‘Can anything be saved?’ he asked at last. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought he could smell the rich odour of dying vegetation on the breeze.
The first minister considered, looking through a list of events in the city as if he might find inspiration there.
‘If the invaders left today, Majesty, we could no doubt salvage some of the hardier grains. We could sow rice in the waterlogged fields and take one crop. The canals could be rebuilt, or we could direct the course of the water around the plain. Perhaps a tenth of the yield could be saved or replaced.’
‘But the invaders will not leave,’ Rai Chiang went on. He thumped his fist into the arm of the chair.
‘They have beaten us. Lice-ridden, stinking tribesmen have cut right to the heart of the Xi Xia and I am meant to sit here and preside over the stench of rotting wheat.’
The first minister bowed his head at the tirade, frightened to speak. Two of his colleagues had been executed that very morning as the king’s temper mounted. He did not want to join them.
The king rose and clasped his hands behind his back.
‘I have no choices left. If I strip the south of the militia in every town, it will not equal the numbers who failed against them. How long would it be before those towns become strongholds for bandits without the king’s soldiers to keep them quiet? I would lose the south as well as the north and then the city would fall.’ He swore under his breath and the minister paled.
‘I will not sit and wait for the peasants to riot, or this sickly smell of rot to fill every room in the city. Send out messengers to the leader of these people. Tell him I will grant him an audience that we may discuss his demands on my people.’
‘Majesty, they are little better than savage dogs,’ the minister spluttered. ‘There can be no negotiation with them.’
Rai Chiang turned furious eyes on his servant.
‘Send them out. I have not been able to destroy this army of savage dogs. All I have is the fact that he cannot take my city from me. Perhaps I can bribe him into leaving.’
The minister flushed with the shame of the task, but he bowed to the floor, pressing his head against the cool wood.
As evening came, the tribes were drunk and singing. The storytellers had been busy with tales of the battle and how Genghis had drawn the enemy past their ring of iron. Comic poems had the children in fits of giggles and, before the light faded, there were many contests of wrestling and archery, the champions wearing a grass wreath on their heads until they drank themselves to insensibility.
Genghis and his generals presided over the celebration. Genghis blessed a dozen new marriages, giving weapons and ponies from his own herd to warriors who had distinguished themselves. The gers were packed with women captured from the towns, though not all the wives welcomed the newcomers. More than one fight between women had ended in bloodshed, each time with the sinewy Mongol women victorious over their husbands’ captives. Before nightfall, Kachiun had been called to the site of three different killings as anger flared with the airag liquor in their veins. He had ordered two men and a woman to be tied to a post and beaten bloody. He did not care about those who had been killed, but he had no desire to see the tribes descend into an orgy of lust and violence. Perhaps because of his iron hand, the mood of the tribes remained light as the stars came out and, though some of them missed the plains of home, they looked upon their leaders with pride.
Beside the ger where Genghis met his generals was his family home, no larger or more ornate than any other raised by the families of the new nation. While he cheered the wrestling bouts, and torches were lit around the vast camp, his wife Borte sat with her four sons, crooning to them as they ate. With the coming of dusk, Jochi and Chagatai had made themselves difficult to find, preferring the noise and fun of the feast to sleep. Borte had been forced to send out three warriors to scour the gers for them and they had been brought back still struggling under their arms. Both boys sat glaring at one another in the little ger while Borte sang Ogedai and little Tolui to sleep. The day had been exhausting for them and it did not take long before both younger boys were dreaming in their blankets.
Borte turned to Jochi, frowning at the anger in his face.
‘You have not eaten, little man,’ she said to him. He sniffed without replying and Borte leaned closer to him.
‘That cannot be airag I smell on your breath?’ she demanded. Jochi’s manner changed in an instant and he drew up his knees like a barrier.
‘It would be,’ Chagatai said, delighted at the chance to see his brother squirm. ‘Some of the men gave him a drink and he was sick on the grass.’
‘Keep your mouth still!’ Jochi shouted, springing up. Borte grabbed him by the arm, her strength easily a match for the little boy’s. Chagatai grinned, thoroughly satisfied.
‘He is bitter because he broke his favourite bow this morning,’ Jochi snapped, struggling in his mother’s grasp. ‘Let me go!’
In response, Borte slapped Jochi across the face and dropped him back onto the blankets. It was not a hard blow, but he raised his hand to his cheek in shock.
‘I have heard your squabbling all day,’ she said angrily. ‘When will you realise you cannot fight like puppies with the tribes watching? Not you. Do you think it pleases your father? If I tell him, you will …’
‘Don’t tell him,’ Jochi said quickly, fear showing on his face.
Borte relented immediately. ‘I will not, if you behave and work. You will inherit nothing from him simply because you are his sons. Is Arslan his blood? Jelme? If you are fit to lead, he will choose you, but do not expect him to favour you over better men.’
Both boys were listening intently and she realised she had not spoken to them in this way before. It surprised her to see how they hung on every word and she considered what else she might say before they were distracted.
‘Eat your food while you listen,’ she said. To her pleasure, both boys took the plates of meat and wolfed into them, though they had long gone cold. Their eyes never left hers as they waited for their mother to continue.
‘I had thought your father might have explained this to you by now,’ she murmured. ‘If he were khan of a small tribe, perhaps his eldest would expect to inherit his sword, his horse and his bondsmen. He once expected the same from your grandfather, Yesugei, though his brother Bekter was oldest.’
‘What happened to Bekter?’ Jochi asked.
‘Father and Kachiun killed him,’ Chagatai said with relish. Borte winced as Jochi’s eyes widened in surprise.
‘Truly?’
His mother sighed.
‘That is a story for another day. I don’t know where Chagatai heard it, but he should know better than to listen to the gossip of the campfires.’
Chagatai nodded briskly at Jochi behind her back, grinning at his brother’s discomfort. Borte shot him an irritable glance, catching him before he could freeze.
‘Your father is not some small khan from the hills,’ she said. ‘He has more tribes than can be counted on the hands. Will you expect him to hand them over to a weakling?’ She turned to Chagatai. ‘Or a fool?’ She shook her head. ‘He will not. He has younger brothers and they will all have sons. The next khan may come from them, if he is dissatisfied with the men you become.’
Jochi lowered his head as he thought this through.
‘I