"Redemption"
Chagatai kicked at the dust below his feet and cursed the fate that had brought him to this miserable place. Everything he saw was covered by a fine layer of the earthy stuff, stirred up by the wind blown in over the eastern sea. He was in Mandalgovi, a miserable frontier town with nothing of interest to distinguish it from a dozen other such places. Mandalgovi had been founded for one reason and one reason only: to keep an eye on the Arab settlement of Mansura to the southwest. But while Mansura was a lovely seaside town, known for its abundance of freshwater fish and highly prized by Abu Bakr for its nearby gold desposits, Mandalgovi was a dry and dusty wasteland. With no promising features and no redeeming value whatsoever, Mandalgovi was used by the great khan as a dumping ground for those who had fallen from grace but for a variety of different reasons could not be killed out of hand. Being the third son of Temujin would qualify as one of those reasons.
Chagatai was staring out over the cliffs on the eastern edge of the city, looking down the hundred foot drop to the waves below where they crashed against the coast in brilliant displays of foam. One would think that a town on the coast would be free of dust, but no; the stuff was everywhere, even filling his nostrils here with the air of decay. There were plans to one day bring irrigation across the plains to the north, and perhaps one day they would come to fruition, but at the present Mandalgovi was as dry as a bone. Tiring of his pondering, as he did every day at about this time, Chagatai rose from his seat against the back of a young fir and headed back towards the dirty town. At least he could drown his miseries in the equally rough tavern back in Mandalgovi.
He had no companion, or even any guards; it was a mark of how far he had fallen from grace that Chagatai was no longer considered important enough for someone else to want to kill him. Nominally he was the regional governor, an important position in more developed areas but little more than a figurehead out here. He could still remember the meeting with his father - no, the khan, his mind automatically corrected itself - which had led to his exile here...
"No! My lord, you can't be serious!" he had pleaded when told of the decision to go to war. "The Iroquois are so much more powerful than we are, there's no chance for us to win!"
Temujin had smiled that evil grin of his and gazed down condescendingly at Chagatai, an impressive feat considering that the younger man was taller by quite a bit. "Don't have the stomach for it, do you? Well I know of a place you can be of use to me, a place where you won't have to worry about fighting any battles, my precious little angel." The sarcasm practically dripped off the last few words, like fine honey oozing from the hive.
Chagatai looked to his brothers for support but found that there was none forthcoming; Ogodei seemed to be enjoying his humiliation immensely and Joichi never let anything but a blank emotionless stare cross his features. Turning back to Temujin, Chagatai found that the khan was enjoying this meeting as well; probably he still hungered to get back at him for the whole Scandinavian incident. Temujin spoke up, speaking the words that doomed him to a miserable fate: "Why don't you guard the southern border for me? I know of a great place to put you up, angel, a little town called Mandalgovi..."
And so he had come to this boring hellhole, a thousand miles away from anywhere, a place where his diplomatic talents were going entirely to waste (a fact which Temujin was no doubt aware of as well). When the war came, he was in no more danger than a dove in a gilded cage; southern border? There WAS no southern border! South of Mansura there was nothing but worthless tundra and a few tiny foreign colonies; attack might come to Mongolia at any time, but never from the south. And so, as his father and brothers were winning fame and glory in the east as the war progressed (against all odds, it was going fabulously well!), Chagatai was stuck in this backwater town trying to forget that he had ever spoken out as an anti-war demonstrator. Even worse, word of Karakorum's displeasure with his actions had spread, and he was treated as though he had the plague by anyone of any consequence whatsoever; no one wanted to risk Temujin's displeasure by associating with his prodigal son. He was mockingly called "angel" behind his back wherever he went, the overprotected young boy too afraid to go to war like the rest of his family. The only escape for Chagatai was to obliterate all conscious thought by drowning himself in drink, something that he planned to do at this very moment.
"Governor! Governor!" It took Chagatai a moment to realize that the messenger frantically charging up the road towards him and yelling at the top of his lungs was actually addressing him. He was the governor, after all, if he had been little more than a laugingstock up until this point.
"What is it?" he asked irritably. This had better be important, and not just another practical joke played by some of the local kids out to make like miserable for him. If it was, he swore that some of them would be dangling from a rope before the day was out.
"Big news!" came the news excitedly. "Enemy troops spotted on the roads to the south - Iroquois ones! And it looks like they've brought archers."
"What!?" Chagatai felt a tinge of fear run through his body. "Take me to see them, now!" The messenger did so at once, and within moments he was standing on the high ground in the center of the city, looking down over the flat expanse of the plains. Sure enough, a contingent of Iroquois archers were approaching the city; while they were not moving particularly fast, it was clear that they would reach Mandalgovi before sundown. The cloud of dust they kicked up seemed to symbolize the smoke of a burning town; not a good omen. Chagatai dispatched the boy to summon him the commander of the town's military forces at once, and settled down to decide what to do.
His first thought was to surrender the town in order to save his life. But that plan was sure to cost Chagatai his head if Temujin ever saw him again, and so would solve nothing. He could flee abroad and escape the reach of the khan... but something told him that the life of a man widely known for cowardice, one who betrayed his own father, would not be long no matter which foreign court he chose to flee to. That left only fighting it out for his very life; not an appealing process. The neigboring regions of Erdenet and Dalandzadgad were too far away to send help; by the time they reached Mandalgovi, they would only be able to get revenge for the slain. Again, not a desirable situation for someone in his shoes. Chagatai would just have to do what he could with what he had on hand here.
The local forces were not promising material. They consisted of untrained militia for the most part, young boys and old men wielding farm impliments and crude stone axes; their commander, an old man who had briefly seen action outside Hovd a generation earlier, turned out to have less military experience than Chagatai himself did. And he had only a matter of hours to try and organize these pathetic fools into a fighting force capable of stopping the Iroquois? It was a horrifying prospect, but with his very life on the line Chagatai threw himself into it wholeheartedly.
Any offensive action was immediately ruled out. With Mandalgovi situated on top of a high hill, their chances were just as good defending as they would be attacking. With this pitiful group, any attack was likely to disintegrate before they even reached the enemy lines. But defense... anyone could defend a region if they were well entrenched and prepared for action. Mandalgovi, of course, completely lacked man-made defenses of any kind, but under the direction of Chagatai a crude ditch and palisade was set up on the western edge of the city. It wouldn't stand up for more than a few moments, but even that could prove to be the difference. He directed others to gather up what wood was on hand to plant sharpened stakes in the ground at intervals to make things more difficult for the invaders, and for rocks to be gathered to throw back at the lightly armored archers. Any ammunition was better than nothing. He organized the motley defenders as best he could, putting them into three different squads and worked out a tentative battle plan. They would lure the attackers in close to the city and into the streets, where the locals could use their knowledge of the town to harray them from behind and attack them in flank, then vanish suddenly when needed. At some point in time, he would organize a charge to break the Iroquois lines. There was no time for anything more complex than that, and on such flimsy preparations did Chagatai settle in with the rest of the warriors for the battle.
They came on the embers of the setting sun, silloetted against its dying red form like some murderous apparitions out of out a nightmare. The Iroquois archers were not large in number either, probably about the same size as the defenders, but they were a trained military force and not some ragtag force cobbled together in a matter of hours. They navigated the obstacles the defenders had placed outside the town with minimal effort and quickly entered the streets. By all means, it should have been a slaughter; the townsmen were no match on paper for the Iroquois invaders. But the people of Mandalgovi were not fighting for pay or country or even some lofty ideal; they were fighting for their homes, their families, and their very lives, and it drove them with a passion and intensity which the aggressors simply did not possess. From house to house and street to street the fighting dragged on, the Mongols never staying to fight for more than a few minutes, always dashing away to reappear from the other direction a few moments later. Within a short period of time the city was engulfed in flames as the Iroquois sought to destroy the cover of their foes, but the night was windless and the fires failed to spread rapidly enough to make a difference. In such close quarters the Iroquois bows were useless and the fighting was reduced to hand to hand combat.
Twice Chagatai found himself in the thick of the fighting, as enemy columns suddenly enveloped his traveling command center; twice he took up his sword and fought for his life alongside his fellow Mongols. He discovered to his shock when the attacks were beaten off that the struggle was liberating - no, exhilarating in fact! Chagatai had never felt so alive as when he was at the head of these men, with them fighting and dying all around him. Let the strong survive and rule, the weak perish! Was this what his father felt all the time? For the first time in his life, Chagatai felt like a Mongol at heart.
When the sun dawned the next day, Mandalgovi was little more than a smouldering husk of its former self, most of its buildings charred stumps of their former selves. But the Iroquois had been beated off, and even more importantly most of the people had survived. Since Mandalgovi hadn't been much to look at before, the loss of the town's physical possessions was not a great burden, especially as aid began to pour in from the neigboring southern towns. Chagatai devoted himself to rebuilding the area and finding shelter for the homeless; he sketched out plans to create a new and far better city upon the wreckage of the old. It was when that work was almost done that he received word from Karakorum, in the form of a simple scroll bound with twine and sealed with Temujin's Fist imprinted in yellow wax - the khan's personal seal. The message it contained was brief:
Good job in the south. You may return home, all is forgiven. I have work for you to do.
Chagatai smiled and went to pack his bags. It seemed that he was back into the good graces of his family once again.
EG2 50AD
I think I'd like to push on and raze a couple more cities, the ones that are currently pushing in on our cultural borders. My other goals would then be to revolt to republic and get some freakin' culture in our cities (would you believe our only cultural building right now is the palace?) 
But, of course, a lot will depend on how the situation plays out. Here's a map for those following the game. 
to the enemies of Mongolia!
Story and turnlog to come tomorrow.
