It was on the night of the first week after the Mongols came to Saryozek, as Nergui was sleeping at a corner in Nurzan’s personal quarters, that Temir let his long-hoarded loot drop from the open palm of his hand and clutter, near silently, next to his caretaker’s face. Nergui shot up as he heard it, that oh-so familiar sound of something like a handful of marbles skittering on the hard floor next to his ear. It reminded of short, fearful moments in prison, that took place in the span of moments: those brief blitzes of men in the corridors that led from the cafeteria to the showers, or in momentarily unsupervised corners in the courtyard. They began with shiny brass knuckles striking faces, or with the distinct hissing sound a collapsible nightstick makes, as it is deftly released from its holster.

Nergui opened his eyes, imagining teeth raining down on cement and found that he was looking at just that: a bit of jaw, a semicircle of yellowed bone studded with chipped teeth. A half-dozen rough pearls, extracted from a screaming oyster-mouth. He looked up to see Temir, but the wheelchair-thing had already hung he head and was feigning sleep. Nergui daren’t rouse him, from fear of Nurzan waking up.

Instead, Nergui scooped the teeth and the bit of jaw closer. In the darkness, lighted by the dim, distant light of the Mongol bonfires, Nergui could not make out the teeth’s shape, but they felt familiar as he traced their shape with the tip of his fingers. He could not be sure, but they seemed to be some sort of elongated canines, with blunt tips. He couldn’t be sure, but from their shape they appeared to be jacketed. Nergui wouldn’t bet on it, but the shape of that jawbone did not seem to belong to any animal he could think of.

He drifted to sleep, the teeth and jawbone held against his breast, when he thought: there are a hundred armed men in Saryozek and they all have guns. And yet I know there could not possibly be enough bullets for them to go around. Even so, the Arystani are the only ones I have seen wielding something of a caliber equal to an AK-47. But the men here, they don’t have automatics. They have rifles.

Stock-action rifles and carbines.

Magazine-loaded.

Nergui’s eyes shot open and he held the jawbone up into the light. Only then, did he realize its actual function, as he looked into its overly long shape, at the way the teeth were placed along the groove set in the bone, at the peg-shaped shape of their protruding roots.

The defenders of Saryozek had no automatics, because they could not manufacture the ammunition. It was only natural that they would find alternatives. Nergui steadied his grip on the jawbone and placed it in a jacket-pocket, making sure it would not touch his skin. He slept fitfully that night, dreaming of skull orchards with hollow bone-branches, reaching out as far as the eye could see.

***

On the third week of the siege of Saryozek, Gansukh Kiryat looked through his binoculars at the scarp-metal walls of Saryozek, examined its crooked, airliner-hull gates and peered into the murky depths of its moat. Finding no point of entry, frustrated by the constant baying of his men running around the city, laughing as the defenders of Saryozek occasionally took pot shots at them (the bullets bouncing against the metal of their mounts uselessly), he turned his attention to the mountain.

It was a craggy, rocky thing covered in rough vegetation, all sharp edges and dust. The few trees that took root there (hard-headed pines and patient tatar maples) seemed to be eking out a meager, miserable existence. It was desolate, it was miserable and to Gansukh Kiryat, it was a lot like home.

He had grown up in Khuvsgul, high up in the mountain places, where there were no horses but wolves and hares aplenty. His father had come here after his grandfather had left China during the Sino-Soviet War, abandoning his post in Xinjiang while the Russian battery cut his brigade to pieces. He had run, grandfather Zao, for so long and so far that by the time he was done, he had climbed all the way to the highest point in Mongolia and on top his grandmother.

He even took the name Kiryat, to make sure that Mao could not find him. Gansukh remembered how his grandfather acted, when he heard someone speaking Mandarin. How he would turn his head and look behind his shoulder, thinking that the Chairman had perhaps sneaked up behind him and was about to grab him by the short hair on the back of his neck and drag him all the way back to Xinjiang to get him shot. He stayed, thus, on the mountain and never once came down, not even on the day of his death. He had chosen a sky burial, Grandfather Zao, after hearing the words of travelling Buddhists, who promised him he would be fed to the birds of the sky and, in a way, ascend.

Gansukh’s father did not come down from the mountain either except once, on the eve of Grandfather Zao’s death. When he came back, father seemed devastated: he had seen what more the world could offer, all the things that were denied him of his father’s cowardice and in turn, he sent Gansukh away, to join the military, to live and to die anywhere else but at the top of Khusgul.

And so Ganuskh joined the Army and served Mongolia as an Infantry officer, the words of his father go, you fool; as far away from here as possible…spurring him on. For his zeal, he was transferred as an instructor for combat readiness in the People’s Army in China. Through his own merit, he was then promoted to captain. Then, to brigadier-general, laureate for his theoretical prowess in a crisis. So good was he at his job, that the Chinese government chose him to lead the vanguard into the invasion of Vietnam, 16 years ago, when civilization clutched at its chest, gurgled once and then fell face-first on the cold hard ground.

There were secret assets, the brass believed, held by the Vietnamese in disregard of international law. There was fuel, resources, hidden military depots and production lines, which aimed to strike at the heart of the Glorious People’s Republic. The cold, hard truth of the matter was, of course, that this was a simple land-grab, in a vain attempt to perhaps maintain their tenuous control over their failing regime. Which, Gansukh later realized, had already collapsed by the point his battalion had crossed the Vietnamese border.

He had led his men barely sixty kilometers into Vietnam, past highways choked with abandoned cars up a slope, down a hill and in the midst of a tiny little village, when the panicked rag-tag group of Vietnamese sprung their trap. Jumping from cover in the ground, crawling out of hidden tunnels, lost in the vegetation, they cut down his battalion to half its force and drove them away in a matter of minutes. Then, they shot at the stragglers and the wounded, before finally setting fire to the village and themselves gunning it as fast and as hard as they could back to their homes. Thus, the invasion of Vietnam ended, for the 100th Batallion of the People’s Army and, Gansukh theorized, for China in general.

Gansukh learned of this of course, mostly through rumour. He had dropped his weapons, abandoned his place and tore off his insignia as soon as he screamed ‘retreat’. He ran like a man possessed, urged perhaps by the flight gene left behind by Grandfather Zao or even, he mused, by his spirit, which had shoved him as hard and as fast as he could from the battle and led him across China (on the backs of horses and donkeys and on foot) all the way to Khuvsgul, where he had hid until the Batu-Khan came calling. He had found little reason in the final purpose of his life being to feed the scavengers of Vietnam (or serving the Chinese government, for that matter).

“Myangan-lord” his Ogtbish secretary said, a wiry man with a long face, his expression one of constant longing. “Someone is requesting an audience with you.”

Gansukh lowered his binoculars, breathed an exasperated sigh and grumbled:

“Tell them to report to me in the evening.” Gansukh said, unseen gears turning silently in his head, the faintest outline of an idea slowly forming in his head.

“He claims he cannot do so, myangan-lord. He is Ogtbish, not of rank.” The secretary said.

“Who is he?” Gansukh asked, the production line inside his head pouring the shapeless idea-gun, pressing it into a mold, chiseling it out, speeding it through the production line of the unconscious and into consciousness, hammering in details relayed by past experiences, adding the glossy finish only evidence can provide.

“He is Usuk, apprentice to shaman-engineer Ganbold, of the 103rd zuun. He explained it was very urgent, that he could speak with you.” The secretary explained.

“Very well. Take me to the little grease-monkey.” Ganuskh said, climbing down from his RV, the newly-minted idea stuggling to break through into the front of his mind, pushing up against his frontal lobe. It was pushed back, of course, at the sight of Usuk, a cross-eyed little monkey of a boy, with a face pockmarked like the moon and ears as big as saucers.

“M-m-myangan-lord! Sh-shaman-engineer’s ap-ap-apprent-” the grease monkey stuttered, while striking a clumsy salute.

“Get on with it.” Gansukh said, the idea now bursting through the seams, just out of sight, dripping gore and screaming.

“I am here to report that the 103rd zuun’s Tngri was recently drained of all its fuel reserves, after the implicit command of its commanding officer!” the grease-monkey blurted out, in perfect synch with Gansukh’s epiphany.

Tunnels! Hidden tunnels in the rocks! It screamed in its squeaky, shrill tones, suddenly putting Saryozek in perspective: a castle, set up against a hidden exit tunnel. An invisible supply and escape line. The siege was doomed to fail. Unless…

“Ah-ha!” Gansukh exclaimed, banging his fist on the side of his RV.

But then again, Baraat Buriyat had also sabotaged his own zuun and perhaps any countermeasures he might have had against this. The young wolf had perhaps thrown a spanner in Gansukh’s works, by either choosing to follow some madcap scheme or by preparing for desertion!

“What?” Gansukh roared.

“Th-th-the zuun-lord of th-th-the…” the grease-monkey stuttered.

“I heard you the first time!” Gansukh said. Turning to his secretary, he snarled “Get this man a triple share of vodka and a half-dozen mukhomor! And get me my council!”

“I l-l-live to s-s-serve you, m-m-mya...”

“Oh shut up, you disgusting little monkey!” he spat, before turning back to his secretary, grabbing him by the shoulder “Make sure you get me Baraat Buriyat. If he runs, hamstring him. If he struggles, break his legs. If he comes quietly, then I’ll crack his skull open myself!”

“Yes, myangan-lord” said the secretary as he started on his way, leaving Ganuskh Kiryat alone with his fever-dreams of punishing mutiny.

***

Miras hated coming to the place beneath the mountain. He hated coming here alone, but he hated it worse when he had Kirill with him for company. Not because Kirill was brave, or because he was cold, or because he had a sort of understanding with the things beneath that Miras could never quite grasp.

It was that he never once used a light, when he came down here. It was how Kirill’s voice lowered with each step, turning into a whisper and finally dissolving into nothing as they crossed the final stretch toward the orchard’s threshold. He never needed any signs to guide him, Kirill. He always followed the correct path, taking turns seemingly at random each time, climbing up the narrow ledges or squeezing through the opening with unsettling ease.

Even in the deeper depths, where even Miras’ lantern’s light seemed to grow dim, enveloped by the approaching darkness, with stale, cold air lapping at his face and creeping through the pores of his skin to whistle up his nerves all the way to his brain, Kirill did not seem affected. In fact, Miras thought, he seemed rejuvenated, graced with a nimbleness that he had never seen in the man, a surety in his gait he had never known him to have in all their years together.

Fifteen minutes later, Kirill would stop at what seemed like a dead end and would raise his arm to signal Miras, stopping him dead in his tracks. Then Kirill would press his hands against the wall of dark and click his teeth together, searching the wall. He would find what he wanted in a matter of moments: Miras could not see it, even with his lantern burning at its highest intensity, but he could imagine what it was, as he looked at what Kirill did next.

Krill would let out a hissing noise, the kind cats make when the wounded rat fights against their grip.

Then, his fingers would press together against something in the wall, grind against it, easing in all the way to his wrist.

His other hand would soon follow, squeezing inside, pulling him in further, all the way up to the elbow.

Kirill would then lower his head, somehow squeezing it between his arms and wriggle it inside, up to his neck.

He’d pull himself all the way into the waist, just like that, making an awful, not-quite-grating noise.

And then finally he would slide his legs all the way to the soles of his feet inside, like birth in reverse.

When he was a boy, Miras found a rat that had been caught on a strip of adhesive tape. It was mangy and old, a grandfather-rat, with beady eyes and a tail that looked like a length of intestine. It had bared its fangs, the rat, spitting at the boy that overlooked him, like a tormented man upon seeing his uncaring god. Miras had stepped on the rat, wearing his sandals, his feet bare underneath. He had thought he would be doing the rat a service, saving him from the long starving death ahead, when truly he only wanted to crush something smaller than him just to see it die.

The rat was soft under the sole of his foot, yielding, its tiny bones pressing up against his skin, his spine seemingly pushing up against him. The rat squeaked once, as the great black shape descended on it, but fell quiet afterward. Miras put his foot down, pushing on the tiny thing, expecting to hear the popping sound pigeon-bones make, when you twist their neck like father had shown him. But there had been no popping sound, no creaking or even a short drawing of breath. There had only been yielding, a soft, sinking sensation that made Miras feel the rat’s bones collapse beneath him, the fur spill out from beneath his feet, the wiry muscles liquefying and rising up to meet him.

Miras screamed, as he saw the rat’s hateful face looking up at him from under the sole of his sandal, its teeth snapping at the air. Its body was splayed out like a pancake, its organs (in his mind’s eye) turned to paste but still it skittered and fought. His sandal had stuck to the sticky strip and Miras found he could not remove it, so he left it there, to the rat and ran all the way home.

When Kirill went inside that place, through that hole, it made Miras think of that rat.

There would be silence, after that, punctuated by tiny tittering, skittering noises. The orchard would stir, Miras knew, grinding its branches against the walls of the cave, shuddering against the rockface, shedding bits of its trunks on the cave’s floor. He had never seen them move, of course, but he knew they moved for Kirill. He had never made out any words, but he could bet he knew they spoke to him. He didn’t want to think of Kirill’s ear, pressed against those knurls that looked so much like faces. He tried to stop himself from thinking of Kirill speaking back to them, he and the…things parlaying.

Miras couldn’t know what they thought of or what they could have possibly wanted, but he knew it never lasted for long. After a few minutes, it would all be quiet again and the Kirill would come out from some other (unseen up to now) opening that was big enough for Miras to come through. Usually, they would water the orchard with the tanks they’d brought from above and they’d plant the dried, dead chunks that came from the storage in Nurzan’s fortress and then they’d leave, without exchanging words, back to the surface. Miras had never had to even look at the writhing sacks that hung from the branches, covered in transparent, glistening skin. They had brushed against his skin once and they had left like dead snakes, splattered on the asphalt for a good ten meters by virtue of a passing 18 wheeler.

This time, Kirill had taken his knife and plunged it, hilt deep into the sacks. He had dragged it across their length, tearing at the skin. The sacks ripped, making a sound like overripe peaches splattering across a marble staircase. Their viscous, clear fluid smelled like battery acid. Something plopped down on the cave floor, wet and writhing. It seemed to miras like a drowned spider, as it flexed its limbs and clicked it teeth…he didn’t stay to see the rest.

The orchard never spoke to Miras. Perhaps it didn’t think him worthy, or smart enough. It never moved of skittered or jittered. But he had seen that root-thing shoot out and trip him, as he was about to leave. It had only lasted moment, but he had seen the red branches grow a full centimeter against the roof of the cave. In the dimming light of his lantern, he watched the hypnotic pattern of the almost-vegetation that had caked the roof and was slipping in through the cracks.

He didn’t say a word and neither did Kirill. When they left, Miras did not hear the sound of the rock as it slid into its place, blocking the orchard. Instead, he heard crunching and pushing and the distant sound of yielding rock.

It was the last time he saw the orchard.

***

The schematics were so simple that even Kushi could follow them and Kushi never had a head for machinery. He had, of course, occasionally delved into the science of fixing his own tractor or experimented with the fine art of jump-starting his own mount, when it halted halfway across the G30 but he had never considered himself an engine jockey.

Then again, a car or a tractor had some science and a few centuries’ worth of technological advancement and considerable sophistication to back their complexity. This device, on the other hand, was much simpler: it was a simple conglomeration of basic circuitry and fuses, of untangled lengths of wire that produced just enough wattage to shock a man hard enough to throw him clear across the room. It wouldn’t kill him, of course, not unless someone pressed the big red button that leered from the remote control menacingly or the timer it was attached to ran out.

Kushi had always wanted to use one of these devices and their attached payload, ever since he had seen that Bruce Willis movie in Tsertsesleg when he was a kid. He had always dreamed of flicking a switch and unleashing a tiny taste of Hell on Earth. At nights, when he was alone and not so drunk, he would imagine himself sitting outside his landlord’s house, holding a remote controller just like this one, pointing it and then pressing on the button. He liked to think his landlord would catch a glimpse of him just as he did it, long enough to hear Chuluun’s final words to him:

“I got your rent, ungas shormor”

And then with BOOM and a WOOSH, the landlord’s house would go out in flames, spitting fire and bits of wood all around for miles, igniting the gas main, taking the entire neighourhood with it, making molten concrete and bits of pavements rain down for weeks, months, years, burning forever. Kushi like to imagine he wouldn’t even look back, wouldn’t even run. He’d light his cigarette on his landlord’s severed, flaming head and then chuck it behind his back. Then perhaps he’d go home and make love to his wife, who would be twenty years younger and not the insufferable prude she already was.

But as things were, Kushi knew that the jig was up, the second Baraat was escorted by the secretary, hobbling to the myangan lord’s RV headquarters. The shaman engineer had probably sold them out already. The Ogtbish would come soon, confiscate the oil drums of the zuun and return them to the Tngri. Then the device would have nothing to be hooked up to and then Kushi would never get to press the trigger, to make fire without wood, to make the walls of Saryozek come down like tinfoil.

“To hell with that” Kushi grumbled through clenched teeth. He had broken his back in the fields, he had put up with his landlord (who died, the bastard, of the flu two days before the Mongols came barreling down Tsertsesleg). He had tolerated his wife, reared his brood and for what? For the chance to die of a burnt-out, worthless liver or on the road? No, this one had been a long time coming.

No-one was going to take this one from him.

“You! Hey you!” Kushi barked at the group of youths that passed him by. They were members of his arbat, a bunch of no-good bastards them lot of them, all mouth and trousers. They struck a salute as soon as they saw him. “Which one of you is looking for an afternoon leave?”

“A whole afternoon sir?” the most eager of them asked.

“Yes, a whole bloody afternoon!”

“Will we be allowed to drink, sir?” another asked.

“What the hell else are leaves for, boy?” Kushi responded. “Now, I want you to take these drums, I want them loaded on your mounts. When you’re done, report back to me, understood?”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

Kushi grinned as the boys grunted, carrying the drums. This one, he wouldn’t let them have. This one, he would have, even if it was the last thing he would ever do.

***

Perhaps, Baraat thought, after the maelstrom of events that followed, with his face covered in soot, his eyes stinging and the skin hanging off his own back, Gansukh wouldnt have lost it half as bad if I hadnt been smiling. Or at least the grin. That would have sent me over the edge too, come to think of it.

But by then, of course, it had been too late for either of them. Their paths were abut to cross, here in Saryozek, to smash into each other finally.

"We will circumvent the mountain, reach behind Saryozek and seek to enter it from the back, using the network of tunnels that the Kazakhs have in place to facilitat their escape!" Gansukh said to the gathered zuun-lords, outside his RV-headquarter, holding the GPS device before him, as if it was some sort of proof of divine favor. "The Kazakhs obviously maintain a network of tunnels that allows them to resupply themselves in case of an emergency and escape, if the siege draws too long. We will cut off that network and infiltrate Saryozek! Once a path has been cleared, the myangan will attack and take the city!"

The conclusion of Gansukh's speech was followed by a long, awkward silence. The zuun-lords exchanged glances with one another. Baraat shifted on his crutches. Gansukh gritted his teeth, checked Baraat's now thin amd mirthless (but still present) smile and said:

"The main force of the myangan will provide us with a distraction, allowing an infiltration team to drive behind the mountain, dismount and search for the tunnel entrances. The team will consist of 30 people, led by Baraat Buriyat" said Gansukh, breaking into a big grin the moment he saw how Baraat's face turned the color of virgin paper. "The zuun-lord, will naturally pick his own choice of men, as he sees fit."

"Myangan-lord, I..." Baraat began and was silenced as Gansukh placed his palm outward in a single, forbidding motion.

"This will be your greatest victory, young wolf. Should you succeed, you will be the one who took Saryozek and will be offered the place of designated driver in my mount, as well as the choice of a servant from my Ogtbish. Such are the honors reserved for the brave, young wolf" Gansukh said, adding just andash of venom to those last three words. It was Gamsukh's way of saying iI know what you're planning, you uppity little bastard. I'm on to youi. From the look on Baraat's face, he knew that he could tell.

"Myangan-lord..." Baraat began, squirming on his crutches, planting them firmly in the hard ground, raising his head high. "It would be the greatest honor."

Gansukh drank in the look on Baraat Buriyat's face, that mixture of shame, indignation and childish anger. There was the faintest hint of murder in his eyes, but Gansukh was aware that the boy would not dare. Not now, after he had been exposed before the other zuun-lords. He was sending him to his death, blind in the dark belly of the mountain. If he was lucky, Baraat would not return from this at all. By then, he would have formulated a more appropriate plan. He would take Saryozek, confiscate the young wolf's hoarded fuel and be promoted to tumen-lord when they reached Volgograd.

Gansukh knew he could not lose.

***

Steel-face knew he should be mad, when the runt of a zuun-lord dragged him from his card game, ordered him to be campaign-ready in two hours and forced him to pick a handful of equally unwilling men from the zuun so they could bury themselves under a bloody mountain. Steel-face was too old for this mucking about with subterfuge and sabotage. He'd had his fair share of power playing, back when the world went down the toilet and found himself spending his days looting, pillaging, takong from the weak and giving to the strong. Unlike Kushi, who discovered he like being a bastard in hos twilight years, Steel-face had revelled in it in the days of his youth and was now thoroughly sick of it.

He should be mad, Steel-face knew that much. But that look of utter misery and rage on the boy's face made all this worthwhile.

He'd nearly thrown a fit, the snot-faced child they had for a zuun-lord found out that Kushi had loaded a half-dozen oil drums on a couple mounts from his arbat and had run for the hills. He was almost frothing at the mouth, when the Ogtbish came, along with a dozen of Kiryat's guard to confiscate the oil drums and to drag the shaman-engineer in the coward's stockade. Something had gone awful sour for the boy, Steel-face knew and he only wished he could be alive long enough to see it come to an end.

The men Steel-face chose were dirty bastards, one and all. Former members from the good old days (before and after the end of civlization), each of them sporting at least one limp or a scar from the days when he could consinstently rough up grown men at his leisure. Now, finding himself infirm and sated, he counted on the cold and the night and the sound of his name to achieve that very same effect. Steel-face knew that he could not afford having men who wouldn't run when thinga went sour, or worse yet, shoot hi, as he was deserting. If the zuun-lord wanted to die, he could very well achieve that on his own.

"Gather the men at the westernmost edge of the camp. We ride in two hours." Baraat had said, despodently.

"Where to, zuun-lord?" Steel-face said, grinning.

"To the mountain. To trudge around in the dark and make our way to Saryozek in the name of the Horde, or to die trying."

"Will we die trying, zuun-lord?"

"Not if I can help it. And not here, not like this."

The zuun-lord turned then, making his way to his mount. This one wasn't a hero, Steel-face knew. This one wasn't a stone cold killer or a bastard. He was a scared, tired boy who had found his plan hampered and himself in way over his head.

Steel-face couldn't decide whether to feel sorry for him or shoot him in the back of the head, right then and there.