The Mongoliad: Book One

Gansukh kept his left hand on the pommel of his saddle and stretched his right hand out in front of him. He looked at his hand against the green of the vast grasslands of the Orkhun River Valley. The width of a man’s hand was called an aid, and it was used to measure everything a man could lay his hands on. Out here, he could measure the height of the grass, the depth of his stride, the length of his horse’s shadow, but all of these things were insignificant against the endlessness of the steppe.

The late-summer pasture grasses undulated like water, revealing the capricious pathways of the wind. The sighing sound of the stalks was a song the Blue Wolf had taught him to hear. He could anticipate the gusts and brace himself against the sudden blows that tried to rock him and his horse.

He closed his eyes and stretched both arms out to embrace the wind; bracing against a strong blast, he squeezed his thighs to stay in the saddle. His horse lowered its head and laid back its ears, groaning deep in its chest. The wind carried the scents of men—smoke, meat cooking for an evening meal, the musky scent of sheep, camels, and cattle—olfactory markers of the pervasive spread of the Khagan’s empire. Along with that came an underlying stink of shit from both beast and man, and abattoir offal, that no city could ever hide—and many didn’t try as hard as Karakorum to hide it.

There are no secrets here.

His nose flared again, and he leaned his head back to draw in more of the cool air—finding other wilder and more promising smells. The scent of rain was faint, the tiniest whiff of the oncoming change in the seasons, that time of year when the clans turned south and east.

Ogedei would be leaving Karakorum soon, heading for his winter palace, and while Chagatai Khan had laid no fixed deadline on Gansukh’s task to curb the Khagan’s drinking, he could not escape the feeling that time was running out. Time for what, though? Gansukh had tried to flee that thought since he had visited the Khagan’s chambers, but now, out where no one could see the expression on his face or hear any word that might slip from his lips, he could face it.

What was he supposed to save? The Khagan was a drunk, and the entire court was caught in an inward turning spiral of sycophancy. Was this the pinnacle of the Mongol Empire? Like an arrow fired at the sun, eventually it flies as high as it can and then begins its calamitous plunge back to the ground.

Gansukh’s horse lifted its head and nickered, shifting beneath him, as if to offer an answer to his question. He looked out across the grasslands again. The sun hung like a coal over his left shoulder; he was facing west and north, the same direction he had ridden a few nights ago when he had pursued the thief. Momentarily he indulged in the fantasy of escaping all this decline and misery—by simply kicking his horse into a trot. He would ride west to the Orkhun, and then beyond, across the endless plain to the edge of the empire.

Leaving it all behind before it destroyed him too.

Lian.

What would happen to her? Why did he care? He frowned. She had nothing to do with his duty—other than the pledge that she was going to help him. She was a slave—and a rather demanding one at that. Most of the time, he was sure she was laughing at him, and while he thought of punishing her for her insolence—both imagined and real—he knew it would only prove her point. He would gain nothing by such physical domination, and he was starting to realize he would actually lose something valuable by indulging in such brutish behavior.

An image of the thief’s terrified expression flashed through his head, that last instant before Munokhoi dragged her away. The look in her eyes. Despair, and a glint of anger, directed at him. He had failed her somehow, and he couldn’t shake that sensation. He couldn’t shake the impression that he had seen something similar in Ogedei’s expression as he had raged about his chamber. Failure.

If he rode away—if he fled—it would be his failure that he was running from, not the empire’s.

The wind shifted again, carrying now the rhythmic thump and hissing stalk rustle of an approaching rider. Gansukh looked back at Karakorum. He squinted, trying to guess the identity of the rider. Not Munokhoi. Too short. Too slender. He felt like a fool as his breath caught in his chest. A woman?

He curled his lips at the sour taste in the back of his mouth—his stomach’s reaction to the elation he felt at the possibility that the approaching rider might be Lian. What is she doing? he thought. How had she managed to get out of the city without an escort? The horse and rider were unhurried in their approach, signaling there was no urgency, which made the possibility that it was Lian both more real and stranger.

The mounted figure slowly dropped out of sight behind a gentle hill, and when it reappeared, there was no doubt as to the rider’s identity. Lian lowered her head to hide her smile, but not before Gansukh saw a flash of white teeth.

He turned away, shoulders twitching, to face the honesty and honor of the endless steppe, and to hide from her the grin stretching across his lips. By the time she brought her horse alongside, he had his face under control, burying his delight under the stern expression he tried to maintain in anyone’s presence.

The wind died back, and the grasses rose to their full height. The riders sat quietly for a minute, watching the verdant plain settle into stillness, and finally Lian broke the silence.

“Your world,” she said.

“Yes,” he nodded. “Simpler. Safer.”

“For you,” she said. “I would have thought I would feel safe too, but all this emptiness frightens me. I don’t know what is out there.”

“True, but the rules are less complicated. It is easier to know what to do.”

Lian smiled. “The rules at court are simple too, Gansukh. You have shown a ready ability to learn them. It is just that they are…foreign to you. Still. It is a matter of comfort. You look across the land of grass and you see… What? Freedom?”

“The falcon soars,” he said, pursing his lips. “The rabbit knows to hide.”

“Freedom for you,” Lian said. “Not for me. And why is that? Because I am a woman? Because I am Chinese?”

“Are those truths any smaller inside the walls of Karakorum?”

“No,” she said, “but there is less wind.” She braced as the grasses bent again. “A moment ago, I would have felt confident in being able to aim an arrow, but now…the wind plays tricks. How can people from the land of grass ever hit their mark?” As if taunting her, the wind rushed in and flung Lian’s hair about her face. She used her left hand to push aside the black strands—pulling one moist from between her lips, he noticed—while her right gripped the reins. “You know that secret, don’t you?”

Gansukh nodded. Above all the things he’d grown to appreciate about Lian—her beauty, her intelligence, and her knowledge about the ways of the court—it was her confounding way of speaking about two things at the same time that continued to surprise him. He wondered if Master Chucai knew this about her, or if he simply saw her as a useful tutor for an ill-attired steppe barbarian.

Gansukh tried to think of a clever response, and failing to come up with anything that seemed remotely daring or insightful, he opted for cautious response and a simple question. “We’ll return to the secret of shooting through and between the wind,” he said. “For now, tell me why you risk leaving the city walls alone.”

“I’m not alone.” She again stroked hair out her eyes and looked for his reaction.

Gansukh twisted in his saddle and peered back toward Karakorum, in time to see a second rider disappear behind the hill. Gansukh recognized the peaked hat. Master Chucai.

“He invited me to ride with him.” Lian folded both hands across the pommel of her saddle, giving up on trying to keep her hair in place. He studied the freedom of her hair, then the sweep of the grass. The secret is studying the flow of the wind between your arrow and the target, measuring the battle between gusts, and finally —watching your target’s hair. The arrow must be nudged a cat’s whisker against the direction of that hair.

With a sinking feeling, Gansukh acknowledged that Chucai arranging a meeting was far more believable than Lian risking leaving Karakorum alone. Although he was pleased she had sought him out, he should have known she