Bones of the Hills (36 page)

He ached as he dismounted and his horse shivered as his weight was removed. The animal’s ribs were showing and Jelaudin patted the mount’s neck for its faithfulness. He could not remember when he had last eaten, and light-headedness made him stagger.

“Are we to die here, then?” one of his brothers asked plaintively. Jelaudin barely grunted in reply. He had set out strong and young, losing men and strength at every turn for the best part of a year. He felt old as he stood on the shore, taking a piece of gray rock and casting it into the salt water. The horses dipped their heads to drink and Jelaudin did not bother to pull them away. What did it matter if they drank salt when the Mongols were coming to kill the sons of the Shah?

“I will not stand here and wait for them!” Tamar was the next in age after Jelaudin. He strode up and down the sandy ground, straining his eyes for a way out.

With a sigh, Jelaudin eased himself down to the ground and dug his fingers into its dampness. “I am tired, Tamar,” he said. “Too tired to rise again. Let it end here.”

“I will not!” his brother snapped. Tamar’s voice was hoarse from lack of clean water, his lips cracked and lined with blood. Even then, his eyes were bright in the evening sun. “There is an island out there. Can these Mongols swim? Let us take one of the fishing boats and smash the others. We will be safe then.”

“Like trapped animals are safe,” Jelaudin said. “Better to sit and rest, brother.”

To his amazement, Tamar stepped close and slapped him hard across the face.

“Will you see our father butchered on this beach? Get up and help me put him in a boat, or I will kill you myself.”

Jelaudin laughed bitterly without replying. Nevertheless, he stood almost in a daze and helped his brothers carry the Shah to the shore. As he struggled through the damp sand, he felt some life come back to his limbs and some of the despair seep away.

“I am sorry, brother. You are right,” he said.

Tamar only nodded, still furious.

The fishermen came out of their driftwood huts, shouting and gesturing as they saw the young men hammering at their boats. The sight of drawn swords reduced them to sullen silence, standing in a knot of fury as they watched the strangers break the single masts, batter holes in the hulls and then push them into deep water so that they vanished in frothing bubbles.

As the sun set, the brothers pushed the last boat into the calm water, wading in after it and clambering over the sides. Jelaudin raised the small sail and caught the breeze, the moment strangely reviving to his spirits. They left their horses behind and the fishermen took the reins in astonishment, still yelling curses after them, though the animals were worth far more than the crude boats. As the breeze freshened, Jelaudin took his seat and pushed the rudder down into the water, tying off a rope that held it in place. In the last light, they could see the white line of breaking waves on a small island out on the deep. He looked down at his father as he set their course and felt numb calm steal over him as he left the land behind. He could not last much longer and it was true the old man deserved a peaceful death.

THE NAME
SAMARKAND
MEANT “TOWN OF STONE
” and Genghis could see why as he gazed on its buttressed walls. Of all the cities he had known, only Yenking was more of a fortress, and he could see the minarets of many mosques towering behind the walls. Built on the flood plain of a river running between huge lakes, it was surrounded by the most fertile soil Genghis had seen since coming to Arab lands. He was not surprised to find Shah Ala-ud-Din had made the place his jewel. There was no dust or sand there. The city was a crossroads for merchant caravans traveling thousands of miles, secure in the protection it gave them. In times of peace, they trundled across the plains, bringing silk from the Chin and collecting grain at Samarkand to take even further to the west. There would be no more of that trade for a time. Genghis had broken the line of cities that supported each other and grew rich. Otrar had fallen, then Bukhara. To the northeast, he had sent Jelme, Khasar, and Kachiun to batter other cities into submission. He was close to obliterating the spine of the Shah’s trade routes. Without trade and messages, each city was isolated from the others and could only suffer as they waited for his warriors. While the Shah still lived, it was not yet enough, nor even close to enough.

In the distance, Genghis could see white smoke rising into the air from the last of the trading caravans to have tried reaching Samarkand
before he entered the area. No more would come now, not until the Mongols had moved on. Once again he considered Temuge’s words on the need to establish more permanent rule. The concept intrigued him, but it remained a dream. Yet he was no longer a young man, and when his back ached in the mornings, he would think of the world running on without him. His people had never cared for permanence. When they died, the troubles of the world slipped away from them. Perhaps because he had seen empires, he could imagine one lasting beyond his life. He enjoyed the thought of men ruling in his name, long after he had gone. The idea eased something in him that he hardly realized was there.

As Genghis watched, the tumans of Jochi and Chagatai rode back from the city walls, having spent the morning riding close enough to terrorize the population. They had raised a white tent before Samarkand when the siege was in place, but the gates had remained closed. In time, they would replace it with a red one and then the black cloth that signified the death of all those within.

With the Shah gone, the Arabs had no one to organize the defense of Khwarezm, and each of his cities fought alone. Such a state of affairs suited Genghis very well. While the cities sweltered in fear, he could bring two or three tumans to bear on a single point, breaking the resistance and moving on to the next with only death and fire behind them. This was war as he preferred it, the breaking of cities and small garrisons. His Arab interpreters claimed that half a million people lived inside the walls of Samarkand, perhaps more now that the farms were empty all around. They had expected him to be impressed, but the khan had seen Yenking and he did not let the numbers trouble him.

He and his men rode with impunity and those who lived behind stone could only wait and fear. It was hard to imagine choosing that sort of life over the ability to move and strike where he pleased, but the world was changing and Genghis struggled with new concepts every day. His men had ridden as far as the frozen wastelands in the north and Koryo in the east. He considered those lands conquered. Yet they were far away. They would rebuild and forget they owed tribute and obedience to him.

He pursed his lips at the thought of city dwellers making new walls and burying their dead. That thought did not sit well with the khan of the Mongols. When he knocked a man down, he stayed down, but a city could rise again.

He thought of Otrar then, of the wasteland he had left behind him.
Not one stone had been allowed to sit on another, and he did not think there would be a city there again, even in a hundred years. Perhaps to kill a city, you had to dig the knife in deep and wrench it back and forth until the last breath escaped. That too was a prospect that pleased him.

As he rode slowly around Samarkand, Genghis’s thoughts were interrupted by the thin notes of warning horns. He reined in, jerking his head back and forth to hear the sound more clearly. Jochi and Chagatai had heard, he could see. Between Genghis and the city, they too had come to a halt to listen.

In the distance, Genghis could see scouts riding in at full gallop. The horns had been theirs, he was almost certain. Could there be an enemy in sight? It was possible.

As his mount reached down to wrench a mouthful of dry grass, Genghis saw the gates of Samarkand swing open and a column ride out. He showed his teeth, welcoming the overconfidence of the enemy. He had Jebe’s tuman as well as ten thousand of his own veterans. Between those and the tumans of Jochi and Chagatai, they would crush any army Samarkand could vomit at them.

The scouts reached Genghis, their horses almost dead under them from the manic ride.

“Armed men to the east, lord,” the first one called before two of his companions. “As many as three tumans of Arab warriors.”

Genghis swore softly. One of the other cities had responded to Samarkand after all. Jochi and Chagatai would have to meet them. He made his decisions quickly, so that his warriors saw only certainty in his responses.

“Ride to my sons,” Genghis said to the scout, though the young warrior still panted like a dog in the sun. “Tell them to attack this enemy to the east. I will hold against whatever Samarkand can bring to the field.”

The tumans of his sons moved quickly away, leaving Genghis with just twenty thousand men. His lines formed with the khan at the center of a shallow crescent, ready to move easily into enveloping horns.

More and more riders and men came out of the city, almost as if Samarkand had been a barracks for a wing of the Shah’s army. As Genghis moved his mount into a slow trot and checked his weapons, he hoped he had not sent too many warriors away to take the victory. It was possible, but if he attacked only one city at a time, it would be the work of three lifetimes to subdue the Arab lands. The cities of the Chin had been even more numerous, but he and his generals had taken
ninety in a single year before reaching Yenking. Genghis had ridden against twenty-eight of them.

If Tsubodai or Jebe had been there, or even Jelme or one of his brothers, he would not have worried. As the plain blackened with roaring Arabs, Genghis laughed aloud at his own caution, making the warriors around him chuckle. He did not need Tsubodai. He did not fear such enemies, nor a dozen armies like them. He was khan of the sea of grass and they were just city men, soft and fat for all their bluster and sharp swords. He would cut them down.

Jelaudin sat cross-legged on a narrow beach, staring over the choppy waters of the Caspian at the black shore he had left earlier that day. He could see fires of driftwood burning there and moving shadows flickering around them. The Mongols had reached the sea and there was nowhere left to run. Jelaudin wondered idly if he and his brothers should have killed the fishermen and their families. The Mongols would not have known then where he had taken the Shah, and perhaps they would have given up the chase. Jelaudin grimaced at his own desperation. He did not doubt the fishermen would have fought. Armed with knives and sticks, the dozen boatmen would probably have overwhelmed his small family.

The island was barely a mile offshore. Jelaudin and his brothers had dragged the boat into the cover of straggling trees, but they might as well have left it. No doubt the fishing families had told the Mongols where they had gone. Jelaudin sighed to himself, more tired than he could ever remember before. Even the days in Khuday seemed a dim dream. He had brought his father there to die, and after that, he half suspected his own end would come quickly. He had never known an enemy as implacable as the Mongols who stayed on his trail through snow and rain, always coming closer until he could hear their horses in his sleep. Sound carried across the water between them and occasionally Jelaudin could hear reedy yells or voices raised in song. They knew they were close to the end of the hunt, after more than a thousand miles. They knew the prey had gone to ground at last, with all the hopelessness of a fox vanishing into its den, waiting in terror to be dug out.

Once again Jelaudin wondered if the Mongols could swim. If they could, it would not be with swords at least. He heard his brothers talking amongst themselves and could not summon the energy to rise and tell them again to be quiet. The Mongols already knew where they
were. The final duty of the Shah’s sons was to watch him die, to allow him the dignity he deserved.

Jelaudin rose, his knees protesting as he unbent and cracked his neck. Though the island was tiny, it was covered in trees and thick foliage, so that he and his brothers had been forced to hack a path. He followed the route they had cut, using his hands to remove the slim branches that snagged his robe.

In a clearing formed by a fallen tree, his father lay on his back with his sons around him. Jelaudin was pleased to see the old man was awake to see the stars, though every catch and wheeze of breath made his chest shudder with effort. In the moonlight, he saw his father’s eyes turn to him, and Jelaudin bowed his head in greeting. His father’s hands gestured feebly and Jelaudin came close to hear the man he had always thought was too vital to fall. Those truths of his childhood had crashed around him. He knelt to listen and even there, so far from home, part of him yearned to hear his father’s old strength, as if his frailty could be banished by will and need. His brothers shuffled closer and for a time they forgot the Mongols across the deep waters.

“I am sorry,” the Shah said, gasping. “Not for me. For you, my sons.” He broke off to suck at the air, his face red and sweat running freely.

“You do not have to speak,” Jelaudin murmured.

His father’s mouth jerked slightly. “If not now,” he wheezed, “when?” His eyes were bright and Jelaudin ached at seeing the gleam of an old, dry humor.

“I am… proud of you, Jelaudin,” the Shah said. “You have done well.” The old man choked suddenly and Jelaudin rolled him onto his side and used his fingers to wipe a gobbet of phlegm from his lips. As he turned his father back, his eyes were wet. The Shah gave out a long breath, then filled his tortured lungs slowly.

“When I am gone …” the old man whispered. Jelaudin began to object, but his words died away. “When I am gone, you will avenge me,” he said.

Jelaudin nodded, though he had left his own hopes long behind him. He felt his father’s hand clutch at his robe, and he gripped it in his own.

“Only you, Jelaudin. They will follow you,” the Shah said. The effort of forcing out the words was hastening the end, and every breath came harder. Jelaudin wanted the old man to find peace, but he could not look away.

“Go to the south and call holy war on… this khan. Call the devout to jihad. All of them, Jelaudin, all.” The Shah tried to struggle up, but it was too much for him. Jelaudin gestured to Tamar and together they helped their father to a sitting position. As they did so, he breathed out completely and his mouth fell slack. His thin body jerked in their hands as it struggled for air, and Jelaudin wept as he felt the bristles of his father’s beard brush across his hand. The Shah threw his head back in a great spasm, but breath did not come and the shuddering became twitches and then nothing. Jelaudin heard a hiss of foul air as the old man’s bowels opened and his bladder released, pungent urine drenching the sandy ground.