Bones of the Hills (25 page)

The khan had made only a rough camp after days of fighting. Jelaudin saw the left flank was a mass of lights, revealing the presence of many men. The nights were cold and they would be clustered close to the flames. On the right, the night fires were more widely spaced, dwindling
to just a few points of light on the furthest edge. It was there that he led his men, racing to take revenge for the battering they had suffered.

He heard the Mongols rise against the attack, howling in their mindless anger. Jelaudin shouted a challenge into the night, echoed by his men. The fires came closer and suddenly there were men on all sides and the forces met. Jelaudin had time to shout in surprise before his stallion was cut from under him and he went flying.

Tsubodai waited with Jochi, Jebe, and Chagatai. It had been his idea to arrange the fires to draw in a careless enemy. Where the lights were thick, he had just a few men tending them. On the dark right flank, veteran tumans clustered with their ponies, far from warmth. They did not heed the night cold. For those who had been born on the frozen plains of home, it was nothing to them. With a great shout, they charged the Arab ranks coming in.

As the two forces came together, the Arabs were sent reeling, smashed from their feet by men who had fought and trained from the earliest years. Their right arms hardly tired as they punched through the enemy and rocked them back. Tsubodai bellowed orders to advance and they trotted forward, shoulder to shoulder, their mounts stepping delicately over dying men.

The moon rose above them, but the attack was broken quickly and the Arab force sent streaming back to their main camp. As they ran, they looked over their shoulders, terrified that the Mongols would ride them down. Not half of their number made it clear, though Jelaudin was one of them, humiliated and on foot. He staggered back to his father, still dazed from the chaos and fear. In the distance, the Mongols finished off the wounded and waited patiently for the dawn.

Shah Ala-ud-Din paced his tent, glaring at his eldest son as he turned. Jelaudin stood nervously, wary of his father’s anger.

“How did they know you would attack?” the Shah snapped suddenly. “There are no spies in the ranks, not here. It is impossible.”

Still smarting from his failure, Jelaudin did not dare to reply. Privately, he thought the Mongols had merely prepared for the possibility of an attack, not known of one, but he could not seem to praise them while his father raged.

“You see now why I did not give you my personal guard?” the Shah demanded.

Jelaudin swallowed. If he had ridden in with five hundred horsemen, he did not think the rout would have been so easy or so complete. With an effort, he strangled a retort.

“You are wise, Father,” he said. “Tomorrow they will take the fight to the enemy.” He fell back a step as his father rounded on him and stood close enough for the bristles of his beard to touch his son’s face.

“Tomorrow you and I are dead,” the Shah snarled. “When the khan sees how many men I have left, he will fall on us and make an end to it.”

Jelaudin was relieved when he heard a throat cleared at the entrance to the tent. His father’s body servant, Abbas, stood in the lamplight, his eyes flickering from father to son and judging the mood within. Jelaudin made an impatient gesture for the man to leave, but Abbas ignored him, coming in and bowing to the Shah. Jelaudin saw he carried a sheaf of calfskin vellum and a pot of ink and he hesitated before ordering the man out.

Abbas touched his forehead, lips, and heart in respect to the Shah before placing the writing materials on a small table to one side. Jelaudin’s father nodded, his fury still evident in his clenched jaw and flushed skin.

“What is this?” Jelaudin said at last.

“This is vengeance for the dead, Jelaudin. When I have put my name to it, this is an order for the assassins to rid my land of this khan.”

His son felt a weight lift from his shoulders at the thought, though he repressed a shudder. The sect of Shia fanatics had a dark reputation, but his father was wise to bring them in.

“How much will you send them?” he said softly. His father bent over the thick parchment and did not reply at first as he read the words Abbas had prepared.

“I do not have time to negotiate. I have offered a note for a hundred thousand gold coins, to be redeemed from my own treasury. They will not refuse such a sum, even for a khan’s head.”

Jelaudin felt his hands grow clammy at the thought of so much gold. It was enough to build a great palace or begin a city. Yet he did not speak. His chance to break the Mongols had been wasted in the night.

Once the Shah had signed the note for gold, Abbas rolled the thick sheets together and bound them with a strip of leather, tying the knot
expertly. He bowed very low to the Shah before he left the two men alone.

“Can he be trusted?” Jelaudin said as soon as he was gone.

“More than my own sons, it seems,” the Shah replied irritably. “Abbas knows the family of one of the assassins. He will see it safe to them and then nothing will save this dog of a khan who has shed so much of my people’s blood.”

“If the khan dies tomorrow, will the gold be returned?” Jelaudin asked, still thinking of the vast wealth his father had given away in just a moment. He sensed the Shah walk to him and turned his head from looking at the tent’s entrance.

“Unless Allah strikes him down for his impudence, he will not die tomorrow, Jelaudin. Do you not understand even now? Did you not see as you came back to my tent?” He spoke with a flat intensity that Jelaudin could not understand, and the younger man stammered as he tried to reply.

“See… what? I…”

“My army is finished,” the Shah snapped. “With the men you lost tonight, we have hardly enough left to hold
one
of his damned generals in the morning. They have reduced us to less than thirty thousand men, and even if the Otrar garrison appears at this moment, we have lost. Do you understand now?”

Jelaudin hadn’t and his stomach tightened in fear at his father’s words. They had fought for days and the slaughter had been terrible, but the field of battle was vast and he had not known how bad the losses had been.

“So many dead?” he said at last. “How is it possible?”

His father raised a hand and for a moment Jelaudin thought he would strike him. Instead, the Shah whirled to pick up another sheaf of reports.

“Do you want to count them again?” he demanded. “We have left a trail of corpses for a hundred miles and the Mongols are still strong.”

Jelaudin firmed his mouth, making a decision.

“Then give command to me, for tomorrow. Take your noble guard and travel back to Bukhara and Samarkand. Return in the spring with a fresh army and avenge me.”

For an instant, the Shah’s furious expression faded. His eyes softened as he stared at his eldest son.

“I have never doubted your courage, Jelaudin.” He reached out and
gripped his son’s neck, pulling him into a brief embrace. As they parted, Ala-ud-Din sighed.

“But I will not throw away your life. You will come with me and next year we will bring four times as many warriors to root out these godless invaders. I will arm every man who can hold a sword, and we will bring fire and bloody vengeance on their heads. The assassins will have killed their khan by then. For so much gold, they will move quickly.”

Jelaudin bowed his head. In the darkness outside the tent, he could hear the noises of the camp and the moaning of wounded men.

“We leave tonight then?”

If the Shah felt the sting of dishonor, it did not show.

“Gather your brothers. Hand command to the most senior man left alive. Tell him…” He trailed off, his eyes growing distant. “Tell him that the lives of our men must be sold dearly if they are to enter paradise. They will be frightened when they find I have gone, but they must hold.”

“The Mongols will track us, Father,” Jelaudin replied, already thinking of the supplies he must take. He would have to gather his father’s mounted guard as quietly as possible, so as not to alarm those they left behind.

The Shah waved a hand irritably. “We will go west, away from them, then cut north and east when we are clear of Otrar. The land is vast, my son. They will not even know we are gone until tomorrow. Gather what we need and come back here when you are ready.”

“And Otrar?” Jelaudin said.

“Otrar is lost!” the Shah spat. “My cousin Inalchuk has brought this disaster on us, and if I could kill the fool myself, I would.”

Jelaudin touched his forehead, lips, and heart with his head bowed. His dream of riding at the head of a victorious army had been crushed, but he was his father’s son and there would be other armies and other days. Despite the humiliation and horror of the battles against the Mongols, he thought nothing of the lives given for his father. They were the Shah’s men and any one of them would die to protect him. As they should, Jelaudin thought.

He worked quickly as the moon passed overhead. Dawn was not far away and he needed to be well clear of the battle and the Mongol scouts by the time it came.

Genghis waited in the moonlight, dark ranks of men at his back. Khasar was with him, but neither brother spoke as they stood ready. The scouts had warned them of the Otrar garrison coming in. Even then it had been barely in time to beat back the night attack on their camp. Behind him, Genghis had given command to Tsubodai, the most able of his generals. He did not expect to get any sleep before the morning, but that was common enough to the warriors around him, and with meat, cheese, and fiery black airag, they were still strong.

Genghis cocked his head at a sound from the gloom. He clicked with his tongue to alert the closest men, but they too had heard. He felt a pang of regret at the deaths of Samuka and Ho Sa, but it passed quickly. Without their sacrifice, he would have lost it all the day before. He turned his head left and right, searching for more sounds.

There. Genghis drew his sword, and all along the line, the front rank readied lances. They had no arrows with them. Tsubodai had spent much of the night collecting the final shafts into full quivers, but they would need them when dawn came. Genghis could hear walking horses ahead and he rubbed tiredness from his eyes with a free hand. At times, it seemed as if he had been fighting all his life against these dark-skinned madmen.

With Jelme, he had chosen a spot to wait just under a low rise. Even in the moonlight, he would not be seen, but his scouts kept moving, leaving their horses and running in the dark to keep him informed. One of them appeared at his stirrup and Genghis dipped his head to hear the soft words, grunting in surprise and pleasure.

When the scout had gone, Genghis nudged his horse close to Khasar.

“We outnumber them, brother! Samuka and Ho Sa must have fought like tigers.”

Khasar nodded grimly. “It’s about time. I am tired of riding against their vast armies. Are you ready?”

Genghis snorted. “I have been waiting forever for his garrison, brother. Of course I am ready.”

The two men parted in the darkness, then the Mongol line surged forward over the rise. Against them, the remnants of the garrison of Otrar were making their way south to join the Shah. They came to a shocked halt as the Mongol lines appeared, but there was no one to save them as the lances came down.

Shah Ala-ud-Din reined in as he heard the sounds of battle echo back from the hills. In the moonlight, he could see distant smudges of fighting men, but he could not guess what was happening. Perhaps the cursed Mongols had attacked again.

With only four hundred surviving riders, he and his sons had abandoned the army and ridden hard. The Shah glanced at the east and saw dawn was coming. He tried to fill his mind with plans for the future, numbing it to regrets. It was difficult. He had come to smash an invader and instead seen his best men bleeding out their strength. The Mongols were tireless killers and he had underestimated them. Only the thought of Abbas riding to the assassins’ stronghold in the mountains gave him satisfaction. The men of shadows never failed and he only wished he could see the face of the khan as he felt their soot-blackened knives plunging into his chest.