The Mongoliad: Book One

wide-eyed at the sky, amazed at the sudden change of view.

The champion reacted, more by instinct than conscious thought. In mid-fall, he knifed his body against Gansukh and got his feet underneath him. He landed in a deep crouch, with the whole of Gansukh’s weight bearing down on his chest. He bellowed as his back arched painfully; growling in frustration, Gansukh squeezed his arms and tried to find enough leverage to push Namkhai even farther. He was stunned Namkhai had found his footing— the man was inhuman! They strained against one another, neither one able to shift the other. All Gansukh could hear was the grinding sound of his teeth and the hiss of air escaping from Namkhai’s pursed lips.

The crowd had fallen silent.

Their eyes met, and Gansukh realized Namkhai was aware of the silence too.

Gansukh glanced around, and as he became aware of the circle of spectators, he spotted a gap in the crowd. Namkhai saw it too, and without hesitation, they both released their holds on the other and stepped apart.

A space opened in the circle of Torguud spectators and quickly filled with a retinue of servants and courtiers, which at the very last parted to form two protective walls. Now appeared the Khagan himself, with his most intimate servants and chamberlains. To the Khagan’s right, an exceptionally short man hovered, bearing aloft a tray of tiny silver cups.

Ogedei Khan held one cup in his hand and was wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “Don’t stop on my account,” he said loudly. “Gansukh, you nearly had our champion bested.”

Gansukh and Namkhai, having bowed at the sudden appearance of the Khagan, now stood awkwardly at the center of the field. Gansukh could barely summon the strength to lift his arms, and his teeth ached from how much he had been grinding them. Namkhai’s face gleamed with sweat, and his hair lay matted against his head. His chest heaved, and he looked to be in no rush to start the fight again. Gansukh swiped at his forehead, clearing the sweat that was starting to sting his eyes, then brought his hands together and bowed again to the Khagan. He remained bent over, trying to catch Namkhai’s attention with a subtle tilt of his head.

Namkhai slapped his hands together and bowed as well.

“No?” Ogedei Khan was jovial with wine and readily dismissed their refusal. “We’ll save the rematch for another time. Here”—he motioned to two men on opposite sides of the field—“you two. Fight for me.”

Gansukh and Namkhai retired from the field as the two chosen guards bent their knees and began flapping their arms in an imitation of the hawk, the traditional way to start a match. They reached the center, bent at the waist, and brought their arms down into a fighting stance. They then awaited the Khagan’s word.

“Go!” Ogedei Khan bellowed.

At the sidelines, jostled by men who slapped his back and shoulders in congratulations at a match well fought, Gansukh fought to catch his breath. While the rest of the men watched the two new combatants, he kept his eye on the Khagan.

The short servant adeptly kept the tray in motion, dancing about and rotating it effortlessly with the Khagan’s every move, to keep a steady supply of full cups near his reach. Ogedei downed each in one motion, slamming the empty cup upside down on the tray. The servant flinched with each one but kept the tray upright and moving. Gansukh wondered what happened when all the cups were overturned. Would the Khagan stop drinking? Judging by his unconscious swaying motion and the strident volume of his humor, that probably wasn’t the case. In fact, this was probably not the first tray of cups.

As the Khagan snapped his head back again, Gansukh scanned the crowd to see if anyone else was paying attention to the Khagan’s drinking, and he was relieved to see everyone’s attention was on the wrestling match.

Everyone except Namkhai.

The wrestling champion felt Gansukh’s gaze and glanced over his shoulder. His eyes met Gansukh’s for a second, and then he turned and rudely shoved his way through the crowd. But it was too late. Gansukh had seen his expression.

The big man had lost his grin, and his face was a mask of disgust and dismay.

The Khagan did not seek, or even need, permission from his subjects, but he did need something—respect. Hard earned and easily lost.

A yell rose from the crowd as one of the wrestlers bested the other, sending him sprawling to the ground on his hands and knees. His opponent helped him to his feet as the Khagan roared his approval.

“Let us eat and drink tonight!” he shouted. “A feast for our fighters.” He staggered as he glanced around the sea of faces, and Gansukh ducked behind a cluster of off-duty guards. His face burned with shame for hiding, but even more for not wanting to be seen beside the Khagan.

He was beginning to understand Master Chucai’s riddle. It wasn’t enough to stop Ogedei’s drinking. The whole empire was in danger of being poisoned with loss of respect.

The Khagan slammed another tiny cup down on the tray. How many of those would he consume in one day? Gansukh wondered, and then an idea struck him.

One cup, he thought. One instead of dozens.

It was a preposterous idea, but it could work.

CHAPTER 26: OVER THE WRECKAGE AND THROUGH THE RUINS

The walls that encircled Kiev were a wrecked shell, though the Golden Gate retained much of its majesty through sheer bulk, if nothing else. As Raphael rode through it with Percival, Roger, and Illarion, he sensed, if only for a few moments, what the city had been before the coming of the Mongols. Then the gate was behind him and he could see nothing but ruins.

To the east, the Dnieper, winding from north to south, flanked the city. Above it stood a pair of hills, and on the taller of two stood a white-walled structure, obviously religious in purpose, with high arched windows that shone even beneath the gray, overcast skies. To Raphael’s eye, it was much in the style of the Byzantine Church, with certain Ruthenian peculiarities.

A street—now just a chute winding among the avalanched rubble of collapsed buildings—stretched before them. Houses had once clustered tightly in the shadow of the old wall, but now only a few rose from the scavenged ruins. The remains of once-proud works of white and gold-tinted stone stood side by side with buildings somehow untouched, as if protected by divine intercession. The building on top of the hill—Raphael suspected that it was the priory of some religious order—was not the only house of God left in Kiev. It was rumored that the Mongols, equally superstitious about all supernatural beings, did not destroy churches if they could avoid it.

The people who remained in this place—he was no longer inclined to call it a city—were likewise a curious mixture of the lost and the enterprising, the shattered and the oblivious. Even after the passage of the Mongolian Horde, Raphael mused, life must go on as best it can. The scent of boiled cabbage reached his nose, along with the sweet, earthy fragrance of beets. A mouthwatering vapor of onion bread wafted from a stone oven squatting incongruously on a rubble-strewn corner, tended by a burly, sweating baker. The stench of garbage and sewage was also prevalent, but that was familiar to any city dweller and even a sign of revival. Dead cities smelled only of ancient decay and dust. Here, life was evident, even to a blind man, in the odor of unwashed, laboring flesh—mingled with fish that he assumed must have been dragged fairly recently from the Dnieper.

Following Illarion’s lead, Raphael guided his horse out of the main path to evade a cadaverous merchant’s thudding, grumbling wagon. It says much, Raphael reflected, about the