Sneak Peek: Of Battles Past

Today we have a sneak peek from author Bryn Hammond’s novel, Of Battles Past.

China has executed Ambaghai, the Mongols’ khan, on a hurdle with donkey ears and tail from the theatre, in mockery of the horse peoples of the steppe. It cries for hachi.‘Hachi means that which is owed, or felt due. It can mean an act of humanity. It can mean vengeance. It meant justice.’

The Mongols go to war for Ambaghai’s hachi, in a century when no steppe people is fit to tackle China. They believe battles are won by the just, and the size differential doesn’t bother them. They are wrong, but the Mongol God comforts them with an omen. Temujin, the baby of that battle day, has in his hand his people’s future victory.

The Chinese have crossbows, but the Mongols have belief.

Of Battles Past is available from Amazon.com, Amazon UK, and Smashwords.

Here is an excerpt from Of Battles Past…

Monghe limped from his single-sheet asylum, his hip at its clumsiest in the first half hour up. With his hot broth he did his libations, drops flicked from his fingers. South for fire: dawn struck a light on the sandstone canyon, marigold, Shiraz wine. East for air: the air you had to snatch out of the wind and gulp, as if to breathe were to catch flies. West for water: gulls from the ocean roam here in search of an ancient sea. North for the dead.

Daily, when he did north for the dead, he thought of a specific, a graphic member of that greater tribe. Monghe’s brigade had given escort to Yorgi Wolfhound who had the king of the Mongols prisoner. Prince Yorgi had led him in a yoke on foot behind his horse and they rode through the streets of Zhongdu. The crowd had jeered and thrown things, thrown fruit and garbage and abuse to do with animals. But his death was orderly, up on a hill, a cordon of guards at the bottom. Ambaghai sat straight, his gaze straight ahead on the horizon, and silent, silent when they hammered nails into his thighs, silent to the end. Oikon Bartaq sang. On his hurdle ten yards down the hill, his hurdle with a straw tail and donkey ears from a farce, he sang, in Mongol, which Monghe understood, for three days and three nights, hoarsely, yes, but with his heart and soul. Only when Ambaghai slumped did Oikon cease to sing. They were left to rot on the donkeys. Monghe, as you do, had gone along, often in the days, and at last had succumbed and stood vigil. Those songs Monghe heard in his dreams and woke with them in his head, and that was why he thought of Ambaghai when he did north for the dead.

Even without stalkers.

He was a major in the army, and that was his crime. Joined up as a lad. Matter of fact, Tartary had been too cut-throat for him. Who wants to stay in Tartary, unless you’re a prince? To garrison walls – it’s not a bad life. There’s the comradeship. Discipline is tribal, not Chinese. You mind your sheep, you sit on a wall and you yarn. It’s not a bad life, and beats Tartary these days. His soldiers were get-outs from Tartary, they didn’t expect to make great fortunes, they weren’t very bad men. The Odds-and-Ends is us: ordinary. Your usual soldier in foreign service, cynical, cheery. Just soldiers.

Cooked. Or half-baked, maybe, but in China parlance, a barbarian is cooked or else he’s raw. The lot on his tail were pretty raw.

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