Chucai laughed. “Well spoken,” he said. “What of their tactics, then? What of the Torguud response?”
Gansukh sensed that Chucai had changed his mind about his line of questioning. He wasn’t sure what he had said—or not said—but Chucai appeared to be mollified on some topic. Or perhaps he is simply setting it aside for now, he thought, admonishing himself to listen carefully to Chucai’s questions. “I am not a member of the Torguud,” Gansukh said carefully. “It would be presumptuous of me to speculate on their martial response.”
“Oh, very tactful,” Chucai said. “Lian’s instruction, I suspect.”
Bristling, Gansukh held his tongue and bowed his head slightly in return.
“The reason I ask,” Chucai continued, “is that there may be a strategic advantage gained by soliciting your opinion in a certain matter rather than simply giving you an order,” Chucai continued.
“I can only hope to be of service, Master Chucai,” Gansukh offered.
Chucai raised an eyebrow in response to Gansukh’s obsequious response. “I am going to ask Munokhoi to relinquish his position as captain of the Khagan’s private guard,” he said.
Gansukh’s heart thudded loudly in his chest, and his cheeks and forehead were suddenly hot in the sun. His knees trembled, and the landscape wavered slightly as he tried to calm his racing thoughts. He had no idea what sort of expression was on his face, though he was certain Chucai could tell the statement had caught him off guard. Was this what he was referring to when he talked about men failing to follow the Khagan? he wondered. Had Chucai’s question had nothing to do with him after all?
In a moment of rare talkativeness, Chucai explained himself. “Munokhoi is unfit to lead the men out on the steppes”—he indicated the land spread out below them with a sweep of his arm—“or here in the mountains. Did he send you here to watch over the caravan? No. That was your decision. You saw the need to look over the terrain before the Khagan crossed it. Munokhoi thinks like a man who has spent his life behind walls.”
Gansukh scratched behind his right ear. “You need someone who has fought beyond the Khagan’s walls,” he said slowly, belaboring Chucai’s point.
Gansukh waited a moment for Chucai to continue, but he wasn’t terribly surprised when the Khagan’s advisor said nothing. This was a not uncommon gambit on Chucai’s part: to start a conversation, and then let it peter into silence. He had infinite patience: as a hunter, he could probably outwait even the most cautious deer; as a veteran of the Khagan’s courts, there was no one more skilled than he at making silence excruciating. The more he learned from Lian, the more Gansukh had understood the merits of Chucai’s techniques. People were more likely to believe something they felt like they had a hand in creating. Order a man, and he will dutifully comply; let him possess an idea as his own, will he not leap to implement it with great enthusiasm?
Gansukh couldn’t help but think of ?gedei’s decision to leave Karakorum for Burqan-qaldun. Had he not, in some small way, manipulated the Khagan into believing the idea was his?
“Master Chucai...” he began.
“Hmmm?” Chucai seemed to have forgotten he was there.
“This is an unusual circumstance that I find myself in,” Gansukh said. “As you say, typically you would simply inform me of your decision, and I would carry it out. Yet, you come to me now and appear to want my input on a certain matter.”
Chucai nodded absently, his attention still on the landscape below.
“Yet, I doubt that you haven’t thought through every consequence of every possible decision already. Do you expect me to have better insight on this matter than you? Or am I supposed to change your mind?”
“Change my mind?” Chucai raised an eyebrow. “What choice do you think I have made?”
Gansukh regarded the Khagan’s advisor warily, a response to Chucai’s question hanging in his throat. Why else would he have come all the way up here to tell me this? Does he want me to ask for the position? Gansukh rejected that idea almost as soon as it came into his head, but it wouldn’t go away. Me, a Torguud captain. There would be certain benefits, of course. And while there were many in the Khagan’s service who wouldn’t trust him, much like he had earned Tarbagatai’s admiration, he could win them over. All he had to do was demonstrate the depth of his allegiance to the Khagan—and wasn’t this entire hunting expedition the result of his efforts to show his devotion to the Khagan? The men would drift toward him. He had led men before; he could do it again.