"Temuge has the camp," he told his generals. "Let us see this Yenking and this emperor." He dug in his heels and his horse jerked into a run. The others followed him, as they always had.
Built on a great plain, Yenking was by far the largest construction any of them had ever seen. As it grew before him, Genghis recalled the words of Wen Chao, the Chin diplomat he had met years before. He had said that men could build cities like mountains. Yenking was such a place.
It rose in dark gray stone that was at least fifty feet from bedrock to the crest. Genghis sent Lian and Ho Sa around the city to count the wooden towers that rose even further. When they returned, they had traveled more than five miles around and reported almost a thousand towers, like thorns along the walls. Even worse were the descriptions of huge bow weapons on the battlements, manned by silent, watching soldiers.
Genghis studied Lian for some sign that the mason was not intimidated, but the man visibly drooped in the saddle. Like the Mongols, he had never visited the capital and could not think of a way to break walls of that size.
On the corners of the immense rectangle, four forts stood apart from the main walls. A wide moat ran between the forts and the walls and yet another girdled them on the outside. A huge canal was the only breach in the walls themselves, running through an immense water gate of iron that was in turn protected by platforms for archers and catapults. The waterway stretched into the south, as far as any of them could see. Everything about Yenking was on a scale too great for the imagination. Genghis could not begin to think of a way to force the gates.
At first Genghis and his generals kept as close as they had to Yinchuan, or some of the other Chin cities to the west. Then a hammer blow sounded on the evening air and a dark blur shot past them, staggering Kachiun's horse with the power of its wake. Genghis almost lost his seat as his own mount reared and could only gaze in amazement at a shaft half-sunk in the soft ground, more like a smooth tree trunk than an arrow.
Without a word, his generals retreated past the range of the fearsome weapon, their spirits sinking even lower as they understood another part of the defenses. To come closer than five hundred paces was to invite more of the great poles with their iron tips. Just the thought of one of them striking a mass of his riders was appalling.
Genghis turned in the saddle to the man who had broken lesser walls.
"Can we take this place, Lian?" he demanded. The mason would not meet his stare and looked over the city. At last he shook his head.
"No other city has a wall so wide at the top," he said. "From that height, they will always have more range than anything I can make. If we built stone ramparts, I might be able to protect the counterweighted catapults, but if I can reach them, they can certainly reach me to smash them to firewood."
Genghis glared in frustration at Yenking. To have come so far and yet be baulked at the final obstacle was infuriating. Only the day before, he had been congratulating Khasar on taking the fort in the pass and Kachiun for his inspired charge. He had believed then that his people were unstoppable, that conquest would always come easily. His army certainly believed it. They whispered that the world was his to take. Facing Yenking, he could almost feel the emperor's scorn at such ambition.
Genghis kept the cold face as he turned to his brothers.
"The families will find good land here for grazing. There will be time to plan an attack on this place."
Khasar and Kachiun nodded uncertainly. They too could see that the great sweeping conquest had halted at the foot of Yenking. Like Genghis himself, they had become used to the fast and exciting pace of taking cities. The carts of their people were now so laden with gold and wealth that they broke axles on any long trip.
"How long will it take to starve such a city?" Genghis demanded suddenly.
Lian had no better idea than any of them, but did not want to admit his ignorance. "I have heard more than a million of the emperor's subjects live in Yenking. To feed so many is difficult to imagine, but they will have vast granaries and stores. They have known we were coming for months, after all." He saw Genghis frown and hurried on. "It could be as long as three years, even four, lord."
Khasar groaned aloud at the estimate, but the youngest of them, Tsubodai, brightened.
"They have no army left to break a siege, lord. You will not need to keep us all here. If we cannot bring the walls down, perhaps you will allow us to raid in this new land. As things stand, we don't even have maps beyond Yenking."
Genghis glanced at his general, seeing the hunger in his eyes. He felt his own mood lift.
"That is true. If I have to wait until this emperor is skin and bone before he submits, at least my generals will not be idle." He swept an arm across the landscape that blurred into distance too great for any of them to imagine.
"When the families are settled, come to me with a direction and it will be yours. We will not waste the time here and grow fat and sleepy."
Tsubodai grinned, his enthusiasm kindling that of the others to replace the dark mood of moments earlier.
"Your will, my lord," he replied.
In shining, black-lacquered armor, General Zhi Zhong paced angrily as he waited for the emperor's ministers to join him in the coronation hall. The morning was peaceful and he could hear the creaking squawks of magpies outside. No doubt the omen takers would read something into the quarrelsome birds, if they saw them.
The funeral of Emperor Wei had taken almost ten days, with half the city tearing their clothes and rubbing ash into their skin before the body was cremated. Zhi Zhong had suffered through endless orations by the noble families. Not one of them had mentioned the manner of the emperor's death, not with Zhi Zhong glowering at them and his guards standing with their hands on their sword hilts. He had taken the head from the Imperial rose, nipping it off with a single blow so that everything else remained.
The first few days had been chaotic, but after three ministers had been executed for speaking out, any further resistance collapsed and the great funeral went ahead just as if the young emperor had died in his sleep.
It had been useful to find that the governing nobles had made a plan for the event long before it was needed. The Chin empire had survived upheaval and even regicide before. After the initial spasm of outrage, they had fallen into the routines almost with relief. The peasants in the city knew nothing except that the Son of Heaven had left his mortal flesh. They wailed ignorantly in the streets of the city, mindless in hysteria and grief.
The emperor's young son had not wept when he heard of his father's demise. In that, at least, Emperor Wei had prepared his family well. The boy's mother had enough sense to know that any protest would mean her own death, so she had remained silent through the funeral, pale and beautiful as she watched her husband's body burned to ash. As the funeral pyre collapsed with a cough of flame, Zhi Zhong thought he had felt her gaze on him, but when he looked up, she had her head bowed in supplication to the will of the gods. His will, he thought, though the result was much the same.
The general ground his teeth in irritation as he paced. First the funeral had taken longer than he would have believed possible, and then he had been told the coronation would take another five days. It was infuriating. The city mourned and none of the peasants actually worked while great events played themselves out. He had borne the endless fittings for new robes to mark his position as regent. He had even remained still while the ministers lectured him nervously on his new responsibilities. All the while, the Mongol khan prowled like a wolf at the door, watching the city.