Conn Iggulden - Conqueror (2011)

‘The men respect him,’ Bayar went on. ‘They have seen his competence. They don’t worship him, but they know he won’t throw them away for nothing. That means a great deal to the ranks.’

‘Enough, general. He’s a good man and so are you. We all are. Now get on your horse and drag the tumans twenty more miles so we can intercept a Sung lord.’

Bayar laughed at the tone, but he ran to his horse and was wheeling the mount and giving orders before Kublai dragged his eyes open again.

In the years since Mongke had become khan, the numbers in the nation had grown beyond anything Genghis would have recognised. His brother Arik-Boke had benefited from peace on the plains of home and the birth rate had soared. Karakorum had become a settled city, with a growing population outside the walls in new districts of stone and wood, so that the original city was hidden from view. The soil was good and Mongke had encouraged large families, knowing that they would swell the armies of the khan. When he rode out in spring, he took with him twenty-eight tumans, more than quarter of a million men, travelling light and fast. They took no cannon and only the minimum of supplies. With horsemen just like those, Genghis and Tsubodai had swept across continents. Mongke was ready to do the same.

He had tried to be a modern khan, to continue the work Ogedai had begun in making a stable civilisation across the vast territories of his khanate. For years, he had struggled with the urge to be in the field, to ride, to conquer. Every instinct had pulled his mind away from the petty rule of cities, but he had strangled all his doubts, forcing himself to rule while his generals, princes and brothers cut the new paths. The great khanate had been won quickly, in just three generations. He could not escape a sense that it could be lost even faster unless he built and made laws to last. He had fostered trade links and yam stations, strings across the land that bound men together, so that the poorest sheep farmer knew there was a khan as his lord. Mongke had seen to it that each vast region had its khanate government reporting to him, so that those who had suffered could make their complaint and perhaps even see warriors come to answer for them. At times, he thought it was too big, too complicated for anyone to understand, but somehow it worked. Where there was obvious corruption, it was rooted out by his scribes and those responsible were removed from their high positions. The governors of his cities knew they answered to a higher authority than their own and it kept them quiet, whether from fear or security, he did not know. The taxes came in a flood, and rather than bury them in vaults, he used them to build schools, roads and new towns for the nation.

Peace was more effort than war, Mongke had realised early on in his time as khan. Peace wore a man down, where war could give him life and strength. There had been times when he thought his brothers would return to Karakorum to find him a withered husk, ground to nothing under the great stone of responsibility that was always turning above his head.

As he rode with his tumans, Mongke felt himself shedding the weight of the years. It was hard not to think of his trek with Tsubodai, facing Christian knights and battering foreign armies into submission. Tsubodai would have given fingers from his right hand for such an army as the one Mongke now commanded. Mongke had been young then and being back in the saddle with armed ranks before and behind was rejuvenating, an echo of his youth that filled him with joy. His horizons had been too small for too long. Chin lands lay to the south and he would see this new city Kublai had created on the good black soil. He would see Xanadu and decide for himself if Kublai had overstepped his authority. He could not imagine Hulegu ever turning away from the great khan, his brother, but Kublai had always been independent, a man who needed to know he was watched. Mongke could not shake the suspicion that he had better not leave Kublai too long alone.

Hulegu’s letter to him under personal seal had been the only sour moment in months of preparation. Mongke told himself he did not fear the Assassins his brother had stirred from their apathy, but what man would not? He knew he could hold his nerve in a battle, with everything going wrong around him. He could lead a charge and face men. His courage was a proven thing. Yet the thought of some masked murderer pressing a knife to his throat as he slept made him shudder. If there were Assassins dedicated to his death, he had surely left them behind for another year or two.

Arik-Boke had come to Karakorum to take over the administration while he was away. Mongke had made sure he too understood the risk, but his youngest brother had laughed, pointing to the guards and servants that scurried everywhere in the palace and the city. No one could get in unseen. It had eased Mongke’s mind to know his brother would be safe - and to leave the city behind him.

In just fourteen days, his tumans were in range of Xanadu, less than two hundred miles north of Yenking and the northern Chin lands. Half his army were barely twenty years old and they rode the distances easily, while Mongke suffered from lack of fitness. Only his pride kept him going when his muscles were ropes of pain, but the worst days came early and his body began to remember its old strength after nine or ten in the saddle.

Mongke shook his head in silent awe at the sight of a new city growing on the horizon. His brother had created something on the grand scale, turning fantasies into reality. Mongke found he was proud of Kublai and he wondered what changes he would see when they met again. He could not deny his own sense of satisfaction in bringing it about. He had sent Kublai into the world, forcing his younger brother to look beyond his dusty books. He knew Kublai was unlikely to be grateful, but that was the way of things.

They stopped in Xanadu long enough for Mongke to tour the city and work his way through the dozens of yam messages that had gone ahead or reached him while he travelled. He grumbled as he dealt with them, but there were few places he could ride where the yam riders couldn’t find him eventually. The khanates did not remain still simply because Mongke was in the field. On some days, he found himself working as hard as he had in Karakorum and enjoying it about as much.

He stripped Xanadu of food, salt and tea in the short time he was there. The inhabitants would go hungry for a while, but his was the greater need. So many tumans could not scavenge as they went. For the first time in his memory, Mongke had to keep a supply line open behind him, so that there were always hundreds of carts coming slowly south in the wake of his warriors. The supplies backed up while he rested in Xanadu, but when he left, they spread out again, paid for thousands of miles away in Karakorum and the northern Chin cities. Mongke grinned at the thought of his shadow stretching so far. Their food would catch them up whenever they stopped and he thought bandits were unlikely to risk raiding his carts, with the khan’s scouts never too far away.

He pushed the tumans south, revelling in the distances they could travel, faster than anyone but a yam rider able to change horses at every station. For the great khan, the tumans would ride to the end of the world without complaint. On minimum rations, he had already lost some of the flesh that clung to his waist and his stamina was increasing, adding to his sense of well-being.

Mongke crossed the northern Sung border on a cold autumn day, with the wind blustering along the lines of horsemen. Hangzhou lay five hundred miles to the south, but there were at least thirty cities between the tumans and the emperor’s capital, each well garrisoned. Mongke smiled as he rode, kicking in his heels and enjoying the rush of air past his face. He had given Kublai a simple task, but his brother could never have succeeded on his own. The twenty-eight tumans Mongke had brought would be the hammer that crushed the Sung emperor. It was an army greater than any Genghis had ever put in the field and as he galloped along a dusty road, Mongke felt his years in Karakorum slowly tear into dusty rags, leaving him fresh and unencumbered. For once, the yam riders were behind. Without the staging posts, they could make no better time than his own men and he felt truly free for the first time in years. He understood at last the truth of Genghis’ words. There was no better way to spend a life than this.