“I’m trying to save your life,” she insisted.
He glanced at her, and she flinched at the wounded look in his eyes—the naked accusation of betrayal.
“Please,” she whispered. “Trust me. If you don’t, we’re both dead.
” Gansukh didn’t reply, but his hand moved slowly away from the hilt of his sword. Putting both hands out in front of him, palms forward, he knelt on the ground. One of the soldiers reversed his spear and hit Gansukh in the lower back with the butt of his weapon. He collapsed on the ground, and as a soldier put a knee in his back and grabbed at his hands to bind them, he kept staring at Lian. He didn’t look away as the Chinese men hauled him up and, with a nod from their leader, dragged him into the darkness of the night.
*
As soon as the Khagan sat down to eat, Master Chucai made his excuses and left the feast for the solitude of his tent. He had been working nonstop for nearly a week by the time the caravan had left Karakorum, and with the camp established and the Khagan and his entourage seated for the nighttime meal, he was no longer needed. For a few hours, he could meditate or read—he had brought along a new edition of Zhu Xi’s commentary on the Four Books that he had been looking forward to examining for some time. He found, more and more, that it was not sleep that truly recharged his vitality but more spiritual activities. When he lay down at night, parts of his mind churned over the matters of the Empire, and while he found new solutions to problems waiting for him when he awoke, sleep was never particularly restful. Meditation and reflection were his most treasured activities, and there had been a scarcity of both in the last few weeks.
The shouting of the guards stirred him from his meditation, and his eyes snapped open. His ger had been dark but for a single flame in a small brazier and the ambient light from the camp that slipped through the space he had left open at the top of the tent flaps, but there was more light spilling into his ger than he had expected to see. Not sunlight. Firelight.
Master Chucai leaped to his feet and raced to the entrance of the ger. He clawed open the flaps and rushed out. His primary concern was the Khagan’s ger, and he quickly ascertained that it was undamaged and that the figures milling around it were the Imperial Guard. He was too far away to make out individuals among the clustered guards, but he assumed Munokhoi would not tarry long at the Khagan’s ger. He will take the fight to the enemy, Chucai thought as he strode through the maze of tents and wagons. The men guarding the Khagan will be diligent, but they won’t be imaginative.
He had had some reservations about putting the hotheaded jaghun captain in charge of the entire Imperial Guard that was accompanying the caravan to Burqan-qaldun, but ?gedei had ignored his concerns. While he had no doubt Munokhoi would ruthlessly deal with the fools who had mistakenly thought they had stumbled upon a wealthy caravan, it would probably be best to ensure that the Khagan remained safe during the fracas.
Chucai came to a sudden halt. He stared at a nearby tent, watching as a trio of overdressed courtiers struggled to douse the flames slithering across the tent’s roof. Blinking his eyes clear of the dust and ash floating in the air, he slowly turned his head and carefully examined the spread of the fires throughout the camp. An idea swam in the depth of his brain, like an enormous koi in a murky pond, and he tried to remain still so as to not spook it, so that it would come to the surface where he could fully apprehend it. There was a pattern to the fires. They weren’t randomly scattered throughout the camp.
Archers, he noted, firing from an elevated position. He scanned the horizon, trying to spot some sign of where the attack had come from, but the smoke from the fires dirtied the air too much to spot any such sign. This isn’t an accident, he realized, discarding the idea that this attack had been a case of mistaken identity.
Initially, the Khagan had wanted to travel with a smaller entourage—none of his wives, a minimum of supply wagons, and only a single jaghun to protect him. The idea had been ridiculous, and Chucai had dismissed it outright, arguing that the Khagan could travel with no less than a minghan—one thousand men—as his personal security force. And, of course, a thousand men would have required a commensurate increase in supplies, which would have, in turn, increased the amount of time it would take to assemble the caravan. While Chucai thought the desire to travel to Burqan-qaldun was more than a passing fancy on the part of the Khagan, he wasn’t the 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.