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dered with silk or gold thread, and silken underwear from China.
But even Genghis s generals would wipe their mouths on their
sleeves, and their hands on their trousers.
The Mongols field craft was slick and practiced but then it
was the product of centuries of tradition. The march was broken
each night, and rations distributed: dried milk curd, millet meal,
kumis, an alcoholic drink made from fermented milk curd, and
cured meat. In the morning a rider would put a bit of dried curd
and water into a leather bag, and the shaking as he rode along
would soon turn it into a kind of yogurt, consumed with great rel-
ish and much belching. Kolya envied the Mongols skills: how they
made rawhide from cow skin, even how they used a distillate of
human urine as a purgative when one man had a fever.
Genghis s army moved efficiently, and orders and changes of
plan were transmitted rapidly and without confusion. The army
was rigidly governed by a hierarchy based on rules of ten. That
way, the chain of command was simplified, with each officer hav-
ing no more than ten subordinates. The Mongols empowered their
local commanders as much as possible, which enhanced the army s
flexibility and responsiveness. And Genghis made sure that all
units of his army, down to the poorest platoon, was made up of a
mix of nationalities, clans and tribes. He wanted nobody to have
any loyalty, save to the Khan himself. It was, Kolya thought, a
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remarkably modern way of structuring an army: no wonder these
Mongols had overwhelmed the ragbag forces of medieval Europe.
But the system relied heavily on efficient and loyal staff. The officer
corps was ruthlessly weeded out in training, through such tests as
the battue and, of course, in battle.
After a few days, still deep in the heart of Mongolia, the army
crossed a grassy plain toward Karakorum. This city had once been
the power center of the Uighurs, and Genghis Khan had estab-
lished it as his own permanent seat of power. But even from a dis-
tance Kolya could see the city s walls were ruined. Inside the walls a
few abandoned temples huddled in one corner, but the rest of the
city had been conquered by the eternal grass.
Genghis Khan himself, accompanied by burly guards, stalked
with Ögödei around this place. To Genghis it was only a few years
since he had established the city, and now here it was, eroded to
rubble. Kolya saw him return to his traveling yurt, his face like
thunder, as if he was angry with the very gods who would make
such a mockery of his ambitions.
In the days that followed the army passed through the valley of the
Orkhon river, an immense walled plain bounded to the east by blue
mountains. It was almost like a Martian vallis, Kolya thought idly.
The earth here was gray and flaking, the river languid. Sometimes
they had to ford tributaries and river channels. At night they
camped on islands of bare mud, and made huge aromatic fires of
dead willow wood.
They crossed one last river, and the country began to rise. Sable
said they were leaving the modern Mongolian province of
Arhangay, and crossing the Hangay massif. Behind Kolya, the
country folded up into a complex patchwork of forests and valleys,
but beyond the massif he could see a more elemental landscape of
yellow grassland stretching away.
At the massif s broad summit there were many small ridges
and folds, littered by shattered pebbles, as if many time slices had
crisscrossed. But a cairn stood here, a heap of stones that had some-
how survived the time shocks. As the army passed each man added
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a pebble or rock to the cairn. Kolya saw that by the time they had all
gone by it would be a mighty mound.
They descended at last to the steppe. The massif receded over
the horizon, leaving nothing but flatness, and they walked across a
treeless plain where the long grass rippled around the horses like
parting water. As the world opened up around him, the immense
scale of central Asia at last diminishing even Genghis Khan and his
ambitions, Kolya felt a huge relief.
But they encountered no people. In this huge place there could
sometimes be seen the circular shadows of yurts, the scars of fires,
the ghosts of small villages packed up and moved on to another pas-
ture. The steppe was timeless, people always lived here much the
same way, and these scars could have been made by Huns, Mongols
or even Soviet-era Communists and those who left these shadows
might have walked across the plain and into another time entirely.
Maybe, Kolya thought, when the last shreds of civilization wore
away, when the Earth was forgotten and nothing was left but Mir,
they would all become nomads, drawn into this great pit of human
destiny.
But no people. Sometimes Genghis would send out search par-
ties, but nobody was found.
Then, lost in the middle of the steppe, the scouts unexpectedly
came upon a temple.
A party was sent ahead to investigate. Yeh-lü included Kolya and
Sable, hoping that their perspective might be of use.
The temple was a small, boxlike building with tall doors,
ornately carved and decorated with lion-head knockers. Out front
was a porch framed by lacquered pillars, and the beams at the top
were decorated by gold skulls. Kolya, Sable and some of the
Mongols stepped cautiously inside. On low tables manuscript rolls
had been set out amid the debris of a meal. The walls were wooden,
the air full of strong incense, and the feeling of enclosure was pow-
erful.
Kolya found himself whispering. Buddhists, you think?
Sable had no qualms about raising her voice. Yes. And at least
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some of them are still around. No telling when this place is from.
Buddhists are as timeless as nomads.
Not quite, Kolya said grimly. The Soviets tried to purge
Mongolia of the temples. This place must predate the twentieth
century . . .
Two figures came shuffling forward from the shadows at the
back of the temple. The Mongol soldiers drew their daggers, to be
stopped by a sharp word from Yeh-lü s advisor.
At first Kolya thought they were two children, they seemed so
similar in size and build. But as they came into the light he saw that
one of them was indeed a child, but the other an old man. The old
one, evidently a lama, wore a red satin robe and slippers, and he
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