The Mongoliad: Book Two (The Foreworld Saga) (48 page)

Her horse stumbled, grunting deep in its chest. Lian tensed her body, clinging tightly to its mane. When the horse stumbled a second time, her heart skipped a beat. It twisted its head to the side, and she saw foam and blood on its mouth, and then it collapsed. For a brief second, she had time to stare at the thin shaft of the arrow jutting from the horse’s neck—if it had been a little higher, it would have struck her instead—and then she was flying again. The sensation was not the same, though, as she clawed and flailed at the air in an effort to grab onto anything.

She hit the ground shoulder first, and she cried out as her momentum flipped her over the point of impact and slammed her hard on her back. She slid and tumbled, and every rock on the
ground hit her like a fist—in the small of her back, on the arms and legs, on the cheek. She tried to curl up into a ball—the same way she had when the Mongol soldiers had first beaten her when they had taken her captive—but her arms and legs wouldn’t work.

Her horse screamed nearby, having broken a leg as it had fallen, and the sound was made worse by the bubbling wetness of its pierced throat.

When she stopped tumbling, Lian lay in a heap. She didn’t know if she had broken any bones in the fall, but it didn’t matter. She had failed. Even if she could stand, she was too bruised to run. Her right hand pawed at her face, a motion she couldn’t understand the genesis of, and there was a strange keening noise coming from her throat.

Hooves thundered past her head, and she felt the impact of a heavy weight against the ground nearby. “Lian!” Gansukh tried to put his arms around her, and her right hand—still wriggling like an agitated snake—vainly pushed him away. “It’s me.” He tried to pin her arm, and finding some unknown reserve of strength, she fought him all the harder.

Somehow she extricated herself from his embrace, even though she didn’t think she had the strength to stand. She could crawl, though, and on bloodied knees, she tottered away from him. Her hair was twisted and matted against her face, and she spat out a mouthful.

She meant to scream at him, but her voice died in her throat.

A line of strange soldiers stood in front of her. They wore haphazard armor, some more complete than others, and the scattered markings on their shoulders and chests were Chinese. Several of the soldiers carried spears, and having spotted both Gansukh and Lian, they lowered their spears.

Gansukh had grabbed her ankle, and he hissed at her as she struggled, but she ignored him.
Chinese!
A new opportunity had presented itself to her, a sudden and unexpected path to freedom.

“I am a prisoner,” she said in Chinese. She raised her hands, showing them her scraped and bloody palms. “Please don’t kill me.”

“What are you saying?” Gansukh hissed in her ear.

She jerked her leg free of his grip and crawled closer to the line of soldiers. Several of the Chinese soldiers lowered their spears slightly, but their general apprehension did not lessen.

“Please,” she whined, making eye contact with the nearest man. “I am captive of the
Khagan
. I beg you to free me.”

Two of the soldiers exchanged glances, chattering to one another too quickly for her to follow. The one on the left wanted to continue their mission; the one on the right was considering her request. Prisoners were always useful, he argued.

“Is this man your master?” asked the curious one. His helmet had a plume of dark feathers, and there was a precision to his words that spoke of formal education.

She nodded, letting a small sob escape from her throat.

The soldiers surged forward, their spears focusing now on Gansukh, who muttered an oath under his breath. Lian glanced over her shoulder and tried to catch Gansukh’s eye, but he was too focused on the spears to notice her effort.

A hand grabbed her arm, jerking her forward, and she gasped as the Chinese leader dragged her forward. Gansukh edged forward and then stopped, eyeing the threatening spears. She knew that look in his eye, the same sort of frantic stare a cornered animal has, one that knows what comes next but is powerless to stop it.

“Wait!”

The Chinese man wound a hand in her hair and jerked her back. She struggled in his grip, winding herself toward him, while trying to keep the soldiers from thrusting their spears into Gansukh. “He’s...he’s a special advisor to the
Khagan
,” she cried to the man holding her hair. “He has value.”

The first Chinese man, the one concerned about his mission, grunted and spat. “He doesn’t look like much.” He nodded his head toward the camp. “We don’t have time.”

“No, wait,” Lian said, frantically thinking how to convince these Chinese men without revealing too much. “They don’t look like much,” she said hurriedly, adopting a more haughty tone. “These steppe warriors are all barely one bath away from being animals, but this one is...special.”

“We don’t have time for hostages,” the first man repeated.

The man who held her hair wound his hand another revolution, pulling her closely to him. “Go,” he said to his companion. “A hostage could be useful...” He scratched his chin thoughtfully for a moment and then barked a command at his men: “Tie him up.”

“They want to take you—” Lian started to explain to Gansukh in Mongolian, but the Chinese man jerked her head back, and she cried out in pain.

Gansukh surged forward. The Chinese spears came up, and Gansukh stopped just short of the points. One of the soldiers jabbered at him to back away, lightly flicking his spear point at Gansukh’s chest to make his command clear. Glowering at the man who held Lian’s hair, Gansukh took a step back. His hand remained on the hilt of his sword.

“What were you saying to him?” Lian’s captor demanded.

“I was trying to tell him to not fight,” she insisted, trying to lessen the tension on her hair. “He is a proud man. He will not just lay down his sword because you ask him to.”

Another boom of thunder rolled across the camp, and Lian realized the sound was too slight to be real thunder. It was the concussive sound of Chinese explosives, and she swallowed the lump of fear that had risen in her throat.
Fire arrows and explosives
, she wondered.
What sort of attack is this?

The first man made a cutting motion with his hand. “We did not come for hostages,” he said, and he called to the spearmen. Half of the circle surrounding Gansukh pulled back their spears and made to follow their squad commander. “Kill them both” was his
final assessment. His men falling in behind him, he ran toward the tents of the Mongol camp.

Lian’s captor hesitated as Gansukh shrewdly eyed the soldiers still holding their spears on him. He remained still, but Lian could read the subtle change in his breathing. He thought they were going to kill him, and he was readying himself.

“Tell him to lie down,” Lian’s captor hissed in her ear. “Tell him to do it quickly, or my men will kill him.” She heard the sound of a knife being drawn from a sheath, and then the cold touch of blade eased against her throat. “And then I’ll kill you.”

She nodded, trying not to pull away from the man or the knife. “Lie down,” she said to Gansukh in Mongolian. “They want to take you prisoner.”

“Why?” he growled. His face was like a mask—only his eyes moved, tracking back and forth between the soldiers threatening him.

“I’m trying to save your life,” she insisted.

He glanced at her, and she flinched at the wounded look in his eyes—the naked accusation of betrayal.

“Please,” she whispered. “Trust me. If you don’t, we’re both dead.

” Gansukh didn’t reply, but his hand moved slowly away from the hilt of his sword. Putting both hands out in front of him, palms forward, he knelt on the ground. One of the soldiers reversed his spear and hit Gansukh in the lower back with the butt of his weapon. He collapsed on the ground, and as a soldier put a knee in his back and grabbed at his hands to bind them, he kept staring at Lian. He didn’t look away as the Chinese men hauled him up and, with a nod from their leader, dragged him into the darkness of the night.

* * *

As soon as the
Khagan
sat down to eat, Master Chucai made his excuses and left the feast for the solitude of his tent. He had been
working nonstop for nearly a week by the time the caravan had left Karakorum, and with the camp established and the
Khagan
and his entourage seated for the nighttime meal, he was no longer needed. For a few hours, he could meditate or read—he had brought along a new edition of Zhu Xi’s commentary on the Four Books that he had been looking forward to examining for some time. He found, more and more, that it was not sleep that truly recharged his vitality but more spiritual activities. When he lay down at night, parts of his mind churned over the matters of the Empire, and while he found new solutions to problems waiting for him when he awoke, sleep was never particularly restful. Meditation and reflection were his most treasured activities, and there had been a scarcity of both in the last few weeks.

The shouting of the guards stirred him from his meditation, and his eyes snapped open. His
ger
had been dark but for a single flame in a small brazier and the ambient light from the camp that slipped through the space he had left open at the top of the tent flaps, but there was more light spilling into his
ger
than he had expected to see. Not sunlight.
Firelight.

Master Chucai leaped to his feet and raced to the entrance of the
ger
. He clawed open the flaps and rushed out. His primary concern was the
Khagan
’s
ger
, and he quickly ascertained that it was undamaged and that the figures milling around it were the Imperial Guard. He was too far away to make out individuals among the clustered guards, but he assumed Munokhoi would not tarry long at the
Khagan
’s
ger
.
He will take the fight to the enemy
, Chucai thought as he strode through the maze of tents and wagons.
The men guarding the
Khagan
will be diligent, but they won’t be imaginative.

He had had some reservations about putting the hotheaded
jaghun
captain in charge of the entire Imperial Guard that was accompanying the caravan to Burqan-qaldun, but Ögedei had ignored his concerns. While he had no doubt Munokhoi would ruthlessly
deal with the fools who had mistakenly thought they had stumbled upon a wealthy caravan, it would probably be best to ensure that the
Khagan
remained safe during the fracas.

Chucai came to a sudden halt. He stared at a nearby tent, watching as a trio of overdressed courtiers struggled to douse the flames slithering across the tent’s roof. Blinking his eyes clear of the dust and ash floating in the air, he slowly turned his head and carefully examined the spread of the fires throughout the camp. An idea swam in the depth of his brain, like an enormous koi in a murky pond, and he tried to remain still so as to not spook it, so that it would come to the surface where he could fully apprehend it. There was a pattern to the fires. They weren’t randomly scattered throughout the camp.

Archers
, he noted,
firing from an elevated position
. He scanned the horizon, trying to spot some sign of where the attack had come from, but the smoke from the fires dirtied the air too much to spot any such sign.
This isn’t an accident
, he realized, discarding the idea that this attack had been a case of mistaken identity.

Initially, the
Khagan
had wanted to travel with a smaller entourage—none of his wives, a minimum of supply wagons, and only a single
jaghun
to protect him. The idea had been ridiculous, and Chucai had dismissed it outright, arguing that the
Khagan
could travel with no less than a
minghan
—one thousand men—as his personal security force. And, of course, a thousand men would have required a commensurate increase in supplies, which would have, in turn, increased the amount of time it would take to assemble the caravan. While Chucai thought the desire to travel to Burqan-qaldun was more than a passing fancy on the part of the
Khagan
, he wasn’t the sort of eager sycophant who would fail to question the ramifications of an idle whim. While the Empire was fairly safe to travel—especially in the heart of territory that had been under Mongol rule for several generations—it didn’t mean that the
Khagan
’s personal safety wasn’t still of paramount importance. There was always the possibility of
attacks by roving bandits—clanless men who would prey on an insufficiently protected caravan or a group of nomadic herders.

But bandits didn’t announce themselves with a volley of flaming arrows. Fire would destroy the very cargo they were hoping to steal.

His own reaction to the attack had been mindless. He had leaped to a conclusion that wasn’t supported by what was actually happening around him. Wasn’t that one of the very lessons Zhu Xi sought to impart in his commentary? This attack was directed at the
Khagan
; the raiders knew whose caravan they were attacking. The true question—the one he should have been asking earlier—was why?

Chucai heard a distant crump of noise, and he knew at once that it was the sound of black powder igniting. Grimly, he nodded to himself as he began to walk toward the
Khagan
’s
ger
again. He wasn’t hurried. He took his time, his gaze sweeping back and forth across the chaos. His height gave him an advantage; while he couldn’t see over the tents, the scurrying frenzy of panicked courtiers and concubines and shouting soldiers did little to block his field of view. Chucai walked and watched, looking for the real reason the camp had been attacked.

If the goal of the attack was to assassinate the
Khagan
, then why hadn’t they set fire to the
Khagan
’s
ger
? Were their archers that unskilled? Chucai doubted that was true. In which case, the fires were a distraction, a means of splitting the Imperial Guard. But why?

Chucai cut to his right, no longer moving directly toward the
Khagan
’s
ger
. Something had caught his eye. He wasn’t sure what he had seen, and it was possible he was chasing a ghost, a writhing smoke shadow cast by firelight.