I made myself smile. “Send a messenger to Subotai and tell him that Orion is here to see him. Describe me to him and he will be glad to see me.”
He looked me up and down. Among the Mongols my size was little short of phenomenal. And Subotai knew of my abilities as a fighter. I hoped that no word had reached him from Karakorum that I had murdered the High Khan Ogotai.
The warrior dispatched one of his men to carry my message to Subotai, then grudgingly allowed me to share the meager warmth of their fire, out of the cold rain.
“That’s a fine pelt you are wearing,” said one of the other guards.
“I killed the beast a long time ago,” I replied.
They told me that this city was the capital of the Muscovites. I remembered that Subotai had been eager to learn all that I could tell him about the black-earth region of the Ukraine, and the steppes of Russia that led into the plains of Poland and, beyond the Carpathian mountains, into Hungary and the heartland of Europe.
By the time the messenger returned, my back felt as if it were coated with ice even though my face and hands were reasonably warm. A pair of other warriors came with the messenger, decked in shining armor cuirasses and polished helmets, jewels in their sword hilts. With hardly a word they took me through the mud streets of the city of the Muscovites to the quarters of Subotai.
He was not much different from the man I had met in an earlier lifetime. As small and wiry as any of his warriors, Subotai’s hair and beard were iron gray, his eyes jet black. Those eyes were lively, intelligent, curious about this great world that stretched so far in every direction.
He had taken a church for his personal quarters, probably because the wooden structure was the largest building in the city and afforded the grandest room for audiences and nightly drinking bouts. I walked the length of the nave toward Subotai; the floor of the church had been cleared of pews, if any had ever been there. Stiffly pious pictures of Byzantine saints gazed down morosely at the pile of pillows where the altar had once been. Subotai reclined there with a few trusted companions and a dozen or so slim young local women who served food and wine.
Behind him the church’s apse was rich with gold bas reliefs gleaming in the candlelight. Some of the gold had already been stripped from the wall; I knew the Mongols would soon melt down the rest. Set into the arch high above was a mosaic of mournful Christ, his wounded hands raised in blessing. It startled me to see that its face was almost an exact portrait of the Creator I called Zeus.
Armed warriors lazed along the side walls of the converted church, drinking and talking among themselves. I was not fooled by their seeming indolence. In an instant they would cut off the head of any man who made the slightest threatening gesture. Or any woman. At a word from Subotai they would gleefully reward a liar or anyone else who displeased their general by pouring molten silver into his ears and eyes.
Yet these Mongols knew the virtues of loyalty and honesty better than most so-called civilized peoples. And there was no question about their bravery. If ordered to, they would storm the strongest fortification in human-wave attacks that would either carry through to victory or leave every one of them dead.
Subotai was drinking from a golden chalice encrusted with gemstones. The lieutenants reclining beside him held cups of silver and alabaster. It never ceased to amaze me: no matter how poor or rude a tribe might be, their priests always had gold and silver, their churches were always the best prizes for looters.
“Orion!” Subotai shouted, leaping to his feet. “Man of the west!”
He seemed genuinely glad to see me. Despite his gray hair he was as agile and eager as a youth.
“My lord Subotai.” I stopped a few paces before him and made an appropriately low bow. I was glad to see him, too. When I had known him earlier, he had vibrated with a restless energy that had carried him and his armies to the ends of the earth. I was happy to see that such energy still animated him. He would need it if he agreed to do what I was going to ask of him.
He extended his hand to me and I grasped his wrist as he grasped mine.
“It is good to see you again, man of the west.”
Looking down at him, I said solemnly, “I bring you a gift, my lord.”
I took the soggy pelt of the saber-tooth from my shoulders and held it out to him. The head had been thrown back so that he could not see the lion’s gleaming fangs until that moment. He goggled at it.
“Where did you find a beast such as this?”
I could not help grinning. “I know of places where many strange and wonderful beasts exist.”
He grinned back at me and led me to the piles of pillows where he had been reclining. “Tell me the news from Karakorum.”
As he gestured for me to sit on the pillows at his right hand I inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. Subotai would have never clasped my arm if he intended to kill me. He was incapable of treachery against a friend. Neither he nor anyone else knew, apparently, that I had assassinated his High Khan, Ogotai, a man who had been my friend in a different life.
While a beautiful young blonde handed me a cup of gold and an equally lovely girl poured spiced wine into it, I told him simply that Ogotai had died in his sleep and that I had seen him that very night.
“He seemed content and pleased that the Mongol Empire ruled almost all the known world in peace. I think he was happy that no enemies stood against the Mongols.”
Subotai nodded, but his face turned grave. “Soon, Orion, the unthinkable may happen. Mongol may turn against Mongol. The old tribal wars of the Gobi may erupt again, but this time huge armies will battle one another from one end of the world to the other.”
“How can that be?” I asked, truly shocked. “The Yassa forbids such bloodletting among Mongols.”
“I know,” replied Subotai sadly. “But not even the law of the Yassa can stop the strife that is to come, I fear.”
As we reclined there on the silken pillows beneath the sorrowful eyes of Byzantine saints looking down upon us from their gilded unchanging heaven, Subotai explained to me what was happening among the Mongol generals.
Simply put, they had virtually run out of lands to conquer. Genghis Khan, the leader they revered so highly that no Mongol would speak his name, had set the tribes of the Gobi on the path to world conquest. With all of China, all of Asia to battle, the warriors of the Gobi stopped their incessant tribal conflicts and set out to conquer the world. Now that world had been conquered, except for dreary dank outlands such as Europe and the subcontinent of India where the heat killed men and horses alike.
“The election of the new High Khan will bring divisions among the Mongols,” Subotai predicted gloomily. “It will be an excuse to go back to the old ways of fighting among ourselves.”
I understood. The empire of Alexander the Great had broken up in the same manner, general battling general to hold the territory already possessed or to steal territory from a former comrade in arms.
“What will you do, my lord Subotai?” I asked.
He drained his chalice and put it down beside him. Immediately one of the slaves filled it to the brim.
“I will not break the laws of the Yassa,” he said. “I will not spill the blood of other Mongols.”
“Not willingly,” said one of the men sitting around us.
Subotai nodded, his mouth set in a tight grim line. “I will lead my warriors westward, Orion, past the river they call Danube. It is a difficult land, cold and filled with dismal forests. But it is better than fighting amongst ourselves.”
If Subotai intended to march into Europe, he would devastate the civilization there that was just beginning to throw off the shackles of ignorance and barbarism that had followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. In another few centuries the Renaissance would begin, with all that it would eventually mean for human knowledge and freedom. But not if the Mongols laid waste to all of Europe, from Muscovy to the English Channel.