Time’s Eye

“Because I think your King is going to be important for all our futures. If he dies, at least it won’t be this way.”

Philip closed his hand over the sheet of tablets, and smiled. “Thank you, lady. But tell me …”

“Yes?”

“Will they remember him, in the future?”

Again, the strange dilemma of too much knowledge—compounded for Bisesa by long sessions with her phone as she had researched Alexander’s story. “Yes. They even remember his horse!” Bucephalus had died in a battle on the river Jhelum. “More than a thousand years from now, in the land beyond the Oxus, the rulers will claim that their horses once all had horns on their heads, and were descended from Bucephalus, when Alexander passed there.”

Philip was enchanted. “Alexander had a headdress with golden horns made for Bucephalus in battle. Lady—if the King is ever close to death—”

“Tell him then.”

When he had gone, she turned on de Morgan. “And you keep that to yourself.”

He spread his hands. “Of course. We must keep Alexander alive—if we are stuck here, he may indeed be our best hope of salvaging something of our future. But by all the gods, Bisesa! Why not sell those pills to him? Alexander is a thousand times richer than any other man of his time! What a waste …”

Laughing, she walked away.

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 Tem, which meant “smith”; his adopted name meant “universal ruler.” It took a decade of fratricidal conflict for Tem 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.