Ears
The Mongol Empire has always fascinated me, especially Ghenghis Khan's ability to maintain discipline among his troops. This is a story about a horseman unmoved by what the Great Khan has to offer.
Catch-up service:
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“Remember to thread the ears through the lobe and not the middle. That bastard Guyuk won’t accept them if they’re not precisely to his specifications.”
“Pedantic cunt. Threatened me last week for stacking the severed heads in the wrong configuration. We’re not Japanese I told him, what do you expect of me? I’m not making some relaxing sculpture for a shogun’s back garden. These are sentinels for the Great Khan, meant to scare farmer scum into submission.”
“I know, I just don’t want you getting in trouble. I like you. You’re a good swordsman and a solid horseman. It would be a shame to see you made an example of.”
“Don’t worry friend, no one’s making an example of me.”
I looped the rough rope into a fat knot and tied it off. Another hundred ears slapped against each other, a macabre set of keys, indicating the conclusion of another day’s work in the service of the Great Khan.
“Right, I could eat a horse. And fuck one too. Let’s go back to the tents as see what’s on offer.”
*****
Serving in the Great Khan’s army has its perks. A warm meal every night, good physical work, I get to take my anger out on the human livestock of the plains and I have never dreamed of being able to end the day by taking off my armour and dress in Persian silks. There’s no two ways about it though: the Khan himself is an arsehole. He thinks that just because he managed to point all the tribes in the same direction at the same time we need to revere him as though he is the lord of the Sun. He’s a strong leader and ruthless fighter, but he is no king. I do not have kings. My father taught me that even if we ride as part of the Mongol column, we will never give up our identity and will follow what is best for ourselves. I like to fight and fuck and drink and ride and the Khan let’s me do that to my heart’s content. That doesn’t mean I’ll bow down to him or think him divine. He still shits out horsemeat like the rest of us.
The Khan’s camp buzzes with the stink of hundreds of men quartered together, each bellowing their embellished tales of heroism. I’m experienced enough to know that what we do is not heroic. It is work. It is butchery. It is what needs to be done to keep us in charge, thinning out the other herds of humanity so that ours can rule the green sea. I have witnessed true heroism: rescuing women, gold, children and other valuable possessions from raging fires, fighting off wild bears in the northern forests as they protect their cubs, riding through pikemen at the gates of the Forbidden City against overwhelming odds. What these men did today on the plains is not heroism. It is the humdrum slaughter of the abattoir.
Soon, I am going to stop.
Soon I am going to turn my horse so that its rear faces the Khan of the Great Sun, Master of the Plains and Unifier of the Tribes. I will let my steed’s bowels show what I truly think of our leader, the man who sowed together the clans into a great cloak, a tapestry of brutality that he has lain over the land as one lays a blanket over a sleeping child, and then I will ride far away.
I was born into a world where I had to kill for status and survival. I still do it everyday, to blend in and because I cannot deny its pleasures, but I crave something more. Where shall I ride to? The House of Wisdom contains jewels of the body and the mind that I may sate myself with. Or I could ride to the edge of the blue sea, to Jerusalem and live with the Mosselmen and the Jews and help them fight against the stinking Crusaders who invade their home. Perhaps I will go further into the land of the Nile, sell my horse in exchange for a camel, establish a caravanserai and become a trader, butchering the deals of my enemies and building mountains of gold instead of skulls. Perhaps south is the place to ride, until I come up against the towering spires of the Himalayas, wrap myself in layers of goatskin and wool, step onto crunching frost and sojourn beyond in the land of the Indus.
Wherever I go, I want to remove myself from these tiresome pricks who mistake themselves as the kings of men for their skill in murdering, or even worse, have convinced themselves that they are gentlemen nomads, refined barbarians who will drink the blood of their enemies, but from a gilded cup. Tomorrow. Tomorrow will be the day when I shall slip away. I will slaughter my quotient of peasants, stack the severed heads and lop off their ears, hand them over to the tame panjandrum of the Khan’s court and then I shall ride away from this and become better than these arrogant sub-savages.
*****
Sunset on the plains is the simplest thing. The black-brown-blue of the land is illuminated to a lush green, tinged with unlikely orange spurs. The huge sky one moment empty, the next overwhelmed by an orb that cannot conceal its desire to swallow everything in its path but, for another day yet, spares us upon this land. I have woken early and check my horse’s saddle, bridle and bit. They were made for me by a talented farrier we captured in Samarkand. He did not squeal and cry to be spared like other prisoners, but emanated an aura of impregnable pride in his work and worth that suggested it would be a crime to slaugher him. I could spot a man of worth. He obliged with his finest work and I set him free with a fast horse, ten gold coins and a warning never to look back.
A fellow clansman rides up to me, awake earlier than usual.
“Are you ready to spread the boundaries even further today? I thought perhaps I would send my gyrfalcon out ahead of us, catch some rabbits before we reach the next town.”
He strokes the neck feathers of the bird, whose head flicks around with the sharp nonchalance of a sleek natural killer. The bird is lucky. It has no doubts and is made for the kill. I envy it.
“Yes brother.” I try to hide a sigh.
I kick my heels into the sides of my horse and gee him along. I must show my usuaul enthusiasm for the daily blood-letting. No one may suspect a thing. Failure to meet ones duties as a slaughterman and soldier can lead to execution, but if anyone gets wind of my plans for desertion, my death will not be slow.
By the time we arrive I can tell that something is not right. Five other horsemen circle the collection of crude yurts.
“It’s empty. The cowards have fled.”
Cowards? Hardly. They must have heard the rumble of our horses or even spotted one of the terrible grisly pyramids the Khan insists we leave to mark our path. The tactics of empire are working perfectly and the land and grain that they could not carry are ours. I do not know if the Khan will be satisfied with this, but my idiot brothers are disappointed that there will be no reason for them to unsheath their weapons. Two of them begin feuding, their blood raised with the desire for violence, desperate to act out the habitual pantomime of killing. A commander intervenes, forcing them to cool their heads, but the aggressor will not, he has already reached for a knife hidden in strapping on his back. He throws it overhand at his opponent but the commander has ridden between them and catches it flush in his neck. There is a moment of silence when all we can hear is the whistling of the wind, as though it runs along one path from the tundra in the north through us to the mountain passes of the south. The knife thrower roars with defiance. His bellow gargles with bile and blood as an arrow shoots through his gullet. The horde scream in approval. A careless rider and a prideful one have been vanquished. They trample their horses over the bodies, relieve them of their weapons and fine silks, urinate on their heads and then ride back towards the main herd. I follow behind, desperate to turn my horse around.
Can I use this opportunity to leave these men now? No, the killing has heightened their senses. Even before I am certain my ally – if he is such a thing – could sense a change of mood or protocol from me. I must delay.
*****
I wake in the night, fitful dreams have trampled my mind with bloody hoofprints. The tarpaulin ripples with the power of the nightime wind, masking the bodily sounds of twenty men sleeping. Now is the time. I can feel it. When everyone is together in a killing frenzy, knowing that if it is not carried out to the specifications of the Khan they will be for the chop, we all keep eyes on our brothers. At night, sentries only look out into the darkness, not back into the encampment. While they sleep I can slip away, take my horse, maybe steal a second steed for freshness and ride against the tide of the horde. I am already dressed in my leather and hide clothing; a warrior of the Khan always sleeps in his clothes. I tiptoe to the end of my bed. At the entrance to the tent I turn to look at them, my brothers. I know I should just stride out, fetch the horse and ride till my face is made raw.
Turning back around I unsheath my knife and kneel next to one of my bunkmates. A second to think and then I run the sharp edge of my blade up his jugular vein, hot blood spurting onto my knuckles. His eyes roll back, whiteness reflecting the blankness now contained inside. Within two minutes I have repeated the action twenty times, avenging the death of thousands with my midnight killings. As the last soldier is dispatched I fetch a second blade from my boot and begin cutting at his ear, then another, until finally I have all twenty from my cohort, looped onto a rope and belted around my waist. Why this indulgence? Force of habit? Or a memento mori of the life I am leaving behind?
I stride out of the tent, content that I am leaving with some balance on my ledger. Perhaps I will become a hermit, a holy man living in isolated caves, hiding up a pillar, on a green island in a lake. Maybe I will ride on until I find a walled city of a new people who have never heard of the Great Khan, or only in tales, I will become the mercenary of a great king or a seller of silks and furs and jewels. But I will keep the ears of my clansmen with me, each a fleshy bead on a prayer necklace, like the followers of Gautama.
My horse is ready, seemingly sensing that it would be needed at this unusual hour. I slide on his back, the squeak of my lamellar armour rubbing against the saddle makes me pause, temple thumping with dread. I scan the dark, but there is no movement. I bid the horse trot to edge of camp. As soon as we are past the final tent I thump my boots into her sides. We ride into the shriving blackness of the night and our new life. I can see ahead a time of true bounty, sweetmeats and comfortable clothes, of learning and enlightenment, of forgiveness and pentitence, of anything but this endless drudgery of killing. I can see…an arrowhead appear through my neck, the ground rising up to meet me, the jumbling pain as my horse stumbles and falls, crushing my legs. I try to call out, knowing that there is no one there to hear me, grabbing at the shaft of the arrow like a puppeteer trying to operate his marionette, it only succeeds in moving my head up and down, a simple mimic of a man.
My clansman appears in my view. “Slaughterer of his brothers. What are you?”
I flap my jaw and lips up and down, but nothing comes from them.
“Traitor.” He spits. “Two-faced dissembler and blackener of the name of the Khan.” He removes his knife and straddles my chest, I can feel his hot fuggy breath on my cheeks, condensation on my forehead. He grabs my hair for purchase and runs the blade down the side of my head, severing the ear. Instinctively I scream out but the wood of his arrow has rendered my vocal chords useless. I see my ear added to the those of my brethren and roped around his waist.
“If you want to run away from all this, you have to be far more devious, little plotter.”
The last image I see is my killer leaping onto his horse, the stallion scuffing a whirl of dust into the night as it spins. Eyes on the horizon he clicks his tongue and the horse accelerates. Back turned away from the camp, spitting curses at the Khan, his clansmen and myself, he rides towards the horizon. He is no longer a butcher. He is a free and powerful killer of men.