The Tiger-Headed Horseman Read Online Free PDF Page A

changing. Khad felt decidedly smug. He had created a city of vice and corruption that, while almost universally despised, had been emulated in many other desert regions throughout the world. ‘Oh, how I wish the golden child Chinggis could have seen this!’ mused Khad.
    Khad saved his most devilish activities for Chinggis's beloved Tsara. Khad disliked women. He was a simple fellow and could not begin to understand the finer workings of the female mind. Instead, he undermined it whenever the opportunity arose. Many of the things he said and did he would never have done to a man; he saw women as weak and to be dominated. He was a very silly man in this respect. To Khad, Tsara represented the life of his nemesis. However, despite Khad's affected hatred, Tsara was as loved by the people as Chinggis had been while he had ruled. The people saw Chinggis's love for his lady as true romance. It had long been the talk of the bathhouses. When it was announced that Chinggis was dead, the people mourned asmuch for the grief they knew Tsara would be experiencing as for the loss of their illustrious emperor. It infuriated Khad. ‘Why should this silly little woman who was born in a distant and barbarian country hold the affections of his people?’ he wondered. Khad thought long and hard, plotting for far longer than most people would deem sane. He had to bring her down. He couldn't kill her as he had her husband, his cousin. Khad needed to be more cunning. He knew that, although Tsara was immensely popular, and although the people of Baatarulaan were progressive as a result of Chinggis's advanced policies, were he able to humiliate and destroy Tsara's character then as a woman her reputation would be forever sullied and would never recover.
    Finding means for such humiliation took Khad to places his imagination had never sought to dwell. He was not by nature a man personally interested in physical love and lust but knew that it was a pastime enjoyed greatly by his subjects (in thought if not in action). Khad determined that, if he could somehow implicate Tsara as having been unfaithful to Chinggis, then this would produce a tarnish suitably tainted to irrevocably ruin her. Searching the nether regions of his city, Khad met a lowly Khem addict who would willingly be interviewed by Khad's media people and testify that for many years he and Tsara had been enjoying illicit Khem-fuelled rumpy-pumpy. It wouldn't matter that Tsara denied the accusations vehemently. What mattered was that doubt would be cast in the mind of Tsara's supporters. After all, these were minds that were becoming increasingly addled and reliant on Khem. They would be easily moved against Tsara.
    Khad's plan worked brilliantly. Within a year of killing Chinggis, Tsara had taken her own life. So it was that Khad managed to eradicate the remaining loyalty to Chinggis and in so doing wipe away the memory of Ulaanbaatar and replaceit with his own visionary Baatarulaan. Khad lived far longer than anybody could have dreamed or wanted. One day he simply disappeared while out tending to his water geraniums. Rumours spread that he had drowned mysteriously in a bizarre gardening accident. Khad's body was never recovered.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    4
    Despite Khad having sold vast swathes of the country, Ongolium was still a large country by modern standards. There were far smaller countries, geographically, that punched far above their tectonic weight. Ongolium didn't pack a punch at all. Outside of Baatarulaan there were no towns as such. During the Terror of Khad people living outside the city had been forced to give up their way of life and move towards the centre. Khad had wanted to control everything and everyone. However, over the years those who had become disenfranchised by Baatarulaan and who longed for the old ways sneaked out of the city and into the mountains. The modern Fun Brigade still patrolled the countryside. They searched for anyone leaving the city while