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    Genghis Khan
    Genghis Khan
    Genghis Khan
    Ebook84 pages1 hour

    Genghis Khan

    By James Chambers

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    About this ebook

    Genghis Khan, the thirteenth century emperor, was infamous for his bloodthirsty, ruthless campaigns, but he was also one of the great commanders of history. Though a master of terror – his campaigns in northern China and Iran were accompanied by a level of slaughter that was not seen again until the twentieth century – he was just and generous to his subjects and often magnanimous in victory. His broad, ambitious strategies and elusive tactics were so far ahead of their time that they were acknowledged models for some of the most successful tank commanders of the Second World War. At the beginning of the thirteenth century Genghis Khan united the nomad tribes of Mongolia, turned them into a formidable army and led them to rule over the largest empire ever conquered by a single commander. By the time he died, in 1227, his dominions stretched eastward from the Caspian Sea to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateMay 30, 2012
    ISBN9780752486635
    Genghis Khan
    Author

    James Chambers

    James Chambers received the Bram Stoker Award® for the graphic novel, Kolchak the Night Stalker: The Forgotten Lore of Edgar Allan Poe and is a four-time Bram Stoker Award nominee. He is the author of the short story collections On the Night Border and On the Hierophant Road, which received a starred review from Booklist, which called it "...satisfyingly unsettling"; and the novella collection, The Engines of Sacrifice, described as "...chillingly evocative..." in a Publisher's Weekly starred review. He has written the novellas, Three Chords of Chaos, Kolchak and the Night Stalkers: The Faceless God, and many others, including the Corpse Fauna cycle: The Dead Bear Witness, Tears of Blood, The Dead in Their Masses, and The Eyes of the Dead. He also writes the Machinations Sundry series of steampunk stories. He edited the Bram Stoker Award-nominated anthology, Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign and co-edited A New York State of Fright and Even in the Grave, an anthology of ghost stories. His website is: www.jameschambersonline.com.

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      Genghis Khan - James Chambers

      ONE

      THE SONS OF THE GREY WOLF

      Across the heart of the northern hemisphere, from Hungary to China, there are almost a hundred thousand square miles of desolate, treeless grassland known as the steppes. Throughout their long winter most of their earth is frozen solid. In the spring and the autumn their air is often thick with torrential rain. At the height of their short summer the yellow grass is baked brittle. For the most part they are good for very little other than hunting and herding hardy livestock; and they are so inhospitable that many of the people who first lived there moved on as soon as they could, migrating to conquer and settle in the richer soil of Europe, the Middle East or China.

      At the eastern end of the steppes, however, the landscape is different. At first the grassland degenerates into a barren desert, the Gobi, but in the north, beyond the desert, there are rich rolling pastures rising amid many rivers to the forested foothills of Mount Kentey, a sacred mountain which was known long ago as Burkhan-Khaldun, ‘God’s Hill’. The people who live there today are the people who have always lived there and, like the haunted land itself, they are different.

      According to their ancient legends, the nomads of the eastern steppes are unlike any other people on earth. At the dawn of time, they say, after the God of Eternal Heaven, Mongke Tengri, had made all the animals, he made the first human beings, moulding them out of clay. But the eastern nomads were not created until later, when the grey wolf, the great hunter, wandered down out of the forests on the side of the sacred mountain. Some say that he mated with a woman. Others say that he mated with a swift tawny doe. But all are agreed that the offspring of this union are the Mongols.

      After ten generations, when the Mongols had multiplied, a direct descendant of the grey wolf’s firstborn, Dobun the Sagacious married a woman called Alan the Fair, who came from a tribe of hunters in the forest. A few years later, Dobun died suddenly, leaving two infant sons. During the next three years, however, Alan, who did not remarry, gave birth to three more sons. Throughout their childhood and youth, her two elder sons believed understandably that their half-brothers were the children of a handsome young servant whom their father had bought as a boy for a hunk of venison. But when all her sons were grown to manhood, Alan called them together and, as sometimes happens in legends, convinced them that the three younger sons were divine. At the conception of each, she claimed, the God of Eternal Heaven, in the form of a shining golden man, had come down through the smoke-hole in the top of her tent, impregnated her with a ray of light and then, after turning into a yellow dog, returned to heaven on a moonbeam. Later, he had visited her again in a dream and told her that the descendants of her sons would rule the world.

      After making her revelation, Alan gave each of her sons an arrow and asked him to break it. When they had all done so, she handed each a bundle of arrows and asked him to break that. When all had failed, she explained her parable. If each stood alone, he would easily be broken, like a single arrow; but if they all stayed loyally together, no power on earth would be strong enough to destroy them.

      While Alan lived, her five sons followed her advice. As soon as she was dead, however, the four eldest divided her herds between them, leaving the youngest, Bodunchar the Simple, to ride off alone on the ugly pony that was now all he possessed. When at last his repentant eldest brother came in search of him, Bodunchar was living in a hut on the banks of the river Onon and surviving by hunting duck with a trained hawk and begging mare’s milk from a clan that was camped nearby. Back among his brothers, Bodunchar described the people who had befriended him. They had no leader. All their decisions were made in council. If they could be taken by surprise, they could be overwhelmed before they had time to organize their defence. With Bodunchar at their head, the brothers and their followers returned to the easy ambush of his unsuspecting friends and enriched themselves by seizing their herds and enslaving their families.

      By the standards of the steppes there was nothing wrong in what Bodunchar and his brothers had done. In truth, as well as in legend, it was the way in which the Turko-Mongol nomads had always lived, and the way in which they were to continue to live for several more generations. These nomads measured each other’s wealth by the numbers of their sheep and horses, and when the size of a clan’s herds increased, it was usually as a result of audacious raiding rather than patient husbandry. Ruthless opportunists like Bodunchar were regarded as heroes, and their success bred success. Warriors often moved from clan to clan, swearing new allegiances to the men most likely to protect their families and make them rich. Although the tribes and the clans into which they were divided must have begun as extended families, their blood lines were soon diluted, not only because those with the best leaders attracted warriors from elsewhere, but also because it was the custom to marry outside the clan. Since bride prices were high, women were often acquired like horses on raiding parties.

      In such a society, life was simple, selfish and precarious. But it was not always to be like this. According to an ancient prophecy, often quoted by the holy men, the shamans, the Mongols would one day be united by a pauper descendant of Bodunchar, who would come to them dressed in a goatskin cloak and mounted on a barren mare. Under his leadership they would become invincible, like Alan’s bundle of arrows, and behind his standard they would ride beyond the steppes to win unimaginable riches.

      This is the story of the man who fulfilled that prophecy. It is the story of an illiterate nomad called Temuchin, who rose to

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