‘I will, when I am certain the scouts are all out and the wounded are being taken back to the main camp. It will be a cold meal tonight.’
Bayar bit his lip, then decided to speak again.
‘You need to be alert for tomorrow, my lord. Uriang-Khadai and I have everything else in hand. Please rest.’
Kublai stared at him. Though his body ached and his legs felt weak with weariness, he could not imagine sleeping. There was too much to do.
‘I’ll try,’ he promised. ‘When I have spoken to the orlok.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ Bayar said.
A scout came through the camp, searching the wounded and those tending them. Kublai saw him first and his heart sank. He watched the man out of the corner of his eye, seeing him ask someone who pointed in Kublai’s direction. As the scout came up, Kublai glared at him.
‘What is it?’
‘A third army, my lord. Coming from the east.’
‘Are you sure this isn’t the same report I had before?’ Kublai demanded. The man paled to see him angry and Kublai tried to get a hold of himself.
‘No, my lord. They have been marked. This is a new one, around sixty thousand strong.’
‘The wasp nest,’ Bayar murmured at Kublai’s side. He nodded.
Kublai wanted to ride again immediately, but Uriang-Khadai came to him as he was spooning a bowl of cold stew into his mouth and chewing, his eyes glazed.
The orlok had a strange expression on his face as he stood before Kublai. In less than a week, they had survived two major battles, each time outnumbered. Uriang-Khadai had expected the younger man to falter a hundred times, but he had always been there, giving calm orders, shoring up a failing line, sending in reinforcements as necessary. The orlok saw exhaustion in the khan’s brother, but he had not broken under the strain, at least not yet.
‘My lord, the third army is smaller and won’t be in range until tomorrow or the day after. If we ride towards them now, we can rest before the battle. The men will be fresher and if we have to fight twice tomorrow, they have a better chance of living through it.’
Uriang-Khadai was tense as he waited for an answer. He had grown used to the younger man ignoring his advice, but out of a sense of duty, he still gave it. He was ready to be rebuffed.
‘All right,’ Kublai said, surprising him. ‘We’ll ride east and break contact with the large force.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ Uriang-Khadai said, almost stammering his answer. It did not seem enough. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
Kublai put down the empty bowl and rubbed his face with both hands. Apart from being unconscious for a time, he could not remember when he had last slept. He felt dizzy and ill.
‘I may not always listen, orlok. But you have more experience than me. I don’t forget that. We’ll move the main camp out of their range as well. I need to find a safe place for them, a forest or a valley where they can rest. We have to keep moving and they can’t match our pace.’
Uriang-Khadai murmured a response and unbent enough to bow. He wanted to say something to raise the spirits of the young man who sat with his legs sprawled, too tired to move. Nothing came to mind and he bowed again as he withdrew.
Bayar had seen the exchange and strolled over, his mouth quirking as he watched Uriang-Khadai begin to issue the new orders.
‘He likes you, you know,’ Bayar said.
‘He thinks I am a fool,’ Kublai said without thinking, then chewed his lips irritably. Tiredness made it hard to keep his mouth shut. He had to lead without any show of weakness, not invite confidences.
‘No, he doesn’t,’ Bayar replied. He nodded to himself, still watching Uriang-Khadai. ‘Did you see him this morning when the Sung overran the wing? He didn’t panic, just pulled back, re-formed the men and shored up his position. It was good work.’
Kublai wished Bayar would stop talking. The last thing he wanted was to invite one officer to comment on another.
‘He isn’t a natural leader, Uriang-Khadai,’ Bayar said.
Kublai closed his eyes with a sigh, seeing green lights flash across the darkness.
‘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
