Conn Iggulden - Conqueror

‘He could take dead goats to his bed, for all I care,’ Batu said with an expression of distaste. ‘What matters is that he is a small man, a man without dreams of any kind. He has only cunning, where the nation needs intelligence. You cannot tell me he would make a good khan.’

‘He would be a terrible khan,’ Tsubodai replied. ‘Under Guyuk, we will see the nation wither away, or broken apart. But if you will not stand against him, who will? Anyway, it is too late. You are already on your way to a gathering. You will give your oath to Guyuk and he will be khan.’

Batu blinked in surprise. His warriors waited for him in a valley more than a day’s ride away. Tsubodai could not have known, unless he was lying about having no sources of information any longer. Perhaps there were a few old men who still came to share tea and news with the orlok after all.

‘You know a few things, for a man who claims to be nothing more than a simple herder.’

‘People talk. Like you. Always talking, as if there is nothing better to do. Did you want me to say that you are making the right choice? Perhaps you are. Now leave me in peace.’

Batu stifled his irritation.

‘I came to ask you what Genghis would have done. You knew him.’

Tsubodai grinned at that, showing his teeth. Two were missing at the side of his mouth, so that his cheek was sunken there. It was easy to see the shape of his skull, the skin stretched over the bone.

‘Your grandfather was a man without compromise. Do you understand what that means? There are many who say “I believe this”, but would they hold true to those beliefs if their children were threatened? No. But Genghis would. If you told him you would kill his children, he would tell you to go ahead, but realise that the cost would be infinite, that he would tear down cities and nations and the price would never be paid. He did not lie and his enemies knew it. His word was iron. So you tell me if he would support a man like Guyuk as khan.’

‘No,’ Batu muttered.

‘Not in a thousand years, boy. Guyuk is a follower, not a leader. There was a time when even you had him trotting around in your wake. That is not a weakness in a carpenter or a man who makes tiles for a roof. The world cannot be full of lead dogs, or the pack would pull itself apart.’ He rubbed his dog behind the ears and the animal grunted and slobbered at him. ‘Wouldn’t it, Temujin?’ he said to the hound. ‘They can’t all be like you, can they?’ The dog settled onto its stomach with a grunt, its front legs outstretched.

‘You named your dog after Genghis?’ Batu asked in disbelief.

Tsubodai chuckled ‘Why not? It pleased me to do so.’ The old man looked up again. ‘A man like Guyuk cannot change. He cannot simply decide one day that he will lead and be good at it. It is not in his nature.’

Batu rested his hands on the wooden spar. The sun had begun to set while they talked, shadows thickening and merging all around them.

‘But if I resist him, I will be destroyed,’ he said softly.

Tsubodai shrugged in the darkness. ‘Perhaps. Nothing is certain. It did not stop your father taking his men out of the nation. There was no middle path with him. He was another in the same mould.’

Batu glanced at the old man, but he could barely see his features in the gloom.

‘That did not work out too well.’

‘You are too young to understand,’ Tsubodai replied.

‘Try,’ Batu said. He could feel the old man’s gaze on him.

‘People are always afraid, boy. Perhaps you must live a long time just to see it. I sometimes think I’ve lived too long. We will all die. My wife will die. I will, you, Guyuk, everyone you have ever met. Others will walk over our graves and never know we laughed or loved, or hated each other. Do you think they will care if we did? No, they will have their own blind, short lives to live.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Batu said in frustration.

‘No, because you’re too young,’ Tsubodai said with a shrug. Batu heard the old man sigh to himself. ‘There’s a good chance there are bones in this valley, men and women who once thought they were important. Do we think of them? Do we share their fears and dreams? Of course not. They are nothing to the living and we don’t even know their names. I used to think I would like to be remembered, to have people say my name in a thousand years, but I won’t care if they do, because I’ll be dust and spirit. Maybe just dust, but I’m still hoping for spirit as well. When you’re older, you will realise the only thing that matters, the only thing, is that you had courage and honour. Lose those things and you won’t die any quicker, but you’ll be less than the dirt on our boots. You’ll still be dust, but you’ll have wasted your short time in the light. Your father failed, yes, but he was strong and he tried to do right by his people. He didn’t waste his life. That’s all you can ask.’ The effort of speaking seemed to have tired the old man. He cleared his throat and spat carelessly on the ground. ‘You don’t get long in the world. These mountains will still be here after me, or you.’

Batu was silent for a long time before he spoke again.

‘I never knew him, my father. I never even met him.’

‘I am sorry I ever did,’ Tsubodai replied. ‘That’s how I understand about honour, boy. It’s only when you lose it that you realise how valuable it is, but it’s too late then.’

‘You are a man of honour, if I understand anything at all.’

‘I was once, perhaps, but I should have refused that order from your grandfather. To kill his own son? It was madness, but I was young and I was in awe of him. I should have ridden away and never sought out Jochi in the Russian plains. You wouldn’t understand. Have you killed a man?’

‘You know I have!’

‘Not in battle; up close, slow, where you can look into his eyes.’

Batu nodded slowly. Tsubodai grunted, barely able to see the movement.

‘Were you right to do it? To take all the years he would live?’

‘I thought so at the time,’ Batu replied uncomfortably.

‘You’re still too young. I thought once that I could make my mistake a good thing. That my guilt could be the force that made me better than other men. I thought in my strong years that I would learn from it, but no matter what I did, it was always there. I could not take it back, Batu. I could not undo my sin. Do you know that word? The Christians talk of a black stain on the soul. It is fitting.’

‘They also say you can remove it by confessing.’

‘No, that’s not true. What sort of a man would I be if I could just wipe out my errors with talking? A man has to live with his mistakes and go on. That is his punishment, perhaps.’ He chuckled then, recalling an old memory. ‘You know, your grandfather just forgot his bad days, as if they had never happened. I used to envy him for that. I still do, sometimes.’ He saw Batu looking at him and sighed. ‘Just keep your word, boy, that’s all I have for you.’

Tsubodai shivered as a breeze rushed past them.

‘If that’s you, Genghis, I’m not interested,’ he muttered, so low that Batu could barely hear the words. ‘The boy can look after himself.’

The old man pulled his old deel robe closer around him. ‘It’s too late now to ride back to your men,’ Tsubodai said a little louder. ‘You have guest rights here and I’ll send you on your way in the morning after breakfast. Coming?’

He didn’t wait for Batu to answer. The moon was showing over the horizon and Batu watched the old man walk back to the ger. He was pleased he had come and he thought he knew what he had to do.

The yam station was a surprising building to see in the middle of nowhere. Three hundred miles north of Karakorum, it had a single purpose: to work as a link in messenger chains that stretched as far as the lands of the Chin, west into Russia and as far south as Kabul. Supplies and equipment came along the same route, on slower carts, so that it could thrive. Where there was once a single ger with a few spare mounts, there was now a building of grey stone, roofed in red tile. Gers still surrounded it, presumably for the families of the riders and the few maimed soldiers who had retired there. Batu wondered idly if one day it would become a village in the wilderness. Yam riders could not move with the seasons as their ancestors had.