The Scales of Good and Evil His Mongol hordes killed off countless people in Asia and Europe in the early 1200s. When attacking Volohoi Kahn convinced the city commander that Mongols would stop attacking if the city sent out 1,000 cats and several thousand swallows. When he got them, Genghis had bits of cloth tied to their tails and set the cloth on fire. The cats and birds fled back to the city and ended up setting hundreds of fires inside the city. Then Genghis attacked and won.