The Mongoliad: Book Two

sort of eager sycophant who would fail to question the ramifications of an idle whim. While the Empire was fairly safe to travel-especially in the heart of territory that had been under Mongol rule for several generations-it didn’t mean that the Khagan’s personal safety wasn’t still of paramount importance. There was always the possibility of attacks by roving bandits-clanless men who would prey on an insufficiently protected caravan or a group of nomadic herders.

But bandits didn’t announce themselves with a volley of flaming arrows. Fire would destroy the very cargo they were hoping to steal.

His own reaction to the attack had been mindless. He had leaped to a conclusion that wasn’t supported by what was actually happening around him. Wasn’t that one of the very lessons Zhu Xi sought to impart in his commentary? This attack was directed at the Khagan; the raiders knew whose caravan they were attacking. The true question-the one he should have been asking earlier-was why?

Chucai heard a distant crump of noise, and he knew at once that it was the sound of black powder igniting. Grimly, he nodded to himself as he began to walk toward the Khagan’s ger again. He wasn’t hurried. He took his time, his gaze sweeping back and forth across the chaos. His height gave him an advantage; while he couldn’t see over the tents, the scurrying frenzy of panicked courtiers and concubines and shouting soldiers did little to block his field of view. Chucai walked and watched, looking for the real reason the camp had been attacked.

If the goal of the attack was to assassinate the Khagan, then why hadn’t they set fire to the Khagan’s ger? Were their archers that unskilled? Chucai doubted that was true. In which case, the fires were a distraction, a means of splitting the Imperial Guard. But why?

Chucai cut to his right, no longer moving directly toward the Khagan’s ger. Something had caught his eye. He wasn’t sure what he had seen, and it was possible he was chasing a ghost, a writhing smoke shadow cast by firelight.

The koi was surfacing in the pond in his mind.

He caught sight of the movement again, and the feeble phantom coalesced into the dim shapes of three men, dressed in dark clothing, skulking between tents. They carried long sticks-spears, though one was longer than the other two.

“Hai!” Chucai shouted, curious to see if these phantoms would bolt like startled rabbits.

The three men froze, dark blots against the dull leather of a tent. If he hadn’t been staring right at them, he might have not seen them. During the day, they would have stood out quite plainly, but in the night-with the haze of the smoke-they were nearly invisible. Which is exactly what the fires were for, Chucai realized. Cover.

“Hai! Men of the Imperial Guard,” he bellowed, directing his voice toward the Khagan’s ger. “To me! There are assassins among us.”

The men moved, two of them sprinting off between the tents; the other man lowered his spear and charged Chucai, hoping to silence the alarm that had given them away.

Master Chucai had but a moment to ready himself. He had no weapon, and briefly he chided himself again for reacting without thinking, but then the man was upon him, screaming at him in Chinese as he thrust the spear.

Chucai flowed like a wisp of smoke, the thick sleeve of his robe sweeping up and around like a fan. Angling his body so that he became a thin reed, he felt his sleeve tug as the spear pierced the silk fabric. His hand kept moving, inscribing the course a bird makes as it dives down on a lake and scoops up an unwary fish. The bird then rises back into the sky, burdened by what it has clutched in its talons. Chucai brought his hand up and turned, feeling the Chinese man struggle to pull the spear out of his sleeve. He clenched his other hand into a fist.

The spearman looked up, a realization dawning on his face that he had underestimated the length of his opponent’s reach, and then Chucai’s fist smashed into his nose. He cried out and fell back, his hands rising to stem the sudden rush of blood.

Simultaneously with the strike to the man’s face, Chucai had closed his other hand around the shaft of the spear and yanked it free of the man’s grip. Dropping his left hand to the spear, he stepped back, whipping the spear around to catch the man under the left arm. As soon as he felt the spear bite into leather, he pulled it back. The man lowered his arms, staggering from the slice, and Chucai stabbed him in the throat.

The other two had vanished among the tents, but Chucai heard shouts coming from up ahead. His alarm had been heard. Pulling the dead man’s spear free, he ran toward the voices.

Soon enough, he caught up with the Imperial Guard. Several had bows, and their arrows had brought down one of the two skulkers. The surviving one stood near the body of his companion, an arrow jutting out of his leg. He held the approaching Mongols at bay with his long spear, and as Chucai approached, he realized the man was holding the Khagan’s spirit banner. The horsehair tassels were matted with blood and dirt, and the point of the shaft was more ornamental than deadly. What stopped the Mongols from attacking the man was a reluctance to damage the spirit banner.

Chucai hurled the spear he had taken from the Chinese man, and it struck the last Chinese man in the hip with such force that he was knocked off his feet. He landed with a thump, and when he struggled to sit up, he was immediately hit by a handful of arrows.

Chucai barked at the guards and they paused, uncertain as to the cause of his anger. Chucai approached the two Chinese men, and a quick glance verified they were both dead. “Look for others,” he snapped at the guards, shaking his head. “Try to capture one alive.”

Dead men were useless to him.

Chucai picked up the spirit banner and ran his fingers through its tassels, trying to untangle them. What did they want with it? he wondered. Why sacrifice themselves for a piece of wood covered with old horsehair?

He had never held the banner, much less examined it closely. It was just an old stick that Genghis had started tying horsehair to. We are horse people, he had explained to Chucai, and wherever we are, the wind will be with us too. Over time, the Khagan had added more strands to it, and Chucai had always marveled at how this simple thing had become symbolic of the prosperity of the Empire.

When he ran his hands over the banner, he noticed the texture of the wood. It felt both rough and resilient, as if it were an intricately carved piece of freshly harvested wood. He raised the staff, trying to get a better glimpse of its surface in the flickering light from the fires. His thumb encountered a rough spot, and he peered more closely at the bump.

It was a tiny scar, scabbed over with dried resin, not unlike the sort of growth that forms after a sprig has been cut from a living branch.

In a narrow depression to the east of the Khagan’s great caravan, Lian and her captor reunited with Gansukh and a few other battered Chinese soldiers. Her Chinese captor left her for a moment as he huddled together with the other soldiers, their voices low and clipped. Gansukh lay nearby, on his side, his hands bound tightly behind his back. His face was a mass of shadows and bruises, and to not look at him, Lian turned toward the Khagan’s camp. All that she could see of the great caravan were the lights of the torches and still-burning fires. The sparse grasses of the gentle slope were limned in orange-and-yellow light, like the edge of an enormous and empty stage.

“What is your name?”

Lian turned her head. The Chinese man who had held her hair was done conferring with the others, and they stood nearby, awaiting further instruction. “Lian,” she said. She inclined her head and raised an eyebrow, an imperious look that had worked well on many a sweaty and nervous official. And you are…?

“Luo Xi,” he replied. His lips pulled into a thin smile, fleeting amusement at her airs. Under the dirt and soot, he appeared to have a strong face-handsome, even, in a Southern way that Lian hadn’t seen in years, with strong cheekbones, piercing eyes, and a complexion unmarred by constant exposure to the sun and wind-the opposite of anyone from the steppes. He took off his helmet, revealing a head of thick black hair, and tucked the cap under his arm. He was trying to appear relaxed, but the way his shoulders remained stiff and hunched forward, and the