Horselords Read Online Free PDF Page B

spring day, the man wore only his woolen trousers and kalat, a stained blue tunic trimmed with red. A conical bearskin cap, decorated with goat-hide tassels, identified the man as a common trooper of Chanar’s tumen.
    Satisfied with the trooper’s response, the khahan waited for his horse to quiet down. “Rise, brother soldier,” he said, trying to put the nervous trooper at ease.
    “Yes, Great Lord,” mumbled the man, pushing himself up from the dirt. Even sitting upright, the man kept his eyes downcast. Yamun could tell the man was a tough and seasoned soldier by the large scars on his cheeks.
    “Fear not, warrior,” Yamun spoke soothingly. “You’re not to be punished. I’ve some questions, that’s all. The commander of your jagun recommended your bravery and skill. What’s your father’s ordu?” Yamun whisked away the flies from his mare’s mane.
    “Illustrious Emperor of the Tuigan, my father was born into the Jebe clan.” The trooper bowed again on completing his words.
    “Jebe’s ordu has many tents, and he’s served me well in the past. What’s your name?”
    “Hulagu, Khahan,” the trooper answered, bowing again. “Very well, Hulagu. Stop bobbing up and down and be a soldier.” The man sat up straighter, obedient to the words of his khahan. “Jebe Khan keeps his ordu to the east, near the Katakoro Mountains, doesn’t he?”
    “Yes, Great Lord, in the summertime when the pastures are rich there.”
    “Have you heard of the Khazari? I’m told they live in those mountains.” He stroked the neck of his horse, keeping it calm.
    “This is true, khahan. We sometimes take their sheep and cattle,” the trooper answered with pride.
    Yamun smiled. Raiding and rustling were old and honorable traditions among the Tuigan. As khahan, he could barely keep the different ordus of the Tuigan from stealing each other’s horses. Any Tuigan caught stealing from another was executed on the spot, but the law did not apply to non-Tuigan. Yamun tucked his horsewhip into his boot-top. “Are they easy to raid?”
    “My father says it was not as hard as raiding the ordus of Arik-Boke and Berku—or so he was told; my father never did this,” Trooper Hulagu added hastily, remembering the penalties Yamun had set. “The Khazari aren’t horsemen and don’t chase us very well, so it is easy to get away. But they live in tents of stone and keep their sheep in pens at night, so we could only raid them when they took their flocks out to pasture.”
    “Are they a brave people?” Yamun asked, dropping his horse’s reins to let it graze.
    “Not as brave as the Jebe,” the man answered with a trace of boastfulness. “They would fight, but were easy to trick. Many times they did not send out scouts, and we could fool them by driving horses ahead of us to make our numbers seem much larger.” The trooper wriggled a little, trying to keep his toes warm in the cold mud.
    Yamun stroked the fine beard on his chin. “Are there many of them?”
    The man thought for a bit. His eyes glazed as he started imagining numbers larger than twenty.
    Finally, the trooper spoke. “They are not so numerous as the tumens of the khahan nor do they fight as well,” he said, breaking into a big smile at what he thought was his own cleverness.
    Yamun laughed at the man’s answer. What he really needed, as he had known from the start, was solid information on who and what the Khazari were like. Trooper Hulagu’s memory was certainly not going to be enough. “What’s the distance to Khazari?” he asked. Again the man thought, although this time Yamun suspected he knew the answer.
    “Illustrious Emperor of the Tuigan, when I left my ordu to join the magnificent Son of Teylas’s armies, I rode for three weeks, but I did not hurry and stopped many days in the yurts of my cousins along the way. The trip could be made faster.”
    “Undoubtedly,” Yamun said, half to himself. The squat warlord paused, although he already knew what