Conn Iggulden - Conqueror (2011)

‘Get up,’ Mongke snapped as he passed them. ‘Bow if you must, but I will not suffer this Chin grovelling in my presence.’

He seated himself on Guyuk’s ornate throne with an expression of disgust. They rose hesitantly and Mongke frowned as he looked closely at them. There was not a true Mongol in the room, the legacy of Guyuk’s few years as khan as well as his father before him. What good had it done to conquer a nation if the khanate was taken over from within? Blood came first, though that simple truth had been lost to men like Guyuk and Ogedai. The men in the room ran the empire, set taxes and made themselves rich, while their conquerors still lived in simple poverty. Mongke showed his teeth at the thought, frightening them all further. His gaze fell on Yao Shu, the khan’s chancellor. Mongke studied him for a time, remembering old lessons with the Chin monk. From Yao Shu he had learned Buddhism, Arabic and Mandarin. Though Mongke disdained much of what he had been taught, he still admired the old man and Yao Shu probably was indispensable. Mongke rose from the throne and walked along their lines, marking senior men with a brief hand on their shoulders.

‘Stand by the throne,’ he told them, moving on as they scurried to obey. In the end, he chose six, then stopped at Yao Shu. The chancellor still stood straight, though he was by far the oldest man in the room. He had known Genghis in his youth and Mongke could honour him for that at least.

‘You may have these as your staff, chancellor. The rest will come from the nation, from those of Mongol blood only. Train them to take over from you. I will not have my city run by foreigners.’

Yao Shu looked ashen, but he could only bow in response.

Mongke smiled. He was wearing full armour, a signal to them that the days of silk were at an end. The nation had been raised in war, then run by Chin courtiers. It would not do. Mongke walked to one of his guards and murmured an order into his ear. The man departed at a run and the scribes and courtiers waited nervously as Mongke stood before them, still smiling slightly as he gazed out of the open window to the city beyond.

When the warrior returned, he carried a slender staff with a strip of leather at the end. Mongke took it and rolled his shoulders.

‘You have grown fat on a city that does not need you,’ he told the men, swishing the air with the whip. ‘No longer. Get out of my house.’

For an instant, the assembled men stood in shock at his words. It was all the hesitation he needed.

‘And you have grown slow under Guyuk and Ogedai. When a man, any man, of the nation gives you an order, you move!’

He brought the whip across the face of the nearest scribe, making sure that he struck with the wooden pole. The man fell backwards with a yelp and Mongke began laying about him in great sweeps. Cries of panic went up as they struggled to get away from him. Mongke grinned as he struck and struck again, sometimes drawing blood. They streamed out of the room and he pursued them in a frenzy, whipping their legs and faces, whatever he could reach.

He drove them down the cloisters and out into the marshalling yard of the palace, where the silver tree stood shining in the sun. Some of them fell and Mongke laughingly kicked them to their feet so that they stumbled on with aching ribs. He was a warrior among sheep and he used the whip to snap them back into a group as he might have herded lambs. They stumbled ahead until the city gate loomed, with Guards looking down in amusement from the towers on either side. Mongke did not pause in his efforts, though he was running with sweat. He kicked and shoved and tore at them until the last man was outside the walls. Only then did he pause, panting, with the shadow of the gate falling across him.

‘You have had enough from the nation,’ he called to them. ‘It is time to work for your food like honest men, or starve. Enter my city again and I will take your heads.’

A great wail of distress and anger went up from the group and for a moment Mongke even thought they might rush him. Many had wives and children still in the city, but he cared nothing for that. The lust to punish was strong in him and he almost wished they would dare to attack, so he could draw his sword. He did not fear scholars and scribes. They were Chin men and, for all their fury and cleverness, they could do nothing.

When the group had subsided into impotent muttering, Mongke looked up at the Guards above his head.

‘Close the gate,’ he ordered. ‘Note their faces. If you see a single one again inside the walls, you have my permission to put an arrow in them.’

He laughed then at the spite and horror he saw in the crowd of battered and bruised courtiers. Not one had the courage to challenge his orders. He waited as the gates were pushed closed, the line of sight to the plains shrinking to a crack and then nothing. Outside, they wailed and wept as Mongke nodded to the Day Guards and threw down the bloody whip at last, walking back alone to the palace. As he went, he saw thousands of Chin faces peering out from houses at the man who would be khan in spring. He grimaced, reminded once again that the city had fallen far from its origins. Well, he was no Guyuk to be baulked for years in his ambition. The nation was his.

The smell of aloes wood had faded since the morning. The city reeked again, reminding Mongke of a healing tent after a battle. He thought sourly of festering wounds he had seen, fat and shiny with pus. It took courage and a steady hand to drain such a wound: a gash and a sharp pain to let the healing begin. He smiled as he walked. He would be that hand.

The entire city was in uproar by the time darkness came. On Mongke’s orders, warriors had entered Karakorum in force, groups of ten or twenty walking every street and examining the possessions of thousands of families. At the first hint of resistance, they dragged owners into the street and beat them publicly, leaving them on the cobbles until their relatives dared to come out and take them back. Some lay where they had been thrown all night.

Even sickbeds were searched for hidden gold or silver, with the occupants tossed out with their sheets and made to stand in the cold until the warriors were satisfied. There were many of those, coughing listlessly and still feverish as they stood with blank eyes. Chin families suffered more than other groups, though the Moslem jewellers lost all their stock in a single night, from raw materials to finished items ready for sale. In theory, all things would be accounted, but the reality was that anything of value disappeared into the deels the warriors wore over their armour.

Dawn brought no respite and only revealed the destruction. There was at least one sprawled body in every street and the weeping of women and children could be heard across Karakorum.

The palace was the centre of it, beginning with a search of the sumptuous rooms that had belonged to the khan’s staff and favourites. Wives were either claimed by Mongke’s officers or put outside the walls to join their husbands. The trappings of status were ripped down, from tapestries to Buddhist statuary. There at least, Mongke’s eye could be felt and what treasures they found were dutifully collected and piled in the storerooms below. More were burnt in great fires on the streets.

As evening came on his second day back in the city, Mongke summoned his two most trusted generals to the audience room in the palace. Ilugei and Noyan were Mongols in his mould, strong men who had grown up with a bow in their hands. Neither man affected any sign of Chin culture and already those who had done so were shaving their heads and ridding themselves of the artefacts of that nation. The orlok’s will had been made clear enough when he whipped the Chin scribes from the city.