Conn Iggulden - Conqueror (2011)

‘Did anyone else reach you?’ the man said. He leaned forward on his locked arms, panting like a dog. Bayar shook his head and the yam rider swore and spat. ‘There were twelve of us. I’ve been searching and riding for a long time.’ The eyes were angry and Bayar bristled in response.

‘We were enjoying ourselves, seeing a bit of the local country. You found us in the end. Now would you like to deliver your message, or shall I have that arrow cut out first?’

The second rider had been searched and allowed to approach Kublai, opening his leather bag and handing over a folded sheet sealed with Mongke’s mark in wax. Bayar and the wounded man watched in silence as Kublai broke the seal and read.

‘No need now. He already knows.’

The wounded yam rider sagged and Bayar took him under the arms, ignoring the stink of sweat and urine. He could feel heat radiating from the flesh, a sure sign of fever. Even then, Bayar was surprised at the lack of weight. The young man had almost starved to bring the message and he wondered what could have been so important as to send twelve riders with the same message. Bayar knew enough to suspect no good news ever arrived in that way. He called one of his officers over.

‘Fetch a shaman. If he’s to live, the arrowhead will have to be dug out and the wound cleaned. Take him from me.’ He passed the dazed rider over and stood, unconsciously wiping his hands down his leggings.

Kublai had grown pale as he read. The sheet with its broken seal hung forgotten from his hand. He stared into the distance, his eyes like dull glass. Bayar’s mood sank further as he walked across to him.

‘As bad as that?’ the general said quietly.

‘As bad as that,’ Kublai confirmed, his voice hoarse with grief.

Xuan felt alive for the first time in years as he rode west. The old skills were still there, long dormant, like seeds beneath the autumn leaves. He could see his men felt the same. They had grown old in captivity, their best years wasted and thrown away, but with every mile they rode from Hangzhou, the past was further behind. More important than that was the news that had come as they left the city. Mongol scouts had been captured as they came south. Each carried an identical message written in the script of their homeland.

Xuan had seen one of the originals, still stained with the blood of its owner. Only a suspicious mind could have seen the benefits of announcing the khan’s death as he rode south. Xuan had that mind, made so by years of captivity. Even so, he longed for the news to be true. He knew the traditions the Mongols followed so slavishly. If they returned home, it would be an answer to his prayers, indeed the prayers of the Sung nation.

He shook his head in the wind, clearing his thoughts with the physical movement. Whether Mongke Khan was truly dead or engaged in some dark game did not matter to him. Xuan did not know if he would live when they found Kublai’s tumans, but he was certain he would never return to Hangzhou.

He looked across at his eldest son, riding on his right hand. Liao-Jin was still swept up in the sheer ecstasy of freedom, no matter where they rode or who might face them. He had thrown himself into the training with all the energy of his youth. Xuan smiled to himself. The men liked him. He would have made a fine emperor, if there had been an empire for him to rule. None of that mattered. They were free. The word was like sweet summer to every man there.

In the chaotic activity of preparing eight thousand men to ride with Sung regiments, it had not been hard to bring Xuan’s other children out of captivity. Xuan had simply sent two of his men on horseback through the city streets, with orders in his own hand. No one had dared to question his new authority, or if they had, the responses had been too slow to stop them. Xuan had even hired servants for them with his Sung cousin’s silver. Given just one moonless night, he would send them north with a few of the best Chin men remaining to him. They would survive in their old lands, somehow. He had not yet told Liao-Jin that his son would travel with them, away from the Mongol tumans coming east.

On either side of the Chin force, Sung lords rode. Lord Jin An had been as good as his word and provided almost fifty thousand soldiers, half of them cavalry. Xuan had not known the young lord was a man of such power, but it seemed his clan had been leaders in the field of war for many generations. Lord Jin An had managed to persuade one other to join him, a cousin who brought another forty thousand to the ranks. To Xuan, it felt like a huge host, though both the Sung lords still seethed at the lack of support from the council, or the emperor himself.

They had brought hundreds of cannon that cut their pace down to a third of what it could have been, but Xuan took heart from the sight of those black tubes trundling along good Sung roads. There were times when Xuan could even dream of futures where he destroyed the Mongol army that was cutting its way through the Sung territories. A solid victory would unite even the council of lords, so that they would move as one against the greater threat in the north. On his most optimistic days, Xuan allowed himself to imagine his old lands returned to him. It was a good thought, but he smiled at his own foolishness. The Mongols had not been beaten for generations. He only wished Tsaio-Wen was there to see Chin soldiers riding with pride. The surly Sung officer had managed to vanish at the same time as the orders for him to report to the barracks had been sent. A coward at the last, Xuan thought. That too did not matter.

Shaoyang was not many miles ahead and the scouts were out, watching for the first sign of Kublai’s tumans. The Mongols had been in the area months before and Xuan did not expect them to be close, but he would find them. He would run them down. Xuan reached out and patted his horse’s neck, feeling again the exultation of being out at last. He turned to Liao-Jin and shouted above the noise of horses and men.

‘Take out the banners, Liao-Jin. Show the Sung who we are.’

He saw the flash of white teeth from his son as he passed on the orders to bannermen on either side. In its way, it had been the hardest task of the previous few months. Finding cloth had not been difficult, but Xuan had been forced to give the task to his own men, in case the news reached the lords or his emperor cousin and was forbidden before he could ride. They had shaped and sewed and cut the long banners, marking yellow silk with the painted chop of Xuan’s noble house. Xuan found he was holding his breath as the bannermen unfurled the cloth. The streaming banners fluttered in the wind, stretching out in lines of gold.

The last Chin army raised their heads. Many of them grew bright-eyed with tears at a sight they had never expected to see again. They cheered the banners of a Chin emperor and Xuan felt his throat grow thick with pride and grief and joy.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

As the afternoon wore on, the tumans remained in the same place, just a few miles east of Shaoyang. The warriors saw that Kublai’s ger was being assembled and the constant, slight tension vanished. There would be no sudden order to mount and ride while the white ger was up. Between them, the eighty thousand men had three hundred thousand spare horses that ran together in a herd like the leaves of a forest, brown and grey and black and dun. As well as providing blood and milk for their riders, the ponies all carried some item of kit, from spare armour scales, ropes and glue, to hard blocks of cheese. It was the secret of their success that alone of all nations they could raid for hundreds of miles from the main camp.