Toregene worked her way down, and Ögedei felt his muscles loosen. He was tight, but it wasn’t that half-remembered tightness, that lower-back tension that came from being in the saddle overlong. “Tonight,” he sighed, “I have to go to dinner and eat over-spiced foreign food with golden chopsticks. I have to pretend to be interested in talking to overstuffed diplomats. That’s all I am now. A man who sits on benches and chairs, who eats and talks. That is all I do.”
“Somebody has to be Khagan,” said Toregene. “You’ve done a better job of ruling the empire than even your father.”
Ögedei scowled. “The empire rules itself. They just need someone to grovel to.” After a beat he added, “And no one compares to my father.”
He felt Jachin shift to his other side, and her elbow descended into the softer flesh below his shoulder. “Before you were Khagan this was all empty grassland,” she reminded him. “Because of you, there is a palace now. The grandest palace the world has ever known.”
“It would’ve been better off staying grassland. A palace for the Chinese is a prison for Mongols.” He flexed his shoulders, shooing his wives off him, and sat up. Their hands were deft, but their words were not helping him relax. He looked at Jachin and then Toregene, making sure they were paying attention to him. “Would it not be simpler if we rode off together? We could leave all of this to someone else and go live in a ger on the edge of a river like we used to. We could live off the land again. Eat what I kill.”
His wives said nothing, but they curled up close to him, running their hands through his hair. He clasped his hands on their shoulders, feeling their warm skin. “I think when I die, the empire will die with me,” he mused. “I have no worthy heirs. Kadan is too enamored with foreign religions. Khashi is more interested in chasing pretty women than fighting. Onghwe…” He shook his head. “Onghwe is worst of all.”
“What about Guyuk?” asked Toregene. “He will be a worthy Khagan.”
“Guyuk is too quick to anger. Remember what he did in Rus.”
“Batu is an arrogant fool,” said Toregene. “Guyuk was—”
“Wars aren’t won by being cruel to your own men,” Ögedei cut her off. “Guyuk is too temperamental. He does not understand how to rule. And his cousins…they would be like wolves in the dead of winter: they would look upon Guyuk as the weakest member of the pack.”
“They wouldn’t dare!” Toregene’s eyes flashed.
“They would,” Ögedei sighed. “And perhaps…” His shoulders sagged and his hands pressed down more firmly on his wives’ shoulders.
“What is it?” Jachin asked. “It isn’t the dream of the steppe that haunts you, is it?”
Ögedei shook his head. “An emissary from Chagatai came today, bearing a message.”
“What message?”
“He sent some stripling to keep an eye on my drinking.”
The women were quiet for a moment, and when one of them spoke, her voice was almost too quiet to be heard. “There might be some benefit to such a man,” Jachin said.
Ögedei whirled on her, and she met his gaze for an instant. She dropped her chin, but the damage was done. Ögedei had seen the sharp glitter of her eyes.
“I am Khagan,” he roared. The headache pulsed in his head, returning with furious hammering. “I will do as I please. When I please. How I please. No one—not my brother, not you, and certainly not some dust-covered, boodog-eating horse archer—will tell me what I may and may not do.”
Toregene leaned against him, her weight holding his arm down. Had he raised it to strike Jachin? He had no memory of trying. There was nothing in his head but the pounding reminder of how long it had been since he had had a drink, and that sensation only proved Jachin’s point. He pulled away from Toregene, dismissing Jachin with a wave of his hand. “You can’t expect a man not to drink from time to time. My father drank. His father drank. Drinking is the only freedom I still have.”
Toregene put her hands on his shoulders. Her braids brushed against his back as she rested her head against his. “Your brother’s not trying to insult you, Ögedei. He just cares about you.”
“Does he?” Ögedei stared at the flickering light of the lantern hanging on the wall. “If he really cares about me, then why doesn’t he come here himself?”
Ögedei could not see the sky for all the dust in the air. Men and horses—and the wind, even—had stirred up the dry ground of the Khalakhaljid Sands. The Kereyid army was endless; every time a break appeared in the clouds of dust, it was only to unleash more riders upon Genghis Khan’s beleaguered army.
His mouth filled with the taste of dirt and blood, Ögedei whipped the reins of his horse and drove it on through the sands. All around him, he heard the cacophony of battle: men shouting, the clanging of swords, the shrill screams of horses dying. He could not tell if his father’s armies were winning or losing. Ögedei’s world was reduced to a red cloud, filled with ghosts.
He beat his heels against the ribs of his horse, trying to keep the animal under control, but it sensed his fear and refused to mind him. Starting at every clang of steel around it, the horse kept shying—first one direction and then another.
He had seen seventeen winters; he did not think he would see another.
The dust swirled in front of him, billowing out from the shape of a charging horse and rider. There was something wrong with his head, and as he emerged from the cloud, Ögedei glimpsed the warrior’s helmet more fully and realized the approaching rider was not from Genghis’s army. The Kereyid, the long feather on his helm broken and bent, flicked his spear down and drove its point into his horse’s flank.
Ögedei felt the shock of the thrust in his legs, and his horse reared, lurching to the right. The reins jerked from Ögedei’s grasp, and as he tumbled toward the ground, he caught a glimpse of the sky through the dust. Blue sky.
The fall knocked the wind from his lungs and made his ears ring. He tried to spit out the dust in his throat, but nothing came out when he retched. His sword was gone, and he tried to remember when it had fallen from his grip: when his horse had thrown him, or when he had hit the ground? The dust had swallowed it up.
The ground shook. A horse. His ears were still echoing with the shock of his fall, and everything was muffled. But he could feel the horse coming at him, and he rolled to the side as the Kereyid thundered past. The tip of the man’s sword caught the edge of his helmet, ringing from one of the metal studs in the leather. His head was yanked back and his helmet flew off, eagerly devoured by the dust.
The Kereyid pulled his horse to a stop, wheeling it around again, and as it trotted toward Ögedei, he slipped off its back in a fluid motion. Sword raised, he charged Ögedei.
Scrambling for the dagger in his belt, Ögedei pushed himself off the ground. The wind gusted between them, and the Kereyid’s blow came slowly, as if all the particulate in the air was causing resistance against the blade.
Ögedei crouched under the strike and thrust up into the Kereyid’s belly. His dagger hit the edge of the warrior’s breastplate, skipped down, and then slid into flesh. Ögedei pulled the blade along the edge of the hard breastplate and blood splashed over his hands. The Kereyid howled, and Ögedei shoved him down. He was still holding his sword, and Ögedei kicked it from his hands and then stomped on the man’s face. The Kereyid continued to yell, and Ögedei kept kicking until his boots were covered in red mud.