24: THE HUNT

At last the battue was ready.

An enormous area of the steppe had been designated for the hunt, which was run as a military exercise. Army units were deployed in a great cordon, each with a full general in command. The beaters closed in toward the center, moving as if on maneuvers, with scouts in advance of the main body of troops, and flanking sections to either side. Trumpets and flags were used to communicate around this mass of troops, and once it was closed the circle was maintained with great precision.

When the beating began, Genghis Khan himself led the imperial procession to a low ridge, which would serve as a good viewpoint. All the Golden Family were required to be present, along with Genghis’s wives and concubines, chamberlains and servants. Yeh-lü traveled with the royal party, and brought Kolya, Sable and their interpreters with him.

The scale of the exercise was startling. When he took his place at the summit of the ridge Kolya could see only a couple of military units, drawn up in formation, standards flying, horses restless, on the plain below; the rest were somewhere over the horizon. And he was stunned by the opulence of the food, drink and other hospitality laid on for the royal party.

While they waited for the beating to be completed the Golden Family were kept amused by falconry displays. One man brought forward a mighty eagle, perched on a massive hawking glove. When the bird stretched its wings, their span was wider than the keeper was tall. A lamb was released, and the bird lunged with a ferocity that dragged the keeper off his feet, to the hilarity of the royal party.

The falconry was followed by horse races. Mongol races were conducted over kilometers, and only the finishing stages were visible from Kolya’s position. The child jockeys, surely no older than seven or eight, rode their full-sized mounts bareback and barefoot. The riding was ferocious, and the finishes, masked by a billowing cloud of dust, were close. The Golden Family threw gold and jewels at the victors.

As far as Kolya was concerned, all this was another example of the Mongols’ mixture of barbarity and vulgar ostentation—or, as Sable put it, “These people really don’t have any taste.” But Kolya could not deny the calm aura of Genghis Khan himself.

Militarily disciplined, politically astute, single-minded and incorruptible, Genghis Khan had been born the son of a clan chief. He was called Temüjin, which meant “smith”; his adopted name meant “universal ruler.” It took a decade of fratricidal conflict for Temüjin to unite the Mongols into a single nation for the first time in generations, and he became “the ruler of all tribes who live in felt tents.”

Mongol armies consisted almost entirely of cavalry, highly mobile, disciplined and fast-moving. Their fighting style had been honed over generations in hunting and warring across the plains. For the sedentary nations of farms and cities around the fringe of the steppe, the Mongols were difficult neighbors, but they weren’t exceptional. For centuries the great land-ocean of Asia had spawned armies of marauding horsemen; the Mongols were just the latest in that long and bloody tradition. But under Genghis Khan they became a fury.

Genghis Khan began his campaigns against the three nations of China. Rapidly growing rich on plunder, the Mongols next turned west, assailing Khwa-rezm, a rich and ancient Islamic state that stretched from Iran to the Caspian Sea. After that the Mongols pushed on through the Caucasus into the Ukraine and Crimea, and struck north in an outrageous raid on Russia. By the time of Genghis Khan’s death, his empire, built in a single generation, was already four times as extensive as Alexander’s, and twice as large as Rome’s ever became.

But Genghis Khan remained a barbarian, his only purpose the empowerment and enrichment of his Golden Family. And the Mongols were killers. Their ruthlessness derived from their own traditions: illiterate nomads, they saw no purpose in agriculture, no value in cities save as mines of plunder—and they placed no value on human life. This was the creed applied to each conquest.

Now Kolya had been magically transported to the heart of the Mongol empire itself. Here, the benefits of the empire were more apparent than in history books written by descendants of the vanquished. For the first time in history Asia had been united, from the boundaries of Europe to the South China Sea: the tapestries that adorned Genghis’s tents combined Chinese dragon designs with Iranian phoenixes. Though contact would be lost after the Mongols’ empire decayed, myths of eastern nations were replaced by memory—a memory that would one day inspire Christopher Columbus to strike out across the Atlantic Ocean, seeking a new route to Cathay.

But in the overrun lands the suffering was vast. Ancient cities were erased, whole populations slaughtered. Compared to the human misery Kolya was able to perceive, even in the pavilion of Genghis Khan himself, the benefits of the empire seemed of little worth indeed.

But Sable, he saw clearly, was drawn to the Mongols’ rapacious glamour.

At last the beating troops appeared over the horizon, yelling and crying, and converged on the hunting ground. Runners stretched ropes between the army groups, making a cordon. Cornered animals lumbered or raced to and fro, dimly visible in the great cloud of dust they raised.

Kolya peered into the dust clouds. “I wonder what they’ve caught. I see horses—asses maybe—wolves, hyenas, foxes, camels, hares—they are all terrified.”

Sable pointed. “Look over there.”

A larger shape loomed through the dust. It was like a great boulder, Kolya thought at first, a thing of the earth, much taller than a human being. But it moved massively, immense shoulders working, and curtains of rust-brown hair shimmered. When it raised its head, he saw a curling trunk, spiral tusks, and he heard a peal like a Bach trumpet.

“A mammoth,” he breathed. “Genghis’s hunters, crossing the time slips, have trapped more than they bargained for—it is the dream of ages to witness this. If only we had a camera!”

But Sable was indifferent.

A little stiffly, Genghis Khan mounted his horse. He rode forward, with a couple of guards to either side. It was his privilege to make the first kill. He took position not twenty meters below Kolya, and waited for the prey to be shepherded to him.

Suddenly there were screams. Some of Genghis’ guards broke ranks and fled, despite the howls of their commanders. Through the billowing dust before Genghis, Kolya saw a red rag flung through the air—no, not a rag, it was a human being, a Mongol warrior, his chest ripped open, entrails dangling.

Genghis Khan held his ground, holding his horse steady, his lance and scimitar raised.

Kolya saw the beast coming, emerging from the dust. It was like a lion in its stealthy advance, but it was massively muscled, its shoulders more like a bear’s. And when it opened its mouth it revealed teeth that curved like Genghis Khan’s scimitar. In a moment of deadly stillness emperor and saber-toothed cat faced each other.

Then a single shot rang out, as unexpected as a clap of thunder from a clear sky. It was so close to Kolya his ears rang, and he heard the hiss of the bullet as it flew. Around Kolya the royal party and their attendants screamed and quailed. Suddenly the cat lay in the dirt, its hind legs twitching, its head exploded to a bloody mass. Genghis’s horse was shying, but the Emperor had not flinched.

It had been Sable, of course. But she had already hidden the pistol.

Sable spread her arms. “Tengri! I am the emissary of Heaven, sent to save you, great one, for you are intended to live forever, and to rule all the world!” She turned to a whimpering Basil. In broken French she hissed, “Translate, you dog, or it will be your head I take off next.”

Genghis Khan stared up at her.

The slaughter of the animals inside the cordon took days. It was customary for some of the animals to be let loose, but on this occasion, as Genghis’s life had been threatened, none was allowed to live.

Kolya inspected the remains curiously. The heads and tusks of several mammoths were presented to Genghis, along with a pride of lions of a size nobody had seen before, and foxes with coats of a beautiful snowy whiteness.

And there were a strange kind of people, too, caught up in the Mongols’ net. Naked, fast-running but unable to escape, they were a small family, a man, woman and boy. The man was dispatched immediately, and the woman and child brought in chains to the royal household. The creatures were naked and filthy, and seemed to have no speech. The woman was given to the soldiers for their sport, and the child was kept in a cage for a few days. Without his parents, the child would not eat, and rapidly weakened.

Kolya saw him up close just once. Squatting on the ground inside his cage, the boy was tall—taller than all the Mongols, even taller than Kolya—but his face and body had the unformed look of a child. His skin was weather-beaten and his feet were callused. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on his body, but his muscles were hard. He looked as if he could run all day without a break. Over his eyes was a heavy ridge of bone. When he looked at Kolya his eyes were startling blue, clear as the sky. There was intelligence there, Kolya thought—but it wasn’t a human intelligence; it was a blank knowingness, without a center in self, like the eyes of a lion.

Kolya tried to talk about this with Sable. Perhaps this was some prehuman, a Homo erectus perhaps, haplessly caught up in the Discontinuity. But Sable was nowhere to be found.

When Kolya went back, the cage had gone. He learned the boy had died, his body removed and burned with the rest of the waste from the hunt.

Sable reappeared about noon the day after that. Yeh-lü and Kolya were in the middle of another of their strategy sessions.

Sable was wearing a Mongol tunic, of the expensive, embroidered sort the Golden Family sported, but she had bits of bright orange parachute silk in her hair and around her neck, a badge of her different origins. She looked wild, a creature neither of one world nor the other, out of control.

Yeh-lü sat back and watched her steadily, wary, calculating.

“What happened to you?” Kolya said in English. “I haven’t seen you since you pulled that gun.”

“Spectacular, wasn’t it?” she breathed. “And it worked.”

“What do you mean, it worked? Genghis could have had you killed, for violating his priority in the hunt.”

“But he didn’t. He called me to his yurt. He sent out everybody, even the interpreters—there were just the two of us. I think he really believes now that I am from his Tengri. You know, when I went to him Genghis had been drinking for hours, so I cured his hangover. I kissed his cup of wine—I slipped in a few aspirins I’d put in my mouth. It was so easy. I tell you, Kolya—”

“What did you offer him, Sable?”

“What he wants. Long ago he was given a divine mission, via a shaman. Genghis is Tengri’s representative on Earth, sent to rule over all of us. He knows his mission isn’t complete yet—and since the Discontinuity he’s actually gone backward—but he also knows he’s getting older. That Communist monument recording the date of his death spooked the bejesus out of him. He wants time to complete his mission—he wants immortality. And that’s what I offered him. I told him that in Babylon he will find the philosopher’s stone.”

Kolya gasped. “You’re crazy.”

“How do you know, Kolya? We’ve no idea what waits for us in Babylon. Who knows what’s possible? And who is to stop us?” she sneered. “Casey? Those dumb-ass Brits in India?”

Kolya hesitated. “Did Genghis take you to his bed?”

She smiled. “I knew he would be put off by clean flesh. So I took a little dung from his favorite horse, and rubbed it in my scalp. I even rolled around in the dirt a bit. It worked. And you know, he liked my skin. The smoothness—the absence of disease scars. He may not like hygiene, but he likes its results.” Her face darkened. “He took me from behind. The Mongols make love about as subtly as they wage war. Some day that hard-faced bastard will pay for that.”

“Sable—”

“But not today. He got what he wanted, and so did I.” She beckoned Basil. “You, Frenchie. Tell Yeh-lü that Genghis has decided. The Mongols would have reached Iraq anyhow, in a generation or so; the campaign won’t be a challenge for them. The quriltai, the council of war, has already been called.” She took a dagger from her boot, and thrust it into the map, where she had placed it before, into Babylon. This time nobody dared remove it.