Shike by Robert J. Shea (the reading list txt) đź“•
" 'A Zinja who kills a brother of the Order will die a thousand deaths.' "Jebu quoted The Zinja Manual, the Order's book of wisdom.
Fudo snorted. "That book is a collection of old women's tales. You are wrong, Jebu. The Father Abbot foolishly appointed us to guard you. We have only to say we killed you because you were trying to escape from the crypt."
"I don't know any Saying."
"Kill the dog and be done with it, Weicho."
The instant Jebu felt the point of the naginata press harder against his skin, he swung his hand over and struck the weapon aside. With a quick chop of his other hand he broke the long staff into which the blade was set. The curved steel blade splashed into the water, and Jebu felt around for it. He grabbed the broken wooden end and held the naginata blade like a sword. But he still dared not climb out of the crypt.
"Come and get me," he said.
"Come and get us," said Weicho.
"He won't," s
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A Zinja does not faint, he told himself. I’m a dead man now, for certain.
He woke to more pain. He was lying on his back, and a flexing of his tortured muscles told him his arms and legs were bound with ropes. He had been awakened by someone splashing water on his face. He opened his eyes, blinked them against torchlight, and saw Torluk and Arghun looking down at him.
“Is this the one?” Torluk said in Mongolian. His chest was bare except for a thick swathing of cloth strips around his middle. Perhaps he, too, had broken a few ribs when he fell from his horse.
“It is,” Arghun whispered. It was almost five years since Jebu last saw Arghun Baghadur. The red of his moustache was streaked with grey. The lines in his face and especially around his slitted blue eyes were deeper. The eyes were as empty of feeling as ever.
“Did you betray Arik Buka just to get at me?” Jebu asked him.
Arghun shook his head. “I left Arik Buka’s service for the same reason I am going to kill you. Because I serve the spirit of Genghis Khan. Roll him over.”
Two men grasped Jebu’s right side and lifted him. He groaned in spite of himself.
“Don’t cause him unnecessary pain,” Arghun said. “He is a brave man.” They pushed him over and let him fall on his stomach. “That’s why I had you awakened, Jebu,” Arghun continued. “It is a bad death, to die unconscious and not know the manner or reason of your dying. I want you to know that it is I who am killing you, in obedience to the will of Genghis Khan. I told you once before that I would avoid shedding your blood.” He turned to one of his men. “Give me your bow.”
“Let me get up to fight you, if you want me to die well,” Jebu said. Arghun laughed as he crouched over Jebu. “I’m many years older than you are.”
“I’m wounded. My left arm is useless. My ribs are broken. It would be a fair fight.” Why am I talking to him like this? Why don’t I just let him kill me and have done with it? Something, the Self perhaps, wanted him to prolong his life as much as possible. But a Zinja does not care whether he lives or dies.
Arghun pressed one knee into Jebu’s back and slipped the double-curved, compound bow over his head. He pulled the rawhide cord against Jebu’s throat and turned the bow. The string cut into Jebu’s neck like the edge of a sword. The tension of the bow pulled the string tight around his neck with a strength equal to that of two men pulling on each end of it. His lungs screamed for air. His windpipe was closed. Arghun gave the bow another turn. Jebu’s head felt as if it were going to burst.
Through the dizziness and the ringing in his ears he heard voices. The bowstring tightened again, viciously. Consciousness faded-and returned in moments. The merciless rawhide cord was gone from his neck. Arghun’s weight was off his back. Breath, never so sweet, whistled through his tortured throat.
Someone was kneeling beside him, cutting the ropes that held him. Yukio.
“We got to you. By the favour of Hachiman, we got to you in time.”
A shout made Jebu turn his head. He gasped at the sudden pain in his throat and neck. The shout was Arghun’s. He was standing face-to-face with Uriangkatai. Both big men had their fists clenched and their shoulders hunched.
“You will die, I swear by Eternal Heaven, you will die for striking me,” Arghun roared.
“You are twice a traitor, Arghun,” Uriangkatai replied in an even tone. “Once to your lord Arik Buka, and now to your lord Kublai Khan. You ordered a tuman of your division to attack our men from Ge-pen. By Eternal Heaven, it is you who will pay for the needless deaths of hundreds of my warriors.”
“They were foreigners,” said Arghun contemptuously.
“They were soldiers of the Great Khan. They were under my command. You will answer to him and to me for the loss of their lives.”
“Then I will answer for one more life as well,” said Arghun, drawing his sabre and turning towards Jebu. Yukio leaped to his feet and stood before Jebu’s body, his samurai sword gripped in both hands, poised to strike.
Uriangkatai raised his hand. “Stop, Arghun. If I let my hand fall, the men with me will fill you with arrows.” The desert ridge was lined with crossbowmen, their weapons pointed at Arghun.
The turkhan exhaled slowly, relaxed, and put away his sword. It must be enough to drive him mad, Jebu thought, to come so close to killing me after all these years, and then to be stopped short.
Arghun turned back to Uriangkatai. Pointing to Jebu he said, “Understand, Uriangkatai, it is the will of Genghis Khan that this monk die. He is the son of Jamuga, the worst enemy of the Conqueror’s youth. Do you think your father Subotai would have interfered with one carrying out the yarligh of Genghis Khan?”
“It is the will of Genghis Khan that fighting among the men of the ordu be punished by death. How much more are we obligated to kill a commander who starts a war among men on his own side. That is written in the Yassa of Genghis Khan.”
“Uriangkatai, tens of thousands of men have fallen today. It is foolish for an orkhon and a tarkhan to quarrel over this one.”
“If this one life is so insignificant, why did you order your men to attack my men, killing hundreds? Let the Great Khan judge the rights and wrongs of this.” Uriangkatai pointed to two of the warriors with him. “Make a litter for the monk Jebu and take him to a wagon.”
“Kill the monk,” Arghun shouted, turning to Torluk and the men behind him. “Shoot him. Kill him now.”
Uriangkatai turned to his own men and called, “Shoot any man who touches his bow.”
Torluk and the men of his tuman remained motionless.
“Torluk, do you disobey me?” said Arghun wonderingly.
There were tears in Torluk’s eyes. “I have followed you since we both were boys in the army of the Conqueror. But if we fire now and
Uriangkatai’s men fire back it will be war. We deserted Arik Buka and went over to Kublai Khan because this war must end, or everything Genghis Khan built will lie in ruins. Now you ask me to begin the war again.” Torluk knelt. “Eorgive me, tarkhan, for not obeying you. But the orkhon Uriangkatai is right. Take this question to Kublai Khan.”
Arghun’s eyes were those of a tiger at bay. “You give me no choice. We will go to Kublai Khan for judgment.”
Two samurai lifted Jebu down from Taitaro’s cart and carried him on a litter to join Uriangkatai’s party before the Great Khan’s tent. Taitaro walked beside the litter. Torches tied to tall poles illuminated the area around Kublai Khan’s huge white yurt. The tent was surrounded by a hollow square of guards, one hundred men on a side and four deep. Eor two of the most prominent generals in the Great Khan’s ordu, the guards immediately parted, but the message sent into the yurt brought no invitation to enter. Instead Kublai Khan’s chief adviser, the Chinese scholar Yao Chow, came out waving his long, slender hands and shaking his head.
“A thousand pardons, son of Subotai,” said Yao Chow, bowing to Uriangkatai. “The Great Khan is holding council. He desires both you and Arghun Baghadur to be present, but not to bring a quarrel to him.”
Uriangkatai said, “Yao Chow, tell the Great Khan war may break out again, here and now, if this matter between Arghun and me is not settled.”
Yao Chow turned a worried eye on the groups of men that had come with the two leaders. “How many of you must enter? The Great Khan’s yurt is already filled to overflowing.”
Uriangkatai said, “For my part, the tumanbashi Yukio, the monk Jebu and the older monk Taitaro to attend Jebu.” He pointed to Jebu, who lay under blankets in a state of deep exhaustion, barely able to stay conscious. His crushed throat felt as if he had swallowed hot coals. Each breath, each heartbeat, was agony in his chest and back. Taitaro had treated him hastily on the wagon ride to Kublai Khan’s headquarters, stripping off his armour, taping his chest and giving him a hot liquid infused with herbs for his throat. As a boy Jebu had been taught to hang by his hands for hours. The same sort of will now enabled him to cling to wakefulness.
Arghun said, “I need only the tumanbashi Torluk.”
Yao Chow nodded. “Those of you who are entering the Great Khan’s tent, disarm yourselves and give your weapons to the guards. I will ask his permission again.”
While they waited, Uriangkatai said to Arghun, “Look there, tar khan. See where Arik Buka kneels in surrender. When we go into the Great Khan’s yurt you must pass the lord you betrayed. Can you face him?”
The wooden door of Kublai Khan’s yurt was open. Above it a flap which could be fastened across the door to seal it against wind and dust was raised on two poles to form a kind of canopy. Under this canopy a man knelt. Even kneeling, he was clearly tall. His head, shaved in the centre, Mongol fashion, was a dark brown. The braids that hung down to his shoulders were black. His belt was draped over the back of his neck in token of submission. Guards with lances stood on either side of him.
Arghun glared back at Uriangkatai. “I have been obedient to the will of Eternal Heaven and the spirit of Genghis Khan. There is no man I cannot face.”
Yao Chow returned with word that they were to enter the Great Khan’s yurt. Uriangkatai went first, followed by Arghun. Arik Buka raised his eyes as Arghun approached.
“I kneel here thanks to your treachery,” Arik Buka said reproachfully. “Of all my tarkhans you were the one I thought I could trust to the end.”
Arghun answered coldly, “My loyalty is to the legacy your grandfather left the Mongols. I believed you were best suited to be Great Khan because you upheld the old ways. But I was wrong. You are a tiger, but Kublai is both tiger and fox. I should have remembered the words of the Ancestor: Kublai is the wisest of his seed. Now I have corrected my mistake.” He turned away and strode through the doorway of the white yurt. Torluk followed Uriangkatai. Jebu, carried by Taitaro and Yukio, brought up the rear.
Kublai Khan, wearing a red satin robe embroidered with jewelled dragons, sat on a golden throne in the host’s quarter of his tent, which was a mobile palace, four times the size of an ordinary yurt, walls and ceiling lined with cloth of gold. In chairs around Kublai sat his orkhons and tarkhans, the officers who had won the day for him. The rest of the yurt was packed with lesser officers, some sitting on benches or cushions, most standing. Slaves passed among them with trays of meat and vessels full of wine and kumiss. It was as much a
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