LITMIR.BIZ

      The wind screamed around the carts, carrying a fine mist of sand that made the men and women spit constantly and wince at the grit in their food. Flies tormented them all, tasting the salt from their sweat and leaving red marks where they had bitten. During the day, the Uighurs had shown them how to protect their faces with cloth, leaving only their eyes to peer out at the bleak landscape, shimmering with heat. Those who wore armour found their helmets and neckpieces too hot to touch, but they did not complain.

      After a week, the army of Genghis climbed a range of rust-coloured hills to enter a vast plain of rippled dunes. Though they had hunted in the foothills, game had become rare as the heat increased. On the blistering sand, the only sign of life was tiny black scorpions scuttling away from their ponies and vanishing into holes. Time and again the carts became bogged down and had to be dug out in the full heat of the day. It was backbreaking work, but every hour lost was one that brought them closer to running out of water.

      They had filled thousands of bloated goatskins, tied with sinew and baked hard in the sun. With no other source, the supply dwindled visibly and, in the heat, many of the skins were found to have burst under the weight of the rest. They had carried only enough for twenty days and already twelve had passed. The warriors drank the blood of their mounts every second day, as well as a few cupfuls of warm, brackish water, but they were close to the edge of endurance and became dazed and listless, their lips dry enough to bleed.

      Genghis rode with his brothers at the head of the army, squinting into the glare for some sign of the mountains he had been told to expect. The Uighurs had traded deep into the desert and he depended on Barchuk to guide them. He frowned to himself as he considered the endless flat basin of rippled black and yellow, stretching all the way to the horizon. The heat of the day was the worst he had known, but his skin had darkened and his face was seamed in new lines of dirt and sand. He had almost been glad of the cold on the first night, until it grew so biting that the furs in the gers gave little protection. The Uighurs had shown the other tribesmen how to heat rocks in the fire and then sleep on a layer of them as they cooled. More than a few warriors had brown patches on their backs where the rocks had burned their deels, but the cold had been beaten and, if they survived the constant thirst, the desert held nothing else that could stop them coming. Genghis wiped his mouth at intervals as he rode, shifting a pebble in his cheek to keep the spittle flowing.

      He glanced behind him as Barchuk rode up to his side. The Uighurs had covered the eyes of their ponies with cloth and the animals rode blind. Genghis had tried that with his own mounts, but those who had not experienced it before bucked and snorted at the cloth until it was removed, then suffered through the hot days. Many of the animals had developed crusts of whitish-yellow muck on their eyelids and would need healing salves if they ever found their way out of the desert. Hardy as they were, they had to be given their share of precious water. On foot, the new nation would die in the desert.

      Barchuk pointed to the ground, jabbing his hand and raising his voice over the unremitting wind.

      ‘Do you see the blue flecks in the sand, lord?’

      Genghis nodded, working his dry mouth so that he could reply.

      ‘They mark the beginning of the last stage before the Yinshan Mountains. There is copper here. We have traded it with the Xi Xia.’

      ‘How much further then before we see these mountains?’ Genghis asked hoarsely, refusing to let his hopes rise.

      Barchuk shrugged with Mongol impassivity.

      ‘We have no certain knowledge, but merchants from Xi Xia are still fresh when they cross our trails in this place, their horses barely marked with dust. It cannot be far now.’

      Genghis looked back over his shoulder at the silent mass of riders and carts. He had brought sixty thousand warriors into the desert, as many again of their wives and children. He could not see the end of the tail that stretched back for miles, the forms blurring into one another until they were no more than a dark smear wavering in the heat. The water was almost gone and soon they would have to slaughter the herds, taking only what meat they could carry and leaving the rest on the sands. Barchuk followed his gaze and chuckled.

      ‘They have suffered, lord, but it will not be long now before we are knocking at the doors of the Xi Xia kingdom.’

      Genghis snorted wearily to himself. The Uighur khan’s knowledge had brought them into this bleak place, but they still had only his word that the kingdom was as rich and fertile as he said. No warriors of the Uighurs had been allowed to travel beyond the mountains that bordered the desert to the south and Genghis had no way to plan his attack. He considered this irritably as his horse sent another scorpion skittering over the sand. He had staked them all on the chance of a weak point in the Chin defences, but he still wondered what it would be like to see a great city of stone, as tall as a mountain. Against such a thing, his horsemen might only stare in frustration.

      The sand under his pony’s hooves grew blue-green as they rode, great stripes of the strange colours stretching away in all directions. When they stopped to eat, the children threw it into the air and drew pictures with sticks. Genghis could not share their pleasure as the supply of water dwindled and each night was spent shivering despite the hot rocks.

      There was little to amuse the army before they fell into weary sleep. Twice in twelve days, Genghis had been called to settle some dispute between tribes as heat and thirst made tempers flare. Both times, he had executed the men involved and made it clear that he would not allow anything to threaten the peace of the camp. He considered them to have entered enemy lands and if the officers could not handle a disturbance, his involvement meant a ruthless outcome. The threat was enough to keep most of the hotheaded warriors from outright disobedience, but his people had never been easy to rule and too many hours in silence made them fractious and difficult.

      As the fourteenth dawn brought the great heat once more, Genghis could only wince as he threw off his blankets and scattered the stones under him to be collected for the next night by his servants. He felt stiff and tired, with a film of grit on his skin that made him itch. When little Jochi stumbled into him in some game with his brothers, Genghis cuffed him hard, sending him weeping to his mother for solace. They were all short-tempered in the desert heat and only Barchuk’s promises of a green plain and a river at the end kept their eyes on the horizon, reaching out to it in imagination.

      On the sixteenth day, a low rise of black hills appeared. The Uighur warriors riding as scouts came back at a canter, their mounts sending up puffs of sand and labouring through its grip. Around

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