to the front.’
Mongke nodded. ‘That will do. Use the bows first, before the young men go in hand-to-hand. Keep the hotheads back until the enemy is reeling. There aren’t so many of them. We should be finished with this by noon.’
Seriankh smiled at that. It was not so long ago that a force of a hundred thousand would have been a battle to the last man, a bloody and desperate struggle. The force of tumans Mongke had brought had never been seen before and all the senior men were enjoying themselves with such strength at their backs.
Somewhere nearby, Mongke heard a jingle of saddle bells and he cursed softly. Another yam rider had caught up. Without the way stations to change his horse, he would have ridden to exhaustion to bring his letters.
‘I am never left alone,’ Mongke muttered.
Seriankh heard.
‘I could lose a yam rider at the rear until the battle is over,’ he said.
Mongke shook his head. ‘No. The khan never sleeps, apparently. Isn’t that what they say? I know
Seriankh bowed deeply and strode away, already issuing orders to his staff that would ripple down to every warrior in the tumans.
The yam rider was so caked in dust and mud as to appear almost one with his horse. As he dismounted, fresh cracks appeared in the muck that covered him. He wore only a small leather pack across his shoulders and he was very thin. Mongke wondered when the man had last eaten, without yam stations to keep him going in Sung lands. There would have been little or nothing to scavenge in the wake of the tumans, that much was certain.
Two of the khan’s guards approached the rider. He looked surprised, but stood with his arms outstretched and his palms visible as they searched him thoroughly. Even the leather pack was opened, its sheaf of yellow papers handed to the rider before it was tossed down. He rolled his eyes at such caution, clearly amused. At last they were finished and turned away to mount with the rest. Mongke waited patiently, his hand outstretched for the messages.
The yam rider was older than most, he saw, perhaps approaching the end of his career. He did indeed look exhausted through the grime of hard riding. Mongke took the sheaf from him and began to read, his brow creasing in puzzlement.
‘These are stock lists from Xanadu,’ he said. ‘Have you brought me the wrong pack?’
The rider stepped closer, peering at the pages. He reached for them and Mongke didn’t see the thin razor he had kept concealed between his outstretched fingers. It was no wider than a finger itself, so that just the very edge of it glinted as he drew it sharply across Mongke’s throat, forward then back. The flesh opened like a seam under tension, a white-lipped mouth that spattered them both with blood.
Mongke choked and raised his right hand to the wound. With his left, he shoved the man away so he fell sprawling. Shouts of rage and horror went up and a warrior threw himself from the saddle at the khan’s attacker as he tried to scramble up, pinning him to the ground.
Mongke felt the warmth pouring out of him, leaving his flesh like stone. He stood, his legs locked and braced against the earth. His fingers could not hold the wound closed and his eyes were desperate. Men were shouting everywhere, racing back and forth and calling for Seriankh and the khan’s shaman. He could see their open mouths, but Mongke could not hear them, just a drum pulsing in his ears and a rushing sound like water. He eased himself down to a sitting position, showing his teeth as the pain grew. He was aware of someone binding a strip of cloth around his neck and hand, pressing hard on the wound so that he could not breathe. He tried to fight them off, but his great strength had deserted him. His vision began to constrict and he still could not believe it was truly happening. Someone would stop it. Someone would help him. His skin grew pale as blood left him in a pulsing stream. He sagged to one side, his eyes growing dull.
Seriankh stood over him, his eyes wide with shock. He had spoken to the khan only moments before and he stared in disbelief at the twisted figure with the right hand bound into bloody bandages tied tightly around the throat. Blood was sinking into the grass, making it black and wet.
Seriankh turned slowly to see the yam rider. His face had been smashed in by fists while Mongke died. His teeth and nose were broken and one of his eyes had been speared by a thumb. Even so, he laughed at Seriankh and spoke in a language the orlok did not know, his slurred speech sounding triumphant. His cheeks were pale under the dirt, Seriankh saw, as if he had shaved a beard and revealed skin long hidden from the sun. The Assassin was still laughing as Seriankh had him bound for torture. The Sung army was forgotten as Seriankh ordered braziers and iron tools made ready. The Mongols understood both suffering and punishment. They would keep him alive as long as they could.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Kublai stared as he trotted along the road to Shaoyang. The city was deep into the Sung heartland and he suspected it had not been attacked in centuries. Instead of a solid outer wall, it sprawled over square miles, a central hub surrounded by smaller towns that had grown together over centuries. It made Xanadu look like a provincial town and even Karakorum would have been lost in it. He tried to make an estimate of the numbers of people who must live in such a vast landscape of buildings, shops and temples, but it was too much to take in.
His tumans were drooping with exhaustion, having forced themselves to trot and walk, trot and walk for seventy miles or more, leaving their pursuers as far behind as possible. He had sent light scouts to the city, but he doubted they were more than a day ahead of him, such was the pace he had set. Both his men and their mounts were close to collapse. They needed a month of rest, good food and grazing before they went back to the fighting, but they would not find it in Shaoyang, with enemies all around.
As the first of the tumans walked their horses into an open street, there was no sign of the inhabitants. Such a place could not be defended and he could only wonder at a society where walls had been torn down to build new districts. It was hard even to imagine such a settled life.
There was no sign of a garrison riding out to meet them. Kublai’s scouts had already questioned the inhabitants, alternating between bribery and threats. He had been lucky, but after months of hard fighting, he was due a little luck. The garrison was apparently in the field, ten thousand of the Sung emperor’s finest sword and crossbowmen. Kublai wished them a long hunt, many, many miles away.
He heard Uriang-Khadai give a horn signal that sent two groups of three tumans on wider paths to the centre of the city, so that they would not all approach along the same road. Kublai supposed Shaoyang had a centre, that its oldest places would have been swallowed in the rambling districts. He did not enjoy riding along streets where the roofs loomed over him. It was too easy to imagine archers appearing suddenly, shooting down into men who had little room to manoeuvre. Once again, he was glad of the armour Mongke had made him wear.
Shaoyang seemed deserted, but Kublai felt eyes on him in the silence and he could see the closest officers were nervous, jerking their heads at the slightest hint of movement. They almost drew swords when a high voice sounded nearby, but it was just a child crying behind closed doors.
The tumans who rode with Kublai carried his banners, hanging limp in the windless roads. He was marked by them as leader for anyone who might have been watching and he felt his heart beating faster, convincing himself in the silence that it was a trap. As he passed each side street, he tensed, craning his neck to see down it, past the stone gutters and roadways to shuttered shops and tall stone buildings, sometimes three or four storeys high. No one came rushing out to drag his men from their horses. When he heard hooves clattering ahead, he assumed the sound came from some of his own men. He had single warriors out as scouts, but the streets were a labyrinth and there was no sign of them as he saw a small group of horsemen ahead.
The strangers were not armoured. They wore simple leggings and tunics and two of them were bare-armed, guiding their horses easily. Kublai took in the details as he looked around him once again for an ambush. The roofs remained clear and nothing moved. The Sung horsemen just sat and stared at them, then one of them spoke to the others and they began to walk their mounts slowly forward.
Around Kublai, swords came out of scabbards with a silk whisper. Bows creaked as they were made ready. The strangers moved stiffly under that close attention, very aware that the street could become their place of death with just one wrong step.
‘Let them come,’ Kublai murmured to those near him. ‘I can’t see any weapons.’
