Conqueror: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Conn Iggulden

a moment, Liu stood and stared at the birds, unable to understand why they had been left to bake on the sand. He raised his head to watch them fly and then comprehension dawned and his eyes widened in sudden panic. The birds were the signal. A dull rumbling came to his ears and the ground seemed to vibrate under his feet.

      ‘Get back to the gate!’ Liu shouted, waving his sword. Around him, he saw his soldiers staring in shock, some of them with armfuls of arrows and swords. ‘Run! Get back!’ Liu bellowed again. Glancing down the pass, he saw the first dark lines of galloping horses and he turned to the gate himself. If the fools were too slow, they had only themselves to blame, he thought, his mind racing.

      He skidded to a halt in horror before he had run more than a few paces. Around the gate, some of the bodies were leaping up, still with shafts lodged in them. One of them had lain perfectly still while Liu broke his hand under his sandal. Liu swallowed his panic at the thunder growing at his back and he began to run again. He saw the gate begin to close, but one of the enemy was there to shove his arm into the gap. The tribesman cried out in agony as his hand was hacked to pieces inside, but there were others with him to wrench it open and fall on the defenders.

      Liu raised his voice in a howl of rage and never saw the arrow that took him in the back of the neck. He tumbled onto the sand, feeling its sting even as the darkness came for him. The inner gate was shut, he was certain. He had seen it closed behind him and there was still a chance. His own blood choked off his thoughts and the sound of hooves faded to nothing.

      Tsubodai rose from where he had lain in the sand. The arrow that had felled him had been followed by two more lodged in his armour. His ribs were agony and every step brought fresh pain and the warm sensation of blood trickling down his thigh. The canyon was filled with a sound like thunder as the galloping line came in at full speed. Tsubodai looked upwards as he heard bows thrumming and saw black shafts darting down. A horse screamed behind him as Tsubodai saw the gate was jammed open by bodies and staggered towards it.

      He looked around him for the ten men Genghis had placed under his command. He recognised four of the figures rushing at the gate, while the others lay still on the sand, truly dead. Tsubodai swallowed painfully as he stepped over a man he had known from the Uriankhai.

      The sound of riders grew into a force at his back until he expected to be hammered from his feet. He thought his wounds had dazed him, for everything seemed to be happening slowly and yet he could hear each laboured breath from his open mouth. He shut it, irritated at this show of weakness. Ahead of him, those who had survived the assault were rushing through the gate with swords drawn. Tsubodai heard the snap of bows, muffled by the thick stone of the wall. He had a glimpse of men falling as they went through, spitted on arrows as they looked up and cried out. At that instant, his mind cleared and his senses sharpened. Arrows still sank into the sand around him, but he ignored them. He roared an order to stand back as his warriors reached the gate. His voice was rough, but to his relief, the men responded.

      ‘Make shields of the wood. Take the hammers,’ Tsubodai told them, pointing. He heard the jingle of armour as men leaped to the sand all around him. Khasar landed running and Tsubodai grabbed his arm.

      ‘There are archers inside. We can still use the broken wood.’

      Arrows vanished into the sand around them, leaving only the black feathers. Calmly, Khasar glanced down at Tsubodai’s hand just long enough to remind the young warrior of his status. As Tsubodai released his grip, Khasar snapped out orders. All around them, men picked up pieces of the original shield and held them over their heads as they rushed through the gate.

      As the hammers were taken up again, archers above their heads shot into the pit between the two gates. Even with the rough shield, some of the shafts found their marks. On the hot sand outside, Khasar ordered waves of arrows up against the archers on the outer wall, keeping the Chin soldiers down and spoiling their aim until the army could move. He bit his lip at the exposed position, but until the inner gate was broken, they were all stuck. The dull thump of hammers sounded over the cries of dying men.

      ‘Get in there and make sure they aren’t enjoying a quick rest while we wait,’ Khasar shouted to Tsubodai. The young warrior bowed his head and ran to join his men.

      He passed under a band of shadow into bright sunlight and had a glimpse of a line of cold-eyed archers shooting shaft after shaft into the killing hole.

      Tsubodai barely had time to duck under a piece of broken planking. An arrow scratched his arm as he did and he swore aloud. He recognised only one of his original ten men still alive.

      The space between the gates was deliberately small and no more than a dozen warriors could stand inside at a time. Except for those who wielded hammers with desperate force, the others stood with pieces of wood above their heads, wedged together as best they could. The ground was still sandy and bristled with spent shafts, thicker than the hairs on a dog. Still more were shot down and Tsubodai heard orders shouted in an alien language above his head. If they had stones to drop, the entire assault would be crushed before the inner gate gave way, he thought, fighting terror. He felt enclosed, trapped. The man closest to him had lost his helmet in the attack. He gave a shriek of pain and fell with an arrow’s feathers standing upright in his neck, loosed from almost directly above. Tsubodai caught the planking he had held and raised it, wincing with every shuddering impact. The hammer blows went on with maddening slowness and, suddenly, Tsubodai heard a grunt of satisfaction from one of the warriors and the sound changed as those closest began kicking at the cracking timbers.

      The gate gave way, sending men sprawling on the dusty ground beyond it. The first ones through died instantly as they were met with a volley of crossbow shafts from a line of soldiers. Behind them, Khasar’s men roared in savage anticipation, sensing there was a way in. They pushed forward, compressing the group at the gate as they stumbled over dead men.

      Tsubodai could not believe he was still alive. He drew the sword Genghis himself had given him and ran forward in a mass of raging men, freed at last from the confines of the killing ground. The crossbowmen never had a chance to reload and Tsubodai killed his first enemy with a straight thrust to the throat as the soldier froze in horror. Half of those who came into the fort were wounded and bloody, but they had survived and they exulted as they met the first lines of defenders. Some of the first ones inside climbed wooden steps to a higher level and grinned as they saw the archers still firing down into the killing hole. Mongol bows snapped shafts across the fighting below, striking the Xi Xia bowmen from their feet as if they had been hit by hammers.

      The army of Genghis began to funnel through the gate, exploding into the fort. There was little order to the assault in the first charge. Until senior men like Khasar or Arslan took charge, Tsubodai knew he was free to kill as many as he could and he shouted wildly, filled with excitement.

      Without Liu Ken to organise the defence, the Xi Xia warriors broke and ran before the invaders, scattering in panic. Leaving his horse in the pass, Genghis walked through the gate and ducked through the broken inner gate. His face was alight with triumph and pride as his warriors tore through the fort soldiers. In all their history, the tribes had never had a chance to strike back at those who held them down. Genghis did not care that the Xi Xia soldiers thought themselves different from the Chin. To his people, they were all part of that ancient, hated race. He saw that some of the defenders had laid down their weapons and he shook his head, calling Arslan to him as the swordsman strode past.

      ‘No prisoners, Arslan,’ Genghis said. His general bowed his head.

      The slaughter became methodical after that. Men were discovered hiding in the fort’s cellars and dragged out for execution. As the day wore on, the dead soldiers were piled on the red stones of a central courtyard. A well there became the eye of the storm as every dry-throated man found time to quench his thirst in water, bucket by bucket, until they were gasping and soaked. They had beaten the desert.

      As the sun began to set, Genghis himself walked to the well, stepping over the piles of twisted dead. The warriors fell silent at his step and one of them filled the leather bucket and handed it to the khan. As Genghis drank at last and grinned, they roared and bayed in voices loud enough to echo back from the walls all around. They had found their