Nergui had seen the glint of the sun on the sniper’s scope the moment before the back of Taidju’s head exploded into fine pink mist. He screamed his warning at Qori, who had begun to turn back, only to see his chest explode outward, showering his coat with blood.
Nergui had turned and almost dodged the sniper’s shot entirely, revving his motorcycle when the axle of his rear wheel suddenly exploded and he found himself skidding across the hard ground, his leg trapped under screaming metal.
He was unholstering his AK-47, screaming obscenities, when the next shot slipped past him and struck the ground beside his head. Cocking his machine-gun, Nergui shot blindly at the glinting dot, praying that it would buy him some time.
Kicking at his downed bike, Nergui bolted to the forest cover, the thunder of the sniper’s rifle echoing behind him. He turned his jog into a full run as soon as it ceased, knowing that he had perhaps fifteen minutes before the sniper would catch up with him. Something ripped under the fabric of his jeans and his skin suddenly felt blisteringly hot, but he knew he couldn’t afford to waste time looking at it.
The forest was a dense maze of firs, pines and brush. Nergui knew he could count on them to provide him with refuge from the sniper, perhaps help him lose his hunter in the foliage but finding his way through this mess, surviving it even, was going to be a whole other can of worms.
Reaching a forked path, Nergui grabbed a handful of pebbles in his hands (already slick with blood) and headed to the right, into the thicker foliage. He’d go through it and around it, then start using the pebbles to mark the path he had followed when he was sure he’d lost the sniper for good. After that, well, Nergui had never been a religious man but he thought that being lost in a forest with a gash in your leg that was making you bleed to death had to draw someone’s attention.
Nergui was shambling his way across a thicket of bushes, thorns embedded in the thick fabric of his jeans, when his left leg suddenly went numb and gave way. He fell, face-first, into the dry twigs with a great crash and tear, branches whipping at his exposed face, white-hot pain blossoming in his field of vision just as the sniper’s rifle thundered behind him and the trunk of a tree a few hundred meters before him exploded in a shower of splinters.
Nergui bit his lip, choking down a string of curses, fingered the hilt of the combat knife he had tucked in his sash and began to crawl through the dry maze, his head hung low. He wasn’t about to start praying just yet. If any gods had played a part in this, they’d have to give him something extra. His life and perhaps a chance to drive 6 serrated inches of stainless steel through the sniper’s eye would be a pretty good start, he reckoned.
Releasing the combat knife from its scabbard as silently as possible, Nergui strained his ears, listening for the sounds of the sniper: the cocking of his gun, the sound of a spent casing tumbling on the forest floor, the rasping sound of drawing breath. All he heard instead was the hammering of his heart in his ears as he gradually bled into the thirsty ground. Looking down at his weapon, he tried to blindly gauge the distance between them, to come up with a means to close in for the kill. His AK-47 was pressing painfully against his back. Nergui thought about perhaps unholstering it, cocking it and then charging out blindly in a shower of lead, killing the sniper by sheer luck or perhaps just buying himself some time. But as Nergui found himself struggling to undo the clasps that held the machine gun holstered to his back, he realized that this would leave him weaponless, exposed to the sniper’s next shot. His hands were shaking, clumsily grasping at the clasp, his combat knife buried halfway into the ground. He shook with rage, as he struggled to come up with something, anything, that would help him.
When Nergui turned his head, he saw the bottomless pit of the sniper rifle’s barrel staring right down at him.
***
At the time when Baraat Buriyat became zuun-lord, the Chrome Horde’s total manpower numbered at twenty tumens. Each tumen was composed of ten myangan and the tumen-lords in turn composed the Khesig, which was the Imperial Guard of the Batu Khan himself. The tumen-lords were, in many ways, the masters of the Chrome Horde, the advisors and administrators that coordinated the efforts of the Khan’s army on its campaign to bleed the bad blood from this sickly world.
The total number of myangans comprising the Chrome Horde were two hundred. There were a thousand mounts to each myangan, each manned by a crew of two men: a designated driver and a designated gunner. Each myangan-lord was the leader of his men, chosen according to his merit by the Batu-Khan himself, to whom he was accountable for his every triumph and failure in the field of battle during his campaign. Each myangan-lord had strict, life-and-death authority over each of his men, a priviliege which - despite the Horde’s proclivity for barbarism - was hardly ever exercised.
While no official record or term was attributed to its existence, each myangan-lord was escorted and aided by a personal guard, named the Ogtbish, which meant ‘Not there at all’. These men were the the shadow players which supported the myangan-lord, killing in his name, spying for his sake, maintaining his iron grip on his two thousand men by virtue of either subterfuge or assassination. These Ogtbish were not Mongols, for the Mongol had little interest in such under-handedness. The Ogtbish were instead conscripts from conquered lands, spared the sword and the gun and the fire, given the chance to either give up their countries, their names, their stations that had nourished and nurtured them (now reduced to little more than ruins) and serve the Chrome Horde.
Each myangan was made up of ten zuun, with a hundred mounts and two hundred men each, each zuun responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the Tngri, which in the days of Temujin (who was Genghis, the Khan’s illustrious ancestor) meant ‘little god’. These little gods were mobile fuel refineries, each with their own name and their own decoration depicting their allegiance. It was in those mobile refineries where the shaman-engineers sacrificed organic matter plundered by the zuun (either tree bark or dead vegetation or animal offerings), which they placed inside the Little God’s hungry maw and were distilled - according to the gentle goading and cooing of the shaman-engineer - into the synthetic earth-blood that fueled the Horde itself.
The protection and escort of a Little God was the zuun’s most exalted purpose and responsibility, for these were the very heart and soul of the Horde: they provided the power that moved the twenty tumen, that powered the petrol generators which maintained radio communication across the many miles through which the myangans were dispersed. These allowed for the Mongols to operate the 3-D printers that created the spare parts and their weapon kits. When the Mongols prayed for deliverance, they no longer paid tribute to the gods of the land or the sky-spirits or the water-runners or the elk-herders. Instead, they looked to the Tngri, who demanded nourishment and very little ritual, who provided and nurtured and cared for the Horde in a way that no God could ever hope to provide.
The myangan’s encampment was laid out in a circle at the very edge of a plateau, its western border set up across the A353, its eastern border across the tundra. The command centers were set up in northernmost and southernmost edges: the myangan-lord a good distance away from its subordinates, yet close enough so he could keep an eye on them, even across the maelstrom of tents and makeshift bunks that seemed to erupt from the bodies of their mounts, spread out across the land beneath a perpetual cloud of black-grey smoke produced by fires maintained by burning the Tngri’s fuel.
Baraat’s RV headquarters was a good distance away from those of the other zuun-lords, placed there according to Kushi’s directions, mostly due to his almost supernatural skill for bending the rules of conduct without breaking them. This placed his zuun well out of viewing distance of Gansukh Kiryat’s tent, but well into the watchful gaze of either his Ogtbish or his subordinates.
“We’re not doing anything wrong, so why should they worry about how hard it is to pry?” Kushi had rationalized with a fellow arbat-lord over drinks.
Baraat’s Tngri was placed south of his RV, also out of sight: this was also Kushi’s idea, but not so much a matter of logistics or privacy. It was, rather, a clear manifestation of his own prejudices, of the kind which Baraat understood and upheld, in turn. The Buriyats descended from forest tribes and were herders for generations. The Ursuts - while once a warrior tribe - also lived off the land. To them, notions like the evil eye or a fear of nicknames were not mere prejudices: they were the Universe’s one unspoken law.
“It is a Little God and it’s our responsibility to care for it. We can’t have it exposed, so others can be jealous of it and curse it,” Kushi said matter-of-factly to Baraat, who agreed wholeheartedly.
The shaman-engineer’s name was Ganbold and he was a man of forty winters, with a thick bushy beard and mechanic’s overalls, stained with grease and adorned with countless charms. His grin was missing half his teeth - most of them rotted by cancer, which he swore that the Batu-Khan cured with a touch - but this only accentuated his mad-eyed eagerness.
“This is Baraat Buriyat, your new zuun-lord,” Kushi said to the shaman-engineer, who acknowledged his commanding officer’s presence with just a sharp, curt nod.
“What happened to the last one?” he said, as he set the row of braziers on the ground in a semi-circle around the Tngri’s front, aided by his apprentice, a hare-lipped boy of 12 summers with eyes as wide as saucers.
“Killed in battle by the tank that this one destroyed.” Kushi said, rolling his cigarette, flashing a grin at Baraat.
“Is that so then? Perhaps I should kill a couple of tanks myself. Going to have myself eating in the same tent as the Khan, won’t I?” the shaman engineer said, as he carefully placed the charcoal on the brasiers, lit them and motioned to his apprentice to fan the flames until they were a uniform ruby-red color.
“Perhaps you should, shaman. But until then, I need you to tell me about the Tngri,” Baraat interrupted him, raising his voice. The shaman-engineer looked at his superior and suddenly his expression changed, as if the realization dawned on him: this was a boy of sixteen summers, barely a man. Was this some sort of joke? An elaborate prank played on him by Kushi or the other arbat-lords?
“Its name is Erlik,” Ganbold said, speaking the name in hushed tones “it is the god of the tundra and the cold places. It is the god who makes warmth out of cold, dead things. Its maximum organic load is set at three metric tons. Its fuel output ratio is 80%, producing prime, grade-A biodiesel.” The shaman-engineer said, as he removed a pinch of incense from his overalls and sprinkled it on each censer. The first one hissed and burned blue. The second one banged and burned green. The third one crackled and burned yellow.
“Erlik demands a sacrifice of copper chloride, to seek the sky-gods’ good fortune and dispel the cloud-fiends. It requires a sacrifice of copper sulphate, which poisons the earth-gods, who are fickle and resist his yoke. Lastly, it desires a sacrifice of sodium chloride, with which it garnishes its food,” the shaman-engineer went on:
“The organic matter, the crude product of the land, is fed into Erlik’s mouth, here” he said, pointing to the funnel in the front of the Tngri. “ It is then eaten and processed in Erlik’s stomach-cavity, where it boils and churns and changes according to the ancient tenets of the EROEI, set in stone according to the Batu-Khan’s godlike decree,” the shaman-engineer continued, slapping the middle of the tank, making its contents slosh softly.
“And from here, from Erlik’s sacred bowels, we receive the synthetic blood, the holy biodiesel which is the lifeblood of our Horde. This is our highest priority, for while Erlik itself is divinity, the parts from which its earthly manifestation is made up are created by man and may well go bad and require to be replaced. When it is so, all operations must be stopped, before the blood clots and kills the manifestation of Erlik and we're stuck dead in the middle of the long road.”
Baraat nodded, the meaning of Ganbold’s babbling lost to him. Still, he acted like he got most of it.
“And what do we do, when the Tngri - Erlik - requires a replacement?”
“Then we print one. But printed materials are fickler than others. It is better to steal it. The divine tenets are clear on this and have strict specifications. But this is of little matter to you, zuun-lord. Erlik does not yet require a new bowel-funnel. Instead, it requires new tires and a replacement axle. It has come to my attention that this manifestation’s chassis has grown weak and weathered, as all material things are wont to do,” the shaman-engineer looked at the braziers that burned intensely now, spewing multi-colored flames “now you must go, zuun-lord Baraat Buriyat. Erlik has begun to speak to me, awakened by the offerings.”
“Does he actually believe any of that?” Baraat asked Kushi, while struggling to roll his cigarette.
“I sure hope not. But it does men good, to know that someone has them covered, faith-wise.” Kushi said, taking the tobacco and-paper mess out of Baraat’s hands and straightening it out in his calloused hands.
“My father told me that religion was the opiate of the masses. He told me his grandfather had not known the meaning of the word God until the Communists left Mongolia.”
“Yes and I bet he also told you about worker’s rights and state ethics and the decadence of the bourgeoisie. Bet he had one of those shoddy Mao framed pictures over his mantle, laid out by that sabre, correct?” Kushi said, rolling the cigarette in a few deft motions and offering it to his superior.
“Yes. He even had one of those old phrase-books, the one the Party handed out when he was young. My grandfather kept it in a strongbox under his bed and wouldn’t let even my father near it. But he’d always quote it by heart. He had this favorite bit that he’d always go on about…”
“’Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’ I bet,” Kushi said, striking his match and lighting Baraat’s cigarette. “My father would say that all the time, too. It’s funny, how quickly they forgot that the Party screwed them over. You know the Communists in Russia drained a small sea and doomed about two million people just because they couldn’t admit they were wrong? You know Mao tried to turn China into a steel-manufacturing nation and didn’t stop even after the whole thing went tits-up? Doesn’t it make you think that our grandparents were pretty damn stupid?” Kushi said.
“I don’t know,” Baraat mumbled, between puffs of his cigarette, “worshipping a mobile distillery doesn’t make us look that much smarter, if I’m honest.”
“That’s high treason, don’t you know zuun-lord.” Kushi grinned his black-toothed grin at Baraat, who only shrugged, as he put out his cigarette and placed his in his jacket pocket.
“If that makes me a traitor, I’d hate to meet a loyal man. Come, let’s inspect my holdings.”
