The Tiger-Headed Horseman Read Online Free

the Vaandals. As the hired executioners had ridden halfway across, Khad's men started a fire at their side of the ice bridge and fired a barrage of flaming tar-covered arrows to the other. The Vaandals’ breath simply melted away with the bridge into the icy Strait of Anian.
    A prat Khad may have been but he was far from stupid. Having been, in his eyes, duped by his aggressively peace-making older cousin, his mind was bent on ensuring he and his legend lasted for all times. When Khad assumed his role as emperor, Ulaanbaatar still held Chinggis close to its bosom. Not a bad word could be said against Chinggis; there simply were no bad words to say against Chinggis. He had been a great man who had made a great city and an even greater empire out of little more than dust and a healthy herd of overzealous horses (he would always hold that it was the horses themselves and not their riders that had won him his empire). Changing names was not going to be enough for Khad to convince the people to forget about his cousin. Khad had to be more cunning. Fortunately, Khad had been born with plentiful amounts of cunning and at which he excelled. A lesser man might havepulled down all the statues, paintings and billboards that exalted their enemy. Not so Khad. He had something far more ugly in mind. He wanted to help his people turn and truly hate their beloved Chinggis. He wanted them to spit every time they said his name. He wanted children to call the ugly weird kids Chinggis in the playground. He wanted Chinggis's name to become synonymous with bad things so that people in the future would say ‘Don't be a complete-and-utter Chinggis’ whenever they wanted to be rude.
    In order to attain the badness he craved, Khad would employ his preferred weapons of choice – bureaucracy and fear. He had already created the Fun Brigade, who were not having nearly enough fun in his view. Khad wanted to encourage them to have more enjoyment by having them force anyone overheard saying anything nice about Chinggis to dance in circles on one leg for an hour while reciting all of the procreative thoughts they had had over the previous week. This was sure to provide the citizens of Ulaanbaatar, or Baatarulaan, with copious amounts of hilarity. Mongolians, or Ongolians, were exceedingly wanton in the bedroom department and enjoyed days on end of frolicking pleasure with their partners. They were also adventurous, so upon hearing the threat made by the Fun Brigade they suddenly fell silent. Not only did they stop saying how fine a fellow Chinggis had been, they stopped saying just about anything. Having to recite the details of their parlour panderings was not a task to be taken lightly. They didn't mind being forced to dance – that would be real fun – but having to let their mother-in-law know exactly what they'd been doing with their son or daughter (or both) was enough to fill even the toughest Mongol, or Ongol, with abject terror.
    With the Fun Brigade patrolling the streets, Khad set about installing various practices and processes that would help further his cause. He drew up a list of ‘Chinggis crimes’ thatincluded not only mention of his name but all things that were deemed to have been fit and proper during the rule of Chinggis. These included virtue, charity, pleasantry and gallantry. Offenders would eventually find themselves in the newly built House of Fun. The House of Fun was a large four-storey building constructed at the highest point in Baatarulaan. It could be seen from most corners of the city and, just in case anyone couldn't see it, large red neon bulbs flashed its name into the night sky accompanied by barrel-organ music. There wasn't a whole lot of fun to be had at the House of Fun other than by the wardens. The wardens, who wore brightly garish clown costumes, were handpicked for their sickly psychopathic tendencies and relished every opportunity to correct the behaviour of their guests. By the time Khad's rule came to an