Conn Iggulden - Conqueror (2011)

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.