Shike by Robert J. Shea (the reading list txt) 📕

always thought it was just one more of the lies your enemies spread about you.”

He looked at her sombrely. “No. It’s true. I myself haven’t done it, and I don’t intend to do it. It’s stupid and wasteful. We did it more often in my grandfather’s day. We saw no use in cities then. When my grandfather sacked Yenking, the capital of northern China, it burned for more than a month. I was born a year after the destruction of Yenking, and one day I will build my own capital there.

“We felt no regret for the thousands of lives we ended, but neither did we enjoy the killing. It was simply work that we did, as one would butcher sheep, because it seemed necessary. Usually victims would be divided up among the warriors. Give each man five people to kill, and an army of twenty thousand can exterminate the population of a city in moments.”

A city just the size of Heian Kyo, Taniko thought.

“We killed conquered people because we didn’t know what else to do with them,” Kublai said. “Then, too, the policy of annihilating whole cities struck such terror in our enemies that they often gave up in despair. Of course, we had to destroy the cities of those who slew our ambassadors. In Khwaresmia, where they murdered our emissaries, my father directed the storming of Mery from a golden throne set up on the plain before the city. When Mery fell, he ordered all the people brought before him. They were divided into three herds, men, women and children. People submit to death more easily when families are broken up. They were told to lie down, and my father’s troops beheaded every one, to make sure that none might survive by feigning death. The heads of men, women and children were stacked in separate pyramids. Even the dogs and cats were killed. Then the city was burned to the ground and stones pulled down. A few thousand people survived by hiding in the cellars. Later my father sent some of his horde back to hunt them down. In the end there was no life left in that place. So it went with many other cities of Khwaresmia and Persia.

“My father did not escape unscathed, however. He used to have nightmares about Mery and other places where he had ordered massacres. Many of the men who took part in the killings suffered from it later.”

Taniko drained her goblet. Her hands were trembling. Did he actually expect her to feel sorry for his father and those like him? The picture of her baby being swept over the waterfall at Daidoji forced its way into her mind.

“Why the children?”

Kublai took the goblet from her cold hand. She made an effort to get up and pour wine for herself, but he waved her down. As he handed her the full goblet, she looked up at him and thought he seemed like an enormous tree.

He said, “If we let the children live they would only have starved to death.”

She laughed shakily. “So you killed them out of your overflowing compassion.”

Kublai looked irritated. “I have already told you that I never ordered such massacres. Besides, in every country it is the law that when one person commits a misdeed, the whole family is punished, including the children. Is that not so, even in your land?”

“Yes.” She recalled the many questions he had asked her about her country on other occasions, and fear took hold of her. “Why do you go on and on? How many lands must your people conquer before you say you have enough?”

“Our ambitions change. My grandfather did not set out to conquer the world. He wanted to take horses and cattle and women from his enemies and force them to submit to him, to protect himself. But each time he won a war, he made new enemies, who feared his increasing strength. So he had no choice but to go on and fight again. By the end of his life, though, we had won so many wars that we began to feel we had a special destiny. The Ancestor often said, ‘There is only one sun in the sky and one Power in Eternal Heaven. Only one Great Khan should be upon the earth.’ He and those who succeeded him sent messages to rulers all over the world demanding that they come to Karakorum with tribute and offer their submission to the Great Khan.

“Grandfather in his day dreamed of reshaping the world so that all of it would be one enormous pasture. Even so, he didn’t talk, as Arik Buka and his councillors do, of preserving the old ways. He never cared whether a way of doing things was old or new. He cared only for what would make the Mongols great and powerful.

“In the end my Ancestor realized that destroying all cities and killing all their people, reducing farms and manors to wastelands, these things would not keep the Mongols powerful. He saw that there is a power that comes from the cities, from knowledge and wealth, that could be greater than the war-making strength and skills of the Mongols.

“Now the cities are a part of our empire, with the knowledge they hold. When my grandfather’s generation took cities, they were like men who have starved a long time and are suddenly given meat rich with grease. They could not digest it. It made them ill.

“I and my generation are Mongol enough to be able to conquer cities, but civilized enough to know what do with our conquests. To be a nomad is not to be uncivilized, after all. I have read the history of China and its endless wars with my people, and I know what we Mongols are. Eor as long as men can remember, we have lived on the edge of the civilized world, hounded and harried by its armies, learning from it, sometimes stealing from it, an unrecognized part of it. We did not spring full-grown from the steppes. It was civilized men who first learned to ride horses and camels, to herd cattle and sheep. They developed the law, and it is law that binds our nomad world together like the leather thongs that hold together the frame of a yurt. They invented warfare. Civilized men moved slowly northwards from the fertile plains of China, building their houses, raising their crops and their animals. They came to a land not so fertile, the land where I was born, poor for crops but good for their herds. They cut themselves loose from the land and began to follow their herds with the seasons. They taught the hunters and forest people who already lived in the north, and they intermarried with them. That is how my people came to be.

“When the Emperors of China were strong, they warred on my people. When the Emperors were weak, my people took lands and tribute from them. The herdsman and the farmers are not different kinds of men, they are right hand and left hand. Through their constant warfare, each developed new weapons and new strategies.

“Now, for a time, perhaps for all time, we Mongols, are bringing warfare to an end. We have united the cities, the farmlands and the steppes in peace, prosperity, and order. There is no reason why all men cannot dwell under one government, even as the Ancestor said. Combining the foundation my Ancestor laid in the Yassa with the Imperial wisdom of China, we can create a perfect government, a government based on Mongol strength to guarantee that it will endure for ever. We will use the old Confucian system of examinations to find the most talented administrators. It is the best system of government in the world-appointment of the most fit. Of course, we must never let the Chinese get the upper hand. We will take their ideas, use their skills, but never let them rise to positions of power. I will bring in able men from all the countries of the earth-Turks, Arabs, Eranks, and Mongols, of course-to rule over the Chinese and humble them. If we allowed the Chinese power, they would corrupt us, weaken us, make us forget who we are, until there were no Mongols left, only decadent Chinese whose ancestors had once been Mongols. I am often accused of wanting to deliver the Mongol empire into the hands of the Chinese, but I am not so stupid as that. I will devour China, China will not devour me.

“After all of China is ours, we will turn west again. With the wealth and wisdom of China, we will go on to the conquest of the Eranks. It will not be difficult. We would have swept through Europe twenty years ago, had my uncle Ogodai not died at the wrong moment. You asked me how far we mean to go. Once we have China and Europe, how much of the world will be left?

“We will be the herdsmen of nations. There are many kinds of riches besides animals, besides precious stones and metals. There is the wealth of beauty, the wealth of wisdom, the wealth of comfort. We will possess and enjoy all of it, all the goods this world has to offer.”

“The kind of wealth you speak of is only accumulated in time of peace,” Taniko said.

Kublai eyed her with amusement. “Those islands of yours have never been invaded. There must be a great deal piled up there.”

“You would be surprised at our poverty. Having seen China, I re alize that our people have no idea what wealth is.” Don’t overdo it, she warned herself.

“You fear me. That is why you keep telling me how poor your country is.” She realized that he had been sitting beside her for quite a while now.

“Your Majesty is the most powerful man in the world. How could I not fear you?”

His dark eyes impaled her. “You know me better now than you did when we met. Why still fear me?”

She saw what was happening to him. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his breathing quicker. A slight flush crept into his cheeks. Like a bull in springtime, she remembered. Amazingly and almost instantly, she felt a warmth between her thighs in response to his stare. She had not known a man in the two years since Kiyosi’s death.

He is such a big man. I could close my eyes and pretend I’m with Jebu. If he lies on me, though, he’ll crush me.

“Your elephant trainers know their elephants, Your Majesty, but still-and wisely-they fear them.”

“Stop calling me Your Majesty. It reminds me of things I would like to forget for a while.”

“What shall I call you?”

His body lay across the bed like a boulder. He smiled up at her. She put her hand on his silk robe and let it rest there, feeling the beating heart of the most powerful man in the world.

“You must think of your own name for me,” he said. “One that we will share with no one else.”

He is so big, so strong. “I shall call you Elephant.”

Kublai laughed and pulled her down so that she lay on his chest. His hands plucked at her clothes. Gown by gown he stripped her. She was surprised when he didn’t stop until she was completely undressed.

“You are exquisite,” he said. “But you are blushing. Does it bother you to be naked? I prefer it this way.” His thick fingers gently explored her body.

“It’s strange to couple with a man in complete nakedness,” she said. “I don’t like or dislike it.” Then she gasped. “I like what you are doing now. Very much.”

She had forgotten her fears of how he might crush her if he lay on top of her. He never did. When