at the stream of water, getting far more down his tunic than in his throat. Kublai smiled at him, but when he resumed his sentinel’s stare, Zhenjin stayed where he was, easing back until he could lean against the rocks in something like comfort.

‘I heard the men talking about what you’re going to do,’ Zhenjin said.

Kublai didn’t look at him. ‘I’m sure you know not to carry tales to me,’ he replied.

The young man shifted his seat, pulling one leg up under him so that he could rest his elbows on the raised knee.

‘They’re not complaining,’ he said. ‘They were just talking, that’s all.’

Kublai summoned patience. It was not as if he had anything to do until his spies reported.

‘What did they say, then?’ he asked.

Zhenjin grinned at him. ‘They said you will be an emperor when this is done.’

‘If I live, that is … true,’ Kublai replied. ‘I will be khan of the nation, but emperor of China.’

‘Does that mean I will be an emperor after you?’ the young man asked.

Kublai looked at him then, his mouth twitching to laugh.

‘Is that what you want? To rule the world?’

‘I think … I think I would like that, yes,’ Zhenjin said, with a thoughtful expression.

‘Then I will do my best to make it happen, my son. You are blood of my blood, bone of my bone. I will name a dynasty and you will carry the name.’

‘Is that why we are going to fight, then? To be emperors?’

Kublai chuckled. ‘There are worse things to fight for.’ He looked over his shoulder at the bondsmen who rested in the mountain crags, the vast majority of his men invisible in the valleys and rifts behind.

‘I think I would be a better khan than Arik-Boke, Zhenjin. That is a reason as well. But a father works for his sons and daughters. He spends his strength and his youth to raise them up, to give them everything he can. When you have children of your own, you will understand.’

Zhenjin considered the idea with great seriousness.

‘I will spare cities when I am emperor. I will be loved and not feared.’

Kublai nodded.

‘Or both, my son, if you are lucky.’

‘I would like to change the world, as you have done,’ Zhenjin said.

Kublai smiled, but there was an edge of sadness to it.

‘I used to discuss such things with my mother, Zhenjin. She was a woman of rare ability.’ His eyes became distant with memory for a moment. ‘You know, I said something like that to her once. She told me that anyone can change the world. But no one can change it for ever. In a hundred years, no one you know will be alive. What will it matter then if we fought or just spent our days sleeping in the sun?’

Zhenjin blinked at him, unable to understand his father’s strange mood.

‘If it doesn’t matter, then why are we going to fight your brother?’ he asked.

‘Perhaps I haven’t said it well. I mean it doesn’t matter if we change the world. The world moves on and new lives come and go. Genghis himself said he would be forgotten and, believe me, he left a long shadow. It does matter how we live, Zhenjin! It matters that we use what we are given, for just our brief time in the sun.’ He smiled to see his son struggling with the idea. ‘It’s all you can say, when the end comes: “I did not waste my time.” I think that matters. I think it may be all that matters.’

‘I understand,’ Zhenjin said.

Kublai reached out and rubbed his head roughly.

‘No you don’t. But you will perhaps, in a few years.’ He looked out over the crags to where his herdsmen were making their slow progress. ‘Enjoy the peaceful moments, Zhenjin. When the fighting starts, this will be a pleasant memory.’

‘Can you beat them?’ Zhenjin asked, looking into his father’s eyes.

Kublai realised his son was afraid and he made himself relax.

‘I think so, yes. Nothing is certain.’

‘They have more tumans than us,’ Zhenjin went on, prodding him for a reaction.

Kublai shrugged. ‘We are always outnumbered. I don’t think I’d know what to do if I came across an army smaller than mine.’ He saw the forced lightness wasn’t reassuring his son and his tone became serious. ‘I am not the first man to try to think how to counter the advantages of a Mongol tuman in battle. However, I am the first one of us to try. I know our tactics better than any man alive. I think I can find a few new tricks. My brother’s warriors have spent the last few years growing soft around the capital city. My tumans are used to fighting every day, every step. And they are used to winning. We’ll eat them alive.’

His son grinned at his bravado and Kublai chuckled with him.

‘Practise your patterns now, Zhenjin. We won’t be going anywhere for a while.’

His son made a show of groaning, but under his father’s eye, he found a flat space in the rocks and began the flowing series of movements and stances he had learned from Kublai. Yao Shu had taught the sequences years before, each with its own name and history.

Kublai watched with a critical eye, remembering how Yao Shu had never been satisfied. There was no such thing as perfection in a pattern, but it was always the aim to make every kick and block and turn as close to it as possible.

‘Turn your head before you move,’ Kublai said. Zhenjin hesitated.

‘What?’ Zhenjin replied without moving his head.

‘You have to imagine opponents coming at you from more than one direction. It is not a dance, remember. The aim is to break a bone with every blow or block. Imagine them all around you and respond.’

Kublai grunted approval as his son turned his head sharply, then swept an imaginary kick away from him in a great circular block. As Kublai looked on, his son plunged a knife-hand into an invisible throat, his fingers outstretched and rigid.

‘Hold there and consider your rear leg,’ Kublai called to him. He watched as Zhenjin adjusted his stance, dropping lower before moving on. Kublai looked fondly at his son. It would be a fine thing to give him an empire.

Arik-Boke could smell his own sweat as he rode, the bitter scent of a healthy animal. He had not allowed himself to grow weak in his time as khan. His squat body had never been graceful, but it was strong. He prided himself on being able to exhaust younger men in any contest. From a young age, he had learned a great truth, that endurance was as much will as anything physical. He grunted to himself as he rode, his breath snuffling from his ruined nose. He had the will, the ability to ignore pain and discomfort, to push himself beyond the limits of weaker men. The righteous anger he had felt on hearing of Kublai’s betrayal had not left him for a waking moment since that day. The aches and complaints of the flesh were nothing to him while his brother rode the plains in challenge.

His tumans took their mood from his, riding with grim determination as they quartered the land in search of any sign of the traitor. Arik-Boke hardly knew the men with him, but that was not important as long as they obeyed their khan. His senior officers were spread out over an immense line, each commanding their own force of forty thousand. Any two would surely equal whatever army Kublai could bring to the field, Arik-Boke was certain. When all five came together like fingers curling into a fist, he would crush his brother’s arrogance.

It gave Arik-Boke some pleasure to plan his vengeance as he rode. There had been too many men in the nation who thought they could rule. Even the sons of Genghis had warred amongst themselves. Guyuk Khan had been killed on a hunt, though Arik-Boke suspected Mongke had arranged it. Such things were already history, but he could make Kublai’s death a hot blade sealing a wound. He could make it a tale to spread fear wherever his enemies met and plotted. It would be right to make an example of Kublai. They would say the khan had torn his own brother down and they would feel fear. Arik-Boke nodded to himself, savouring the sensations. Kublai had a wife and children. They would follow his brother into death when the rebellion had been destroyed.

He sat straighter in the saddle when he saw his scouts racing in from the west. The tumans who rode with the khan were the central block of five, while his orlok Alandar commanded the right wing as they moved south. Arik-Boke felt heat rise in him as he began to breathe faster. Alandar knew the orders. He would not have sent the scouts in unless he had sighted the enemy at last.

The galloping men raced across the front rank of the tumans, cutting in at an angle to where Arik-Boke’s banners flew. Thousands watched them as they reached the khan and swung their mounts between the lines. His bondsmen used their horses to block the scouts from coming too close, a sign of the new fear that had come to the nation since the death of Mongke.

Arik-Boke didn’t need to wait for them to be searched and passed on through to him. The closest scout was just a couple of horses away and he shouted a question.

The scout nodded. ‘They have been sighted, my lord khan. Forty miles, or close to it.’

It was all he needed and he waved the scout off, sending him running back to his master. His own scouts had been waiting for the word. As soon as they heard, they kicked their mounts into a lunging canter. In relays, the news would bring all the tumans in, a hammer of the most dangerous fighting forces ever assembled. Arik-Boke grinned to himself as he angled his horse to the west and dug in his heels. The blocks would turn in place behind him, becoming a spear to thrust into his brother’s hopes.

He glanced up at the sun, calculating the time it would take him to make contact. The rush of enthusiasm damped down as suddenly as it had arisen. The scout had ridden forty miles already, which meant Kublai’s forces had been free to act for half a day. By the time Arik-Boke’s tumans reached him, it would be dusk or night.

Arik-Boke began to sweat again, wondering what orders he should give to attack a force he could not yet see, a force that would certainly have moved by the time he arrived in the area. He clamped down on his doubts. The plan was a good one and if he didn’t bring his brother to battle until the following day, it would not matter in the end.

Kublai stared at a single point in the distant hills, waiting for confirmation. There. Once more he saw the flash of yellow, appearing and disappearing in an instant. He let out a slow breath. It was happening, at last. The bones had been thrown and he would have to see how they fell.

‘Answer with a red flag,’ he called to his scout. Miles away, the man who had signalled would be watching for a response. Kublai kept looking out at the blurred point as his man spread a red cloth as tall as himself and waved it before letting it fall.

‘Wait … wait … now, yellow,’ Kublai ordered. He felt some of his tension ease now that his plans were actually going into effect. Signal flags were nothing new over long distances, relayed from valley to valley by men on the peaks. Even so, Kublai had refined the practice, using a system of five colours that could be combined to send a surprising amount of information. The distant watcher would have seen the flags and passed on the message, covering miles far faster than a horse could ride.

‘Good,’ Kublai said. The scout looked up, but Kublai was talking to himself. ‘Now we’ll see whether my brother’s men have the stomach to fight for a weak khan.’

CHAPTER FORTY

Alandar muttered to himself in irritation as his scouts came racing in, clearly expecting him to gallop off immediately in response to the news they brought. Instead, he had to balance his orders with the best tactical decisions on the ground. It was not a pleasant position and he was not enjoying the morning. Karakorum was over two hundred miles behind him and he had lost the taste for sleeping under the stars and waking stiff and frozen. His block of tumans had ridden at good speed, covering the land and staying in touch with Arik-Boke, but Alandar could not shake the feeling of unease that plagued him. Everything he knew of Kublai said the man was not a fool, but Arik-Boke was convinced he could be run down like a deer in a circle hunt. Alandar’s own men expected him to roar battle orders at the first sign of contact, and as the scouts reported, he could feel their eyes on him, questioning. He stared straight ahead as he rode.

His four generals were close by and he whistled to bring the most senior man to him. Ferikh was a solid officer, with white hair and twenty years of experience under three khans. He trotted through the ranks at the summons, his expression serious.

‘You have new orders, orlok?’ he asked as he came up.

‘Not yet. It feels like a trap, Ferikh.’

The general turned automatically to stare at where Kublai’s tumans had been sighted, racing along a pass between two valleys. The contact had been brief, but just long enough to send Alandar’s scouts pounding back with news. In relays, the news would be stretching out to the blocks in the long sweeping line.

‘You do not have to respond, orlok,’ Ferikh said. Alandar winced slightly to see the disappointment on the older man’s face. ‘The khan can decide when he has brought up the middle tumans.’

‘Which will not happen until dark,’ Alandar said.

Ferikh shrugged. ‘Another day will not make a difference.’

‘You think it’s a trap?’ Alandar asked.

‘Perhaps. A brief sighting of a small group, no more than six or seven thousand. They might want us to go charging in after them and then stage an ambush. It’s what I would do.’

Alandar rose as tall as he could manage in his saddle, looking at the hills all around them.

‘If it’s an ambush, they will have a large force somewhere near, ready to spring out as soon as we move.’

He was in a difficult position and Ferikh appreciated his dilemma. The men expected their officers to show courage and quick thinking. They had heard the news and they waited for the order to ride hard and fast, but Alandar had not spoken. If he fell for some ploy, he would risk the tumans with him and Arik-Boke’s anger. Yet if he came across the tail of Kublai’s army and failed to take the chance, he would look like a fool or a coward. He was caught between impossible choices and so did nothing, letting time make his decision for him.

In the distance, on his left side, his attention snagged on a blur in the air. Alandar turned round to stare and his expression changed slowly as he realised what he was looking at.

‘Tell me I’m right that I can see dust beyond those hills, Ferikh.’

The general squinted. His long sight was not as sharp as it had once been, but he made a tube with his hands and focused down it, an old scout’s trick.

‘Has to be a large force to send up a cloud like that,’ he said. ‘Judging by where we saw the first ones, they’d be in about the right position to hit our flank.’

Alandar breathed out in relief. He would have a victory to report to the khan after all.

‘Then I think we’ll see some fighting today. Send five thousand between the hills after the ones we saw first. Let them think they’ve fooled us. The main tumans can cut through … there.’ He pointed to a break in the green hills that would allow him to swing round and attack the army making the dust rise. ‘Go slowly, general. If it’s Kublai’s main force, we’ll stay out of range, ready to disengage. It will be enough to hold them in place until the khan reaches us.’

Alandar looked east, behind him, where the rest of Arik-Boke’s army would be riding in support. ‘We should have four more tumans coming up soon, then the khan’s own tumans. The last will be here sometime after noon tomorrow. I’ll give new orders as they arrive.’

Ferikh sensed the relief in the orlok at being able to make a decision. He bowed his head briefly, already enjoying the thought of confounding those who had tried to fool the khan’s own army.

Five minghaans pushed forward towards the first valley and then Alandar gave the order for his main tumans to swing round and dash for the break in the hills. They surged into a gallop and the expressions of the warriors were cheerful with anticipation. They had all seen the faint trace of dust by then and they were already imagining the false khan’s confusion as they appeared from a different direction, falling like wolves onto his flank.

Alandar was in the first line that entered the cleft, his tumans thundering behind him. He thought he had seen through whatever ruse Kublai was intending, but he was still aware that Kublai’s entire force outnumbered his. Even so, he could not shake the sense of satisfaction that he could spring a trap on those who sought to fool him. He had not risen to command the khan’s armies by making mistakes. For a moment, he thought of Mongke’s orlok, Seriankh. He had been removed from authority for losing his master and fought somewhere in the ranks. Alandar still thought the man was lucky to have kept his life.

Alandar passed into the shadowed ground, with steepening slopes rising on either side. Somewhere ahead and to the right would be a force of warriors riding to surprise his tumans. He leaned forward in the saddle, his hand dropping to the long sword that slapped against his mount’s flank. The land began to open out and in the sunlight he could see a green valley before him. In the distance, he thought he could hear sounds of battle as his minghaans met and clashed with the false group he had been meant to attack. Bows bent on either side of him as his warriors prepared a crushing volley of shafts. For a time they would ride without reins, using only their knees to guide the ponies at full gallop. Alandar could feel the moment when all four hooves left the ground as a rhythm beneath him. He would not use a bow that day, though he had one strapped to his saddle. He felt the excitement of the men around him, the quick breaths of air that seemed suddenly cold as the hills fell away and his front rank plunged out into the sun. His tumans feared nothing on earth and he led them. It felt glorious as he craned forward for the first glimpse of the enemy.

Surprise and disappointment flashed through Alandar’s tumans as they rounded the foot of the hill and were able to look down the valley stretching to the east. They shouted and pointed to each other as they rode further in, so that thousands of throats made a growling wail that fell away.

There were horses in the valley, thousands of them. It did not take a soldier of Alandar’s experience to see they were not mounted by Mongol warriors. He gaped at the sight of Arab boys whooping and kicking at a milling mass of animals. Each one seemed to have some wide branch tied to its tail, so that it dragged on the dusty ground.

Alandar felt his stomach tighten in fear. If these were the distraction, where were Kublai’s tumans? Almost without thought, he slowed his pace and the tumans matched him, coming down to an easy canter and then a trot. They were nervous at the sight of the trap, knowing they had been drawn in, but not yet seeing the danger.

Alandar jerked round in the saddle as he heard yells and warning horns sound behind. His tumans were still in the cleft between hills, stretched out. Something was happening half a mile behind him and he cursed aloud, yanking the reins savagely to halt. He could hear the sound of bows thrumming at the entrance to the valley, echoing back like the buzzing of bees.

For a moment, he could not think. The valley was too narrow to turn his tumans. The enemy was hitting them and he could not bring his force to bear. He raised his arm and ordered his men forward. If he could bring them all out of the valley, they would be able to manoeuvre once again. The lines surged forward with him, ignoring the boys on their horses as they whooped and jeered. His lines stretched out and Alandar saw movement on his left. He almost cried out in frustration as he realised the position. With a dozen of his personal guard, he pulled his horse out of rank. Behind the knot of men, his tumans kept going, clearing the valley behind as his heart sank.

Mongol warriors were riding at full speed out of the hills there, straight for his flank. Alandar could only roar a warning and even then his men were exposed, under attack from the rear and the side at the same time. He showed his teeth in a grimace, then drew his sword. The enemy had worked him into the spot they wanted, but the games were over and it was time to fight. His generals bellowed orders and the first volleys soared out to meet the flanking force, blurring through the air. It was his one advantage over a flying column, that he could bring more bows to bear on their front rank.

They were already widening their line to fifty as the first arrows reached them. Alandar watched in shock as the enemy ranks raised cumbersome shields and seemed to snatch the arrows from the air. He had never seen Mongol warriors carry such heavy things into battle. They used the bow and the bow required two hands at all times. His generals were already turning men to face them, the orders running quickly down to the minghaan commanders and the leaders of each hundred in the tumans. His men were shifting from a running flank to a wide front, but it was one of the hardest possible manoeuvres and involved halting thousands in good order. Even so, it was beginning to happen.

Alandar felt hope swell in his chest, but then the enemy threw down their shields and raised bows. Shafts hummed back across the shrinking space between the racing armies. Alandar saw his ranks could not form up in time and he winced as the enemy archers poured volleys into the milling lines. He saw a dark stripe across his vision as something clipped his shoulder and went spinning away, rocking him back in the saddle. Another shaft thumped into his horse, sinking to the feathers in its throat so that the animal began to cough and spray blood from its nostrils.

Alandar panicked, dismounting with a stumble as the horse went down. His men had to clear the valley and they could do it only by riding hard and fast away from those who attacked. At the same time, he had to make a strong stationary line to answer the flanking attack. The orders clashed in his mind and he could not see a way through. The sun was warm on his face and arrows whirred past him without making him flinch. His guards were looking to him, but as he mounted a fresh horse from instinct, he sat with a blank expression, frozen. For a time, his tumans fought on their own.

His generals registered the lack of orders for a brief time, then filled the gap, working together. Those below them in the chain of command barely had time to grow worried before new orders came down the line and they were moving again. Jaguns of a hundred formed up in solid blocks, seeking only to hold back the flank attack until their main force was able to swing out of the valley.

It might have been enough to save the battle, but the tumans they faced were the veterans of the Sung territory. When the fighting was fluid, they moved in overlapping lines, so that they always brought the maximum force against the weakest points. When the fighting came down to swords and lances, they gave no ground, so that Alandar’s tumans were smashed back.

Those in the valley ran clear at last and Alandar shook his head in disbelief as he saw the force that pressed them from behind. He had assumed it was no larger than the few thousand he had seen in the taunting glimpse that morning. Instead, the hills vomited warriors under Kublai’s banners, such a flood of them that he realised he should have worked to keep them between the hills where they could do less damage. He was outnumbered by at least two to one and the Arab boys riding to make a dust trail watched open-mouthed as his tumans were crushed, hemmed in and hammered.

Alandar could see only chaos, too many groups racing back and forth. From his first move, he knew he had been dancing to Kublai’s plans and the knowledge burned him. Arrows darted in all directions and men were falling everywhere. He could hardly tell them apart in the press, though the enemy tumans seemed to know their own. His guards had to fend off a yelling warrior barrelling past, using their swords to turn the man’s lance away from Alandar. As the man went on, Alandar found himself thinking clearly, though he felt his guts twist in anguish. There was no help for it; he would have to call the retreat.

His own horn had been lost with his fallen horse and he had to yell to one of his officers. The man looked ill as he understood, but he blew a sequence of falling notes, again and again. The response seemed to be lost in the roiling mass of fighting men, except to call attention to that part of the battlefield. More arrows lifted into the air, seeming to move slowly, then dropping with a whirr all around them. One struck the horn-blowing officer high in the chest, puncturing the scaled armour. Alandar shouted in anger as the man slumped, wheeling his horse over and yanking the horn away.

He was panting heavily, but he raised the horn and repeated the signal. Slowly, he was answered by men too hard-pressed to disengage easily. They pulled back over the bodies of friends, raising swords and lances horizontal to hold the enemy off.

The gaps they made were suddenly filled with whining shafts. Hundreds more warriors were sent tumbling, choking on wooden lengths through their chests or throats. A few ranks made it to Alandar and formed around him, panting and glassy-eyed. They held position long enough for their numbers to swell to a thousand, then pulled back, joined by free riders as they went until some three thousand were moving across the field of the dead.

Of his generals, Alandar could see only Ferikh with him, though he had around twenty minghaan officers. They had all been in the fighting and they were battered and showing wounds and cuts. He saw the enemy tumans spot their moving group, men pointing across the valley floor. He felt the blood drain from his face as thousands of fierce eyes turned to see the orlok retreat.

His small force were still picking up stragglers as they struggled through to him, but by then the enemy were forming ranks, ready for another charge. Alandar looked across the battlefield. The losses appalled him to the point of illness: thousands of dead, broken bows, kicking horses and screaming men with wounds that poured blood onto the ground. One of the enemy rode to the front rank and said something to those near him. They roared a challenge, the noise making Alandar jerk in the saddle.

Barely five thousand battered men rode with him. He had thought to combine them with the rest of his tumans, but the fighting seemed to have stopped across the valley. With eight hundred paces between the armies, his men drew to a halt, exhausted and fearful as they looked to him for orders. Against him, the valley had filled with tumans, standing their ground in eerie silence as they all turned to watch. Alandar swallowed nervously and without a command, his remnant drew to a halt. He could hear the laboured breath of them, men muttering in disbelief. They had been outfought and outmanoeuvred. The sun was still up and he could hardly take in how fast it had happened.

‘Behind us, the khan approaches with enough men to destroy these,’ he said, raising his voice to carry to as many as he could reach. ‘We have lost only the first skirmish. Take heart that you fought with courage.’

As he spoke the last word, the enemy leader roared an order and the enemy surged forward.

‘Go!’ Alandar shouted. ‘If I fall, seek out the khan!’ He turned his horse and dug in his heels, kicking the animal into its best speed. The Arab boys scattered before his men, jeering and shouting as they ran.

As soon as Alandar had ridden clear of the valley, Kublai called a halt. Uriang-Khadai came riding up to him in short order and they nodded to each other.

‘Arik-Boke won’t keep that formation now he’s found us,’ Kublai said. He did not congratulate the older man, knowing Uriang-Khadai would take it as an insult. Beyond a certain level of skill and authority, the orlok needed no praise to tell him what he already knew.

‘I have often wanted to show Alandar the errors in his thinking,’ Uriang-Khadai said. ‘He does not react well under pressure, I have always said. This was a good first lesson. Will you turn for Karakorum now?’

Kublai hesitated. His army was still relatively fresh, the victory keeping their spirits high as they dismounted and checked their mounts and weapons. He had told his orlok he would try for a quick attack on the head of Arik-Boke’s sweep line just as it became a column and turned towards them. After that, the plan had been to ride hard for the capital and seek out the families they had left behind.

Uriang-Khadai saw his indecision and brought his pony alongside, so that they would not be easily overheard.

‘You want to go on,’ he said, a statement more than a question.

Kublai nodded warily. His own wife and daughter were safe in Xanadu, thousands of miles to the east. It was not a small thing to ask his men to keep fighting with the fate of their families hanging over them.

‘There is just a short time before my brother brings his tumans back into a single army. We could roll them up before us, orlok. If there were no women and children around Karakorum, would that not be your advice? To hit them again and quickly? If I head north now, I will be throwing away the opportunity to win. It may be the only chance we get.’

Uriang-Khadai listened with the cold face, giving nothing away as Kublai spoke.

‘You are the khan,’ he said quietly. ‘If you order it, we will go on.’

‘I need more than that at this moment, Uriang-Khadai. We’ve never fought an enemy with the lives of women and children in his grasp. Will the men follow me?’

The older man did not answer for what seemed like an age. At last, he dipped his head.

‘Of course they will. They know as well as you that plans change. It may be the best choice to go on and fight again here, while we have the advantage.’

‘But you want to head north, even so.’

The orlok was visibly uncomfortable. He had sworn an oath to obey, but the thought of his wife and children in the hands of Arik-Boke’s guards was a constant drain on him.

‘I will … follow orders, my lord khan,’ he said formally.

Kublai looked away first. He had known many moments where hindsight showed him a choice, a chance to turn his life one way or the other. It was rare to feel such a moment as it happened. He closed his eyes, letting the breeze pass over him. He felt death in the north, but the smell of blood was strong in the air and he did not know whether it was a true omen or not. When he turned east to face his brother’s distant armies, he felt the same cold shiver. Death lay in all directions, he was suddenly certain of it. He shook his head, as if to clear cobwebs from his thoughts. Genghis would not have wasted a moment. His men knew death, lived with it every day. They slaughtered animals with their hands and knew when a child began to cough that it could mean finding them cold and still. He would not fear such a constant companion. He could not let it influence him. He was khan at that moment and he made his choice.

‘My orders are to go on, orlok. Grab what arrows we can and chase Alandar into the tumans coming up. We hit the next battle group with everything we have.’

Uriang-Khadai turned his horse without another word, shouting orders to the waiting tumans. They looked confused, but they mounted quickly and formed up, ignoring the wounded and dying all around them. The sun was setting, but there were hours of grey summer light to come. Time enough to fight again before dark.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Kublai gave thanks for his brother’s poor decisions as he sighted four tumans riding hard against him. The great general Tsubodai had once employed the same system, five fingers stretching across the land in search of enemies. It was a powerful formation against slow-moving foot soldiers. Against the tumans he commanded, it had a weakness. His brother had formed a separated column a hundred miles long to search the land. Kublai and Uriang-Khadai had hit the end of the sweep and as the column turned to face him, he could work his way down it, bringing almost twelve tumans against each battle group as they reached him. Arik-Boke could still halt and let his tumans join up, but until he did, his warriors were vulnerable to simple numbers and overwhelming strength.

Overall, Kublai and Uriang-Khadai were seriously outnumbered, even after slaughtering Alandar’s men. That disadvantage would dwindle as they cut through the snake piece by piece. In his head, Kublai went over his plans for the thousandth time, looking for anything to improve the odds yet again. He did not have to check Uriang-Khadai was in position. The orlok was more experienced than anyone Arik-Boke could field and his tumans showed it in the way they flowed over the land, moving well together.

The second block of his brother’s tumans was too far away for Kublai to hear their horns, but over the vast plain of green grass, he could see them begin to shift and move in battle formations, reacting to his presence. He frowned as the wind whipped by him, checking the position of the sun. The soft grey twilight lasted for hours at that time of year, but it might not be enough. He hated the idea of having to pull out before the battle was done, but he could not be caught in one place. Every manoeuvre was intended to reduce his brother’s ability to move, while enhancing his own. He could not be caught in the dark, with armies closing on his position.

Against stolid Sung soldiers, he would have kept his final orders to the last moment, too late for the enemy to react to them. As it was, the Mongol tumans he faced could shift and reply just as quickly. Even so, he had the numbers. With Uriang-Khadai keeping order, he sent his men forward in a column, like two stags rushing at each other. At a mile, he felt the first urge to give the final order, his heart beginning to hammer at him. Arik-Boke’s tumans were moving fluidly, darting back and forth as they came on. He did not know who led them, or whether Alandar had reached the apparent safety of their ranks. Kublai hoped he had, so that he could send the man running twice in one day.

At half a mile, they were sixty heartbeats apart. Kublai gave his order at the same moment he saw the enemy tumans swing out to envelop his column head. He grinned into the wind as Uriang-Khadai and his generals matched the formation. Both hammer-heads widened, but Kublai had more tumans and he could imagine how they must appear from the enemy’s point of view, spreading like wings at his back, further and further as his forces were revealed.

It seemed an instant before the arrows flew on both sides. The wide lines could bring many bows to bear and the shafts soared out by the tens of thousands, one every six heartbeats from men who had trained to it all their lives. For the first time, Kublai felt what it was like to meet such a barrage in anger and he had to struggle not to flinch from the whirring air. The volleys spat like a war drum beating, crossing each other in the air. He could hear the thumps of them hitting flesh and metal, the grunts and cries of men on both sides and ahead of him. His own place in the fourth rank was not spared as shafts arced overhead and fell among them. Yet his wider lines could answer with thousands more shafts and the air was blacker on his side as they fired inwards, hardly troubling to aim against so many.

The first volleys broke holes in the galloping front ranks; the second and third tore men and horses away, so that those behind went piling into them. On both sides, the storm of arrows punched through armour. The heavy shields Kublai had picked up in Samarkand were long behind, left to rust on the valley where they had beaten Orlok Alandar. It had been a tactic worth trying, but the true strength of his tumans lay with the archers, the smashing power of bows of horn and birch, drawn back with a bone thumb ring and loosed at the moment when all hooves left the ground. The fourth volley was brutal, the air so thick with arrows that it felt hard to breathe. Thousands were hit on both sides and horses crunched to the ground, turning over at full speed so that their riders crashed down hard enough to kill.

Kublai’s tumans kept their formation better than those they faced. They had spent years in battle against the Sung, against forests of crossbows and enemy pikes. The lines bunched in places where the arrow storm had been thickest, but the rest forced their way through with hardly a drop in speed. In the last moments before impact, they followed the routines drummed into them: bows were jammed onto saddle hooks and thousands of swords were drawn as they reined in slightly, allowing the ranks behind to surge ahead.

Through Kublai’s front ranks came his lancers, each one lowering great lengths of birch as they went. It took enormous strength of arm and shoulder to hold the lances steady at full stretch. They brought them down in the final heartbeat, aiming the point ahead and leaning in, bracing for the impact. With half a ton of horse, rider and armour behind it, the lances slammed through the fish-scale chest-plates worn by the tumans. Kublai’s riders wore no straps to keep hold of the long lances. As they bit, his men let them go, rather than break a collarbone or an arm trying to hold on. The air filled with spinning splinters as ten thousand lances struck and many shattered or broke at the hilt. The enemy rank went down, coughing blood or knocked still and white as they bled inside.

The crash of thousands of warriors meeting each other at full speed became a low thunder of hooves and roaring voices. The two fronts tangled together as they struggled with swords, hacking at each other with insane violence. Kublai’s wide line spread rapidly around to the flanks as Uriang-Khadai continued to give calm orders. His tumans there had kept their bows and they sent another dozen volleys from each side, battering the men loyal to Arik-Boke.

They were answered with arrows every bit as powerful as their own, as warriors on the flanks loosed shaft after shaft back at them. The two sides were close in by then, drawing and loosing with grim stoicism, ignoring the deaths around them as they fought on. At the front, Kublai’s tumans were pressing forward, killing and moving, crushing the head of the snake. The flanks began to crumple back, the aim of Arik-Boke’s archers spoiled as those at the head were forced to give ground. Uriang-Khadai rode up and down his ranks barely two hundred yards from the main lines. As the hammer-head compressed, his men kept up their fire. The rain of arrows in return began to dwindle, but they loosed until their quivers were all empty, having sent more than a million shafts into the crush.

Mongol tumans did not retreat, did not surrender, but Kublai’s forces were overwhelming them. His veteran warriors pressed forward at every slight give, forcing them to move back a step and then another, then a dozen more as two ranks collapsed. They could not move to the sides, where Uriang-Khadai watched with cold eyes. The tumans he commanded on the right drew swords with a sibilant rasp that sent a shudder through the flanks. They had the space to kick their mounts into a gallop. Uriang-Khadai yelled an order and his tumans snapped shut on the flanks, swords coming down in short, chopping blows.

The head of the column collapsed and those in the flanks felt the shift, panic swelling all around them. They tried to turn their horses, yanking savagely on reins as they were buffeted by unhorsed men and loose mounts on all sides. The edges of the flanks were hammered back as Uriang-Khadai’s tumans tore into them and those in the very centre turned their backs on the battle and whipped their mounts desperately. Even then, with the decision made to retreat, they could not get clear. There was no room to move and the press of those behind kept them in place, yelling in fear or pain. The killing went on, with the flanks so compressed men could hardly move at all. Kublai’s tumans cared nothing for those who tried to surrender. There was no possibility of mercy. It was too early yet to stop the killing and the carnage was terrible. Men raising their hands were cut down where they stood. Screaming horses had new wounds gashed in their flesh by racing warriors.

Kublai had not entered the fighting beyond the first charge. With a group of his bondsmen, he waited to one side, watching closely and giving orders to shore up the heaving lines. It was like watching a wave surge up around a rock, but the rock crumbled and fell into sand as he looked on. He caught a glimpse of his brother’s orlok, fighting and roaring orders in the centre, already struggling to get away. Alandar would remember this day, Kublai thought with satisfaction, if he lived through it.

Kublai looked up as Uriang-Khadai sent a horn note across the battlefield. In the fading grey light, he could see fresh tumans coming. It would be the centre formation of Arik-Boke’s sweep line and Kublai guessed his brother would be in the squares riding hard at him. The sun had set while the fighting went on. If it had been noon, he knew the moment was right to go on. His men had broken the tumans in the second battle group and lone riders were already streaming away, heading for the safety of their khan as he entered the field.

Uriang-Khadai sounded the horn again and Kublai muttered to himself. He was not blind, or deaf. Plans and stratagems hurtled through his mind and he sat still, transfixed by the opportunity. His men were weary, he reminded himself. Their arrows were gone and their lances were broken. It would be madness to send them in again, in the dark. Yet he could end it all in a day and the thought ate at him. He clenched his fists on his reins, making his gauntlets creak. The horn sounded for the third time, snapping him out of his reverie.

‘I hear you!’ he shouted angrily. Kublai gestured to his waiting bondsmen. ‘Send the signal to disengage. We’ve done enough today.’

He continued to stare out into the distance as the falling note droned out across his tumans. In the dim light, they had been expecting it and they pulled back quickly, forming ranks and resting on the wooden pommels of their saddles as they rode clear, calling and laughing to one another. The dead lay among the dying and Kublai could hear one man scream with astonishing volume, somewhere in the twitching piles they passed. He had to have broken legs to be left with breath to make such a noise. Kublai didn’t see the warrior who dismounted and stalked over to the wounded man, but the sound was choked off mid-cry. He thought suddenly of Zhenjin, worrying for him. It was always a difficult line to walk for a khan and a father. The men understood he would be worried about his fourteen-year-old son among them, but he could give no sign of his fear, nor leave Zhenjin out of harm’s way. Uriang-Khadai usually placed Zhenjin to the rear of any formation without making a point of it. Kublai looked across the field for his son, but he could not see him. He clenched his jaw, sending a silent prayer to the sky father that he was all right. Uriang-Khadai would know. The man missed nothing.

Thousands of Arik-Boke’s forces had escaped the hammer-blow he had dealt them. They kept going as his men formed up and began to trot north. Kublai looked back over his shoulder, over the dead men and horses, to where his brother still rode in a cloud of dry dust. Already, Arik-Boke’s distant tumans were merging with the gloom as darkness overtook them. Kublai tilted his head in a gesture of mocking respect. Orlok Alandar had won free in the final moments and Kublai only wished he could hear the man explain to his brother how he had lost so many men in just a day.

Arik-Boke raged as he leaned forward in the saddle and yelled ‘Chuh!’ to his mount, kicking it savagely in the loins to keep his speed. Sweat was dribbling into his eyes and he blinked against the sting of salt, peering into the distance. The light was almost gone and the tumans ahead shifted and blurred like writhing shadows. He could hear only the galloping horses around him, so that the battle ahead seemed almost dreamlike, robbed of the clash of swords and the screams of men.

The general of one of his tumans was angling his mount to catch up to the khan, the animal’s head lunging up and down with effort. Arik-Boke ignored him, his focus only on those ahead. He knew he had lost contact with the tumans behind, that his long formation had been attacked at one end. He knew very well that the force with him might not be enough to send his brother running, that he should wait and re-form. He had only four tumans in close formation, but another eight were behind. Together, they would be enough, no matter what Kublai had managed to do. Arik-Boke spat into the wind as his brother’s name flitted through his thoughts. His saliva felt like soup in his mouth and heat breathed out of every pore as he rode on, harder and further than he had galloped for years. It had to be Uriang-Khadai who had organised the attack. Arik-Boke knew he should have allowed for his brother turning over command to a more experienced officer. He cursed long and loud, making his closest men look away rather than witness his rage. He should have done a thousand things differently. Kublai was a weak scholar and Arik-Boke thought he would have made chaos of good tumans. Yet they had struck at exactly the right point, at the right moment. They had beaten Orlok Alandar and he could still hardly believe it. The right wing of his sweep should have been the strongest point, but they had rolled it up. Now darkness was coming and they would escape his vengeance.

The plain was long and flat, but the battle was still a tiny, surging throng of dust as darkness came. In the last moments before they were lost to sight, Arik-Boke was sure he saw tumans streaming away to the north. He clenched his jaw, the heat of his body feeling like fuel for the anger within. Karakorum had few defenders, with his entire army in the field. He felt sick at the thought that his brother could take the capital in a quick strike. He had ignored Alandar’s feeble worries, convinced back then that his brother would never get in range of the capital. It should have meant nothing, but Arik-Boke wanted to roar his frustration. Whoever held Karakorum had a claim to rule. It mattered in the eyes of the princes and the small khanates.

His general had reached him, riding alongside and shouting questions into the wind. At first, Arik-Boke ignored the man, but then the darkness was on them and he was forced to rein in and slow to a canter, then a trot. Their horses snorted and breathed hard and the searing energy drained out of Arik-Boke, leaving a coldness deeper than he had ever felt before. Not till that moment had he seriously considered Kublai might beat him in battle. His mind filled with images of facing the scholar within the length of a sword. It was satisfying but empty, and he shook his head to clear it of foolishness. He rode on, into the night.

All around him, warriors coming the other way were streaming past, keeping their faces down in shame before those they knew. They were joining his tumans at the back in tens and hundreds, coming out of the blackness ahead. Arik-Boke saw one of them wheel his horse, turning to match the trotting line as he tried to come across it. The man was within a horse-length of him and calling out before Arik-Boke knew it was Alandar. The khan’s knuckles were white on the reins as his orlok reached him, bringing a stench of fresh sweat and blood that hung on him like a cloak.

‘My lord khan,’ Alandar said.

He did not need to shout over the noise of the horses any longer. They were barely trotting by then, the black grass flowing under their hooves unseen. Arik-Boke almost called for torches, but there were still hundreds coming away from the battle and he did not know if they were all his own men. It would not do to light himself up in the line.

‘Orlok, I revoke your rank. You will not lead again in my armies.’ Arik-Boke tried to keep his voice calm, but the rage threatened to spill out of him. He wanted to see the man’s face, but the darkness was complete.

‘Your will, my lord,’ Alandar said, his voice unutterably weary.

‘Will you report then? Must I drag it out of you word by word?’ Arik-Boke’s voice grew louder as he spoke, until he was almost shouting. He sensed Alandar flinch from him.

‘I’m sorry, my lord. They set a trap to draw off my warriors, with a second position to make me think I had spotted the ruse.’ Alandar had worked it out by then, though he was still dazed after such a day and so tired he could barely speak at all. He could not be seen to praise the enemy, but there was a grudging respect in his voice as he went on. ‘They ambushed my forces once we had followed them into a valley. I saw some twelve tumans in all, under Kublai and Uriang-Khadai.’

‘Were my orders not to wait until the main army came up to you, if you saw the enemy?’ Arik-Boke asked. ‘Did I not consider exactly what has happened today?’

‘I’m sorry, my lord. I thought I saw through their planning and could strike a blow for you. I saw the chance to break them and I took it. I was wrong, my lord khan.’

‘You were wrong,’ Arik-Boke echoed. It was too much to have the man yammering his apologies at him. He turned to the general on his other side.

‘Oirakh, take this man’s weapons and bind him. I will deal with him when there is daylight to see.’ He ignored the sounds of struggle as warriors closed on Alandar. Had he truly expected to live? The man was a fool.

As the crescent moon showed itself, casting a thin light, his tumans came to the edges of the battlefield Kublai had fled at the last. Some of the fallen men and horses were still alive, calling piteously for help to those who passed them. Arik-Boke picked his way carefully, slowing to a walk. The dead lay thick on the ground as he went on and he could hear wounded men sobbing with pain. The rage in him became a hard ball in his chest and stomach so that he could hardly straighten his back. Kublai’s orlok had done this thing.

At the centre of the dead, Arik-Boke dismounted and called for lamps. The smell was appalling, and despite the darkness, flies were everywhere already, buzzing into the faces of his men so that they had to wave them away every few moments. Arik-Boke breathed deeply, closing his eyes as the lamps were lit around him and placed onto poles. They cast a golden glow, revealing staring eyes and cold flesh on all sides. Arik-Boke shuddered slightly as he turned on the spot, taking it in. His lips thinned in disgust and anger blinded him. His brother was responsible for all of it.

‘Bring Alandar to me,’ he said. He had not bothered to look in any particular direction, but the order was carried out quickly even so. Alandar was dragged in and thrown face down at Arik-Boke’s feet.

‘Were they heading north at the end?’ Arik-Boke asked.

The man who had been his orlok struggled to his knees and nodded, keeping his head bowed as low as possible.

‘I think so, my lord.’

‘It will be Karakorum, then,’ Arik-Boke muttered. ‘I can catch him yet.’ He knew why Kublai wanted that city. Tens of thousands of women and children had formed their own slums on the plains around Karakorum, waiting for their men to return. Arik-Boke drew a long knife from a sheath strapped to his thigh. The torn flesh of his men lay all around him and there had to be reckoning, a price to pay for all of it. He knew then what he had to do.

Alandar had heard the knife come free and looked up in fear.

‘My lord khan, I …’ His voice choked off as Arik-Boke took him by the hair and cut his throat with powerful strokes, sawing into the flesh.

‘That is enough from you,’ Arik-Boke said into his ear. ‘Be silent now.’

Alandar jerked and struggled, the sharp smell of urine filling the air and steaming. Arik-Boke shoved him aside.

‘Scouts! To me!’ he roared into the night.

Two of the closest came in fast, leaping from their horses. They glanced at Alandar’s cooling body, then quickly away.

‘You have ridden hard today,’ Arik-Boke said. ‘But you will not rest tonight.’

The two scouts were both young men, not yet eighteen years of age. They nodded without speaking, awed at being in the presence of the khan.

‘Take fresh horses and go to Karakorum. Use the yam stations for remounts.’ He yanked a ring from his finger and tossed it to one of the young men. ‘You will have to pass my brother’s armies, so ride hard and fast. I want you to reach the city before him. Find the captain of my palace guard and tell him I said it was time. Do you understand? Those words, exactly. Repeat your orders.’

The two scouts chanted his words back at him and he nodded, satisfied. There was a price to pay for all things. By the time Kublai reached the city, he would learn the cost of his rebellion. Arik-Boke smiled at the thought. Perhaps Kublai’s men would mutiny when they realised what he had cost them. Arik-Boke might return to his city to find his brother already dead at their hands.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

The night was cold and still as Kublai rode towards Karakorum. He and his men shared twists of black meat as they went, passing skins of sour milk or clear airag to ease parched throats. There was no time to stop and acknowledge the victories of the day, not with Arik-Boke’s tumans so close behind. Kublai had seen his son for just a brief moment as Zhenjin rode past him on some errand for his minghaan officer. No doubt the man had suggested he ride close to the khan as he went. It was the sort of subtle gesture his men arranged and Kublai knew they were proud to have his son riding with them, with all the trust that implied. Kublai pitied the enemy who tried to take on that particular minghaan. They would slaughter anyone who came close to the khan’s heir.

Though his thoughts were sluggish, Kublai worked through plans as he rode. He had to get clear before dawn, but his men had fought or ridden all day and were drooping with tiredness. Without rest, he would be robbing them of their strength, ruining his army just as he needed them at their sharpest and best. He had already given orders to ride in pairs, with one man napping as the other took the reins, but they needed to dismount and sleep at least for a few hours.

Uriang-Khadai was perhaps the oldest man under his command, but in the weak moonlight, he looked fresh and stern as always. Kublai grinned wearily at him, trying to resist the lolling motion of his head that led to a sudden start as he found himself asleep. It was one advantage of the high-pommelled saddle, that it held a sleeping man better than some designs, but he still felt he could fall if sleep took him. He yawned hugely every few moments.

‘Do we know the losses yet?’ he asked, more to keep himself awake than because he truly wanted to know.

‘I can’t be certain until there’s light,’ Uriang-Khadai replied. ‘I think around two tumans, or a little more.’

‘In one day?’ Kublai demanded, the words bursting out of him.

Uriang-Khadai did not look away. ‘We killed more. They have the same bows, the same skills. The toll was always going to be high.’

Kublai grimaced, raising his gaze to the stars. The numbers were appalling, as great as all his losses against the Sung. Many of them would be alive still, cold and lonely among the dead as they waited for Arik-Boke’s warriors to find them and plunge a knife into their flesh. He shuddered at the thought of such a final vigil. After years with them in the Sung territories, each one was a loss. Arik-Boke had no concept of the sort of loyalty that had grown up with his tumans over the years. He brushed the thought away, knowing he would only become enraged afresh at his foolish brother. The depth of his anger could still surprise him, but it felt like an indulgence to give it rein.

‘Four days to Karakorum,’ he said aloud. ‘And my brother’s men will be behind us all the way.’

Uriang-Khadai did not reply and Kublai realised he had not asked the man a question. It made him smile that the older man could be so tight-lipped after everything they had endured together.

‘I have one more bone to throw, orlok. Once we reach Karakorum, we can turn to defend the city and our people. I will make Arik-Boke the enemy in the eyes of the nation. And when the battle is at its height, Bayar will hit him.’ In the continuing silence, Kublai sighed. ‘What do you think of that?’

‘I think you have ten tumans or less to your brother’s twelve and more,’ Uriang-Khadai said at last. ‘I think we are running low on arrows and lances. I cannot plan around a reserve force that has had to ride two thousand miles or more.’

‘You came back from Hulegu. Bayar will get here,’ Kublai said.

‘And I will be pleased to see him, but we must prepare for the worst. We need weapons.’

Kublai grunted. He should have known better than to expect encouraging words. The Chagatai khanate had provided many of the supplies for his campaign. Lord Alghu had sent the Arab boys to raise the false trail of dust that played such a part in their first battle, and the food and drink they still had came from his cities. Yet Uriang-Khadai was right, arrows and lances were their most important stock and the last of them would go in one charge.

‘If you can make arrows and lances appear in the next few days, I would thank you on bended knee, orlok. Until then, there’s no point discussing it.’

Uriang-Khadai remained silent for a long time, thinking.

‘There are stocks in Karakorum, enough to fill every quiver we have,’ he said at last.

Kublai held back from mocking the idea. The older man knew the chances as well as he did.

‘You think we could get them?’ he asked.

‘No, but Arik-Boke Khan could.’

Kublai winced at the words, but he nodded. ‘The city knows nothing of the battles out here, not yet. I could send men in his name with orders to bring new shafts and lances out on carts. That’s good, I think. That could work.’

‘With your permission, I’ll send out a few scouts with the order, ones I trust to play a part.’

‘You have it,’ Kublai replied. He gave silent thanks for the man at his side. In the darkness, it was somehow easier to talk to him than usual. Neither man could see the other well and Kublai considered sharing the secret he had learned years before, in the archives of Karakorum. His weariness made him slur his words, but on impulse, he decided to speak.

‘I found a record of your father, once,’ he said. The silence seemed to swell around them until he wondered if Uriang-Khadai had even heard him. ‘Are you still awake?’

‘I am. I know who he was. It is not something I am used to …’ Uriang-Khadai’s voice trailed off.

Kublai tried to cudgel his thoughts into order, to find the right words. He had known for years that Uriang-Khadai was Tsubodai’s son, but the knowledge had never found a moment to present itself. Hearing that his orlok already knew was oddly deflating.

‘I liked him, you know. He was an extraordinary man.’

‘I … have heard many tales of him, my lord. He did not know me.’

‘He lived his last years as a simple herdsman, did you hear that?’

‘I did.’ Uriang-Khadai thought for a time and Kublai kept silent. ‘You grew up with Genghis as your grandfather, my lord. I suppose you know about a man’s long shadow.’

‘They seem like giants,’ Kublai muttered. ‘I know the feeling very well.’ It was an insight into Uriang-Khadai that he had not expected. The man had risen through the ranks without anyone’s name to help him. For the first time, Kublai felt he understood something of what drove the man.

‘He would be proud of you, I think,’ Kublai said.

Uriang-Khadai chuckled in the darkness.

‘And Genghis would be proud of you, my lord. Now let us leave shadows to the night. We must find a river for the horses and I will fall out of the saddle if I don’t rest soon.’

Kublai laughed, yawning again at the very idea of sleep.

‘Your will, orlok. We will make our fathers and grandfathers proud, you and I.’

‘Or join them,’ Uriang-Khadai replied.

‘Yes, or join them, one or the other.’ Kublai paused for a moment, rubbing grit from his eyes. ‘Arik-Boke will not stop now, not with us heading for the capital. He will push his men to complete exhaustion behind us.’

‘You wanted him to be desperate, with everything he has focused on the city. If Bayar does not come …’

‘He will come, orlok.’

The three days that followed were some of the strangest Kublai had ever known. He had been right about Arik-Boke pushing the tumans to their limits. On the second day, the armies passed four yam stations and knew they had covered a hundred miles between dawn and dusk. Scouts milled at the edges of each force, sometimes coming to blows, or drifting into range of arrows so that they were plucked from their mounts and sent sprawling to a great cheer from the nearest warriors. At sunset on the third day, the two armies were barely ten miles apart and neither could close or widen that gap. Kublai had lost count of the changes of mount as he and Uriang-Khadai did their best to keep their animals fresh, but there was never enough time to graze and they had to leave hundreds of horses when their wind broke or they went lame. All the time, he felt his brother’s breath on his neck and he could only crane into the distance, looking for Karakorum.

Sunset was hardest on the men. Kublai could not call a halt until he was absolutely certain his brother was done for the day. With the armies in such close range, he dared not rest where Arik-Boke could spring a sudden attack. His own scouts relayed the positions back to him in chains, over and over, until finally they brought the welcome news that their pursuers had stopped. Even then, Kublai insisted on going on, forcing each precious mile in sweat and stamina. His men slept like the dead under the stars and had to be kicked awake by the changing guards through the night. Men cried out in troubled sleep, worn down by the constant threat of being pursued. It sat badly with natural hunters to be hunted, while those behind grew in confidence like a wolf pack, knowing they would run them down eventually.

Kublai had welcome news from his scouts long before the tumans under his command, but he did not pass it on, knowing they would enjoy the sight of carts laden with weapons coming from Karakorum. They were guided in to his spartan camp as the sun died over the mountains on the third day, greeted with whoops and shouting from his men. One climbed each cart and began throwing full quivers and lances to outstretched hands, laughing at the thought that the city had given them such a gift in error. The men driving the carts were left untouched and they knew better than to protest as they were shouldered aside and sent back to the city. Karakorum lay barely forty miles away and Kublai knew he would reach it by noon the following day. He wished he had thought to ask for fresh skins of airag to go with the arrows and lances, but it was enough to see the glee on his men’s faces for what they had won with trickery.

Kublai felt a great tension ease in him as he settled down for sleep that night, taking a moment to thump the grass beneath him when a lump dug into his hip. His men would fight with Karakorum in sight. They would battle an enemy just as weary as they were and they would give a good account of themselves, he was certain. Even so, he feared for them all.

Twelve men fighting ten was a rough match. The two extra tumans his brother could still field were a different proposition. Twenty thousand men would be able to pour shafts into his flanks, or hammer his men in charges while they were locked in battle. Against the Sung, he would have laughed at the numbers. Facing his own people, he struggled with despair. He had done everything he could and he thought again of the last bone he had to throw when Karakorum came into view. Somewhere out beyond the hills, Bayar had to be closing on the city. His three tumans would surely be enough to turn the battle.

He was still thinking it through when sleep took him in a black wave. Kublai knew nothing else until his son was shaking him by the shoulder and pressing a package of cold meat and hard bread into his hand. It was not yet dawn, but the scouts were blowing horns to signal that Arik-Boke’s camp was getting ready to move.

Kublai sat up, cutting off a yawn as he realised it was the last day. No matter what happened, he would see an end before the rising sun fell behind the mountains. It was a strange thought, after so long.

His sleepiness vanished and he stumbled to his feet, taking a bite and wincing as it caught on a loose tooth. Karakorum had tooth-pullers, he recalled, wincing. His bladder was full and he put the bread in his mouth as he pulled back his deel robe and urinated on the ground, grunting in satisfaction.

‘Stay safe today,’ he said to Zhenjin, who merely grinned.

The young man had grown thin in the days of fighting or riding, his skin darker than Kublai remembered. He too was chewing on the thick bread, hard as stone and about as appetising. The thick mutton grease was a gritty paste in his mouth and Kublai almost choked as Zhenjin handed him a small skin of water and he gulped from it.

‘I mean it. If the battle goes badly, do not come for me. Ride away. I would rather see you run and live than stay and die. Is that understood?’

Zhenjin gave him his best look of sulky scorn, but he nodded. Scout horns sounded again and his rough camp jerked into faster motion as men mounted and checked their weapons for the last time. Arik-Boke’s tumans were moving.

‘Quickly now. Get back to your jagun,’ Kublai said gruffly.

To his surprise, Zhenjin embraced him, a brief, fierce grip before he was sprinting back to his horse.

They rode hard through the long morning, covering miles at a smooth canter or trot while the scouts kept their eyes on Arik-Boke’s forces and reported back constantly. Forty miles would have been nothing to fresh horses and men, but after days in the saddle, they were all stiff and weary. In his mind’s eye, Kublai imagined them bleeding broken horses by the mile, turning the animals loose as they limped or collapsed. The sturdy little ponies were bred to endure and they went on, just as the men who rode them went on, ignoring the aches in their backs and legs.

It was a surreal moment for Kublai when he began to recognise the hills around Karakorum. The grey-green slopes shouted to his memories. He had grown up in the city and he knew the lands around it as well as anywhere in the world. His breath caught in surprise at the power of it, when he knew they had come home. In all his planning and manoeuvres, he hadn’t taken into account the strength of that small thing. He was home. The city his uncle had built lay but a few miles further on and it was time to turn and face his brother, to test the men he had taught and learned from over thousands of miles of Sung lands. He felt tears prickle his eyes and laughed at himself.

Karakorum had originally been built with a boundary about the height of a man. That had changed when the small city was threatened and the walls had been strengthened and raised to include watchtowers and solid gates. Kublai no longer knew how many people it held, or how many more clustered round it in the tent slums. He had walked among them more than once when he was young and the memories were both vivid and sad. His people did not do well in one place. Though they came to Karakorum for work and wealth, they had no sewers and the gers there clustered so thickly in the sun that the stench of urine and excrement could make a strong man gag. As nomads, every camp was fresh and green, but when they were trapped in poverty, they made a slum where no woman and few men dared to go out after dark.

He could see the white walls in the distance when he gave the order to halt at last. He had avoided any thoughts of the future while his brother Arik-Boke was in the field against him. It seemed too much like dangerous pride to make plans for the years to come when he could so easily be killed. Yet as he stared into the haze behind him, he thought of the wide lands in the Chin territory around Xanadu. He could find them a place there. He could allow them to stretch out and live like men instead of animals, crushed into too small a space, too small a city. His people grew sick when they could not move, and not just with the diseases that swept through the city every summer. As the sun beat down, he shuddered at the thought of some pestilence raging through Karakorum as it baked in its own filth. If he lived, he could do better, he was certain.

Uriang-Khadai was like a wasp that afternoon, riding everywhere and snapping out commands so that the tumans formed in good order. Kublai’s banners were raised far away from where he sat his horse, surrounded by bondsmen. With a wry smile, he looked across the field at the fluttering walls of yellow silk, decorated with a dragon twining on the cloth as if it were alive. The arrows would fall thickest on those men, volunteers all. They were the only ones still carrying heavy shields he had kept back, with their horses’ chests armoured in fish-scale panels. Kublai himself would ride far from them in the fourth rank, invisible as he gave his orders.

Even with the losses, nine tumans and some six minghaans stood to face Arik-Boke’s army. Most of them had fought together for years, against far greater numbers. Each officer had met and drunk himself senseless with his colleagues a thousand times. They knew the men around them and they were as ready as they would ever be. The khan’s city lay at their backs and they had to win it for him. The khan himself fought in the ranks. There would be an ending on that day.

Arik-Boke still had ten miles to make up when Kublai had called the halt. It was time enough to empty bladders and take gulps of water from skins being passed down the ranks, then thrown down when they were empty. A hundred thousand bows were checked for cracks, with strings tested and discarded if they stretched or were too worn. The men rubbed grease on their sword blades to let them slip out of the scabbards easily and many of them dismounted to check their saddle cinches and reins for weak points that could snap under load. There was little laughter among them and only a few called to their friends. They had been hardened in the long ride to the city and they were ready.

Kublai kept his back sword-straight as he saw the first outriders of Arik-Boke’s tumans. They appeared far away like black flies, shifting back and forth in the heat haze. Behind the scouts came the tumans in great, dark blocks of horsemen, riding beneath a cloud of orange dust that reached above them in spiralling fingers.

He tested his sword grip again, dropping the weapon in and out of the scabbard so that it clinked. The sick feeling that made a knot in his stomach was a familiar sensation and he raised anger to sear through it. The body was afraid, but he would not let weak flesh rule him.

The sight of his brother’s army made his heart beat faster and fury surge in his blood, summoned by his will and stronger than the fear. Sweat broke out on his forehead while he sat like a statue watching them come. He could smell the horses around him, combined with the gamey stench of men who had not washed in months. His men, bound to him by oath and experience. Many of them would die that day and the debt would be Arik-Boke’s. Kublai reminded himself that he knew his brother, no matter how he had changed in the years apart. The false position with the banners had come from that knowledge.

Arik-Boke would not just want to win the battle. The losses of his orlok had humiliated him. If Kublai still knew him at all, he would be half blind in wounded pride and rage, aiming his archers at that point. The bannermen would soak up the shafts. It was not a pleasant thought as memories of their youth flashed into his mind, but Kublai would use anything, any weakness. In silence, he sent a prayer of apology to his mother and father, hoping they could not see the battle he would fight that day.

Kublai looked right and left along the ranks of silent men. He wore no sign of his authority and his bondsmen were watching him with expressions of quiet pride. They were ready. He sent another prayer to the spirits of his ancestors that Bayar would come.

He saw Uriang-Khadai raise a hand and Kublai matched the gesture. It was time. He looked ahead to the vast army coming at them as his orlok gave the order. Horns began to sound across the ranks, a single, droning note that made Kublai’s hands tremble before he gripped the reins hard. A hundred thousand warriors dug in their heels and began to trot forward to meet the enemy, his younger brother.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Arik-Boke craned forward in his saddle, peering through the dust to where his brother waited for him. The scouts had reported Kublai’s position long before, but he still waited for his own eyes to confirm it. Though the walls of Karakorum were painted white, he could see only a hint of paleness behind the darker lines of Kublai’s tumans, like a reflection off metal. He nodded to himself, clenching his fist on his sword hilt.

His twelve generals were riding on either side of him, already looking back to their tumans and wanting his permission to ride with their men. Arik-Boke kept silent. His orlok had failed him and he had not appointed another, just to see him fail in turn. He was khan and he would command the battle. He could sense the unease of the senior men, as if the fools thought he would keep them in line with him right up to the first shafts in the air.

His tumans had ridden fifty miles that day without stopping. They were weary, but the sight of the enemy standing to face them would cast that weariness away. Arik-Boke did not feel it himself. Anger and excitement coursed through him as the range closed to two miles, less. He could see the formations of Kublai by then, still standing as if they had grown roots waiting for him. He struggled with colossal rage at the thought of them barring the way to his own city, standing in the khan’s rightful path. His brother would answer for his arrogance, he promised himself.

His tumans matched his speed, though they were not idle. Spare horses were brought up from the rear in their thousands, pulled alongside, so that his warriors could jump across without slowing down. The ones they had ridden all morning fell back quickly without heels and whips to keep them going. Arik-Boke was close enough to see the bright yellow flags of his brother’s position, standing tall on spears like bristling spines. At such a distance, he could not make out the symbol on them, but he had his first sight of the false khan’s position. He could imagine Kublai looking out and a shudder went through him as if their gazes had locked over the empty plain.

‘There is your target,’ he called to his generals. ‘I will give a province to the man who brings me his head. Which one of you will be a khan after today?’

He saw the stunned expressions as they understood and he was satisfied. They would drive their men ruthlessly for such a reward, falling on Kublai like a mountain dropping from the blue sky. It was a good thought.

He sent them back to their tumans and felt the change in just a short time as they began to roar orders. The speed grew and all the tumans matched the racing lines, each one subtly trying to manoeuvre to be in the best position to hit that small group of banner flags.

Arik-Boke grinned into the breeze. The armies were less than a mile apart and he had set bloody meat before the wolves. He had more men and they fought for the great khan of the nation. To ride to such a battle was the closest thing to joy he had ever known.

The scout was exhausted, drooping in the saddle as his horse reached the final yam station in the heart of Karakorum. It had not been an easy run to get around Kublai’s tumans. He’d had to swing wide, beyond the scout lines, and then ride on through the darkness whenever he found a path or a road. He hadn’t slept for three days, hadn’t been able to with enemy scouts checking every trail and path. He’d spent some of the previous night with a dagger cutting into his bicep, using the pain to keep him awake as he peered out from a thicket and waited for a group of warriors to move on. He scratched at the bandage as he guided his exhausted mount down the city road to the yam station. His mind was playing tricks on him, making him hear whispers and see strange colours he could not name whenever he forced his eyes open. He had no idea what had happened to his companion. Perhaps he hadn’t had luck with him and had taken an arrow as he rode.

The scout was eighteen years old and he had once thought of his strength as limitless, until the ride showed him the truth. Everything hurt and his mind felt like a solid lump in his skull, stupid and slow to react. Perhaps that was why he felt so little triumph as he almost fell from the saddle into the waiting arms of the yam riders. They did not laugh at the state and stench of him, the saddle still damp under his legs from the times he had urinated without stopping. With an army taking position outside the city, they were visibly worried. One of them took a wet cloth from a bucket and rubbed it over the scout’s face roughly, waking him up a little as well as clearing the caked dust and filth.

‘No message bag,’ one of them said, with a twist to his mouth. None of them expected good news from the sort of message that could not be written down. He slapped the scout lightly on the face.

‘Wake up, lad. You’re here, you’ve arrived. Who were you sent to speak to?’

The scout brought his hands up irritably at the rough treatment, pushing them away as he stood on his own.

‘From the khan. Captain of the Guards,’ he croaked at them. One of the men handed over a skin of clean water and he gulped gratefully, spitting onto the floor to clear his gummed mouth. His words did a reasonable job of waking them all up to their usual efficiency.

‘You walk him in, Lev,’ the yam master said. ‘I’ll deal with the horse.’

The animal was blown, ruined, and in much the same state as its rider. The master took the reins with a grim expression to lead it out into the yard. He didn’t want blood on the floor inside.

‘I’ll be expecting a few choice cuts for tonight,’ one of the others called after him.

The yam master ignored the comment and the scout was led stumbling away with a man’s hand on his shoulder.

The yam rider knew better than anyone not to question the scout and they walked in silence through the streets towards the khan’s palace. It could be seen from a long way off, with its gold-capped tower. The scout looked up at it gratefully, hobbling along with each step sending sharp pains up his legs.

The palace gates were manned by Day Guards in polished armour. They nodded to the yam rider and looked askance at his filthy companion.

‘Khan’s orders. Captain of the Guard, urgent,’ the yam rider said, enjoying the chance to make them move quickly for once. One of the Guards whistled and another one inside went running off at full sprint, his boots clattering on the stone corridors so that they could hear his progress for some time.

‘Any news of that army?’ the Guard asked.

The scout shrugged, his voice still rough.

‘They were turning to face the khan, last I saw. It’ll be over today.’

The Guard looked as if he wanted to ask more, but they could all hear the running steps returning, with another alongside. The captain had not bothered about his dignity, not with a message from the khan and a hostile army outside Karakorum. He arrived at a flat sprint, skidding to a stop and putting an arm out to the gatepost to steady himself.

‘Do you need to tell me in private?’ he asked, panting.

‘I wasn’t told that. The khan told me to say “It’s time”.’

To the scout’s surprise, the captain paled and took a deep, slow breath as he settled himself.

‘Nothing else?’

‘That’s it, sir. “It’s time.”’

The captain nodded and walked away without another word, leaving four men staring after him.

‘That doesn’t sound good for someone,’ one of the yam men muttered.

Kublai snapped his gaze back and forth, between the tumans riding towards him and his own. Both sides moved fluidly, shifting and overlapping as they came together, searching out weaknesses in the other and forcing them to react. To an outsider, it might have looked as if two great armies swept mindlessly towards each other, but the truth was a constant, darting struggle. Arik-Boke’s generals would shore up one wing and Kublai or Uriang-Khadai would react to it. They would bring a new tuman swinging over to bolster another position, drawing the enemy back into line rather than risk a massed attack on a weak part of their formations. It happened at a canter and then a gallop, with each officer seeking the slightest advantage as they came within bow range.

At three hundred paces, the first shafts were sent flying up from both sides. The maximum range and the closing speeds meant they would hit overhead in the ranks further back. Kublai saw them soaring thickly to where his bannermen rode and he roared a final order to the closest general. They had only moments to react, but they drifted left, shoring up his own ranks and weakening the false position.

It was too late for Arik-Boke to react again. Kublai and Uriang-Khadai had been reading his formations, seeing the build of strength on his left wing. It was well hidden, with thousands of men screening the main shift, but Arik-Boke had taken the bait. He would hit the false position, where he believed Kublai to be waiting for him.

Kublai barely noticed the volleys thrumming out from both sides, one every six heartbeats, launching terrible death and destruction. He had eyes only for the enemy movements. They were throwing their strength into one side to reach where they thought he was, skewing their formations to bring the maximum numbers against that point of his lines and smash through.

In the last heartbeats, arrows buzzed between the armies by the tens of thousand, crossing each other in the air. Horses and men went down hard and Kublai had to wrench his mount out of the way of one fallen rider, then kick in to make a half-stumbling leap over another. He found himself in the second rank as the lances came down on both sides. He drew his sword.

On his right, Arik-Boke’s tumans had brought lances to bear early, soaking up the arrow storm as they tried to punch right through to the yellow flags. Kublai could read his brother’s rage in their formations and he shouted without words, a roar of sound that was swallowed in the screams and crashes all around him.

A lance came at him, aimed squarely at his chest. At first it seemed to be slow, then his mind adjusted and it struck at him like a darting bird, drawn in at the speed of two horses galloping head-on. He turned the tip of it with a grunt, forcing it wide so the lancer went past him on his right. Kublai slashed across the man’s face as he went and felt a single spot of blood touch his cheek.

His own lance warriors took advantage of the weaker lines against them. Arik-Boke had committed his main strength to one wing, so that his tumans formed almost a spear on the land in the last moments. Kublai showed his teeth in the wind. He could not save the men who carried his banners, but he could hit the suddenly vulnerable flank they had helped to expose.

In just a few heartbeats, the two armies had slid past each other like dancers. It was a level of manoeuvre and formation only possible by the elite horsemen of the nation and yet Arik-Boke had made a mistake. As his tumans crashed deeper and deeper, throwing down lances as they broke, their flank was exposed to Kublai’s main strength. Uriang-Khadai bellowed new orders at the exact moment Kublai did, sending fresh volleys of arrows into the streaming mass as they passed, punching hundreds of men from their mounts.

It took time to turn his tumans and every moment was agony as more and more of the flank poured past him. Kublai reined in savagely, using his strength to drag the animal into a tight turn. It stumbled again on a body, but came upright, snorting in fear. He pointed his sword at the tumans of his brother and his men dug in their heels, roaring ‘Chuh!’ to their mounts in a great burst of sound.

They struck at barely more than a canter in the space they’d had to leap forward, but Arik-Boke’s tumans were focused forward and the swordsmen cut deep into them, hacking and slashing with the huge strength of men trained to the bow.

Kublai went with them, through the first rank galloping past him, then further as the lines crumpled. His minghaans kept his attacking line wide so that no single point could get ahead of the rest and find itself flanked in turn. With men dying on all sides, his officers kept calm and gave out a stream of orders. The khan’s command had dropped to them and they were veterans, stolid and serious about their work.

Arik-Boke’s flank collapsed as Kublai’s tumans cut it to pieces. His men had bitten a huge bowl into the enemy, and despite the efforts of the minghaan officers, they were in danger of going too far into the crush. Before Kublai could give new orders, Uriang-Khadai had committed two more tumans, widening the attack and battering the flank with arrows and then a lance charge. They had the time to get up to speed and they tore into them at full gallop, lances down so that men and horses were broken and sent tumbling.

Kublai saw his yellow banners fall out of the corner of his eye. A great roar went up from Arik-Boke’s tumans at the sight and they began to fight back with renewed ferocity. The single-minded drive that had ruined their formations for a single objective was gone. He felt the difference in moments as they pulled back from his men and began to re-form. He cursed. The arrows were still flying and he knew he would be the target if he gave the order.

Two of Arik-Boke’s tumans had swung out from the battle to reach a good position. As Kublai watched, they drove back in, sending arrows before them, then shoving the bows into the saddle hooks and drawing swords. They believed Kublai was already dead and it gave them heart to keep fighting. He grimaced to himself, then nodded, turning to his bondsmen.

‘Raise them up,’ he shouted. ‘Let them see how we fooled them.’

They grinned wildly as they unrolled great yellow streamers, sliding metal rings over the tips of banner-poles with practised efficiency. With a nod to each other, six of them raised the poles at the same time, sending Kublai’s banners fluttering in the wind.

His tumans raised their swords and bows as they saw it, roaring at the top of their lungs. The crash of sound seemed to send Arik-Boke’s tumans reeling back, but the reality was that Kublai’s men surged forward. Nothing pleased the Mongols more than a good trick on the field of battle. Not only was Kublai alive, but Arik-Boke had wasted the lives of many thousands to tear down a false position. For a short time, Kublai’s warriors laughed as they bent their bows and struck with swords, then the momentary giddiness dissolved and they were back to the grim-faced killing men of the tumans.

Over thousands of heads, Kublai could see his brother’s banners, half a mile distant. He had ignored the position, with no desire to see his brother dead. He wanted him alive if possible, though if the sky father took him with a shaft or a blow, he would not regret the loss. His own bondsmen pressed close around him as those of Arik-Boke’s archers in range sent looping shots high, hoping for a lucky strike. Kublai set his jaw as the air above him filled with whining shafts. He wished for a shield then, but he had not been able to carry one and maintain the deception. One of his bannermen was plucked away with a grunt and another man caught the falling banner as it was jolted out of his hand. Kublai made a growling sound as he saw he would have to pull back. The charge against the exposed flank had carried his rank deep into the enemy and he was exposed to the counter-attack that would surely come now his brother realised his true position.

For a frozen instant of time, Kublai searched the horizon for some sign of Bayar’s tumans. His men had fought well and his officers had shown themselves as an elite. Perhaps four of his brother’s tumans had been slaughtered for the loss of half that number, but the battle was far from over and Kublai was in desperate danger.

Even as he formed the thought, Uriang-Khadai brought tumans across him, forcing the enemy back and allowing him time to get clear.

Kublai shouted to his men to find him a position out of the front ranks and they began to drift through the warriors. They cheered him as he went, still delighted at the deception that had allowed them to humiliate Arik-Boke. Men he knew from years among the Sung raised their swords in salute as he passed them, then pressed on with their tumans.

The battlefield had spread almost a mile from the original site, as the tumans shifted and struck, pulled back and charged again. As Arik-Boke’s men pressed on in rage, Uriang-Khadai pulled four tumans out, leaving a sudden space. The enemy warriors rushed in after them, lost in the need to cut down the jeering horsemen, still hooting and calling to them as they went.

Uriang-Khadai made them run into fresh volleys of arrows from a halted line, emptying quivers by the ten thousand shafts. The broken lines they faced were torn apart, building lines of the dead. Their own archers replied without the massed force of a volley and were quickly cut from their saddles. Uriang-Khadai raised and dropped his arm to signal the shots, then rotated the front ranks to allow those who still had shafts to race forward. In the heart of the battle, the perfection of the manoeuvre broke the centre of Arik-Boke’s forces. Those who survived it pulled back from their mad rush and formed up around their khan, ready to be sent in again.

Kublai had moved back three hundred paces, frustrating the enemy archers who sought him out. From that position, he saw Uriang-Khadai take over and heard the beat of volleys snap once more. He turned his head to see a huge block of fresh warriors detach from his brother’s position and come swinging out. They rode around the wavering centre and Kublai swallowed hard when he saw Uriang-Khadai could be hit from the flank and rear in turn. He looked around for the forces available to him, sending runners to his generals as fast as he could speak and shove them away.

Once again, he looked for Bayar on the horizon. Ever since his return from the Sung, he had dreaded the thought of a battle so closely fought that the armies of the nation destroyed themselves. He had already lost count of the dead, and if it went on, the empire of Genghis would be defenceless, with wolves all around them. He needed the men his warriors were killing. He needed them all. He looked for Bayar and sat frozen, his right hand clenching tight on the sword hilt. Tumans had appeared in the distance, dark lines of racing horsemen.

Kublai felt his initial surge of excitement fade as he saw the number of them. Too many. He breathed harder, feeling fear sink its teeth into him once again. Too many! He had sent only three tumans to Russia with Bayar. The army galloping towards him was far larger.

Kublai closed his eyes and bowed his head, breathing so hard and fast he felt his blood heat soar and his face grow flushed with every beat of his heart. He could surrender, or he could fight to the last man, the worst of all decisions. He wiped blood from his cheek in a spasm of anger, but Arik-Boke’s men were shouting and the formations were moving again, as if to counter a new threat. Kublai’s head jerked up, his breath held in his throat.

Not a reserve, then! Arik-Boke was already shifting his banners around, moving them away under a shield of tumans. Kublai felt dizzy and ill as his pounding pulse dwindled in his ears. He had known the agony of defeat, accepted it. He was not certain what he would have done, even then, but as the men around him shouted and cheered, he bawled with them, waving his sword to the tumans coming in at full speed.

‘Lay down your swords!’ Kublai shouted to the enemy.

His generals took up the cry, then his minghaan officers, then the men who ran each jagun of a hundred. In moments, thousands of voices were yelling the order at Arik-Boke’s men and all the time, six tumans were galloping closer, fresh and deadly with full quivers and unbroken lances. Kublai repeated his order and his tumans repeated it like a chant. Uriang-Khadai pulled them back further, opening a new space between the armies. No one raced to close the gap and the tumans of Arik-Boke sat their mounts in stunned silence, watching sixty thousand men riding hard at them.

Kublai didn’t see the first of Arik-Boke’s men to throw his sword to the ground, followed by the empty quiver from his back. The officer was a senior minghaan and his thousand copied the gesture. Many of them dismounted and stood by their horses, their chests heaving. It spread through Arik-Boke’s tumans, one after the other, beginning with those furthest away from their khan. By the time Kublai could read the banners of Bayar and Batu Khan with him, only a single tuman with Arik-Boke remained armed and ready, surrounded by their own men calling on them to surrender.

Arik-Boke’s last tuman waited in grim silence as Uriang-Khadai gathered his tumans in silent ranks and Bayar and Batu Khan came into range with bows ready.

Under that threat, with a fresh army against them, the last tuman threw down their swords and walked away from the small knot of bannermen with Arik-Boke. He roared at their backs in furious anger, but they ignored him.

Kublai rode with the feeling that he had never been in more danger that day. He did not have to order his generals to form up around him. A single arrow could take his life and then Arik-Boke might yet rally his tumans again. He did not doubt his brother would fight to the end and leave the nation weak and wounded. He nudged his horse forward across the battlefield, not looking left or right as his men shouldered aside warriors they had been trying to kill just before.

It seemed to take an age before he found Arik-Boke. His brother looked older, Kublai saw, his ruined nose bright red with emotion. He still carried a drawn sword in his hand and Kublai murmured a command to those at his back. They bent their bows with an audible creak, a dozen shafts focused on one man who stared balefully at Kublai.

‘Surrender, brother,’ Kublai called to him. ‘It’s finished now.’

There was a bright gleam in Arik-Boke’s eyes as he glared round at his men. His face was well made for the contempt he showed them and he leaned over to hawk and spit on the ground. For an instant, Kublai thought he would kick his horse forward at him and die, but his brother shook his head as if he could hear the thought. Slowly, he opened his hand and let the wolf’s-head sword fall onto the grass.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Kublai stood alone in the throne room of the palace in Karakorum, looking out of the open window over the roofs of the city below. He hadn’t noticed the grime and odour he carried with him before entering the palace. The clean rooms with the polished stone floors made him feel oddly out of place, like an ape in a garden. He smiled at the thought, imagining how he must look. The armour he wore was a far cry from the scholar’s robe he had worn for much of his youth. Palms that had once been ink-stained were ridged with sword callus. He held up his right hand with a wry expression, seeing the pale scars on the skin. The grime that had worked its way into every seam and crevice of his fingernails was a mixture of blood, earth and oil.

He had not seen the city of his youth for many years and from the first steps through the gate, he had been struck by both the familiarity and the differences. The short ride through the streets to reach the palace had been a surreal experience. In his years away, he had entered many Sung cities, too many to count or remember. Karakorum had once seemed large and open to him, a place of wide streets and strong houses. To the man who came home, it was somehow small and shabby. None of the people within the walls had ever seen the delicate gardens and streams of a Sung city, or the vast hunting parks that were being shaped in Xanadu. Even the palace library where he had spent countless hours had shrunk in his absence, once golden treasures failing to live up to his memories. Walking alone through the palace corridors, he had visited many of the places of his youth. In the room where he had once slept, he found the spot where he had carved his name in oak. Standing there, he had lost himself in reverie for a time, tracing the primitive lettering.

Even the palace gardens were different, with shaded rows of trees grown huge. They changed the views and altered the sense of the garden, spreading patterns of shadows so that nothing looked the same. He had sat for a time at the bench and pergola built after Ogedai’s death. There had been peace there, as the pale blossoms of a cherry tree stirred in the wind around him. The war was over. He had realised it truly as he sat there in the silence. All he had to do was rule.

The knowledge should have filled him with joy, but he could not shake the feeling of disappointment that weighed on him, as if all his years at war had won him only echoes of memories. He tried to dismiss the sensation as nostalgia, but the reality hung in the thick summer air, already sweet with the smouldering herbs that were said to ward off disease.

With an effort, he turned away from the window looking out over the streets below. If Karakorum was flawed, it was still the first city of his people, the boundary marker that Ogedai Khan had built to take them from nomadic tribes to a settled nation. It had been a grand dream, but he would do better in Xanadu. He would do better as emperor of China, with all the wealth of those vast lands at his disposal. Kublai realised he would have to appoint a governor for Karakorum, someone he could trust to make the city bright and clean again. Uriang-Khadai sprang to his mind and he considered the idea carefully, finally nodding to himself.

The place Kublai thought of as home had become a city of strangers. His place was in Xanadu, a bridge between the lands of the Chin and the Mongol homeland, exactly as he had planned it. From there, he would send out the tumans to dominate the Sung for all time. He clenched his fist as he stood in the silence. They had almost fallen to a Mongol general. They would fall to the great khan.

He heard footsteps approaching the polished copper doors that closed off the room from the rest of the palace. Kublai gathered his will once again, ignoring the weariness that made his legs and arms feel leaden. He had ridden and fought all day. He stank of horses and blood and the summer sun was setting at last, but there was still one thing he had to do before he could bathe, eat and sleep.

There were no servants there to answer the fist thumping on the outer door. No doubt they had all vanished as the conqueror came into the city, expecting slaughter and destruction. As if he would harm a single one of his people, the nation of his birth. He crossed the room swiftly and heaved open the copper doors. He was not aware of how his right hand dropped to his sword hilt, an action that had become part of him.

Uriang-Khadai and Bayar stood there, with his brother between them. Their expressions were grim and Kublai did not speak, gesturing for them to enter. Arik-Boke was forced to shuffle forward, his feet tied so he could take only the smallest of steps. He almost fell and General Bayar gripped him by the shoulder to keep him upright.

‘Wait outside,’ Kublai said softly to the two men.

They bowed briefly without protest, sheathing their swords as they went. Uriang-Khadai pulled the doors shut and Kublai watched the gap close on the orlok’s cold eyes.

He was alone with his brother, for the first time in many years. Arik-Boke stood with his arms behind his back, straight and strong as he looked around the room. The only sound was the hissing wheeze from the old scar across his nose. Kublai looked for some sign of the boy he had known, but the face had coarsened, grown heavy and hard, as Arik-Boke’s eyes glittered under the inspection.

It was difficult not to think of the last time they had met in that place, with Mongke full of life and plans and the world before them. Much had changed since then and Kublai’s heart broke to think of it.

‘So tell me, brother,’ he said, ‘now that the war is over, were you in the right, or was I?’

Arik-Boke turned his head slowly, his face growing mottled as he flushed in slow anger.

‘I was in the right …’ he said, his voice grating, ‘but now you are.’

Kublai shook his head. To his brother, there was no morality beyond the right of strength. Somehow the words and everything they revealed infuriated him. He had to struggle to find calm once again. He saw some gleam of triumph still in Arik-Boke’s eyes.

‘You gave an order, brother,’ Kublai said. ‘To butcher the women and children of my men in the camps around the city.’

Arik-Boke shrugged. ‘There is a price for all things,’ he said. ‘Should I have allowed you to destroy my tumans without an answer? I am the khan of the nation, Kublai. If you take my place, you will know hard decisions in turn.’

‘I do not think it was a hard decision for you,’ Kublai said quietly. ‘Do you still think it was carried out? Do you believe the captain of the Guard would murder defenceless women while their children hung around their legs?’

Arik-Boke’s contemptuous expression faded as he understood. His shoulders dipped slightly and some of the spite and anger seeped out of him, making him look worn and tired.

‘I trusted the wrong man, it seems.’

‘No, brother. You were the wrong man. Even so, it is hard for me to see you like this. I wish it could have gone another way.’

‘You are not the khan!’ Arik-Boke snapped. ‘Call yourself whatever you want, but you and I know the truth of it. You have your victory, Kublai. Now tell me what you intend and don’t waste my time lecturing me. From you, scholar, I have nothing to learn. Just remember that our mother held this city and our father gave his life for the nation. They are watching you as you put on your false expression of regret. No one else knows you the way I do, so don’t preach to me. You would have done the same in my place.’

‘You’re wrong, brother, but it doesn’t matter now,’ Kublai replied. He walked to the copper doors and thumped on them with his fist. ‘I have an empire to rule, one that has grown weak under your hand. I will not fail in strength or will. Take solace in that, Arik-Boke, if you care about the nation at all. I will be a good master for our people.’

‘And bring me out each month to parade me in my defeat?’ Arik-Boke said, his face flushing once again. ‘Or shall I be exiled for you to show the peasants your famous mercy? I know you, brother. I looked up to you once, but no longer. You are a weak man and for all your fine talk, for all your scholarship, you will fail in everything you do.’

In the face of his brother’s spite, Kublai closed his eyes for a moment, making the decision with a wrench that felt like ripping the scab from a wound. Family was a strange thing and even as he felt Arik-Boke’s hatred battering at him, he still remembered the young boy who had swum in a waterfall and looked at him in simple adoration. They had laughed together a thousand times, grown drunk and shared precious memories of their parents. Kublai felt his throat grow thick with grief.

Uriang-Khadai and Bayar entered the room once more.

‘Take him outside, general,’ Kublai said. ‘Orlok, stay for a moment.’

Bayar took his brother into the corridor, the shuffling steps somehow pitiful.

Kublai faced Uriang-Khadai and took a deep, slow breath before he spoke.

‘If he hadn’t ordered the death of the families, I could spare him,’ Kublai said.

Uriang-Khadai nodded, his eyes dark pools. His own wife and children had been in the city, at his home.

‘The tumans expect me to have him killed, orlok. They are waiting for the word.’

‘But it is your decision, my lord. In the end, it is your choice.’

Kublai looked away from the older man. There would be no comfort from him, no attempt to make it easier. Uriang-Khadai had never offered him the weak way and he respected him for it, as much as it hurt. Kublai nodded.

‘Yes. Not public, Uriang-Khadai. Not for my brother. Put aside your anger if you honour me and make his death quick and clean, as much as it can be.’ His voice grew rough as he spoke the last words.

‘And the body, my lord?’

‘He was khan, orlok. Give him a funeral pyre to light up the sky. Let the nation mourn his passing if they will. None of that matters. He is my brother, Uriang-Khadai. Just … make it quick.’

The summer sun was warm on the back of his neck as Kublai sat in the gardens of the palace, his son Zhenjin beside him. In the distance, a black plume of smoke rose into the sky, but Kublai had not wanted to stand and watch his brother’s funeral. Instead, he rested with closed eyes, taking simple pleasure in his son’s company.

‘I will be going on to Xanadu in a few days,’ Kublai said. ‘You’ll see your mother again there.’

‘I’m glad I had the chance to see this city first,’ Zhenjin replied. ‘It is so full of history.’

Kublai smiled. ‘It isn’t history to me, boy. It’s my family and I miss them all. I rode with Genghis when I was younger than you, barely able to stay on a saddle.’

‘What was he like?’ Zhenjin asked.

Kublai opened his eyes to find his son watching him.

‘He was a man who loved his children and his people, Zhenjin. He took the Chin foot off the throat of the nation and made us look up from the struggles of tribes. He changed the world.’

Zhenjin looked down, playing with a cherry twig in his hands, bending it this way and that.

‘I would like to change the world,’ he said.

Kublai smiled, with just an edge of sadness in his eyes.

‘You will, my son, you will. But no one can change it for ever.’

HISTORICAL NOTE

There are few surviving details of Guyuk’s khanate. It is true that he brought an army to attack Batu in his own lands, after Batu failed to give his oath at a quiriltai, or gathering. We know that Batu was warned by Sorhatani and then Guyuk died in a manner unknown, with the armies in sight of each other. People do just die at times, obviously, but as with the death of Genghis’ son Jochi, some endings are a little too fortuitous to believe the official record. I should add that there is no evidence that Guyuk was homosexual. I needed to explain how he fell out with Batu on the return from Russia - a detail missing from the historical record. As he was khan for only two years and died conveniently early, I was thinking of him as a similar character to England’s Edward II, who was homosexual. The development came naturally. Guyuk achieved nothing of note.

Guyuk’s death cleared the way for Mongke to become khan, beginning a conflict within the Mongol nation as the forces of modernisation, as represented by Chin influence, struggled against traditional Mongol culture and outlook. Mongke was supported by Batu, who owed Sorhatani his life.

Mongke was about thirty-six when he became khan, strong and fit, with good years ahead of him. It is true that he began his reign with a gathering at Avraga, then a slaughter of the opposition as he cleared house, including Guyuk’s wife, Oghul Khaimish. She was accused of sorcery.

Mongke began his khanate with a push outwards, reestablishing the Mongol war machine in all directions. He ruled from 1251 to 1259, eight years of expansion and slaughter. His brother Hulegu went west to crush the Islamic world, while at Mongke’s order, Kublai was sent east and south into Sung China. Their mother Sorhatani died in 1252, more than seventy years old. In her life, she had ruled Mongolia in her own right and seen her eldest son become khan. A Nestorian Christian herself, she had her sons taught Buddhism and established mosques and madrasa schools in Islamic regions. For the breadth of her imagination and reach, she was simply the most extraordinary woman of her era. It is a pleasure of historical fiction that I sometimes come across people who deserve books all to themselves - Julius Caesar’s uncle Marius was one. Sorhatani is another. I have almost certainly not done justice to her.

If it had not actually happened, a fictional account of Kublai’s attack on Sung lands would be ludicrous. He had no experience in battle and had lived a mostly scholarly life. At that time, just one city in Sung territory held more people than the entire Mongol nation. It was, to put it lightly, an immense task, even for a grandson of Genghis. As a side note, home-made sheepskin rafts of the sort I have described were used by Kublai and are still used today to cross rivers in China.

Mongke did give Kublai experienced generals. For plot reasons in previous books, I wrote Tsubodai as childless. In fact, Uriang-Khadai was Tsubodai’s son and a renowned general in his own right. Mongke gave Kublai the best for his first campaign, as well as a minor first objective that he could accomplish with ease. There again, Genghis showed the way. As Genghis had attacked the Xi Xia kingdom first, to establish a back door into Chin territory, Mongke saw the Yunnan region with its single city of Ta-li as the way in to the Sung. Kublai’s army would have been outnumbered, but that would not have been too worrying. They were always outnumbered. It is interesting to note that the popular idea of a Mongol horde overwhelming smaller armies is almost completely false.

Mongke offered Kublai a choice of two vast estates in China. In the history, Kublai had time to ask Yao Shu for advice and the old man recommended Ching-chao in the north as it had rich soil. In time, Kublai would establish thousands of farms there that produced a vast fortune and led to trouble with his brother over his income. It was on those lands that he began his ‘Upper Capital’, known as Shang-du, or in the more common English form, Xanadu. It may not have had a ‘pleasure dome’, as in the poem by Samuel Coleridge, but it did have an immense deer park within its walls, where Kublai could hunt.

The Assassin fortress in Alamut came under attack by Hulegu’s forces around 1256. The head of the Muslim sect that held the fortress of Alamut was, in fact, Ala Ad-Din. I avoided his true name because of the similarity to ‘Aladdin’ and because I’d used one too similar in a previous book. Here I have used Suleiman. The Ismaili Shia Muslim Assassins were extremely powerful in the region at this time, with at least four major fortresses, though Alamut was the strongest, an impregnable eyrie in the mountains south of the Caspian Sea. Interestingly, the storyline around Hasan and the leader comes from the record of the Mongols written by Ata al-Mulk Juvaini, a Persian writer and historian who accompanied Hulegu both to Alamut and Baghdad, later becoming governor of that defeated city. We do not know it was Hasan who murdered his master, but he seems the most likely candidate. Hasan had been tortured over years for amusement, even to the point of being abused with his wife in the bedchamber. It is one of those interesting events in history that the leader of the Assassins was killed at exactly the wrong moment, making Hulegu’s task simple. The Assassins were compelled to surrender and their new leader, Rukn-al-Din, was kicked to death on Hulegu’s orders - a great honour from the Mongol point of view as it did not shed blood and therefore recognised his status as leader of the sect.

The fall of Baghdad to Hulegu is one of the most shocking slaughters ever to occur in the line of Genghis. Hulegu did insist on disarming the city, then went on to butcher at least 800,000 of the million population. The Tigris is said to have run red with the blood of scholars. The caliph was allowed to choose 100 of his 700 harem women to save, then Hulegu had him killed and the women were added to Hulegu’s gers.

I have tried to contrast Hulegu with Kublai, as they had such differing styles. In many ways, Hulegu struggled to be like Mongke and Genghis, while Kublai became as Chinese as the most tradition-bound Chin lord - and greater. Baghdad was ransacked and looted, as Hulegu seems to have had a greed for gold that Genghis would never have understood. In comparison, it is true that Kublai spared cities if they surrendered, making it a central part of his style. He forbade his men indiscriminate killing of the Chin and Sung, on pain of their own execution if they disobeyed him. His character must be set against the traditional ruthlessness of his culture to understand what an unusual man he was. He was certainly influenced in that by Yao Shu, a man still revered in China for his Buddhist principles and the lives he saved.

Mongke still felt the need to join the Sung attack on a different front in the end. One source puts the size of the army he brought into Sung lands as sixty tumans - a true horde of 600,000 men, though a smaller figure is much more likely. Enemies of the khans always had trouble estimating Mongol army sizes because of the vast herd of remounts they kept with them. We do not know if Kublai had stalled, or whether Mongke had always agreed with his brother that a two-pronged attack would be necessary to unite the Chinese empires.

The manner of Mongke’s death en route to Sung China is disputed. It was either an arrow wound that became infected, or dysentery, or cholera: such a wide range of possibilities that it allowed me to work with the idea that Hulegu’s attack on the Assassins could well have earned their final vengeance. Kublai knew he had to pull back when the news reached him of the death of Mongke. It was an established tradition, and even Tsubodai’s conquest of western Europe had been abandoned on the death of Ogedai. The Sung generals would have heard almost as soon as Kublai himself and their relief can only be imagined. Yet Kublai refused to leave China. He had already begun to divorce himself from the politics of home. China was his khanate, his empire, even then.

Mongke’s army had no such reluctance and immediately abandoned their progress south in Sung lands. When Hulegu heard the news, he too returned from the Middle East, loyal to the end. He left only some twenty thousand men under General Kitbuqa (who did indeed insist on holding Christian Mass in conquered mosques). Without the other tumans in support, they were destroyed by resurgent Muslim forces, using, of all tactics, the feigned retreat so beloved by Mongol armies. However, Hulegu had won his own khanate, which eventually became modern-day Iran. Only Kublai ignored the call.

At home in Karakorum, Arik-Boke made a decision that would affect all the generations of his family to come. He had ruled the capital in Mongke’s absence and was already established as the khan of the homeland. With the return of Mongke’s army, he convinced himself there was no better candidate and declared himself great khan. The youngest son of Sorhatani and Tolui had come to rule.

In the same year, 1260, his brother Kublai declared himself khan while standing on foreign soil. Kublai could not have known that he was sowing the seeds of a civil war between brothers that would bring the empire of Genghis to its knees.

I have altered the order of Sung emperors rather than omit scenes with the boy emperor, Huaizong, who ruled slightly later in the period. Emperor Lizong had reigned for some forty years when he finally died childless in 1264. He was succeeded by his nephew, Emperor Duzong, a man of immense appetites. He lasted only ten years until 1274 and was succeeded by his eight-year-old younger brother, who in turn would survive only four years and see Kublai’s triumph over his house.

On the subject of numbers: fourteen is extremely unlucky in Chinese culture, as the sound is similar to the words for ‘want to die’ in both Cantonese and Mandarin. Nine, as the greatest single integer, is one of the luckiest numbers and is associated with the emperor.

By this time, there were simply too many princes to include them all. Lord Alghu was son to Baidur, grandson to Chagatai, great-grandson to Genghis. He ruled the Chagatai khanate and initially supported Arik-Boke in the civil war before turning against him. It is true that he was the first of his line to convert to Islam, a fairly sound tactical move given the people he ruled in the khanate around Samarkand and Bukhara, in modern-day Uzbekistan. A century after these events, Samarkand would become the capital of the conqueror Tamerlane.

The answer Arik-Boke gave to his brother, ‘I was in the right and now you are,’ is part of the historical record and fascinating for what it reveals of the man. Like Guyuk Khan before him, Arik-Boke’s death remains one of those oddly convenient occurrences in history. He was in the prime of his life, healthy and strong, yet shortly after losing to Kublai, he dies. It is not difficult to suspect foul play.

When I began this series, I intended to write all of Kublai Khan’s life. The most famous events - meeting Marco Polo, both attacks on Japan - seemed like vital parts of the story. Yet it is a truth of historical fiction that all the characters are long dead; all the lives and stories have ended, and usually not well. Very few lives finish in glory and I have already written the deaths of Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan. For once, I thought I might finish a series with a character still alive and with all his dreams and hopes still to come. I might know that Kublai’s wife and son died before him, leaving him a broken man given to drinking and eating far too much, but at this point in his life, he does not - and that is how I wanted to leave him.

There will always be loose ends with such a decision. Kublai defeated the Sung at last and established the Yuan dynasty of a united China, a name still used for the currency today. His descendants ruled for almost a hundred years before fading into history, though the bloodline of Genghis ruled other khanates for far longer.

This story began with a single, starving family, hunted and alone on the plains of Mongolia - and ends with Kublai Khan ruling an empire larger than that of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. Over just three generations, that is the simply the greatest rags-to-riches tale in human history.

Conn Iggulden

London, 2011

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Airag/Black airag

Clear alcohol, distilled from mare’s milk.

Arban

Small, raiding group, usually ten men.

Bondsmen

Warriors sworn to personal service, guards to a khan.

Chuh!

Phonetic representation of the Mongol horse command for speed.

Deel

Lightly padded full-length robe with wide sleeves, tied at the waist.

Earth Mother

Earth spirit, partner to the Sky Father.

Gers

Circular homes of felt and wicker lattice, sometimes mistakenly called yurts.

Guest rights

The offer of temporary protection or truce while in a man’s home.

Gur-khan/Great Khan

Khan of khans, leader of the nation.

Jagun

Military unit of a hundred men.

Khan

Tribal leader. No ‘k’ sound in Mongolian, so pronounced: ‘Haan’.

Minghaan

Military unit of a thousand.

Nokhoi Khor!

Pronounced: ‘Ner-hoy, Hor.’ Literally: ‘Hold the Dog!’ - a greeting when approaching strangers.

Orlok

Overall commander of a Mongol army.

Quiriltai

A gathering of princes for the purpose of electing a new khan.

Shaman

Medicine man in a tribe, both a healer and one who communes with spirits.

Sky Father

Sometimes called Tengri. Mongol deity, partner to the Earth Mother.

Tuman

Unit of ten thousand.

Yam stations

Stops for fast scouts to change horses, twenty-five miles apart.

INDEX OF CHARACTERS

Ala-ud-Din Mohammed

Shah of Khwarezm. Died exhausted on an island in the Caspian Sea.

Alkhun

Senior officer of the khan’s guards in Karakorum.

Arslan

Master swordsmith who was once armourer to the Naiman tribe. Father to Jelme. Died of disease in Samarkand.

Baabgai

The bear. A Chin recruit who becomes a successful wrestler.

Baidur

Son of Chagatai. Rules his father’s khanate around modern day Afghanistan.

Barchuk

Khan of the Uighurs.

Basan

Wolf tribe. Bondsman of Yesugei in Wolf of the Plains.

Batu

Son to Jochi and grandson to Genghis Khan. Leads a tuman with Tsubodai and becomes a lord with vast lands in Russia.

Bayar

General to Kublai.

Bekter

Oldest son of Yesugei and Hoelun. Murdered by his brothers.

Bela IV

King of Hungary at the time Tsubodai’s tumans attacked.

Borte

Olkhun’ut tribe. Daughter to Sholoi and Shria. Becomes wife to Temujin/Genghis and has four sons: Jochi, Chagatai, Ogedai and Tolui.

Chagatai

Old storyteller in Wolf tribe.

Chagatai

Same name as storyteller. Second son of Genghis and Borte. Father to Baidur.

Chakahai

Daughter to Rai Chiang of the Xi Xia. A princess given as tribute. Second wife to Genghis.

Chen Yi

Criminal gang leader in Chin city of Baotou.

Chulgetei

General of a tuman under Tsubodai.

Conrad Von Thuringen

Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights.

Eeluk

Bondsman to Yesugei Khan. Becomes khan of the Wolves on Yesugei’s death.

Enq

Olkhun’ut tribe. Father to Koke. Brother to Hoelun. Uncle to Temujin/Genghis and his siblings.

Genghis Khan (see also Temujin)

First khan of the Mongol nation. Husband to Borte. Father to Jochi, Chagatai, Ogedai and Tolui. Dies in Bones of the Hills.

Guyuk

Son of Ogedai Khan and Torogene.

Hasan

Brutalised servant in assassin fortress of Alamut.

Ho Sa

Officer of the Xi Xia. Becomes envoy and officer under Genghis. Dies in Bones of the Hills.

Hoelun

Wife of Yesugei. Mother to Bekter, Temujin, Kachiun, Khasar, Temuge and Temulun.

Hulegu

Third son of Sorhatani and Tolui. Grandson of Genghis Khan.

Ilugei

General of a tuman under Tsubodai.

Inalchuk

Governor of the city of Otrar. Dies when Genghis pours molten silver into his mouth.

Jebe (originally Zurgadai)

Chosen successor to Arslan. Becomes one of Genghis’ most trusted and able generals. Leader of ‘Bearskin’ tuman. Friend to Jochi, Genghis’ son.

Jelaudin

Son and heir to Shah Ala-ud-Din Mohammed.

Jelme

Son of Arslan. Later becomes one of Genghis’ most trusted generals.

Jochi

First son of Genghis and Borte. Some doubt over paternity. Becomes general to ‘Iron Wolf’ tuman. Only general ever to rebel against Genghis. Killed in Bones of the Hills.

Josef Landau

Master of the Livonian Brothers, an order of European knights.

Kachiun

Fourth son of Yesugei and Hoelun. Becomes a general under Genghis.

Khalifa Al-Nayan

Leader of elite Arab cavalry for Shah Mohammed.

Khasar

Third son of Yesugei and Hoelun. Becomes a general under Genghis.

Kokchu

Shaman to the Naiman Khan and later to Genghis. Killed in Bones of the Hills.

Koke

Olkhun’ut tribe. Nephew of Hoelun. Cousin to Temujin and his siblings.

Koten

Leader of the Cumans, a refugee people who fled into Hungary and converted to Christianity.

Kublai

Second son of Sorhatani and Tolui. Grandson of Genghis Khan.

Lian

Master mason and engineer from Baotou, who makes siege machines for Genghis.

Mohrol

Shaman to Ogedai Khan.

Mongke

Oldest son of Tolui and Sorhatani.

Ogedai

Third son of Genghis and Borte. Husband to Torogene, father to Guyuk.

Oghul Khaimish

Wife to Guyuk Khan. Killed in purges by Mongke Khan.

Old Man of the Mountains

Traditional title for the leader of the Assassin sect. Father to Suleiman, who inherits his position.

Rai Chiang

Ruler of autonomous Xi Xia kingdom in northern China.

Rukn-al-Din

Son of Suleiman. Briefly inherits Alamut.

Samuka

Second in command to Ho Sa in his tuman. Dies in Bones of the Hills.

Sansar

Khan of the Olkhun’ut tribe. Killed by Genghis in Wolf of the Plains.

Sholoi

Olkhun’ut tribe. Father of Borte. Husband to Shria.

Shria

Olkhun’ut tribe. Mother to Borte. Wife of Sholoi.

Sorhatani

Wife to Tolui, the youngest son of Genghis. Mother to: Mongke, Kublai, Hulegu and Arik-Boke. At one point, she was ruler of the ancestral homeland and co-ruler of the capital city. Three of her four sons become khan.

Temuge

Youngest son of Yesugei and Hoelun, brother to Genghis. Shaman and administrator.

Temujin (also Genghis)

The First Great Khan, or Gur-khan. Second son of Yesugei and Hoelun.

Temulun

Only daughter of Yesugei and Hoelun. Marries Palchuk. Murdered by Kokchu in Bones of the Hills.

Togrul

Khan of the Kerait tribe. Dies in Wolf of the Plains.

Tolui

Wolf tribe bondsman.

Tolui

Same name. The fourth son of Genghis and Borte. Husband of Sorhatani and father to Mongke, Kublai, Hulegu and Arik-Boke.

Torogene

Wife of Ogedai, mother to Guyuk. Rules Mongol nation as regent.

Tsubodai

Originally Uriankhai tribe. Becomes Genghis’ greatest general and orlok - leader of his armies.

Uriang-Khadai

Orlok to Kublai.

Wei

Emperor of the Chin. Father to Xuan, Son of Heaven.

Wen Chao

Ambassador of the Chin court, sent into Mongol lands.

Xuan, Son of Heaven

Emperor of the Chin after the death of his father, Emperor Wei.

Yao Shu

Buddhist monk brought back from China by Khasar and Temuge. Becomes chancellor to the khans.

Yaroslav

Grand Duke in Moscow at the time of Tsubodai’s attack.

Yesugei

Khan of the Wolves. Husband to Hoelun. Father to Temujin, Kachiun, Khasar, Temuge and Temulun.

Yuan

Master swordsman and guard to Wen Chao, a Chin diplomat in Mongol lands.

Zhi Zhong

General of Chin emperor Wei’s armies. Becomes regent to Xuan after murdering his master.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Without the sterling efforts of a number of skilful and dedicated people, these books would probably never see the light of day. In particular, I must thank Katie Espiner for editing a monster, as well as Kiera Godfrey, Tim Waller and Victoria Hobbs. Yes, it would have been easier without you lot interfering, but more importantly, it wouldn’t have been as good.

Other Books by Conn Iggulden

The Emperor Series

The Gates of Rome

The Death of Kings

The Field of Swords

The Gods of War

The Conqueror Series

Wolf of the Plains^*

Lords of the Bow

Bones of the Hills

Empire of Silver

Blackwater

By Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden

The Dangerous Book for Boys

The Dangerous Book for Boys Yearbook

By Conn Iggulden and David Iggulden

The Dangerous Book of Heroes

By Conn Iggulden and illustrated by Lizzy Duncan

Tollins: Explosive Tales for Children

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2011

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers 2011

CONQUEROR. Copyright (c) Conn Iggulden 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Map (c) John Gilkes 2011

Conn Iggulden asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-00-727114-6

While some of the events and characters are based on historical incidents and figures, this novel is entirely a work of fiction.

EPub Edition (c) AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 978-0-00-728543-3