H, then?
***
The War God’s Tale
Yinchuan, August 1227
The Great Khan stood still, beads of sweat trickling into his greying beard, as his servants strapped on his well-worn, ornate armour. The sounds of men and horses screaming and dying grew ever louder around him. His men. His horses. The lavish tent trembled at the deep roar of the cannons, followed by the high-pitched shattering of fine porcelain cups shaken off the tables. With some difficulty, the servants finished fitting the last piece of his gear, tying it tight around his expanding waist. A life of conquest in the saddle had not fended off the added weight of age. He sighed. Ten thousand battles he has fought, and won them all, yet perhaps there was no moment more dangerous than this one.
“Khagan.” The servants knelt before him – it took two of them to raise his trusty spear; taller than almost any man, in his powerful, expert hands it was a deadly weapon capable of skewering horse and men alike. When his fingers closed around the sturdy, polished wood, the Great Khan felt better instantly. He took in a deep breath, composing himself, feeling the weight of his beloved spear in his hand. It comforted him.
He could hear the shouts growing closer. A man in armour stumbled through the tent flaps, not even waiting to be admitted. At the sight of him, the servants fled. His face was frozen in fear, his eyes frantically spinning around in a panic. He was badly injured, burnt and frostbitten in equal measure; his wounds bled all over the fine rugs of the Great Khan’s tent. The Khan ignored it, in his magnanimity. There were more important things to deal with. “What is it, my general?”
The wounded general gulped at the air, trying to make his report. “Khagan, you must flee now! He… he’s-“ The remainder of his words were left unsaid as his head parted ways from his body, the mouth gaping and closing foolishly like that of a fish.
Pity, the Great Khan thought to himself detachedly, he was a fine general. Raising his spear and spinning it above his head, he let out a tremendous battle cry and swung the spear at the masked man who had just decapitated his subordinate. His strength had not faded with age – he could still wrestle a horse or two to the ground – and the spear severed his would-be assailant at the waist. The masked man fell, guts trailing from his torso. Puffing up his cheeks, the Khan spun the spear again and thrust it behind him. A pained gurgle told him that he had hit his mark – yet another of them had attempted to stab him in the back. “If you are trying to sneak up on me, know that it is foolishness!” he roared triumphantly. The blood surged through his veins, and he felt younger, stronger… more alive than he had ever been in the past two decades.
A third masked man, taller and more menacing than the other two, stepped in from the tent’s opening, gleaming sword in hand. “Very well! Come at me if you dare!” bellowed the Khan as he gripped his spear firmly in a two-handed stance. His opponent did not respond with words, but with only a mocking nod. The fight was quick but furious; though the masked man was an extremely skilled fighter – swift, lethal and tricky – before the Great Khan’s might he too fell, as the Khan finally managed to thrust the point of his spear into the man’s unprotected throat.
The noise of battle continued all around him, but there were no more attackers forthcoming. The Great Khan looked down at his fallen opponents. He could not tell whether any of them were he. Probably not. He was not so naïve as to think that it would be so easy. He stretched his spear out, to unmask his foes.
Then, the wind changed.
The yells of fighting and dying men faded away quickly until there was nothing but silence.
He looked up.
At the entrance to the tent there stood a man, wrapped in a ragged, blood-red cloak and hood. A Han death mask obscured his features.
There was no mistaking him.
The Great Khan’s fingers trembled, and the spear almost slipped from his hands for a brief moment. Still, he was the Khagan of the Mongol Empire. He feared nothing, not man nor ghost… nor god. “You are finally here,” he spit out, finding his mouth terribly dry all of a sudden. “Khun… baryn…“ He could not find it himself to finish his sentence, for some reason.
“Why the serious face, Temujin? I see you have dispatched the three men I sent as the blood price for this raid. I hope you will find it sufficient payment to sate your bloodlust.” As usual, the masked man’s tone was light, his voice young. It had always been that way, even when he returned with the heads of the Khwarezmid’s best cavalrymen in bloody sacks, and destroyed an entire city to demonstrate the Empire’s might. It had always been that way ever since the first time Temujin met him all those years ago, as a boy on the steppes.
Men called him many names: War God, the Tiger of the Steppes, Lord of Battle, the Masked Tyrant; he, who had brought about the end of the once-powerful Tang in bloody conflict, toyed with the rise and fall of the small dynasties in between, and aided the ascension of the Great Khan’s own empire. Of course, Temujin himself was not so superstitious. The man never took off his mask! It could be anyone under there… anyone willing to carry on the legacy of a god of war. That was what he had thought – what he had tried to think, for all these years. Yet, whenever he saw the man in the flesh, he could not help but think, deep down, that perhaps the stories were true.
“Why have you turned on me now, Tiger?” muttered Temujin, his confidence flagging every second he had to face the masked man despite his best efforts to hold himself together. “I thought you were… loyal to me. To my cause.”
The masked man took a few steps further into the tent, and ignoring the Khan’s question, asked courteously, “How is Borte doing? I heard that she was in ill health.”
“S-she is a strong woman,” the Khan mumbled. “She will pull through. Stay where you are. Do not come close to me.”
The War God chuckled lightly underneath his mask.
“You saved my life once before, when I was imprisoned as a young man.” The Khan raised his spear again, pointing it at the man before him. “I thought you my brother!”
“Did you really, now? You, who had taken Jamukha’s lesson to heart?” Another step forward. “Well, I would love to spend time reminiscing about our past, great Khan, but…”
Temujin backed away, looking to his sides. One more step. “You are a traitor!” he exclaimed. "Traitor!"
Laughing, the man took one more step.
The Great Khan let out a triumphant cry, as his fingers fumbled for the string. He pulled it. The contraption activated, and there was a loud bang, louder than any thunderclap, that filled the room with fire and smoke.
The Khan shook his head to get rid of the incessant ringing. He waved his spear in front of him to clear the smoke. He had asked his engineers to set up a hidden cannon near the tent, to lay a trap for the War God’s inevitable arrival. Mysterious and powerful he may be, he was still a creature of flesh and blood. An iron ball flung at tremendous speed would still destroy him like it would a stone wall.
Through the grey, the Khan could see the outline of a figure. Standing.
His heart stopped in his chest. The blood drained from his face.
It was impossible.
As the smoke cleared, he saw it clearly. The sight of the War God, with his right arm stretched out to the side. The ragged cloak billowed all about him while the hood had fallen back to reveal long black hair streaked with white. His fingers were dug deeply into a smoking iron sphere, and his feet had not budged a single inch from where he had been standing. The hand tightened its grip. The solid cannonball shattered.
“I-Impossible. This is… you’re not even… monster…” For a moment the Great Khan almost dropped to his knees in despair, but then he remembered who he was. He would not kneel. He would never kneel, ever again. “Even so… Even so!” he shouted, “You will not find me easy prey, god of war!” Howling in rage, he charged at the masked man. He was taller and larger by far; the War God had always been rather average in build. Using the considerable might of his aging muscles, Temujin swung his spear at the man who had once been his ally, and he roared. “Live or die, today my legend will last forever!”
The shadows around the masked man’s feet rippled.
As easily as a man would take candy from a child, the War God plucked the heavy spear from the Khan’s own hands and sunk it into its owner’s chest.
“It will. Do not worry. I will see to it personally,” he said jovially.
Temujin fell back, sprawling on the luxurious rugs of his tent as he stared fixedly at the long shaft protruding from his breast. “I… I… but why?” He still did not understand. The pain was spreading, as was the crimson pool underneath him.
“For those that need me. Those that depend on me,” came the unexpected answer.
“I… I did…” gurgled the Khan. “I depended… you… who else would?”
“The world.”
Temujin breathed heavily, struggling to stay awake. He gave the masked man a puzzled look. The world? What did he mean? As if he understood the meaning of Temujin’s gaze, the War God continued to speak.
“Order and chaos. This is the cycle that ensures the progress of mankind. The world cannot prosper in stagnation. Something… someone is needed to tame the chaos to create order, and to plunge order into chaos.”
“The… world… depends on it?” groaned Temujin.
“Now you’re getting it.”
“You helped my empire… establish order… and now you are to return it to chaos?” The Khan let out a defiant laugh. “Ha! My heirs… my children and grandchildren… they will be good rulers. I know that… Will you go after them next?”
“All in due time, Khagan. They have their roles to play, and I have mine. A hundred years from now… a thousand years from now, my work will still go on.”
“…you have always been such an… enigma, with that silly mask…” breathed the Khan.
“Any last requests?” asked the man unconcernedly.
“…take off that mask… let me see your face…”
“No,” said the man quietly, and more seriously than Temujin has ever heard him. He sounded almost angered. “Thrice have you asked me that question, and the answer will always be the same. I will never do that.”
The Khan laughed. At least, at the end, he seemed to have finally struck a nerve. He could go to the afterlife with that small victory. “Then…” he coughed, “the sky…”
“...Alright. That I can do, Temujin.”
Standing over Temujin, the War God looked up at the roof of the tent. He raised one hand high, palm outward. There was a blinding flash, as brilliant as the radiance of the afternoon sun. The top of the large tent had vanished, disintegrating into glowing embers.
“Ah…” sighed the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. “The sky…”
It was as blue as he had wanted it to be.
***
The masked man looked up, away from the dying Khan. It was not long before Temujin breathed his last. Giving the dead man one last glance, the War God turned and walked away, drawing the hood back over his head.
Bring order to a chaotic world, and plunge an orderly world into chaos? Fine words, and an interesting sentiment. Still, that was not the whole truth of what he truly felt. Even a hundred years would not fill the emptiness he felt within him. To be needed by people. To be depended on by people. He had already saved the world once, but in a world without strife that need faded. That is why he did what he had to do, so that people would need him again. So that they would depend on him again. Yet it was not enough. He wanted more.
And gradually, he began to envision the cycles of the world, turning in the palm of his hand.
To save the world, and to destroy it, over and over again.
It was… selfless, was it not? Even he was occasionally unsure of that nowadays, when he had once been burning with fiery conviction.
Even so, that emptiness – that hunger – inside of him would not vanish. All the better. His work is not yet done. Raising his head, the War God looked to the west. Past the deserts and mountains, there would be fresh lands to explore… that depended on him to be there.
As he crested the hill, he found his loyal followers awaiting his orders where he had left them, the banner of the burning one-eyed serpent fluttering proudly in the breeze. He looked over them. His loved ones. His family. His friends. Those that needed him the most.
He smiled.
Yes, they would head into the west...
---END---
