‘What is this?’ he said softly.
‘A gift from a friend,’ Xuan replied. ‘Enough to keep you all for a time. You will survive and you will be among your own people. I do not doubt you will find others willing to help you, but no matter what happens, you have a chance at a life and children of your own. Isn’t that what you wanted, Liao-Jin? Someone was listening, perhaps. Go now. I have given you horses and only two men to accompany you, my son. They are loyal and they want to go home, but I did not want to send so many that they might think of robbing you.’ Xuan sighed. ‘I have learned not to trust. It shames me.’
‘
‘The others should go. But I am an officer in your regiment, father. Let me stay. Let me stand with you.’
‘I would rather see you live,’ Xuan said curtly. ‘There will be many here who die tomorrow. I may be one of them. If it happens, let me know my sons, my daughters are safe and free. As your commander, I order you to go with them, Liao-Jin, with my love and my blessing.’
Liao-Jin did not reply. Instead, he waited while his sisters and brother embraced their father for the last time, standing aloof from them all. Without another word, Liao-Jin walked them away into the darkness, to where the horses waited. Xuan could see little, but he listened as they mounted and his youngest girl sobbed for her father. His heart broke at the sound.
The small group moved away through the camp and once again Xuan was pleased he had thought to seek permission from Lord Jin An. There would be no startled cries from Sung sentries in the night. Jin An had enjoyed the idea of it all and had even signed papers for Xuan that would help them if they were stopped in Sung lands. Everything else was down to fate. Xuan had done his best to give them a chance.
Footsteps approached and his heart sank with heavy knowledge. He was not surprised when the dark figure spoke with Liao-Jin’s voice.
‘They are gone. If you are to die tomorrow, I will be at your side,’ his son said.
‘You should not have disobeyed me, my son,’ Xuan said. His voice grew less harsh as he went on. ‘But as you have, stay with me as I walk the camp. I won’t sleep now.’
To his surprise, Liao-Jin reached out and touched him on the shoulder. They had never been a family given to open displays of affection, which made it worth all the more. Xuan smiled in the dark as they began walking.
‘Let me tell you about the enemy, Liao-Jin. I have known them all my life.’
Karakorum was full of warriors, the plains before the city once again filled with tumans and every room in the city housing at least a family. Two hundred thousand of them had come home and the land was hunted out for a hundred miles around the city. In the cramped camps, the talk was often of Xanadu in the east, apparently crying out for citizens.
Arik-Boke stood in the deepest basements of the palace, with all life and movement far above his head. It was cold in that place and he shivered, rubbing at bumps on his arms. His brother’s body lay there and Arik-Boke could not look away. Traditionalist to the end, Mongke had left instructions for his death, that he should be taken to the same mountain as his grandfather and buried with him. When he was ready, Arik-Boke would take him there himself. The homeland would swallow his brother into the earth.
The corpse had been wrapped and the terrible white-lipped gash across the throat had been sewn shut. Even so, it made Arik-Boke shudder to be alone in the dimly lit room with a pale mockery of the brother he had known and loved. Mongke had trusted him to rule Karakorum in his absence. He had given him the ancestral homeland as his own. Mongke had understood that blood and brotherhood was a force too strong to break, even in death.
‘I have done what you wanted, my brother,’ Arik-Boke told the body. ‘You trusted me with your capital and I have not let you down. Hulegu is on his way, to honour you and everything you did for us.’
Arik-Boke did not weep. He knew Mongke would have scorned the idea of red-eyed brothers growing maudlin. He intended to drink himself unconscious, to walk among the warriors as they did the same, to sing and be sick and drink again. Perhaps then he would shed tears without shame.
‘Kublai will be home soon, brother,’ Arik-Boke said. He sighed to himself. He would have to go back to the funeral feast above soon enough. He had just wanted to say a few words to his brother. It was almost as hard as if Mongke had been there alive and listening.
‘I wish I had been there when our father gave his life for Ogedai Khan. I wish I could have given my life to save you. That would have been my purpose in the world. I would have done it, Mongke, I swear it.’
He became aware of the echo in the basements and Arik-Boke reached out and took Mongke’s hand, surprised at the weight of it.
‘Goodbye, my brother. I will try to be the man you wanted. I can do that much for your memory.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
Before the sun rose, before even the grey light that heralded the dawn, both camps began to wake and get ready. Tea was brewed in ten thousand pots and a solid meal eaten. Men emptied their bladders, often more than once as internal muscles tightened with nerves. On the Sung side, the cannon teams looked over their precious weapons for the thousandth time, rubbing down the polished shot balls and checking that the powder bags had not grown damp and useless.
When the pale light known as the wolf dawn came, both armies could see each other. The Mongols were already mounted, forming up into minghaans of a thousand that would act independently in the battle to come. Men eased tight backs as they rode up and down the lines. Many of them tested the strings on their bows by pulling back without a shaft, loosening the heavy muscles of their shoulders.
Some things had to wait for light, but as soon as he could tell a white thread from a black one, Lord Jin An had the cannon teams pulled into position on the front rank. Others went to the sides, where they would present their black mouths to any flanking attack. He could see Mongol officers staring over at his regiments, noting their positions and pointing out features of the formation to others like them. Lord Jin An smiled. No matter how brave or how fast the Mongols were, they would have to ride through roaring shot to reach his ranks. He had learned from the defeats of other men. He tried to put himself in the Mongols’ position, to see how they might counter such a display of force, but he could not. They were lice-ridden tribesmen, while he was of the noble class of an ancient empire.
The Sung regiments formed up behind the lines of cannon. Lord Jin An sat his horse and watched as his subordinates assembled the gun soldiers in the first ranks back. Their heavy hand-cannon were slow to reload and notoriously inaccurate, but they would hardly be able to miss as they poured fire alongside the cannon. When the shot and powder was all spent, his cavalry ranks could ride out. Deeper still behind the guns, swordsmen waited in their lacquered armour of iron and wood, standing in disciplined silence. Lord Jin An had placed the Chin contingent there, behind the protection of his guns.
He liked the man who had once been an emperor. Lord Jin An had expected Xuan to be one of those obsessed with his status, having lost so much of it. Yet Xuan reminded the Sung lord of his own father, dead for almost a decade. He had found the same world-weariness in both men, tempered with a dry humour and the sense that they had seen more than they cared to remember. Lord Jin An did not think the Chin soldiers would run, but at the same time, he dared not trust his strategy to such elderly men. They were keen enough at dawn, but if the fighting went on all day, they would not be able to keep up with those half their age. Lord Jin An made a mental note to keep an eye on them through the fighting, to be sure a weakness in the lines did not develop.
The sun seemed to take for ever to creep above the eastern horizon. Jin An imagined it showing its face to the citizens of Hangzhou and to the lords who still disdained the threat to their culture and the emperor. They were fools. Before it set, he hoped to have broken the foreign army that had dared to enter Sung lands. With such a victory behind him, a man might rise far indeed. It was just one day, he told himself, feeling sweat break out on his skin. Just one, long day.
Kublai sat his horse, with Bayar and Uriang-Khadai on either side of him. The other officers had formed the tumans, though they remained ready for any orders from the three men watching the Sung positions.
‘I do not understand how imperial Chin banners can be flying there,’ Kublai said, frowning into the distance. ‘Is it mockery to present the colours of men we have defeated? If so, they are fools. We beat the Chin. They hold no
