‘Go!’ Alandar shouted. ‘If I fall, seek out the khan!’ He turned his horse and dug in his heels, kicking the animal into its best speed. The Arab boys scattered before his men, jeering and shouting as they ran.
As soon as Alandar had ridden clear of the valley, Kublai called a halt. Uriang-Khadai came riding up to him in short order and they nodded to each other.
‘Arik-Boke won’t keep that formation now he’s found us,’ Kublai said. He did not congratulate the older man, knowing Uriang-Khadai would take it as an insult. Beyond a certain level of skill and authority, the orlok needed no praise to tell him what he already knew.
‘I have often wanted to show Alandar the errors in his thinking,’ Uriang-Khadai said. ‘He does not react well under pressure, I have always said. This was a good first lesson. Will you turn for Karakorum now?’
Kublai hesitated. His army was still relatively fresh, the victory keeping their spirits high as they dismounted and checked their mounts and weapons. He had told his orlok he would try for a quick attack on the head of Arik- Boke’s sweep line just as it became a column and turned towards them. After that, the plan had been to ride hard for the capital and seek out the families they had left behind.
Uriang-Khadai saw his indecision and brought his pony alongside, so that they would not be easily overheard.
‘You want to go on,’ he said, a statement more than a question.
Kublai nodded warily. His own wife and daughter were safe in Xanadu, thousands of miles to the east. It was not a small thing to ask his men to keep fighting with the fate of their families hanging over them.
‘There is just a short time before my brother brings his tumans back into a single army. We could roll them up before us, orlok. If there were no women and children around Karakorum, would that not be your advice? To hit them again and quickly? If I head north now, I will be throwing away the opportunity to win. It may be the only chance we get.’
Uriang-Khadai listened with the cold face, giving nothing away as Kublai spoke.
‘You are the khan,’ he said quietly. ‘If you order it, we will go on.’
‘I need more than that at this moment, Uriang-Khadai. We’ve never fought an enemy with the lives of women and children in his grasp. Will the men follow me?’
The older man did not answer for what seemed like an age. At last, he dipped his head.
‘Of course they will. They know as well as you that plans change. It may be the best choice to go on and fight again here, while we have the advantage.’
‘But you want to head north, even so.’
The orlok was visibly uncomfortable. He had sworn an oath to obey, but the thought of his wife and children in the hands of Arik-Boke’s guards was a constant drain on him.
‘I will … follow orders, my lord khan,’ he said formally.
Kublai looked away first. He had known many moments where hindsight showed him a choice, a chance to turn his life one way or the other. It was rare to feel such a moment as it happened. He closed his eyes, letting the breeze pass over him. He felt death in the north, but the smell of blood was strong in the air and he did not know whether it was a true omen or not. When he turned east to face his brother’s distant armies, he felt the same cold shiver. Death lay in all directions, he was suddenly certain of it. He shook his head, as if to clear cobwebs from his thoughts. Genghis would not have wasted a moment. His men knew death, lived with it every day. They slaughtered animals with their hands and knew when a child began to cough that it could mean finding them cold and still. He would not fear such a constant companion. He could not let it influence him. He was khan at that moment and he made his choice.
‘My orders are to go on, orlok. Grab what arrows we can and chase Alandar into the tumans coming up. We hit the next battle group with everything we have.’
Uriang-Khadai turned his horse without another word, shouting orders to the waiting tumans. They looked confused, but they mounted quickly and formed up, ignoring the wounded and dying all around them. The sun was setting, but there were hours of grey summer light to come. Time enough to fight again before dark.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Kublai gave thanks for his brother’s poor decisions as he sighted four tumans riding hard against him. The great general Tsubodai had once employed the same system, five fingers stretching across the land in search of enemies. It was a powerful formation against slow-moving foot soldiers. Against the tumans he commanded, it had a weakness. His brother had formed a separated column a hundred miles long to search the land. Kublai and Uriang-Khadai had hit the end of the sweep and as the column turned to face him, he could work his way down it, bringing almost twelve tumans against each battle group as they reached him. Arik-Boke could still halt and let his tumans join up, but until he did, his warriors were vulnerable to simple numbers and overwhelming strength.
Overall, Kublai and Uriang-Khadai were seriously outnumbered, even after slaughtering Alandar’s men. That disadvantage would dwindle as they cut through the snake piece by piece. In his head, Kublai went over his plans for the thousandth time, looking for anything to improve the odds yet again. He did not have to check Uriang-Khadai was in position. The orlok was more experienced than anyone Arik-Boke could field and his tumans showed it in the way they flowed over the land, moving well together.
The second block of his brother’s tumans was too far away for Kublai to hear their horns, but over the vast plain of green grass, he could see them begin to shift and move in battle formations, reacting to his presence. He frowned as the wind whipped by him, checking the position of the sun. The soft grey twilight lasted for hours at that time of year, but it might not be enough. He hated the idea of having to pull out before the battle was done, but he could not be caught in one place. Every manoeuvre was intended to reduce his brother’s ability to move, while enhancing his own. He could not be caught in the dark, with armies closing on his position.
Against stolid Sung soldiers, he would have kept his final orders to the last moment, too late for the enemy to react to them. As it was, the Mongol tumans he faced could shift and reply just as quickly. Even so, he had the numbers. With Uriang-Khadai keeping order, he sent his men forward in a column, like two stags rushing at each other. At a mile, he felt the first urge to give the final order, his heart beginning to hammer at him. Arik-Boke’s tumans were moving fluidly, darting back and forth as they came on. He did not know who led them, or whether Alandar had reached the apparent safety of their ranks. Kublai hoped he had, so that he could send the man running twice in one day.
At half a mile, they were sixty heartbeats apart. Kublai gave his order at the same moment he saw the enemy tumans swing out to envelop his column head. He grinned into the wind as Uriang-Khadai and his generals matched the formation. Both hammer-heads widened, but Kublai had more tumans and he could imagine how they must appear from the enemy’s point of view, spreading like wings at his back, further and further as his forces were revealed.
It seemed an instant before the arrows flew on both sides. The wide lines could bring many bows to bear and the shafts soared out by the tens of thousands, one every six heartbeats from men who had trained to it all their lives. For the first time, Kublai felt what it was like to meet such a barrage in anger and he had to struggle not to flinch from the whirring air. The volleys spat like a war drum beating, crossing each other in the air. He could hear the thumps of them hitting flesh and metal, the grunts and cries of men on both sides and ahead of him. His own place in the fourth rank was not spared as shafts arced overhead and fell among them. Yet his wider lines could answer with thousands more shafts and the air was blacker on his side as they fired inwards, hardly troubling to aim against so many.
The first volleys broke holes in the galloping front ranks; the second and third tore men and horses away, so that those behind went piling into them. On both sides, the storm of arrows punched through armour. The heavy shields Kublai had picked up in Samarkand were long behind, left to rust on the valley where they had beaten Orlok Alandar. It had been a tactic worth trying, but the true strength of his tumans lay with the archers, the smashing power of bows of horn and birch, drawn back with a bone thumb ring and loosed at the moment when all hooves left the ground. The fourth volley was brutal, the air so thick with arrows that it felt hard to breathe. Thousands were hit on both sides and horses crunched to the ground, turning over at full speed so that their riders crashed down hard enough to kill.
Kublai’s tumans kept their formation better than those they faced. They had spent years in battle against the Sung, against forests of crossbows and enemy pikes. The lines bunched in places where the arrow storm had been
