SWORD OF KHAN- PART II
Winter on the Onon river...
The world clad in white, horses digging the snow with their hooves...
The laughter of children... winter games on the frozen river...
A boy from another clan...
His friend...
From snowball fights to crafting arrows, they did everything together...
"Let's be friends forever!"
A cup to drink to vow everlasting friendship...
...in which each of us had shed a drop of his blood...
He was my blood brother...
My friend...
Jamukha...
Vaggie awoke to another dream, much less disoriented than she had been the first time...
She had seen it clearly; she remembered names, places and moments...
She knew where and when she had reappeared, far from the Burkan Kaldun and the Merkit raiders...
And she knew what led to this...
...
It was the Year of the Mice, and the army of Temujin Khan had travelled westward to Naiman lands, near the Altaj mountains...
Following the defeat of Wang Khan, the clans that still opposed the rule of Temujin Khan had fled to the realm of the Naimans, ruled by Taiwang Khan... Clans of many different peoples, like the Kerait, Merkit, Oirat, Jadarat, Dorben, Tartars...
So many peoples and clans, that it will be called the Battle of the Thirteen Sides.
Taiwang Khan had little power over the coalition, for he was under the sway of his energic but arrogant wife Gorbesu, who saw the alliance as her opportunity to ged rid of the Mongols she despised. So confident were Gorbesu and her allies that they foolishly sent a missive to Alakush-teginquri, ruler of the Onggut, in which they informed him of their plans of war and asked him to join their side, so that the Mongols would have to fight both in the west and in the south.
Not only was Alakush-teginquri an ally of Temujin Khan, he was a vassal of Altan-khan, Emperor of the Jin Dynasty, who saw with favor the new balance of power, for it promised relative stability in the north at a time when war with the Song Dynasty was brewing in the south, where the great river divided the two most powerful kingdoms of China. Therefore Alakush-teginquri promptly informed Temujin Khan, who had his armies prepared much sooner than his enemies had anticipated.
Still, the Mongols arrived only after a long journey to the farthest western regions of Mongolia, meaning their horses were tired and those of their enemies were not.
Knowing his rivals would feel secure in their greater numbers, Temujin Khan approved of a clever ruse to buy some time; he had a great numbers of mannequins made, with campfires to make his army look much bigger than it was. Learning from their scouts of the unexpected strenght of the Mongol army, the coalition chiefs hesitated.
More cautious than the rest, Taiwang Khan wanted the army to retreat to the Altaj Mountains and prepare for the Mongol advance there, where the harsh terrain would be in their favour. It was a good plan...
But what he got what the exact opposite; the other chiefs, including his own son Kutslug, openly accused him of cowardice and one went so far as to say they would be better off with the Khan's wife in charge!
Jamukha agreed with that sentiment and he spoke thusly: "Many Mongols are under my command, not Temujin's! There's a reason my blood brother is not advancing: he's buying time! We better seize our chance and strike now!"
Jamukha; who could even remember the time when he had been placed by his lord Wang Khan in charge of the expedition against the Merkit after they kidnapped Temujin's wife?
After the two boys, now ambitious men, were driven apart by their dreams of power, Jamukha had sown discord between Temujin and Wang Khan to weaken both, and had conspired against Temujin at every turn...
And now it all came to this because there were no other schemes left for the sly Jamukha; the Naiman were in only power in the steppe that had not either joined Temujin Khan's coalition of tribes or been destroyed by it...
...
Before Vaggie's eyes, the armies and the banners and the battlefield all appeared, emerging from the mists of time...
She knew this dream was a test, just like the first one. A test of what, she could not say, not yet.
She was leading the side of the Mongol formation, the fastest troops that would outflank the enemy while the center, led by Temujin's brother Kasar, would distract them.
The enemy, comprising many different clans with their leaders, didn't have a plan of attack nor did they expect a fight with a strictly organized and disciplined army...
When the Mongol horsemen attacked from the side with waves after waves of arrows the battle was all but decided. For Taiwang Khan and his closest Naimans it became a fight to the last man, and the Khan himself was killed, hit with many arrows...
But Vaggie could not see Jamukha anywhere; she kept fighting, searching for her greatest enemy, dismembering Naiman and Tartar warriors, covered in blood...
At last, she spotted the banner of Jamukha's Mongols!
She rode to meet them, to end this today!
"JAMUKHA!"
Nothing could have prepared her for who was coming...
...
Astride a white horse, there was a warrior clad in glimmering white armor covered in blood, holding a silver sword...
A ghastly horned helmet fell to the ground, revealing a grey-white face covered in scars, silvery white hair and gleaming sickly yellow eyes...
HER eyes...
"VAGGGIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
...
For a moment, Vaggie forgot everything.
The dream, the battle, the slaughter of men and horses all around her, the arrows raining down...
Everything...
She was back in that alley again, telling a demon child to run away...
...the look in her eyes...
...as she took one of hers!
...the moment before she tore her wings apart with her swords, she had spoken...
...her words boomed in her head like cracks of lightning!
"Sinful filth like you has no place in the presence of the Authority!"
Vaggie had forgot everything...
Lute was the only being left in the cosmos...
The one person to KILL.
...
The earth trembled under the hooves of their horses...
...Their swords clashed...
...Crackling like lightning!
They instantly fell off their horses, into the blood-soaked mud...
Undeterred.
They fought too fast for the mortal eye to see, each swing, each clash of their swords burning with deadly brilliance, like it could incinerate or blind any mortal being...
...like the very goddesses of war dueled over the fate of mankind!
And she spoke:
"YOU WERE MY FRIEND, VAGGIE...
...YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO DESTROY SINNERS, NOT JOIN THEM!"
"SHUT UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!"
An opening. Lute smiled.
Vaggie was hit in her right leg. She fell, her knee exploding with pain...
One downward slash of Lute's sword...
Vaggie caught it with her left arm- for a moment the blade was stuch in her armor...
...and in her arm. She felt her bone cracking...
Then it was over.
...
One upward blow and Vaggie's sword was in Lute's stomach and through her back. And Vaggie yelled, roared in agony and joy as she thrusted her blade!
...
Vaggie, now back on her feet, twisted her sword before taking it out!
As Lute looked numbed by the excruciating pain, she looked up at her...
"Do it... Correct your mistake!"
Vaggie looked at the sword in her hand, feeling like she already held the Sword of Empires, the Sword of Power...
One moment and she would be gone from her mind. Forever...
Then Vaggie remembered. Everything...
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
She threw the sword high in the air, and it landed somewhere in the blood-soaked mud, striking like a bolt of lighting!
"THE GREAT BLUE SKY IS MY WITNESS! I WILL NEVER BE LIKE YOU!"
Lute stood there, glaring defiantly at the woman she once called her friend...
"Why? Why would you not do it...
...Why would you be so weak?"
"Because, as much as I hate you...
...I would hate myself more if I did it..."
...
In that moment Lute was back in that alley one last time.
Her wings tore from her back, her armor gone, everything lost.
And then saw her face...
...felt like a stranger in a brand new place...
...
After the Year of the Mice, the Year of the Ox came and went...
...and for the first time in forever, peace reigned in the steppe.
And came the spring of the Year of the Tiger, when Temujin Khan called the great kuriltai, the first pan-Mongol assembly.
At the headwaters of the Onon river, the nine-pointed banner was raised, adorned with nine tails of mighty yaks...
...and on the banner was the emblem of the Borjigin, a white falcon victorious over a black raven.
On that day of spring Temujin Khan was made Khan of Khans, Genghis Khan.
"If you, my people, are willing and ready to make me your Lord, are you also ready to do as I command, to come when I shall call you and to go where I shall send you, even to the ends of the Earth?"