The mountain sagged and then tumbled down with a mighty heave, two hours into the slaughter. The men of the myangan had been slaughtering Saryozek's (now weaponless) defenders with knives and bullets, throwing then off the wall's parapets, shooting them into their pleading mouths or dragging them behind their mounts, as they were tied to the benders.

The fight had gone out of Saryozek, when the white god fell and now, so did its mountain. It shed itself in a tumble of rocks and dust, it hissed as it smpthered Nurzan's fortress which screamed in the staccato tones of crumpling steel and disintegrating cement. Nergui had long since left, of course, following the scampering flock of little gods, who rode out mounted on rats. They had felt the mountain go as soon as the white god's will was no longer there to hold it up, since his corpus had been sprawled out lifeless on the ground, slain from within by a vile parasite.

Kirill did not leave his place beside Nurzan's scrap-metal throne and neither did Miras, who spent long moments balling and shouting at the paralyzed Arystani, strugglong tp pick up his gaunt frame (even though he could have otherwise done it with ease). They stayed, the Kazakh lords of Saryozek in their fortress and Nergui knew without needing to once to turn back and see, that they had ben crushed by the falling mountain, crushed and popped against the descending roof, itself overcome by ancient stone.

Nergui watched as the little gods danced amid the slaughter, as they revelled and sang with much greater ferocity when the mountain finally came down and spewed it half-formed, dead and dying horrors:

There were child-sized spider with eyes for mouths and a multitude of barbs where their eyes should be. There were snake-like things with long, pointed faces, their mouths locked in a perpetual grin, even as they suffocated beneath the open sky. There were gaunt creatures with arms like stalactites, dripping milky-white fluid from the wounds on their chest. There were mockeries of humanity that stood like horse beset by ring-mouthed worms and gangrene-black serpents, which wailed like infants before they died.

These, Nergui knew, had been the children of the white god. They had sprung from within him immaculately, born from his in its highway-wide veins, sproouted from the algae-coated patches within the lining of his stomach, matured inside their saturated-fat coccoons in the valves of his heart. Creatures of his flesh, the flora of the Bone Orchard, whose scaterred, shaterred bird-bone branches now clattered as they rained down on the rubble. They made such sweet, castanet-rythm as they clickety-clacked on the hoods of the mounts and sang a song mich like the one hail sings against hard, cold earth.

The white god had been the mountain and Saryozek and Nurzan was his prophet. The Arystani had become part of a new food chain, the one that was growing to fill the gap mankind had made and maintained a tenuous hold on in the millenia of theor civilization. 

"You! On the ground!" the Mongols shouted, as they came up to bloodied, battered, dust-coated Nergui and grabbed him by the throat, rifles flailing. They were overcome by blood-lust and terror, as all men are in the presence of gods, be they of their faith or not. Nergui did as he was told, raising his hands in the air for good measure.

"Ogtbish" he said, over the cacophony. "Ogtbish of the 103rd myangan, in service to Gansukh Kiryat." he added. The Mongols stopped and looked at each other, uneasily.

"How the hell did you get here?" they asked. "What happened to this place? What the hell is going on?"

"It was a hunting ground for gods. And you just killed the apex predator." Nerfui said, before he was dragged away. There was a power vacuum, he knew, that wpuld have to be filled. He saw the little gods all around, bickering and snarling, pecking at the fleeing souls of dead men, sinking their teeth into each other's flesh, clawing and screaming as the pack already turned in on itself. A pecking order was being established, that would crown the new king-predator. And the battered, beaten, bloodied few that would stay here, be they Mongols, Kazakhstani or Ogtbish, would be prey.

***

Heng watched Baraat Buriyat, as he was dragged away from the cheering Mongols by Gansukh's Ogtbish, taken without even the slightest hint of struggle. The city was burning, the walls and streets were choked with blood, the mountain had just tumbled down without any hint of tremor; but he was smiling, grinning a great big wolf's head grin.

Gansukh shouted hoarsely at Baraat, ordering him to kneel on the ground, spewing forth his string of accusations and misdeeds: stealing fuel from his zuun's Tngri, plotting for conspiracy against the myangan-lord, endangering the myangan through reckless action of a subordinate under his explicit command. He went on for a while, his rambling degenerating into incoherent spitting and frothing at the mouth, as he was handed the whip from his Ogtbish. Heng gasped at the sight.

“For your transgressions, the law of the Horde demands from me I should take your life!” Gansukh snarled. “But for the taking of Saryozek, you will instead be flogged, as an example to your zuun and to your subordinates.”

With a motion, Gansukh ripped the bloodied flak-jacket from Baraat’s back and raised the whip, bringing it down in a single motion. It had been awkward and fueled by hate, wholly unlike Gansukh’s careful strokes that had wreaked such havoc to his victims (whose bloodied and torn backs she had treated). But Heng heard the sound of fabric splitting and knew that he had already drawn blood.

“Your punishment will be forty lashes.” Gansukh said, turning to the men, whip in hand. They stared at their myangan-lord with eyes radiating hatred. This only served to infuriate him further. As he turned, staring each man down, his eyes finally gravitated to her, transfixing her on the spot. “The Ogtbish will keep count.” He added.

Heng walked out of the RV and joined the myangan-lord at Baraat’s side. The young wolf looked up to her and gave her a smile that was halfway a scowl. It fell apart, becoming a mask of hate the second the whip cracked again against his skin, tearing an oozing red streak across his spine.

“One.” Heng whispered. Baraat looked up at her once again, his grin still there, if strained. Once again, the whip whistled through the air and tore into the flesh. “Two” Heng counted.

Again and again, the young wolf would turn to her, well into the first dozen lashes. His back had become a criss-cross of red and black, framed by bruised skin. “Fisteen” Heng counted and cringed, as she heard the unmistakable sound of the whip, lashing at the open wound, blood spraying her face. Baraat’s smile wavered only for a moment and was gone by the next lash. He had gone pale, by the sixteenth, but maintained his hold on his senses. By the twentieth, the skin on his back was a tattered, bloodied rag, sticking to the muscle.

“Twenty-one” Heng miscounted, as the whip came down once again. Gansukh’s face and hands were stained with blood, the whip slick and slipping in his hands.

“Twenty-two” Heng counted again, as the whip lashed Baraat on his shoulder, then snaked down and bit into his chest. The young wolf shuddered, but didn’t cry out or struggle. The myangan stood silent for the long moments it took Heng to kneel down beside Baraat, to check on his pulse.

“Is he alive?” Ganuskh asked, wiping the blood from his face.

“Myangan-lord, please…”

“Is he alive, Ogtbish?” Gansukh snarled.

“Yes” 

“Keep counting.” Gansukh said, bringing down the whip once again, masterfully striking at Baraat’s exposed skin between the hands of his Ogtbish, his motions swifter, more elegant and calculated now. The twenty-third and twenty-fourth-blow kicked Baraat Buriyat back to consciousness, just as the twenty-fifth stuck the back of his legs, biting just above his tendons.

Heng watched, through the blood and the terror that had transfixed her into place, counting each blow, watching as Baraat’s cries turned into howls, then sobs, by the thirty-fifth blow. By the thirty-sixth, the young wolf was limp in the Ogtbish’s hands and sagged to the ground.

“Let him go.” Gansukh Kiryat said, reveling at the sight of the boy, as he dropped to the dirt and began to crawl away. Heng moved toward him, to stop him, turned to the men beside her, ready to ask for a stretcher so they could get him to the infirmary.

And then the whip cracked again and Heng felt Baraat’s blood spurting across her back.

“Thirty-seven” Gansukh growled, as the young wolf lay flat against the ground. “Thirty-eight, thirty-nine” he snarled. “Forty.” He counted, his final blow fiercer than any before. There was a deathly stillness, as Gansukh retrieved a bit of cloth from Baraat’s torn shirt and used it to wipe at his whip, sloughing off congealed blood in layers from the leather. “Take him to the infirmary. If he dies, you hang.” he told Heng.

There was no celebration that night. No drinking or a movie. There was only silence, for those that had fallen and daggers on Gansukh Kiryat’s back and for Heng, the ragged breathing of Baraat Buriyat, who would occasionally babble, swept up by fever and would blindly reach out for Heng’s hand, as she was halfway through her stitches.

“Did I do good?” he asked, half-dreaming, an hour before dawn, as Heng put the final stitching on his ruined back.

“You took Saryozek and killed its god. Now rest, young wolf.” She told him and he slept soundly, his fever gone by dawn.

***

In the month it took for Baraat Buriyat’s wounds to heal into deforming scars, the Mongols completed the final stage of Saryozek’s conquest. Once the fires had been quenched, the dying dispatched and the dead were burned (the great white god and his kin quartered and burned in sections far from the borders of the city, so as to not risk infection), the myangan put down its weapons, picked up its pickaxes and shovels and welding tools and began to rebuild.

The broken, burnt wall of Saryozek was patched up with stone, so as to hold from further attack, as the Ogtbish and the cowards were set to traverse inside and remove the tons of dead flesh (appendages of the white god) from within its confines, to burn accordingly. The ruined homes of the people of Saryozek were rebuilt or repuprosed according to the needs of the myangan. The most sizable of the houses, once belonging to the Arystani’s (now late) lieutenants, were patched up and seized by Gansukh Kiryat and his myangan-lords, fitted with 3-d printers, the RV headquarters attached to them to provide electricity and power as desired by drawing fuel from the Tngri, setting up communication arrays to contact the 5th tumen and report on their progress.

When the officers had been set up, the Mongol men who had found for themselves widows and wives of Saryozek were moved to their homes, either slaying the men or removing them from the premises. These abodes were restored soon after, to provide for the men, since it would be they that would stay behind as a rear guard, to maintain control on this holding for the Batu-Khan.

The rest of the men were scattered and moved to live along with the citizens of Saryozek, their own habitations also restored and provided some power. They were to be fed and protected from any harm that might befall them, the bloody and terrible execution of the previous hermen that had maintained Arystani control for all these years executed as an example. These men were fed to the Tngri (along with the dead defenders) to be turned into the myangan’s life-giving biodiesel. 

By the end of the month, the entire myangan had moved its mounts within the walls and began its short-term, symbiotic relationship with the city, providing guns and bloodied blades but above all, warmth and power to the Kazakhs. And the Kazakhs in turn shared their resources and provided to the Mongols who (despite their occasional bouts of violence and their greedy temperament) were at the very least, human.

Baraat Buriyat knew of these things first from Heng (who had remained at his side until Gansukh’s secretary informed her that she was to be relocated to Kiryat’s quarters and did not return) and later by the men from his zuun, who came to his side to visit him during the relocation. 

“They speak your name, young wolf. They say you sank your teeth into the white god’s gut and tore him apart.” They would whisper, as they offered him swigs of vodka or bits from their mukhomor which Baraat politely turned down.

“What about Gansukh Kiryat?” he would ask, the sound of even his name bringing his blood to a boil. “What about Heng, the Ogtbish doctor?”

“Gansukh Kiryat has retreated to his quarters. As for the doctor, we do not know. He has removed Ganbold, the old shaman-engineer from his place as the caretaker of the Tngri and had his dolt of an apprentice in his place.” They would say and Baraat’s heart would sink in his chest. “Is it true, that you dug your way out of the white god with your bare hands and teeth?” they would ask, afterward but Baraat would not say a word against it, leaving the legend to grow and fester like an untended wound on Kiryat’s side. The myangan-lord had humiliated him, even after he had taken the city for him, even after he had given him this victory. Baraat had never asked to be a zuun-lord. He had thought himself happy to live and die a soldier in the service of the Batu-Khan, to die in the field of battle or between the legs of a good woman in a ripe old age or with his head smashed against his mount’s dashboard, in the ways befitting proper men.

But Ganuskh had turned this into a power play, had made Baraat his target, making this into his own personal vendetta. He had sent him to die, then was about to abandon him in the dark and the cold, to be killed at the hands of the Arystani and their monsters had it not been for Kushi Ursut’s sacrifice that tore down Saryozek’s walls and left Saryozek wide open to be taken at a moment’s notice.

Now, it was his name he heard echoing from the watering holes, spoken out loud again and again like a rallying cry among the fighting men, or whispered in hushed tones outside his tent. By the time he would be released from the care of the nurses, Baraat knew, the men would flock to him and hail him as some sort of conqueror-king. And Gansukh would already know, of course. His position as zuun-lord would soon be compromised and perhaps he would be once more a target, albeit an easier one.

***

“For your exemplary service” Ganuskh Kiryat informed Nergui, as he was kneeling on the thick carpet in the myangan-lord’s current residence “your role in the location of Saryozek, your infiltration of the Arystani and your suffering at the hands of your captors, I bestow to you the title of torghud, as a member of my personal Ogtbish guard!”

“I thank you, myangan-lord, for this singular honor.” Nergui said, bowing his head, both as a sign of respect and to avoid the stare of the Chinese doctor at Kyiryat’s side, the woman called Heng.

“You will stay at my side from this moment forth and reside in my quarters. When we reach Volgograd, I shall commend you to the Batu-Khan and request that you are granted the status of Mongol.” Ganuskh said, as he rose from his seat and patted Nergui on the shoulder. “Play your cards right until then, and I could even give you your own arbat!”

My own arbat? So I can be defied by my subordinates and treated like gift-wrapped garbage by my subordinates and suffer the abuse of my superiors? Nergui almost said. “Thank you, myangan-lord.”

“For your first task, you are to go to the infirmary and inform Baraat Buriyat that he is no longer zuun-lord. Tell him that he is heretofore stipped of command of the 103rd zuun and is instead to be posted as my designated driver, to report to me when he is summoned. Understood?” 

“Yes, myangan-lord.”

“Good man. You may go.” Ganuskh Kiryat said, resuming his seat, Heng by his side. As Nergui turned to leave, he caught the woman’s stare but did not stop. He made his way outside, to the gradually chilling air that made his wrist-stitches tug at his skin and his wounded gums ache, to be done with his little errand and get to bed as soon as he could.

The little gods had already infested Saryozek and clambered up to the shoulders of the touched few that were to become their prophets. The Kazakhs and the Mongols alike were slowly rediscovering religion, already beset by infectious abstract concepts that sought to dominate their minds. Soon, one of those infected would cry out a name or break into sermon when the god had gestated and begin his battle to spread this disease among others. How long would it be before another white god was hatched in Saryozek? He wondered? How many more were there in the world, now?

Nergui moved unseen through the streets. He was a plains-clothed, wounded Ogtbish, his name and face unknown to the grunts and even to some of the officers. His report had been given directly to the myangan-lord and had stayed between them, in strictest confidence. He was a non-person and could receive no further honors than perhaps being spared the dangers of crossing first into uncharted enemy territory, risking his life for the Horde.

The infirmary had been set up inside a half-demolished building, the tent keeping out the cold. There was a crowd of drunk or stumbling Mongols that whispered around it, trading between them tall tales of the man inside.

“Heard he killed the Arystani himself and stabbed the monster in the brain.”

“I heard he’d planned the bombing of the wall all along.”

“I hear he’s one of the Batu-Khan’s bastards. Guess it makes sense.”

“Found the shaman-engineer’s apprentice strangled to death in his house. They say he did it with his own hands.”

Nergui slipped into the tent and informed the nurses (Manchurian men the both of them) of his purpose, sending them away. Baraat Buriyat did not bother to even look up at him, as he cleared his throat.

“I was sent here by myangan-lord Gansukh Kiryat, to inform you that you are hereby stripped of the tittle of zuun-lord of the 103rd zuun.” Nergui said. Receiving no response, he added: “That you are from now on reassigned as the myangan-lord’s designated driver and you are to report to him when summoned.”

Baraat reached out his hand blindly, grabbed the plastic waste container by his bed and lobbed it blindly at Nergui, who avoided it by a hair’s breadth, watching it as it splashed and emptied its contents against one of the nurses’ chairs.

“Fuck off, Ogtbish.” Baraat spat.

“As you wish, sir.” Nergui saluted and turned to leave.

“Wait. Aren’t you the biker-scout who spotted Saryozek? What was your name again?”

“Nergui, sir.”

“Your name is no-name, huh?” Baraat said with a chuckle, sitting up with some effort. “I guess it’s fitting, for an Ogtbish. Tell me, what did you get, in exchange for leading us here?”

“A place in the myangan-lord’s torghud, sir. And the promise of becoming a Mongol, if the Batu-Khan approves when we reach Volgograd.” Nergui responded and felt slightly relieved, when Baraat snickered.

“Then what? Maybe they’ll burden you with a zuun too, like they did with me? Bet they told you what an honor it is to be a person, rather than just an extension of Kiryat’s long arm, huh?”

Nergui remained silent. Baraat continued.

“I never asked for any of this.” he said. “I never asked to be zuun-lord, or to be whipped until the skin fell of my back. Hell, I only ended up killing that damn thing out there, because I was in its belly and it would have digested me otherwise!”

“And you are rewarded for your exploits, are you not?” Nergui hazarded.

“Rewarded? With a broken leg and a back that looks like a map of Hell? No, no, no. This is nowhere near enough compensation.” Baraat grinned. “Tell me, Nergui, are those men still outside my tent?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are they still going on about how I’m the Batu-Khan’s bastard?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. How would you like out of all this?”

“Out of what, sir?”

“Out of being an Ogtbish. Out of the Horde. To fuck off back to Manchuria and go back to herding chickens or whatever the hell it was you did before.”

“I was a small-time crook and in prison, sir. I certainly don’t want to go back there. There’s nothing else waiting for me, to tell the truth.”

“Then how about your freedom? Would that be good enough?” Baraat asked. Nergui thought of it, weighing the options in his head. There weren’t that many, but the prospect of dying in a bed, old and wrinkled instead of young and quartered by his Mongol subordinates, seemed like the better prospect.

“I would like that, sir.”

“Good man. Come find me when we reach Volgograd. You are free to go.”

Nergui could not read the half-mad expression in Baraat Buriyat’s face. But he could certainly tell that the glint in his eye bore the unmistakable hint of greed. 

No matter, Nergui told himself, as he watched the little god that was hard at work jumping from the shoulders of one of the soldiers outside the infirmary to the next. None of this will matter, in the long run. Not the play at intrigue, or the lies or the slaughter.

All of this will be little more than dust, before long.