Project Aura

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Jagged white-topped peaks crowned the horizon in all directions, cut only by the narrow river valley. Like an invasion of locusts, the great Genghis Khan’s army marched up the chasm, driving hostages they swept up before them. Finally, deep in the high country, the valley broadened, opening to a lake, next to which was a small town of whitewashed stone buildings. A thick layer of ice covered the water, even though it was the height of summer.

Horses’ and men’s lungs labored for oxygen as the Khan deployed the bulk of his warriors in a semicircle around the captives at the near side of the village. More than a thousand hostages, every person who lived in the lower valley, milled about in fear in front of the Mongol soldiers.

At over ten thousand feet in altitude, the valley was a desolate place holding little of obvious value. The twenty-thousand-foot-high peak of Kharta Changri loomed to the west, overlooking massive glacier fields that fed the lake and river, known as Kharta Chu to the locals, that came out of it. Ten miles to the south, Chomolungma, which was not to be called Mount Everest for another six centuries, filled the horizon.

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