Death of Genghis Khan, 1227
Participant: unnamed Mongol escort soldier, assigned to burial procession
We did not know he was dead when we were summoned.
The order came before dawn, carried without urgency. No names were spoken. Only numbers. I was one of them. We were told to ride light and speak less. That alone told us this was not a campaign.
When we reached the camp, the air was wrong. Not tense — empty. No songs. No quarrels. Even the horses stood as if waiting for instruction they would not receive. In the centre lay a cart covered in plain felt. No banners. No symbols. Just weight.
No one said his name. No one needed to.
We began moving before the sun rose. The steppe swallowed us quickly, as it always does. Grass bent, then stood again. Tracks softened behind us. I remember thinking the land was obedient. Later I understood it was complicit.
On the first night, we made camp by a narrow river. We ate in silence. When I lay down, I noticed a horse tethered without a rider. I assumed he was on watch. In the morning, the horse was gone. The space where he slept remained flattened.
There were fewer men when we left the river than when we arrived. No one asked why. No one was answered.
Each day followed the same shape. Ride. Stop. Adjust the cart. Erase signs. Speak only when commanded. I stopped measuring time by hours and began measuring it by absences.
Another night. Another fire. The circle around it grew wider, not because we spread out — but because there were fewer shoulders to close it. A man who shared dried meat with me on the second night did not appear on the third. His bowl remained where he had set it down, clean.
I told myself it was coincidence. The steppe is vast. Men wander. Men fall behind. Men are reassigned. This was always true.
But patterns have weight.
By the fifth day, I stopped counting the others. Not because I could not — but because counting felt dangerous. Numbers invite expectation. Expectation invites fear.
Still, the mind notices what it wants to survive.
We crossed a stretch of land where the grass thinned and the soil showed through, pale and soft. We were ordered to walk the horses, then to ride back and forth until the ground looked old again. When we finished, two men were told to continue forward with the cart. The rest of us waited.
They did not return.
No explanation followed. Another order came instead.
Move.
I began to understand then.
This was not an escort. It was a narrowing.
The body remained covered. No prayers were spoken. No rites observed. Whatever power had ruled half the world did not require ceremony in death. It required silence.
I wondered if he had planned this himself. If he had known that memory is more dangerous than enemies.
That night, I dreamed of roads that closed behind me as I walked. When I woke, a man I had ridden beside since the beginning was gone. His saddle lay where he had set it, still warm.
I did not say his name. I realised I could no longer remember it clearly.
Remembering felt like rehearsal.
On the final day, we reached a place without markers. No hills worth naming. No trees worth carving. Only land that looked like all other land. We were ordered to work quickly. The cart was unloaded. The earth opened and closed again. No one lingered.
When it was done, horses were ridden over the ground until even the act itself felt forgotten.
Then the orders changed.
Some were told to ride east. Others west. Small groups. Fewer words. I was told to take my horse and follow the man ahead of me until further instruction.
I mounted. Before moving, I counted the horses out of habit.
Then I stopped.
When dawn came, we were ordered to move again.
I counted the horses before mounting mine.
I did not count myself.