were all men who had fought with courage and been battered to the ground. From a town of ten thousand, it was a pitifully small number, but he could at least have the glimmerings of respect for those few. He watched in stern silence as they stood and rubbed their wrists. Two of the nine were sobbing, while the rest stared at him in mute horror and impotent rage. He felt it like good wine in his mouth, making him strong.
He did not speak the local tongue, so he had his words repeated by one of the chemists, a turban-wearing Moslem named Abu-Karim.
‘I will give you horses,’ Hulegu said. ‘You will go ahead of my warriors, my carts and guns. Ride west and south and tell them I am coming. Tell each man you meet that he must open his doors to me, that he must give me his wives and daughters to be mine and his wealth, which will also be mine. He may keep his life. Tell them that if a city, or a town, or a single home bars its doors to me, I will visit destruction on them all, until the earth itself cries out in pain.’
He turned away then, not bothering to wait until the translator was finished. Baghdad was to the south-west and the caliph there had sent more blustering threats and lies. To the north, Hulegu felt the pull of the Assassin strongholds. He grunted in irritation at being caught between the two desires.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kublai could see a multitude around him, from those digging toilet pits, to warriors leading horses and women tending cooking fires for their husbands and sons. He had never known the life of a moving tribe, but something in him found peace in it. Looking into the distance, he wondered again at the veritable nation he had brought south. There must have been half a million souls in the column that rode down the border of Sung lands. He was not even sure of the true number.
He stretched his back with a soft groan as his wife and son prepared his ger for him. Not that little Zhenjin was much use, he noticed. Mongke’s orders had not extended to his family and the ten-year-old still wore a Chin silk tunic and leggings, down to a pair of soft sheepskin boots. His topknot of black hair flicked back and forth with every movement. Kublai tried not to laugh as he saw the boy sneak a handful of steaming meat scraps from the pile that Chabi was working into pouches. She had only looked away for a moment, but the boy had quick hands. Zhenjin had stuffed his cheeks before she turned back. It was bad luck that his mother chose that moment to ask a question, or perhaps not. Chabi adored and spoiled her first-born, but that did not mean her instincts were blunt. As Zhenjin struggled to reply around a mouthful of hot meat, she poked him in the stomach and he sprayed bits of food, giggling.
Kublai smiled. He could still be surprised at the strength of his emotions when he looked over his family. It wasn’t just that the boy delighted him, but a moment with his family could bring sudden understanding of his own parents. His father had given his life to save a khan, and Kublai finally appreciated the scale of that sacrifice. The man had acted for the nation, knowing he would never see his sons or his wife again. In a strange way, it left a debt to be paid by all of them, as well as a sense that however they lived their lives, they could not equal their father’s final act. Kublai sensed Mongke struggled with the same burden. His older brother was trying to fit an ideal, but he would never know peace looking for the approval of the dead.
At least Mongke had not stinted in men or supplies. With Uriang-Khadai as orlok and Bayar as his senior general, Kublai travelled with two hundred iron cannon and thousands more carts filled with gunpowder and equipment under heavy tarpaulins. He had a staff of ninety-four men and women to handle the moving nation. As he stood there in his reverie, he could see some of them close by. When he had eaten, they would come to him with the details, plaints and problems of so many. He sighed at the thought, but the tasks were not beyond him, not yet. He crashed into slumber each night, yet still rose before dawn and practised with the sword and bow. When the armour had begun to feel light on him, Kublai could even imagine thanking Mongke for the changes he had wrought. The khan knew more about being a warrior than his brother. Unfortunately, it was all he knew.
Kublai felt an itch in his armpit and worked his thumb under the iron scales to scratch the sores there, grunting at the small pleasure. Life was good. He had seen his Chin estates, and in his mind’s eye, green shoots were rising quickly from the black earth. Just sinking a few painted poles into the soft ground had marked a grand new venture in his life. Yao Shu had arranged the lease of thousands of plots, with the rent to be paid from the first crops. If the Chin farmers prospered, two-fifths would be Kublai’s and the money would go to making a city in the north.
It was a dream worth having, something beyond the mass of warriors and horses that filled his sight to the horizons. Though it was little more than a vast square marked out on grassland, his men had already begun calling it Shang-du, the ‘Upper Capital’. Those who did not speak the Chin languages called it Xanadu. He whispered the word aloud.
With a sigh, Chabi wiped a hand across her brow and told Zhenjin to carry the platter inside for the stove. Kublai’s mouth filled with saliva. He was always hungry these days. His wife stood and stretched her own back. He looked over at her and their eyes met, united in their weariness. His mind lost the visions of palaces as his stomach rumbled.
‘Did you get me a skin of wine?’ he said.
‘Of course,’ she replied, ‘though I hope you will not leave it empty again and complain tomorrow about how your head is bursting. There will be no sympathy from me.’
‘I never complain!’ he said, wounded. ‘I am like a stone for keeping silent.’
‘Was that some other man stumbling around the ger this morning, then? Cursing and demanding to know who had stolen his hat? I thought it was you. In fact, I hope it was you, because he was very active last night, whoever he was.’
‘You were dreaming, woman.’
She grinned at him and flicked her long hair back from her face, working quickly with her hands to tie it. He stared deliberately at her breasts as they moved under the cloth and she snorted.
‘There is a fresh bucket of water at the door for you to wash, old goat. Don’t stay out here dreaming, so the food gets cold. I know you will complain anyway, but I will ignore you.’
She went inside and Kublai could hear her berating Zhenjin for stealing some of the pouches. Kublai chuckled to himself. When he had set out from Karakorum, he had not known how long it would take to reach the Sung lands. It was almost two years since Mongke had become khan and Kublai had spent a year of that simply travelling, moving his great host south, day after day. His tumans were with their families and there was no sense of impatience in their ranks. They did not need to stop to live. For them, the journey was as much their lives as reaching the destination. In the evenings, they played with their children, sang, gambled, made love, tended the animals or a thousand other small things that they could do anywhere. For a man who had lived most of his life in Karakorum, it was a strange thing to see.
Kublai had kept his oath to Mongke and not opened a single scroll or book since leaving the city. At first, it had been a terrible hardship and he had slept badly, dreaming of old texts. On the borders of Sung lands there were many signs of that ancient culture. They had already passed through hundreds of small towns and villages and Kublai had not been able to resist snapping up written works when he found them. His growing collection travelled with him like an itch at the back of his mind.
It had been Yao Shu who offered to read them to him in the evenings. Though Kublai was uncomfortable at skirting his oath, he could not deny it was a comfort. His son Zhenjin seemed to enjoy the droning voice and sat up late when he should have been asleep, listening to every word. Kublai’s mind had suffered like a desert in time of drought and the ideas poured in, reviving him.
His body too had toughened in the months of travel. Saddle sores were just a painful memory. Like the experienced warriors, he had developed a sheath of dark yellow callus on his lower spine, about the width of a man’s hand across. He reached behind him to scratch it, frowning at the sweat-slick that stayed on his skin no matter how often he bathed. Mongke could not object to his being clean, at least. Though he wore the scaled armour, Kublai suffered less with rashes and skin rot than his men. In the humid summer, a scent of bad meat overlaid even the odour of wet wool and horses. Kublai still missed the cool Chin robes he had grown to love.
The orlok of his tumans had a ger in sight of Kublai’s, with three women and a host of servants tending his every need. Kublai squinted to see Uriang-Khadai standing over one of them, giving some instruction about the best way to stitch a saddle. The orlok’s back was arrow-straight, as always. Kublai snorted to himself. He had already
