He groaned to himself. The Chin had assembled an army so vast he could not see the end of them. The Badger's Mouth gave way to flats of ice and snow, almost the bottom of a bowl of high peaks before the road that led to the emperor's city. Yet the Chin soldiers filled it and spilled further and further back onto the plain beyond. The white mountains hid the full extent of them, but even so, they had more men than Kachiun had ever seen before. Genghis did not know how many and he would be riding slowly down the pass in just a few short hours.

With a sudden stab of fear, Kachiun wondered if his men could be seen from the camp. Chin scouts had to be patrolling the area. They would be fools not to, and there he was, with a line of warriors stretching back into the white fastness of the hills. They needed surprise and he had almost thrown it away. He clapped Taran on the back in thanks for the warning and the boy smiled in pleasure.

Kachiun made his plans, passing word down the line. The men behind would retreat far enough for dawn not to reveal them to sharp-eyed enemies. Kachiun looked up at the clear sky and wished for more snow to cover their tracks. Dawn was close and he hoped Khasar had made it to safety. Slowly, painfully, the line of warriors began moving back up the slope to the trees they had left behind. A memory came to Kachiun of his childhood as he climbed. He had hidden with his family in a cleft in the hills of home, with death and starvation always close. Once more he would hide, but this time he would come roaring out and Genghis would ride with him.

In silence he sent up a prayer to the sky father that Khasar too had survived and was not freezing to death on the high slopes, lost and alone. Kachiun grinned at the thought. His brother was not easy to stop. If anyone could make it out, it would be him.

Khasar whipped a hand back and forth over his throat, signaling for silence from the men behind him. The storm had died at last and he could see stars overhead, revealed through drifting clouds. The moon lit the sterile slopes and he found himself on a sharp edge over a sheer drop. His breath caught in his throat as he saw the black tower of one of the Chin forts below him, almost under his feet, but separated by a plunge into blackness over rocks so sharp that only a little snow had settled on them. Great drifts humped themselves around the fort where they had slid from the crags, and Khasar wondered if his men could make the final descent. The fort itself had been built on a ridge overlooking the pass, no doubt filled with weapons that would smash anyone coming through. They would not expect an attack from the cliffs at their back.

At least there was moonlight. He went back to where his men had begun to cluster. The wind had dropped to no more than a gentle moan, and he was able to whisper his order, beginning with a command for them to eat and rest while they passed their ropes forward. This last thousand had come from the tuman of Kachiun, and Khasar did not know them, but the officers came forward and only nodded as they heard his orders. The word spread quickly and the first group of ten began tying ropes together, coiling them near the edge. They were cold and their hands were clumsy with the knots, making Khasar wonder if he was sending them all to their deaths.

"If you fall, remain silent," he whispered to the first group. "Or your shout will wake the fort below us. You might even survive if you hit the deep snow." One or two of them grinned at that, looking over the edge and shaking their heads.

"I will go first," Khasar said. He removed his fur gloves, wincing at the cold as he took hold of the thick rope. He had climbed worse cliffs, he told himself, though never when he was this tired or cold. He forced a confident expression onto his face as he jerked on the line. The officers had tied it to the trunk of a fallen birch, and it seemed solid. Khasar backed to the edge and tried not to think of the drop behind him. No one could survive it, he was certain.

"No more than three men on a rope," he said as he went over. He hung out as far as he could, beginning to walk down the icy rock. "Tie some more together or it will take all night to get down." He was giving orders to conceal his own nervousness, forcing the cold face to hide his fear. They gathered around the edge to watch him until finally he was past the edge and clambering down. The closest men began tying more ropes together to allow a second descent, and one of them nodded to his friends and lay on his stomach to take hold of the quivering rope that held Khasar. He too vanished over the edge.

Genghis waited impatiently for dawn. He had sent scouts down the pass as far as they could go, so that some of them returned with crossbow bolts buried in their armor. The last of them had come back to the camp as the sun set, two bolts sticking out of his back. One had penetrated the overlapping iron and left a streak of blood that smeared his leg and his pony's heaving flanks. Genghis heard his report before the man could have his wounds tended, needing the information.

The Chin general had left the pass open. Before the scout was driven back by a storm of bolts, he had seen two great forts looming over the strip of land below. Genghis did not doubt the soldiers in them were ready to pour death on anyone trying to force their way through. The fact that the pass had not been blocked worried him. It suggested the general wanted him to try a frontal assault and was confident the Mongol army could be funneled into his men and smashed where they were weakest.

At its opening, the pass was almost a mile wide, but under the forts, the rock walls narrowed to a pinch of no more than a few dozen paces. Even the thought of being hemmed in and unable to charge brought a sick feeling to Genghis's stomach that he crushed as soon as he recognized it. He had done everything he could and his brothers would attack as soon as they could see well enough to aim. He could not call them back, even if he found a better plan in the last moments. They were lost to him, hidden by the mountains and the snow.

At least the storm had eased. Genghis looked up at the stars, whose light revealed the huddled mass of prisoners he had herded to the mouth of the pass. They would go ahead of his army, soaking up the bolts and arrows of the Chin. If the forts poured fire oil, the prisoners would take the brunt of it.

The air was frozen in the night, but he could not sleep and took deep breaths, feeling the chill reach into his lungs. Dawn was not far away. He thought through his plans once more, but there was nothing else to do. His men were well fed, better than they had been in months. Those he would lead into the pass were veteran warriors in good armor. He had formed the first ranks of men with lances, in part to aid them in herding the prisoners forward. Tsubodai's Young Wolves would come behind him, then the warriors of Arslan and Jelme, twenty thousand who would not run, no matter how vicious the fighting.

Genghis drew his father's sword, seeing the wolf's-head hilt shine in the starlight. He lunged with it, grunting as he did so. The camp was silent around him, though there were always eyes watching. He put his body through a routine Arslan had taught him that stretched his muscles as well as strengthening them. The monk Yao Shu was teaching a similar discipline to his sons, hardening their bodies like any other tool. Genghis sweated as he whipped his sword through the sequences. He was not as lightning quick as he had once been, but he had grown in strength and sheer power and he was still supple, despite the scarring of so many old wounds.

He did not want to wait for dawn. He considered finding a woman, knowing it would help to burn off a little of his nervous energy. His first wife, Borte, would be sleeping in the ger, surrounded by his sons. His second wife was still nursing their baby daughter. He brightened at that thought, imagining her pale breasts heavy with milk.