The Mongoliad: Book One

you need to know? Is Chagatai concerned that I will become such a drunk that my lips cannot remain shut? That one of my enemies will send someone in to steal them while I sleep?”

“No,” Gansukh countered, flustered by the sudden change in Ogedei’s mood. “It’s Master Chucai—”

“Chucai.” Ogedei spit out the name like it was something caught in his throat. “He’s an old goat herder who thinks the hills are full of wolves.” He drew himself up to his full height and thrust out his chest. Some of the liquid in his cup slopped out, darkening his already stained sleeve. “I am not a goat.”

“No,” Gansukh replied. “Of course not.”

Something caught Ogedei’s attention and he beckoned Gansukh to follow him. He staggered out onto the balcony and pointed at the great war banner mounted at the edge of the balcony. It was a gigantic spear, much too long to be wielded easily from a horse; beneath the iron blade hung thick strands of black horsehair, the tails of an entire herd, and they streamed and twisted in the embrace of the night air.

“The Great Spirit Banner of Genghis Khan,” Ogedei said. “Do you know the story, young pony? My father’s spirit is still alive, inside that pole, making sure his empire expands until it covers all the lands.”

Gansukh nodded. “I’ve heard the story.”

“It’s just a story,” Ogedei slurred. He leaned against Gansukh, who staggered, trying to support the Khagan’s sudden weight. “It’s superstition,” Ogedei hissed. “There’s a secret…” He became entranced with his cup. When he drank, some of the wine spilled down his chin. “It’s older than my father,” Ogedei continued, oblivious to the wine dripping off his face. “He did not make it. It was given to him, long before he became Khagan. He never told me where…” Ogedei stared at the banner for a while before continuing.

“He told me how to listen to it, though. He told me how to see things in the way the hair moves. It’s more than a banner…I can look at it, and it tells me of battles I have never seen, battles that have not happened, and even some that I know never will. I can put my hands in the hair of a thousand horses and feel the rhythm of their movement. How to attack, how to feint, how to retreat—I can feel how every battle can be won.”

Gansukh gazed at the banner, trying to see what the Khagan saw, but all he saw was black horsehair vanishing into the approaching night. “My Khan, with all due respect, you are drunk.”

Ogedei’s attention snapped to Gansukh’s face and then to the cup in his hands. He drank greedily from it, as if there were answers to be found in its dregs. His eyes were even more glazed when he lowered the cup, and he stared out at the horizon, not seeing anything, not even the fact that the sun was gone and night had fallen. “You don’t understand, pony,” he said. “I am Khagan, and I do as I like. And the empire depends on that. My father’s empire. It must continue on. For the memory of all those who sacrificed themselves. For the memory of Tolui.” Tears started to form in the corners of Ogedei’s eyes.

“You don’t understand,” the Khagan shrieked suddenly, pushing Gansukh away. He threw his cup too, and Gansukh ducked, letting it sail past him and into the room. “None of you do. Not Chucai. Not Chagatai. Not any of my generals. None of you understand what is truly important. You all want to tell me what to do, but you don’t know. You don’t know what to do!”

Gansukh backed away, his hands held in front of him. “My Khan, I’m—” he started, but he was cut short by a tremendous wail that came howling out of Ogedei. He watched, startled, as the Khagan tore an ornamental cap off the balcony railing and hurled it into the night. When the Khagan whirled on him, Gansukh retreated quickly, but the Khagan’s interest only lay in the furniture and vases in the sitting room.

Gansukh continued to retreat toward the door, stunned by the transformation that had come over Ogedei Khan. He was no longer the leader of the Mongol Empire; he had become a gigantic infant, throwing a horrific temper tantrum. He threw vases across the room. He picked up furniture and dashed it against the floor, and when he couldn’t pick it up easily, he kicked and hit it. All the while, his body shook with great wracking sobs.

The door opened, and Gansukh, filled with both shame and revulsion, slipped out of the room. The guards closed the door and stood in front of it, their eyes forward, their postures saying quite plainly that they would never acknowledge any of the sounds coming through the portal. What happened behind them was a secret they would never reveal.

Gansukh’s hand slipped inside his deel, touching the tiny lacquered secret held therein. Ogedei’s voice chased him as he walked away from the Khagan’s private room, an echo that grew louder and louder in his head as the real sounds grew fainter: None of you understand what is truly important.

CHAPTER 20: THE DEATH OF A FRIEND

A messenger does not kill; a Binder does not take life. But there was blood on her hands and on the knife.

“Do you need help?”

Cnan heard Raphael’s voice distantly, and for a moment she thought he was asking the question of her, but when she raised her head to reply, she saw he was speaking to Percival.

“I raised him from a foal,” Percival said. His face was a mask; his lips barely moved as he spoke. “I will do it alone. Help the others see to Taran.” The solemn knight turned and walked into the woods, following a trail of blood and crushed grass.

The silence of the field and forest closed around Cnan. Her knife still dripped blood into the hoof-trodden dirt and grass. She stared, seeing but not seeing the trees at the edge of the woods in their strangely placid beauty. Yasper’s lingering smoke rendered the sight eerie and ghostlike. The dagger in her hands felt light as air, and that seemed wrong. She wanted to be rid of it, but at the same time couldn’t make herself throw it away.

They had wrapped Taran in a cloak and taken him back to camp, where a grave would be dug. The Dutchman wandered the field, dousing the flames, and about him the remaining smoke wreathed and whirled. She stepped over the corpse of a Mongol, facedown in the dirt, the body positioned just as Taran’s had been. She suppressed a shudder and moved on, feeling as though she would be violently ill.

How far had she fallen, to permit herself to arrive here and to use this tool, a killing tool, as it was meant to be used? She wiped the blade clean with a clutch of dried leaves, shock wearing away slowly, like feeling coming back into a sleeping limb and, with it, the first prickles of returning conscience.

Not what she wanted to feel.

She took another step, planning to get away from the company and be by herself. Her feet took over. As she walked, she heard arguments behind her: Roger’s raised voice, Feronantus’s reply. The words were empty and distant, intrusions into an awful dream. Was this the penance for what she had done?

A strange, sad sound reached her, seeped into her mind, and pulled her along the direction in which she walked. Tall weeds brushed against her legs. She stopped at the edge of the wide open stretch through which Mongols had rushed only a short time ago, and her focus returned with a sickening lurch as she realized that she had not been wandering aimlessly, but following another’s footsteps across the field and back toward the woods.

Cnan stood still, watching as Percival knelt by his mount. Obeying some instinct that had told it to seek refuge, the horse had staggered into the shelter of the trees and then collapsed.

The knight’s frame caught the rays of sun falling through the canopy of high trees, mail over muscle moving with a deliberate, gentle softness so utterly at odds with his violent motion before. Cnan heard again the husking, ragged sound that had pulled her from her malaise—deep whimpers from Percival’s mortally wounded destrier.

His own breath seemed to blend with the slow panting of the large horse where it lay amidst the ferns.

Her stomach clenched, and a lump formed in her throat as he removed a mailed glove and ran a callused hand over the animal’s thick neck. A shaft jutted from the animal’s flank. The horse gave a louder moan, and its chest heaved. Percival stood back a few steps as it thrashed and then twisted in agony.