Amgalant
#1
Of Battles Past
by 
Bryn Hammond
Published by Bryn Hammond at Smashwords 
Copyright 2012 Bryn Hammond
http://amgalant.com 

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The cover is Caravaggio, David with the Head of Goliath

Dedication
My sister has been godmother to the book. Amgalant, what’s written and what isn’t written yet, I dedicate to her, with waves from Tem and Jam, and no sight or scent of a goat. In steppe epic, a steed and a sister are your trustiest, most intelligent and indefatigable aid: the hero doesn’t have to be heroic, but these do.

Sequence of Amgalant
Of Battles Past is the first part of Amgalant. From here you can go either to When I am King, the next part, or to Amgalant One: The Old Ideal, which has both of these. After that, Me and Atrocity and The Sheep from the Goats together make up Amgalant Two: Tribal Brawls. 

Table of Contents
A note on my source – over the page
Origin Legends
1. Yesugei Seizes a Wife
2. One People
3. To Avenge Ambaghai Khan 
4. Bad Times, Great Traditions
5. Friends are Chosen by Father and Child
6. A Drink with Tartars
7. Hoelun Alone 
8. In the Mountains’ Sanctuary 
9. Temujin Slays his Monster 
10. A Yoke about his Neck 
A description of The Secret History of the Mongols
Acknowledgements
From me

A note on my source
I closely follow a source, The Secret History of the Mongols. This is an intimate biography of the Mongols’ greatest figure, but uses the art of oral epic: it has frequent direct speech, frequent verse – gorgeous as a source. 
At times I slip into straight translation of my original, whose words, often, are better than any I can muster of my own. Either I tell you where I do, or further along, I think you can tell. Now and then I discuss the Secret History. Excuse me for this; it’s where I have matters of interpretation to talk about, or features I want to point out.
For more on my source, see the full description at the back.
The Secret History opens with the Mongols’ origin legends. So do I.

Origin Legends
Once a great grey wolf, his fur touched by blue like a cloudy sky, wooed a doe, ochre like a steppe horizon. The doe loved her enemy. For in that age animals understood each other’s speech, in a state of jargalant and amgalant, happy and at one. Tangr had a goal for these beasts in their courtship and sent them on a journey over the Sea of Origins. When they came to Onon Springs on the mountain Holy Old Haldun, the urge to quest in their hearts lay quiet. Here the ochre doe coupled with the cloudy wolf and cast a strange creature, a human child: our first father Bataji.
The offspring of Bataji hunted in the mountains where arise the three rivers Onon Gol, Tola Gol and Kherlen Gol. In the seventh descent Borjigidai, most famous of the hunters, took a wife Monghol-Jin, from whom came our people’s name. With his wealth of pelts Borjigidai purchased horses for his son, Toroqol-Jin the Rich, and the Mongols first left the hand-to-mouth life of the forest, followed the gols down to herd horses on the steppe. But Borjigidai was the last of us who knew how to talk to the animals.
The sons of Toroqol-Jin, Half-Blind and Heavyweight, doubled and tripled his herds. Half-Blind had a single twice-size eye with which he saw to the distance of three days’ journey on wheels. One day the brothers climbed to the black-crowned head of Holy Old Haldun, from where Half-Blind saw a band of people on the way into the mountains up Tungelig Stream. “Heavyweight,” he said, “you have badgered me to find you a wife. I spy with my big eye a girl with a face like the moon. She drives a black wagon towards us, and you have three days to make her acquaintance, before the mountain chieftains lay eyes on her and lay precious furs at her feet. If only she isn’t promised away, I’ll offer them our horses.”
Heavyweight rode down the stream while the band rode up, and discovered Ulun Ghoa (ghoa, after the doe, our tribute to great beauty). Aside from her beauty she was widely known and keenly sought for her skills, her intelligence and her temperament, yet her family set such high price on her that no-one had the means. She came from the Tumat on the Sea of Origins: her mother Barghu-Jin daughter of the chief in Barghujin Marshes, her father Crafty Gorlo, for that he was as crafty as the beasts; but they had abandoned their home, unhappy with the ways of the Tumat. There people had begun to ban one another from tracts with fur and game, as though they owned the antelope, the sable and the wild goats. “Wild beasts are free in the Sacred Mountains,” Gorlo had said, and his clan on their wagons came to live alongside the mountain chieftains Bosqaghsan the Blest and Charmed Shinji, where they named themselves anew, Gorlos or the Banned.
Ulun Ghoa was given to Heavyweight and by him had two sons, Bol-Gunutei and Bel-Gunutei. Shortly Half-Blind went to his grandfathers and left four grown sons who were turbulent and rowdy. These nephews scoffed at Heavyweight – they thought him a lightweight – they went to camp by themselves and took the name Dorben or the Four.
One day Heavyweight rode up to Toqojagh Heights to hunt deer. There he met a Uriangqot – the old people of the mountains, with the old customs – who had slain a three years’ deer and had on to roast a coil of gut before he butchered his meat. Heavyweight sat by his fire and claimed from him. “Share with me, friend.”
“I’ll cut your share,” answered the Uriangqot and butchered his deer: the sacraments of the quarry he kept, the pluck of the vitals with the head and hide, but the whole flesh with the bones in he gave away to one who asked.
Satisfied with the results of his hunt, Heavyweight rode for home with the load on his baggage animal. On the way he met a stranger who had no animal, who went wearily on foot, nearly dragging a boy by the hand. Both had red hair like foxes and green eyes like cats. Heavyweight asked the stranger what people he was from. “Ah, my people,” he sighed. “Our name for ourselves is the Happy Kings, and I’d be as happy as a king to reach them. We are far in the north. I came with furs to trade, but those outrageous Dorben robbed me of my merchandise and reduced me to herd for them. To save my son from servitude I ran away, but I am at the end of my contrivances to live. I’ll offer you a trade. Give me as much of your meat as I can load on my shoulder, in exchange for this my child. Only swear to treat him less harshly than the wolves.”
Heavyweight answered, “Are these the tricks of Dorben now? We have a bargain, brother, and I’ll treat him like my own, my Bol and Bel. Take what of the deer you can manage, and Tangr lead you home.” There by the wayside they swapped: the father walked on with a haunch of deer over his shoulder and Heavyweight, after the day’s transactions, fetched home half the carcass and the foreign boy.
Now Heavyweight left his wife a widow. Although she dwelt alone and took no other husband, Ulun Ghoa three times conceived and gave to the hearth Bull Qatagi, Bull Salji and Bodonjar: unusual children, tall, with light in their hair and eyes. When Heavyweight’s sons grew of an age to query the matter, they began to grumble together out of her earshot, though not for that unnoticed by her. “Mother avoids our father’s kin, where is decent to go if she wants further children. Who can she go to? In the tent there is only the foreign slave, sold for a deer’s haunch to our father, with the tawny hair and tiger’s eyes. She has been to the slave, and disgraced us with brothers who are black-boned, unknown, ignoble. A Mongol has never been a slave.”
One year at the change of weather, when Ulun Ghoa was old, she heard her husband whistle for her. Only left to do was blunt the axe she knew they ground, Bol and Bel. With the last of winter’s dry mutton on to boil, she gathered her sons at her hearth. Like hunched black crows sat Heavyweight’s get, huge torsos and sleek low heads, arms on them like badgers’ arms, with a gaze that burns a hole, with a wolvish shine at night – these the signs of their nobility, the old sacred descent, God’s animals. What did the others possess? Fiery hair, watery eyes: fire and water travel between the earth and sky.
From her quiver Ulun Ghoa drew five arrows and gave one each to her sons. “Can you snap them?” 
They arched their brows, snapped the shafts like twigs and waited puzzled with the pieces in their fists.
She drew another batch of five, and this time tied them into a truss. “Now can you snap them?”
In order of age they tried, and strained. Badger-armed Bol gave up with a grunt. “That is beyond our strength, mother.”
Her pot had boiled while they wrestled with the arrows. “Bol-Gunutei and Bel-Gunutei, you gossip about your mother and speculate where she goes, what she does, who fathered these three children? Uncanny children they are and you are due an explanation. I saw him indistinctly, in a yellow glare as of the sun. Every night I awoke to him: he entered by the smoke hole when the moon was high, by the gap at the top of the door if the stars to the south cast a light. In a man’s shape he was wont to stroke me over my womb, where his glow sank into me. When he had done what he came for he fled up any beam he found, low on his belly like a fiery hound.
“Bol-Gunutei, Bel-Gunutei, rashly you insult these sons, call them slave-begotten and ignoble. Bite your tongues, for they are children of the sky. Tangr has sent a sire to our people. What can be his purpose but to rear a royal clan, our people’s kings?”
Meekly they listened, two much abashed, three in dumb wonder.
“Yes, I see ahead. Mongols have been equals, but those days are past. Always the world loses its innocence. Scorn not each other, for there is no creature on the holy earth who has not been sent with a heavenly purpose. Jaya-ghatu are we, pregnant with our fate. Scorn not each other. Each of our fates is heaven’s path for us, and none is like another, and no-one else can tell. Judge not but help each other. The five of you grew warm in my one womb. Keep my mother-love, which is equal, uppermost in your hearts and minds. One by one you can be snapped like the brittle shafts of these arrows; but at one, at one in spirit, who is strong enough to do you hurt?”
On winter’s eve the five brothers sat once more, to share out her stock and store. Bol-Gunutei, Bel-Gunutei, Bull Qatagi, Bull Salji: these came to agreement on a fair division, but they agreed also to withhold Bodonjar’s share. “Daft Bodonjar?” they asked. “If he is a child of heaven,” they laughed, “why then, he is God’s own simpleton. You can’t trust him with an animal. Whatever we gave him he’d lose.” They gave him nothing but his food from out their pots and their worst horse to ride, an old white dun with sores along his spine-stripe and almost no hair in his tail.
Ill-used, elbowed out, Bodonjar grizzled to himself. “What am I to them? A half-wit, and less than half a brother. Why stay? No-one wants me here.” On the wretched horse he rode away alone. “Who cares what becomes of me? Who cares if I freeze or starve?” His tears dripped on the scrappy black mane. “Even this ugly plug doesn’t do what I tell him.” The lament was true: they had followed the Onon Gol down as far as Baljun Isle when the dun with the sores along his spine-stripe decided he had had enough and stopped. Where his horse stopped, Bodonjar spent the winter.
Without a tent, he wove a hut from rushes. Without a creature in his hut to talk to he was lonely, for Bodonjar liked to prattle on. When he bumped into a grey falcon at gorge in the guts of a black grouse, he pulled out his horse’s last hair-tails, tied a snare and caught the falcon. Although she objected at first he kept her with him in the hut and talked to her and she grew used to him. In want of food, he began to trail behind the wolves on their hunts. The wolves were messy eaters and left scattered about remains of their feasts to be scavenged. Once in a while their victim escaped them up a cliff or tree, and after the wolves had slouched off Bodonjar, with stones or other missiles, often got his animal. Through that winter Bodonjar and the falcon ate or went hungry together, until at last the ice was over and they had not starved. Now the water splashed and the spring birds flew in – ducks and geese, storks and dragon’s-feet – thousands past a night, squalls and cyclones of birds. Bodonjar freed his falcon.
In spring he stacked up the dead branches of winter to hang his ducks and geese. Such a glut caught Kill-Quick that his blighted timber reeked with the flesh, his racks stank to the sky. But he never thought he had too much.
Twelve tents of Uriangqot journeyed down from the mountains to graze their mares in the meadows on Tungelig Stream. Greedy for the milk he had half-forgotten, Bodonjar roamed amongst the milch mares, where they gave him to drink straight from the pail. Daily he came at milking-time. The Uriangqot found their guest untalkative, almost dumb: he neither told them his name and clan nor asked for theirs, and never once did he dismount. But his tame falcon intrigued them and they made an offer, the falcon for his pick of the pregnant mares. He laughed them off and told them she was family. “I nearly believe she is,” they said when he had gone. “He has her eyes.”
With spring, Bodonjar’s brothers dispersed in search of him. Qatagi happened on the Uriangqot camp, where he described the old white dun, described Bodonjar. “A mooncalf. Talks your ear off. You can’t mistake him.”
Uncertainly they answered, “There’s our milk-guest. The horse fits your description. He has a hawk, too, schooled to hunt for him like a hound. Where he sleeps at night we don’t know, but when the wind’s north-west, feathers and down from the ducks and geese he catches blow here, thick as a blizzard of snow. And the pong, for he can’t kill enough, like a fox on a spree who’s once been afraid of starvation. Wait with us; he’s guaranteed to turn up at milking-hour.”
When they went out to milk, a spindly figure on a white horse cruised through the meadows, and Qatagi recognised the truant. In his brief fashion he muttered about the anxiety he had caused, and led the boy and his bird straight home.
Trotting at his brother’s heels, Bodonjar intruded on his taciturnity to interest him in an idea. “Agha, it is said, a head on top of your torso, and to close your coat a clasp.”
Used to his noise for noise’s sake, Qatagi heard this with one ear and dismissed it.
“It is said, my agha, a head on top of your torso, and to close your coat a clasp.”
He can’t keep a thought inside his skull. It’s an infirmity. If I acknowledge him when his talk has significance, and otherwise don’t, he might learn.
“Often is it said – oh agha – a head on top of your torso, and to close your coat a clasp.”
Qatagi’s patience snapped. “God knows you say it often. You aren’t squatted with the wild geese now, that gaggle and can’t shut their throats. Spit out your purpose, Bodonjar, or else leave people in peace.”
Bodonjar spat out his purpose. “That camp we left on Tungelig Stream. You saw how fat their mares in milk, and did you get a glimpse of their stallion? – the most glorious silver dun with stripes like tarnish on his knees. They don’t have a head-of-camp, but discuss the least decisions half the day: tried and untried, weathered and raw, head and hoof, every voice has to be heard. It’s called equality. They are easy. The five of us can seize their horses.”
“Seize their horses?”
“Easily.”
“Rob them?” Qatagi sought to ascertain.
Bodonjar gave a shrug or a rotation of one shoulder, much the way a hawk or falcon stretches the muscles in a wing. “Do the wolves rob the deer, or Kill-Quick the dragon’s-feet?”
Slowly Qatagi nodded. “It is your falcon has taught you.”
“Am I wrong to learn from the hawks and the wolves? I had no other to teach me how to live this winter past.”
“I’m sorry about this winter past, Bodonjar. But I can see you have grown up in it. Daft? You are like the beasts, and the old stalkers in their footsteps: you are Crafty Bodonjar.”
For the first time Mongols went to war. From Bol-Gunutei and Bel-Gunutei descend a great number of tribes, often those of inclination to live quietly without strife, such as Ongirat the Givers of Wives, Suldu and Iqira. There is a tribe named Qatagin and another named Saljiut. But a third of our tribes descend from Bodonjar in the great clan known as Borjigin, People of the Wildfowl. 
These are the mothers of the Borjigin.
In that first warfare, ahead of his brothers on scout, Bodonjar captured a woman of the camp. Like the mares whose teats swaggered she was fat, halfway through pregnancy: to his eyes she dripped milk and oozed honey. Only now, when he was at war, did he ask who his milk-hosts were. “We are clan Jarchiut, tribe Adangqa, of the Uriangqot people,” she answered. “And you?”
He said, “I have been a Have-not. Now I am a Have. Your husband must be slain, that you can be mine.”
Her child in womb, Jajiradai, the Outsider, Bodonjar fostered at his hearth: his are the tribe of Jajirat, from whom comes Jamuqa, oath-brother to Tchingis Khan. Her next child Bodonjar fathered, Baharidai, the Captive: his are the two tribes of Baharin, the Naked and the Free. 
Now an owner of animals, Bodonjar led home a clan lady, an ujin of white bones. She came, as moons do, with a skirt of stars to escort her. To one of these stars his heart went out and they had a child together. But once Bodonjar wasn’t around her child came into dispute; people attributed him to an Adangqa Uriangqot servant of the tent, and Cabichi, son of the wife, cast Jugeledur out of the clan, out of the jugeli sacrifice. His are the tribe of Jugeled, who are yet outcasts from Borjigin.
Cabichi, for his squat size (four foot and a quarter and not a lot of it leg) went by the epithet Fist-Shins; but such an example was his courage that those who fought with him cried him a baghatur, a hero. Baghatur stuck as a title, one given by spontaneous popular shout, and a Mongol’s proudest. Tribes of his line include Uru’ud and Mangqot, named after brothers, who always fight together; Noyojin, or the Do-Nobly, named for their ancestor’s haughty ways; Barola, or the Gobblers, named for the sight of their originals around the pot. 
Once the Mongols had learnt war, war did not remain for outsiders. Tribe clashed with tribe, until from Cabichi’s first grandson Catchi Warhorse came Qaidu, and from Qaidu, through Bai Bird-of-Prey and Tumbinai, came Khabul: Qaidu and Khabul were the Mongols’ early kings, that on the steppe are khans, whose whole purpose was to forge the hundred tribes back into one people. Only in the khans’ days did chief not feud with chief, when they answered to an over-chieftaincy. So, in their own way, the khans too strove to create again the original state of jargalant and amgalant, just as the shamans’ difficult work was to talk with animals and with the dead, which we knew how to do at first.
Khabul Khan had a son Bartan Baghatur, and he a son Yesugei, also a Hero. It is his son Temujin who goes by the name Tchingis, when he is khan.

1. Yesugei Seizes a Wife
‘Son, what kind of girl do you want me to find for your wife?’
‘Father, find me a girl who’s up before I get to my feet, who’s on her horse ahead of me, who, before I reach the enemy, has heads of theirs to give me.’
‘That’s a comrade-in-arms you’re after, not a girl. Still, I have heard of one...’
plot-opener, twice used in The Book of Dede Korkut, old tales of the Oghuz Turks
Yesugei had been cried a baghatur and been chosen marshal of his tribe the Kiyat. For father he had Bartan Ba’atur, a hero of the China wars whom, impious people liked to joke, Yesugei worshipped whilst alive. For grandfather he had a latter-day legend, Khabul Khan, whose most famous deed, possibly, was to have pulled the beard of the Emperor of China over dinner at his court – wherewith began the China wars. In spite of these points to assist him, and close on thirty years of age, Yesugei had no wife.
This was nobody’s fault but his own. The situation he had left to grow, uninterrupted, with Suchigu had inhibited his father, he knew. Suchigu was too ensconced. The upright Bartan shrank to ask a noyon for his daughter where the tent mightn’t altogether belong to her. His father was quite right. It was up to Yesugei to change his home circumstances, if he had wish of a wife. And he had wish.
He had need. Simply, a marshal’s wife has a great deal to do; wives are trained from infancy, and Suchigu grew up a slave. In effect he was half a bachelor and half not. His nokod didn’t mind and they liked Suchigu, whom they called Suchigu, her pet-name, where they ought to call the woman at his side Lady What-have-you, at banquets. Their wives weren’t always as tolerant, but that wasn’t the crux. Half a bachelor, simply, finds himself half-equipped at times. He was meant to have a lieutenant – aside from Ubashi – in short he wasn’t meant to function without a wife. That was his excuse. It wasn’t going to be easy to tell Goagchin she was out.
They hadn’t been unhappy. In a gay mood Suchigu was hard to be unhappy with. Moreover, she possessed a trait a man never does underprize: you only have to undo your trousers and she is without fail very interested. No complaints there. So what did he have to complain of, exactly, in private territory? He didn’t know. That was the trouble. A sense, an instinct told him, there is more. It’s not too late. I’m not thirty yet. Out there exists what they sing of in the songs. Was he a dreamy-head, to want what they sing of in the songs?
Perhaps he had seen his promise through. He had unworthy niggles of thoughts: had he lived, Dolgor might have gotten over her by now. Forgive me, Dolgor. If you love her yet, then you know the thing I yearn for.
Yesugei, I didn’t intend you to go this far. You can’t live my life for me.
That wasn’t Dolgor, that was him.
The children he didn’t count in his decision. Children from a slave aren’t worse off than children from an under-wife, but both are adjuncts. They don’t rank in the clan. Without a wife his hearth, after him, must go to his youngest brother for lack of a recognised youngest son. As for the eldest, who was five, he could give him animals and set him up, but he couldn’t give him status. Status wasn’t up to Yesugei – a fact, unfortunately, the mother of his children didn’t seem to understand. Perceptions? He didn’t give a goat’s toenail about perceptions, but society was society, and keep Goagchin or cast her off – act of his didn’t alter the status of her children.
One night, late, in his father’s tent, alone with him, Yesugei spoke up. “Father, I start to feel the want of a wife. Both to manage a wife’s tasks and for her companionship.”
Poorly timed. The news about the khan had hit Bartan very hard and domestic concerns weren’t at the front of his mind. But that was just why the matter had grown urgent in Yesugei’s heart, with war ahead, serious war. He had to tug his father’s attention: in fact his eyes lost focus and came back again guiltily to Yesugei. It was awkward but how you had to talk to Bartan, since the news. Yesugei pursued. “Of course, to introduce an ujin, I’d straighten out my tent. It weighs on me, father, that you cannot countenance the situation I am in with Goagchin.”
“On the contrary. Who has said so? Have I?”
“No, father.”
“When he lay with fatal wounds and short of twenty, your brother-by-oath asked you to take his love in, as wasn’t, he knew, to be asked of his brothers by the bone. This you promised.”
Yesugei felt a twinge of conscience, yet.
“And I can tell you, Yesugei, only once have I heard a comment, the intention critical, but to my mind not. It was said to me, Yesugei goes far to keep his promises. He does, I answered, he travels very far. No, I look on with satisfaction.”
“I am glad. Glad, too, that members of my nokod don’t quarrel with how I live, unlike one or two of their wives.”
“Who gives a billy’s balls what one or two wives have to say?”
“Quite, father.” This was strong language, to cite the nether parts, stronger than toenails. He had learnt pride from Bartan, as he had learnt most things. Gossip? Beneath his notice. Nevertheless he was aware. “If I seek to change my circumstances, I am driven by my own needs. And I consult Goagchin’s needs, but the fact is, I never was Dolgor to her.”
“That is a known syndrome with widows.”
“Yes. However, I’d like to be...” He coughed. “I’d like to come first.”
“Of course. The least of us have a title to be first at home, and you, Yesugei, though I say who sired you – I say in order that you do not misunderstand me – I’d offer you with conviction to a queen. The Queen of Persia – the Queen of India – I don’t care who she is, she can thank me for you.”
This outspokenness was like Bartan. His negatives were outspoken too. Yesugei slipped his hat briefly over his eyes, a gesture towards modesty. “Perhaps, father, at the meet of the tribes, can you inquire for me? The meet, I know, is for sterner purposes. But the war we have ahead is just why I feel pressed upon, and press.”
A gradual change came over Bartan Ba’atur’s face; again his eyes saw elsewhere and he grimaced, to see what he saw. “Weddings, Yesugei, weddings? I don’t know I can say let’s have a wedding, while Ambaghai lies unrevenged. It was a wedding trip he went on. To tie a treaty of friendship he led his daughter to the Tartars, and the Tartars led him in a yoke to China. Until I have spilt blood for his blood. Until I have forgotten in blood his tortures and their obscene pageant of death. Ask me then about weddings, Yesugei. Ask me then.”
At this from the grief-stricken old hero, Yesugei felt grossly selfish and hung his head.
Still, he had a struggle to sacrifice the idea, and he grizzled to his agha Mengetu. That’s what an agha’s for. “If only I had acted a month ago. Right now I’d give my left leg beneath the knee for a wife – the like of yours, Mengetu. Or Noikon’s or Daritai’s. Father’s a judge of an ujin. If only I’d left my fate in his hands. If only Dolgor had lived.”
“You have the scrumptious Suchigu.”
“Scrumptious is as scrumptious does,” sighed Yesugei, at his loosest of tongue with his agha. The senior brother is a semi-father, but then again, remains a brother.
“Over-scrumpted, are you, Twig?”
“Mengetu, if I told you about the woman I wish I had...”
“Don’t start.”
“I bet she exists, too. I almost know she does.”
“You’re in a bad way, Yesugei.”
“As I try to tell you.”
Mengetu turned the problem over in his hands. “I can come up with only an old truth to give you, for you are not one to trample on our father’s feelings. It isn’t a true truth nowadays, but used to be: mares and women are what I lift my weapons for. There’s innocent days for you. War leaves widows – we hope theirs, not ours.”
Yesugei thought much about this hint of Mengetu’s. War’s way to a wife might be his only way. His oath-brother had bequeathed him Suchigu; he might have to take bequeathal from a foe.
Then one day, out in hills of a black bubble-stone above camp, a hawk on his arm, he crossed paths with a young couple newly-wed, on that trip together that newly-weds try to have to themselves, from her tribe into his. Though the hills funneled them closely by they didn’t greet him, no doubt because the husband was a Merqot. A Merqot in costume is hard to mistake. This specimen, big enough to begin with – he out-statured Yesugei – wore a sort of helmet-cage, the scaffold for four-foot antlers, and his cloak was sewn over with white feathers. Birds and deer are the Merqot symbols, amalgamated in their tattoos – winged deer – and they ride their stags like horses. He had a horse for this journey, only the one. His wife wore primrose silk, and drove a dainty coach with wind chimes and a handsome black camel in harness. Because of the camel cart in Kazakh style, traditional with them for weddings, he thought her Ongirat. And, because of her circumstances and his state of mind, he thought her his ideal ujin, come to life, just the ujin he had dreamt of for his wife. Her chin, her cheeks, the rear of her head were arcs of circles, with that ineffably lovely, that hypnotic symmetry of the moon – as in the songs. Her eyes were strikingly dark and startlingly light. They dwelt on him, and she gave him a nod for maintenance of the courtesies. You don’t ride by people without salute, whatever terms you are on, but the Merqot did, with an embarrassed scowl, as if he had an intimation, and Yesugei did, with a flagrant stare, because an idea had knocked him on the head.
For things to be perfect he’d have been a Tartar. But a Merqot’s next on the hate-list. Yesugei didn’t give himself time to think: he knew where thought led and in this instance he declined to go there. It was his only chance. It was happenstance. It was too near perfect and you almost felt churlish towards fate to say no. That was his excuse.
Obsessed with the Merqot and the ujin he galloped into camp, threw his hawk off his arm to the first candidate, skidded to a halt by Daritai’s tent. “Brother, are you home? Yesugei calls you out.”
In half a moment Daritai was outside with his whip and his weapons. “Do you need me, brother?” He leapt onto the horse that awaited him at his door.
They cantered to Noikon’s tent. “Hoi – Noikon – your brothers call you out.”
At once he joined them, wiping milk from his mouth. “Where are we off to, brothers?”
But at Mengetu’s tent they found he had gone with the herds. “I’d have liked my three brothers with me for this,” said Yesugei. “But we don’t need the numbers. My target is a Merqot on his own. I want him driven off, because I have set my heart on what he escorts. If we don’t have to hurt him we won’t.”
His brothers glanced at each other. Noikon asked the question. “What does he escort, Yesugei?”
“A new wife, a lady of the Ongirat.”
You can stand about and debate. You can dissuade people who seem to be hot in the head. They didn’t do that. Daritai whistled. “Half of us have Ongirat wives. I dare say they can be mollified – bad match that you are, Yesugei. A Merqot has a hide to traipse past with a legal-got girl. More often he kidnaps them, and he can’t accuse if we riposte. On his own, the cocky goat’s turd?”
Noikon said, “He counts on his crazy shamans to save him. Either he thinks we’re too much in dread of them, or he’s right and we’ll drop stark dead off our horses. Come on.”

The Secret History doesn’t give us Yesugei’s side only, but switches perspective to Hoelun and Tchiledu, when they are attacked. When three Mongols fiercely galloped at them in a gully of the gravel slopes, Tchiledu did as a mother animal often does: she runs, clumsily enough to tempt the hungry with her haunches and never mind the morsel her baby. He squatted on his haunches as he scorched through a nasty patch of scree, but staggered upright, with gravel rash. The three of them gave chase.
In and out the piles he lost them, lost sight of them, and he circled back to Hoelun. But she was upset to have him back. “No, Tchiledu, save your life. They won’t spare you – I saw their faces. Oh, I saw the first one’s face, he had ill thoughts. How strange his eyes, green like a cat’s, and his hair as if afire. I’ve never seen such people.”
“I can’t leave you for them.”
“You must, you must. Don’t make me see you killed.”
“My Hoelun –” he said in anguish.
“Yes, yes, but you can find another one of me, and not of life. Another one of me – oh, but Tchiledu, when you do, call her by my name. For Hoelun was your love’s name, Hoelun – not another. Here, go with my scent. My scent in remembrance.” From underneath her stiff silk skirt she tore off a great sheet of her shift.
The three strange Mongols swung into the gully again.
As she thrust her shift at him he clutched her wrist. “Come onto my horse.”
“Double-weight, we’d get a hundred yards. I tell you, go.” She flicked his hand off, the way you flick your wrist to sail a hawk.
Driven away as much by her as them, he struck his horse’s thigh, to salvage, at least, his life, if possible. They pursued him. The Merqot bent his antlers into the wind, but his left arm held her shift upright like a flag. No-one drew a weapon, that the Secret History mentions. Tchiledu stood no chance, against three. Yesugei had gone to get his brothers to obviate a fight, where he might be disqualified for war, where she might be caught in the cross-fire. No-one need get hurt. They chased him over seven hills, says the history, and saw him off.

She hadn’t tried to hide, futilely, in the gravel maze. Straight-backed she sat on the driver’s bench, her skirts disordered where she had torn her undergarment for a keepsake. Now Yesugei wondered what he had done. Interfered in these lives, and to what end? That she might spend her life with him, like Suchigu, wishing he were the love of her youth?
That thought hurt. But he was too late for cold sense. He clipped a lead onto the nose-ring of her black camel.
When he did that she threw away the reins, and changed, disconcertingly, into a mad thing. She didn’t care about them, or what they witnessed. Her head tossed – her tall silk box of a hat flew off and was ignored – she keened. Keened her husband’s name, and the appendages to his name, so that Yesugei learnt who he was. Half-sang, for sorrows, phrases for sorrows, are close at hand in the songs. “Tchiledu, Tchiledu Giant, Royal Tchiledu, who never rode the empty steppe with empty belly, whose tuft has never blown against his face, now, now how does he go, his tails flung to and fro, to and fro, his chest, his back, his chest, his back.”
But that was what she did, fling her hair and whip her face, her unhatted hair, in the indecency of grief. Images of the buffets of fortune – but her husband’s, not her own. Merqot don’t have a tuft and tails, Yesugei thought in a not-quite-irrelevant angle on the question: a woman’s lot is to travel into foreigners, but can a woman want to go to Merqot? He didn’t pick up her hat. It was a wifely hat, which the Merqot had put on her.
Like that he led her on her cart. Her throes had an illogical effect on him. They ought to have made the creep of guilt more acute, but that didn’t happen: he grew glad again and optimistic. True, emotion and wet eyes in nowise harmed her beauty.
Daritai told her to desist. Daritai wasn’t cruel, but he was indirect. Noisy emotion set his face awry, as incurably as he grimaced at sour plums. “I give you a verse for a verse.

He leaves by high passes, your love who lay with you;
He leaves on deep waters, the love you lament.
Call after him – he cannot hear you.
Trail him – he has left you no trace.”

Noikon swung about. “Daritai, that is for the dead. – We have not slain your Merqot, lady.”
“We didn’t need to,” muttered the youngest.
She watched Daritai and Noikon in new silence, very sane.
Messy. Daritai had assumed they were to tell her the Merqot was dead, until Noikon discomfited him. You charge in without a tactical meet...
Thus introduced to her, Noikon thought to try a bit of neutral talk. “That’s an elegant beast, your camel,” was the subject he started on. “I don’t know what you were going to do with him in the marshes, though. It’s moss or it’s mud flats, up there. He’d never find his feet.”
No answer.
“It’s hard of your father to send you, too. Did they warn you, you’d eat nothing but fish and web-foot birds? And their substitute for felt? Fish scales.”
She spoke. “My father engaged me to Tchiledu, brother to Toqtoa King of Merqot. What’s for dinner wasn’t in the contract, but yes, I have an acquaintance with my husband’s culture. Often thought savage, by the ignorant or those with the brains of a fish.”
Straight insult is outside drill and Noikon didn’t have a clue what to say. Yesugei reined his horse’s head towards her and asked, “May I know your tribe and clan, ujin, your father’s name and your name?” Babjo walked on sideways.
“Certainly you may.” She stared right into his eyes. She meant to be confrontational, but his guts oozed. “You have to do with Hoelun, daughter of Hulegu, from the Olqunot clan of tribe Ongirat.”
“It is the boast of Ongirat that they live by the beauty of their daughters and need no arms.”
“We give wives to far peoples and our friendships stretch the steppe. Thereby my father has no hostilities with Merqot, while I see you suffer strife with them. But that we have lain away arms is poetry. When we are given cause we Ongirat can fight.”
Still the stare contest, and he got the message. He let her win at stare. “May I tell you our names? We are Kiyat. These are two of my brothers, Noikon Taiji and Daritai Otchigin. My name is Yesugei.”
“Those are not names I thought to hear.”
“No, lady?”
“I thought to hear no names and no ancestors’ names. Yesugei of Kiyat, I know of him, but I did not know him for a wife-thief.”
As was habit with him in navigation of a puzzle, he talked to his horse’s ears. Seen in the ears is the subtlest transmission, that might help. “Yes, he is a wife-snatcher, when we Mongols have disturbed days and he no leisure. But from a Merqot I do not thieve. A Merqot owes me women, for he seizes mine. Ongirat in the south aren’t open to Merqot raids but we are. To your origin tribe I am no foe, as I mean to demonstrate.”
“These days are disturbed for we Mongols,” she said with the heavy tramp of sarcasm, “since Tartars assaulted an enemy off his guard and on his way to a wedding.”
This was a keen thrust, nigh on fatal.
What was he going to do with her, lock her up? What did wife-snatchers do, come to that? Keep them under arrest in the tent? Convince them? He straightened his horse and rode forwards to her camel’s head. Absurdly, he felt hurt.
Noikon, in his innocence, said to her, “That isn’t fair.”
A howling innocence, after which Yesugei had to speak. “Lady, I don’t do this on a whim or because I saw your face. You aren’t to be my fifth wife, more for ornament than purpose. I have none, and a captain needs a captain’s lady, for his great tent and for a million things. I ask you, Hoelun Ujin, not to judge me solely on today.”
This echoed in his own ears very lamely. The camel, not grown up yet, lipped at his sleeve, and Babjo – no horse but hates a camel – poked a hoof at the beast. Yesugei reprimanded him with a growl.
“If I am intended for a captain’s lady, I can ask your brothers to move off and leave us space to talk, Yesugei Baghatur.”
Eagerly he gestured his brothers away. They took themselves out of earshot, one front, one rear, and watched for come-backs by her Merqot. Ambush might even work.
There was only the plod of her camel’s feet and the wind chimes on her cart. “Lady, we are alone to talk.”
“Had you killed Tchiledu for me, I had waited for the three of us to be alone, you and I and a knife, and made impossible for you to profit by the act. Before I slew you.”
I think she means that. Yesugei observed to her, “A man extracts a peculiar comfort when he knows he has an avenger in the wife at his hearth.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I saw no need.”
“A sign of contempt?”
He said, “I saw no need.”
“I see no need for your conduct. It is steeply beneath you. You aren’t poor. You aren’t unknown. The Marshal of the Kiyat can have any lady he makes suit for. Why does he snatch?” 
“Yes.” Yesugei, who had nodded through most of her question, turned about and began on his explanations. “Because of my father. Him you have heard of fifty times if you have heard once or twice of me: Bartan, who earnt baghatur at the defeat of Hu-sha-hu. What has been done to Ambaghai has him by the throat. More, his agha Oikon Bartaq was with the khan and shared his end. He cannot turn his heart from them, nor give his heart over to gladness. It is a time for grief and revenge. I had thought I must be content to try and win a Tartar’s widow. Then fate saw that I see you. Now there are two ways I might have ruined my life. If my father does not forgive me for my short cut. If you cannot feel for me as a wife.”
She heard him out with two or three sharp inspections of his face. Although he rode twisted right about at the waist to talk to her she seemed utterly unselfconscious, or almost insensitive to his stare. She wasn’t a vain beauty. “There are three ways,” she told him when he finished.
“Three ways?”
“The third Toqtoa King. Or doesn’t a daredevil baghatur think twice to start a feud with Merqot royalty?”
“Not twice. I think of him once. I can defend against Toqtoa.”
“You were a trifle late to apologise, at any rate, after you learnt who my husband was.”
“There is that,” he said off-hand.
“It is a pity you didn’t stop and greet each other.”
“I cannot be sorry we omitted to.”
“That suggests you have concerns.”
“That suggests I can’t think I’d have had the gall had I spoken to the man. It is like Bodonjar, who drank their milk but didn’t step down from his horse. It is no excuse,” said Yesugei. “It just assists.”
She eyed him. Possibly, he thought, she thought he’d be easy to escape from. Possibly. He said, in an effort to charm, “I am not royalty.”
Her retort had a sort of haughty equanimity. “You have right that you harm yourself, above who else you harm. I was happy on my wedding cart today, Yesugei Baghatur. I won’t be wretched tomorrow for you.”
However she meant him to take this – that he didn’t have the power to make her wretched – he was the captain of a nokod, the marshal of a tribe, and he judged her in the framework of his experience. This was gutsy, this was not to be intimidated, but more: this bespoke a type he valued highly as a fighter, who lived in a core of self that remained intact, untouched by accident. Often the type were distanced. But she had not been prevented from engagement when she wept and wailed for her Merqot.
At last she became sensible of how he stared at her, as he rode almost backwards, and she frowned. Not shamefast, more annoyed, like a woman who tires of the results of her beauty. “I thought you did not steal me for my face,” she remarked tartly. 
“Just then I had forgotten your face.”
Next she said, “Do you mean to lead me on a rope into your encampment, or can I drive?”
Promptly he unclipped the lead. To loose her, strangely enough, instilled in him a sense of possession, and as she gathered up her reins he had a hard time not to climb onto the coach bench, where she sat in primrose silk and half her shift. That intimate, that erotic gift of the shift. She’d have to forget him. But not here and now.
A tiresome spirit conjured up Suchigu to him, Suchigu, at this hour out to milk her pet white goats, with squirts for the children and splashes in their faces and laughter.
Worse, his new lady intuited where his thoughts had gone. “Did you have a wife and lose her?”
A kind inquiry, to get a murky answer. “No, never a wife, in true usage. Though I am quite old, as you see me, on the climb to thirty. I have lived with a woman, Goagchin, or Suchigu is her familiar name. By me she has a boy of five and a baby in the pouch. She is from the Jangsiut, slave tribe of Kiyat. My oath-brother Dolgor was mad about her, but he went to his fathers, far too young, and he charged me with her shelter. When brother weds brother’s widow he does not reduce her or rob her of that which she owns. I took her over on the terms she knew with him. Goagchin has sat at my side and in fact performed the office of a lady of the tent. That is at an end with your arrival, as are our... terms of intimacy.” He creased a brow to wait.
“And what is she to do?”
“Cause my lady no disquiet. Of course she has a roof over her head from me, a ger for her and the children.”
“Your lady is to oust her from her tent, the mother of your children, who has performed the office?”
“What else, once I have a wife?”
“Are you tired of her?”
“Yes, frankly, I am,” he said. “Have in mind I did not choose her, Hoelun.” The name-only slipped out – too fast in an acquaintance, and Yesugei too late to pin on a lady.
For them there was no slow trip from her tribe into his, spent in exploration of each other. But they had their walk down from the hills. For discovery, there was much, learnt of her, to exercise him, and perhaps most a moment at the end. They left behind the hills’ stone knuckles, and in the Turk carpet of edelweiss ahead was to be seen his camp. Hoelun leant forward on her cart seat, intent, and in the way you feel a weather shift, a change of wind or a charge in the air, he felt her attention leave him. Because he had only ever felt a sensation of the mental from shamans, he had to wonder. Later, when he asked her, she told him not to be silly. Nevertheless, Yesugei thought he knew a shaman when one got into his head.
The felt of the gers gleamed white with chalk, laid out in the spokes of a wheel, the fence of black wagons the rim. Twelve gers belonged to his father, his brothers and their wives, three for his staff, and twenty-six were his nokod: men from outside tribes, who had chosen not to fight for their tribal chief but for a captain, and him, by tradition, they chose exclusively on character, without an eye to kinships, rank or wealth. It was a fine tradition, and he was proud of the count that had come to him. At the big ger, hub of the wheel, blew his standard of stallions’ tails.
Before they entered the gate Yesugei paused. He had to say if just a sentence or two. “Although you come to us uncelebrated, believe we are happy in you, and call upon you, a happy spirit to watch over me and mine.”
Noikon helped, bless him, with an old truth. “For us on the steppe, naked to the Sky who is God, to be sincere is more important than to be elaborate.”
The abducted woman rebuffed neither of them, this time.
Dogs and kids charged in from the four quarters. Wives at doors saw her ornamental cart, her silk, her loose hair neither in sprigs like a girl nor put up in a hat like a wife, her self-possessed air and the way she ignored their gazes, and to his anxious eye took against her at first sight. Strings of horses and her shy young camel felt an instant horror of each other. Yesugei found his head shepherd Jaraqa and left him with the problem of the camel.
At the hour she milked her goats, Bartan had intercepted Suchigu and came back with her to the great tent. Like most grandfathers he never saw too much of the children. So Yesugei ushered Hoelun in to startle his father and his slave love at the vats. Bartan’s noble-boned countenance, Suchigu’s winsome, dimpled face: both grasped that here was no ordinary guest, and asked him by their very silence what it meant. “My honoured father, and my friend Goagchin. I introduce to you Hoelun, daughter of Hulegu of the Olqunot-Ongirat. The lady is my wife.”

A fortnight after the event Yesugei set out for Olqunot. A fortnight was his shrewdest estimation of the right interval of time: not on the heels of the news, as if brazen, yet not reluctant to front up, as if he didn’t stand by his actions. Roughly, what Tchiledu had given for Hoelun, over a six years’ courtship from the age of twelve, he tripled to give for her again – if he got so far.
In spite of a declared neutrality, as she awaited her father’s verdict, Hoelun didn’t stickle to make suggestions... a fact that incited crazy optimism in him, which he concealed to the utmost of his ability. Her father Hulegu had swollen joints, and to his shame and misery found horseback a discomfort: don’t give him the horse ornament – give that to her brother, but the furs and carpets to her father and the silks and brocades to her mother. When she glanced at the stuff on wagon she said, “I’m not cheap. I wasn’t cheap the first time. Was it worth your while to steal me?”
Yesugei tipped his head. But to answer, he’d have to flirt. And he didn’t.
She went on. “At my wedding feast, after sufficient black milk had been drunk, I was spirited away and hidden from Tchiledu under my aunt’s leopard skin, while my kin told him he’d have to go through them to get to me. Whereupon he ransacked the camp and they chased him about with floppy staves and other comical weapons – no-one got hurt, or not beyond medicine, which was more black milk, once Tchiledu had found me and dragged me off. And that was the way we left my home camp, with howls of outrage and shaken fists. – We went back for my things.” 
“The wife-fight. I have enjoyed a hundred.”
“Yes, there is nothing like a wife-fight.”
“What do you mean to say, Hoelun? That I face a wife-fight in earnest?”
“Merely that you have done in earnest what we do in game. Or not game but drama, drama of our early days, when we rarely bargained for a wife. Days we keep a fondness for in the cockles of our hearts, from the enjoyment had.”
“This is stern upon me, I suspect.”
“It is just ironic that Tchiledu had to take me by violence too. It isn’t the way to thoroughly discourage seizure of women.”
Severest criticism or extenuation of a sort? Both and neither. Where she said she awaited her father’s verdict, Yesugei saw her stand back and observe her own life, from that core of the self that has nothing to fear. Women have nothing to fear, men say in envy, no mortal foe; his to inherit his father’s feuds, hers to drive her cart into foreign parts, the Great North Forest in Hoelun’s case and sit beside the brother of a savage forest king. Women have a different perspective. Still, Yesugei hadn’t known one quite like her.
While he was gone to talk around her family she might simply walk away.
The evening before he left, his camp captain asked the awkward question. “And your lady? Have I instructions on your lady?”
Is she to be watched? was the question. What do I do if she up and walks away? There was one course, one course only, and Yesugei gave a prompt and hearty answer. “Instructions, Ubashi, are to see her instructions done, as if they came from my own mouth. That’s the beauty of a wife: I can be in camp and out simultaneously.”
Ubashi – let off the hook – wished to indicate his satisfaction. “I wouldn’t say that’s the beauty of a wife, if my wife were Lady Hoelun. I’d say her beauty mesmerises like the moon’s.”
“Do you know, that old moon simile was never so... unextravagant.”
“Very slight exaggeration,” agreed Ubashi.
“Oi. I can say that, but you can’t agree.”
“I can’t?”
“You’re to tell me she’s a turtle here and now or I won’t leave tomorrow.”
Ubashi boggled a bit. But he had a sad history to do with a girl out of his league, he lived a bachelor, and in short he liked to be teased. “From your staff, Yesugei, God speed in Olqunot.”
“Mention me at your daily milk.” 
“Why, you’re a right prize, you are.”
“A right prize what?”
Next morning she walked him to the gate in the wagon ring. To see her strong, free step, her unselfconsciousness, Yesugei recognised that she was one to leave him, if she left him, by the light of day and in front of his eyes. None so ignoble as to stop her. The ignoble idea wouldn’t enter her head, nor the heads of those in her sphere, in her atmosphere. Yes, he had seen arrows bounce off that sort of certitude. Stop her?
“I have a message for my father.”
His foot was in the stirrup. There he braced.
“As Yesugei satisfies or dissatisfies you, so he does your daughter. I have met with honour here, in especial from Bartan Baghatur who hosts me in his tent. I have come to ask whether my given fate lies here. For I do not sense I am astray. It ought to feel wrong, and doesn’t. I talk only of my fate, not of other people’s actions.”
This was an extraordinary statement from a victim of abduction. He’d have gobbled out, I have that sense too. But of course, he was head over heels. He didn’t gobble, he got on his horse.
Even after this from her, on the trip into Olqunot he ate his heart out. He thought of her Merqot, arm in the air to flaunt her shift, he thought of him with her shift, with the odour of her. Odour’s as fundamental to a Mongol as to his dog. Yesugei’s rival conjured her up by scent, even now. The sniff is the old-fashioned kiss, and for her to give him... Yesugei’s head whirled. He had a challenge ahead.
Ahead, since, as she gave her father to understand, he hadn’t laid a finger on her. That at Bartan’s stipulation. Until he had attempted to be in the right with her family, she was to stay a guest of Bartan and his sister, and Yesugei was to behave like a gentleman. He did – like the exemplar – and sat with her in Bartan’s tent and tried to prove himself. “So much one noyon owes another. But if Hulegu of Olqunot demands his daughter back from us, after your attempt – then, Yesugei, I cease to intervene.”
Cease to intervene? He meant he butted out. Other people butt out, but your dad’s the one who can and does comment on your behaviour. Isn’t he?
Bartan wasn’t always blunt. It had to be a bad sign when he wasn’t.
From Olqunot tents where they drank milk Yesugei dispatched rumours of his approach. He had come with three of his nokors, a number he thought a guard but not a gang. Jagan, Toroqol and Aktagh were a sworn trio whose exploits had been put into verse. Why them? Hoelun had said, “The Three Steeds. I have heard their song.” 
“In Olqunot?”
“We aren’t the ends of the earth. We are only the start of the Gobi.”
The Steeds were there to back him up by song, he hoped. And fight? Only if they shoot me out of hand. A whisker on the late side then, they said. But Hoelun hadn’t warned him he’d be shot, as he liked to think she might, and her folks were Ongirat, they weren’t Uru’ud.
He stepped through Hulegu’s door, which you have to do in a duck, and found them gathered to hear his explanation. Hung about with bow boxes, quivers, scabbards, nonetheless they were going to be Ongirat about this. Had they been Uru’ud they’d have come in hunt of him and strung his guts up from the trees. As one of Ulun Ghoa’s light-begotten, Yesugei had a lot to say for the wolf’s litter.
A zealous lad of a brother, a couple of fierce-faced uncles, an outraged grandfather, and in centre seat, with a tight grip on their mental leashes, the nearest-touched, her father. Merely the effort Hulegu spent to get the case heard meant he felt beforehand a certain commitment to Yesugei’s cause, because he had fought for him already. Jagan, Toroqol and Aktagh watched their captain at work, where his subtlest, his least cognizant talents lay, persuasion. His enthusiasm for her did endear him, if puzzle them slightly (he tried to say a thing or two they didn’t understand) and those at a romantic age – her grandfather and the lad – gave him marks for how in love he was. In a gradual transition he became not a kidnapper but a known man, a man steadfast in courtesy howsoever tried, a frank man with a very frank face, a great communicator – as distinct from a big talker, for he was strong in other methods. A face that wasn’t suavely handsome, almost average, you might mistake to say, until his fantastic smile (that he had to keep sheathed in the early stages). There’s the eyes and the hair to start up a tale-tell, how he got them, and nicely themed to them, a green velvet hat with bronze band and knob. At his waist a wide sash embroidered with lions that leapt onto the backs of antelope, not to eat them but to mate (legends of tribal origins and our original, ideal state). A narrow waist like a screwed rag, to have the whole horizon in his sights; wide shoulders and arms that nearly tipped him over, except he went to pains to keep them equal and was as deft a draw with the left: the shape he ought to be. Aren’t you just tempted to have your grandchildren by him?
Still, how he may have sped without Hoelun’s message was for Yesugei, in an indulgent hour, to guess, and he liked to guess he’d have sped to a squalid end at the hands of Uncles Dagachi and Babujab. They left to the father, after her message. “Ai,” the father sighed. “Had you been no stranger to her she might have spoken so. – Strangers, of course, you were. I don’t accuse my daughter of a plot.”
Humbly, faintly humorously he said, “I haven’t tampered with her message.”
“No, no. A fiend in camouflage behind a human face he must be to quote lies from a daughter to her father. Hoelun has a strong mind. When I said my last to her and owed her truth, I named to her one major fault, for strength of mind can over-venture into fault.” He shook his head. “And this has happened, and she sends to her father thus.” In a moment, where he had been bewildered, Hulegu resolved into clear lines. “What I have not detected in Hoelun is triviality or erratic loyalties. These had I been sorry for. When my daughter changes her mind... that has weight.”
Next day he gave his verdict. “My daughter (always my daughter) is in-between tribes: wept out of us, nor yet feted into them. From a boy Tchiledu has come to us yearly and we are fond of him. It is not us, Marshal Yesugei, who have taken from him what I gave him. On Tchiledu my heart is uneasy, but my daughter no more belongs to Olqunot. We have wept her away. I am nought beyond a noyon and do not calculate the interests of chiefs and of kings – that is for you. For me, I acknowledge Tangr; we are in his hands, and his hand is in this. We know not: Tangr knows.”
With this surrender to the ways of God, she was his. It had certainly been the most inspired idea of his life, to seize her, when he saw her.
They dedicated the day to a carousal, fueled by a huge cauldron and spirits-of-milk. Gratitude obliged Yesugei to dive head first into the distilled milk and he didn’t disappoint. Jagan, Toroqol and Aktagh felt a duty not to leave their captain to drink alone, no more than fight alone. Yesugei essayed to seduce her mother, which is the done thing, and besides she wasn’t half bad, if she were a hint of Hoelun in her ripe age with him. He blathered about his luck. Hulegu didn’t suffer him to be the only gift-giver: for Yesugei there was an eagle, a superb bird the size of his torso, and for Bartan a treasure, a brooch for his hat, a bull in bluestone and silver with walrus-ivory horns. By that night’s moon her dad, his dicky knees strapped up to stand at ease in his stirrups, led them on a mad gallop for sheer spirits, milk or their own. No-one got hurt.

Bartan lived in and between the gers of his sister Tamsag and an under-wife of his, who at the age of sixty people hadn’t forgotten to call Abaghai Ghoa, the Beauty. These grand dames – Tamsag a daughter of Khabul Khan, Abaghai of his ally the Falcon Chief – were at the turret of the tribal aristocracy. Like stallions, their hair had never been cut; by means of a wood frame, grease and copper clamps they created huge spiral horns of hair at the sides of their heads in mimicry of mountain argali rams, an old-fashioned coiffure with a stately, untamed effect. They wore short jackets of silk ribbon in stripes, like the bridge in the sky. Hoelun paid them their due of deference and found them quite free from airs. They had enjoyed their lives and ended up jolly. They yarned for hours; at water they liked to fish, a queer sort of sport to most on the steppe, acquired by the Falcon Chief while a prisoner of the Oirat. They didn’t bother their heads much about Hoelun. In anticipation, however, of her enstatement as Yesugei’s lady, they took her to visit a neighbour’s hattery and pick out a hat. The neighbour had a dozen in use and several under construction, amid braid and cockades, nets and aigrettes. Hoelun went for a simple forget-me-not blue spire, of light but sturdy bark, which she undertook to elaborate upon.
She had lost Tchiledu’s hat.
She sat with Yesugei’s beside her, and no hat on. The wifely high hat: which was she a wife to?
No-one she talked to in camp neglected to insert a testimonial to Yesugei. The head shepherd Jaraqa battered her ear on the theme for upwards of four hours, under the guise of a tour of the flocks. The camp captain Ubashi, though shy with her, managed to convey a great deal of information on how he earnt his honours. Bartan, the other Hero in the camp, did not defend his son’s actions to her. In fact she suspected him to be unhappy with them, although he gave slight indication of that either. But he commended Yesugei at the expense of heroes in general. “Baghaturs make bad chiefs, notoriously. Now and then the twain can meet. Yesugei was never flamboyant for the sake of flamboyance. Even what got him cried, see, was a grim need-to-do, whereas to your straight-up baghatur, the more gratuitous the feat the better. Yesugei doesn’t muck about, and there’s the chief in him.”
It was unusual for four brothers to live together with their father – throughout the year, as she learnt they did. On this she questioned Mengetu. In answer he assured her she didn’t have to always if she didn’t want to. “Whenever we feel the need of elbow-room, us brothers or a wife, we take ourselves off to be ourselves. A week or a month, a summer or a winter. Me and mine have. What’s space for, but to put between people?”
As a matter of fact the marshal’s wife mightn’t find herself thus free, but she didn’t say so. “I was simply curious. Big congregations are less efficient.”
“We enjoy a congregation, and can afford a little inefficiency. We’re the wolf family who hang together while they can squeeze in around the feast. Until they tread on each other’s toes, soon or late. Happens late, in a harmonious family.”
“Even if they do not chafe, there is an urge for independence, that tends to strike at the age of independence.”
“There is. But at the time I came of age, and Noikon and Yesugei after me, there was our grandfather. Unity was in the air.”
Khabul Khan, renowned as a drunk and a clown, also as a visionary: before him the name Mongol wasn’t much in use, only the names of tribes.
The second brother Noikon was one of those of whom people say a straightforward soul or like a child in the world. And that description dangerously encroached on how she had to describe Yesugei... from the anecdotes they told her. Once and twice and three times, in the anecdotes, he staked his cause, his friends, his life on people’s scruples. Not people he had an opportunity to judge, or who had a duty to him, but the neutral and unknown. These incidents were stressed, as characteristic of him, as his quirk, as why they liked him.
Naivety?
The naivety of a man without a flyspeck of knavery himself. On the steppe the sky is a vast transparent blue, unfogged by sea. A Mongol is as honest as the sky is blue, Mongols like to say. No doubt what she saw as a fault was enmeshed with his attractions; the proof was in his nokod; more than skill in captaincy and freehandedness with spoils went towards the cult. They came from twenty different tribes and they chose him on his worth.
But his worth wasn’t the argument for her. She wasn’t a free warrior, to bestow her loyalty – she was Tchiledu’s wife, and wives don’t transfer, whomever they meet, or they are indecent. Did she have a fate here? Did she need to believe she had a fate? To feel drawn to Yesugei, to feel – yes – even a physical draw: either she was a deeply indecent woman, or else she had a fate.
In songs were women like her, women uncertain of whose hat to wear. Kidnapped women were a common theme for songs. One went around like a wheel in her head. One of those crux-songs: no narrative, or very little, to tell you how the situation came about; an abrupt beginning, and terse conclusion – only the agony.

His head is forfeit, fair game for my clan: 
If he comes, they have means to meet him. 
Otherwise is it with us.
Wolf dwells on an island, I alone on an isle. 
Strong is his sanctuary, circled by marsh; 
They stake it out, thirsty for slaughter. 
If he comes, they have means to meet him.
Otherwise is it with us.
My spirit wandered far away with Wolf, 
When it rained into the river and I sat to weep, 
When the greedy eagle glutted on his catch – 
Though I hungered for that, I hated it too.
Wolf, my Wolf, my yearning for you 
Is what wastes me away, the rare sight of you, 
Heart’s misery, not how they famish me.
Do you hear, husband? Our unhappy whelp 
Will be prey for the wolf in the woods. 
It is easy to tear what was never together: 
The tale of our love, untold.

Obscure, a segment from an epic in close focus; she didn’t know the story of this disputed woman, who at least felt like a prisoner. But they always do. It’s always a self-conflict, a log-jam of claims or of loves; two courses, both strongly felt, neither of them altogether right nor altogether wrong; often violence erupts at the end, often chests lost grip on the uproar of hearts. Tragedy. With Yesugei away her thoughts were grim. Feuds and affairs of honour: she didn’t want to wind up in a song. She had no idea whether the woman, in the last lines, were about to kill her child, or what; she didn’t want to know. Now, there needn’t be a tragedy, let’s be sensible. That didn’t often work.
When Yesugei rode into sight with a great eagle she recognised on a cantle-perch and his three nokors in laughter beside him, she knew who her husband was.
Bartan Ba’atur took her on his arm to the great tent, kissed the sides of her face, also kissed the sides of Yesugei’s, which cheered Yesugei up. Bartan wore his bull brooch from Hulegu and she wore her new blue hat.
So Yesugei and she were shut into the tent. Even his door guard Qongdaqor, who lived on the threshold (wife and child in a ger nearby) slept on the outside tonight. The hearth fire flickered tigerishly in his wide green eyes, intent on her, and on his tassels of hair, very like the fire. Until Hoelun said, “Your eyes belong to a stalking cat. You are my husband; you don’t have to stalk me.”
He rose to his feet as if with fury, although far from furious. The night through they lay by the hearth in the firelight. He was nearly thirty and knew what he was about. After him he went on with deft fingers. “Do I disturb you?” Yes, but she hid rapture in his shoulder.
About the cat’s eyes she asked. Bartan was tawny-headed like a lion and the whole clan had eyes in shades of slate, greys or greens. In answer she heard a legend about impregnation by beams of light, a tale she met archly. “Simpler days, yet is it incumbent on a woman to deny she loves her slave.”
“You don’t suggest I have a liar for an ancestor, Hoelun?”
“I do not. I make no comment. Whoever he was, the stranger from the Happy Kings, I know he was a great big galumph. Maybe he was a giant. The giants live up north a way and likely they trade furs. Merqot call their big ones Giant – like Tchiledu...”
“Now, are you fair to mention Tchiledu? Aren’t I taller than him?”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Do you come above my high hat?” She stood up against him to measure him. He pulled out the pins of her high hat and took her head into his hands. But Qongdaqor at the door interrupted with a guest and Hoelun was caught in chase of her hat.
How enormously selfish was she, to tease Yesugei with mention of his rival? Her lack of sorrow for Tchiledu must come back to haunt her. There must be such a thing as nemesis, apart from mortal feud. But she was happy.
Within days they upped tents. Bartan was in a fidget to be at the hur altai, the meet of the tribes. Scant else happened in his head other than the foul death of Ambaghai, once past the distraction of a wife for Yesugei.

2. One People
Joyously they lifted him on the white felt for a throne and danced a ring around the King Tree of Qorqonag, until they wore a furrow to their ribs, until they dug a trench up to their knees.
The Secret History of the Mongols, passage 57
It was the fat time of year: the waterside meadows that pitch of green that screams at the eye; the foals lusciously at suck, and pinched from their mother’s teats, ayrag galore – ayrag that buzzes on the tongue like a bee, caresses the throat like a kiss, floats in the belly like a wafted balloon – frothy and fizzy, tart and sweet, churned, fermented, a sort of yoghurt-beer. Ayrag for an inner glow and an outer burst of robust health, ayrag to keep you hale and hearty into old age.
The old had come early. They had less to do, and possibly more pressure of thought in their heads. Together they sat, physiognomies familiar for a half a century, now with an element unknown – unknown, but in common. So Bartan saw and understood them. He had meant to enjoy his grandchildren, and a reminiscent natter; he had hung up his quiver with his trophies on the wall; he had aspired to slip off in his sleep, and not for years yet. Idylls of old age had been abandoned.
On the principal question to be decided by the meet – choice of a khan – few of the old seemed to have a strong opinion. Bartan had none, but important to him was a nearby matter, on which he spoke wherever he sat with groups in discussion. Every time he gave his speech almost word-for-word, for he had boiled it, shaped it, hardened it and oiled it, like the leather armour on his back. And the grey-tailed gentlemen who listened were in harness. “When Khabul Khan like a grand old tree crashed to earth, we besought him tell us in whose hands he wished to leave his people. We said, you have seven sons, you have distinguished nephews and cousins; among these the khan has the ability to judge. Khabul answered, he inclined to entrust his people to Ambaghai, son of his cousin Bilga the General; him he judged most fit. Did not Ambaghai know (though in his hour we were not there, but only my brother Oikon to go with him to the grave) his is the voice we need to hear when we determine the most fit? He knew, and he contrived to smuggle a message to us. Yet this message of his is found to be equivocal. It was to be delivered to Cutula and to Attai, and he suggests his listener for khan. When you are khan, he says, to Cutula, and again to Attai.
“Why does Ambaghai equivocate with us? When a judgement was called for, did he stay undecided? I never knew him to. No, he was not hard-put to give to us one name, he can weigh the claims of different men. He gave us two – and haunts us with the old ghost of factions. Factions, and Khabul Khan but ten years in his tomb? He is not scared of factions. The Mongol tribes are a people. It is what Khabul Khan stood for. And Ambaghai wishes us to use the muscles of our unity, and feel for ourselves how strong they are. That ghost he dares invoke, that we may see it laid, here, when we choose a khan in the Qorqonag Meadows.”
His speech didn’t go unchallenged. A Jajirat with half a nose but a huge scar – a face that disarmed Bartan, that had earnt the right – said to him, “One of these names is your own brother, ba’atur. A brother has an interest, that’s scored into the bone. Two’s a party interest. Three’s a faction. Factions, yes; we here are old enough to remember, and beware.”
“In that case Khabul’s sons can’t make up a faction, since Zhongdu. There aren’t three of us alive. I’ll be at the gates before impious hands take down those relics from their wooden donkey. From their hill of perverted cruelty I’ll fetch those relics home to Holy Old Haldun, our Sacrosanct Mountain. Or I’ll join their spirits at the hearths of our fathers, where there is virtue, where there is honour, where a man can be glad he has lived.”
The Jajirat heard him with a faint light in the eye. “Gates of Zhongdu? You must be sixty. Hu-sha-hu was thirty years ago, and you weren’t wet behind the ears.”
“Thereabouts.”
“I’m sixty-six. I have my date fixed because my name’s Heavenly Hair, after the comet. I’ve hung on, with half my nose; and obviously to me now, I was sent, at the end of my career, to strike cosmic fear and awe into the Tartars.” His scar crawled to the side – clarified by his eyes as a smile. “I’ll see you there.”
On the eighth and ninth of the moon the young converged on Qorqonag Meadows in thousands and tens of thousands. The weather of minds, the atmosphere, stayed clear and constant, didn’t change for mass of people or for giddy youth. No-one had come here to squabble, they came to pick a man to lead them into war. They had met in summer, to go to war in winter – not on Tartary first and China next, but in a double front on both. No-one questioned that. Least Bartan, who believed in the justice of the cause. Tangr determines wars.
At ascent of the moon on the ninth, the actual start-time of the hur altai, the rival claimants rode in. They rode in side by side with their bands jointly, indiscriminately behind them. It captured the general mood, caught and flew the mood like a hawk to the sky. Along their way through the willow trees folk turned to see them and loosed shouts of sudden inspiration, shouts of one people, one people. One under God, for Khabul. Though beforehand there had been preferences, in that moment both were loved; the task of choice was felt to be a mean thing.
Three winters away on China patrol hadn’t shrunk Bartan’s brother. Cutula spilt over his horse like a saggy ger without its trellis dumped on a two-wheel cart, like a bear blown up with autumn honey straddling a sheep. God made the Borjigin big, but Cutula must be the biggest they got. On sighting Bartan he roared with the face and the voice of a sunshiny storm. He had a battle-stunt whereby he hugged his foes to death; on this score Bartan fended off his arms, content with a clout between the shoulderblades.
Attai Taiji and Cutula pitched next together on the bank of the Onon Gol, one of the three rivers that wind down from the Sacred Mountains and describe where the Mongols live: Tola curls on the west, Onon drives to the north, Kherlen slants easterly. These were the Mongols’ northernmost grounds, that belonged to Tayichiut, Ambaghai’s tribe, and Attai’s. Ambaghai had nominated one of his ten sons – not the first in fortune’s order. Fortune doesn’t send your sons to you in order of utility, to spare a father heartache; though his love be equal a man can and must judge the talents of his sons. Age has weight, age is experience; the aghaship goes on age, but not other office. Khabul, had he been of a selfish, clannish make, could have spoke his first son Oikon, or his second Bartan. Instead he set a tradition of the man most fit for the job. I am no khan, Bartan laughed, I am moody, I am nostalgic, if left be I can brood the day away. Cutula? Not at thirty, no, not against Ambaghai. But at forty he has a tighter organisation inside the head, and he has lost none of his gusto... the famous Borjigin gusto, which boils down to the fact, or rumour, he can eat a grown sheep at a sit and drink to make his father blink. The latter was quite true, the sheep three-quarters true, and regretted. Or else Attai Taiji (taiji, a Turk ornament to the name, in vogue). Young as he was he had made a splash in battle – a splash of Chinese, always most popular – and he cut a figure, he had romance. There he sat under his fantastic standard of a tiger’s tail wound about a copper pole, in a ruby satin hat, his forelock grown almost to his lip, to be tossed from his eyes like a stallion. Women and boys wouldn’t go past him, the vast majority of both enamoured of him. Cutula had homely features and grungy sheepskin and enamoured only his trusty wife Galut – but he had the size of a myth. Romance or myth? The physical was a factor, people like a leader to stand out. Bartan overheard: “I tell you what, with the choice between Cutula and Attai, to lift up on a white felt and dance with him – what do you reckon?”
“Cutula, definitely. Like, you can’t turn down the challenge.”
“Won’t be pretty.” 
He hoped they didn’t choose for sake of the challenge of Cutula and a rug... but they might. If Borjigin threatened to become a kingly clan, to Ulun Ghoa’s prophecy, that was because they stood out. It wasn’t coincidence: most Borjigin were normal Mongol, by now, but Khabul had been a spectacular throwback and his after him. Widely through the world you see blow-in strangers adopted as kings, being different or being God’s gift; and Qatat’s royal clan were begotten by light, shortly before us. Who are we? Are we Rus, or are they too recent? Are we Scyth, or are they too remote? The Oosoon were pigmented like us, in the Huns’ day. We’re Mongols. Our friends Uriangqot are here, sloe-eyed and thin as splinters. Physical type doesn’t matter – that was Ulun Ghoa’s lesson too.
For a few heady weeks of the year the steppe in a binge throws out a wilderness of flowers that tangle your hooves and confuse your horse. At dusk Bartan strolled in a meadow of anemones with Cutula and Galut.
Jurchen China had invented a death for exclusive use upon steppe people: a hurdle in satire of a horse that they affixed you to by nails through the thighs, set up on a hill exposed to the weather, without garments, for on the steppe people are proud of how hardy they are to the elements. The hurdle has a donkey-head and tail from their theatres, and is called the wooden donkey. Blood loss and cold kills you within a few days. The corpses aren’t removed. This is done in a district of the city. People come to watch.
The brothers muttered to each other that they were glad, they were proud Oikon had been there with Ambaghai. Cutula observed, “It’s a chancy thing, to mock. You try for contempt, and contempt blows back in your face.”
“I hear Ambaghai sat indifferent to them, his eyes on the horizon. Oikon sang.”
“They were faced towards north – did you know?”
“Were they?” He gleamed, almost smiled. “Why?”
“Ignorance? Our saints in the sky.”
“Mockery. Ride home if you can.”
“Mockery.” Cutula nodded. “Like I said. In your face.” 
Meanwhile Galut wept, on their behalf. Also she pulled them back to the here and now, the daily and mundane, and consulted Bartan in the outfitting of her husband. “I thought, with eyes on him so, he might have me sew up a new suit of clothes for him.”
“A new suit of clothes?” blustered Cutula. “You can sew me new clothes in the winter and bless you. I don’t go into the year’s clothes early, for eyes. And consider, Galut.” Much quieter. “They’d say I’m on the scent.”
“You are on the nose,” she told him promptly.
Bartan, left the family umpire, on age, said that skins from one’s own sheep can never be undignified... and Cutula didn’t want to turn this into a beauty contest.

In a big glade of the willow growth at dawn they gathered for a memorial, or funeral for the absent. It was kept very simple. First Ambaghai’s message was heard, through his Besut who had escaped from under the very shadow of the Wall, no easy matter and not without incident, Bartan believed. This Besut hadn’t been a wedding-guest, he had gone along to lead the string of spare mounts; he was black-boned – of obscure ancestry – or black-headed, that is a man with his hair in its native state who doesn’t wear a hat. Besut were a slave tribe of Tayichiut. As punishment for his services he had been stood up on a rock amid a sea of the noblest hats, with instructions to use his tongue. The man failed miserably at first.
Into the silence of stage-fright a voice shouted out, with a verve meant to be infectious, smacking the lips over the syllables. “Balaqachi Baghatur.”
The moot shout. You’re only allowed to shout the once. But he got a second, and a third distinct, and after that he got a bawl. Maybe sentiment crept in – Bartan hadn’t heard about an actual tally of the slain – but he had brought them Ambaghai’s last words. Now Attai leapt onto the rock, and in the gift that comes most straight and sincere from the heart, clothes instinct with the odour of the giver (an intimacy, a brotherhood) he draped on Balaqachi’s shoulders his own gilt coat. Aristocracy, ancestry? Not there lies pride, for a Mongol. Shout him a hero, and he’ll thrill to the shout for his life. Enheroed, and with Attai’s hand on his newly-splendid shoulder, Balaqachi heaved in air and spoke strong enough.
“This was I to convey to Cutula son of Khabul and to Attai son of Ambaghai: My daughter and I went amongst the Tartars to her wedding and were seized. I am about to go behind the Wall. Don’t commit my mistake, when you are chief over chiefs, khan of our people. Until your five nails are torn off, until your ten fingers worn down, strive after my hachi.”
Hachi means that which is owed, or felt due. It can mean an act of humanity. It can mean vengeance. It meant justice.
His message was new to no-one there. Yet it had a terrific effect, heard together, direct from the mouth of his last contact with them. Undemonstrative men groaned, and stamped, and caught each other’s eye begging for a throat to slit. Bartan, blooded forty years ago and tough as an old boot, because he could not stand it, fumbled out a knife, turned down his fur cuffs to his fingers’ ends, and unseen gashed his hand.
Possessions of Ambaghai’s such as he might be interred with were laid on the rock. People hung their belts about their necks, removed hats and circled nine times. They left locks of white hair at the foot of the rock or flowers, coins or amulets or other little treasures, or a trickle of blood.

To be out of the way, Attai and Cutula began to study maps in a shut tent, ahead of the campaign.
People either liked the fact that Cutula had twenty years on Attai, or else they thought Attai had the cut of his father. There the wheels ground to a halt. “You’re entitled to your opinion,” said Heavenly Hair the Jajirat. “I’m entitled to mine. What do we do next?”
“Argue,” a friend of his told him.
Heavenly Hair crossed his arms. “I can fight you. I can’t argue with you. Haven’t had an argument in my life. If it’s not worth a feud, it’s not worth a loud voice.”
“Debate, then.”
“Debate what? You’re entitled to your opinion. I have no desire to change your mind.”
“You stubborn git. We can sit here side by side and opine our own opinions. That doesn’t get us a khan.”
“No, but it’s very nomad. And even more Mongol. What is a Mongol? – as my comrade’s old dad used to ask.” His comrade Bartan. “As free as the geese in the air, as in unison. Geese don’t argue. Only over she-geese, and I’m past that.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No, I’m not, either. Thanks be to ayrag. Liberty and loyalty, said my comrade’s old dad: learn from the geese, they can go together. They belong together. The flights of the geese promise us we don’t give up independence, to unite. Fine hand with an instructive simile, the old chief.”
Yes, he had been. What is a Mongol? Khabul rustled up answers to suit. The one dearest to him was the shortest: what is a Mongol? Loyal. Mongols were an invention of his, largely. And of themselves, for the habit had grown general, to ask and answer the question.
What is a khan? Not Mongol but steppe, antique steppe, Khabul the first Mongol to take the title. Before him they had elected temporary over-chiefs in time of war, Qaidu the lion of these, who had lived and led them in desperate times. Times that taught them, at last, Ulun Ghoa’s lesson: disunity is fatal. A permanent king, to be a symbol and guarantor of unity. Strong peoples have kings. It is a truth.
“The tribes of Israel clamoured for a king. Quoth Jehovah, Have I not been sufficient unto you? Other nations have kings, said the people, and we need to be strong against our enemies. Quoth Jehovah, Set a king above you and he’ll conscript your sons to run before his chariot, your daughters to bake his bread and perfume him; he’ll tithe your flocks, your olive groves, your orchards to pay the expenses of his court; you’ll find yourselves his slaves. On that day, because of the king you have got you, you shall cry out, but Jehovah will not hear.”
Bartan had a crony who had spent years among the Turks and gone half-Christian. “What was the upshot?”
“In short? God lost the argument, and through his prophets anointed kings. David, a hero-king, won the tribes’ war of liberation; King Solomon the Wise enriched and enlightened his people. After them the tale drops off. There’s a sad parade.”
“What Jehovah said of kings?”
“Too often true.”
Bartan harumphed. “We aren’t the tribes of Israel.”
“No indeed. – I dare be sworn your brother’s proof against magnificence. If magnificence hit your brother over the head, he’d blink about him and go back to scratch his fleas. Fat fleas, who scamper to hide in his creases.”
“Your vote’s his, then?”
“It’s why we love him. Seriously, Attai’s there for sentiment, isn’t he?”
An aged Tayichiut put a suggestion. “We go out to the horses and pluck a tail hair: for Cutula a light hair, for Attai a dark. We tie the hairs in bunches and the bunches’ size tells the mind of the people. That’s Qatat.” He went on, “Qatat have traditions alike to ours. They are known egalitarian. Chiefs of the eight tribes voted in an over-chief for a term of three years; at end of term he stepped down for a new vote.”
“Until one of them stopped the stepping down. When he hadn’t stepped down for three terms and disgruntlement grew severe, he invited the seven other chiefs to his joint for an election and had them murdered.”
“This is so. But I talk of Qatat traditions.”
People weren’t content. “Two bunches of hair tell us we are of divided mind. A majority isn’t a unity.”
“How can we have a unity?”
“How can we not? Say Attai wins by a hair. First mistake he makes, we’ll have the Cutula I-told-you-sos.”
“Doesn’t seem fair on either of them. Our man deserves to know he has our support, not fifty-one per cent thereof.”
Thought continued. “A contest between them? For an outcome out of our hands, past dispute.”
“A duel? Lovely. Maybe on games day.”
“No, of course not a duel.”
“Rhyme and riddles, then? Or hit your target through your knees?”
“It’s Attai for hit-your-target, or any acrobatics, and he’d ravish hearts while he’s about. But it’s Cutula for pop heads off with your hands.”
“Can we get away from amusements? Here’s an amusement more seemly, from the Turks. When kings meet on affairs of state, they have a bilig contest as a gracious after-dinner pastime: which of them can spout most wisdoms. A bit like a flyte, only not insults. Wisdoms, the sport of kings.”
“Even wisdoms. I can quote old saws til the cows come home. Doesn’t make me material.”
A Noyojin said, “Duel is verdict-by-God. He’s onto an idea, ah –?”
“Natti.”
“Natti’s onto an idea, with his contests. Which are never just skill, but judgement of fortune or fate. We won’t put our trust in a violent verdict-by-God, nor trial by athletics neither. But can’t we have an oracle?”
“An oracle?”
“You’d never get I-told-you-so.”
“An oracle means no-one’s disagreed. An oracle means we can’t be wrong.”
“I like an oracle. It’s respect towards him for whom we’re here. His voice, and let the rest be God’s.”
“The geese fly on instinct,” said Heavenly Hair, “in perfect symmetry. It’s an ideal, but beyond us. Nearest we get might be listen to God.”
Bartan came across Mengetu, squeezed in beside him and murmured, “It’s true, for an image of oneness, Tangr has to be the ultimate. Perhaps I am a hard-to-satisfy quibbler. It is right for us to contemplate Tangr and emulate him on the earth. I do not know that it is right to ask of him utterance on an issue of this man or that... Don’t quote me, Mengetu, but I scent Christianity in this. It isn’t quite us.”
“These are high questions for me. But if you have religious scruples, father, I don’t doubt our bagchis are to tell them similarly.”
“The bagchis have more of a sense for these things than I do. The guardians of our religion.”
“Can’t be a ba’atur and a bagchi.”
“I don’t see why not, although one isn’t often. The method doesn’t matter; I am happy with either of our candidates, like most here.”
“Attai’s twenty. It does bother me.”
“Then he has fifty years in him. Imagine had we been blest with his father for fifty years. The lad’s more of a glamour, but that aside, he has the sensibility, the grace of his father. The spontaneous touches. He was exquisite with his coat.”
“You fancy Attai. Eh? Antics with the coat? Winning hearts?”
Bartan maintained his dignity. “I am neutral. Anyway, I’ve heard oracle at every fire.”
“Were you bitten by one of these damned dogs?”
Down he glanced at the twist of wool about his left hand, from that up into his son’s face. “I am my own mongrel dog.”
His first son flickered a frown, inquired, “Blood vows, father?”
“No. No. – What need?” he added slightly wildly. 
“We’ll give him his hachi, father.”
“That is hard to do. Justice, Mengetu, justice?” he cried. Dumbly he shook his head. “But he can have my blood.”

Bagchis were to ask by fire a sheep’s shoulderblade, tomorrow at time the sun and the moon were witness.
Cutula and Attai put away maps for the night and wound down over a game of fictive armies on a board. They had thrown their hats off, and Cutula the skins from his blubbery chest.
In flitted a girlish young thing with her hair up and pinned into a tall blue steeple of a hat: a triangle on a sphere, the moon and its shadow. Cutula had been introduced to the hat. “My nephew Yesugei’s new wife?”
“Yes, sir.”
As an uncle he didn’t need head-cover, but Attai snatched for his. “Can I help you, nephew’s wife?”
“Sir, my husband is at the ram’s consecration; I haven’t spoken to him. I have been in the tent of Orboi Queen. From her mouth, into the ear of Unegen Queen, I overheard an outrageous thing.”
Cutula got cumbersomely to his feet, to take a moment for digestion of such a statement. He stooped over his visitor. “Why, and do the widow queens whisper aught to do with me?” 
“I thought so, sir. Orboi said to Unegen: there are eight bagchis to examine the bone, Oliji from Uriangqot, Jizighlar from Ongirat, and six are Tayichiut. Leave matters to me. We won’t see Attai khan.”
Slowly Cutula swayed back on his heels. He felt sick and sad and weary at once. His head whipped to the side, and worse than any obscene oath, he spat into his hearthfire.
Attai had risen. Leaden and brusque, much unlike his usual, he told the woman, “Stay silent on this.”
She nodded to him, and retreated. Softly Cutula called after her, “You did right to come to us, Yesugei’s wife.” Alone with Attai he ventured, “It may be misheard.”
“Cutula. The queens hate me. They are jealous for their sons. I am a third wife’s son, and her dead. Her dead, and much suspected to have been Ambaghai’s lamb. And I. Why did he pour attention upon me? Not for my merits. This they teach my half-brothers Tarqutai and Todoyan. It is pity, in a great man’s surrounds. Oh, it is pity. It must not be known.”
“Don’t the silly bats want a Tayichiut khan?”
“That is hatred, Cutula.”
Cutula scratched the shaven crown of his head. “Can the Christian Devil himself hate you?”
“Hah,” he ejected, nearly gay. “I’m afraid.”
“To corrupt a bone interpretation... where do they think they are? The courts of China? Orboi, I tell you, she thinks she lives in the courts of China. We’re in the wild Willows of the Qorqonag, the barbarian north, thank God.”
“I do thank God, and have undamaged faith. Only in Orboi’s self-important brain. Our bagchis aren’t to be corrupted, not for her love nor money.”
“Why are there six Tayichiut?”
“We’re in Tayichiut. They are attuned to the spirits in the water and trees. They have invited two learned guests to participate.”
“Do you know the gentlemen? Yourself, Attai?”
“Yes. Esteemed seniors. None beneath seventy, and deep-versed in ceremonials. Not by any stretch to be thought ill of.”
“Then I don’t think ill of them. But at a hur altai, the hundred tribes in meet, I think we ought to be more intertribal.”
“Cutula, you cannot cast doubt.”
“I won’t cast doubt.”
“The oracle is scheduled for conjunction of the skies, the ram has gone the way of his fathers and the bagchis are doing what bagchis do. You and I can but wait to learn our fate. And for heaven’s sake, comrade, the result? – you and I don’t care.”
Cutula hadn’t finished with the argument. But there they had another interruption, on a gladder note, and Attai seized the opportunity to escape him. Their newest hero came by, tentatively, in Attai’s gilt coat – or not in, still under; he hadn’t had the effrontery to thrust his arms in the ornate sleeves. He asked to enter Attai’s service.
Attai took his hand. “Be companion to me. In the vicissitudes of life we have each other, our joys and our griefs jointly felt. – Excuse me, comrade. The nokod squad want to meet Balaqachi. He’s my first baghatur.”
Cutula squinted at him. “How about our game?”
“Oh, I had you beat.”

At rise of sun a ram’s scapula was scorched on a fire and the cracks scrutinised. They spelt out Cutula.
The Mongols danced him in, on a white felt rug for his throne. It wasn’t gainly, but was uproarious. Attai Taiji pulled a shoulder in the cause. In a quiet interstice Cutula spoke to a few major figures. “When I go, soon or late, of course, we revert to Ambaghai’s other nomination.”
Once they were done with the rug he led them on foot around the ancient, craggy, green-haired King of the Willows, who stood for vigorous life itself and zest. He made you want to dance, the old character in his summer hair. He shook his branches with them, people swore, and no wonder, for they poured ayrag on his strong old roots – ayrag for a twinkle in the eye until the day you go. Khabul had been a twinkle-toes himself.
For the remainder of the day he gave out Ambaghai’s treasury. It was traditional at an ascension, also before a war. Him with empty treasure chests is hungry. Starve a chief of funds: starve a tiger and send him out to hunt. It indicated he had an eye to Tartar treasuries, and a confident eye at that.
Next day was games days. Wrestling in the morning; Cutula was mad keen, and could be heard with Borjigin slogans and the licensed insults of sport as his nephew Buri laboured towards champion of the day. Noon, with its straight light, was for the exact science of archery (It’s an art. It’s a religion. No, wrestling’s the religion). Afternoon, races. Races were for the kids, lightweight, only there to steer, except for the last, twelve miles on untamed horses off the steppe – that was for whoever volunteered.
With these short celebrations they remembered what they were there for. Traders had zeroed in on the meet. They were of indeterminate affiliation, half-breeds or from way out west; Chinese keep shop, but it’s a tougher, rougher type that journeys out to barter on the steppe. Besides, Chinese disdain trade, trade’s for the vulgar or for foreigners. Why? It’s Confucius. Know your enemy, and Cutula took his research seriously, but often enough they came up against a baffler and then the answer was, it’s Confucius. It certainly is, said Cutula (often, but a decent line can stand re-use).
Metal? he asked the traders at their mart, tugging out his sword for what he meant. They shook their heads, and by gesticulation he understood blamed the government in China. “No contraband? Hidden compartments?” He eyed their carts in disappointment. Mongols don’t smelt metal, not on any scale – in contrast to the wonder-smiths, the Turks. China was aware, and to transport iron or iron ore over the border was the death and ruination of you, if caught... these days, with their cosy set of alignments, Tangut on-side and the Tartars their source of horses. China was in a pretty situation, these days.
Yet a few cocky Mongols had the idea the emperor paid them tribute, just because he sent annual loads of silk and had done since Khabul Khan and the vasty steppe gobbled up the infinite army of Hu-sha-hu. But you have to wrap your head around China. Bribery is ridiculously cheaper than a war effort. There’s a slippery concept – war is no effort to a nomad. The Chinese themselves termed these consignments neighbourly donations or other polite phrases. Very polite, the Chinese. In their fashion.
Never mind; there’d be a lot of salvage, a lot of re-use, with a sideline in scrounge. A blade’s none the worse for a history – rust is romantic. As a matter of fact the steppe is littered with weaponry, from flint to bone to copper to bronze to unlikely Indian steel. And found things are special, the chanced-upon, the happy accident, ours to purposes unknown; found things are tangrilar, whatever they are: dropped from the sky. Even if it’s a coin stamped Out of Beshbaligh. That’s not the point. We are in God’s hands. Heaven must find us metal, and half a chance. Cutula didn’t talk like that aloud.
He dispatched information-scroungers. Among these, Balaqachi, into the zone he had won through on his own – the zone of the Odds-and-Ends, the mercenary army, China’s outer guard of nomads, from the great breed of collaborators. Attai, butter-hearted, tried to get him off the hook, but Cutula requisitioned him, to achieve his feat over again. “We’ll make you sorry you’re a hero.”

3. To Avenge Ambaghai Khan
His shout cracked the ears like thunder in the mountains. His hands were the paws of a bear and could snap a strong man’s spine the way you snap an arrow. On winter nights he slept naked at the foot of a great tree on fire, and felt neither the sparks that spat out nor the branches that collapsed on him; when he woke he thought he had been nipped by fleas.
Rashid a-Din, Persian historian, on the tall tales of Cutula
And the bitter twist? China wasn’t, strictly, China. The north half of China, with which they had to do, was run by collaborators. Erstwhile barbarians, traitors who have abjured the tribal way of life (that cause, that is a cause, a cultural fight and quite conscious. Who wants to be Chinese? Koryo – Japan – Tangut, a state of civilized social climbers out of the very fiercely independent Tibet – almost the whole world on every side wants to be Chinese. Not us). Here was a different Wall, of more actual use and function and painstakingly maintained, behind which true China as seldom as possible fought a nomad. So what happens when a handy barbarian climbs onto the emperor’s throne? That was the big question, of shake-the-earth consequence to China and the steppe – the question Khabul had solicited an answer to when he pulled the emperor’s beard.
He wasn’t just drunk, Yesugei defended his grandfather’s behaviour to Hoelun. He had a reason, although the why and wherefore tends to drop out of the tale.
“Why did he pull the emperor’s beard?”
“To test whether it was glued on or grew out of his chin.”
“That is self-evidently as sober as a judge, and moved by a laudable spirit of inquiry.”
“You listen, my wife.” It starts with the Kingdom of Qatay. Qatay lies beyond Great Khingan Mountains; Tartary this side, on the far side Qatay; there is steppe, though with the sea air the Khingans block from us, the sea that evens out temperatures and slows the weather down; rainy steppe and mild. “Only by our standards, of course. Still crazy to a Chinese.”
“Over west, the other side of Altai Mountains, lies steppe smooth and lush; you lick the butter from the grass; the clouds dribble cream. The Huns said they had found Nirvana.”
“I don’t envy other people’s steppe. Tangr gave me steppe with teeth, because I’m up to it.”
“I am from desert steppe.”
“Leave out the steppe. Steppe’s where a horse can score a feed.” 
“You are astray.” 
China went through a time of turmoil, and the Qatat on their sea-blown steppe – a cautious, slow people, not rash – quietly grew strong. A general in mutiny – no true Chinese but a hired Turk – purchased their aid; they lent him fifty thousand troops and he took China’s throne. Briefly; one of a dozen usurpers of the age. But Qatat’s wages had been the corner of China they abutted on, with two cities, Tatung and Zhongdu, and they kept their wages. Under the House of Song China came together again, only without this north-east corner, a hole in their map. Song were obsessive about Lost or Alien China and tried and tried and tried again, but merely had to sign a worse and worse treaty. The Kingdom of Qatay lived richly on the damages paid by the Song. “And yet, Hoelun, at their height, these exactions amounted to the emperor’s income from a single city, and he counts his cities the way I count my sheep.”
On their side, Qatat – a cautious people – were content with what had been ceded to them, nor thought of conquests. Their kingdom, that included city and steppe, they were slow and sensible with; they had a Chinese government for the Chinese and a tribal government for the tribals; him at the head was both the Liao Emperor and the Iron Khan; folk lived by their different systems. Of course, Qatat changed, at least those interested to change. They took in science and scholarship, but not the Chinese evaluation of them. Their values were their own, for instance medicine was prized, the trades and crafts and practical sciences that China scorns. The steppe loves know-how, the technical: keep your effete calligraphers, give us an engineer. Their kingdom tried to be the best of both worlds. A hazardous course, but one they steered for two centuries, and they can’t be said to have succumbed on the cultural front. It was an achievement, the Kingdom of Qatay.
“Iron Khans dabbled in calligraphy.”
“There’s nothing wrong with calligraphy. It just doesn’t get you far.”
“Perhaps the finer points are lost on those who do not write.”
“No doubt the finer points are lost. Much else was lost, much hard to define in the round, easy to point the finger at in specifics. There’s the cultural front, and then there is another hazy front. Rot set in. Can you be the best of both worlds, Hoelun?”
“I do not know.”
“It was an experiment. But they grew unjust, which is where Jurchen come in.”
Song found themselves an ally to the rear of their foe, up in the forests and along the sea-coast, on the margins of Qatat’s steppe. In secret contacts by boat on the ocean they struck agreement for a joint attack. It is China’s historic strategy to set barbarians against barbarians: back a weak barbarian against a strong, back a far barbarian against a near. This was a wild people; even to Qatat they were the Wild Jurchen; the Song ambassadors met their King Akuta enthroned on twelve tigers’ skins and were entertained with dramas of the boar-hunt and of battle. Though they belonged to the kingdom, through two hundred years they had remained uncontaminated by culture from the south. “And, my wife, they fought as the savage fight, while Qatat were soft and half-civilized, and the upshot was what the upshot is.” Song were caught out by the usual upshot: the Jurchen revolt went so fast they didn’t have time to do their stipulated bit. By agreement the Song and the Jurchen were to have one of Qatat’s Chinese cities each. Song failed to seize their city, Zhongdu; they asked King Akuta for help; without too much trouble he obliged, and as per the agreement vacated his prize for the Song. On that note of strength and honour he went to his ancestors, and to the worship of his people, while there are Jurchen, which he earnt.
With the great man gone Song began to bicker about the line of the frontier. Shortly they infringed the treaty. They miscalculated: Akuta’s brother Arzat tore up the treaty, took Zhongdu a second time – for Jurchen – and after that took the Song capital and took prisoner the emperor and his heir. A new pact was negotiated. Now Alien China wasn’t the north corner but the north half.
It was Arzat who asked our khan to dinner in Zhongdu, along with other peoples’ khans. He had a Chinese name that hurt the tongue but his guests from the steppe were to call him Arzat, Anjuhu Khaghan, that is golden in Jurchen, for a holy river in his home. There were Tartar princes; the great Marquz Khan was there; the redoubtable Inanch as a boy at the side of his father; even the Idiqut of Uighur.
Khabul spoke of Akuta to his brother. “Fifteen years ago the Iron Khan in his yearly rounds came to celebrate First Fish Feast with his river tribes. The custom was for his under-kings and chieftains to offer him first catch and dance for him. One by one they laid fish at his feet and danced, until your brother’s turn, but he did not get up to dance. They gave him three chances; three times he refused; whereupon the Iron Khan flew into a rage and told his soldiers to swipe off his head on the spot. A member of his suite saved your brother’s life, coaxed him to retract his order; the disgruntled chief was beneath his notice, an object of scorn but not of fear. What Akuta meant by his no-dance demonstration was to draw attention to his people’s grievances – grievances they had often forwarded to court without result. These grievances were four. First, that the sea-eagles and gyrfalcons, the tribute that they paid, had become onerous and caused them hardship, since with recent wars they had to fight through hostile territory to the birds’ nest-grounds on the coast. Second, that when Jurchen came to town to trade the merchants abused their trust and ignorance to grossly cheat them. Third, that government officials, with frequency, flogged the clan heads who dealt with them, no matter though they be grandfatherly and frail. Fourth, and most egregious, that such officials, at their whim, detained Jurchen women for usage obscene. – From these grievances,” Khabul concluded, “we see the Age of Iron had grown unjust and corrupt and had learnt vices.”
“Thus we feast in the Age of Gold,” answered the Golden Khaghan. Very happy he was to hear this speech, as he sought to win them over from the old Iron. The last of the Iron Khans had wandered their steppe, reduced to barter his garments piece by piece for sheep to eat. Before the dinner he had been captured (to live out his life in company with the prisoner-emperors of Song) but the major, almost the only figure of Qatat’s fight-back, Ile Dashi, was still at liberty. Last known address on Orqon Gol, where Qatat had kept a remote outer station to watch the steppe – within Marquz Khan’s area. However, Marquz Khan had scarcely heard of him (Ile who?) nor had the least guess where he might be now. 
What he knew went into Khabul’s ear. Ile Dashi was an honest soldier who had tried hard to be loyal to the last Iron Khan, but the man’s ill-leadership defeated him. To start he had abandoned his court and his army and fled over the Khingans. In his absence court and army thought they had a right, as they had the need, to elect another king; they chose his uncle, whom he had left in charge of the defence. A hard year later, when his aunt, now the widow-queen, with Ile Dashi, led their Emaciated Army to join the fugitive, he punished her disloyalty with death. Then, too late, he imagined that his kingdom wasn’t lost, and concocted grandiose schemes and insisted on rash skirmishes. In the end Ile Dashi left him to the fate of his vainglory, and re-grouped, with tribal support, on the Orqon, Qatat’s last bastion. He hadn’t given up, but when Jurchen dispossessed Song of their capital he acknowledged the realities and took his remnants west.
“You liked him?” Khabul asked his neighbour khan.
“Yes, he was a memory of Qatay as Qatay once was... and I had certain loyalties myself.” 
On these questions – whose side they had espoused in the revolt, or the whereabouts of Ile Dashi – the Golden Khaghan didn’t impolitely push them, if only they transferred their loyalties to him. They had gone so far as to dance for him. The Idiqut of Uighur (famous for dance) twirled ribbons with a tranquil grace; Khabul kicked up his heels and slapped them. To dance is no indignity: the idea is an exhibit of your culture, like the articles you bring, your people’s yield and wares. A khaghan, a khan-of-khans, is danced to, but an emperor’s equivalent is abasement.
Which species had asked them to dinner? Which sat on the throne of the north half of China: a khaghan or an emperor? Khabul, who had a comic’s license, volunteered to find out on behalf of the dinner guests from the north. He began with Arzat’s companions, most of whom had been Akuta’s. “Five years in China,” he said to them, “and you haven’t untied your pig’s tails. I have to call you steadfast.”
This was rowdy jest; slightly bruised, they told him the pig’s tail had come down from their mother sow.
“It’s always the hair. With the Turks China had a phrase: to untie the tresses. That’s when a barbarian converts to civilization and an honest Turk becomes a bastard Chinese. Isn’t that what they used to say in your heyday, Idiqut?”
The Idiqut, whose heyday was three centuries ago, half-closed his eyes and curled up his lips, like the idol of his kingly title.
“Now, I’ve never seen a Jurchen with a beard. Though I understand the Chinese take a yard of grey beard as a guarantee of sagacity. But Arzat, you must have started on yours in the days you sat on tigers’ skins for glory. Or have you entwined a horse’s tail into it?” There he leant across (the dinner was intimate, and he had a yard of arm) and gave the beard an experimental tug.
Hoelun laughed.
“See, you can’t help but laugh. His Jurchen companions laughed, that was the thing. His Chinese courtiers were shocked to their silken shoes, but the Golden Khaghan had to laugh along. To a Jurchen there is nothing remotely rude in a joke with a chief, even if he is jumped-up into an emperor.”
“But he changed his mind.”
“The courtiers changed his mind for him, behind the scenes (where courtiers work). They convinced him Khabul was a whipper-up of trouble, a rebel and a malcontent, and that he had profaned the emperor’s person. When he left Zhongdu, heaped up with gifts of silk, a squad went on his heels to do him a mischief. The squad were too clumsy for my grandfather, who ambushed their ambush; next year war was underway.
And what of the Golden Khaghan’s other guests from that banquet? A price was put on Marquz Khan’s head for loyalist sympathies and harbour of Ile Dashi; turned in by Tartars, he became the first to ride the wooden donkey. Subsequently the Idiqut aligned Uighur not to the east but to the west, in a league with Ile Dashi’s new state of Black Qatat. His Tartar friends still visit. But the dinners aren’t intimate, and they do not dance. They lie flat in abasement on his floor.” Yesugei left a moment’s silence. “That is why we hate them and despise them, the Jurchen and the Tartars, who both, as my grandfather said, are bastards, and that is why I go eagerly to war. And you, wife?”
“I drive your wagon eagerly to war, but there are times I wish I were your captain of clan group in arms and not your wife.”
“I don’t have those times,” he said.
“You know who I am named after? A Qatat queen’s sister who campaigned on the steppe – the one who put that outer station on the Orqon. Do women often fight in Kiyat?”
“Never been heard of,” he said.
“Your Aunt Tamsag gutted an Oirat the way she guts a trout. I have heard her recount the tale.”
“Fantasy,” he said. “The old dear.”

Hoelun’s needlework had to do with fish, strange on Yesugei’s walls. The needle wasn’t her best instrument, either, and she’d have stowed her samplers in the bottom of her chests, but he displayed them. 
Acquaintance with her new tribe had she none, taught for a life in Merqot, not in Kiyat. She had to ask questions. Yesugei’s cast-off slave love was a sensitive matter to ask questions on.
“She isn’t in your tents, Yesugei?”
“No. She is in the tents of Arash, now.”
This seemed to be clear, to him. “It is equivalent to divorce?” A casual equivalent, for slaves.
Yesugei stopped a moment, and then stated the obvious (to him). “As she is in his tents, I have, of course, no rights in her. I won’t violate the rights of my own nokor – he’d have to come to me and complain, and I’d have to throw me under the axe. In that, like a divorce has happened, yes.”
Whether he had rights hadn’t been her question. But he answered humorously against embarrassment or discomfort, although answered fully because he understood her difficulty, her ignorance of Kiyat. Ongirat, who aren’t militant, own no slaves.
Yesugei’s staff were slaves. Not Jangsiut, the tribe in enslavement that fought alongside Kiyat, to be distinguished by their grown-out hair. His staff were individual captives, their great-great grandfathers captured by his great-great grandfather. In behaviour towards and from these she saw no difference to the free; Yegei Qongdaqor wore a hat, a velvet hat, which can’t be quite correct. Correct is for neat theory, not for day-to-day.
Mongols are known, to their neighbours, as on the extreme side of strict, in sex. Not that Turks aren’t true to wedlock, for example, but Mongols peculiarly. Adulterers – rare and monstrous creatures who go under the axe. But what is adultery, and isn’t? Slaves aren’t exempt: when you capture a woman in war you are not free of her if she has husband alive. That is adultery. Captive wives can never be so used, unless and until the wife is known a widow.
What about Yesugei? What about her?
Yesugei had done Tchiledu great, great insult. Continued to do, to treat him as if he didn’t exist. (Had he put Tchiledu out of existence life might have been simpler. He hadn’t.) It was one of those sanctioned transgressions, one of those inconsistencies. Similarly, a horse-thief is more foul than a murderer, a horse raid a glory and a theme for song. Seizure of women is a grey area. So, Hoelun found out, are slave loves; and if, when she saw Goagchin with her pet white goats trotting at her heels, a curiosity pricked her and a sympathy, weren’t they akin? At times, still, she felt unchaste. Goats? She knew nothing about Goagchin, beyond the goats; perhaps she saw too much in them, but a goat is the least of the five domestic animals, almost scorned, and with an ill, nearly a wicked temperament. For Goagchin to trail about camp with her silky, pampered goats, dressed in a style that wasn’t decent to Hoelun’s Ongirat eyes, but that caught eyes... she felt sorry for her.
That went for Bagtor too. Goagchin and her goats she always thought to approach, never did; but when she came across the five-year-old boy, slouching and scowling on his own, in earshot of the gang of camp children, she wasn’t timid. One day she walked into a stone battle between Bagtor, behind the wheel of a wagon, and three little demons about his age, whom she told off thoroughly. This she saw as a serious incident, and though she didn’t quite like to acquaint Yesugei, she had in the children’s captain to talk to: the head shepherd’s son, a lad of eleven with a round, open face and the scars of captaincy upon him, grazes and dung smears and hair they may have to shave off, whether he were noble or not. A far cry from Bagtor, stiffly squeezed into a cute silk suit. If I have children, thought Hoelun, I’ll have grubby scamps, with grins on. Where was Yesugei’s hand in this? A father doesn’t interfere, a lot; he defers to the mother, and doesn’t have unseemly disagreements on how to rear a child.
The gang captain hung his head, admitted he knew such things went on and that they were wrong. Why do they go on? she asked him. Why do the children pick on Bagtor? “It surely isn’t that he is the marshal’s son.”
“It isn’t. Or wouldn’t be, if he didn’t tell the kids he’s going to flog them out of camp when he’s in his father’s stead.”
“Monglig,” she hazarded, “maybe you were a duffer once or twice when you were only five.”
“Maybe I still am,” he grinned cheerily.
“I suspect we have before us a vicious circle. You have seen how a vicious circle works?”
“Oh yes.” Old acquaintances.
“What a vicious circle needs is a stout and sturdy person to put his foot into the spokes. I hope that person might be you.”
“Mistress,” he said. They didn’t often call her mistress, or call the master master in direct speech, Yesugei’s staff. “I promise to stick my foot in, with my kids. Only...”
“You see a problem. Tell me.”
“He’s not allowed to associate with me.”
“He’s not allowed?”
“He’s to stay away from me and my gang, his mother tells him. That’s why he’s mean to us, and my kids get provoked.”
The vicious circle had hoops. She had seen an astrolabe once, out of the Kingdom of Qatay, but they had failed to conquer its intricacies. “Has there been trouble, that he is to stay away from your gang?”
“I try not to lead my kids into trouble. I try to lead them to be intrepid and generous of spirit, like Yesugei leads his.”
“A fine aim.”
“On my watch Yesugei hasn’t had cause to tell us off.”
“I’m afraid he’d have found cause had he seen what I saw yesterday.”
“Yesterday was bad. I never knew about stones. Stones can get kids hurt.”
“A captain ought to know.”
“He ought,” the lad wrung out, and at once captainly duties seemed to weigh on him.
“What term have you been in office, Monglig?”
“One year nine months, since Onggor came of age, whose lieutenant I was two years.”
Onggor was Mengetu’s son. “But I imagine, in great need, you can consult the old captain? Or isn’t that done?”
“I hold the old captain in the highest estimation, as do the troops. And I am’t too proud, your ladyship, to ask him to step in. – Is, ah, can?” He hopped from foot to foot. “Is Yesugei to hear of this?”
“Not for a first offence. As I said to the sentry who was too busy whittling a flute from a bone to notice me.”
Monglig grinned.
It wasn’t that Yesugei was harsh, but people found a sad eye from him very hard to stand.
After her intervention Goagchin came to visit her. A lion might have stalked into the tent, so timid was Hoelun. Lions are lost to the steppe, but unforgotten. Goagchin was as big and gorgeous as she thought a lion might be, bigger than life, a bit of the legend about her. She purred – a soft, throaty voice. She had a dimple that never went away. She wound her sash high up and tight, to curve. Hoelun only curved when her husband undid her felt coat and hide trousers; her silk gown was summer wear, and occasional. Trousers are steppe. Gowns are Chinese. There had been a trade, a thousand years ago, yet a tentative one; women in gowns stood out, and men in gowns, to her knowledge, weren’t an extant species on the steppe (shamans a third sex and another species altogether).
She had time to rattle on in her head. It is rude to converse over the first cup. Goagchin took her first cup about the tent and dabbed milk on the mouths of the effigies. Over Hoelun’s head, over the north couch where she used to sit with Yesugei, a two-legged figure with utility belt of toy tools: “Jol Jayagachi, bless with your gifts the lives in this shelter of felt.” Over the door, on the inside, a woolly ewe with a great udder: “Emelgelji, bless with your gifts the lives in this shelter of felt.” Outside the door the whole of a stuffed hare, white. “Jandaghatu, bless with your gifts the lives in this shelter of felt.”
When thirst has been quenched you can talk to your guest. But Goagchin began. “You have been a friend to my Bagtor, lady. We want for friends; we are in an awkward situation, and your kindness means much to us. Bagtor has quite lost his heart to you.”
Hoelun murmured. She felt as if smothered by a great big gorgeous cushion, that hindered speech. How did Yesugei cast her off? She was determined not to be a jealous wife, a jealous wife out of those how-not-to-behave sort of tales.
“May I be frank with you, my lady? Do you mind if I am outspoken? Can we talk of Yesugei, you and I – or shouldn’t we?”
To this call she did answer. “I very much hope we can talk freely, and be sisters.”
“There are things about Yesugei you must have learnt, even in so short a while. He never has an ill intention. I believe he never has. Still, he did not think through the consequences, when he took me in. Do I lack gratitude? I have never faulted him, not to his face, not to others. But – I say to you – we are left in an awkward situation. Commonly does a man co-habit with a slave and have his by-blows from her. But not before he has his wife and his true children, his children that rank in the clan. Bagtor, lady, is Yesugei’s first son. And yet he is not. Is he? I do not know another child who has his situation to grow up to.”
Neither did Hoelun, now she thought.
“Of course, Yesugei did the upright thing – beyond what other men might do. But that is just why things are unusual. And to be unusual, to be unconventional, though fine for the marshal, who can do as he sees fit, often leaves difficulties for lesser people. Like me, and Bagtor.”
This was nothing other than the truth.
“Almost I wish... but there. What he did he did, and was done, if you like, in a surplus of honour. But this upside-down life of his, when he has wed ten years too late, a child of five cannot understand. A child cannot understand why he is the odd one out, why nobody knows where he fits.”
They sat. Goagchin sighed. “I have said quite enough. I spoke to excuse Bagtor, if he can be sulky. I just do not wish Yesugei to say he is spoilt. Spoilt?” she frowned. “By whom?”
Here, at last, Hoelun made a contribution – off the subject of Yesugei. “Perhaps, Goagchin, Bagtor might quickly shed the sulks if he joined in more with the other children.”
The frown, for an instant, turned ugly, quite ugly. “Not with that imp of the Alip shepherd. A rough boy, lady, and strange for one of his origins to follow on from Mengetu’s son. I won’t have Bagtor answer to him, although he does not rank.”
This was abysmal. They were children. But next Hoelun thought, yes, of course she is status-conscious. Of course she is.
The frown wafted off without a trace and she dimpled more deeply. “Do you find you haven’t a moment to sit and chat with a guest, my lady? There is the feast tonight and I interrupt you. A marshal believes he is busy, but a marshal’s lady? He has his staff, but did I have mine? Qongdaqor is stood there at the door, while I run in and out in a mad distraction. Do you find, Lady Hoelun?”
“There is much to do, ahead of the nightly banquet.”
“You mustn’t hesitate, should you ever find you wish you had a spare set of hands.”
“I wonder whether you’d stay and help me, Goagchin, this very afternoon?” 
At the end of that night’s feast Yesugei kept Arash back and they put their heads together, in masculine fashion. When they had done he walked him out with a hand on the shoulder, came in again and began, “Perverse blasted woman. She has a ger from him, but she prefers to serve in the great tent than be mistress of her own. It asks for gossip, given what people know of us before. I can say I don’t care for gossip but there’s more than me involved. If she’s staff of mine she’s mine to maintain. No, Arash maintains her, I borrow her to polish my furniture. Arash and me have just had to sort out whether we step on each other’s toes.” 
Into this irritation she waded. “Cannot you make her an offer, Yesugei?”
He froze. Then he acted dumb. “An offer? Of?”
“Status. Status as a wife. Though she is from an enslaved tribe, and not quite from outside yours, since Jangsiut are Kiyat’s offsiders, nothing prevents her being an under-wife. It is the major wife who has to fit specifications.”
“Is this her idea?”
“I do not know. I do not know her ideas, but you are the father of her children, and if she has ideas, I gather from her that she thinks of the status of her children.”
“Act of mine can’t change the status of her children.” As if he had said so before.
“No. Or yes and no. You can make their mother a wife.”
“As can Arash. And does his damnedest to, if she’d co-operate.” 
“Arash has been said no to, on whatever grounds.”
“Only half said no to, Hoelun. Am I to have her back again, after he has had her for a fortnight, as if I’d given him a lend of my ewe while she’s in milk?”
From this contemptuous metaphor she knew they skirted near to disgust. “It is muddy, Yesugei, but is that her fault? Before Arash, she has been with two men and not been a wife.”
“I admit. Still, she can’t go to Arash for a fortnight. That is just...” He tightened his lips and abstained to say what that was, just. “And for me to wed her now is no way to make an honest woman of her.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that is the way to make her seriously dishonest. I cannot – I cannot, Hoelun, with commitment. I’d have to grit my teeth. I’m sorry but this is the fact. I cannot go from you to her and her to you and forget where I am due that night and wish I wasn’t. I cannot live like that, I cannot do that with the least conviction, Hoelun.”
“Indeed,” she said in quiet assent.
Less upset, he pursued, “And what does she do, when I detest to be with her? I know Suchigu and I tell you, she’d have Arash anyway. Only he’d try like blazes not to be had. But he’s been had, and in short, how is he meant to leave off? If he doesn’t, I’m supposed to send him under the axe, for trespass against me. It’s impossible, Hoelun. Do you see?”
“I see.”
“We’re human. I am and he is. I’m not going to send him under the axe for that. No, you can have her in the tent, but she goes home to Arash. I am sorry to put my foot down. That is the most I can do.”
“It is your life too, Yesugei. I have no further solicitations of you.”
He nodded, and inquired with a true note of doubt, “You weren’t getting me off your hands?”
“No. I was not.”
He inserted a finger beneath his hat to rub the back of his head. “I haven’t asked whether you are happy with me, Hoelun.”
“It is likely I answer only too often. If I do not say aloud, I hesitate to boast of fortune, out loud. And thought of him inhibits me.”
“Forgive me.”
“Yes. And if we come to grief,” she went on, “next year, next week, know I’d have had things no other way.”
Possibly, possibly, Yesugei felt a guilt too, or if not guilt exactly, fear – fear of getting their own way, overmuch, and tempting fate. To put up with Goagchin about the tent might be a sop to fate or to his conscience, for he did.

The hundred tribes don’t add up to a huge number but that simply doesn’t matter.
“Absolutely doesn’t matter?”
“It never does. – Not unless you contrive to get caught by an army you didn’t know was there. Mind you, even then. Once fifteen horse were caught out by a thousand infantry. They tried to surrender on terms, but the terms bit got a laugh. So they went for the famous end. Into a hawk’s wings, and charge. To their amazement, and that of the infantry, they charged right through them and left a slaughter. No casualties.”
“Just like that.”
“It’s true. They themselves were the last to believe. I thumb my nose at numbers. There are fifty million people in north China and sixty million in the south. Latest intelligence. On the steppe, between Old Qatay and Black Qatat – we haven’t had a census for a century or two – but our guesstimate is a million.”
“Most of them Tartars.”
“You exaggerate, but yes, more Tartars in that than Mongols. Five times more.”
“Fortunately numbers don’t matter.”
They talked like this underneath the nightskins.
Feasts weren’t feasts, either, but war discussion. “It squares to attack them together. Militarily, they’ve got into a tangle. The Iron Khans felt vital to be self-sufficient, which took a lot as they had to fight off the Song. Their horse soldiery is said to have gone giant strides ahead, but with these enormous herds, they spilt about the foot of the Khingans onto Tartar grass. Had to. The magnificent Tartar grass. Tartars got their backs up about that, but the Iron Khans found an answer to them: starve them on their silver. Tartary in the funny situation, rich in silver lodes, empty of iron. Slap on a metal ban for punishment, that’s what the Iron Khans did, and what Jurchen learnt from them to do. And Jurchen have their herds, but Jurchen weren’t a horse people to begin with, and they have half of China. Half of China’s army, to mount. See, they can’t lose Tartary grass. Jurchen and Tartars, they equip each other for war. Disentangle them now, you might get a battle, foot soldiers on one side, silver blades on the other. I’d like to see that.”
Quietly Yesugei said, “Along came Ambaghai.”
Too quietly to be heard; they talked on. “Scabs. If Tartars didn’t trade them horses, I’d shoot Chinese foot soldiers like lame rabbits.”
“Can’t China rear a horse?”
“Yeah, they try. Jurchen have government horse farms. They put a lot of effort in. But they turn out a poor horse.”
“Our horses die like flies in China. It’s bad habitat for them.”
“I wish Jurchen died like flies in China. Why don’t they? It’s wrong habitat for them too.” 
“The steppe horse doesn’t take. How’s he to take, on a farm in China? He withers away. He turns up his toes, just as I’d turn up my toes. And then, to have a foot-slogger on top of him? It’s the indignity.”
“A China nag, that’s what becomes of the steppe horse as farm animal. They had more joy with breeds from Outer Persia, only you have to get there... you have to go through Tibet, and after that your problems start. When they had the Turks as conscripts they got there, but the Arabs threw them out. Here there’s a line: step across, you’re in China, and at risk of speedy death merely from the climate. It’s not like that over west. There’s a gradual slope. Cross-breeds have a chance over west, and the Outer Persia horse, he’s a cross-breed, not an artificial one but natively a this-and-that. Goes for the people too, in Outer Persia. It ain’t half so us-and-them. Why a Turk takes, over west.”
“Back to Tartary, and the war.”
“It’s pertinent,” said the excursionist, one of Yesugei’s Three Steeds. Their song told of their travels.
“I’ll tell you what’s pertinent.” Gombo was captain of a clan unit, who in action led fifty of his kin. “Tartars sell horses to the foot soldiers of China, which for cruelty is a crime, and Tartars sold them Ambaghai. Not for iron, since Jurchen are smart enough to keep them lean on iron. Not for iron, which I might have understood though never forgiven. For titles. Titles not in Jurchen, that at least sensibly translates, but titles in Chinese, that to the Chinese they ludicrously mispronounce. For courtesans. Queens of the court, the Chinese say they are, but they aren’t. They aren’t princesses. You know what they are. For silk. For Tartar princes to parade in silks, under sophisticated titles and with sophisticated women on their arms. For Tartars to mimic Chinese. That is what they got in return for Ambaghai. Bastards? They are prostitutes. – Pardon my Chinese, lady. We don’t have a Mongol word for what they are.”
Kiyat were to fight Tartars, that winter.
In the south half of the war the slogan was Khabul’s forty-seven forts. Twenty forts he had taken by arms together with an insurrectionist prince of the Ile – the old clan of the Iron Khans – whose father, instated as a tame king for Jurchen in his home territory, had been executed on suspicion of disloyalty. Which at least assured them of the son’s. A further twenty-seven forts had been clauses in the treaty extracted by his defeat of Hu-sha-hu: disarmament wherever Jurchen had built into Mongol grounds. Arzat had been the builder, a great one for walls. The tracts he built on were Ongirat usage-right, and when Khabul caused these irruptions to be evacuated, Ongirat used them too – the watchtowers for far sight, the barracks to winter their sheep in, the ramparts to drive antelope against. Because they were there. Disarmament, not demolishment; and now these lines had been occupied again. Easily – that was the point of them: where there’s a wall, there an army can penetrate unexposed and China’s killer puzzle of logistics is solved. They were expensive and laborious, but along them China forged outwards, hard to stop. One day there’d be walls on Onon Gol.
But not if Bartan Ba’atur had his say. Bartan intended to take his fight to the Wall and had joined up with Jorkimes for the south campaign. When he said Wall with a capital he meant not Arzat’s new lines, or others obsolete or operational, he meant what they amounted to, and what they stood for. China needs horses, and grass to feed them. China needs territory in the north. Since China first threw the Huns out of the Ordos, and threw up a wall, these ghastly dead gigantic insects that crept across the steppe had been a bone of contention. These ugly mean-spirited possessions of our mother earth, these worms, these anti-liberty flags and wind-blown banners to imprisonment, these thistles in the grass, these lines of poison. A nomad can do poetry, on walls. The Wall is what we hate. Civilization is what has done us wrong. Yesugei’s father was out for hachi. Short of hachi, he wasn’t going to be soothed, or quieted, or told to sit at home and grow old... and justice is a distant quest.
Mengetu tried to keep spirits light. “A howling old ba’atur like our father? The Jurchen want to pile stones on their wall and crenelate Zhongdu. He has seen fiercer times than you or I. Even though he is sixty, I’d think twice to challenge him – I don’t know about a baghatur like you.”
“You would be right, were Bartan’s heart not set on rescue of Ambaghai’s remains. His remains are for the ridicule of the crowd, and there is a crowd to get through. Less isn’t to satisfy our father. He won’t be home with less.”
Mengetu jerked to his feet, twanged the string of his bow at his thigh, cast a stern eye on Yesugei. “Then leave him to follow his chief the way he finds pious. This world was but half of loyalty once, half of loyalty and love.”
With a bent head Yesugei stood up beside him. “Now you are right, agha.”
He saw his father off and went to Tartary.
Attai led the south campaign, Cutula the north. Main targets north were China’s pupil-kings Jali the Bull and Yorgi Wolfhound. It was to Jali Ambaghai engaged his daughter, and Yorgi who assaulted Jali’s wedding-guests; Jali hadn’t lifted a hand on the matter, then or since. They were rivals, but in tandem they earnt their China income. Cutula rode into the operations camp on a yak. Whenever possible he did, both great animals much more at their ease. Yak-cow cross, strictly, that’s yet a heap bigger than an ox; whole yaks get altitude sickness down from the mountains. You can’t charge on a yak into battle, or not that Yesugei ever heard. Might be worth a try. Tartars tossed to left and right on horns. “Nephew,” he bellowed.
“My uncle the khan. And your battle-yak?”
“Iffy. I took him to trials, but when he gets excited he has the drawbacks of an elephant. You know the drawbacks of an elephant.”
“By report.”
“Besides, though he goes forward and back he isn’t greatly subtle beyond that.”
“He’s stupid?”
“Cattle are stupid. Sorry, Zig.” Cutula patted him, and clambered off him.
“Too stupid for battle. Is that a sort of oxymoron?”
His uncle the khan fixed an eye on him. “An oxymoron’s the other thing.”
“Right.”
“I trust you don’t talk like that in front of the troops.”
“No, my jokes are much better.”
“Because I had you in mind to announce us to Jali. What do you say? Nothing major. Just tell him we’re here.”
“Bit of a joke?”
“It’s a tough war, Yesugei. Give us a lucky start.”
For this assignment he took a pick of Kiyat, his nokod and the Wolves, a unit of Tayichiut – not a clan but a created clan, like Jorkimes. A lot of tribes began that way, like Tayichiut. The creators were two brothers of Bilga the General, Ambaghai’s father, both of them alive and there at headquarters, with loops of hair like white rope. Their names weren’t the names their mother gave them but wolf-aliases: Gendu meant a meat-eater he-animal and Olugjin meant an agent of death. These days Uder Unan and Baqaji led the Wolves in action. Their art was close group combat in emulation of their namesakes – the bloody stuff, and high risk – wolves take heavy injuries. Close combat is a speciality, that most who live by archery frankly eschew, as against the whole point. Most archers don’t like to get blood on them, in fact can almost be said to be squeamish (there is religious excuse). Not so Uder Unan and Baqaji: they rubbed animal blood on their faces and hands and told Yesugei now they wouldn’t notice their own.
“I don’t aim to shed your blood. Tonight is a lark. I want to come back intact. No losses. A clean score-stick. Can you do that for me?”
In their blood camouflage they pulled faces at each other. “Stay alive? Suits us.”
At his stirrup, a hand on his knee, Hoelun mentioned again, “Explicit instructions, Yesugei: don’t get hurt.” He had no wish to disappoint her, truly. It charmed him to be seen off to the fight by his wife.
Headquarters were where the Kherlen Gol spilt weedily into Hulun Nor. Two great lakes lay like puddles at the bottom of the steppe, between slow inclines up to the remote mountains east and west; streams ran in but none ran out; rain was unknown here. Hulun Nor, the north lake, had a circumference of two hundred and fifty miles. Beyond the lakes lived Tartars, and swam for pearls. Above the north lake lived Jalaya, and took fish, shrimp and crabs, pelicans, cranes and heron. But the Mongols had a sense they weren’t at the altitude they were used to, and they bothered neither bird nor fish – white flesh and wet flesh, and poor sport into the bargain. They weren’t a water people, but even this early in the year, across the lake to the horizon was a white scintillation at dawn. 
Jali the Bull kept winter court in a circular ruin whose history had been forgotten, known simply as the Old Stronghold. There may or may not have been a great castle or what have you, but only a ring of stone remained and stood against the wind. From a nearby bushy hill Yesugei’s team listened to a late night at Jali’s court, the poignant high notes of the stallion’s lute that can be mistaken for human cries. A creek meandered from the hill to the ruins, dry in the winter drought and grown over, where cows spent the night for a cease-fire from the perpetual blast of the north wind. Along this trough went Uder Unan and Baqaji beneath a cow’s hide and with the gait of a cow.
They attacked at first light. The Wolves, with spear and axe, took the gates, as Yesugei depended on them to, for his nokod galloped up the ramp of earth blown against the north face and jumped down on the inside. Kiyat ran rings about the stone circle, shot at any head that popped up and catcalled. “Come out from your walls, Jali. Do Tartars sit in cities?”
Inside, his nokod seized each a mount in gear from in front of a tent, which is more contumelious than to steal mares and spares off the steppe. As soon as he had an answered name-call without the gates, Yesugei blew his horn in imitation of a whirl-away of the wind, and whirl away they did.
There was no pursuit. They had announced themselves: Tartars had seen them, their rosy bulbs of cheeks, their five tresses of hair and a front tuft, that identified a Mongol; and they saw their tuqs, the wolves’ tails and the white stallions’ tails afloat under abstract horns against the sky, signatures, if Tartars knew their Mongols.
Cutula met them effusively, inspected each trophy horse, listened to each tale. The horses’ seats were silver thrones, silvery friezes on the arches before and behind, tapestry skirts (keep them, said the khan to his nokod, at which extravagance Yesugei murmured). Uder Unan and Baqaji described the guards in bronze scale like mirrory snakeskin. Yesugei told of the great tent, for fifty or sixty people, in matt black felt with stripes of glossy panther pelt, and a gold crown to close the smokehole.
Yet in spite of celebrations, in spite of the stallion’s lute and and toasts, the atmosphere was sombre. Bultachu Ba’atur, the captain of a great and gallant nokod, who had been a hero of Yesugei’s since he was a boy, abashed him when he said, “An old-fashioned piece of warfare, Yesugei, with panache, and none down. Just the thing for a song.”
“Start on a lark, I thought.”
“Nevertheless, we’re out to spill blood, aren’t we? Vengeance is had in blood, not in silver seats and warhorses. It’s going to cost us of our own.”
The lutanist dragged his bow with heavy tread from string to string. It may have been a lugubrious song, or they may have imagined sad music. “You with the lute,” bawled Cutula. “Don’t you know a lively tune? What, wring our hearts, because Yesugei has seized Jali’s horses? Upbeat, man. Upbeat.”

There is a curse of contraries. War in earnest set in, and bad luck.
Cutula’s son Girmau was slain at the age of sixteen. In a running skirmish his horse blundered, perhaps in a hole; Girmau, a gymnast, did a kind of cartwheel off and gained his feet unhurt; but on the instant that his friends saw him start to sprint, a Tartar shot him. A fortnight later they thought they had lost Cutula. A group of Mongols and a group of Tartars were in chase, unknown to each other, of the single gazelle in the reeds of the marshes. Cutula didn’t re-join his hunt group. He had had to hide underwater in swamp that never quite congealed; the Tartars found his horse and his overcoat, and after several hours in search of the prize, left him for dead without them. Submerged in the reeds and the water he heard them decide he didn’t stand a chance. Without his horse and overcoat he trekked across the frozen lake, into the north wind, for five days. In disbelief did they see his humpbacked figure, with a raw grimace for a face, trudge up to his ger and into the arms of the half-mad Galut. His size, impossibly, had saved him.
Tartar witches, Bamsi Shaman told Galut, that month had spent their utmost spells upon her hearth. He promised a strong effort, and in the spirit urged on their great embattled eagles, set to guard the camp, and strove with talon and beak against a nightmare of shadow beasts.
Bad spells shaken off, thawed out, only at the edges gnawed away (he lost sight in an eye, and they had to trim him of a few fingers and toes and the fleshy portions of the ears) Cutula was determined on a critical encounter. But a critical encounter Jali did not want. Temptation, bait, sheer insult were wasted on him. “Where’s his honour? Yesugei’s companions ride his companions’ horses. Where’s his pride?”
“Ah, you’ve got the wrong man. It’s Jali. His idea of gallantry is hire Yorgi Wolfhound to kidnap his own engaged.”
“He’s afraid of the man you can’t freeze. Eh? Can’t freeze his testicles off.”
“No, they didn’t have to cut him there.”
They abandoned headquarters on the nor and marched against the Old Stronghold. Wives drove in quivers and cuirasses, children inside hutches. That deep into winter the steppe where grew the famous Tartar grass was an ash-grey crust, dark grit dunes. Only the sky stayed blue, although lit by a persistent silent lightning in the distance... more a summer phenomenon. Wild lightning in summer. What was on Tangr’s mind, that he crack his skies at the wrong time of year? The wrong time. The wrong time. Yesugei rode to Hoelun on his ger wagon. “Are we out of our time? Do you feel?”
“I don’t like to say, Yesugei, I’m not a great one for gut knowledge or intuitions.”
“I thought you were.”
Jali left his ruins vacant for them.
To take frustrations out, Bultachu Ba’atur and Tayichiut went off to fight Yorgi Wolfhound. By co-incidence, so did the Tartar tribes Tutuqliut and Ariyiut. To these latter Bultachu declared he was there for the Wolfhound’s hide and had no quarrel elsewhere. Tutuqliut and Ariyiut were there for winter sports, to loot their neighbour of his ill-gotten gains, what Tartar princes not in with China do. Outnumbered three to one (and not by infantry) Bultachu bargained as far as to suggest to them the loot was theirs, if the Wolfhound’s hide were his. However, Tartars clubbed together, against Mongols.
Ambaghai had wooed Jali the Bull away from China: detach one, encourage others. Jali had secretly leagued with a prince he was at feud with, to renege. Beyond Tartar perfidy, what was going on? Princely rivalry China itself instils and exploits; they tussle with each other, they cut each other’s throat to serve China and be paid, and that suits China. So what was going on?
The Tayichiut contingent came off almost unscathed. Bultachu told them this wasn’t the time to fight. But his renowned nokod made a rear-guard for them. Men who join a nokod are distinguished from tribal troops in attitude, too. Tribal troops fight when they are mustered to a fight, or in private feud, but sheep are their daily business. Nokors have sworn service, as individuals, to a particular man; their tradition of strength lent to the worthy gives them an ethical cast, and a nokod captain feels they are his to use to right purpose. When there is call he asks them to sacrifice life, which isn’t asked of shepherds under arms – a chief or marshal can avouch, there are none of those to squander. Few of Bultachu’s nokod came back. But they knew they had prevented a slaughter. 
Yesugei was gutted, mostly by the thought, I’d never equal him, in emergency at the call or in countenance afterwards. Not that I ever set up to equal him. Start on a lark, he had said to him. Just the thing for a song, Bultachu had said. Yesugei was gutted.
Survival: he thought of his uncle’s walk on the ice. Sacrifice: if only they were to be sung. That matters. Much has been done, unsung.
Next they had news from the south.

Monghe limped from his single-sheet asylum, his hip at its clumsiest in the first half hour up. With his hot broth he did his libations, drops flicked from his fingers. South for fire: dawn struck a light on the sandstone canyon, marigold, Shiraz wine. East for air: the air you had to snatch out of the wind and gulp, as if to breathe were to catch flies. West for water: gulls from the ocean roam here in search of an ancient sea. North for the dead.
Daily, when he did north for the dead, he thought of a specific, a graphic member of that greater tribe. Monghe’s brigade had given escort to Yorgi Wolfhound who had the king of the Mongols prisoner. Prince Yorgi had led him in a yoke on foot behind his horse and they rode through the streets of Zhongdu. The crowd had jeered and thrown things, thrown fruit and garbage and abuse to do with animals. But his death was orderly, up on a hill, a cordon of guards at the bottom. Ambaghai sat straight, his gaze straight ahead on the horizon, and silent, silent when they hammered nails into his thighs, silent to the end. Oikon Bartaq sang. On his hurdle ten yards down the hill, his hurdle with a straw tail and donkey ears from a farce, he sang, in Mongol, which Monghe understood, for three days and three nights, hoarsely, yes, but with his heart and soul. Only when Ambaghai slumped did Oikon cease to sing. They were left to rot on the donkeys. Monghe, as you do, had gone along, often in the days, and at last had succumbed and stood vigil. Those songs Monghe heard in his dreams and woke with them in his head, and that was why he thought of Ambaghai when he did north for the dead.
Even without stalkers. 
He was a major in the army, and that was his crime. Joined up as a lad. Matter of fact, Tartary had been too cut-throat for him. Who wants to stay in Tartary, unless you’re a prince? To garrison walls – it’s not a bad life. There’s the comradeship. Discipline is tribal, not Chinese. You mind your sheep, you sit on a wall and you yarn. It’s not a bad life, and beats Tartary these days. His soldiers were get-outs from Tartary, they didn’t expect to make great fortunes, they weren’t very bad men. The Odds-and-Ends is us: ordinary. Your usual soldier in foreign service, cynical, cheery. Just soldiers.
Cooked. Or half-baked, maybe, but in China parlance, a barbarian is cooked or else he’s raw. The lot on his tail were pretty raw. They were Jorkimes (the Resolute, in Turkic) a band hand-picked by Khabul Khan to guard his first son Oikon Bartaq. Monghe could quote verses on old Khabul’s selection criteria:

Those with grit, those with guts,
Nimble thumbs on the bow,
Bellow lungs and huge hearts.
They must steam from the mouth...

And so on.
Barbarians in the raw tend to be simple-minded on what to do with a foe. Either you kill him or you don’t. No permutations. These might learn fast, for him. Chinese are artistic in torture; the steppe does more in the way of desecrations of the dead and trophies, quivers from your skin, cups from your skull. Maybe, for the worst of both worlds, they could skin him alive, chat to him while they sewed the quiver. Was that adequate? He’d be an ornamental quiver, align his tattoos.
The worst of both worlds: he sat on the throne of China, he was the Emperor Tikunai. Only the trouble with the worst of both worlds seemed to be, neither world can own him. The staunch Jurchen set nickname him the Han Ape for his go-Chinese agenda; he interdicts Jurchen language, Jurchen costume. But on the streets he’s a legend for lechery and a bogglingly bloody style of politics, which ain’t Confucian. Where did he come from? The worst of both worlds, obviously, worse than the worst of either.
If Tikunai had dreamt up the wooden donkey, Monghe might have understood. No, Arzat had, for Marquz, and Arzat wasn’t insane.
Monghe, a major in the army, didn’t know much. But he knew he hadn’t signed up for torture. And his Tartar soldiers felt the like. They weren’t vocal, they were scarcely articulate, but they didn’t care for torture. You can tell them they’re dainty, you can have a laugh at them. But you can’t tell them they’re not human. When they drag Ambaghai through the streets and hear the insults to do with animals, they have to start to think, what am I, then? When they watch his torture as a public spectator sport... I don’t know how things work in the city. We’re from the steppe, and on the steppe, your physical courage, your stoicism to pain, is important to you; you seldom get a day’s comfort, the weather what it is. Insensibility – you grow callouses head to foot, so’s you can grab your lamb shank from the cauldron on the boil and wash with ice, because that’s the summer and the winter. Big part of your identity. To watch that undone, to watch that dismantled – how can you not feel got at? The city’s sheltered. Whether they’re more scared of pain, or less, he didn’t know. Obviously they can be distanced. Perhaps it’s simple: they don’t identify with Ambaghai. He’s an animal.
Jurchen are pigs. I don’t mean that rudely. Their totem is the boar and sow. Ile are named Ile after an ancient stallion cult; Qatat were steppe; Jurchen aren’t, you can tell, or they wouldn’t find the mock-up donkey such a joke. But take a pig, do gruesome, ludicrous things. How would they feel?
Monghe didn’t need stalkers to make him think.
And what was the wooden donkey for? To intimidate? If so, Monghe might have told them, had they asked him: a trifle asinine. The emperor wasn’t out here, see. Monghe was out here, and these samples weren’t intimidated near as much as pissed off. His Tartars had the willies. They thought to be inside-out Tartars, the moment the stalkers spied their chance. Tartars have a bad name with Mongols just lately. Just soldiers.
That chance didn’t come about. Monghe had kept to open ground and kept on course towards the wall. Today, in an equation of time, distance and where the re-reinforcements were, he crossed an invisible line to safety. The stalk seemed to be over, the victims acknowledged to have got away. This he knew because they came up close, to jostle him and flaunt their tuq, to tell him, we know where you live. His tailenders waved at them in answer, see you later.
However, they hadn’t quite finished with him. They drew up in a row, very neat and at-attention. From beside the standard a single horse threw out its front feet and catapulted into a run. The rider urged, tchoo, tchoo, and the horse flattened down desperately fast, although no other animal before or behind was in motion – his army had stopped to see what this was. A one-man onslaught? The rider wore a hide vest ornamented with bone and poised a battle-axe, the butt of the head gilt, scarlet haft. Monghe’s rearmost stood and gawped at him. Until he was about in spitting distance and whirled his axe at them and battlecried. And the rank of Mongols – like a line of bulbuls, the honour-guard in stone that flanks a grave – came to life and stood your hair on end and yelled, yelled in grief and rage, Ambaghai.
His soldiers had to shoot. They shot, a lot of them together, triggered to action by the cry. Again there was silence. The horse, unhit, skidded to miss his lines, trotted back to its rider on the ground, blew from its nostrils and whickered, wondered what had happened.
The bulbuls sat and stared. Not at the corpse. Straight at him.
“Go and see who that is,” he said to his lieutenant.
“Reckon we know him?”
“He knew me.”
Idige went gingerly to peer (one eye on the bulbuls) came back and mumbled, “Yeah. They’re not hard to i.d. It’s Oikon Bartaq’s brother. Bartan.”
Monghe nodded.
“Daft old gaffer, isn’t he?” said a Tartar.
“Shut up,” said another.
“I just mean. Why’d he have to do that for?”
“What did that prove? What the hell was the point of that?”
Indeed. The age for loyal self-slaughter was past. The age for loyal self-slaughter had been past in the seventh century, when a few nostalgic Turk generals in mercenary service to the T’ang sought permission to do themselves in for a Chinese emperor. For a Chinese emperor. No, you can’t, said the Chinese, none of your barbarous customs to mar the funeral. One grizzled Turk general went ahead anyhow and marred the funeral (oi, stop that suicide) laid on the tomb like a dog. T’ang Taizong didn’t mind the barbarity; T’ang Taizong, alone of emperors, understood the steppe and that inspired devotion.
“Move on,” said Monghe.
As his officers dispersed one said harshly to those by, “It proves they know they’re as near as they’re getting to Zhongdu. Right here in Buzzard’s Gorge.”
Yes. For now. But he won’t be the last. Was that what he tried to say? Here’s how we feel. Why does an emperor deliberately inspire hatred? That was the bit Monghe didn’t get.
An idiot paused to ask him, “Do we, ah – take his horse, or –”
“Christ, soldier, if you want his friends to chop you to pieces, go and strip him. Otherwise, move on.” He shouted in general, “Move on.”
Still Monghe lingered and gazed at the avenger on the ground. One day you’ll be sorry for Ambaghai. Should he tell the emperor? Message to Your Celestial from the Mongols. By suicide post. One day you’ll be sorry.
The emperor can go fuck a goat. The emperor can find out.

Jorkimes had laid him in sandstone cliffs, which Tamaja described, once water-cut, wind-scoured since into spirits’ castles. They had gone too high up for his horse. “On the way down he went height-shy. Quite obstreperous, though he’d climbed gamely with your father and they don’t always like a dead load. No doubt you know the horse: aged-ash, faint dapple on the quarters, dark legs. Old horse.”
“Olja,” Daritai answered. “Olja, Booty. A prize from Ambaghai. He’s had that horse... eight years, Yesugei?”
Yesugei only shook his head. Mengetu had listened to the whole with his face in his hat.
“As we pulled and pushed the horse, Bombogor here saw what the matter was. Didn’t you, Bombogor?”
“Aye.” 
Bombogor was an intermittent talker. Tamaja had to quote him. “He said, the mount is like the man: old-fashioned. Isn’t there a custom we’ve forgotten? So we led him back where your father lay, and slew his horse beside him.”
This hauled Mengetu out of his hat. Huskily he told them, “You did right,” and groped an arm over Yesugei’s shoulders. “You did right, Jorkimes. Had our father lived a thousand years ago, they’d have known him. He was steppe.” Mengetu nodded (ignored his blubbered face) and slapped on Yesugei’s far shoulder. “Three things are forever: the steppe, the sky, a brave’s love for his chief. When he cannot offer him his enemy he offers him that love, and goes to guard him where they have sent a thousand foes.”
“Ambaghai wasn’t a big slaughterer.”
“Hell, Twig.”
“Dad was in his day.”
“Yup.”
Daritai felt left out. “In our epoch we grudge the dead a horse and let our finest walk. You know what he’d say?”
“What, Daritai?”
“It’s effing Christian.” 
“No, he wouldn’t, Daritai.”
“A bit strong,” Mengetu agreed. “He’d go toenails.”
“Balls. I’ve heard him. Several times.”
“Mother’s was tea leaves.”
“Yes, that was fairly lame.”
“Tea leaves. You used to wonder whether she’d got the right idea. Of course I never queried her.”
“She’d have tea-leaved you, twice over before milk.”
The Jorkimes interrupted. Tamaja did, gently, and matched Mengetu at threes. “Three things are steadfast: a hawk’s fealty, a hound’s faith, a warhorse’s devotion. I slew the horse. When he went down I saw your father lift his ghostly arm to claim him. What I saw, Bombogor and Joro say they saw. That’s why Attai sent we three to tell you. – Bombogor?”
This time he rumbled, from out his cloak of an uncut bear’s pelt, front paws crossed on his chest, claws intact. “Aye. He’d shorn his horse’s mane with a tassel left to hang onto. I saw him grasp the tassel. And why not?”
“Why not, Bomb?” Tamaja encouraged him.
“I’d seen his spirit once in the day. Hadn’t I?”
Through these witness statements Mengetu wagged his head. Right now he’d only have been astonished if they hadn’t seen his ghost. “A spirit no way alien in the age of bronze and chariots,” he maundered. “But out of his time in the Year of the Pig, Century of the Wooden Donkey. The Huns never had that. It’s modern. And I have a suspicion. They invented the donkey for Marquz Khan, whose folk, like three-quarters of folk from the Khingans to the Altai, without only the Tartars and us, have gone over to the Cross. You know what? It’s effing Christian. And here we are, people, where my dad knew we were: at the last stand of the steppe.”
“The war isn’t over,” Yesugei suggested. “Either of them.”
“Here’s for the war. Here’s for the last hur-ah.”
Upbeat, man, upbeat, as the large gentleman said.
The third Jorkimes, Joro, had cheeks like russet onion bulbs, popping out of the ground when he smiled. “To glimpse ghosts... I don’t mean to be a fatalist nor yet a forecaster, but for us to glimpse ghosts...” His eyes swerved to the shaman. “Are we far behind?”
Bamsi Shaman caught the smile as it wobbled off his face. “Don’t be afraid. He has gone to lend Olja back to him who gave him, just as you’d do, in life, if you found your captain unhorsed. Don’t grieve. I too have seen them. I see them now. Bartan goes on foot by his stirrup, glad; Ambaghai is proud upon his horse; Oikon Bartaq sings a hymn. They are saints in the sky.” His countenance, alight from within and from the fire, shone around them like an orb from above, until he gazed on Yesugei with such a lively love, Yesugei saw the meadows of the clouds, the ideal meadows we imagine for our ideal dead.

4. Bad Times, Great Traditions
The tribes had disintegrated and were in perpetual hostilities. Only too often the brave and the active mistook robbery and debauchery for worthy feats of arms. What they owned was squeezed from them by the Golden Khaghan of China until they lived in the grimmest poverty. They wore the skins of dogs and rats, ate the flesh of these and of animals found dead. Iron stirrups were the sign of a great emir: from this can be imagined their other luxuries.
Juvaini, 13th century Persian historian, on the state of the Mongols before Tchingis Khan
That winter of the war Hoelun spent pregnant; although for days on end, until late along, she simply forgot the fact, due to the war. She must have been pregnant at the hur altai, and only Bartan’s stance, that Yesugei first approach her family, had saved her from uncertainty as to the father – for which she felt great gratitude. She had been ignorantly pregnant the day in answer to Goagchin she said Jol Jayagachi needn’t be in haste to bless her, which ought to be a lesson to her that felt effigies have ears. Yesugei had his ideas on precisely when she had acquired a child, but his ideas were more sentimental than mathematical. “I can certify him a true child of the steppe.”
“Can you quite certify, Yesugei? Or did you just...”
“What?”
“Enjoy that time the most?”
“No. In honesty untrue. Funnily that always seems to be the last time.”
“I see. Then what stands out?”
“On the hoof. Wind in the heart, speed in the blood.”
“As fathers before you have popularly claimed.”
“Am I going to be a father?”
“Yes, Yesugei.”
“I like to hear you say.”
She stroked his face. “You have lost yours, Yesugei.”
“I have. And I never have, or I don’t exist: my foundations are him. I am glad this one inside you exists, Hoelun.”
“He is a child of war.”
They knew he was a he. An otoshi had warned Hoelun she ran to boys and had lean hopes for a girl. “Then I won’t have to teach embroidery,” she answered, “and that is pains spared.”
Pregnancy came with discomforts, inabilities, odd taboos and a queer tantrum of jealousy from Bagtor, who had been told he mustn’t be a bother to her when she had a baby of her own. And Yesugei wasn’t more grown up, to have to share her. He made a genuine effort to like her transmogrified figure, but once said he missed her. “Not half as much as I do,” she retorted. As she grew heavy Galut found less and less for her to do towards the upkeep of the camp, and Ubashi left a cask, as if by accident, next to her tethered mount. At least Yesugei did not send her home, even though she was eight months gone before the ceasefire of spring.
War is a winter pursuit. With spring they must turn attention to the horses, who were half-starved, and to the foals, lambs and calves; and likewise she had attention for her young. As a spring station Yesugei chose Dolion Tor, an old site of his family’s, where his father had led home his mother, where these days he had a difficult time to tell a ghost from a fond memory. He came over reminiscent; he took Hoelun on slow walks and conjured up the ghosts, those he knew firsthand or hand-me-downs. On these walks she waddled, and he went with the awkward gait of a Mongol off his horse; they laughed at each other for unlovely.
Dolion Tor stood out from ground flat for thirty miles around, a cone shape with a kink, or as first observed by Qongdaqor’s great-grandfather Ogda, captive of Khabul’s father Tumbinai, a sat-upon high hat. As far up as the kink grew dwarf willow, the universal willow of which the shaman sang:

To strike root throughout the world is the fate of the willow tree:
My great, grievous fate is to weep for each soul I see... 

Above the twist the stone was naked, a great blunt torso that in the horizontal light of early day wore a semblance of shoulders seen from the rear, shoulders somewhat humped, somewhat tired, but inhumanly strong. He was the elemental of the tor. To him people had piled up cairns and stacked branches into towers and knotted on floats of white fleece. To him Yesugei and Hoelun gave stones from the flats, gave them back, stones that had belonged him, to strengthen him again.
Here Hoelun had a ritual introduction to Yesugei’s ancestors, which was overdue – because of the war. “They forgive distraction, the spirits; I’m afraid they have to; they haven’t forgotten what the earth is like. And this way we can introduce you both.” The grand dames Tamsag and Abaghai Ghoa, in their spiral hair-horns and their ribbon jackets, told the ancestors who she was and who grew under her heart, without a name yet but their descendant. She offered milk to a retrospect of figures: Khabul Khan, Tumbinai, Bai the Bird of Prey, Qaidu, Mother Nomolun. The late and great... to Hoelun’s mind Mother Nomolun challenged them for greatest, even with Khabul Khan in the list. She had saved her people, and you can’t do more than that.
Spring weather is turbulent. Every afternoon for a fortnight a gang of bruise-hued clouds grumbling with their brew slunk up to the massy black stone of the tor. After a face-off of pops and hisses the clouds slouched south, to burst into storm on the horizon. Yesugei sat down to watch this spectacle. Others joined him, until the afternoon confrontation became a camp entertainment or observance. It was uncannily like a wrestling match, and Monglig and his crew of children kept the adults laughing with cheers and prompts to their contestant the tor. But the laughter was devout. Thunder and lightning can harm a child in womb; the tor, they thought, defended its own.
Yesugei sewed an angel. This is a felt doll to be enlivened by a shaman, guardian of the infant. Children’s souls are so easily lost, so insecure; they drift in and out of the flesh; mother and father have to sleep, but the angel never sleeps, and if danger threatens its charge, the mouth-hole in the felt screams out.
With a matter of days to go, when Yesugei least thought of war, war broke upon him.
There came a call to an emergency muster on Urshiun River. The Urshiun is an umbilical cord from Hulun Nor down to its daughter lake Bor Nor. Over the Urshiun lies Tartary. This frontier was kept by the Mongols’ most belligerent tribes, Uru’ud and Mangqot, who lived between the Tartars and Ongirat, a stark contrast to Ongirat in temperament, like guard dogs. Now the guard dogs sent alert. An army from China, of infinite number (they meant impossible to count) had issued onto the Tartar steppe. They weren’t met as intruders. They distributed arsenals of iron and the Tartars princes joined them, one by one. They marched towards the nors. Uru’ud and Mangqot sent around the tribes: Tartars give them the run of their steppe; we won’t give them ours. We stand on the Urshiun. No more walls on Mongol ground. We are a wall.
“It is Hu-sha-hu again,” said Hoelun.
Yesugei didn’t answer that. “My staff – Ubashi, Jaraqa, Qongdaqor – are the only fit men I can absent. I’ll tell them, when you go into seclusion, they assume joint charge.”
They were fairly humourless to be absented, his camp captain, his head of flocks and his door guard. On verge to accuse him, is that because we’re slaves? Or they had no such thing in their heads. “You’re my staff,” he said. “I need you here.”
He spoke to Goagchin. “I understand she is to crouch in your knees?”
“Yes, she asked for me.” 
“And an otoshi?”
“The otoshi is due the day after tomorrow. Granny Magsa, who I had for both of mine. This is seen to, Yesugei, and were you here you’d have to keep your nose out. It makes no difference that you are away. You cannot enter, and you’d only prowl about and fret. You are better off.”
That was a definite attempt at comfort.
To her, shortly before he left, he said earnestly, “Hoelun. If... if I am unlucky, I ask a thing. Right or wrong. Name him my name.”
She had her hands on the great lump, as she did, in an instinct of alarm at the weight or the strangeness. It wasn’t right, and he shouldn’t even talk of ill luck. Of course she didn’t like to tell him no. “How?” emerged from her. “You are Yesugei. To me.”
“But if I can’t be there, Hoelun. If I can’t be. In spirit, perhaps?”
The spirit answers to its name. Forever ago she had beseeched Tchiledu: call your next girl by my name. That wasn’t right, that was very selfishly possessive and almost sorcery – to haunt him, to be there, to be there. Forever, not yet a year. “Hush. My husband. I have known you for less than a year. It isn’t enough. No; I won’t name him without you; he shall first hear his name from his father. Come home, Yesugei.”

New life is newly torn from death. New life is raw and wild, a power that doesn’t know our safe and social ways. For her labour Hoelun was laid on raw, unwashed skins of wild animals: the wild claimed her, the dead smelt her out. New wild life; an infant; in equal parts they were afraid of him and afraid for him. His soul has three pieces, that fit together in a jigsaw; the pieces are forever, the conjunction is once-only; you must shatter into your pieces again, like Humpty Dumpty. There is his ami, his creature-life, his breath, that has vivified other creatures; in between times this soul perches as a bird on the tree of Umai of the Womb: flesh is its symbol. There is his suns, the aspect of him that is his ancestors, which also has been used before, and dwells in the flowery shadows of Irle Khan where memory crowds; from his suns he has dim memories of other lives, in the suns is a mental furniture, is what transmits: this is bone. There is his sulde, the soul-piece unique to him, his creation; people have strong sulde or negligible sulde; you grow your own: this rides on the blood. Sulde remains where its attachments were, and the scenery about us is full of soul. The spirits that inhabit mountains and rivers were once people, the spirit of Dolion Tor once lived and loved here. But these big spirits are differently thought on: are they elementals or ex-humans? There are those who want to worship a mountain, in and of the fact it is a mountain. Others see animal mind and emotion as the story from start to end. None of this is fixed. We have no dogmas, no texts. We have no name, only the Old Faith. A baby soul, flown from the Tree of the Quick and freed from the Dungeons of Memory, is fragile as he pieces together and is inhumanly wise before he forgets.
When Granny Magsa triumphantly hoisted up a gangly boy with his fists in the air and his face in a huge scowl, the mother, from her squat between Suchigu’s knees, stared at his stiff, upstanding hair, wet and caught in the firelight, of a shade a vixen might be proud of in her cub. Wildly she laughed, and Suchigu and Granny Magsa laughed like idiots with her. “What have they given me?” Hoelun gasped.
“A Borjigin,” said Suchigu at her ear.
“As outrageous a Borjigin as I’ve seen in fifty years,” declared Granny Magsa. Bloody yet and on his cord she gave him to the mother.
In her hands he ceased to clench his toy fingers into toy fists. From out of his right clutch there plopped a clot of blood, black, as big as a knucklebone. The clot slid on her breast, past her heart.
A voice, sombre, half-known, spoke inside Hoelun’s head. She cried out, not after but with the voice, even as the voice said: “They are dead. They are dead. The battle has been a catastrophe.”

Granny Magsa took charge of the situation.
The mother – a gate for spirits – lay in seclusion, not to be come near. The otoshi had cast a magic circle around the ger and her helper-spirit was on patrol, a spirit akin to her task, ambiguous and scarcely tame: the Uul Fox, who strikes mad. With the otoshi and her Fox in camp the men were uneasy. Bravely, Ubashi, banished from the great tent, had set up a headquarters on carpets outside within earshot of her, ahead of her fortnight’s isolation and boredom. Throughout her labour Ubashi stuck fast to this station of his in earshot, although Jaraqa and Yegei Qongdaqor found no end of other things to do. Hoelun had a peep-flap in her felt and saw him, saw him tread his carpets and wring his hat; in a whimsy she thought Yesugei had possibly asked him to discharge a husband’s office. Ubashi heard her pangs, and when they were over he heard what she cried out.
First Granny Magsa sent Suchigu away. A skinny finger sealed her lips and pointed her out of the tent. Suchigu went meekly, which warned Hoelun she had a firm individual to deal with. She bent Hoelun’s head to bite the cord – she didn’t have to bite through – she mopped up mother and baby with a pungent water, she crooned a nonsense song, as if nothing odd had happened.
“They are dead,” wept Hoelun.
“Sshh. Baby doesn’t cry; don’t you upset him. Drink.” She spilt on her lips more tea of poplar bud, that numbs to pain. But doesn’t numb to catastrophe.
“You don’t understand,” Hoelun wept into the tea.
“I understand a sight, my dear, maybe better than you do. Have you had sights before?”
“No.”
“No, never?”
“No. I am not the type. I scoff at sights. You must believe me.”
“Oh, the biter bit,” said the unflappable old woman. “The spirits like such tricks. Now, Hoelun, I believe you heard a voice. But these experiences aren’t straightforward and we won’t jump to conclusions.”
“Conclusions? It is very simple.”
“Can you tell me who spoke?”
“I knew her. I half-knew her.”
“Any sense of who?”
She began to shake her head; then there leapt to her, “Mother Nomolun.”
“Mother Nomolun?”
“Yes, her.”
“You have just been introduced to her, I think. How did she strike you? What were your thoughts about her? Answer me, Hoelun, I am on your side, I try to investigate.”
“I thought of her sad and courageous story.”
“When Mongols had to fight off the incursions of Jalaya and we nearly lost the Three Gols and the Sacred Mountains and ourselves. Our worst war, and she led us. In a single great battle she was slain with eight of her nine sons, but her youngest she had hidden in a stack of fuel. Terrible times, and that battle of hers –”
“No,” gasped Hoelun. “No, no, no.”
“Why, she is a crow to caw, to caw of the times she has seen. How can she forget?”
“She didn’t caw,” said Hoelun angrily. “She told me.”
“The spirits are in perpetual talk about us. We rarely have ears for them. In your state you have ears. To her, outside time, that battle isn’t in the past. It happens now, always happens now. But to us a memory, Hoelun.”
“No. She came to me because she has known such a catastrophe. She has known this. Mongols have known this once before. It is as bad as hers,” she whispered. “And she said they. They. Not I or we.”
“We won’t argue over grammar,” said Granny Magsa mildly.
The tea betrayed her: she felt a lethargy, and thrashed.
“For heavens’ sake.” Granny Magsa snatched the baby from her breast, the baby Hoelun had been oblivious to. In spite of her – queerly by now – he didn’t cry. “Panic and you panic my tiny Borjigin, a bird but moments ago alighted, and perhaps he skitters back into the sky. For shame, mother.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. – I need to talk to Ubashi.” This loud enough for him to hear.
As loud, the white witch of an otoshi countermanded her. “If he breaches your seclusion I’ll freeze his limbs and hang him up to thaw. I’ll have no more of this. You’ll lie quiet, mother, and you’ll give your baby suck.”
That is what she did. Ubashi had heard her. It was up to him.
On a nasty set of horns, Ubashi started towards the great tent, faltered and skulked away, half a dozen times. In this exercise Jaraqa and Qongdaqor found him, when next the gutless wonders put in to tip a head and mutter, “How goes?”
“A healthy baby boy with red hair. The mother tight as a sheep’s stomach.”
Froth of laughter and mild curses.
Ubashi interrupted. “Jaraqa, is your lad of an age for an errand? I’m in mind to forage for news. My thumb twitches, and my hackles stir, and I know there’s news.”
From behind her felt Hoelun’s heart went out to him for his agitation: he believed her. He didn’t quote her but he believed.
Jaraqa answered him, jovial. “My thumb twitches too, to pluck my string, and my hackles stand at China on the steppe. Yes, send my Monglig out. Only I restrict him to the Kherlen, or else he’ll end up with the army and tell me he thought we meant a first-hand account. – You don’t, do you? If you want first-hand I’ll go.”
Qongdaqor countered, “The flocks can’t keep without you, granddad, whereas I’m a fifth wheel, when I daren’t step near my door. I can be spared to go.”
“We won’t argue over which of us abandons the post he condemned us to. Young Monglig goes for news.”

Hoelun nursed the baby at her sore and udder-big breasts, while the otoshi droned songs that made sense to spirits and to infants, and boiled up herbs to stimulate her milk or to save her from insistent urination on the hour. She didn’t feel as tight as a sheep’s stomach (used to bag butter) but loose, floppy and with innards out.
The baby’s eyes underwent a change and resolved from dark to grey to his father’s green, as if they had to absorb the light of day. On this idea she laid him in the beam that revolved around the ger, an oval cast by the three-foot vent at the apex of the roof, the hour’s clock. The baby, still no crier, blinked his father’s eyes, with a halo of weird fiery hair. Granny Magsa thought him on display to the Borjigins’ sire.
When Granny Magsa napped, lulled by her sensible behaviour, Hoelun wrought her simple sorcery, her witchcraft. Witchcraft is what you oughtn’t do, though very similar to wizardry. “Yesugei, Yesugei,” she whispered fiercely, up into her ring of free air or through the chimney pipe. “Yesugei, Yesugei.”
If he were a spirit he must come.

At twelve years of age, with a war not far away, Monglig traversed the steppe alone. No-one told him he was too young; he met only those too young or old to fight, invalids, infirm grandfathers, women with children. Among these survivors his status, his promise and importance, shot up, for he was only three years short of arms-age and in rude health. Grandfathers took him squarely by the shoulders: “A strong bold lad. We have need of lads like you.” They clapped him on the back and inspected him proudly, strangers to him, in nobles’ hats. Wives, at a pitch of anxiety, lavished food and care on him. “Most children of the Mongols are orphans. Most of our children. Mine, I do not know yet.” He traveled on, for a more circumstantial account, or in the grip of a ghastly fascination to find out: and Attai Taiji? And the black-bones, Balaqachi? – a hero of Monglig’s. One stern granddad with a leg gone, on crutches, quizzed him: “We have torn our five nails off, we have worn our ten fingers down. What are your hands for, boy?”
He knew the answer. “Ambaghai’s hachi.”
The shock of death shadowed over the world. On a silent steppe only black crows voiced their bleak lament, in the heavens only ugly vultures hovered. He tried (kids’ captain – strong bold lad) not to knuckle under to bewilderment, until he dismounted before his dad and Ubashi and Qongdaqor and spilt out the worst he or they had known of news.
“There has been a great battle at Bor Nor. Cutula is killed: hewn by axes, the axes of a crew of Tartars, like a big tree; the gashes in him tell what toil he was. Attai Taiji with his tiger standard charged into the Chinese infantry. Balaqachi found him on the ground, and laid over him his gilt coat; above him he fought and never left him more. A Chinese must wear the coat now. Bultachu Ba’atur has spinal damage; the verdict is he might pull through but he won’t walk. Lucky Telegetu, the champion from White Jalaya, has lived up to his name, and he singled out Jali the Bull and Jali’s luck cried quits. Our nokod, by crazy grace of heaven, has none down. The captain is unhurt. They even took prisoner a knot of Tartars at their flag stand, princes or entourage; that and Jali, people say, are the only notches our side of the stick. The majority – I have heard two-thirds, and I have heard four-fifths – dead, almost the whole in battle and not after. There’s a fight and there’s a slaughter. We fought; only those who couldn’t lift a limb killed like cattle. Capture? They weren’t interested. The dribs and drabs they took alive, by their mistake and ours, aren’t.”
Hoelun, intent, up against the felt; along with her, Ubashi had known the rest for days, and he didn’t underestimate her selfishness. In case she had missed the crucial sentence he swung around to her to shout, rough, but celebratory, “The captain is unhurt.” He loved him too. At the worst news in the Mongols’ history, she wept for joy.

In a dim early light Hoelun jolted awake: she heard his voice, where Ubashi had his carpets, on a high note of exasperation. She threw herself at her peep. But a shoulder blocked her, a shoulder in purple silk quilt and armour with silver tracery. The head turned, a face inches from hers, grey in the hazy dawn, with gouges of age, dismal and proud; in the Tartar fashion he wore a silver ring through a nostril, which lent him a haughty curl. Ignorant of her seclusion, he spoke to her. “Joy of the day, lady. If you are the lady of the tent, I believe you own me like a beast.”
Next moment Yesugei put him aside with a hand and a hard eye. An eye that fastened on her, wet out of nowhere. Slurred with fatigue and his feelings he said, “I am arguing with this damned granny. I have met Khazar mastiffs easier to get past.”
“It’s too late,” laughed Hoelun. “Aren’t you face to face with me?”
“Yes. A sight to heal my heart.”
“Yesugei,” she said in an unmitigated satisfaction.
Beyond him Granny Magsa capitulated in a scold: the circumstances, and Hoelun near the end of her sentence. “Go in, you irreligious goat. Go in, go in, before you butt at me so hard you hurt yourself. But my circle closes behind you and the Wild Fox prowls. When you want to come out, don’t cross on your own. Tell me.”
“I don’t want to come out. My heartfelt to you, granny. I am no harm to my wife and child.”
“Softly, Yesugei, softly, on new life. Spare his ears from horrors.”
“Hah. Spare my tongue.”
From this Hoelun understood not to press him. Distract him with the baby. Into baby-inspection and baby-tease he entered as if things were normal, or perhaps more zealously than that. “He’s ’orrible, isn’t he? He won’t be handsome.”
“It’s early to condemn him, I expect.”
“I put in for mother’s input.”
“And what is the matter? Didn’t you want a Borjigin?”
“I swear I wasn’t as bad myself.”
“Yes, the granny says he is as bad as she has seen.”
“Does he have a name? Or do I go on with my names for him, which are Push-Nose and Tug-Toes?”
“No, you can’t go on like that. I haven’t named him yet. I told you –”
“Yes,” he interrupted, his eyes in a glimmer for a moment, wide and wild. “You told me to come home.” He stopped abruptly.
She kept to subject. “Since I haven’t given thought... or do you have one handy, Yesugei?”
He shook his head, rather absently.
“Then by the old method: at heaven’s suggestion. I know a Hatchet, because of a near-accident, and a Ba’abgai because a bear blundered against the ger. – Who was that who blundered into mine? Who intruded on me?”
“Him?” Or he might have said, hm? He stiffened. “A prisoner I took. Don’t mind him.”
“What is he called?”
“Temujin Uge of Aliut.”
“It’s musical enough. Happenstance or heaven has suggested, in the hour we need a name.”
He caught up with her, and he frowned.
“Unless you dislike?”
He smoothed out the frown. “I leave names to the mother. Mother’s more in tune, at the age, isn’t she? He’s almost none of a father’s affair, at the age. It’s a handsome name.” He leant and stroked the baby’s forehead with his thumb. Tenderly he told him, “You are Temujin.”
The baby blinked up at him with just his eyes. Yesugei smiled, one of his smiles, his marvelous smiles. Yesugei wasn’t very handsome, just marvelous.
With his eyes down on the baby he started to talk. “When I heard he came on the day, Hoelun, on the very day – I had a thought, you see. I had a thought, I’d changed horses and was about to go in again, I thought, I won’t come out, and then I thought, I wonder whether she has had the baby?” He stopped. Said again, “I wonder whether she has had the baby?” He touched his face, touched his scalp. “That was around the fourth of afternoon. Had you had him?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “I found my nokod a job to do. I told them, there’s a flag stand of Tartar bigwigs; I want them alive. Alive is a lot more tricky. Kept them focused for hours, hours until... until night, in fact, and those of us... those of us... we came away. A little battalion of us, I got them together, in fact, and we, what do they say in wrestling, in the melee? The gentlemen declared and stepped out of the ring. Fancy, this one’s a few days old and he’s saved his father’s life.”
With great ambivalence he said so. She ventured to say, “I am glad.”
He gave a half-nod, and they left off talk of that. “Temujin, then?” He contemplated.
“The stalk is iron. Temur, Turkic for iron; bitten off, as Mongols slur, and seldom bother to say baghatur but baa like sheep.”
“Iron. That – forgive me – is an irony.”
“Dear, dear. – Perhaps we had to name him for events, since he had to arrive at such a time. I am sorry if you didn’t want a reminder. We can at once give him an alternate name and never speak his first more.” 
“I listen to a reminder. There was the sea of infantry in front of us or off to the side there was the flag stand. You might have named him Flag Stand.”
“We can call him Flag Stand.”
“It’s a name I can learn to love. Hoelun.”

Privately to his nephew Cutula had said, “This isn’t the way we unstitched the infinite army of Hu-sha-hu.”
“No.”
His uncle had a ball of white where frost had nipped one eye. It disconcerted you to talk to. “You’ve got to fight with the sentiment, Yesugei. No use to fight against.”
Did Yesugei speak up, or argue? No.
Unlike the Chinese we don’t degrade, disgrace and decapitate our military leaders for failure. It’s a disincentive, as no few Masters of Light Chariots or Swift Cavalry have found: oops, lost one, I’ll have to defect to the Huns. It isn’t Cutula’s fault. He was right, you have to fight with the sentiment, and the sentiment, strongly, throbbed to Uru’ud and Mangqot’s slogan, No walls. We are a wall.
We are a wall?
We are not a wall. We’re a flock of birds, we wheel away into spaces as vast as the air, to kill us you have to catch us first; but we’ll swoop at you out of the blue when you’re footsore, fatigued and off-guard. They had let infantry overtake them. There was just no excuse for that.
We were angry.
The Borjigin fire-heads were known for a fiery temperament and had to tutor their young in control. Bartan taught him: ride your anger, don’t allow your anger to ride you. Can be learnt, I know from experience. He had never seen his father in a violent temper. “But I was a great sinner that way, Yesugei, before I was grown up enough to have you. Khabul told me, there’s the thunder and lightning in us, since we are sky-begotten; dangerous stuff, thunder and lightning, wrongly employed. Employ them as God intended, for they aren’t without utility, much as we frown upon a temper. Mind not to do as did the original shaman, who grew proud and like an ingrate challenged Tangr. Nothing worse than a heavenly gift abused. You get upset at the right things, Yesugei, and that augurs for you.”
His father had died of grief, or indignation. It’s hard to distinguish. At Bor Nor, once they understood the battle was disastrous, no-one tried to be exempt, exempt from the general fate of the Mongols, the fate of their lions and stalwarts: who am I to live? Yesugei knew; he had felt the sway of the general mood, he had thought who am I to live? God strikes us down today. I have no argument. I have a last wish, a last testament: my bones be found with these my comrades’ bones, with these I admire. United we stand, and let us fall united.
Is that angry? Is that magnificent? Is that the end of the Mongols? Yes, yes and maybe.
How was he going to live with the fact he had lived?
Death is only transition into a spirit. Death is only to meet your ancestors face to face and be fed on sacrificial meats by your descendants. Spirits are omniscient, and travel freely through time and space, to the stars. Perhaps we need a hell, to put us off. Christians, quite seriously, think twice. His father – Yesugei wailed on the inside – for instance, were he a Christian, hadn’t found pious to drop his bones by Ambaghai’s. I’m a great sinner that way. Him, and the feast for the scavengers Yesugei had seen at Bor Nor. What of our heroes? – No harp to awaken them, but the dark raven, drawn to the fey, he chatters, and asks the eagle how he sped when he spoilt the slain with the wolf.
You have to put it in poetry. Don’t you? Yesugei hadn’t witnessed a big pitched battle before, whether from the win side or the lose side. He witnessed why the steppe avoids them – like the plague, like the plague on a big scale. Have you ever been into a plague ger, when no-one’s alive and they sterilize by fire? No, he hadn’t done that either. Those who lived through one, he honestly didn’t know how they were ever to be towed into another. Still, there wasn’t much prospect of that.
Death, hot, and in chase of your comrades: oi, you lot, Tomdol, Ultantaz, wait for me. Death, cold, mass, indiscriminate, and torn by beaks. Survivors, for their punishment, have the worst sight.

Kill them like cattle.
That was one option, what to do with his prisoners, and Yesugei had nothing much against. It was only that he had instructed his nokod to take them alive, for which he might have to invent a reason. They had liberty of movement – so far – he had sworn them on their mothers’ and grandmothers’ graves: obey him, do him no harm. They were Tartars, but he supposed they understood an oath. “It’s that or the yoke,” he had said. “Which do you like?”
The one Hoelun had named his son after (that did cause him difficulty, difficulty in use of the name to each of them, that gave him a stutter) was head and shoulders the figure of the group – not in rank, in character, of which he had more than his share. And he didn’t hold back on character out of caution about the cattle option. He was often found in Yesugei’s path, to lock horns with him.
“Who is the lady with the ram’s horns who goes by?”
“That is my Aunt Tamsag.”
“As I thought. Khabul’s daughter.” He smiled his sardonic smile. “Tell her – unless my notice is ignominy – she has not changed out of recognition since her blossom days.”
“You have met?” asked Yesugei reluctantly.
“It was in aid of her husband our famous shaman Tchogor came, to try his cures. For a year Kharju had languished, his soul absent, lost; in vain your shamans had voyaged to the ends of the earth, searched the bottom of the sea, scoured through the dead, confronted Irle Khan. Tchogor came, and had found spoor, on a short investigative flight, when Kharju gave up the ghost. The spirit who imprisoned him, who had feasted on him slowly, gobbled him up, as soon as he saw our shaman on the case. Tchogor told his clients this for truth, but the truth did not save him. On his journey home, his disappointed clients had him murdered.”
“The tale I grew up with has a murder in it. But not of the great healer Tchogor, nor out of petty spite but vanity, when he saw he must fail in a cure; and that he met his end on his way home was thought God’s justice here. If you were of Tchogor’s party I shan’t introduce you to my aunt.”
“Old murders are hard to unriddle.”
“There are more recent deaths that are more plain.”
“True. Though not my tribe, Yesugei Kiyat, sold your king. You Mongols can’t pick one Tartar from another. You should, since Tartars do, to a fault.”
“To our eye there is intricate in-fight without difference. None of your tribes, for example, said no to China. None came instead to stand by us.”
“Stand by you?”
“Ridiculous, is that? Ridiculous for steppe peoples to stand together?”
“I don’t know about ridiculous.” The princely captive ran a finger down a groove in his jaw. “Suicidal, yes, and I don’t mean China, I mean our reception with you.” 
“I’d have clasped your arm for a comrade, Temujin Uge.”
“Out of a Mongol mouth,” he wondered to the air. “Curses and spittle I have had out of Mongol mouths, since Ambaghai.”
“Yes, I’d have clasped your arm,” Yesugei pursued. “Because I remember Ambaghai. Have you stopped to ask, what was the purpose behind his death, his hideous death? What was the purpose?”
“I have asked that question, Yesugei Kiyat.” His interest was engaged. “I had not thought the Mongols paused to ask. It’s odd, at a time Mongols were quiet and only jealously watched the border against encroachment. Ambaghai gave no sign of bellicosity towards China, and their shipments of silk to you were piddling. Why did they do it?”
“You see why too.” No-one else did. No-one else had had the chance; he had figured things out on the way back from Bor Nor. You have to have the hindsight. It made such sense in hindsight, the sense of the snap of a trap. 
“At first glance, gross misjudgement, gratuitous incitement. In hindsight a masterly strategy. One act, a sequence of effects. Mongols too enraged to be rational. Tartars too frightened to say no. Where do they have us now?”
“Us? Now you say us?”
“I do, Kiyat, when we have Chinese soldiers intermingled with our flocks. You frightened us in the winter; we had to co-operate with them or face up to you alone. Co-operation costs, and we are in an intimacy tighter than we were.”
“In Ambaghai Khan’s future you and me might have been friends.”
“Your Ambaghai I didn’t meet, but we feel we knew him. We knew him an idealist, and dangerous, as idealists are. Clearly he upset the Jurchen even more than did Khabul – who only mocked them and went to war against them – whereas Ambaghai tried to wed into his enemy. Yes, that was far more dangerous. To Jurchen, and therefore to us. The dirty work had to be done. By Yorgi Wolfhound, but you are right: Tartars, whatever their tribe, understood the dirty work had to be done. And no, Yesugei Kiyat, we did not come to stand with you in your self-destruction. Tartars have learnt how to survive.”
Yesugei kept his spittle in his mouth and spoke through his teeth. “Our king isn’t the first king whose blood is on your hands. Marquz Khan of Hirai. China can depend on you, depend on you to be traitors to the steppe.”
“Yes, Kiyat, but again, ask why. You’ve had the intelligence to ask why. Do you think this hasn’t happened to us? Have you forgotten? We had a great king, Mogusi, who overran the Iron Khans’ occupation-town on the Orqon, who seized our stolen graze-grounds back. They caught him, they hacked him apart at the joints, and they fragmented us. Ever since they have kept us in fragments. Now you have been broken in battle. Not every Tartar is happy to lose his fathers’ traditions and watch the corruption of his people. But there is no people who have lived within reach of China and remained uncorrupt. No people. You Mongols – you savages, you are scarcely out of the woods, and you have lived behind us while we live up against the Wall. But under your three khans you began to poke your heads out into the big world. Wait and see, Yesugei Kiyat. In twenty years’ time, God grant, I’ll take up with you our discussion of today, and I’ll ask you what has become of your independence, your dignity, your fathers’ traditions, and of your moral outrage and of your moral high ground.”
At least young Temujin had been named after a cogent, incisive sort who can keep up his end of an argument. Yesugei’s head rang as if from punches. “Temujin Uge,” he said, “I’m a busy man. Can we adjourn this til twenty years’ time? When I just might startle you and have an answer.”
Temujin senior smiled his smile and stepped out of his path. “I look forward to resumption.”
“Not altogether unequivocal on whether I do,” he muttered as he and Ubashi, who had been there throughout, walked on. “Did I lose that argument?”
“Very hard to tell. Bit intense for me. What I told from that is, he hasn’t got enough to do. Idle hands. How about I fix that? There’s the hair for the felt wants a sift.”
“Can Tartar royalty turn his hand to felt? He has left felt for silk.”
“I’ll shortly re-teach him his traditions.”
“If you don’t mind him messing up your sift, Ubashi, you can have him.”
“In the fancy armour?”
He sighed. “No, I’ll divest them of the fancy armour. Time I gave out the wages.”
“They grow in, Yesugei.”
“Hm?”
“They grow in. Maybe my granddad was as much a misfit about camp, in the early days. Employment’s a start.”
This was a timely comment. It struck Yesugei that he was glad his granddad hadn’t gone the cattle option with Ubashi’s granddad. Too late, anyhow, after you’ve argued, which feels tantamount to an acquaintance. At least Uge’s a perfectly Tartar title, not bastard Chinese. He flung an arm around Ubashi’s shoulders. “It’s a stretch to imagine the Uge’s grandkids grown in to be a vital organ, Ubashi, like you. But you’re right.”

That his wife had had a sight didn’t astound him. It tallied his end: she had been in contact with where he was and that was how he knew about the baby, though he didn’t know he knew, he thought he wondered. His wife’s clairvoyance – a talent he believed hers and not merely to do with her state – had caught him like a fish on a hook and reeled him home. None of this disturbed him, this was cosy. This belonged at his domestic hearth, but people began to speculate upon his son, the time he had come, the clot of blood he had come with in his tiny fingers, and on his name.
“You’ve named him in trophy of your prisoner?”
It wasn’t quite like that. My prisoner isn’t much to boast of. I don’t know whether he’s flattered.
“You and Lucky Telegetu, you gave us an inch of victory in a rim horizon of defeat. It’s you we followed out, Yesugei, the few of us who got out. I can’t feel bad about that. I can, to be frank with you, and I nearly joined the honour-guard, but we can do them honour. A few of us live to fight again, to fight again in memory of our dead. And that’s what you told them, Yesugei, when you went against the tide and annoyed them, which meant to me, too, Yesugei, the war doesn’t end here. The war isn’t over. And I came away with you. I don’t know, Yesugei, just you the odd one out, and none down – none down, that staggers belief, and I found a belief again. I felt a finger’s touch on my nape, a spirit of ours, and our spirits must have been with you, to salvage us an inch of luck or grace. And why you, if fate was such that our spirits’ utmost only ran to an inch? Your kid. How’s a baby, a young Mongol, on the day? He’s our spot of optimism.”
Our spot of optimism was his son, innocent in his pouch, with his soft fiery scalp and big, solemn, owlish eyes. Yesugei grew the bristling stance of a guard dog. He didn’t quite know why, or what he was afraid of.
And the clot of blood, a black clot in his right hand? What did that signify?
It signifies, perhaps, there’s blood involved when a child comes out and us men have the right idea to steer clear. 
God has struck us down.
Tangr warned us. Over winter, nothing went our way. He warned us; our fault we didn’t listen.
Has God forsaken us?
Did God send us a sign? A sign, even at time of battle, even in his blasts? Our cause was not unjust. We are short-sighted, he is far-sighted. We don’t know: he knows.
What Yesugei heard he understood, in his depths, an ache in his bones, a tremble in his bowels: is there hope? But that was why he got the pip with this talk.
Once, out to consult in other circles, a stranger said to him, seriously or otherwise, “To give him your vanquished enemy’s name? Ancient enchantment, marshal. It transfers to him the Tartar’s strength – transfers his spirit, just the way you pour the milk brandy from one bag into another. The one shrivels up, the other thrives for two.”
Heaven help him. Not the Tartar.
In his botheration he had a visitor, a fellow new father who came to commiserate with him, or to be giddy together at this inconvenient time to be a new father. “I heard of your plight, Yesugei, and I thought, there’s a man in a muddled-up situation, like mine. I go about with this absurd grin and I get the funny glances. Do you find?”
Yesugei found he was fervently glad to meet him. “It’s a brilliant idea, that you came. Stay a bit, won’t you?”
“Matter of fact, Yesugei, I’ve had an inspiration. Because of the coincidence, yours and mine. In old times my clan Jarchiut yearly dedicated a child to your clan, a tribute owed from our erstwhile captivity. Here’s a descendant of our captor and no mistake. Inspiration struck: to observe the dead custom and promise mine, at age, into the service of yours. In your service ours have always found adventure and often fortune. It’s a start in life. Our fortunes in the late war notwithstanding, life goes on... as you and I know, who are plunged in baby poo and so on.”
“Jarchiudai, I don’t know how to answer you. Except that Uriangqot are a people out of the Happy Age and enter into our legends for your open hands and hearts. And I’ll answer for my Temujin, that your Jelme won’t have cause to rue your promise. I can’t guarantee a big figure from him, but here and now I guarantee him a true and loyal friend. – What’s jelme in Uriangqot?”
“Plum.”
“Excellent.” Ah, the sanity. Why didn’t we name ours Plum? Yesugei slapped himself for that thought.
Jarchiudai had ridden in on an elk, with a bellows on his back; he was a smith – “Just a tinker,” he said – he tinkered the holey pots in camp, and he whipped up a pouch for Temujin from sable pelts, suppled as only Uriangqot know how, a dense and shiny night-sky black, a luxury to touch. Hoelun said, “Sable is opulent for a baby’s pouch. Are Uriangqot like this?”
“Like kings, each one.”
“And Temujin has a servant because Bodonjar once attacked his milk-hosts?”
“Even a suspect action can have a nice consequence.”
“He’ll have to be on his most gracious behaviour with Jelme.”
“Yes, he’ll have to be. I’ve gone ahead and guaranteed.”

In the weeks and months after the battle Jurchen proved a point to Mongols: they proved they weren’t Chinese. Infantry they sent home to softer climes, but Jurchen troops spent spring and summer on the steppe. “The truth is, the steppe defeats most of our foes for us.” Jurchen were northerners. The spring winds didn’t hurl them into oblivion, neither did summer’s vicious storms scare the pants off them, though they saw the usual hail size of a cow’s skull. Tumults of the atmosphere they braved, who half a century since had been Wild Jurchen. As for logistics, the troops didn’t blench to live on milk and meat, and that solved logistics. A Chinese can’t digest milk. Milk makes a Chinese sick, even as bread has been known to kill a nomad. “They aren’t a Chinese army. We’ve got that. What next?”
On the other hand they were Chinese and there were a couple of Chinese methods. Mostly people thought they waited for autumn and winter again and resumption of the campaign. Either drive the Mongols off into distances from which they wouldn’t trouble China, or else round them up. Round them up, fence them and use them in their wars. Fence them in the old Ordos, sheep grounds, since a thousand years ago a sort of livestock pen for nomads, and...
“Conscript us in the Odds-and-Ends?”
“Of course. We aren’t the first and we won’t be the last.”
“That simply isn’t going to happen.”
“That’s going to happen, or we’re going to have to move out.”
“What, just load our wagons and go?”
“It’s what a people do when they can’t stay put.”
“We aren’t strong enough. Go? – go through other peoples. You aren’t strong enough, you get butchered.”
“Or you drift, drift into other peoples and forget who you are.”
“I’m a Mongol.”
“Yep. I’m a Mongol. I won’t be forgetting that.”
“It’s the kids who forget.”
“Yesus Christ.”
“Who’s he? Is he a Mongol? See?”
“Lighten up. I can’t swear in my own religion. It’s blasphemous.”
“They’re not going to turn me into a Tartar. In no sense or shape. That’s what they’re not going to do.”
“How do they intend to reward the Tartars? With our steppe.”
“Set the Tartars over us?”
“Enslave us to the Tartar princes?”
“Before that, I’d join up with Toqtoa.”
“That isn’t funny, either.”
Possibly pummeled into thought by Temujin Uge, Yesugei wasn’t caught on the hop when Jurchen did none of the above. Why get rid of the Mongols, when they weren’t a threat? Why give their space, or them, to the Tartars, and beef Tartars up into a threat? No, Jurchen liked the way things were, liked where they have us now. Leave the remnant of the Mongols on their ground, and any Mongol energies left must be spent to keep that ground.
Jurchen demanded war damages, penalties to be paid by each tribe, separately calculated, on size. Separately: not through a central agency, he had been cut up with axes, and Jurchen didn’t want to encourage a centre. Yesugei was intelligent these days. He saw his last of Temujin Uge: his prisoners were demanded too. “Until we meet again, then. Twenty years?”
The man gave an actual smile. “God grant.”
“I’ll have that rejoinder.”
He said, “God grant,” and further stretched Yesugei with an offer of his arm. So they did clasp as comrades, the once.

While bigger, badder things were going on, Hoelun had an anxiety of her own. Although Suchigu had been generous with her (less towards Yesugei), jealousy had reared its ugly head, in the unlikely vessel of Bagtor. Briefly he had had her to himself; she had a child and he had a rival, and he suffered the total-hearted rage of six years old. To vent his passion he developed a whistle-hiss, like a mad kettle. Yesugei was amused, and said she slew hearts on every side; Ubashi was in a similar case, he jested, only more manly at the blow. Yesugei wasn’t much help.
Then, at a stream, she left Temujin in his pouch for a few moments under the watch of Yesugei’s huge dog Tiger – who was proof against wolves or strangers, but not against a boy from the home camp. When Hoelun returned Bagtor had Temujin wrong end-up in his pouch; he was stuffing him in by his feet. Now at last Temujin learnt to bawl, since he was half-suffocated. Fortunately Bagtor wasn’t very efficient. What if he had pushed him in the stream? This was wicked, wicked... and yet childish. Tiger hadn’t been oblivious to the trouble his charge was in; she found him trotting circles and whining in divided loyalties. To jump at Bagtor’s throat was impossible. What was right to do? Hoelun had no more idea than the dog.
Ought she tell Yesugei this? A sense for him cautioned her. Very rarely was he severe but he had been. Years ago he had had a member of his nokod flogged and dismissed from his service. For what infraction? “Namnan flew out of his tree and laid violent hands on another nokor. The captain didn’t hear excuses, that time.” Too often, far more often than he liked, Yesugei felt he had to punish out of Bagtor what Goagchin put into him; punishment came hard to Yesugei and Hoelun saw he was left perplexed on how to love him. To alienate him from Bagtor with the tale... like Tiger, she found that impossible.
In the end Hoelun tried her hand alone. She told Bagtor that for a man to do what he had done was wicked wrong. He had nine years ahead of him to learn to be a man. Along with this she told him he was her husband’s child and thereby just as important to her as children from her womb. Then she sent him on a hunt with Arash – out of his tight silk suit – with a tall piece of work to attempt for her: a white winter hare for her neck.
Bagtor came home from his hunt and suavely gave her her snow hare. Yesugei said he himself hadn’t shot a scrap until the age of eight, and anointed his thumb with blood, a rite Arash had left to the father. He had lost his whistle-hiss. This Bagtor only laughed to see Temujin in his pouch – “Like a grub in a pod,” he said.

Yesugei’s lifetime hero Bultachu Ba’atur had been declared out of danger, though he didn’t have the use of his legs. Fifteen months after the battle Yesugei went to see him, in a band of his brothers, Lucky Telegetu of Jalaya, Uder Unan and Baqaji of the Tayichiut Wolves. “We can call ourselves the Luckies,” proposed Uder Unan. “For you, Lucky, and Yesugei isn’t short himself. Once he told Baqaji and me not to get killed, and we haven’t managed to. Fight with him, you’re charmed.”
“The Luck-Hogs,” agreed Lucky and crunched the face in sympathy at Yesugei. It was the sort of reputation you have to lose one day.
Jalaya had been the worst enemies Mongols ever knew, worse than Tartars... maybe. Maybe that was yet to be determined. Qaidu, the child Mother Nomolun hid under a fuel stack, overthrew them, and here they were, or one of them – a typical one, his hides in splashy hues with silk cut-outs sewn on, and slung with his own weight in armament. For another historical curiosity or irony, Jalaya had been muscled out of their original home on Amur River by the Wild Jurchen, and that was how come they invaded Mongol grounds. History gives you hope, at times. They journeyed to Bultachu Ba’atur for hope, or to work out what hopes they had.
The topic first of concern was wall activity. After the troops, under their guard, had come the labourers; Jurchen meant to occupy new tracts of steppe, tracts unbuilt-on before. Lucky Telegetu had a thorough report. “They’re in construction on two lines. One’s an extension of Arzat’s, nor-nor-east, that is, in a beeline for Bor Nor. The other runs forward of the Han wall above the Ordos, east, north-east, then strikes up direct for the foot of Great Khingan Mountains: to close the gap of grass, to cut Tartar steppe off from Qatat steppe.”
“Who’s this for?” frowned Baqaji.
“These lines control the three peoples, us, Tartars and Qatat. More Qatat insurgency last year. They fork from north of the Ordos, like jaws that hinge – jaws open wide – we’re going to lose what’s between them.”
“How far up do they intend to build on the Bor Nor line? To Bor Nor?”
“Of that we have no idea. Unless we capture a project manager.”
Daritai proved he had a spatial brain and said, “An inverse contour in the north and they can get the jaws into a maniacal grin.”
“With half of Tartary inside.”
“It’s the conquest of the Ordos over again. Knock them out, fence them in. But ambitious. What’s the odds they’ve bitten off more than they can chew?”
“If only we had teeth left. We’re gappy-toothed, we are.”
“Bleak terrain,” put in Bultachu. To a bone adept’s instructions he lay flat on timber planks, aged by the experience, with drastic weight loss.
“Where they are now, on the Khingan line,” Lucky told them, “it’s salt piles, cairns of salt, nothing but. Doesn’t deter them. They use convicts for the labour gangs, you know.” 
Bultachu asked, “How are the walls structured?” 
“Earth ramparts, a trench in front. In key sections – the avenue into Qatay – they double up with an inner and an outer trench and rampart. Signal stations out ahead and behind, too, in case of misadventure, to warn the rear forts. What’s an innovation is shelves on the outer face, half-moons. Can’t see what they’re for, except, outer face? That’s attack, not defence.”
“Intimidatory,” said Uder Unan. “It’s the function of a wall.”
“They just like their walls to bristle,” said his co-chief. “Muscular Chinese. I hate that sort. I like the calligraphers.”
Lucky Telegetu went on. “Crossbows, infixed. Them mechanical crossbows with rotation-fire, big mothers.”
“I hate crossbows.”
“Crossbows are for those as can’t shoot.”
“Which I’ll tell myself, Uder, for comfort, when I’m skewered.”
Bultachu’s wife Prajna – a Buddhist word, wisdom – she had come to him from Tibet – observed, “This is a project they must have had on the maps for a fair amount of time. When were these lines drawn? When Ambaghai rode innocently into Tartary?”
Mengetu took up the hint, with heat. “Yes. They fought us to gain freedom on the steppe, the freedom to construct. We can’t stop them. They had these walls in mind from the beginning. Possibly they drew their maps right after Khabul and Hu-sha-hu – they want the run of the steppe, not to get out of their depth as he did. With these walls they can launch steppe operations, from way out on the steppe, supply lines there and permanent. Infantry can safely march along these walls. Intimidatory? It isn’t just that they take a slice of Ongirat ground, again. How can we go to war, infiltrated by these walls?”
When they had for a while exhausted wall discussion, Yesugei steered the talk onto Mongol leadership. Lack thereof. “My agha and I have spoken to Galut Queen. She has a reluctance to step into his shoes.”
“Step into his shoes?” questioned Bultachu. “Why, and did you ask her, Yesugei, to pick up her dead husband’s sword?”
“No, not his sword. But his staff of office. The queen is the right person to convene a hur altai, and in the interim to maintain her husband’s government.”
“How did she answer you?”
“Negatively. No-one’s eager for a hur altai, she said, after the crowd in Qorqonag Meadows, to meet and do a head-count. On her entitlement to govern in his stead, she answered that widow queens are a Qatat tradition and aren’t universal. Mengetu and I thought the queen’s take-up is our tradition too, insofar as we have set our traditions of government.”
Bultachu listened with his eyes in the fire. At the end he gave a grunt. “Yesugei – Mengetu – I’m laid on my back. Perhaps I have a sympathy. Of the family at her hearth, three likely lads and their father, she has left the one who was under arms-age. How much can Mongols demand of her? If she can’t, she can’t. It approximates, maybe, to if you asked me to lead a war, without the legs.”
Yesugei made a sad note not to do that, then. “We thought she may change her mind with time, and came away. Mongols have no other centre to negotiate with Jurchen from, but treat with them tribe by tribe, and that isn’t a strength. Our war penalties, which we understood a one-off, are discovered to be due yearly. Little tribes don’t know how to pay twice, never mind next year and the year after that.”
“Aye, but is Galut to unscramble our mess? She’s drawn the short straw, hasn’t she?”
“I don’t like to pressure her in her grief.”
“There’s a steppe tradition, wide steppe, that royalty in office can step down to live a private life. Frequently they did in antiquity, in modern times less often, but to my mind that argues for and not against the tradition. Is that her wish?”
Mengetu said, “She used the phrase, a private life.”
“Then, I’m sorry, I cannot urge her. I’d be a hypocrite, for one thing, unless I got up and went at them, or crawled out to grapple their ankles.”
From beside his planks, Prajna toyed with one of his hair tails on his chest and said lightly, “Bultachu has promised me to enjoy a home life.”
“Bultachu,” said Bultachu, not without a twinkle at her, “isn’t spoilt for choice.”
After this, as Yesugei gazed into his hero’s hearth, half-melancholy and half-sweet and imagined himself crippled in Hoelun’s custody, Bultachu awoke him with her name. “Your wife Hoelun, Yesugei, I hear, had an experience, with what perhaps is a sign for us. Have you been to a tolgechi for interpretation?”
Yesugei stifled his dismay, poorly. “And do they speculate to this distance? Mine’s scarcely unusual, to come bloody from the womb.”
The crippled baghatur cocked an eye at him. In that cocked eye Yesugei recognised he was going backwards fast, on this. He’d splutter next. What was he afraid of?
“We don’t want to intrude, Yesugei. Excuse me if I say I discern a symbol, at least, in that clot of black blood. My thoughts puddle in me, stagnant – I can’t go for a gallop and whisk them from my head. I think about Bor Nor. The blood was stagnant like my thoughts, black, old. It whispers to me, wait. You people have come to me for counsel, but my only counsel is grit our teeth and have what I’m not famous for – as my wife can testify – I only find to say, we must be patient. That from me is news. Wife?”
“Patience has suffered most among your virtues, my dear, since you were tied to a plank.”
“In spite of which, what else have we? Patience. Hope?”
The group of them pondered. From Uder Unan, “Vengeance is a flyblown meat. The Turks say that.”
His other half grimaced. “And they call us garbage-mouths. I won’t say no to maggoty offal of Jurchen. Hang me if I do.”
Moodily from Mengetu, “I wonder how patient my grandfather is, who watches from his cloud.”
“Like us,” said Bultachu, “he might just have to chew on his fingers, and chomp his arm away to the elbow, and hope, by the time he’s down to the left foot, Mongols, once again, can do him proud.”
The Jalaya champion fondly stroked his tasselled hilts. “It is my fundamental skill. I prefer to butt heads. More lively. But if there’s one thing I can do, I can breed sheep. I can breed them faster than they confiscate them. I can’t be starved. I can eat the felt of my tent, I can eat the leather of my tack. I can outlive a Jurchen. I can outlast him. I can out-steppe him. Because he’s a soft-belly, flabby-spine Chinese.”
Noikon took up the hymn. Noikon often got told he perpetuated the daft in Daft Bodonjar – most often by Daritai – but he hadn’t missed the native vein of how to talk in verse. “Tenacity is my epitaph. I don’t drop in my tracks until my rain-washed bones are out of cartilage. Hunger, thirst, pangs of the flesh? I forgot them a hundred years ago, I mislaid them as I crossed the ocean. But my purpose? My purpose floats from my crumbled bones, and goes on.” 
Bultachu, flat on his back, startled them with the stag’s bugle that had been his war cry. The two Wolves howled.

“He meant I have a duty. I have a duty, don’t I, Mengetu?”
“None of us want to interfere.”
“That’s what he said. He meant I have a duty.”
“Yesugei, forgive me, I haven’t grasped why you are so hesitant.”
He made half-confession: he confessed as much as he knew. “Blood? Blood. The Wolves daub blood on their faces, but that’s to prove how unawed they are.” Blood. You slit a sheep’s belly, insert your hand, pinch the tube into the heart. The sheep bleats once to be slit and thereafter ignores you, peers about at other things until his head flops. You don’t shed a drop of blood. Part of that is husbandry, part is sacred dread. “Blood is the very height of ambivalent. There might be a bad significance in blood.”
“That’s true, Twig. But if the sign is for Mongols, the bad significance is ours in general.” 
“He is fifteen months old. He isn’t even a twig, he is a nub. It isn’t fair,” objected Yesugei, “to send signs about a baby.”
“Dear, do you want to cut short the suspense?”
“Go to a tolgechi?”
“Unless you don’t want to cut short the suspense.” 
“It might cut out the talk and speculation. They might leave him alone.”
“Likely we learn there is no sign. As you say, Yesugei.”
“I say crap.”
“Yesugei?”
“Find me an interpreter of omens, agha. Take me to one.”
“Yes? I’ll start inquiries.”
“Don’t start inquiries.”
“Case histories. Credentials.”
He had swung to the opposite obstinacy. “The first one we run into. Before I change my mind.”
They ran into Azjargal.
She lived alone – alone with the invisible, her neighbours said. No-one was home. Just inside the door, where a sip and a sup are left for stranger or acquaintance who comes by, there was laid out a banquet of milk. Clotted cream and crust of cream, sour cream and cream with honey, smooth yoghurt and stiff yoghurt, crisp curd biscuit and curds-and-whey, mild cheese, aged cheese and a whiffy cheese from years ago, a flagon of fermented milk and a jug of milk distilled. “Here’s a turn-out for the time of year and a woman on her own.”
“An old-fashioned welcome.” Mengetu rubbed his hands together and stepped right in. “And no damned dog.”
Through his distraction Yesugei thought, don’t the foxes get at the food?
They sat down at her hearth to wait. Noikon poured the ayrag. With the last cup in the stack, as he poured for himself, he said suddenly, “Hey. Seven cups. One for each of us.”
Daritai, who loved him dearly, said, “The arithmetic.”
“How about her arithmetic?”
“It’s uncanny. Try the cream.” He licked his fingers. The others had their fingers stuck in the dishes or stuck in their mouths. Yesugei ingested more of his fingernails. Though none of them went for the black milk they loosened up as if they had – they laughed and grew loud, while he remained uptight, until he wondered what she put in her cream. Not that he was cynical. In the ghosts’ underground, whether you are there by accident, by seizure or by voyage, you must neither eat nor drink or you can never leave. Fraudulent shamans had been known. So had shamans who were wolves in a sheep’s fleece, whose clients become their victims, who, when left alone with the sick, devour their souls.
She came in.
She was in costume, from her gilt horns to her tapestry tails. She had shells from the sea, verdigris coins from history, flint arrows from antiquity. These things about her gave her free voyage in the heavens and the earth, but the eyes are where to see the shaman’s universal sympathy. Azjargal was young but she had weary eyes, weary and sad with the weight of the world, and brave for the sake of the sad of the world. She was a shaman. They loved her at first sight and she them.
Laughter was quenched and they stared, with their fingers in the dishes. Now only Yesugei had the gumption to get on his feet and greet her. “It is I, Azjargal, who come with question for you. I am Yesugei.”
As the focus of those eyes he stood, and his hard heart lay down arms.
“Ask me your question, Yesugei. Eat and drink, Yesugei’s friends.” Next to him she sat and gave to him her vast and almost physical attention.
Strangely, this didn’t inhibit him, but the contrary. There spilt out of him the story, the story and whatever got attached: the horrors of Bor Nor, his attitudes, the fact he was only here at Bultachu Ba’atur’s nudge.
“Yet through your fears, my love,” she said with quiet fervour to him – shamans use endearments – “you have had the courage to come, to put your trust in me. The sky spirits knew your brave faith, who told me what I know.”
“Shaman, what do you know?”
“Last night, as I flew in the upper atmosphere, I met a sky spirit in swans’ down and lambs’ wool whose face to my eyes was as a handsome image in a steel mirror. Once, he told me, I was Ulun Ghoa’s lover; from my loins sprang the Borjigin. Tomorrow one of mine is to come to you with a question, but he dwells in doubt. Say to him, yes, the child has speed in his blood, wind in his heart.”
Yesugei began to beam, began to wince.
“For he came to life on the hoof, at the gallop.”
The others’ laughter made a come-back, in squawks and chortles. They found this hysterical, or the cream had gotten into them; and Mengetu no better than the rest. Yesugei eyed them, and wondered who invited them. “That I didn’t tell you. – Did I?” he consulted them.
They attempted to sober up. “No, you certainly didn’t.”
Daritai. “If you did, you certainly shouldn’t.”
The shaman spared his friends only an indulgent glance of mild amusement and went on, intimately to Yesugei as if they were alone. “I’ll tell him, I said to the handsome spirit, if that is the answer to his question. No, he smiled, that isn’t his question; go on. My goose and I flew on. Beyond the moon we flew, we saw the stars like crests of waves on the sea. I was stopped by a spirit in gilt-bronze armour whose face to my eyes was as the blur of a fire on a hot day. He told me, I live in the sphere of the sun and I have an interest in Temujin. The blood in his hand was the blood of Bor Nor, whose thirst he is sent to slake. The blood of Bor Nor? I said, the blood of our dead that cries? Glad is this news to me. Tell his father the news, he said.”
Yesugei knit his brow and hung on.
“But I thought of you and your father’s heart and I said to the sun spirit, a father wants to know more. A father wants to know what his son is to be. A great captain? A famous baghatur? Chief of his tribe? More questions, more questions? he said to me. Go on, if you can stand the light. Up, up, we flew, to where the light grew too intense and I crouched and hid my eyes behind my goose’s wing. As soft as cloud, as clear as noon, quiet as a low wind, a voice spoke in my ear. Here I am, who govern the heavens. The Mongols must go years without a king and have hard times. But I have given them Temujin, him for whom your dead clamour, to right his people’s wrongs, to be his people’s king.”
From this blow Yesugei flinched, and gazed with a tragic face into the fire. It was what he had been afraid of.
“As I flew down to earth, I wept,” said Azjargal. “I didn’t know why. Whether sad tears for our dead or glad tears that God does not forget us, or whether the light hurt my eyes, or whether I felt the troubles of your father’s heart.”

Away from the tolgechi’s ger they rode in introspection, the father’s mood contagious. Until Daritai broke the spell and cracked his knuckles. “I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to hear those Jurchen are going to get theirs.”
Noikon tried to shut him up. “It’s no joke, Daritai.”
“It’s no bad news, either. I don’t understand why we’re gloomy.”
“Are you keen?” Noikon challenged him. “To step up, after the fates of the last two? – Not to fetch misfortune. Blest spirits avert. There’s a dearth of volunteers, have you noticed? As Bultachu said, next in has to unscramble our mess.”
“The idea is he’s to achieve our revenge, not come to a sticky end.”
Noikon shook his head. “I don’t know. Borjigin and lovers out of the sky?”
“Oh, that was just the interlude to make us laugh.” 
“Do you believe her?” he put to him point-blank.
“It doesn’t matter whether I believe her. If what she tells me is to happen, happens – I’ll be happy.”
“There you are wrong, Daritai.” This was Uder Unan, serious, unlike himself. “Without our faith the shamans cannot fly. However much they wish to help us, they can do nought for us without us – have you never heard a shaman say?”
Impossible, thought Yesugei. Temujin, for the next twenty years, to listen to this? How to confuse a child. And he had other reasons, reasons that hatched with their feathers on, as if they had incubated in the bottom of his head. Gently he spoke up. “A boy is like to find such a prophecy a trouble to him, whether a true one or a mistake.”
“That I understand, brother. And there’s an argument for a touch of flippancy, if ever I heard one.”
“Nor do I disagree. He doesn’t need this business dumped solemnly on him. Our children, don’t they? have enough to grow up with. They grow up in the shadow of Bor Nor. Most robbed of their fathers. I have tried to imagine... in twenty years’ time, our children in their flower: what effect? What have we left them? Away from the negative, we have left them our traditions and example, the portion we have always left to our children. Cast back to when you sat with your chin on your father’s knee and he held up to you great examples from the past and taught you emulation, a fine emulation, to be worthy of those of your tribe, of your people. This I wish to do with my son Temujin. I wish to tell him of his grandfather, how he was a man scarcely to be matched, only boys dream. Boys dream. They dream of great example. Our fathers taught us emulation: to set your heart high on a hero, try to be like him if you can. To your poor ability. No father – no father,” he stressed, “tells his child, you’re a cert to be a great figure one day.”
Mengetu took up his thread and went deftly where he was getting at. “Child kings exist. But they are foreign to us, I hope to remain foreign. It isn’t healthy, and doesn’t rear what we want in a king.”
“As my agha says. I won’t seed foreign vanities in my son and vices. I’ll teach my son to worship those he can dream to set his standard by. Do you understand?” he flung.
Lucky Telegetu assured him, “The lot of us understand, Yesugei. You want to keep this between ourselves?”
“That is what I ask, what I have to ask. I am sorry if this is a sign for the Mongols, I am sorry – I’ll beg Bultachu, too, to understand, my son comes first with me. I think of him, of his interests, ahead.”
“The interests coincide, Yesugei,” Mengetu said, “as we have agreed, if we want to make a king of him. If he’s to be our king, we need a Mongol. Mongols need a Mongol. Not a circus freak. Not an emperor. We elect kings – when they’re grown up. Attai, bless his spirit and God cradle him, was a bit on the young side for me. The tolgechi has told us our lad’s to be elected in the future. We’ll await the event.”
Baqaji put in, “There’s a funny trick with knowledge of the future: you’re not meant to act and twist things up. You’re almost meant to know and then forget – go on as if you didn’t know. Am I right?”
“Or that’s the way people behave,” answered Uder Unan, “whether they’re meant to or not. When spirits tell us the future in our sleep, we sort of nod, stash the knowledge in a box and go our merry way. No big deal. No big deal, Yesugei. What we heard in there won’t travel further.”
“Except, the old ba’atur?”
“Wolves, can I send you two back to him? Him I owe, most definitely.”
“Aye aye. Happy to. He’ll be happy to hear.”
“Consider us sworn,” Lucky said to him. 
“Thank you. Thank you, my brothers and my friends.” Then, as Babjo pranced along, he thought to add, “There won’t be call to mention what I can do on horseback, either.”
It set them off again.

5. Friends are Chosen by Father and Child
Those who swear to be brothers,
Between the two of them, they have one life.
They never forsake one another,
For each defends, in the other, his own life.
The Secret History of the Mongols, passage 117
Eight years have gone by since the battle at Bor Nor. At eight Temujin has big joints in the hand and shoulder, but he won’t be an out-size Borjigin – they have baby-fat that never melts, and Temujin runs off his; he is big-boned and lean, like his father, rambly, until he gets the muscle. From his mother he has an orb of a face, although the masculine ideal is more hewn or chiselled. Orbs are girly, unless you happen to be a religious icon. Neither his eyes nor his hair have darkened as they often do, and both stand out against the amber skin of the steppe, ruddy at the cheeks in the Mongol way. Green-eyed, orb-faced, at this juncture he most resembles an owl. “Owls don’t figure in the imagery. Do girls go for owls? I want him to be a hit with the girls.”
“Is that the way to get on in life? You seem more concerned with his looks, than whether he has in him a baghatur.”
“No doubt. I haven’t baghatured for years. It’s on the home front you have your life determined.” 
There was a sign of the times, but Hoelun didn’t say so. They had been left alone in the wreckage, to be happy; with fewer calls on Yesugei, because of the disaster, they lived a normal life. They felt they cheated – she did, and Yesugei had his guilt. But fate had been generous with them.
The children like to slide on ice stark naked, and not for a dare, just out of exuberance. Once Temujin did himself damage. A Tariat had lost his camels and the camp went out to search. Temujin chanced upon the strays, but a sleety gale set in and the animals, strangers to him, refused to be driven against the weather. They wandered where the wind pushed, so he stuck to their tails, not to lose them again. For three nights he lay out in the sleet and storm, and in triumph led the camels into camp. Exposure and exhaustion they cured with camel’s milk, which is sweet and fatty and hauls the dead back by the heels. His mother and his father found themselves at difference on whether to tell him off or flick him under the chin. Seen as a feat the incident isn’t unusual, but Temujin overheard his father point out to his mother he has grit, grit that keeps you alive, that kept his great-uncle alive on his hike across Hulun Nor... and he is proud.
He lives in no danger of natty silk suits. Silk to him means the antique ujins’ ribbon-coats, a treasured banner in his father’s coffers, the rich days of the past. Among the camp kids – who aren’t, for a symptom of the times, organised along military lines – he is liked, and shoves and is shoved like the others. The children don’t brawl or throw fists, since they never see such ill-behaviour from the adults. When they shout insults they have to be witty, like a taunt session in combat, or else they are scoffed off the stage. Accuracy with your arrow, scintillation with your tongue: these are what have other children agog. Temujin isn’t out of the way for his age in either, whereas his brother Jochi, at six, has a flair for archery and for taunt-and-vaunt. If children quarrel they wrestle out the issue or are put to another contest; when beaten you have to leave your quarrel behind; however, so does the victor. Temujin has a hostility he hasn’t solved with a wrestle, but only Jochi is privy to the particulars of this.
Quite a little tribe he has of brothers, with two years between each of them. Temujin and Jochi aren’t much of a nuisance to their mother – they aren’t sighted, once off for the day on Hairyfeet (his hooves overgrown by his fetlock hair) and Camelhead (a flaxen with a funny, uncouth head). They don’t eat inside but rear of the tent, in the society of a baby gazelle, suckled on a nanny-goat, or the latest in their animal nursery. Mother hopes they pick up an education on their travels. Jochi is as burly and blubbery as a bear cub, and hasn’t red hair but flaxen, like his steed. Next comes Catchiun, which means an oddity, in a fond way. At four he is taught horse skills by his father; he had just learnt to walk, upright and unawkward, when his father took him away for lessons; by the time he is through with him he’ll have lost the knack again, and ride or hobble, like dad does, thereafter. Temuge is two, and either has a limb trapped, inexplicably, in the lattice or has gotten into her hampers and her vats, as only toddlers and foxes know how. This time, an otoshi has told her, it’s a girl – due to Yesugei’s devout intercession, he said. “And she had better be your last, Hoelun. Don’t you think?”
“Why, I feel I have come through unscathed.”
“That is how I want to keep you. There are herbs. Methods. Gut, and I promise not to grumble.” 
“I can ask the otoshi about medicines, if we decide we are content.” She was still Yesugei’s only wife, and that was why she did not grudge him children. Head-count had never been more critical and there was an urge to breed; widows of Bor Nor flocked to their otchigins, or elsewhere, but they must be pregnant; there were otchigins with twelve apiece, like prize bulls, who had dead brothers’ lineaments; or if he left behind a lad by another wife, widows went there. It is pious to his lineaments, an after-faith to him; women are only wed once, women say, and they feel the pull of his next-of-kin. To go with a stranger is scandalous, but in these times that is done too. Such was the herd instinct – spit out kids – Yesugei and Hoelun had pitched in with four boys, to match his set of brothers.
But Noikon had been murdered. It was murder: no-one came forward with a claim on him, a claim to fight him or to slay him out of hand. There hadn’t been a fight. They found him with an arrow under the shoulderblade and spoilt of possessions – stripped, the arrow sawn off to remove his coat and shirt. Besides, Noikon wasn’t known for feuds and had none on that they knew of. Mengetu and Yesugei were greatly upset, but what Hoelun learnt from was Daritai’s deep affliction and how he wept into Yesugei’s neck, months after. The brothers investigated outsiders who had been in the neighbourhood. It was Tartar work or Merqot, or no-tribers, fugitives, outcasts, who often slipped to robbery. Once a man from the pugnacious, staunch tribe of Uru’ud said to them, “However, you make no inquiry closer to home? Do we turn a blind eye, if the culprits don’t suit our ideas?”
Mengetu gave the offence he had taken: he struck the man across the face. For this he had to duel. They didn’t lose another brother, and the man conceded with a wound. In fact he said to his opponent, “Needn’t kill each other, need we? Mongols both.”
There were cases that came as severe disappointment to Yesugei, in the conduct of Mongols. Most flagrant, Black Qadan the chief of Jajirat: so unjust was he in management of his tribe’s debt to China that members of his tribe conspired against him and he was slain inside his own tent at night. In abject emulation, said Yesugei, of the emperor of China, that monster Tikunai, assassinated in his campaign tent by his generals and staff, whom he had driven to desperate tactics. Can we be glad, asked Yesugei, to hear of his bad end, when Mongols copy China thus? Less spectacular, yet sad, Tarqutai of Tayichiut, first son of Ambaghai, half-brother to Attai Taiji. Perhaps he wasn’t altogether to blame. Tayichiut dated only from Ambaghai’s grandfather’s day, Jaraqa the Lotus who took his followers into the verges of the great north forest and named a new tribe, the Sacrificers. Forest life is more fragmentary than life on the steppe; up there a tribe can coalesce and dissolve. Tarqutai’s exactions were felt heavy on his outer periphery, light on his clan, who lived richly, and in short, the periphery drifted away. 
Hoelun was disposed to blame his mother Orboi Queen, from what she knew of her. But Attai Taiji had told her to stay silent on Orboi’s machinations or threatened machinations at the hur altai, and she hadn’t breached that silence even with Yesugei. The Tayichiut clan were brother-bone to Kiyat and Yesugei, quietly, more by example than admonishment, took Tarqutai in hand. They were geared for the forest, without sheep and ger wagons, and he lent them aid in their transition back onto the steppe. Now Tayichiut headquarters camped in tandem with Kiyat headquarters. 
Her husband noticed her dislike of Orboi Queen. “The lady is a trifle uppity. Old ladies can be like that, at their worst.” Hoelun must have grimaced, for he frowned. “Has she done you any insult, with her airs and graces?”
“No, no. But she steers Tarqutai, which I have to call a pity.”
“The clutches of old queens.” That led him, by antithesis, to, “We must ask after Galut.”
As marshal of Kiyat, Yesugei, with his family, found their pride in poverty. He himself sent twice the head-of-sheep to the Tribute Wall than Kiyat with the biggest flocks.

One day, over the flats at a slow dance-step, rode a troop, a square, a hundred in ranks of ten, towards their camp. Strange men, tall and thin with bulgy brows and great eagle’s noses, astride horses out of legends of Farghana in the west: high and slender and next to a shaggy steppe horse almost naked, with a glint in the light like metal, horses of copper or bronze or argent. The men glittered too and jingled in elaborate armour, bronze and iron, silver and gold, copper and tin. A flag embroidered with a winged lion about to pounce into the air, and a tuq with a hawk for a top-piece, paraded at the right and left stirrups of the leader.
There had been a tedium to daily life in late years. The approach of this rich and strange troop, which spelt adventure, had the whole camp up on wagons in that section of the ring, agape. By contrast, Yesugei awaited them at the gateway without the least astonishment, as if he had asked them to visit. Possibly he had. “Hirai,” he announced to those of his nokod in earshot. “From the royal house of Hirai. That is the flag of Marquz Khan, who knew Khabul, and suffered the death of Ambaghai.”
“Why are they so peculiar? I thought Hirai were Turks.”
“They are. They went Turk a while back. Much like Borjigin, they’re none too certain on their origins. Don’t ask them where on earth they come from – they can’t tell you and the question’s rude. A history their ancestors chose to forget.”
“Borjigin dropped from the sky.”
“And Hirai blew in with the wind.”
“Do they know what direction? North wind, south wind? East wind, west?”
“Their advent in Altai Mountains has to do with the tribal upheavals at the foundation of Tangut. Then Naiman thrust them out of the Altai, east to Orqon Gol, to be our neighbours. It’s the royals and the nobility who are least Turk in physiognomy.”
“Pushed around. No wonder they’re a bit dizzy and can’t recall.”
Near the wagon ring the hundred-square halted and their leader dismounted. Yesugei walked forward to him. On his heap of curly hair he wore a crown – battlements, two battlements one inside the other, with prongs of silver and prongs of gold. It was hard to judge with the curls and the crown but he had at least an inch on Yesugei, perhaps up to two, which Yesugei’s people weren’t used to see – but narrow as a stick, where their captain was a wide trunk of a tree – no contest, if matters came to a wrestle. “A glad welcome to my guest,” said Yesugei.
“Do I have the honour to greet the grandson of Khabul Khan, marshal of the Kiyat, Yesugei Baghatur?”
“Yesugei is my name.”
“My grandfather was Marquz Khan, and an old hearty of your grandfather. And a couple of fine old khans they were. I am Toghrul, and again, honoured to meet you.” Very freely and frankly, although he wore a crown, he held out his right arm.
In the comrades’ clasp they took each other’s arm, which disarmed Yesugei’s people, for Turks can be haughty with Mongols, on account of their art with metal and their ancient kingdoms.
“My other claim to fame,” the Turk went on, “or foot into your graces, is that I had a Mongol mother, although she has left more trace in my upright heart, I hope, than in my face.”
This was arrant flattery. Yesugei’s people didn’t mind. The captain laid on him one of his smiles, that always knocked his victim off his feet. “Three times welcome, guest, for your grandfather, your mother and yourself. Are you thirsty from your journey? I have milk white or black for you and yours.”
This was a lie. There were a hundred of them and he didn’t. To lie in such circumstances isn’t dishonest but sublime. He’d find the milk, and find meat for his guests, if he had to chop off his leg. A leg is not so precious as one’s reputation as a host.
“I’ll have to explain myself,” answered the royal guest, “but you see me an itinerant beggar. In my rear I have my wagons and my flocks, and what I beg is permission to camp hereabouts for a night or two. If you grant me, I’ll dismiss these and tell my people they can pause and enjoy a sheep-boil. As for me, Yesugei, I won’t say no to a black milk. I rarely do.”
Yesugei took him in like a stray. In the seat of honour in the great tent he smacked his lips over his spirits-of-milk. “Velvety,” was his verdict. “Slips down only too easy. Nectar of the gods. Your lady wife?” Yesugei’s nokod watched. He had a knobbly forehead, hollow cheeks and a hawk’s beak, to go with his name, toghrul a kite. Instead of a Turk’s jet and amber and crescent eye, both his hair and skin were a dark peat-brown and his eye as round as a cow’s... to go with his name, hirai the crows, as in black as. Who called Borjigin outlandish? The captain sent them an eye that meant rude to stare. “I’ll admit at once, Yesugei, I didn’t wander past by haphazard. I am here a suitor to you.”
“To me?” For the first time Yesugei gave off a slight sense of the unexpected. “In what way can I help you?”
“There’s a story attached, as tangled as a sheep’s intestines – my story. But I came to you on the strength of your story. It is reported on the steppe that of the Mongol tribes, mulcted by the Throne Over Civilization (North), Marshal Yesugei’s retains the behaviour of old, where others nab sheep from their neighbour tribes to meet demands and even, the rumour goes, steal each other’s children.”
He didn’t know the captain, to start him. The captain knew he didn’t know him and went with great restraint. “The rumour is without grounds. I have that from the Jurchen themselves. They told us, if we cannot pay in stock we can pay in slaves. Who are we to enslave? we asked and they answered, your children. This engendered the rumour, one I look into yearly at the Tribute Wall, but there have been no instances. Mongols have not sold their children to China.”
The guest saw he had touched on a sore point, and listened gravely. Then he changed his tack – as courteous as a king. Was he a king, or what? He hadn’t said. “My people must admire yours for action, while we are inactive in spite of what they did to my grandfather. My grandmother Herigji took her vengeance on the instrumental Tartar prince, and hid a hundred volunteers in cart-vats – full, she told him, of fermented milk for his banquet. That banquet was a Tartar abattoir when her vats were trundled in. Alas, however, we haven’t gone to war with Jurchen. Nobody has. I’m afraid Mongols served them for their object lesson, and suffer the frequent fate of the brave: to warn others off.”
Mildly Yesugei said, “I’m not sorry we went to war.”
A nokor up and told him, “You haven’t learnt your lesson, captain.” 
On the topic, Yesugei got an air of let’s consult him since we have him here. “From that perspective, perhaps, I can see the why of their annual expedition to the Tribute Wall, which, I have to suspect, doesn’t pay for itself. Is there value for them in the lesson?”
“Yes, they have a quiet steppe and can turn attention to the Song. I’d say their aim is achieved.”
“We have the constant fear, of course, that the Tribute Wall can swiftly be built up into a military wall. It isn’t, at the moment, quite occupation. They occupy us in the autumn, and trot our animals along to the Argun and the Gan, from there beyond the Khingans and we feed the Jurchen in their northern home. We can’t feed China, China’s too far to drive our stock and that’s the excuse. The actuality is a permanent pincer movement with the Gobi wall and a demonstration that they have us north and south.”
Their neighbour agreed, “It does lower over us. From Great Khingan Mountains, across the top of Tartary and on between your Onon Gol and Kherlen Gol, to stop just short of Khentei Mountains, and that isn’t far short of Hirai. It’s only a bump of earth and livestock pens, and goes right through your grounds for Mongols’ own convenience, and yet we feel the threat. Underneath us the Gobi wall, and the east Gobi’s a no-go: given into the charge of Onggot, the Black Watch, who were transported in, not to be too Tartar-heavy – seems Jurchen don’t trust Tartars either. The Onggot have set up towns along their wall, Hohhot, Togto, Orchar. The sprawl of town where once the horses roamed, and even where the camels did. It subtracts from your Ongirat a swathe of Camel Steppe, and strikes two-thirds the way to your battle site of Bor Nor. That and the wall to close the gap under the Khingans: the bottom third of Tartary that used to be, and Tartary split into Conscripted Tartary and Unconscripted (But Auxiliary). A strategic area, as the Ordos was strategic. What’s within, to China, is now the Inner Steppe, or the Outer Territory, or Independent Onggot. A wall is hard to argue with. It’s not hard to attack, funnily, the steppe has galloped straight through walls time without number. But when it merely stands there, in the midst of you, what are you meant to do? Tell it to go home?”
This rehashed what Yesugei knew, sympathetic, slightly gassy, not much use. Yesugei crinkled his eyes. “I often apostrophise that Tribute Wall and tell it where to go. For want of other answers.” 
“Not much help with answers, am I? There is one, a hoary old answer. The steppe is spacious. The steppe stretches west, above the Aral Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea and onwards. Our sea of grass. Load up your wagons and ride away, and His Celestial Muck-a-Muck can’t extract tribute from you.”
“This is true,” said Yesugei.
“It isn’t shame, if the feint retreat isn’t shame, and that our most beloved battle tactic.”
“You come back from a feint retreat.”
“When you want to, my neighbour, when you want to. You’re acquainted with the Uighur Turks? They didn’t want to, they had found a life elsewhere, and I defy you to cry shame on the Uighur. Once they lived where I live. The ruins of Black Balghasun on Orqon River are still a grand sight. The famous twelve iron gates – breached by Kirghiz, savages out of the forests north, who destroyed our greatest state, in wealth and intellectual culture greater than the Blue Kingdoms before them. When the first Iron Khan Abaoji, who thought to be a sort of constable on the steppe, chased the Kirghiz out of the ruins, he asked the Idiqut back to resume his days of glory, when he wasn’t an Idiqut but a khaghan right the way from the Khingans to the Altai. Equal monarchs, he suggested, the Iron Khan and the Idiqut, your side of the Khingans and mine, and new glory days across the steppe. But by that time, for a hundred years, Uighur had been custodians of the Tarim oases, the oases that are beyond my description. I haven’t been. But you have heard of the frescoes in the temple caves, the ferment of thought, the creativity in that crossroads of the world. There the Uighur had discovered new arts, new religions, and the Idiqut declined. The steppe, too, declined without them – as I confess, who own the Orqon now, on the east, while Naiman own west of the river and Merqot own the north. None of us are a patch on the Uighur.”
“New religions?” echoed one of the nokod. “Are we to take to our wagons, and take up new religions?”
Toghrul turned a bluff face to him, a face without offence. “No, that you needn’t. The name of Tangr has been known on the steppe for thousands of years and over thousands of miles. Tangr, Tenger, Tangri... Old Uighur, Blue Turk, Hun.”
Since this Hirai from the royal house talked to the nokod, another tried him. “Tangr sent us to live along the three rivers, sent our Father Wolf and Mother Doe on a great trek into the mountains where they spring. You call them the Khentei, but we call them the Sacred.”
“Our bones lie along the Three Gols,” another joined in. “Our shamans’ bones and our shamans’ instruments that make each a sacred site. If we wander off our spirits won’t follow us, and where are we then? At mercy of foreign spirits. There is a spirit in the Sacrosanct Mountain who watches over us. Too ancient to have a known name, but Tangr entrusted us to him. The wolf and doe coupled on his slopes, she cast a child on his slopes, the original Mongol. I cannot leave his sphere. I cannot leave that mountain.”
“Our bones that lie at Bor Nor have only begun to weather. I won’t abandon them til they’re crumbled away.”
“Hear, hear,” came a murmur, more or less unanimous.
Yesugei himself gave assent in a nod. “There you have the answer to your answer, Toghrul. It’s a fair question, why don’t we, but the answer is likely to be adamant.”
“Nor are you wrong.” He addressed this to the circle of them. “I salute your pertinacity.”
The nokod ventured to joke with him. “Is that like tenacity, only pig-headed?”
“A neat definition. Neater than I am in Turk-Mongol crossover-speech – did I mean perseverance?”
Likewise, Yesugei: he gave a different smile from the arsenal, one that warned of a jest ahead. “Our neighbours to the west needn’t worry about a Mongol crossover.”
This was a test of his humour, or of his laugh. Yesugei often said, I know whether I’m going to like you by your laugh. Their neighbour did laugh, from the throat, with a squeeze of the eyes and a gulp at the end. The nokod saw that Yesugei liked him. “I might have been concerned, Yesugei,” he told him with a knobbly hand out. “Except my concerns are up in the air. Suspended, my office, and me expelled from Hirai. Mind, I query the legality of my expulsion. Like Mongols, I find myself strongly inclined to stay put. And if I caught the obstinacy from my mother, God bless her.”
To this information Yesugei said, “I did not know what to title you.”
“You and I can dispense, and my title is insecurely poised. Yet I have one: khan of my people, by anointment, by elevation on a white felt, by acclaim. An uncle of mine disputes me on a legal point and has been to the courts. Here I am with the crown of my grandfather and my father on my head, and I have my sceptre in my bags, and I have a flag. In these lie kingship, or else in my uncle’s hasty court with absentees. – Shall I start at the start?”
“Wet your throat.” Yesugei gestured to his cup and Hoelun leant to pour.
“Thank you, lady. I am the first son of the first son, as such named heir as soon as he had me by my father Kyriakus. Thus I have always been a hostage to fortune. Twice a hostage for my father, and not by his consent. Happily for me, my throat was too valuable an item to cut. First Merqot captured me when I was seven; they put me to grind pigments in a mortar, which one rather enjoys at seven. My father rescued me, an urchin in a spotted goat’s skin with uncleanable fingers. At thirteen Alchi Tartar plucked me from the nest, and my dear mother too; he put me to mind his camels. I struck up with his shepherd, a captive from Tangut, and we made our escape through the desert, where my mother succumbed to a snakebite.
“Ups and downs, then, I am used to; vicissitudes I drink with my daily broth; still, I can’t help but feel I have earnt my crown. My father Kyriakus came unfought into his throne; that is a proud first, and he had the emotion of Marquz’ death behind him. With me we are back to the stoushes. Two of my father’s forty sons, whose names I utter under sign of the cross –” Toghrul touched his brow, his sternum, his right and left shoulder – “Tai Temur and Bull Temur, joined conspiracy against me. I trust their souls are with Yesus Christ, for God forgives; and God forgive me, for I did warrant their deaths who plotted mine. Thereupon my father’s brother Gur convened his court and had me banished: the sentence laid down by Marquz for attempt by a member of the royal family on a fellow member’s life – banishment when there is extenuation found, but the sentence never to be less. That is Gur’s case. How his case stands up I’d like the chance to argue with him; however, because I did not trust his motives, I obeyed, and I took only the hundred of my guard his court allowed me.” Toghrul paused to moisten his throat, but with a finger up that promised more. The nokod hung on, wide-eyed.
“Who did we run into out of Hirai? Toqtoa King of Merqot in Black Gorge. We were in the gorge and he was on the steeps. Bad position, Yesugei. But I knew the way to Toqtoa’s heart. Forest savage though he is, he thirsts for status – a foot into the circle of the steppe kings, who don’t ask him to dinner. I wed my daughter to him. I am sorry but I did. If I hadn’t, she’d have been seized along with our other women over the corpses. This Hujaur knew and she went gamely, as to certain death in battle to save others; God give her reward. Toqtoa, a savage but a social climber, preferred the khan of Hirai’s daughter, bestowed upon him in the right style, albeit at spearpoint, to the khan of Hirai’s head on his spear. He let us pass.”
Through this escapade the nokod noticed the captain’s missus fidget. Perhaps he wasn’t aware of her history, sent to a fate worse than death in Merqot. But she didn’t bring up her history.
Toghrul slapped his knee. “And here I am.”
However, he hadn’t got to why he was here. “A suitor to me,” Yesugei finished for him. “I have to say I’m flattered.”
“Your nokod I had heard of. I meet them now, and they might have to forgive me if I say in front of them, they are known for knights out of the tales. It is them I sue for. I sue for them, for yourself and yours to make up a hundred. In return I have a king’s gratitude on offer, if I am in the upshot a king.”
To this offer, no bad one, they thought, their captain said in query, “You believe we can assist you to your kingship? A hundred of mine?”
“I don’t have a war on, marshal; I have an arrest. My intentions are to arrest my uncle Gur and fight him in court, only properly. And I have counter-charges of treason and of usurpation, but here in your witness I undertake not to execute. There’s been enough of that. As I say, you have a name in Hirai, and if you lend me support I won’t exude the scent of a strongarms come to wrestle my throne from my uncle, but of a defendant with a strong case in justice. Hence, too, a number for an arrest. Bluntly, you are known an upright man. Now, what you think of me, what you make of my case, there’s another matter. I’m a Turk. I have proved that with my story. In a time of innocence we too changed our kings without violence, but for us that time is distant. You are children in the world. That I mean, Yesugei Baghatur, with no slur, with no disdain.”
“I understand you do. We are a young people. Your story bewilders us, but to be fair, we have had three khans.”
“My grandfather and my father, Marquz and Kyriakus, have tried to revive that time of no argument, no family assassination. It was the whole idea behind their first son initiative. It’s why I was a king in the cradle. I feel obliged to fight for their idea, along with fighting for my arse.”
Here, perhaps because they grinned, Yesugei told him, “Your offer, Toghrul, has my nokod interested. I’d like to discuss with them before I give an answer.”
“Absolutely.”
When he had gone through half a gallon of black milk, without visible consequences, Toghrul left to soak up on his own sheep. In his absence the nokod discussed him. “What a crazy story,” one began with a fascinated contempt. “His next-of-kin’s his worst enemy.”
“Not his fault, though. He didn’t invent the system. I don’t know how far back his time of innocence was, but the Blue Kingdoms’ system spun out of control at the end of each generation. They handed on brother-to-brother, only onto the next generation when they ran through a fraternal set. Brother-to-brother was meant to guarantee a grown-up king. Uncles and nephews? Tell the Blue Turks. Generations in conflict, they had, for kids of them as had been His Nibs, strangely, championed a father-to-son. Then when their turn came, on a father-son scheme, hundreds of cousins were candidates. Lesson is, there’s no perfect system, but maybe you’ve got to stick to one.”
“I’ll stick to ours.”
“Has he got forty brothers?”
“Not hard, when Kyriakus Khan had twenty and upwards of queens.”
“What did he die of?”
“I call that hard.”
“Stay decent.”
“Who was the Mongol queen, his mother?”
So far Yesugei had only listened. He answered this. “Jiloa of Jajirat, a sister to Black Qadan.”
“Ah. Didn’t drop that name, did he?”
“An interchange of cultures, to go by his end.”
“The ill odour of Black Qadan doesn’t taint his sister.”
Now Yesugei asked, “Aktagh, Toroqol, Jagan, you have been in Hirai and eaten with Kyriakus. What did you pick up to help us?”
“Years ago, captain. But we heard talk of this Gur, his uncle. Gentle, gentle and meek like Yesus Christ, and always thought about the welfare of the black people (black people, to Turks, even though your black-faced Hirai is your blue-blood). That was the gist about him. Toghrul says his stance isn’t sincere but I’d be sorry to think so. If he insists on punishment for brother-murder, however judicial, isn’t that the aim, Marquz’ aim? To stop the bloodshed. Toghrul’s right about the aim, with first son. They used to have a clan slaughter, because any of the blood were eligible.”
Aktagh spoke for the trio of friends. Yesugei nodded.
“For Toghrul to... hang onto the coattails of your reputation, I don’t know. Reputation’s a pearl above price. You are known an upright man. In Hirai, Yesugei. Didn’t know they took an interest.”
A whistle out of Yesugei. “How about my nokod? Now we’re alone, can I just slip off my lid and emit my steam? If you knew how a captain’s heart swells. A captain won’t fit his cuirass on, with a heart the size of his. Who’s next to step over my threshold and tell me he has heard of my nokod? The Idiqut of Uighur? Shah of Persia?”
They laughed at him. This was terrible boast, but on their behalf. On their behalf, but indirect, which gave them leave to laugh at him for camouflage of their enjoyment. “Knights out of the tales,” they elbowed each other. “That’s Turk for a nokor. No-one does them like Turks, never did.”
“He’d be a judge, then.”
“Climb down.”
Aktagh persisted with objection. “This is why he’s after us: for a hue of righteousness. He even says so.”
Alyp. “Yes, he says so. At least he’s honest.”
“He’s banished for brother-murder, Alyp. Is that honest?”
“Yes, but he’s only murdered two. That isn’t a witticism. Like he mentioned, and you did, it’s a step forward from the assassinations of the past.”
As Aktagh opened his mouth again, his friend Toroqol butted in. “The captain wants to. You want to, don’t you, captain?”
“I don’t want to turn him away. No-one likes to say no to a suit. Aktagh, I’m not asked to adjudicate on Hirai’s throne. Thank God. About the legal issues I don’t have a clue. We’d only help haul them to court.”
“We’d be seen to be on his side.”
“That’s true. He’s my suitor. The only question in my court is whether to say no to a suitor or say yes.”
“What if Gur had come a suitor?”
“And I knew nought against him? – I’d be much moved to answer yes.”
“Makes me wish Gur had.”
“Nokor, if I do help Toghrul, you need not.”
“No, captain. We’re a unit. We’re a unit and you’re in charge. I only have conjectural opinions on Gur and on Toghrul, but I know what I think of you.”
“Eh? Miss out?” a comrade said. “Stay at home, when we’re asked out to play by people on such horses?”
“Not for my life,” said the one beside him. “I don’t know much about their quarrel and I care less, and there you have the truth.”
“It is utterly, blatantly, none of our business,” took up the next along. “And that’s the beauty of it. Ah, Yesugei, give us an adventure.”
He laughed. “You are mesmerised by the jingle-jangle and the gleamy-weamy horses.”
“And yourself? What grabs you?”
“Me? I like him. At bottom. And there you have the truth. I know he wants me to, but that doesn’t stop me.”
One of them questioned, “What if we find we’re on the wrong side, and the right side comes after us? It’s Hirai. They’re bigger than us, you know.” 
“Then,” answered Yesugei, “we hightail for the driest of the Gobi, or the wettest of Barghujin Marshes. Up to you.”
They tossed the possibilities. “Scorpions or six-incher mosquitoes?”
“The Black Watch or Toqtoa?”
“Toqtoa. He can be bribed. Hoelun, can’t you help us in that quarter?”
“No,” she told them. “You are on your own. Unless my husband wishes to trade me for safe passage?”
“Only if I have to,” he promised.
“Now, captain, my home patch of sand lies in the Gobi. And a pretty patch it is.”
“If you have a bush on your sand, comrade, you’re host.”

The putative khan of Hirai knocked about camp and struck up with unlikely people: he charmed Orboi Queen, he drew out Bagtor at the awkward age of fourteen. “The dogs like him, and the children. I’ve never known those judges to be wrong. – And you, Hoelun? You are a stern judge, I know.”
“Am I? Stern?” Although they had put away the subject in a box she said lightly, “I thought you didn’t believe in child kings.”
“I believe in them less. We don’t want a hostage to fortune, regularly kidnapped. Still, Toghrul seems not to have turned out too bad for the system. Seems to me, Hoelun. Tell me your opinion.”
“I find him genuine.”
“Genuine is what matters.”
“On the whole.”
“You have a reservation.”
“I am a hard woman to win over. I am a stern judge. Without reservation I say to you, go, before your nokors drop from boredom. To Hirai the affair is grave and consequential, but to them it’s First Milk Feast and Winter Slaughter in one. They are underutilised.”
“Of this I am conscious. Come to that, my wife, a few of our youngsters can do with the exercise. Bagtor and Belgutei are of an age. I thought Temujin, too.”
“Belgutei at ten? Temujin at eight.”
“I know, but how often do we get the chance? I must find means to give instruction to my sons. What do they see of the life of their fathers, beyond the effort to scrape up tribute?”
“And if you run into trouble?”
“Then the boys can run as fast as me. I’ll mount them on runners.”
“Don’t mount them on warhorses. And no – I said no – combat.”
“Spoilsport.”
“I don’t want Temujin to come home and boast he has shot a Hirai before he has shot a hare. Even by accident.”
“Do you impugn his aim?”
“His aim is more consistent than mine. He tries his heart out, and I don’t have the time.”
“How do you explain that bull’s eye at the games with Jorkimes?” 
“You can’t tempt me to come. But yes, Belgutei and Temujin. At least, the children with you, I know you won’t get in over your head.”

The nokod and the children had a splendid time. No blood was shed. Gur, whatever his motives, evaded arrest. Yesugei’s hundred pursued his thirty from Telesut Steppe to the Alashan desert where he crossed into Tangut, an old asylum for the Hirai royal house, who had ties there and a hostage at court. Toghrul was just as happy to prosecute the absent, and he made official Gur’s banishment. Aktagh sighed, on the dusty outskirts of Tangut, and sighed outside court; and Yesugei wasn’t without his niggles, but then neither was Toghrul, and Toghrul confessed these freely to him. “You know, I might mistake my uncle, Yesugei. I might. How do you search the insides of a man? The court has decided. He’ll have a fine life in Tangut. My brother’s there, my brother out of a Tangut mother; he doesn’t function as a hostage for me but he stays on. Quite the scholar. The Tangut have entitled him Jaqa Gambu, which means vastly learned, roughly. He comes home for the holidays, in fact he’s the only brother of my forty I can sit down and have a heart-to-heart with. You’ve done things more sensibly, with four.”
Nevertheless, Toghrul already had several queens. He had to; he had to honour important Hirai clans and neighbour peoples with his royal insemination. That was Toghrul’s phrase. “Now, you,” he said, “have your Hoelun, and you are very obviously blest. – I don’t mean to come across envious, Yesugei. Can we swap lives for a month or two?”
“No, you can’t have Hoelun.”
They rode the circuit of Hirai, from duke to duke, who iterated their loyalty to him or else evacuated ahead of him. Very few did the latter. Kyriakus’ queens had each her ordo, a court and territory over which she was the monarch, where she reared her children. That was why Toghrul scarcely knew a few of his brothers. “For example –” he signed the cross – “Tai Temur and Bull Temur. I’d have had trouble to point them out in a crowd. Does that mitigate the crime, Yesugei?”
“Blood and ashes, Toghrul. Am I to know?”
“You’re such a listener, I talk too much. And I’d not have you think poorly of me. I’ve come to a high estimation of you.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“I haven’t?”
“No, you just like me.”
“A bit of that. You know, when I cross myself, the gesture isn’t empty. If I’m frank – as I tend to be with you – I can’t see what I did as a crime, in the circumstances. But a sin? It is always a sin.”
“I understand the distinction.”
“It’s the first sin.”
“The first sin?”
“Cain slew his brother Abel and that was the first sin on earth. At times one can wish one wasn’t a Christian. It’s certainly the sin of choice for Turkic kings. Now, I mayn’t be the most deeply religious of men. I mean I am, but I haven’t got time. But I want to do the right thing. And that’s why I like you, Yesugei.”
“Why?”
“You are the right thing.”
“Say that again, I’ll call you outside.”
“Outside? Outside we get an audience. Keep my kingly dignity in mind. I’m not keen to try you, but if I have to – inside.”
They had grown intimate; Toghrul with a warmth of temperament, with milk in his veins, in the idiom. Yesugei began to tell him he liked him only after he loved him. How that happened he didn’t know. He enjoyed the competition. As for Toghrul’s side, he had a trillion old acquaintances, but he had to notch them on his tally-stick: loyals, disloyals, indeterminate. They had to kneel to him, and he cut a lonely figure as the only one on his feet... to an outsider’s eye.
One night, when Toghrul had black milk in his veins – and in front of an audience – he caught Yesugei’s neck in the crook of his arm. Like that he announced, “This is my friend Yesugei. He’s short, I know. But to me, he stands head and shoulders above God’s creatures on the earth. That’s why I have determined to ask him to do me the honour, and be my anda.”
Toghrul was drunk. The audience were drunk too. Public of him, but Yesugei had his chance to laugh him off. Postpone until they were sober. The old Turk kings used to ponder questions twice: once with the heart, in the heat of alcohol, again with the head, sober.
“I’ve struck him dumb, at any rate. I know I don’t deserve him.”
Sober, though, you’re most of the time too gutless; and the heart, said the old Turk kings, ought to weigh more than the head. Yesugei clapped his hands to the arm about his throat. “This tall friend of mine, who has no intelligible idea what he’s gotten into, I take for my brother-by-oath, and fuse my life with his.”
“Do you mean that, Yesugei? You’re as drunk as, and besides, I’ve got you in a throttlehold.”
“If you don’t sober up on the question, Toghrul, tomorrow, I won’t.”
“God bless you.” Damply he kissed the side of his head.
In his mother’s ordo Shadow Woods, across the Tola Gol from her Mongol tribe of Jajirat, Toghrul pitched his father’s and grandfather’s ger, of daffodil-yellow wool and gilt wood, where the vessels, except the cauldron, are of gold. Were, until he hosted Yesugei’s hundred and told them to keep their goblets. Royal, in the tribes, is a synonym for generous, and Toghrul proved he had the right stuff in him. He swore an ongoing gratitude: “Your service, Yesugei, to me, I vow to give again, unto the children of our children.”

On a perfect blue winter’s day Temujin crouched at knucklebones on the frozen Tola. A boy, likewise with his bag of knucklebones (no boy is a boy without) whizzed one across the ice to get his attention. Temujin peered up at him. “Do you want a game?”
By way of consent the boy drawled, “I don’t see why not.”
Over the game they glanced curiously at each other. From a distance Temujin had put the boy at six; up close he saw he was mistaken. Like forest people he had skin bone-ivory with near-black eyes, but he was Mongol by his style of hair. He had a pointy face. “What tribe?” asked Temujin, casual, as he tossed.
“Jajirat. You?”
“Kiyat. I’m Temujin. I’m eight.”
“I’m eight too.”
“Are you eight?”
“Don’t you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Is your mother foreign?”
“No.” It embarrassed him to stick out, but he liked to be like his father. “My father’s like this.”
“Big for eight, aren’t you?”
“I guess.”
“I’m not. My name’s Jamuqa. I’m Mongol on both sides but I’m a throwback to our founder who was Adangqa Uriangqot. I’m strong for my size, but. Smart, too. I can back that up.”
Temujin got an anxious crease in his brow. “You are like Uriangqot. They ride elk.”
“Hmm.” The boy tipped his head to the north bank of the river, to Jajirat. “Over there’s a tree I saw split right in half by heaven’s fire. It’s sacred now, and I was there. If I’d been climbing in the tree I’d have been zapped. Then either I’d be burnt to a crisp or I’d be a saint alive and have whatever I want. Do you reckon you’d have jumped out of the tree or took your chances?”
Underneath the usual challenge was the flesh of a question that for once Temujin did want to engage with. “It might happen too fast. If the tree has a spirit, the spirit might push you out in time, or keep you in.”
“Yes, but this tree doesn’t have a spirit. You have to know or you’re smoke. Who can’t think fast as a lightning bolt, or just an instant faster, he’s pretty dead pretty quick. And that’s not the point anyhow. The point is, is it worth the risk?” The boy’s pointy face, aslant, shone with the combat of wits.
He wasn’t six. If he fibbed about his age he fibbed the other way. Most wit engagements Temujin found glib. He didn’t win at glib, he wasn’t any use at blather, even banter wasn’t altogether his. Into flyte his heart wasn’t to be dragged by an ox, fleer he dug for in vain. This was a litany Temujin had put work into.
People, and boys the worst, are so much more intelligent than what comes out of their mouths. In an oral culture, to bridge that gap from mind to mouth is urgent, early work. But the idioms didn’t suit Temujin, or not those dwelt on at eight. He had a quick and lively mind, locked up in his skull. He too, like his kind, was a talker, only in difficult hatch. Jamuqa’s style wasn’t empty, and dimly Temujin thought, I can talk like him. I can talk to him.
With these thoughts dimly in him he was silently intrigued, and forgot to own that he had lost – which in boys is done by dumb indication, in poems is acknowledged just like a passage of arms.
The boy eyed him once or twice, in wait. Abruptly, and with his name attached, he up and said, “I tell you what, Temujin. If you want, I’ll take you to see my tree.”
Temujin didn’t know whether he took a lot of boys, or never a one. Cautiously, he wasn’t casual. “Yes. I’d like to come.” 
“I have an hour.” A bit importantly he squinted at the sun. “That’s what I can shave off my chores.”
Temujin was after his opportunity to talk to him. “We can stay out and I’ll help you with your chores.”
“You can’t help.” In a brag he told him, “If I don’t do my chores my grannies flog me. And I can back that up with the welts.”
Temujin gazed at him. He had been meant to gawk, maybe to admire. Maybe to see how big and tough he was, since he got flogged. Temujin obliged him and observed, “I only knew soldiers got flogged.”
“You were wrong, see. I do. I have to be a chief, and that’s hard in hard times and softly nurtured ends up soft, and soft’s no use to us.”
“Are you going to be a chief, Jamuqa?” he asked him with respect.
“Jajirat’s in the stewardship of my grannies. Other kids aren’t flogged, even in Jajirat. My grannies are right hags, and I don’t care if they hear me. I’m an only child, and if my grannies can quell the trouble and keep the family in, I’m to be chief after my father. My father,” he got to the specifics, suspicious, pugnacious, “Black Qadan.”
Temujin knew about Black Qadan. Every Mongol knew, every Mongol boy. How can he make friends? Boys must bad-mouth his father to him, as they heard their fathers do. That is why he is a little itchy. Temujin skittered a knucklebone. “Isn’t Toghrul Khan your cousin, then?”
The other boy’s eyes flitted about his face, like a bird hopping. “I’m to call him uncle for his age. Toghrul’s fairly decent.”
“My father Yesugei has just become his anda. They drank each other’s blood with dust of gold, exchanged their clothes and gave a precious possession. Toghrul gave a colt with a cream coat and white hair, who’s half-divine. There’s a mountain far in the west where you leave your mare and the divine sires visit her from the clouds. Their offspring have such thin skins they sweat in blood, but they are hot, like shamans who walk naked in the snow and swallow embers. The sires talk and their offspring can understand our speech. Toghrul’s colt has been led here slowly, when he was in womb and through his life so far. My father can’t compete, but he gave his last treasure and his best: a sword from his grandfather Khabul, a blade of Indian steel damascened. It’s a union...”
Jamuqa watched him.
“... for life,” he wound up lamely. This, the whole of this, was copy, but his mouth had run away with him in the romance.
In encouragement Jamuqa said, “Like Sartaq and King Mangalfa of Uighur.”
Temujin had thought to have discouragement, there. He was a nice boy, in spite of things. With bad grannies. “Can you come to supper? Since you’re cousins. Do they mind?”
“I have to tell them. But I can come.”
“Can you come home to Kiyat with us?”
He opened his eyes. “I don’t think so, Temujin.”
“Or I can stay with you a while. With you and your grannies.”
He skewed the triangle of his face. “You don’t want to stay in Jajirat. Believe me. What’s got into you?”
Abashed, Temujin muttered to the marbled depths of the ice, “I don’t know.”
There was a tug on his sleeve. Jamuqa had stood up, and tugged at him. “Come on, Temujin,” he said. “I’ll take you to my tree.”
At Temujin’s instigation they swore an anda oath. Oaths aren’t meant for children, this or others. But Temujin thought no harm to tread where his father had trod, and Jamuqa didn’t falter to do what he wasn’t meant to. In a charred fork of Jamuqa’s tree they gashed a finger and licked the trickle with the lightning’s ashes, since they had no gold dust. Jamuqa gave Temujin his roebuck knucklebone and Temujin gave Jamuqa his copper-sealed sheep’s. With each other’s hides and what-not, head to foot, in defiance of their different sizes, they came before Temujin’s father and the Hirai khan.
“We are andas, me and Jamuqa,” said Temujin with pride.
“Temujin and me,” said Jamuqa with fast devotion.

6. A Drink with Tartars
If a thirsty traveler asks for milk on the steppe and meets refusal, one head is to be confiscated from the culprit’s flock.
from the Jasaq or justice code of Tchingis Khan
In spite of wisps of hair no less ’orrible than Temujin’s had been, worse than any of his brothers since, Temulun was a girl, and Yesugei whimpered over her beauty – which Hoelun didn’t see yet. In the midst he slipped in, “Now, Hoelun, you mustn’t be covetous of my affections. Addition does not subtract.”
“I can share you with my daughter.”
“It isn’t her.”
“Have you taken a wife in Hirai?” she questioned. “Or had one thrust upon you in award?”
Cheerily Yesugei said, “He’d have tried if he didn’t know better. He gave me half his kingdom, but much I managed to give back. I have taken an anda.”
Next thing to, then.
“It was his idea, if that helps. Furthermore,” he said to divert her, “Temujin has taken one too.”
Tired from her lie-in, Hoelun exhaled quite spontaneously, “Sweet heavens. I shouldn’t have let you go.” 

Yesugei’s enthusiasm, that had been in a slump, at least the way a snail shrinks its horns into its home, was out to face the world and fighting-fit. He hadn’t been home a month when he was in a bustle to be off again. Temujin had turned nine, and that was none too soon to contract him to his future wife.
At broach of this Hoelun suspected a match in Hirai, the khan’s daughter or similar. But no, he had Ongirat in mind, indeed Hoelun’s clan of Olqunot. “Where I can ask them to track down for me your spitting image.”
“He won’t want my spitting image, by the time I’m through with him.”
“Ongirat have been our Givers of Wives and that is a tradition to maintain. Or perhaps I’m still out to prove I’m not a cad, for mine.”
“I suggest we wait a year, Yesugei. Ten and over is considered the age.”
“Oh, that’s because – not to be squeamish – they’re most often lost before ten. Temujin’s in rude animal health and a shoe-in to see next year.”
This was flippant, almost. Nothing other than the truth, but not to be spoken. When you have a sick animal you don’t utter the possibility, you try not to think the worst, lest you damage the creature’s chances. But Temujin had been sick once, and through his own fault. Very likely he was proof against slightly flippant speech. Yesugei was in a strange mood, since Hirai. He ignored her suggestion of a year’s wait and went ahead with preparations.
Once when he remembered her suggestion he excused himself on grounds that Temujin had started early. “With that poor boy of Black Qadan’s.” The mention sent him on a tangent. “There’s a casualty of the times. We’ll have to have him with us for a summer or a winter, as he’s a friend of Temujin’s. Toghrul keeps an eye out for the boy, but Jajirat isn’t his arena. His mother didn’t live through him. They say Black Qadan was too crushed by loss of her to contemplate wife after. Toghrul said along the lines. No-one’s black through-and-through. Maybe not even that boy’s grandmothers. Welts, such as I’d leave on a soldier who endangered us in time of war. I don’t know that neglect of the milking qualifies. It tempts me to take up a whip.”
“You are sore on this, Yesugei. You can’t take a whip to the Jajirat chiefly widows.”
Crisply he said, “Neither their sex nor their station are a sanctuary to them from me.”
This was Yesugei on the verge of a temper. Not in one. He stood with his back to her, hands on hips, head down, over the shelf with the children’s angels, the felt dolls of his make. She didn’t want to push.
In a moment he began on another tangent. “Here’s where we miss a khan. You’re right, I can’t take a whip to the Jajirat chiefly widows. But cruelty to children has got to be a crime and a khan can step in on a chief.”
Hoelun had a leap of intuition. When she had these leaps with her husband she didn’t sit on the wall. “Yesugei? You cannot.”
His wide shoulders swung around, with the twist at the waist of an expert rear-shot. “Cannot?” He paused. “Flog the grandmothers?”
“You cannot tell people. He is nine.”
Yesugei twitched one of his brows. He didn’t bother with the other. Hands on hips – handsomely stanced – he shook his head at her. “You have me just a feather wrong. I don’t want to tell people. I want to tell him.”
In a gasp she asked, “Why?”
“Ah. There’s the tricky question.”
Hoelun stared at him.
“I think up rationalizations, but I know that’s what they are.”
“Yesugei, I don’t understand you.”
He had his air, his air since Hirai, cheery, offhand, a tendency to flippant. “I can tell you my rationalizations.”
“Since you can’t tell me why, I suppose you had better.” She might talk like that to Temuge.
“He’s nine. It’s young, but then again, is it? At nine most of them is set. People can alter – people can alter at any age. Watch him, he has his character. A character I dare undertake won’t warp, like a jerry-rigged cart, when we load him with the weight. I was proud of him over Black Qadan’s son.”
“It is six years until we put weapons in his hands for use unchaperoned.”
He butted the balls of his hands together. “Let me try another on you. I don’t want him to come across the knowledge by accident. I always tried to stamp out the talk, like a bit of fire leapt the hearth, but you can’t stamp out talk. There’s still speculation about his arrival on the day. Jochi teases him with names we might have named him on the Bor Nor theme. And a stout lad he is, who copes with Jochi’s names. He’ll start to speculate himself. His father knows how to tell him. How to tell him. The how is important.”
“I agree. But this rests on the assumption that the tolgechi’s interpretation was a true one. And that is an assumption you and I agreed not to make.”
Now he didn’t butt his hands, but he shifted on his feet. “This I don’t deny, Hoelun.”
Nothing else from him. “You have changed your mind.”
“Over the years I have come to put stock in Azjargal’s truth, her true flight. We have inquired into her; she is highly thought of –”
“Total stock?” Hoelun near-to-interrupted. “It is, or has to be, your total stock, Yesugei. It includes your stock with Temujin.” She decided to go on without mercy. “Tell him a prophecy that fails to come about – for omens are shadowy truths and liable to human misconstruction – not only have you thrown him into confusion, but,” she pressed on, hard woman that she was, “you have done yourself no assistance in his eyes. Every father hopes for his son to vest faith in his wisdom.”
Greenly he peered up at her with a half-bent head. In eventual answer he said, “Don’t think me light at heart to forfeit my wife’s faith in my wisdom. Yet am I driven. That in my heart which drives me, wisdom or unwisdom, I can only obey.”
And this was his answer.
She wailed, “Yesugei, you are unlike yourself. I do not know you.”
“Nonsense, my wife. I am being a pig, I admit.” He caught her; she had run at him. “You wish you didn’t know me, for sure and certain.”
“You have changed your mind.” It was an accusation. More than that – a wail, a panic.
“Why, even a donkey changes his mind, once or twice in his life.”
“No.” In the comfort of his arms she jested with distress. “It is Toghrul. Toghrul, his ridiculous goblets and his pretty colt. It has gone to your head. Or has he turned you Christian?”
Yesugei laughed. “It has nothing to do with Toghrul.”
“Then you confess you have changed?”
“I’m as normal me as a pea. And you have the shakes, my wife? You? You pluck thoughts out of my head and I don’t even blench.”
“But in earnest, husband? You intend to tell him?”
“Oh.” He had her by the wrists, fondly, smilingly. “I’m very much afraid I do.”
He did not beseech her to understand him. He did not chew his trigger-thumb, until she did. This was not her Yesugei.

Temujin was jubilant: a month’s journey, just him alone with his marvelous father.
Bagtor ground his nose in how grown up he thought he was, to be engaged to a girl. To upset him Bagtor talked nastily, filthily about girls and then laughed at Temujin’s disgust. “I don’t know you’re armed for this, Temujin, honestly I don’t.”
Bagtor hadn’t been given a children’s engagement. In front of them both Hoelun told him, “Your father left you your freedom, Bagtor, since he had the liberty, in your case. At a festival, at a games, you’ll meet a girl, and you’ll be very glad, believe me, Bagtor, then, that you have your freedom. Temujin has to suffer for his rank.” It is the chiefly families who always go outside the tribe for wives: to keep the bones interconnected, the bones of the great Mongol skeleton. But Bagtor only felt he didn’t matter enough to have his father choose his wife; Bagtor only knew his mother was a slave and that disqualified him. He didn’t grumble to his father – at fifteen he was a man but he wasn’t man enough for that – however, he had begun to blame his mother; he had begun to scorn his mother and to be sarcastic with her. The nokor Arash, who had been a father figure to him (a father of his own) most unfortunately had lost his life in feud.
Bagtor and Belgutei were black-haired and dark-eyed, so that the wife’s children and the slave’s children were as distinct as Ulun Ghoa’s two sets of sons. Like Ulun Ghoa, the Mother of the Mongols, Hoelun made no distinction: her husband’s get was what was important to her, not who came from her womb; she loved Yesugei in them, and her love was equal. To Temujin she talked about clans. “Society runs on two wheels, two systems side by side. In one wheel your father is at the hub, in the other he is a spoke. It is a load off, he tells me, at a clan meet, to sit down in the row and misbehave himself like a kid brother (he says, although in actual fact he doesn’t). Your father has much responsibility and that weighs. The wheels mayn’t always run in a way we think ideal. I can criticize clan structure, where Bagtor and Belgutei have to sit down the row from my children. But then I balance that with your father’s experience. Carts don’t run on one wheel, and that’s for the wheel’s sake, not only for the cart’s. You and Bagtor have to strike a balance: he is your senior in age, your junior in the clan. I can point to no more smoothly-running model than Yesugei and Mengetu.”
Temujin doubted that Mengetu ever mimed to set Yesugei’s hair alight or stuff embers in his mouth, to see whether he were proof, to see whether he were heavenly. For these fire incidents Temujin had thought up his answer (the day Bagtor thought unoriginal he’d think unoriginal too) – “Why don’t you try dad?” It mightn’t be a great answer, but told him he was a coward. If he didn’t care he was coward, what do you do? From daddy’s boy the answer might only provoke, but you can’t worry about that. Temujin had consulted Jamuqa, who had bigger uglies to face in his grannies, and Jamuqa spoke on the look-them-in-the-eye approach. It deters an ugly, at times, or other times can aggravate them. Still, to turn tail is both dangerous and impossible to pride. “If I’m flogged to death before I’m fifteen, Temujin, I can tell you one thing: I never groveled.”
“Are you chief at fifteen?”
“I’m independent.”
“What are you going to do about them then?”
“Honestly? I don’t reckon I’m going to be magnanimous, Temujin.”
Magnanimous was Temujin’s mother’s word. She had ascertained, “There has been nothing physical?”
“No.”
“Speeches won’t hurt you. Where are we if we quarrel over speeches?”
“Uncle Mengetu did.”
“Temujin, that was another grade of speech. Bagtor feels hard-done-by, and perhaps he isn’t without a case? Try to be big, Temujin. Try to be magnanimous.” And she went on to equip him with an idea what this means.
“I wish he’d hit me,” said Temujin to Jamuqa.
“You’d have him up on charges, then.”
“How come Bagtor can’t lay a finger on me and your grannies can tear into you? None of this is fair. The day he hits me I go to dad. I don’t have to stand that, kid or no kid. He won’t, though.” Temujin avouched to his friend, “He won’t hit me, because he’s a coward, but if he saw a way to have an accident, at no risk of getting caught, he’d snatch his chance.”
Jamuqa, who felt half-dead at times, didn’t pooh-pooh this notion from him. “In my judgement, you have the luxury to despise him, Temujin, never mind what your mother tells you.”
An orphan on both sides, Jamuqa was bold, but Temujin had to mind what his mother told him.
For his engagement trip they took him out of Jamuqa’s clothes – unpicked at the seams to fit him, adjusted by his and Jamuqa’s hands, no other, inches short at wrist and ankle. “You won’t win a wife like that.”
“Dad didn’t fit into Toghrul’s. He was funny too.”
“My anda’s garments are laid in mother’s chest for precious objects. Your anda’s garments can lie with them.”
“While we’re away. When we’re home can I have them out to sleep with, even if I am engaged?”
Yesugei twitched his face at Hoelun, who was coiling Temujin’s hair-tails, before and behind his ears – the nape tail got off. Coils are a silly fashion; they bounce and distract your sights. Dad wore his five tails in greased tresses with bronze clasps or wound with wire. Even mother wouldn’t coax him into coils. 
“Once in Ongirat your father is to shave you daily. And leave your hat on, like a young noyon.”
“Yes, mother.”
Onggor stuck up for him. He was senior first cousin, Mengetu’s son in his twenties, much-liked by the kids. “The hat’s a pity. Hats are a pity in general, and he’s an exhibit why. He’s different with his hat on and off. His skull’s his asset.”
Yesugei said, “Next you’ll have us dance about naked, Onggor.”
“I might, at that. I’ve got assets.”
“And you know where to keep them.”
“Sorry, uncle.”
“You’re not wrong on Temujin. He possesses a skull, and at home without his hat he isn’t such an eyesore.” His father winked at him.
“Your cranium indicates the inner features,” Onggor taught him. “Like a lamb in a sack, you see the contours, you see the faults and the strengths. You can tell a great deal about a man by the bone of the head. That’s why we cover up. – Is that why we cover up, Yesugei?”
“That’ll do.”
“We shave the upper head,” Onggor went on, “to have our intimate selves to offer to family and friends, to God and the spirits, or to our king. Whereupon you needn’t squirm, Temmy, you have a great head.”
“Shame about his mug.” That was his father.
“Yesugei.” That was his mother, who told him, “Don’t you listen to your father, who detects too much of himself in you. But you can do far worse.”
At setting-out, Hoelun, unlike her custom, didn’t walk by Yesugei’s horse with her hand on his knee, but by his. This froze Temujin with too much attention. But outside the gates Yesugei climbed down again; then they whispered and kissed with open jaws, as if he wasn’t there, which he was much more used to.
“Be obedient, Temujin, and stay at your father’s side.”
“Yes, mother.” The boy had no other idea in his head than to go at his father’s girth forever, and obey him.
On the trip his father taught him, hundreds of things throughout the day. Geography was a big subject, quite technical, with words for a hill by size, shape and situation – the ability to describe. Geology, biology: put them together, they are steppe science, or how to keep your animals alive. Horses have a trillion technical terms, less for sheep. In a camp Yesugei had him try his hand at a wether sheep for the pot, try his hand inside a wether, slide along and pinch near the heart, stop the blood. He felt the throb, the dammed-up blood, in his hand inside the sheep, which is spooky, but he was steady and didn’t spook the sheep, who blithely bleated at him, grew sleepy and nodded off. After the organs and gut had been removed and the blood ladled out and gone to make blood sausage, Temujin watched his father hang the carcass from a branch and with quick slashes of a butcher’s knife pare or peel the flesh away from the bones. The operation left an intact skeleton, clean and white, and a single eiderdown quilt of meat. Temujin despaired. “It’s in the wrist. Helps you with the sword. Sword’s your second or third weapon but yet no idle art.”
“Can you whittle a Tartar’s flesh from his bones like that?”
“Why, do you want to eat him?”
Temujin gurgled.
“Now tell me the bones’ names, top to bottom. Give me a rhythm and I won’t demand bottom to top.”
Most of the time they traveled along water. Water has been up to the skies, goes between us and the skies. It must not be grossly tainted; dirty boys wash with skimmed tallow, with salt, with mineral muds that make you glow, but not with water; if you do, the lightning comes to tell you, Water is an Element of Mine. Go quietly through the life around you. Very bad boys thrash the heads off stalks for amusement. A boy is boisterous, but he disturbs his surrounds at his risk. The stalks of grass have a fate to be eaten by your horse – just as you have a fate to be eaten by beasts and birds, no ill fate, to feed life; but leave the grass to its existence, as you wish to enjoy yours. Never strike an animal, least one in your charge. Worst, no less than sin, is to strike a creature’s head. That upsets Tangr, for he feels that. At the crown of the head of every creature is a spot, an empty spot, a bob of air, a pop of gas, an atom at one with the atmosphere. Ultimately, Temujin, if you listen to that spot, you can discover your right path. You feel a sense of going with the scheme of things, you feel a harmony, the jot of heaven in your head with the overhead heavens. When you have that sense, Temujin, don’t doubt. Do as you’re told. His father nodded, gazed off. In a while, as they rode side by side, he squeezed his shoulder and examined him. “Who’s that bird, and what’s he on his way to?”
Tsolmon is the twilight star, that ignites at the times of transition, day into night, night into day; the star shamans image on their drums, which are their slingshots or their catapults; Tsolmon creates the comets, a star of great energies, wild and lovely and perhaps not for such as us. Altan Hadas, the Gold Stake, is how we know the fixed star, the axle of the spectacle of stars that wheel. Time wheels as the stars do; time is a circle and infinite; there is no time; to a shaman there is neither time nor space, only infinities in touch. These are mysteries, said Yesugei, perhaps you can help me with later. Let’s try the weather, to baffle and defy us. There is a study that never ends. “And with the weather we shade into religion again.”
“What are the clouds?”
“God’s very thoughts, that coalesce and drift. His softest thoughts, as soft as thistledown or weasel’s belly or your baby sister; his fiercest, from which we cower. A gift to us, God’s shaven head, or more intimate than that.”
Temujin liked to ask him these questions and hear his answers. “Is our sky the bluest in the world?”
“Blue, wide blue, for we are high, and high in God’s heart.”
“Why?”
“So high are our heights of the steppe, to walk is almost, almost to fly, is the poise of the bird, is the skitter of the stork across the water. We yearn to fly and we are light on our feet. We don’t clog and cumber ourselves with baggage and belongings, neither do we rifle the flesh and bones of the earth, rip her up and scar her. We aspire to the sky. We nearly float. A few of us do.”
Temujin laughed entranced. “I want to float.”
“Like a membrane balloon, like a kite.”
“Can I be a shaman, father?”
“Ah... you know a tyke doesn’t get a choice, Temujin. The spirits call or else they don’t. Likewise for the rest of us. We have our fates. How about a captain of men? Does that dash your hopes?”
“Like you?”
“More or less like me. Possibly the less the better.”
“I’m no use in a battle. I won’t be a baghatur.”
“Blue heavens, Temujin, have you tried a battle and not told me?”
Also Yesugei said a few things about wives. A very few, as he didn’t need the information right away. “Your first wife – she’s chief. She owns the lion’s share of you. Wives understand that emotions won’t be alike, but you must be scrupulously equal in maintenance. Sister-wives are keen to get along, if only you don’t muck things up. Quarrelsome wives: it’s unsightly, it’s uncommon and the husband gets the blame. You do your duty by each of them, and you do your rounds. Never cheat on your rounds. Dodge a night, you won’t be forgiven. A man can wind up with several homes, or none. Your first wife’s your first chance, you don’t know whether she’s your only, and in short, try to have a home with her, Temujin.”
“You only have Hoelun.”
“Yes. Yes. Your mother and I don’t tire of each other. She hasn’t kicked me out the tent. Mind, I fear I have been greedy of her. Your mother has had five children and that is toil. I have heard women say – not your mother – give me my few and leave me youth and strength. They aren’t ewes, my boy, to be impregnated year in year out. There are different kinds of women: there are those who mate to mate, which is pretty much what men do, and there are those who mate for children. But this is an area that can wait.”
“Right, dad.”
At night they lay behind their horse-seats for a shelter from the wind, in their overcoats to keep the frost off. Temujin was warm and cosy with his head underneath his father’s chin. One night he woke at a rank scent of wolf, saw the eyes yards away and jerked his elbow back. Yesugei, in a trice up on his arm, snarled viciously at the wolf, who vanished. “A poor outcast, at his last contrivances to live. Otherwise he’d never poke his snout at you and me.”
“In Jehol the wolves hunt people and tear them down from their horses. People daren’t go out alone.”
“In Jehol, eh? Maybe they cross-breed with dragons, in Jehol. Who told you that?”
“Monglig.”
“Might have guessed. He’s telling you whoppers, my boy.”
“Are there werewolves on the Ob, or is that a story?”
Yesugei nestled his chin over his head again. “I don’t rightly know. A man can but go armed and stay alert. Sees you through most dangers, and the one that’s yours is yours. I’d be famous, though, if I fell to a werewolf. More famous if I skinned him.” There he fell asleep.
Next day he taught about wolves. “Our Father Wolf, we say; Turks say, Our Mother Wolf. Of animal ancestors, wolf’s most popular. We see ourselves in him. There’s fat in that, Temujin – I’d talk the day away on that – but here’s a tidbit for thought. Wolves are like people because...” he held up a finger. “Great characters. Very strong on individuality. As strong on fellowship. Gregarious animal, with big teeth. It is the major effort of their lives to avoid strife with their loved ones. How to live together, Temujin. Turks take the identification a step further and tell you, what’s native to them in government comes from the wolf.”
“Ours last night was an outcast.”
“Perhaps he was a quarreller. Perhaps he was a brute. They get their own back on a brute, at opportunity. Perhaps he interfered with what wasn’t his. Those who upset the vats too often, wolves can treat very roughly. It’s hard not to pity him, however he got on the wrong side.”
“You didn’t want him to eat me, though.”
“No, my charity only stretches so far.”
Words lightly spoken. There followed a more serious attempt to eat Temujin, by the wolves’ tame kin. Dogs guard the flocks against wolves and are bred to be a match; the ultra-breeds are Tibetans or Khazar mastiffs like Yesugei’s Tiger and Rascal. On a milk stop, as Temujin ran rings about the ger, he ran smack into the chest of a Tibetan, who promptly took him by the throat and gnashed. Temujin had his fur hood up, which got gnashed instead of his neck. He gargled, and the dog chomped growlingly; the adults charged out of the tent and the dog’s owner hauled him off.
Yesugei flipped out his knife and eyed the dog, whom their host had by the scruff. Temujin didn’t hear their exchange, but only reluctantly did his father sheathe. You can’t rid your host of his dog, if your host doesn’t recognise the need. That was what he said to Temujin when they left. “I’m sorry, my boy. If that brute were mine... Keeps him for Tartars, my arse. For Tartar boys of nine? If I hadn’t drunk his milk...”
Shaky and faint, Temujin tried to jest. “I wouldn’t have been so famous, dad, killed by a dog, like a rabbit.”
“Oh yes you would,” seethed Yesugei. “I’d have gone through him, his owner, his kindred and his clan. And I’d curse them and crack their bones,” he went on, and his eyes were moist, “and I’d find you the Water of Life though that be but a tale.”
“I’m fine, dad.”
Yesugei wiped an arm across his face. “Remind me sew your hood up before your mother sees.”
“It’s in tatters, isn’t it?”
“Yep. Did your mother tell you keep your hood on?”
“No, that was my hat.”
Yesugei pulled on Temujin’s ear.
“Irle Khan missed out on me.”
“Shhh. I’ll say a hymn to the black god, though.” He did. He said:
Throned on black beaver pelts thou suppest, Irle Khan; 
The breastbone of a corpse serves thee for platter, 
Thy cutlery shrivelled fingers, sharpened nails, from a tomb.
Thy great hips girt with thine sword in verdigris, 
In iron scales, in ancient braid and epaulet, thou comest stalking, 
Thou stretchest forth thy hand to our heroes, to our steeds.
Irle Khan, like a black coal thy countenance glitters, 
Like tides in the ocean wave thy waxy black tresses: 
Mighty, mighty art thou, lovely art thou, Irle Khan.

This was to flatter the King of the Dead, frustrated of his prize. “And I didn’t give him the dog as a sop,” muttered Yesugei and ruined the effect of his hymn.
Near sunset that day he shot a goose and they halted for the night on a temporary rain-lake where the sunset smeared. Temujin walked monster-tracks in the sand with the goose’s feet, while Yesugei sat quiet and abstracted over the spit-roast. In the dusk they ate. “You like goose.”
The boy had four fingers in his mouth, along with a hunk of goose. “Goose is terrific.”
Yesugei picked at his. “See me. I have trouble.”
“What’s up with it?” he mumbled.
“There are those who’d tell you they have a religious scruple, to kill a thing with wings, but I’d be kidding you. Bodonjar ate goose when he was down on his luck, and that’s what a goose means, to my age. Before Bor Nor we were shepherds and lived on the fat of our flocks. There was no meat like mutton, no meat but mutton, and the chase was strictly sport. That gamey streak still puts me off. Do you think we try hard to expunge our hunter past?”
Temujin was afraid to chew what hung out of his mouth. “Don’t know, dad.”
“Eat up. Enjoy,” Yesugei smiled.
He gulped.
“We have been here before. Borjigin have. Borjigin means Those Who Lived on Wild Fowl. Why do we boast of his time of misfortune? Because of his time of triumph. Out of his ordeal he hatched, a creature he mightn’t have been, Daft Bodonjar. He must be the Mongols’ example. Your name, now. I felt ambivalent on a trophy-name, but your mother told me the name stood for our survival, for our fight-back, for our inch of victory in the defeat.”
Temujin ate slowly, his eyes fastened on his father’s face.
“Boy, I have a secret to tell. If I tell you a secret, does that cut you off from your brother Jochi?” 
“Jochi’s my comrade, but he’s a kid.”
Yesugei nodded.
Before he resumed Temujin jumped in, “Andas don’t have secrets. Do they, dad?” When Yesugei hesitated, anxiously, “He’d be pulled inside-out like a sleeve before he gabbed. We swapped our secrets. I know his.”
His father muttered, “I am too cruel to separate you from your friend. – Are you happy for me to talk to him, inspect his equipment, beforehand?”
“Yes, dad.”
“It’s a secret for your sake, my boy. If I have done at cross-purposes with heaven’s intentions – concealed an omen sent to Mongols – I thought of you, as a father does. There are others in the know: Bultachu Ba’atur, Uder Unan and Baqaji, and Lucky Telegetu of Jalaya. You remember him; he came when we cut your hair at six and he took his lock away. Do people talk to you, Temujin, about your entry into the world? I know Jochi has a crack or two.”
“He isn’t the only one. I have to hear a bit of smart-aleckry. Temujin Bloody-Hand, or the Fist of Fate.”
“From the other children?”
“Dear me, no.” The boy rejected this in wonderment. “The other kids never gave me grief. From Tarqutai Chief.”
Yesugei shook his head. “Have you any sense, yourself, of a fate?”
His mouth made an inaudible no.
“I took your omen to a tolgechi, who told me what the heavens above told her. I can’t say I was glad at heart to hear the task you have. In the very hour you came to us, your great-uncle Cutula was hewn by Tartar axes. Since him, no chief has stepped forward to take up the load he then laid down. Our chieftaincies, Temujin, in these days, I am sorry to say, go too often to men who have that perversion that is not the wish to be great, the thirst for glory, but is ambition. If the type I talk of saw their way, they would. They haven’t, because the Mongols are split, impoverished, at feud, infiltrated. We steal from one another, Temujin, to pay the tribute – that is true. It is a sad state of affairs. No-one has stuck his hand up, neither our public-spirited nor our most corrupt. But in that hour when you coincided with Cutula he handed you his baton. The great task, the heavy load: to be the Mongols’ khan. In your khanship we have been promised to win the battles that we lost.”
Across the fire, Temujin, perched on his feet with his knees either side of his ears, stared owlishly.
“Does this daunt you, boy?”
Now he blinked, a slow owl’s blink. “Us kids had our fortunes told. Mine was, Never first in arms, but never last in wisdom; not magnificent, but dear to the magnificent.”
“That was a piece of amusement. This is a tolgechi, who ascends the sky. You understand the difference.”
“Yes, dad,” he answered strongly. “I understand the difference. I meant...” But he didn’t say what he meant. Instead, with a stout air, he said, “No.”
“No?”
“It doesn’t daunt me. If I have my fate.”
Yesugei’s forehead puckered. Of course, he had set about to daunt his child. “Come here.”
For just a moment Temujin hung back. Then he scampered in between Yesugei’s knees.
“There.” Yesugei stroked his scalp, tender-skinned after a shave. “These are big affairs, but they are far, far off. You aren’t big, nor have to be. You are my boy Temujin, and that is your only, only fate, for years ahead.”
“Daddy,” he yelped childishly and wriggled into his coat.

Two peaks in winter white glowed against the sky, fifty flat miles apart, Frosty Mount to north, Flowery Mount to south. “In sight of the twin mountains we are in Ongirat. But a third of our journey yet to Olqunot. You’ll like Ongirat. Though that’s a silly thing to say. You like your mother, I suppose, and several of your aunts.”
“But I haven’t met a he-Ongirat. You wonder whether they have them.”
“There’s a he for you, by his beard. Dead ahead and trotting towards us. I can tell he’s Ongirat, too: a waist unencumbered by weaponry.”
They stopped to greet him. A wrinkled old gentleman with a gossamer silvery beard from his chin, in chalky white felts but for red boots, wide, embroidered, the toe upturned; his cloudy grey horse had accoutrements in red and an ornate loop of a bit. He introduced himself as Dei Sechen of the Bosqur. None of this was name: dei is an endearment for an uncle, a sechen is a sage. Clan heads in Ongirat are titled Sechen, Temujin had learnt.
“It’s my lad I’m here for. We are come to find us a wife, aren’t we, Temujin?”
Temujin tucked in the corners of his mouth at the man.
“A big-limbed lad, and lively-faced. He has spirit and intelligence: fire in his eyes, light in his countenance.”
“I thank you, Uncle Dei.” Uncle my uncle, this was to say. “A kind verdict.”
Affably the old gentleman said, “Shall we ride on together, friend, and shorten the way? My way lies with yours.”
“You weren’t going...?” Yesugei turned his thumb back, the way the Ongirat had been going.
He crinkled up his eyes. “My way lies with yours.”
Temujin liked him, in spite of the quiz he put him through. He had been warned about the quizzes, when he fronted up for people’s girls. “Do we have a hope in your tribe?” asked Yesugei at the end of his interrogation.
“Forgive me. It’s the instinct, to try out their gaits, when a boy comes to us to woo.” Dei Sechen had a turn of speech oracular, old-fashioned and ornate; nothing Temujin didn’t hear in songs. Next he sang outright, about Ongirat and girls.
The tribe of the Ongirat from old times 
Has depended on the beauty of our daughters, 
Lived by the love of our granddaughters. 
We do not compete with other peoples.
For you who are grown great figures in the world 
We send our soft-face girls. 
We harness to a Kazakh cart a he-camel of black, amble out 
And seat them upon thrones at the side of kings. 
We do not compete for mastery of peoples.
Up the step we hand our girls of shapely faces, 
Sit them on the high fronts of the carts, hitch the dark camels; 
Towards kings and khans our daughters drive; 
We elevate them to the queens’ seats at your sides.
From old times the tribe of the Ongirat 
Has had the countenance of queens to be our circled shields. 
We live by the love of granddaughters, 
Armoured only in the beauty of our daughters. 

“Is ours not the way to live, friend Yesugei?”
As they jogged along Yesugei had half-closed his eyes to the lullaby, on the white glow of the mountains and the vast blue above. He laughed. “A noble way to live, Uncle Dei.”
“Last night I dreamt a dream, at dawn when true dreams come. Today I have ridden out in search of my dream and you find me on the quest. Thus it is I do not know which way I go.”
“A lucky dream?”
“Most fortunate, extravagantly fortunate. Mayhap, since I chanced upon you, you have an insight for me.”
“Why, I am no augur. But I’ll listen to a dream.”
“In my dream I saw a gerfalcon in flight, sheer white, with the sun and the moon in its talons. It flew down to me, as if I had cast the bird, and alighted on my glove with its trophies.”
“That is happy augury and no mistake.”
“Fabulous, and I awoke to know today is my fabulously lucky day. What is a person to do, but ride about like a tomfool until his luck drops into his lap?”
“I don’t know what else I’d do. Have you had a clue?”
“None. None, and the hours creep by.”
“I wish you advent of your fortune, Dei Sechen.”
A sigh wafted his gossamer beard. “The anticipation has tired me out. It’s noon and I need my noonday milk. You’ll quench your thirst with me? We aren’t far. There, we are in sight.”
Mount Frosty and Mount Flowery watered trees between them, thinly. In winter larches smoke from a chimney fluttered like grey leaves. “Dad,” whispered Temujin, “he is like an enchanter from a tale.”
“Temujin? I rarely know you rude.”
“I’m not rude, dad. But he attached himself, and he wants us to go home with him.”
“I don’t think he means to put us in a potion or turn us into pigs. He is a little wizardly, in the nicest way. I’ll watch out for you.”
“Me you, dad.”
“Right we are, then, boy.”
A neat fuel stack, both dung pats and dead branches; a tidy porch new-swept; a homely ger of rugs and cushions, pots and pans; the weaponry, if there was weaponry, not on the walls but stowed away. Dei Sechen talked of his fourteen children, their dispersal: his daughters gone to far tribes, his sons set up with flock and herd, summer and winter graze-grounds, the oldest the furthest away, with most time to get on his feet. “Of eight sons I’m left with only my otchigin at home.”
This was Alchi, a half-grown-up lad, or young for his age as the hearth-child often is. Yesugei spoke on the hearth-child. “The staff of your father’s age. And busy enough for you, I expect, him a widower.”
“Oh, I have a lazy life of it. Don’t I, father?” answered Alchi. “There’s the fairy housewife for the work.”
Dei Sechen agreed. “My otchigin’s work is to see his old father isn’t lonely at his hearth, and otherwise, he hangs on the teat.”
“I do just what an otchigin ought. I cosset my father and draw the furs up over his knees.”
Now Dei Sechen crinkled and twinkled.
Yesugei smiled and tried, “Mine’s Temuge. A true otchigin: he knows he’s to be my crutch and my daily milk, and baits me like a blind bull. Knows he’s to inherit and acts as if he owns the ger. Fire tegin, in the original Turk, and he thinks he’s a prince. He’s three.”
“Three and known your otchigin?”
“Yes, he won’t be ousted from the station. My wife has done her bit for the Mongol cause.”
In at the door toddled a wee girl behind a very big cheese. “But here she is: the child of my age.” Dei Sechen’s face melted like butter on the stove. “My daughter Borte. Ten years.”
“Meet the fairy housewife,” said Alchi, and he softened up noticeably too.
Ten, going on twenty. Back to the larder and in she toddled with a thigh of wild donkey and shaved the stiff, half-frozen meat into the pot. When she had this at a simmer she took out her embroidery. Nomads have two opportunities for art: poetry and ornament; nothing a nomad wears, lives in or uses cannot be ornamental. Alchi wore a shirt from Borte’s hands, in a washed-blue that was a sky for a wild embroidery of birds. The felt on her lap, streaky ochres for a sunrise, was being stitched with more birds. Poetry and ornament are both for general hands (nothing isn’t on the steppe) but there are the true artists amongst us, whom spirits inspire. He might be watching one. Beyond the child’s unfinished technique there was the vision – not so far beyond either – in which she was rapt. In her spare time. While Yesugei had been here no-one else had lifted a hand; her father, her brother and the guests sat comfortably on their left felt boots, nibbled cheese and nattered. Just like home, only the ger manager was ten. Did she make the tack and mend the wagons too? Grown women did, and she’d better get used to it.
“My,” he commented to the father. “It’s true what they tell me, then: a girl grows up faster. You know, I haven’t much experience with girls. I have brothers, and until my angel at the end, I have sons. Quite why I’m entrusted with estimation of the girls of Ongirat, I can’t say. The husband-to-be’s no use to consult. – Where is the husband-to-be?”
“My otchigin took him out to see the horses.”
“There you are. That’s the interest he displays, with a fine specimen of a girl in front of him. A girl has to outshoot him or he doesn’t notice her.”
“A universal fault in boys, and why our girls include archery in their acquirements. Household skills, they know, won’t earn them points at that age.”
“Don’t tell me. Yours is a precision shot, on top.”
“I’d be a liar to tell you that. She quails from a live target and weeps over a kill. Uriangqot weep over their kill, in the waila ritual. That’s my Borte.”
“Not the proud hunter of that wild donkey, then.”
“But the hunters are not so callous as herders. Are they?”
“You are perfectly right, and you cite me Uriangqot tears. A Uriangqot hasn’t quite forgotten jargalant, and he no more thinks to eat his domestic stock than eat his neighbour. His elk’s a member of the tribe. And do you know, I grow more like him? Not through virtue. I’ve had to teach my boy butchery on other people’s sheep. Kill old Harry? I can’t afford to. Old Harry, who slept in my shirt when he was a lamb with a cough, whom I have struggled to keep a Mongol and not a Chinese sheep. Milk and wool, year in year out, are more value than a one-off treat of meat. When wealthy we gobble meat but we live amply on dairy. I don’t try to say we had grown luxurious, or complacent, or lost to the time of innocence. I don’t know what I try to say.”
Dei Sechen suggested, “Things change for our children. Our children’s lives are going to be different than yours and mine. We do not absolutely know they are going to be worse.”
“Even catastrophe isn’t without its upside. Is that an odd thing to say? I don’t mean we have learnt a lesson – Tangr knows what lesson, and one harshly taught. I don’t mean that. Just that we on earth can’t see the consequences. Few catastrophes have only bad consequences.”
“You chime in with my mood today, my guest Yesugei. Today dawn I dreamt of the sun and the moon. How can I believe the future is dark? Optimism isn’t often heard, but pessimism, I dare assert, won’t aid us.”
“An idiot optimist is not so unwise as a gloomy-guts. At least, I hope.” He gave a nod to the daughter, her embroidery on her lap. “Your daughter’s birds aren’t gloomy. In the blue sky or the sunrise. They have more a sense of freedom and of magnificence.”
“Ask Borte what Bor Nor means to her and she’ll tell you, the birds. The shores of Bor Nor are where our girls watch the blue-foot crane in courtship, our emblem of troth and true love. Borte embroiders on other themes, from the gamut of traditional themes, a few of them dark contemplations. But she always comes back to the birds, and her birds, no, never are gloomy. More in the way of effulgent glory.”
“Lively as they are, I can see why they might fly off the felt and into your dreams of a night, Uncle Dei. I can almost say she captures the light of the sky.”
He tipped his head. “Perhaps, yes, perhaps.” Very affably he asked him, “Are you no great believer in a dream, my friend?”
“Ah.” This caught Yesugei out. “It seems I am. My skeptical stance, I have to admit to you, has proved skin-deep in the past.”
His thoughts, of course, turned to Temujin; they had run on Temujin a while past. He had told him, and the other thing to do was see him to a wife. Why? To balance up, to put the other wheel on. From the start Yesugei hadn’t been altogether happy to dedicate his child to vengeance, no matter how deeply he felt the deaths at Bor Nor. Our children aren’t here to fix our mistakes, but to have lives, lives we can’t guess at. Did Dei Sechen say that? Catastrophe and vengeance: one major wifely function is to pull you out of dark thoughts, in Yesugei’s experience, to commit you to life, too. That was Yesugei’s experience. How gloomy might he have been in these nine years without Hoelun? He’d have keeled over with gloom... with guilt. Temujin, he was determined, had a right to that other aspect of life – which determination lay behind this haste to get him wived. I am hasty, aren’t I? But I can feel I’ve put the other wheel on.
Why not a wife who, at mention of Bor Nor, thinks of the birds?
Hang on, Yesugei. There’s haste and there’s haste. Plump for the first girl you meet, they’ll laugh at you for a soft touch. Sees a girl, has his head turned. Merely on those grounds you can’t.
“Can I offer you mine for a trial run?”
He started. “A trial run?”
“You spoke of your inexperience with girl children. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander – I put your boy to the quiz. Get your measure to gauge them by. Borte’s at the age when she’ll have to stand up to an inspection. It’s a trial run for her too.”
To this Yesugei said, “Only sensible. Set me a high standard, else I’ll be putty in the hands. But your daughter’s on a schedule. Can she fit me in?”
The father launched them. “Tell the marshal of Kiyat where Kiyat got their name.”
Promptly she answered, “The Torrents. Qaidu gave them the name for a battle-deed in the defence of the Sacred Mountains, a charge down a spring-torrent gorge.” 
“Try her on other tribes.” Dei Sechen went to have a snuff of air out on his porch, not to inhibit Yesugei in his inspection of his daughter. 
Yesugei flipped a finger at her over his upright knee. “Qabturqas. Totem and tuq.”
She rattled them off.
“I give up. Tell me about you. Are you happy here with your father and his otchigin? They keep you on the go, you being the lady of the tent.”
Naively she told him, “My father says I am his daughter, his granddaughter and his wife in one, and that is how much he loves me.”
“Fair enough.”
Sincerely she told him, “A wife’s work is never done.”
“For a truth.” Unobserved by Dei Sechen he said what entered his head. “My aunt Galut Queen was about as put-upon as you in a war camp. Tell me, when your father has to give away his three-in-one, and hands you up onto a Kazakh camel-cart, where do you fancy to go?” 
She plucked from the air, “Tibet.”
“Tibet? And what about Tibet entitles Tibet to you?”
“I don’t know any girls who have gone.”
“Neither do I. The yaks are out of Tibet, and Bultachu’s wife Prajna; but getting in? The Blue Turks wrote on their history-stones, we conquered north and south and east and west, but we never got into Tibet. And the T’ang have a similar lament. You’re an explorer, then, Borte? And your Tibetan boy? – because there’s a boy at the end of your travels, for better or for worse. What do you look for in him?”
“I’d like a boy you can talk to.”
“Talk to?” Yesugei scratched behind an ear. “I knew you’ve have high standards. What if he’s the King of Tibet’s boy – let’s call him Stag ri Gnam Gzigs, because you might have to – and he’s handsomest you’ve ever seen, only a bomb-out in the talk department?”
She did a dainty grimace. “Can I say no?”
“You can say whatever comes out.”
“No.”
“We’ve just knocked back the King’s son of Tibet.” He shook his head. “Does he help his case if he’s slain fifty by the age of seventeen?”
“Fifty what?” 
“Up to you.”
“I hope he doesn’t exist, because I don’t quite like him yet.”
“Now, I was told girls twitter over a prince and a warrior. Is that the frivolous girls?”
She didn’t agree; she ducked her head and smiled.
“I bet being a baghatur doesn’t assist me in the least.”
The doubt on her face was fractional. “That’s different.”
“Oh? I have to hear this.” He put his chin on the heel of his hand and stuck his eyes on her.
As adroit as twenty she told him, “That’s your peers’ evaluation. And I happen to know your feat.”
“Enough about me. Very unfortunately I’m far too old. It’s my boy I’ve come to Ongirat for, and I have to say I fear our prospects dim. As a girl, may I consult you? Is his hair just too hideous for words?”
“Ah...”
“Like, we’ve got a thousand similes for hair that’s meant to be, but you turn to him and poetry putters out. Who’d have his young for quids? It’s as if I’ve brought a purple calf to market.”
The artist in her answered. “It was the eyes I noticed. They are like green water. I saw blue eyes once, with a caravan from Black Qatat.”
“Plenty of blue eyes in Almaliq. Apple orchards, too. But blue eyes, no brains, you know; they are holes through to the sky. At least we’re puddles.”
“The fishing birds like green water.”
That had been a mistake: Yesugei was in love. When the father asked how he had found her he answered with an intact conscience. “She’s given the girls of Olqunot a run. His mother’s clan is going to be hard-put to come near her.”
“A kind verdict,” said Dei Sechen to him, as he had said to Dei Sechen. “You must stay for the stew. Wild donkey, slow-stewed – I defy you, my friend, without prejudice, to prefer mutton.”
Am I meant to flirt with them? What am I meant to do exactly? Ask Temujin? Temujin was engrossed in the stew. Which was a start, Yesugei supposed, but he didn’t once glance up at the cook. Wild donkey simply melts away lusciously in the mouth, and that’s raw. Stewed in its own juices with its marrow leaky from the bones, that’s divine. Dei Sechen had given Temujin the thigh bone to suck on, which is tantamount to the fat tail of the sheep and an honour above his age. With an eye experienced in calves and foals Yesugei sketched her adult lineaments. It’s in the bones. She had big hands, like Temujin, to grow into, big but shapely – shapely hands, shapely whole. She promised to be tall and substantial, and her features were pronounced, almost too big but for their balance. She’d be the bold beauty of the tree, not the flower.
“Temujin, do you like a flower or a tree?”
“Dad? Like, how?”
“Just your gut instinct. Flower or tree. Quick.” Yesugei snapped his fingers.
“Tree,” jumped Temujin.
“Thought so. You have a strong mother.”
Temujin puzzled at him, and went back to his big bone of donkey.
“I can’t prefer mutton,” he ceded to Dei Sechen. “Without prejudice.”
“Honey and curd, or a dash of milk brandy?”
“My host, you mustn’t fuddle us for the road. Dusk draws on.”
“But sleep the night. There’s no sense to set out in twilight. It’s the sun you travel with and not the moon?”
“My host.” He stopped. “My host, I must be round with you.”
Dei Sechen’s face was innocent inquiry, except that crinkles squeezed his eyes into slits incongruously sly.
“You throw your daughter at me.”
The vapoury puff on his chin quivered with a furtive humour. “A father does not throw his daughter. A father is stiff and difficult and has nearly to be knelt to, like a Turk king.”
“Quite so. Now, I’m proud of my boy. To my mind he’s an excellent catch. Why do you fish for us, Uncle Dei?”
“Today departs from other days. Today the father of a daughter woos the father of a son; today, whatever fortune sends my way, I shall grasp with both my hands.”
Yesugei’s heart lurched, or tried to rotate like a stuck wheel. “Whoa,” he said, not quite to his host. “Either you have a Hun treasure trove, unbeknownst, frozen in your larder, to be turned up the next time you dig; or the Caliph of Baghdad is about to visit you, in disguise as is his habit. I’m not him.”
“No, my friend.”
“I’m the marshal of Kiyat, and I don’t need the sun to announce me.”
“No, my friend. Yet can I interpret my dream to hint at a union, and perhaps my gains aren’t to be in silver and gold. Perhaps my gains aren’t to be obvious to me.”
“Interpretations.” Yesugei shook his head.
“In the moon we see a lovely, wise woman, in the sun we see a handsome, triumphant man. The moon, the queen of the night, is our trope for our focus of light, the wives at our hearths. The sun might stand for –”
“The sun stands alone.” Yesugei seemed to be upset. “We do not liken – we do not liken to the sun. It has no likeness.” Turk kings do. Turk kings, in their pomp, liken a king to the sun. Mongols aren’t so ostentatious.
“Truly. I hope I am not impious, whether asleep or awake. But Borjigin have a legend they were begot by a figure of fiery light. At first sight you and your boy are Borjigin, with the light in your eyes and the fire in your hair.”
Yesugei returned the silence of despair.
“Thus I am topsy-turvy, for today. Tangr sets things on their heads. Like a wooer, I hope for a yes but I anticipate a no.”
Helplessly he said, “I’ll sleep on it. I told his mother...”
“I understand. We cannot seize ahold of every chance that comes our way. Mayhap we leave great fates by the wayside far more often than we know. This time, by grace, I had a dream, and the wit to recognise my luck and ask you home.”
“Yes. I suspect you dream of heavenly spheres because you are a saintly old gentleman.”
Instead of sleep he lay awake on it. Queenship may or may not be a stroke of fortune – ask Galut. But Yesugei didn’t know, either, what the gains might be, what future lay before their children. Dei Sechen dreamt he had a chance to make his daughter queen, and bully for him. Who was Yesugei to rob him of his dream’s advent? How to explain himself to Hoelun he’d just have to figure out on the trip home.
At the crack of dawn he was first up and out, and perched on his heels to watch the sunrise. But Borte wasn’t far behind. She didn’t see him, as squirrel-toed she climbed a larch, sat astride a bough and joined in the carol of the birds.
After carols she sizzled onions in butter in a pan and poured over them the donkey jelly from last night. If she fed Temujin like this he’d be that giant Borjigin in no time. Yesugei said to the father, “Has bliss on the clouds aught to do with onions, do you think?”
Dei Sechen crinkled up. “My answer is yes.”
“I haven’t asked a question. That is, only about onions.”
“There’s no charge.”
“No charge? No charge for a triple-precious object? You toy with me.”
“Can I ask for more than the sun and the moon?”
“I said you were a saintly noyon. I won’t have that, though. I tell you up front, I own no more than I ought beyond a noyon’s name, but I’ll do justice to the merchandise. Give me time.”
“I give you eight years or thereabouts.” 
The children’s eyes shifted from father to father and they began to have suspicions, even the boy. The boy was crippled, either to eat his onions or to lift his gaze from them. A girl can be ignored (unless she outshoots you) – a future wife is hypothetical and while she so remains, doesn’t disconcert you. This was a live one. The girl, like a perfect lady, didn’t stare at him.
Later Yesugei asked her, “Are you very cross with me? He isn’t Tibetan.”
“I don’t mind that. He’s quiet.”
“He has been. Lass, here’s where you might have to trust me and take a punt. I do believe he’s quieter than the average boy, as he is. But boys make a lot of noise, most of which mightn’t interest you. I swear, he ought to try to talk to girls. Just for an instance, he has tact. Tact? Your half of the equation has the tact, at least early on. Don’t tell him I called him a girl. Now, he worries he isn’t the hero-type, but am I right, that won’t worry you, who know there’s more than one type of hero?”
She listened diligently. “When boys are shy, we’re told to see the shape of them in the father.”
“You are cross with me. Don’t be. I like to think I’m a captain who understands his men, but if I got called a girl at nine it wasn’t for my tact.”
Dei Sechen scolded him. “Leave my daughter alone, or she’ll never transfer to the one she’s given. Indeed, why don’t you leave him with us for a term?”
“A term-of-labour, Turk style?” That alarmed him. “The traditional twelvemonth?”
“It isn’t for his labour that I ask. The custom acquaints a boy with his wife’s tribe, widens his horizons. But I do not wish to cost his mother tears.”
“More likely me, matter of fact. And he’s at a stage. A stage when he needs his dad about.”
“You are a fond father.”
“I am, aren’t I? Or a stage when he needs to find his own feet. A year spent with Borte, as a change from his kid brother Jochi – he’d grow up like spring grass.”
“It’s for the children’s sake I ask. If engaged children forge a friendship before adolescence is visited upon them, we find they remember they aren’t from different species, in the throes.”
“Ongirat are the experts. Nought more important, Dei Sechen, than a friendship over the hearth. Nought more important. I agree: a twelvemonth.” Yesugei knocked on his hilts. “Escort him, when you can, around strange dogs.”
“Dogs?”
“A dog tried to tear his throat out on the way here. He’s petrified of them, though I haven’t noticed.”
“I won’t notice either. What else?”
“He’ll eat you out of house and home. Labour? See that he does, or you have a bad bargain.”
Never mind dogs, was dad to abandon him to the girl? Dad felt a rat, nonetheless he did. Terror must be temporary. Dei Sechen was nothing if not avuncular, and the otchigin had taken an instant shine to him.
“I’ll leave you Jahan, Temujin. Though I haven’t had the funds to be indulgent with you, you can be seen to have two mounts, in your wife’s tribe, and Jahan’s a noyonly type. To go with that hat.”
“Keep the hat on. I know.”
“Two mounts doesn’t mean unsighted from meal to meal – unless Borte is with you. With you here she’ll be allowed time off to be a kid, and she’ll shortly value you for that. There’s a kid inside her, Temujin. She’s interested in wild animals, but because they keep her to slave at the hearth, there’s an area where you’ve had more opportunity to learn. Ride out and watch the wild animals. But don’t shoot them to impress her. Talk to her about them. If you spot your chance, track her down a tiger.”
“A tiger, dad?”
“It’s the eyes, lad.” He dropped a hand on his shoulder. “The eyes are serious weapons. Use them wisely.”
Temujin digested this. “You won’t have a spare horse for the trip home.”
“Sweetheart. Don’t worry about me. Wink’s got a spare set of legs.”
Temujin joined him on the first miles of his journey – just Temujin, Dei Sechen with the sensitivity to omit this courtesy. “Talk to her. Have I told you?”
“A few times, dad.”
“For us boys, you’re almost articulate once you get going. For us boys, in actual fact you’re quite intelligent.”
“Wow, dad.”
Both of them laughed. “It’s to your mother’s program. You she set to suck at her left teat and Jochi at her right. On the left lies the organ of the heart, the seat of thought, and the left teat nursed your heartly faculties. Whereas the right nourishes physical facility, as the right hand is natively abler than the left. So we have you and Jochi. One of these days he’ll outshoot you –”
“One of these days a month ago,” Temujin told him.
“Is that so?”
“I’m not to tell, in case of fluke. He is a fluke, though. I know I’m ordinary, but Jochi’s hot for six.”
“You don’t wish you got the right teat? Your mother knows what she’s about. For Jochi I’ll find a girl transfixed by an arrow – no shortage of those. Your girl suits your strengths. As far as I can determine, Temujin. A wife – the first wife; I don’t know about others, to be frank; or perhaps your true wife whether she came first or not – by our beliefs, she’s forever. Life and death. When you natter with your ancestors over the shadows or the essences of fires, she’s your wife. I have tried to judge aright for you. God grant you take after me, because I can’t figure out what else a father does but see whether he can’t get in love with them himself.” 
“God grant I’m a mirror of you, dad. And that’s why I know I’ll like her, dad. Because you do.”
Moved, Yesugei cast an arm across his shoulders. “See? Talk to her like that, when you’re grown, she won’t grumble. Boy.” He squeezed the arm. “This wasn’t how I meant to do things, to tell you what I told you and then leave you on your own. While you have me, do you have any questions for me?”
At once he asked, “Why me?”
“I know that one. You’re going to be congruent to the task. Fit for the job.”
“I can’t see that I am.”
“Not yet, my woolly ears, you aren’t. Be funny if you were. Tangr sees you in your potential. It’s him we have to trust in. Your great-grandfather Khabul and your great-uncle Cutula were khans, and they weren’t perfect. They had foibles. Khabul drank way too much (forgive me on high) and Cutula very seldom changed his clothes (he smelt high, and he doesn’t mind to hear). They were human.”
With a tilt in the two straight strokes of his brows he said, “They were magnanimous.”
Yesugei creased his brow.
“I’m not. I never change my clothes if I can help. But it’s different when you cannot be – big.”
Yesugei pulled up his horse. “Temujin, what gives you the idea you aren’t magnanimous?”
Hairyfeet stopped beside Wink, a black with a splotch of white about one eye. The horses nuzzled, but Temujin constricted his lips.
“Boy? I’m your father. Tell me freely.”
“Mother says.”
“Mother says?”
“If I can’t rise above my sense of injury, I’m not.”
“What sense of injury?”
There tumbled out, “Bagtor goes on I call him a bastard. I never have said that word, until I just did. But he goes on I call him that behind his back. Mother says if I give a grudge permission to pitch tent in me, I’ll end up and call him a – word.”
Shortly Yesugei said, “I don’t have bastards.”
Temujin stilled and glanced at him cautiously.
Yesugei was aware his face had changed; he was angry, palpably angry, in front of Temujin. “From son of mine I’d have hoped for the honesty to insult me to my face. Son of mine. To beget a bastard is act beneath me.” Thus he made statement, as if he were about to challenge. Challenge who, his son? “A bastard is a child who can’t point to his father. If Bagtor can’t point...” But he petered out. Challenge who, himself? He muttered, “Where have I gone wrong?”
And this was worse for Temujin to see: his uncertainty.
“Harshly said is harshly felt. I have been at fault on Bagtor, if unintentional fault. I didn’t know how he felt, I didn’t know he inflicts the affair on you. Hoelun, does she, keeps this from me, like a child?” This last, with a twist of the mouth of hurt disenchantment.
Solemn owl eyes watched him. He couldn’t help but think of Hoelun’s words about a son’s faith in his father’s wisdom. Then the Temujin-owl gave a peep. “Dad.” A peep with trust in, or love.
Yesugei heaved him off his horse, onto his own. “Boy,” he answered.
Temujin fiddled with Yesugei’s sleeve, which is a boy’s caress. Yesugei sat with his arms loosely about him, hands locked on the other side of him, and went on. “Boy. I’ve told you about your great-grandfather and your great-uncle, and as for your dad, him you see short of unblemished. Now, onto you. Your mother sets you a labour. Not one to be achieved overnight. Virtues are like muscles: the more you use them, the stronger they grow, the easier labour becomes. You can’t draw my heavy bow. But one day.”
Temujin listened and doodled a finger on his sleeve. 
“And your mother in her wisdom has chosen out for you a hard target, but one worth the sweat and toil. Magnanimity: it’s a big word for a big thing, and you’re a little tyke, but we have expectations of you.” He jiggled him in his arms. “In your labours ahead, Temujin – for I told you, didn’t I, the load’s a heavy one to haul – you won’t be alone. You won’t have to ponder your questions alone. You’ll have the great minds of the age beside you.”
Temujin lilted a quote. “Not great but dear to the great.”
“If you like, Temujin. It is a group thing, to run the Mongols. The khan? Pish. Obviously, it’s the marshals and the baghaturs who run the operation. Khan just co-ordinates.”
“Will you always tell me what is right to do?”
He knew that one, still, in spite. “I’ll tell you what I believe right, whenever you ask me. I’ll always be your father.” He removed Temujin’s hat, nuzzled him, plopped the hat on. “Are we happy for the time?”
“Mm hmm.”
“Then I’m going to dump you back on Hairyfeet, turn his head to Dei Sechen’s ger and say, God keep you, and love you as your father does.”

Yesugei rode on plunged in thought. Not gloomy, but grave, and self-critical; thoughts he was glad enough to shake out of, when in the last hour of light, north of Mount Frosty, he saw a hunters’ camp. Fresh game – he smelt roast goat, or hare – beat the bag of runny yoghurt at his cantle, and a mood to be social overtook him. He leant his hips towards the fire and Wink went where steered. 
Close to, he saw the glint of the silver pierced through their nostrils. Ongirat and Tartary both abut on Bor Nor. The war was in the past. Here they were. Yesugei didn’t veer away or make believe he hadn’t ridden up to help them eat their catch. Why be rude? They weren’t his enemy. Even if they were, your worst enemy has guest-rights at your fire. That has been the ethic for thousands of years on the steppe, else no-one can survive. He swung from his horse – stiffly; he stiffened lately, in the hip and the knee; he wasn’t far off forty and the aches had begun.
As a guest behaves he behaved: he squatted at their fire and warmed his hands, nodded to them. No introductions – they can lead to trouble – you only need to know you are host and guest. Guest was how they addressed him, jochi, a much-used name he had used for one of his.
The roast kid was splayed on its hide. They sat in a circle, took out their knives and dug in together. Several of the Tartars cut choice portions for their Mongol dropper-by, a slice of liver, a kidney. Talk was about animals and the weather, neutral subjects of universal pertinence that never tire. The hunters rued they weren’t pitching into donkey. Donkey’s a devil to catch, laughed Yesugei.
“The most obstinate beast on earth,” said his neighbour. “Obstinately won’t be slain.”
“My wife seems to think that’s me.”
“Does she? How come mine claims the title?”
They didn’t call themselves by name, either, to avoid the incendiary, in case he and they had slain each other’s kith and kin in the war. The thought of Temujin Uge floated through Yesugei’s head. It did when he met a Tartar.
One of them sat apart and didn’t eat. To inquiry he merely shook his head, under the hood he had drawn up, a black hood sewn with spirals of pearls. Sick, thought Yesugei, and doesn’t want to say.
In a Tartar rite, the bones weren’t chewed or cracked for their marrow, but at the end of the meal were wrapped up in the hide; this to be left with a simple spell, for the belief was the animal grows again from its bones. A symbol remained, though belief may be in the past.
The one off his food, in a raspy voice, asked him had he ever sampled grain whiskey?
“I can’t say I have.”
He held out a silver cup. “From barley. It’s rough, but don’t worry, I croak because I have a rot, not from the whiskey.”
Yesugei took the cup and said in toast, “Your health.” When he went to sip his eyes watered. Instead he tossed. It was atrocious and he had to grimace, but he didn’t cough. He handed the Tartar back his silverware. “So that’s what they drink in town? I guess the charm is in the effect.”
“Yes. The charm is in the effect.” He set the cup upside-down on the grass beside him. Then he pushed back his hood, from a head lean and grey. “Do you know me, Yesugei Kiyat?”
Temujin Uge.
No. He wasn’t, just an instant’s resemblance in the sombre cast of face, the grooves of age, the haughty curl of the nostril ring. “No, host, I don’t know you. Have we met?”
“Nine years ago. You haven’t changed, you haven’t changed in the slightest. But as I tell you, I am diseased and I have. The shamans cannot tame the demon of my disease and I have a few months to live.”
“I am sorry,” said Yesugei. It came out very neutral. He sensed the change of air, he heard the others’ hush. The fire crackled to itself uninterrupted.
“Anyway,” went on the unknown Tartar, “what was I to you, nine years ago? One head of cattle.”
Not the Uge but another of his captives, of whom he had dim memory. Yesugei nodded and said, “Excuse me that I still can’t attach a name. I only retained my prisoners of war for two or three months and I haven’t given thought to them in years. Though, to be strict with the truth, Temujin Uge carved for himself space in my head and is uneffaced with time. How is the white-bones?”
“You ask after him like an old friend.”
“Not that. But he and I had a tryst, in twenty years’ time, to finish an argument. I had a point to prove to him, or he to me. Nine years of the twenty are gone... gone his way, more than mine, I fear.”
“Your tryst must be kept in the ghosts’ underground, Yesugei Kiyat.”
“Dead? I am sorry.” That came out hollow, as echo does. However, he was strangely sorry. “Argument with him felt uncannily like clouts about the head, but I hadn’t given up hopes to trump him in the end.”
Quietly, viciously, the Tartar said, “You needn’t maintain this guise with me. I was there and saw.”
“I am not known for guises.”
“You murdered him you talk of.”
Yesugei had one of those flashes: haven’t I been here before? Yes, that’s right, he and I discussed a murder. “Murder? I set him free, just in the state I captured him, down to the silver in his nose and the rings on his toes, and I never saw nor heard of him again.”
“Then the witch your wife – she named the child. Perhaps you are innocent, innocent and ignorant. It is one to me.”
Yesugei sank his teeth into his lip.
“By foul magic was he slain. Yes, you set him free, and before we crossed the Urshiun he was stark dead. And your son, for whom you stole his name? Your son, for whom you robbed him of his soul? Your son thrives?”
Yesugei rose to his feet. He had made statement and he did not stoop to do so twice. “I offer fight,” he said, “if this is your belief and you care to fight.”
“I do not choose to fight you.”
“Or one of these in youth and strength.”
“My accusation is foul magic. I do not choose to fight.”
He might have insisted, and he felt that way inclined. But to fight over foul magic is to dignify arrant superstition. And the man was on his last legs, and the others here hadn’t accused him. “Then I’ll leave your fire.” He walked away towards his horse. He wouldn’t whittle a Tartar from his bones tonight.
Up on horse he thought of a thing he much desired to know, and stepped again into the halo of the firelight. “You, Tartar, who have not given me your name, I charge you tell me this: did Temujin Uge, whose arm I clasped, suspect me to be involved in his death?”
He answered, “How? Invisible bolt struck him down on the banks of the Urshiun. One moment alive, next moment dead, and no earthly wound upon him.”
To know this mollified his feelings. “Indeed, I scarcely thought him the kind to fantasize of evil spells, or to fail to see sincerity. Now is he witness to us, and with his ghost’s sight he descries that I did him no harm. Were I guilty I’d not invoke him.” Yesugei glanced around the group, the other Tartars, witless with embarrassment and discomfort. To them he used the old-fashioned phrases for stranger who meets stranger on the steppe. “Brothers, who have shared with me your meat and milk, I wish you peace to your camps, increase to your flocks.”
They dodged his eyes. One, the one whose wife thought him obstinate, too, quickly circled a finger in the air in holy gesture, and then put his face into his hands. The thin, sick face of the Tartar in the pearl hood remained fierce and steadfast, like a crazy hawk.

Like a crazy hawk. Superstition’s a dangerous beast, very dangerous. Both his wife and his child had been mentioned and Yesugei didn’t like that. Illness or the approach of death can warp your brain, give you strange obsessions, the way a pregnant woman craves for dandelion. Nine years on, to feel the humiliation of his short captivity – that’s obsession. Yesugei hadn’t been captured in war, but honestly. This was nowhere to leave Temujin for a year, in the neighbourhood of Tartary, Dei Sechen with no weapons on his walls. One doesn’t feud with a child of nine – then again, Toghrul had a stint with Tartars at thirteen. If they believe in soul-theft they might want Temujin for a weird ritual, return the stolen possession to its owner. That’s the trouble with witchcraft, they’re bloody mad.
Why in blazes did we name him Temujin? Didn’t I want Flag-Stand? Didn’t I want Plum?
Ahead, out of the sphere of Mount Frosty, stretched Umber Steppe; behind his right shoulder the sun went down. When he had lost the Tartars’ campfire in the disastrous, silent conflagration of the sky, Yesugei halted. Double back? That might be to lead them straight to Temujin. He’d stop here. If they came after him at least he’d know their intentions, and he’d stay vigilant the night. Tomorrow, when he had light to see pursuit, back to Dei Sechen and take Temujin away.
Agitation gripped him; his gut clenched and unclenched like a jittery fist. You ridiculous father, he’s safe tonight, he’s snug in his nightskins and doesn’t dream of Tartars. Yesugei leant against his horse-seat, an elbow hooked about the front arch, on watch for Tartar activity. Next he knew, he had slithered onto the mattressy grass and the stirrup had caught him by the chin. Wasn’t he on watch? Sleep, thick sleep, pampery thick luscious sleep lapped at him like a dish of cream. But a firm voice said, Yesugei.
Go away.
Yesugei.
Groggily he got his chin out of the stirrup, peered into the starry dark and slurred aloud. “Is that you, Temujin senior? If that’s you, I never cast a witchery on you. Leave me alone.” His head dropped against the knee-flap with a sort of thunderclap.
Yesugei.
Ah let me sleep.
Get up, Yesugei.
“You get to bloody Irle Khan where you belong.” The effort to say that only disturbed him further. Athirst for sleep, and sleep impossible: as if he had drunk a pint of grain whiskey, feverishly hot and thirsty for water (that a Mongol doesn’t drink) – too drunk to sleep and too drunk to be awake. So you toss and groan and argue with ghosts.
Get up, Yesugei.
Heavens and hells. Heavens and hells of every religion.
He got up.
He got up, and he threw up. The moment he was half-upright and semi-conscious his stomach came into motion and heaved, ejected his kid supper in a run of detonations that left him dizzy and sweaty on his hands and knees
As happens, however, he felt clean, rid of what he was better off without; he was awake and alert. The whiskey can’t be that strong. What’s wrong with me?
Sweat dribbled from him like a distillery. Violent nausea, splitting headache, listlessness, sleeplessness, sweats: adds up to marmots’ plague. There were contagions now with people dependent on marmot meat. You always test a marmot first; an unsafe animal is dopey, incurious, slow. When plague comes to a ger the people of ger, the dead, the early-symptomed and the outwardly untouched, hang black felt over the door and shut themselves in, for the plague demon to do his worst with them, whom he has in his claws; to keep his rampage within the circle of their ger. Greater love hath no man, greater courage. Yesugei was moved every time he thought of that. Ordinary people. The plague demon – what sin created him? The shamans can tell you: a neglect here, a cruelty there. Can he ever be tamed? Of course; every demon is a victim too; once he was human, once animal, once like you and me. We make our own demons, we can unmake them. Only the circle is vicious, quipped a shaman. A circle is holy. The Tartar with the wife who drew a circle in the air and put his head into his hands. Yesugei poked at his armpits, his groin, where the black bulbs grow; no tumour, no tenderness; and he ought to be giddy.
The disease, the rot, his ex-captive had, whose cup he drank from? By rot he meant a slow disease and this was acute.
Have you sampled grain whiskey?
I can’t say I have. I can say your whiskey’s so awful I won’t know the difference.
The charm is in the effect. My accusation is foul magic: I do not choose to fight.
The other Tartar who drew a holy circle and bent his head into his hands.
Yesugei had got himself poisoned and Hoelun was going to be angry at him.
A hunt poison. Infrequently used – poison taints the meat – mostly to bag mountain sheep and goats for their horns. Wounds won’t stop the wild sheep and goats, they bounce off on three legs or with an arrow through a vital organ and you lose them in the terrain. It has to act fast, but that’s in the blood. Ingested, how does a poison behave? He had no idea, and besides he wasn’t an argali or a blue goat. Poisoned arrows are known in war, but again, he had drunk his.
He had thrown most of his up, hadn’t he? He felt his stomach empty. And Have-You-Sampled, how often has he tried to poison his own species, you have to ask? He’s a Tartar, but you know, he isn’t Persian. Versed in techniques to poison blue goats, but I’m a guess. Be a botched attempt, a headache and a gutache, not a lot worse than poison by alcohol.
There Yesugei stopped for an answer. The animals know. An animal crawls away to where he wants to spend his last or drop his bones, though to your eye there’s no need to despair. They’ve an ounce of prognosticator each and they know.
Ask a silly question.
I can kill Have-You-Sampled, I have that in me. I’d have felt more kindly towards the plague demon. What’s this one’s excuse?
If he’s fit to poison me, what isn’t he fit to do to Temujin? Yesugei staggered up and whistled for his horse.
Wait. Won’t he come after me, won’t he want to see his work? I’m not in terrific shape to defend Temujin right now. I mustn’t lead them to him. They don’t know he’s here.
Hoelun doesn’t know. If she doesn’t hear from us she’ll search in Olqunot and we haven’t been there. While she searches, the Tartars might hear his name mentioned, his ill-fated name: Dei Sechen of Bosqur, he’s engaged his daughter, he has young Temujin with him for a term-of-labour. Warn Ongirat? They aren’t fighters. Warn Hoelun? She is. I can go home and put this in her hands. Home’s six stages, at quick march. Twelve days turnabout. Safe to leave him twelve days, in camouflage? Safer than draw attention, try and take him with me? Can I guarantee I can get home? – if I start I’ll have to. Six days, I don’t know I have them up my sleeve. Wink can do the distance in three. “Can’t you, Wink?”
The horse, head thrust in a tussock, swivelled up to him his white-splotched eye.
With them after me to see the results, finish me off, I reckon I’ll get home? Yes, but that’s exactly when I don’t want Temujin with me. I have to move, one direction or the other.
Saints above, whoever’s there, point me in the right direction. Tangr, if you take an interest, if he’s part of your scheme, give me a direction. Wrong direction, the boy’s in my case. Your boy, Tangr, you tell me. Come on.
He watched the sky. A comet too much to ask? How about a bird?
A breeze blew on his face, a breeze blew north-west.
“That’ll do.” And he jumped onto his horse. “Home, Wink, fast as you can.” He had forgotten his seat, with food bags attached. “Weight,” he said dismissively and they left them behind. He knew he wouldn’t want the food. Bow on one hip, quiver the other, sword on his back: he was equipped, equipped to down a Tartar hunt party if he had to. “Whatever we have to do, Wink. If I have to kill you into the bargain, we run by sun and moon. Do you understand me?”
No doubt the horse understood his master was ill and urgent, that he had to be in his camp. In poetry the horses are talkative. Wink wasn’t, but Yesugei talked to him constantly. “Least I can do, aside from cling to your back.” He did cling, and sway; Wink understood the sways weren’t to steer him and ran a straight north-west across the drab Umber Steppe. Yesugei half-lay on his neck and crooned. “The ideal horse: his nostrils quiver as briskly as the gills of a fish; he has a hare’s haunches, a weasel’s spine, legs from the gazelle; the crest of his neck he arches like the peacock; his head a serpent’s head, dainty and neat and erect. That’s the ideal horse. Here’s only you and me. Get me home alive, Wink, you’re a legend.” In poetry the horses save their masters by sublime loyalty and fiendishly clever tricks. Wink stuck to running. A gallop exhausts a horse, a trot exhausts the rider; the run is a gait you can go at the day, and the night and the day and the night. Yesugei half-lay on his neck, face in his rough hair, an eye on the rear horizon for Tartars, until one night his sight shut up, shut him in a box with the lid not tightly on, with a slit. But they either didn’t catch him or didn’t try. It’s possible, he thought, the others have thrown a bag over the old loony’s head. Quite possible at that. Still, not to stake Temujin on.
Encouragement to his horse meant he didn’t have much time to cogitate or contemplate or any of that. He didn’t feel a need. He did hear the dead of Bor Nor, who said to him: Nine years, Yesugei, nine years and no more. You had an errand, but your errand is done and you’re nine years overdue.
Yes, he answered them, yes. An eddy of Bor Nor had caught him into its great tide, almost the moment his errand was done. Did they wait at the lake of Bor Nor, wait to see Tangr’s scheme? Dead Mongols don’t mind the water. He had an image of the ghosts in the wind-ruffles, or adrift on the wind with the herons and the storks; he thought of the crystal and marble in winter, the lake like a crystal chalice, a marble temple; he thought of dead comrades, and he didn’t mind the water either. 
When he threatened to drift with the wind and slip into the water too soon, the voice came back again, the firm dry voice. Ride on, Yesugei. Ride on.
Now he didn’t argue with him. “Uge, I can’t do this without you. It’s for your namesake, Uge. Stick to me.”
Ride on, Yesugei. Ride on.

Camp was desolately quiet. Through his narrow slit of eyesight, like a stupid helmet, he saw no-one; no-one shouted to him as he jogged in slung about his horse’s neck. What had happened here? But when he reached his tent he heard his door guard Qongdaqor, reliably at station. “Yesugei? Yesugei, are you inj...” Qongdaqor’s face came into vision. “Dear God.”
“What’s happened here?” he demanded as Qongdaqor thrust a shoulder underneath him. His horse, at a stop, trembled violently. “Where are they?”
“It’s the Onon’s day. They’re at the river.”
“My wife, at the river?” That was, what, another hour? He’d never last.
“No, no, she didn’t go. She said she’d go later. She’s about.”
“Then get her for me, for God’s sake, Yegei.” 
“I can’t...” Qongdaqor had him sprawled on his arm and shoulder. He bawled by his ear. “Hoelun, Hoelun, Hoelun.”
“I’m injured on the inside,” he told him. “I’m slain by poison.”
Qongdaqor dragged him over his threshold, and bawled. “Hoelun.”
Going backwards with his heels bumping, Yesugei lifted a finger to his horse. “My hero.”
Where she prowled on Dolion Tor she heard, she heard and she knew who. She knew, Yesugei. He was so strange; he was flippant, he was flighty, he didn’t do as I told him; the spirits were upon him, shortly to take him. Clearly she thought this as she sped.
Outside the tent, his black with the splash of white over one eye lay on his side, with the life and effort in him to shiver. Nearly she stopped, for a horse in heart-arrest from exhaustion can be revived with kicks to the heart. But she went by.
Inside lay Yesugei, his face stiff, rough, a bark effigy of him, greenish as if his eyes had leaked. He didn’t see her, not a yard off, not until she knelt in front of him. “Hoelun,” he said with a voice very normal from the grotesque face. His hands groped.
She gathered both his hands in hers on his chest and asked Qongdaqor, “Is he sick?”
“He is poisoned.”
Yesugei said, “He has his wits about him, but no great hope, Hoelun. Who is here to entrust a mission to? There is not a moment to be lost.”
“In camp, us and Monglig. The whole of –”
“At the Onon. Fetch Monglig,” he told Qongdaqor.
“Use me, master. Give your orders to me.”
“You,” he snarled, “you don’t leave my wife’s door. Fetch Monglig.”
“He’s at the water troughs,” Hoelun threw after the guard.
Alone with her, he seemed to put aside impatience; his hands squeezed hers and he peered at her through pussy eyes.
“Who did this to you? Why?”
He lay and panted; a pant in the chest beneath their hands, in the tongue behind his bottom lip.
“Tell me who. Husband, I will avenge you.”
The bark-like skin of his face cracked, cracked into a smile. “Ah. There’s my Hoelun. Hoelun, after the conqueror of the Orqon. That isn’t terribly Ongirat.” He smiled on. He had his air again. “I’m afraid he didn’t give his name.”
“Yesugei.” 
“Tartars, by their silver.” So easily he spoke from his harsh, stiff face. “But who or why? He was sick unto death himself, and old, a relic from the war, he must have thought to take a Mongol with him. At random.”
“Describe him. He has kin.”
“None of that. None of that, Hoelun, there’s no gain. Keep out of trouble, you and the children, that’s what I want from you. No Tartar feuds. No avengers hidden in vats of ayrag. No inquiry. Promise me, Hoelun. No inquiry.”
“How, how can I? How can I make no inquiry?”
“Have I not ridden home to you? You won’t grudge me now? Promise me, Hoelun.”
“Of course, of course I promise you, Yesugei.”
Again he smiled. “That’s the way, my love. Stay out of Tartary. The children need their mother. My wife, my love.”
“Mine,” she gasped and kissed his lips. 
A pop-eyed Monglig stopped-and-started in, flung off his hat. Hoelun held out her hand to the twenty-year-old. “Come where he can see you. He is partly blind.”
To issue his instructions Yesugei pushed up onto his arms and shook confusion from his head. “I have left Temujin with his future wife’s father, Dei Sechen of the Bosqur-Ongirat, who is camped between Mount Frosty and Mount Flowery; we have agreement for a twelvemonth’s term-of-labour. Monglig, these are my orders. Bring Temujin home. Don’t talk to strangers. Between here and there don’t tell your names. Act as if in hostile territory. Act as if you’re out on espionage, lad. I won’t send the troops in, we’ll do this the quiet way. I’ve entire trust in you, Monglig. Follow what I have told you as if I’m holy writ. Lose no time.”
He was satisfied. Qongdaqor and Hoelun helped him lie down. Right away, plainly, he felt he didn’t have to struggle any more. Right away his eyes wandered, wandered where he didn’t see them, or look for them. They focused on other things, they fixed.
Qongdaqor bent to her ear. “Come away, lady.”
She spat at him, “Not yet.”
Monglig backed from the verge of death as from a cliff. The dead, too, have an instinct to cling, and in their fear of the strange can be a danger to their near and dear, they can try to take a familiar face with them. Not so Yesugei, with his eyes elsewhere; when Qongdaqor prised her hands from his, he didn’t cling. “Let him go, lady. Trouble not his spirit. His spirit is untroubled but for us. His heart is wrung to see you weep as he sets out on journey.” To Qongdaqor’s strong, kind murmur, in Qongdaqor’s strong, kind arms, she was walked from the tent.
The white eye of his horse stared up to heaven.

7. Hoelun Alone
No followers but our shadows, no store outside of our fat.
The Secret History of the Mongols
No-one said, humour him. No-one spoke in such fashion, but they went about to do his orders in the spirit. Qongdaqor growled, “’Taint a wonder,” which meant a man who had his milk poisoned might suffer from mistrust. Extraction of Temujin from Ongirat, therefore, was a quasi-military operation. As if you’re out on espionage, lad.
That Yesugei be poisoned struck his camp as one of the more grossly unfair of flagrant injustices, in the history of. “Never hurt a fly, unless the fly hurt him first.”
“Even then, he’d give it a chance to apologise.”
No investigation into his death – that was an elephant of an order to humour. But he had been lucid.
Monglig had nothing against a spot of espionage, and like most in the camp he had thought of Yesugei as the best person he knew. Anonymous travel, avoid strangers. You don’t have to see the whys and wherefores in holy writ.
By the time he got to Bosqur he was in the mode, and he took into his head to conceal Yesugei’s death. Out here, unknown, were his poisoners; why tell them the upshot of their piece of skulduggery? Why tell Dei Sechen, who was a stranger to Monglig? Err on the safe side – that went to Yesugei’s instructions. In war, in espionage, a fib isn’t a fib, and Monglig lied in Dei Sechen’s ger: he told them Yesugei’s eyes ached for Temujin.
Straightforward, if affable, Dei Sechen questioned, “Has his mother an objection to the match?”
“No. No, nothing on those lines. It is only the marshal’s desire to have him home.” 
Monglig tried to say the marshal. At home they said, him we lament. It is decent not to name the newly dead. Behind decency lies the logic of self-protection, for the dead don’t at once want to be dead, and the path to the ghosts’ haven is difficult, fraught with hazards. The dead loiter and yearn for old acquaintance, whom they try to seduce or snatch. In cases of haunt, where they can’t or won’t find the way themselves, after a few months a shaman escorts them, goes the journey with them and delivers them into the arms of dead kith and kin. Yesugei doesn’t haunt, Hoelun had said straight away, Hoelun who was known to have the sight; he is gone, gone. Nevertheless Monglig felt awkward to name him.
You can’t always be too fastidious. On his excursion for battle-news at twelve, with the numbers of the dead, in the need to determine who’s dead and who’s alive, people hadn’t used a lot of circumlocution.
“Go home to your father, then, Temujin,” said the old Ongirat, “who is very fond of you. But vouch for us. You haven’t been unhappy here?”
“No, Father Dei,” Temujin answered heartily.
“Ask my friend to lend you back to us shortly. We are in a way to miss you too – are we not, Borte?”
The girl he was engaged to said to him, “Yes, come back as soon as you can, Temujin.”
Once they had left the ger Monglig found himself in another tangle-up, from his fib. It isn’t that your father misses you, he had to tell Temujin. It is that he is dead.
He thought the boy bombproof, since he didn’t cry. But Temujin, at the age he was, might have been told that God had gone out of the sky. He was more puzzled. This is near where there was the wolf he frightened away, he thought on the trip home. This is where he told me what the clouds are. This is where...

They saw a drastic change in Mengetu. He had had, now, two brothers foul-slain; and in neither case had he had his vengeance. To Hoelun he told his heart. “On the outside I am Mengetu; inside I am a mad dog. My late brother is very fine to forgo revenge for a random act. I won’t transgress his wishes; if I do I involve his children and my own; arbitration is tricky to organise in a Tartar feud. Though I am conscious of his reasons, I cannot stand his sentence. It is a sentence to me. I am sorry, Twig; you were the finest of we brothers, and Noikon right behind you; there was no justice for Noikon, and again, there is to be no justice. Any day, maybe tomorrow, a man is going to say to me I turn a blind eye to a brother’s murder. Last time I challenged to duel. Next time I rather fear I am to rip his liver out, tear his liver in my teeth before his ghostly eyes. It is impossible for me to live in society.”
Hoelun understood. “Although I find I do not crave to slaughter Tartars. That is because I’d have no satisfaction. If I slaughtered Tartary, still, he is gone. And hachi there is none of in the world.” 
“Hoelun, I hope you forgive me,” he resumed. “But I cannot be a social beast.”
“Galut Queen, after her losses, lives in a deep privacy. I think of her. It is a temptation to me... to lick my wounds. To have done.”
“In need, seek me in Jangsiut. I don’t want to cast aside my duties altogether. I believe I can be of use in Jangsiut. They are on poor grounds, and though I can’t help them to wealth of grass and water, I can stand up for them in argument with the hungry gangs once known as Mongol tribes. No doubt,” he laughed with difficulty, “I feel fit to hide my face amidst our slaves. Am I a free man? Not without my vengeance. I am in shackles.” And Mengetu moaned, “Had his death been self-inflicted. Had his end been one of ignominy underneath the axe, my hands had been thus tied, exactly thus.”
“Go with God, my husband’s agha,” she said.
Others, whom he didn’t talk to, criticized him as one of those antisocial animals who aren’t driven from a group but drive themselves away, cranky and embittered. The Tartar’s poison had poisoned him too, they said, and thought him derelict in duty. The fourth brother Daritai almost said as much. “He leaves me in the lurch a bit. That’s what an otchigin’s for – have the baggage dumped on him – only who’s in charge of Kiyat? I daren’t cross Mengetu, I daren’t accost him in a mood. Only number three had the tact for that.”

Next came the disbandment of his nokod. For this sad affair they gathered at a last banquet in the great tent with his stallions’ tails outside. It had been a month and they dropped the phrases, ours we have lost... mine, mine I have lost, said Hoelun. The phrases were for his sake, that he orient his spirit away from his old life; or for theirs, to be a boat of discipline on a sea of emotion.
In his honour the nokod attacked a whole-stewed ewe from the outside in; they peeled and split up the tail, the richest nourishment to be had, as thick as a fist with fat. After this rare gluttony of mutton (neither weather-kill nor a carcass gouged by wolves’ teeth) they sat over the goblets they had earnt in his service. One by one, not in turn but on nerve, they gave the tributes they had prepared, verses original or on crutches of the known and dear: his feats, episodes that caught his character, sketches of him in metaphor. Hagahar’s was a humorous portrait and a sore trial of grown men who wept with laughter. Bouts of black milk in between oiled eloquence. Among them his widow recycled a verse, that had once fit another hero, and fit him.

Of captains, of comrades, seen in the world,
His was the sweetest, the tenderest heart,
Truest to his loyalties, thirstiest for glory.

“Glory is love,” she concluded. “Love he had.”
Again the black milk said a deep amen.
After the elegies she asked them about their future. “Nokod leaders like him aren’t three-for-a-goat. Have you thoughts to attach to another?”
Hoelun was in an early stage of grief, and perhaps didn’t by intention load her question. The answer, anyway, went to the tune of her internal, No. Who else can there be?
“I don’t know there are any, lady, in the true old style.”
“No, he was the last of the true old style. It’d be a step down.”
“Steep, if we signed up with Tarqutai.”
“Tarqutai?” she queried.
“The chief of Tayichiut has put in an offer to take us over.”
Hoelun shed a haughty air. “An offer to take you over?”
“That’s about how we felt, lady,” glimmered Tailgan. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
“A nokod ain’t a hand-me-down. Me, I told him what a nokod is: we choose our man, a worthy man. Through our tradition the worthy are strong on the steppe.”
“Worthy’s the old word, and not one – beg your pardon – springs to mind of Tarqutai.”
Brusquely from Garyp, “In spite of his exorbitant promise of pay.”
“Where was he to get that sort of a treasury, then?”
“Wasn’t curious. Purse for a mercenary guard.”
“Disbandment is a sad time for any dead man’s companions, to shake hands and take leave. In the songs they never do disband, but your captain isn’t anonymously poisoned in the songs, you have your last stand. We prefer to stand under his tuq and see our last of each other – we prefer disbandment to abandonment of what we are.”
Two or three months on, Hoelun sorely wished she had suggested the nokod stay together, pick a leader from amongst them, although he be not Yesugei. At the time, what was his, without him, she saw no purpose for, in despair she threw away; whereas in a later grip of grief she clutched at what was left of him and thought she had been perverse.
“We’re back to our tribes, most of us, lady,” Hagahar told her. “Lend a hand. Things are grim enough in mine. We won’t lose contact, I hope, a few of us been with Yesugei since he was a pup. Me, first glimpse and I was his; and the glimpse was him getting a tumble in a horse race. That’s true love. It was the way he whistled to his rival going past.”
Hoelun thought to equal this. “I loved him in an hour. But he had kidnapped me. It was the way... the way he was.”
Through the night they reminisced. “Not in vain did he live,” said Hoelun.
“No-one who knew him,” they said, “knew him in vain.” Very late, very drunk, about his tuq, they cheered him as they often had alive, in a throaty roar: hur ah, hur ah, hur ah. 
It’s a Mongol cheer, that Europe learnt from Mongol armies at battles sixty years ahead, when the chivalry of Hungary and Germany found themselves outfought, out-thought and thoroughly out of their league in the scientific warfare of the foe. A big step, in sixty years, from hard times on the Onon Gol to triumphs on the Danube: Liegnitz, Wiener Neustadt might have been the moon to Yesugei’s nokod, the moon Dei Sechen dreamt of.

An otchigin is the family dumpster: as the ranks of his brothers thin, on him devolves the care and maintenance of the widows and the children. While they live they leave him free-and-easy, for his life grows hectic later on, escalates with death of brothers. Survival of the youngest is as guaranteed as might be, as he isn’t sent to fight. Daritai had also his father’s relics, his Aunt Tamsag and Abaghai Ghoa, both with slightly scattered knucklebones at the age they were, and he had the family’s domestics, with kids. There were kids in droves, in his custody. He had more kids than sheep. And Mengetu had walked out on him.
“That’s scarcely fair to say.” He had said so in the tent of Mamaj, one of Noikon’s widows. “You four brothers did things differently, to camp together. It’s usual for the otchigin to be the only man about the camp. Don’t we spoil you adequately?”
An otchigin has his brothers’ widows on temporary loan, in this life; he holds them in trust for the original, in the next life. A woman has only one husband, women say. Noikon’s widows did spoil him, half like a child instead of a husband, although a big child kept happy not by indulgence in honeycomb. And they told him off for greedy. What’s an otchigin to do? He has no fame, as he isn’t sent to fight. The other brothers claim to envy him and he claims to envy them.
Perhaps an otchigin observes his brothers’ wives and has the thought, one day. That’s only natural. Only natural, after a widow’s first grief, when she sees that life goes on, to start to anticipate the transfer. Mamaj, as a matter of fact, spoilt him in ways she attributed to Uriangqot, who had a name to be liberal. He began to imagine Hoelun at him like a lamb at the udder.
One day, just as they passed in camp, he said to her in a gentle joke, “Unless you do me the honour, Hoelun, I’ll be the butt of ridicule.”
From her face the thought had never crossed her mind. From her face, for an instant, now that the thought did, the thought was met with revulsion, disgust, contempt. As if an insect had crawled into her dead husband’s things, a slug in his nightskins perhaps, a spider in his boot.
Her answer was perfectly courteous. “My husband’s otchigin, I had given no thought to the question. Can I ask for an interval? I am inclined, at this stage, to live his widow.” 
Daritai shrugged a crick out of his shoulder, and struck back with the jocular sarcasm that was his scratch or daub on hoof or horn, his mark. “It’s me who’s the butt; of course you haven’t thought. I’m afraid I’m your option, within the family, Mengetu absent and fed up with life. Oh, or there’s Bagtor. Quite a rivalry of charms.”
Hoelun, for an interminable moment, met his eye. She walked on.

Who’s in charge of Kiyat? – Daritai had asked. Crudely, that was up for grabs, or so Tarqutai thought. After he had failed to ingratiate himself with Yesugei’s nokod he tried again with Kiyat, and volunteered that year to collect from Kiyat for the tribute.
Tarqutai had alienated his own tribe of Tayichiut over tribute issues, over his inequity, and that was why the Tayichiut clan were here. Very briefly Daritai said to her, “Let him. I’m busy.” He and she only spoke briefly, since.
Ideal would be Mengetu. Short of ideal... take charge of the tribute herself? To voice objection to Tarqutai was to hang a rotten carcass on the racks. Orboi Queen, his mother, had years ago distinguished Hoelun as an enemy, which wasn’t inaccurate.
Yesugei had been aware of the frictions. He may have been naive, he may even have met his end naively, to drink a Tartar’s poison. Unperceptive he wasn’t, and he sized up Tarqutai and his mother the queen, but Yesugei had a knack and he managed to guide his fellow chief with subtlety, without antagonism, without getting hackles up. He used to say, “It’s Ambaghai’s widow, Ambaghai’s son. We owe him the effort.”
“He isn’t a much of a chip off.”
“No, he isn’t. But you never know, Ambaghai might be due a grandchild from his loins who is.”
“When Orboi Queen is out of the arena the grandchildren stand a chance. It is a shame they cannot live up to him.”
“What, greatest Mongol ever?”
“I thought that was your grandfather.”
“It’s a toss-up. Temujin Uge told me Ambaghai.”
“Temujin Uge? He’s a judge.”
Hoelun settled for insistence on use of Yesugei’s figures from last year, which had been calculated with great headaches as to who can afford what, and Hoelun, do you mind if we throw in the speckled cow? Last year Yesugei had come home rich from Hirai, and he remained rich for upwards of a week. And that was why the tribe of Kiyat, as the Hirai khan had said, kept its integrity. Integrity as in unity, integrity as in behaviour.
To pick a quarrel, to air the putrefaction of the carcass, to have Orboi and Tarqutai up stakes and go and camp elsewhere, was a thing she half-wished for, although against Yesugei’s schedule; until she did exactly that.
Ghajaru Ineru is a rite for women wed into the tribe, who had thereby switched their spirit-loyalties; men, to whom a change of tribe is nonsensical or worse, stay out, as afraid of their wives’ alien spirits. Kiyat and Tayichiut held the rite jointly, close bones in the great skeleton, only separated with Ambaghai’s grandfather. Orboi, who reigned over the women, determined on an auspicious day, the date of which she kept under her elaborate hat, until she stealthily woke the celebrants from their sleep and a cavalcade of ujins in ornament, with whispers and stifled laughter, tiptoed from camp before light. Much of the secrecy is ritual; go back to sleep, they tell their husbands, you haven’t seen what I’m up to. But Hoelun, left out, slept on obliviously.
Five hours into the day Goagchin asked her, “Aren’t you at Ghajaru Ineru? I know you didn’t attend the Onon...”
Only then did Hoelun notice she was in a camp empty of its upper crust of women, with the odd slave left, like Goagchin. It was incendiary and she went up in a roar. She had been at home without her hat, and without her hat she followed their trail. A gregarious assembly of women on a gala day in their tallest and most ostentatious headgear isn’t hard to locate, ritual secrecy aside.
In her daily wear Hoelun barged through them straight for Orboi Queen, with her sidekick queen and sister-wife Unegen. It was late in the festivities: they had sacrificed a cow, and on a frame erected the head, hide and hooves. Hoelun stalked up to Orboi where she sat under her saggy cow on stakes. “You have forgotten me, Lady Orboi.”
“Oh,” she said as if she had. “Lady Hoelun.”
“What do you mean, to eat the spirits’ leftovers without me? Am I foreign to your sacrifice? Am I to be ignored with the slaves?”
Unhatted, Hoelun’s hair whipped her own face in the wind. In her fury she was spitting, and she spat on Orboi’s vestments. At least, they claimed she had. The two queens exchanged a silent comment on her. Almost certainly Orboi had meant a petty social exclusion: oh, you slipped my mind. But in the moment that was lame, and the logic led her; Hoelun’s own words led her. “Why,” she said airily, “Lady Hoelun, weren’t you wed into Merqot? Indeed, for your white bones, since you are here, join us in the feast. But I didn’t number you among those I was obliged to call.”
This was outrageous. This was to deny her union with Yesugei, and him newly dead. “Over Yesugei’s sacred bones you have the effrontery?” 
“Over Ambaghai’s sacred bones, you have effrontery, lady. Ghajaru Ineru is in my purview and I think I know who to invite.”
With this statement Orboi committed herself to an ostracism.
Beside the queens, next in grandeur, sat Tamsag and Abaghai Ghoa, exquisite antiques, as aristocratic as lions and horned after wild rams, but utterly harmless. By their faces they were dimly startled by the scene. More modestly situated, she caught sight of Mamaj, with whom she got along. Mamaj dropped her eyes.
Since she had given Daritai his answer, Daritai’s wives, that is, now, the women of the Kiyat camp, had chilled towards her. What did Daritai tell them? That she didn’t deign to do as Noikon’s widows had done? That he had been direly insulted? That she was too hoity-toity for him, for them?
It was impossible, impossible to let another into the nightskins where Yesugei had been. It wasn’t for Yesugei’s sake, who might have expected her to revert to his otchigin in the normal manner. It was her. She could chew her leg off, like an animal in a trap, with less sense of self-infraction. But she didn’t scorn to, and she didn’t put herself above others who had lost their husbands.
It may even be my old fears of unchastity, that once I had two husbands. Once I knew enjoyment of Tchiledu and that is true – very, very remote but true. I tore off my shift for him, lest I forget. After Yesugei, no. And Yesugei took no other, when he might have had twelve, the marshal, a hero and so popular. Do they think of that?
So popular. And I am unpopular, aren’t I? Have I noticed before? Did he notice? I think he did. Yesugei, who in his private life did nothing but flout convention. It isn’t that.
With a conspicuous lack of concern, Hoelun turned on her heel.

Early next day, as she nursed Yesugei’s baby daughter, Qongdaqor told her from the door, “Tayichiut are striking tents.”
To this news she said merely, “Orboi Queen and I like not to live a team in yoke.”
For years they had, and Yesugei’s head shepherd Jaraqa must sort out the flocks: flocks that had intermingled, that had struck up friendships, as sheep firmly do, in fact flocks Yesugei first cut from his own to give Tayichiut a leg up, to help them from the forest onto the steppe. The sheep weren’t happy, and neither the shepherd. He came in to splutter to her. “That Orboi – I do not call her queen. It isn’t queenly, to my mind, to call you what she calls you.”
“What does she call me, Jaraqa?”
Jaraqa puffed and blew. “My mouth cannot cooperate.”
“Why, dear, at my orders?”
“A slattern–” his eyes roiled in their sockets – “with the sight. She says you tried to curse her. You muttered and spat on her garments.”
“Mutter I have to reject. I was loud.”
However, when Uder Unan and Baqaji stepped in to take their leave, her heart, alive to them, misgave her. They were distressed. Sufficiently to say, “Our chief can’t enforce our esteem or our affection. Only our obedience. It’s a sorry day.”
From Yesugei’s friends, this half-convinced her to be sorry. On their exit she watched them stop by Temujin in the lane. Baqaji crouched to talk to him and Uder Unan stroked his neck with a thumb. Hoelun didn’t overhear what they said.
Obstreperous animals, and the uproar of a removal no-one had known about yesterday – these weren’t Tarqutai’s fault. The abrupt split had been his mother’s idea. He thought he might disdain to be humiliated, and with his half-brother Todoyan, Unegen’s son, he rode on ahead out of the chaos of the flocks. As Unegen to Orboi was Todoyan to Tarqutai: those times Todoyan acted on his own initiative he was found erratic, perhaps through want of practice.
When Yesugei’s shepherd in his state of exasperation dogged the Tayichiut brothers and told them what he thought of them, from a distance people saw Todoyan lift his spear in threat; saw Tarqutai attempt to ride on with his brother in tow and with his dignity intact; saw the shepherd, a slave, on foot, shake a finger at the spear and not cease his tirade; saw Todoyan lope at him on his horse. Saw Jaraqa dodge and swerve, saw the spear drive on a line with his spine.
Temujin and Jochi saw, where they clapped together a wicker corral for the Kiyat sheep. They saw Jaraqa stretchered past them on a section of wicker borrowed from their fence, the spear out at his neck as if he had a double backbone.
The flabbergasted children simply stood there, in human cries and chaos, now, not the sheep. In an odd consequence of Bor Nor they hadn’t been exposed to violent death. They hadn’t seen fighting men stretchered into camp to be nursed by their wives and children. In their ignorance they heard glamorous tales of violent death on a grand scale. They hovered on the spot in fascination, very like vultures. Then, like vultures, they inched forwards, Temujin and Jochi, the one an incitement to the other. They went to see. Temujin, two years up on Jochi, put on a spurt, into a trudge, faint, but his eye alight.
There knelt Monglig with his father’s head in his lap. To Temujin’s disbelief his father was alive, alive with most of a spear in him. “It’s Temujin,” he quavered. “Can I help?” An errand, he thought. Fetch a surgeon. Fetch Hoelun. Fetch water.
It wasn’t Monglig who answered. Jaraqa did, with a spear in him, croakily, from Monglig’s knees. “Is that you, Temujin? Alas that your saintly father sees us from his cloud. This is the end of Yesugei’s days and ways.”
Jochi had come up behind him. When Temujin turned to run he ran smack into Jochi, but blundered around him and kept running.

Temujin had vanished. “He hared off,” Jochi had to tell her. “Flipped his lid.” 
“Upset, Jochi, was he?”
“Lost his bottle.”
A week went by before he traipsed in on a mare beyond her milk years whose whereabouts were only thought of when they moved, no halter, a switch of larch for a whip. Neither damaged nor severely starved, but in danger of throttling from his mother. “After what had happened, to worry me like that? I didn’t know whether you were next. I didn’t know whether you had gone after them too and got short treatment. It can’t be put past them – Tarqutai who rode on as if his brother had left for dead a stoat that dared to yap at him.”
“I’m sorry, mother. He is dead?”
Hoelun had spent a wild week of anger, of anxiety. “No, he’s on his feet and with the sheep.”
Temujin lowered his eyes.
“How have you fed yourself?” she demanded. “Did you stone rabbits?”
“I met people.”
“And you just waltzed up to drink their milk for them? Never mind who they are. I met people. Your father met people. Your father learnt he gave his trust too easily. You had better learn.”
No answer.
“Where have you been?”
“The Sacred Mountains.”
“The –? And what for?”
“I didn’t go in. It’s marshy and the streams are in torrent in the melt. You have to know the paths. But I saw them from the outside.”
She flapped over him with a shriek. “What for?”
The truant didn’t take this for a question. Contritely he glanced up at her, from Yesugei’s eyes.

One morning Qongdaqor did a double-take to see Hoelun walk from the tent: she wore Yesugei’s spare cuirass, shiny with new oil, and a round helmet of hard leather in Tibetan red that had been a trophy on the wall. She asked for her steed and Ubashi.
The underemployed camp captain did a double-take and then he did a triple. “Mistress, your instructions?”
“Ride with me, Ubashi. We circuit Kiyat.” From its tripod stand she hoisted Yesugei’s tuq, a twelve-foot spear of ash with an iron ring for the tails and a counterweight iron butt. She kicked off her right stirrup, leant the butt on the tread and shifted her own weight to the left.
Tarqutai, Ubashi knew, had had more luck with Kiyat than with Yesugei’s nokod, the offer identical: to take them over. In Kiyat, focus on the chiefly family was loose. The chief, known as the marshal, is chosen by consensus from a pool of the founder’s get – in the first instance. If he has gotten what, wrapped in green grass, a cow wouldn’t lip, what smeared with fat a dog wouldn’t lick, the circle is widened. Khabul hadn’t been a Kiyat marshal; famously, in his youth they had passed him by as too fond of the drink and a bit of a tearaway. In these times of insecurity two trends were in evidence: to treat lineage as sacred, worship descent, or to flock to the strong arm, with or without much ornament. Both were trends for Tarqutai to exploit, as Ubashi overheard in snatches where he stood outside the tents of Kiyat with Yesugei’s tuq. Tarqutai argued his effectual arm and the Mongols’ holy martyr Ambaghai. In the usual course, Yesugei’s sons might have had the sentimental edge, if they proved to have the equipment; and a man’s sons are ready-trained to his station. Military office is a family affair. Had Yesugei lived, great had been the likelihood of one of his – say Temujin – stepping into his harness after him; had he lived to be aged or otherwise inactive, one of his might have taken on his functions, overseen by him. That was why Temujin’s name got mentioned in the Kiyat tents. A father and son, by the father’s death, can be deep in co-operation, and though not in a technical sense an inheritance, military office works thus.
It isn’t strict or fixed, Ubashi understood. There are traditions, different traditions that on inspection, in fact conflict; there are sentiments and the like must be said; and these traditions and sentiments grow strong or weak in the climate of the times, in the circumstances. And so he heard Kiyat slip into Tarqutai’s hands.
“Our lion names, our great dead, either left no children – Attai – or left them too young, like Cutula, and like Yesugei. We are a people of orphans. The great Mongol skeleton – with bones knocked out, with gaps. To preserve what we have, we cherish offspring of the lion sires, just as if a beam of light begot them, yes. And we wink nine times at a fault, for the sires’ sake.” This was Gombo, who as captain of fifty of his kin group had fought in Tartary beside Cutula and Yesugei. He had come outside for privacy. “Me, I’m old guard, I’m almost the oldest head I know; I lived through Bor Nor, God help me. My own sentiments, strongly, lean towards offspring of Yesugei; I’ve spotted Temujin for promise, as I thought I saw Yesugei spot him. To me – I say outright in your ear, Hoelun – there’s nought wrong with a widow marshal the way we have a widow queen, until Yesugei’s are grown. That’s what I’d like. Others, they see a bigger branch off the trunk of Ambaghai, and I’ve heard, I’ve heard a lot of, we can go to Tarqutai and come back to Yesugei’s. There’s the idea that Yesugei had Tarqutai in his tutelage.”
“Yesugei went to pains with him, but I’d say he had him closely under eye where he didn’t have scope to do much harm.”
“You know and I know, he didn’t intend him for his next-in-charge. But there’s the perception, and Yesugei, alas, hadn’t time to sort these matters out. At the last, he gave no word on his marshalcy?”
“It is a marshalcy. He wasn’t the khan, to name a name.”
“No. It’s just that things work differently, after Bor Nor. If he had we’d have listened.”
“He did not.”
“Tayichiut foster the perception of next-in-charge, and harp on the brother-tribe. And I’m left with this, Hoelun: Yesugei spent the efforts of his latter years to conserve Kiyat, to conserve our unity. We watch other tribes disintegrate. If the majority go to Tarqutai... I don’t know. I don’t want Kiyat split.”
“I don’t ask you to create a split, if the consensus is for Tarqutai. Not only is division contrary to Yesugei’s efforts, but Yesugei didn’t own the tribe, the tribe goes by joint decision. My husband had no thought to flout traditions there.”
“If we had Mengetu. A headquarters, you and Mengetu, with lads of promise who have the smack of Yesugei... Is there any chance? Can you persuade him? The otchigin isn’t versed in war, and lady, though you run a mean war camp, you haven’t led in combat.”
“No. I haven’t been in combat.” 
“But you and Mengetu, you’d be a team we’d hitch our wagons onto.”
“Mengetu is sick with his sorrows. I have said to him I understand his stance.”
“Then I can only urge you, go the rounds. Talk to the others, whom I haven’t left unacquainted with my opinions. Most kin groups have post-Bor Nor captains, as you know; I don’t criticize the new set, but they do have a different perspective. Us few who have followed his standard in war, we don’t want to switch to the scarlet. It’s the white tails forever for us. I’d go with you, Hoelun, only I dare say they’ve heard enough out of me. But give them a sight of Yesugei’s tuq...” The old captain squinted, or almost winced at the tuq in Ubashi’s hold. “His spirit lives on in his tuq.”
But this he didn’t say with enormous conviction. A tuq possesses a temporary life after him who lent an aspect of his soul to be his emblem. Death, for the left-behinds, is gradual, even Yesugei’s, seized quickly. But a tuq too must have its funeral, and that last aspect of his spiritual self flit to its liberty. When? The widow, who has his relics in her custody, senses when. Ubashi felt a discomfort, to have the tuq in hand, months on; a discomfort he hid from Hoelun.
Hoelun went the rounds with the spirit of a war hero that burnt on in his tuq. But Tarqutai had been around the Kiyat tents before her with inducements of live cattle. Where did he get the cattle? He stole them. Tayichiut had driven their wagons north to their old grounds on the upper Onon, and there met the Suldu, trespassers, they said, ridiculously. In punishment they seized the famous Suldu rosy cows, fat from their meadows.
“But that is banditry.”
“Lady, what’s between Tayichiut and Suldu I’m ignorant of.”
“There is nothing between them. He has robbed Suldu and given you their cattle?”
Here, thought Ubashi, you have the man who left a spear in Jaraqa and rode on. Where was the outrage? Confronted with Hoelun’s outrage, the captains at once scrabbled for excuses, since they had taken the cattle.
“Lady, the day prior to his arrival with the cow, the children in my care drank water because I had no milk. I had no mare’s milk, no cow’s milk, no ewe’s milk, no nanny goat’s milk. I had no bitch’s milk. Forgive me, lady, but you don’t know how that feels, to see your children quench their thirst with water. Water doesn’t stick the flesh on.”
This, said to her with a return of passion, doused hers. “We have scrimped with our children.”
“Yes. Yes, you’ve been frugal with them, for a chief’s children, we know. Still, they don’t go hungry.”
“Last year Yesugei earnt in Hirai and he straightaway gave what was given him. He kept a colt. His nokod kept their goblets.”
“Forgive me, lady,” this Kiyat said again. “But there won’t be any more where that came from. And half of what he had from Hirai, half of what didn’t go to the Tribute Wall, went to Iqira.”
“Iqira were at the end of their contrivances, last year. Worse off than us. Is this blame?”
“No. Indeed no, God keep me. It’s Jurchen whose policy is to make life nigh on impossible for us. The assessor knew he earnt last year and charged him the taxes. How Tarqutai came by the cow exactly, like I said, I don’t know. I only know I have to feed my kin group’s children.”
This exchange left a dent in her. “Even I,” she said to Ubashi, “underestimated the importance of one man. Why, he has been gone four months.” After a moment, “And I have not his strength. My arm aches.”
“Ujin, you are strong.”
“I wish I were less. I might give up.” A while and she said, “It isn’t strength he had I lack.”
Ubashi only found to say, “They pick a wrestler to heft that tuq about, beyond short distances.”
“Women can wrestle.”
“Aye. There was Mafjuguru who overthrew her suitors, until one took her fancy and she let herself be beat. And that’s no tale, though she had her schematics from tales. My grandfather saw her wrestle.”
“It’s Mother Nomolun I need to be. But bless me, I am not.”
“Whose deed was to hide Qaidu inside a stack of fuel.”
“What is your lesson, Ubashi?”
Pierced by her eye, he went stupid. “Uh, mistress, I guess I meant I don’t much like her fate.”
After one more tent and discussion inside she turned for home. On the way she said a second time, “My arm is weary.”
“And the horse, I’ll warrant.”
“Can you take this, Ubashi?”
“Aye, mistress.”
Qongdaqor helped her off with the cuirass. She sighed, “If only I had a simple thing to do, such as to wear that against a big bad Tartar.”
“Big bad Tartars are a big day’s work for a Jorkimes or an Uru’ud.”
“But there is so much less to be afraid of. Must I see his efforts go to waste? Must I fail him?”
Qongdaqor dug in his brain before he answered. “Was my master so unkind and skew-eyed as to task you with his tribal affairs?”
This dragged Hoelun’s far-away gaze to him. “What if I told you he did?”
“Then I have fouled my mouth.”
“Kiyat, Qongdaqor. His Kiyat.”
Qongdaqor wiped specks off the cuirass. “He had several cares in the world. His Kiyat. His staff he gave a thought to now and then, I am certain. His most treasured, treasured Hoelun. A spirit cannot always have his way. A ghost has his frustrations, who can’t be hands-on.”
“You are a wise one, Qongdaqor. Do you have time to think while you stand by the door?” Next she said, “Tomorrow. Tomorrow, you and his other staff, lay his tuq with me, on Dolion Tor.”
“Aye, and half our hearts.” He had a spasm of horror. Cleanly killed means bones clean-picked, but did the birds and beasts shy off his poisoned flesh?
She saw his thoughts. “If you are not afraid of his remains.”
She wasn’t. They had laid his horse beside him, too, as Jorkimes had with Bartan in Buzzard’s Gorge on the road to China. “The last of the ba’aturs,” his thoughts went on aloud. “I hope I live to hear a shout for ba’atur. Have we left behind the heroic age, Hoelun?”
“You have children. So does Yesugei.”
“Aye. I hope I live to see mine serve his as I served him.”
“I hope I live to see mine deserve such service.”
“I never grew tired of his door.”
“Nor I of the least joint of his little finger.”
“Tomorrow’s an opportunity to tell him. In case he doesn’t know.”
Hoelun glimmered a smile. “But he does. That was the trouble with him.”

There were negotiations – not face to face – between Daritai and Tarqutai on the manslaughter of Jaraqa of Alip, otogu slave of the family. Hoelun, face to face, met with Daritai. “Tarqutai, we hear, offers payment. The son of the slain wishes for blood.” 
“Does he? Exacted by whom?”
“Monglig says, himself.”
“Which isn’t possible.”
“No. I have striven to prevent him. Likewise Qongdaqor and Ubashi.”
“Prevent him? I’m afraid we won’t see Todoyan enter into duel with a slave.”
“The slave doesn’t think to dignify Todoyan with a duel. To Monglig this is a matter for criminal feud and not for feud of honour.”
“So he threatens to walk into Tayichiut headquarters and shoot him out of hand?”
“To him, murder, murder witnessed by a crowd, has given us the license.”
“Prevention is sensible, then. They’d tear him limb from limb.”
“With his status Monglig cannot fight the case, even if he grants Todoyan feud of honour. That is much to grant. It is to grant him his chance to slay a second after the first. Has he the right to strike back, the right to equal fight? Is this an affair of honour?”
“To be pragmatic: Tayichiut offer to pay. To turn down payment and take blood is without doubt to incur retaliation. They won’t see our license. That’s a course you have to justify to your victim’s chief, and guess who the Tayichiut chief is?”
“I too say we have to be pragmatic, given who the culprit’s chief is.”
“Marvelous. I thought you were about to ask me to walk up and shoot him.”
“Are you in mind to agree to payment?”
“Yes, I am. What else? You want me to challenge, don’t you?”
“No. I ask you to demand of them feud of honour, for me to undertake.”
Daritai arched his brows. “You?”
“Me.”
“Is this to get me laughed at again, Hoelun? First you won’t do me the honour, and next, you do the honours for me. Is this to amuse the neighbours?”
“This is because they won’t have Monglig, while you are the otchigin with a camp of widows and children who do not want to risk you, and I am happy to.”
“Do you acknowledge that the family domestics are in my charge?”
“Yes. That is a fact.”
“And that the case is in my hands?”
“Yes.”
“As otchigin I have duty towards my dead brother. Duty of shelter to his dependants. To permit you to fight the case is scarcely to shelter you. I don’t believe my dead brother can dissent from my answer. My answer is no.”
“Then Todoyan pays so-and-so heads of livestock. Perhaps he can steal them.”
“Neither he nor I set the price.”
“Those who can’t fight, or those who won’t fight, take payment for murder.”
“Now I am a coward?”
“No-one expects the otchigin to fight, who has been kept from combat.”
“I must point out your own want of expertise.”
“My competence to stand to Jaraqa’s slayer is for me to judge. On the subject of his temper I have heard Yesugei say, a temper isn’t altogether bad but is there to be lost at the right time. Rarely though he challenged, when he did, his temper was what won for him.”
“Yes. Along with his wrist action, I venture to suggest.” 
“Your answer is no?”
“It hasn’t altered since I told you. Mind, I cast no aspersion on your temper, or its competence to kill at twenty paces, nor on your temperament in general. My brother coped with you, but then he was fifty times the man I am.”
“If you were the last man on earth, Daritai.”
“If you were the last woman, Hoelun, believe me, I’d share a ger with my mare.”
“Your mare might understand you. Your mare might find you sufficient to her emotional life.”
“Tiger’s teeth and claws of bear,” emitted Daritai, mildly. “And this, now, is an attempt to bait me into a challenge? You want to fight me now, Hoelun? Quite happy to come at me with a sabre, instead?”
Yes. I want to fight. I want to gut an Oirat the way I gut a trout. I want to conquer the Orqon. I want, I want.
I want Yesugei. I want to be with him, and what years are there to wait?
Have patience, my wife, my love. I am patient.
You are a ghost.
True, the time is nothing to me, the time until we are together again. Our amgalant, our jargalant: at one, and in our joy.
I am not as religious as you are, Yesugei.
No, but you have faith in me.
Can I have a heaven, just you and me alone?
“Hoelun,” interrupted Daritai, concern undisguised in his voice. “Things get easier. Things get easier with time.”
“I know they do,” she whispered. She stood up, and she smiled at him. “Let us be honest, as we have already been childishly rude. Yesugei must be perplexed to hear us, to hear how shabby we are without him. You don’t need me, Daritai, and I don’t need you. I am going to camp alone.”

Yesugei’s staff sat and digested the information from Daritai that they weren’t Yesugei’s staff, and weren’t his widow’s – they were his. “Her ladyship the she-marshal can come or go as suits her. Family staff, I’m sorry to say, came to me with the furniture. I need a quartermaster. I need a flock watch. And you, Qongdaqor, won’t stand like a tin soldier, I’ve plenty for you to do. But you can sleep at home, how’s that? We aren’t a military headquarters, we’re the home help brigade. I’m the butler.”
Of the four brothers, Daritai had always been least likely to blow up in your face – Daritai, notorious for a detached, sardonic nonchalance. But Hoelun had got under his skin. Perhaps Monglig felt the worst, for they knew she had had a row with him over his father. Or else Ubashi felt the worst. Or else Qongdaqor.
Monglig sniffed into his sleeve, “The last he said to me, he said he had entire trust in me.”
Qongdaqor upped this. “He reminded me I don’t leave his wife’s door.”
“The door’s about to leave you,” Ubashi told him bleakly. “And your new owner has new orders and you’re not allowed to follow.”
Qongdaqor thought he detected insurgency abubble. “Follow, you’re a runaway, and he can slit your heels and drop in hair to lame you.”
“He won’t do that.”
“No. Not to otogu. Even in a mood. But that’s what obedience is. No ifs and buts. As if I’m holy writ, said Yesugei. He always was to me. But I can’t split hairs and say I don’t owe obedience to his otchigin. It’s not, obey the one you loved.”
“I love Daritai,” declared Ubashi. “He’s being a cock right now. You love your family, even the cocks.”
Qongdaqor went on with his correction of rebel tendencies. “The fact is, Yesugei was very soft on us. As tin soldier by his door he put a hat on me for ornament, that’s meant to be for noyons. To abuse his great humanity to us isn’t gratitude. I know what I am. The hat hasn’t gone to my head. Prove disobedient and he’ll wear half the blame, they’ll talk about his laxity. Now, there’s Noikon, his widows and orphans here we oughtn’t to forget. And Hoelun...”
“What, Hoelun?” truculently from Ubashi.
Stoutly he said, “She has her rights here, if she wants them. Come or go is up to her.”
“Up to her, to stomach Daritai or not?”
“And as to where he sleeps, he can’t insist.”
Ubashi gnashed.
“How is she to manage?” asked Monglig. “Heavy work with the animals. The wagons.”
“Just watch her.”
“A maxim to keep in mind, Ubashi.”
That was Qongdaqor. “What?” He gaped, he opened his arms. “What is this?”
Qongdaqor justified himself. “Yesugei used to tease you.”
“It’s highly indecent. Yesugei used to get away with a lot.”

Hoelun and Suchigu were twisting new hair into old baggage ropes. Ubashi, who loitered in the great tent lately, came in as Suchigu said, “There’s the two high-wheeled carts, and there’s the ger wagon, but what of my tent? We won’t be on the flats, that we can go tandem with the heavy vehicles.”
“A boy can drive your tent-cart, since a boy can drive, I suppose. Can a boy drive, Ubashi?”
He ducked his head. “And why not?”
“Or else,” she suggested, “there is room and to spare here in the great tent, if we make do with one.”
In this way Ubashi learnt that Suchigu had taken into her head to leave with Hoelun. He might have thought, glad to be rid of her. But he perked up not for that. “A couple of hands for you, ujin. And Bagtor who’s come of age, Belgutei not far behind. They’ll be a help.”
“It is sisterly of Suchigu,” she said in a tranquil understatement. 
The staff detested Suchigu, whose exaggerated disdain for the unnoyonly was a standard joke, but no joke to them, to that imp of the Alip shepherd, neither to her: to the young Goagchin, Hoelun imagined, smitten with the ladylike and entranced by tall hats, who had been told these weren’t for her. Like the boy slave under a weapons-ban who dreams of swords and armour that can never be for him. If and when they drop into his lap he doesn’t know how to use them. So Goagchin swaggered and swiped with hers, and did no actual harm. The glamour of the lady hadn’t been spoilt for her now she knew examples. As petty as she was on status, she hadn’t hated the noyon’s daughter who ousted her from the marshal’s side at banquets. She had thought Orboi Queen splendid. Why didn’t she stay with Daritai, who owed her children keep? With Daritai’s wives, who were the great and gracious in her eyes, and kind to her? She had chosen sides, and she had chosen Hoelun; she had taken a critical stand against Orboi Queen for her sake. Why? It is no use to ask. People choose, and can’t tell why themselves. Hoelun put it in a treasure-chest that had the label, friendship.
When she was shy, Suchigu’s throaty voice sank into a gurgle. “You have always treated me as a sister-wife.”
“We have been sister-wives; now are we sister-widows.”
“Although,” Suchigu tagged on slyly, “Otchigin needn’t get ideas.” She shot a glance at Hoelun, a dimpled, wicked glance. “If he tries his tricks with me he’ll shortly discover, this lamb has teeth.”
Hoelun only scraped up an acquaintance with camp gossip because she was too polite to stop Goagchin. Why, at this from her, did she scream with laughter? It was most unlike her. “I’m sorry, Ubashi,” she gasped. “I hope you have no idea what she said.”
Suchigu, rope limp in her hand, lay on her back and stomped.

“Mother?”
Crouched with the buffalo’s off-hind on her knee, she lifted her head. “Yes, Temujin?”
“Have you decided where to move to?”
“Yes, I have.” She let down the foot. “Temujin, I think you understand, your father didn’t leave us wealthy. I think you understand why.”
“Yes, mother.” For proof he attached a quote. “In poor times for the tribe a chief’s pride is in his poverty.”
“And you are proud of your father, nor ashamed to be poor.”
This he didn’t need to answer.
“In his last speech with me Yesugei left me instructions: stay out of trouble. Our children’s safety and mine was what mattered to him. We are going to do exactly as he told us. I have thought of a district that is out of the way of trouble, and where we can live on what we have. You put them into my head, Temujin: the Sacred Mountains.”
His face caught alight.
“They are a sanctuary from the outside world. Mongols left them, spilt down the gols onto the steppe, where they learnt to fight each other, and start to do so again. We have seen enough of violence. The mountains are peopled by Uriangqot, who do not grudge us space and what grows; little frequented by Mongols but on pilgrimage. They are a fortress, a fortress with sally-ports and a moat. A sanctuary circled by marsh,” came to her from a song. “Tell me,” she asked as if idly curious, and picked up the buffalo’s hoof again. “Why there, when you scampered off?”
This time he told, fumblingly with his childish feelings. “Where Tangr sent our original father, inside the Sacred Mountains the Sacrosanct Mountain, whose spirit watches over us, where our fathers’ spirits alight when they come to earth for news of us.”
He wants his father. “I see, Temujin. Your father spoke of them to you? I am less spiritual than Yesugei; but in spiritual terms and in practical terms, there is nowhere safer for us. We simply don’t have milk and meat to eat each day. We have to gather. The grassy steppe won’t feed people, but the forest is a trove. And I was taught for a forest life – I was meant to live in Merqot. On the steppe I cannot guarantee to feed you; there, I believe I can. Do you mind, Temujin, to leave the open steppe?”
“No,” he said with conviction. 
“With my history I can’t be a forest snob. Jaraqa the Lotus led a band into the forest, a sort of religious sect or dropout group that he named the Sacrificers – and left his traces in Ambaghai, whom we call our jargalant khan. The Sacred Mountains are a cousin of the taiga, wandered into the grass zone or left behind. If you listen to most Mongols the taiga, the great north forest, is a haunt of wizards and witches, outlandish creatures and customs. But the taiga is where we came from.”
“Over the Sea of Origins.”
“Which is too far for us, for that is Merqot, and I am late to meet my first husband again, though once, in a way, I loved him. Outwards are Oirat and Adarkin and folk more uncouth to us. But we mean to guest with Uriangqot, who, we know, aren’t sorcerers and cyclops and people who hop on one foot.”
Temujin smiled.
“The forest is hard work. Rich, but to gather its fruits isn’t to stroll along behind your flock and herd with milk and meat laid on.”
“How do we afford the tribute?”
“The tribute collectors can whistle for me.”
“Oh,” said the boy.
“Whenever I have more than keeps our skins on, I’ll help my neighbour. What I won’t do while I live is pay my Kiyat dues to Tarqutai.” 
“No, mother.”
“I hope Yesugei is happy with my decisions, where he is. Where he is, can you feel, isn’t so far? Just for a start I know he is inside us. When he lost Bartan, whom he idolised, he said his father was his foundations and can’t be gone from him. I am sorry you have lost yours early. You won’t forget him.”
The owl-eyes grew. “I can say every sentence he said to me, like a wisdom-song.”
There Hoelun thought to chivvy out a piece of information. But if Yesugei had told him what he had a notion to tell him, the child must have mentioned by now. If he hadn’t, that, to her, remained a mercy. I’m sorry, Yesugei.
“Does Toghrul know about father?”
“I expect he has the bulletins, in Hirai. Toghrul Khan is grand, Temujin, for the likes of us. He always was, but when usurped he had need of your father. No doubt their andaship was a portion of his kingly gratitude, since Yesugei escaped a Hirai wife, or maybe you are the one who escaped. A king gives his sisters and his daughters out for service, as in turn Toghrul takes daughters of his dukes who clamour for the honour. Andaship too can be a cement of state. When he was banished and had a hundred fighters at his back, we were important to him.”
Temujin listened silently.
“We won’t go begging at the Hirai court.”
“No, mother. And my anda, mother? Will I see him?”
“I can’t think of visits at the moment. In our changed circumstances, even your engagement...” She trailed off. Temujin wasn’t the match he had been, only months ago. Perhaps Bosqur saw the prospect of a marshalcy, and that had been stolen by Tarqutai too. “For now we must concentrate on the day-to-day. As my heart’s-side son, with your heartly strengths, that include fortitude, I enlist your aid. The tots mightn’t understand our situation in the way that you do.”
Where he sat Temujin straightened and tucked in the corners of his mouth, which gave him an air of let’s get stuck in, of down with the hat, up with the sleeves.

8. In the Mountains’ Sanctuary
Hoelun Ujin, with her native courage,
Tightened down the high hat on her head,
Tied up her skirts in her sash.
Up and down the Onon Gol she ran
Picking sour pear and cedar cones,
Day and night scoured for nourishment for her sons.
Mother Hoelun, with her innate gall,
Took up sharpened sticks of juniper,
Dug the ground for roots and tubers,
Nourished her sons on mountain leek and onion,
On lily bulbs, white rush bottoms, silverweed.
She fed the clutch of upturned gullets in her nest,
Her hungry young, who grew to be kings and legislators.
The Secret History of the Mongols, passage 74
In his twelfth year Temujin never once wore a hat, and he grew his hair out like the Uriangqot – or like a shaggy yak, his mother told him, rusty, as isn’t a curiosity in a yak. She also told him, half-humorously, “In spite of the ownership daub, I can scarcely disguise you more effectively from foes. That can’t be Temujin, they’ll say, last heard to be a noyonly young boy.”
In his twelfth year he next-to-never had meat in his teeth. The children sat around Hoelun’s boil-ups and jests flew thick and fast. Whole onions bobbing in the pot resembled the fabled dish of stewed testicles. As for the tubers... Jochi was behind a fixation on the ruder items of the animal, while Temujin quietly steered the attitude: laughs, not grumbles. Meat? Try mushrooms fried lavishly in butter.
Catchiun earnt great family fame when he tried another stripe of mushrooms – an experiment engaged in for his art. The lecture he got went like this: “A singer with poverty in his heart, with an ear deaf to the spirits’ songs, goes for inspiration to intoxicants. It is like the fake shaman who cannot trance and gets drunk or smokes silly weed in a masquerade. Is your call to song genuine, Catchiun?”
Bubbly milk they did have, bubbly, without which they weren’t Mongol. “A Mongol is half ayrag, as a bow, for a fact, is half glue.” To Temujin Hoelun explained why she had traded their sheep and invested in mares. “Uriangqot, you notice, own no sheep but often keep horses. Aside from the milk I want to mount us into the future, and thirdly, we have a single treasure: that is Toghrul’s colt. I give him a herd, for the value of his foals.”
At twelve and ten Temujin and Jochi aspired to be hunters, not merely gatherers. High aim at the age, and to start with Hoelun didn’t encourage them, for amateur hunters were a serious intrusion on Uriangqot. Jochi’s knack for archery didn’t mean he downed wild animals at his whim. You have to find them and you have to stalk them, almost you have to talk to them, like Borjigidai the great hunter. And Jochi had the fault of being cavalier about their lives, which didn’t endear him to Agha Rich, giver of game. Otherwise as generous as the Uriangqot who taught them about him, Agha Rich, when he heard Jochi brag or hang his tongue out for blood (like the rude bits, an obsession) closed his heart and hand to them. Temujin explicated the problem to him; Jochi acknowledged he had a problem, and his answer was, “Can’t you see to the religious side of things, Temujin? I’ll shoot.”
“At least,” Temujin tried, “learn to walk quietly, or you’ll never shoot Chinese.”
“Why on earth not? Unless the Jurchen army slinks off to hide in the old Jurchen forests.”
Temujin had to admit his statement illogical.
“See, I’m made for Chinese, not for critters. I’ll be a Chinese shooter and a half. Walk quietly? Oh no. When I start on my march from the Onon they’ll hear the rumble of my footsteps and feel the earth of China quake.”
“That is, if you haven’t been unhappily reduced from lack of meat.”
Jochi bleared at him, for this touched his potential as a Borjigin giant. “I haven’t lost flesh. Tell me where I’ve lost flesh. My type don’t, you see, no matter what you do to us. Great-Uncle Cutula lost his frost-nibbled pieces, but he never lost flesh. As evidenced by the strokes the Tartars took. Hack a walrus with an axe. He didn’t feel the first six, and the next six got him cross.”
This was typical fare from Jochi. Often there wafted through Temujin’s mind thoughts he had to keep secret, such as, it’s Jochi who takes after Great-Uncle Cutula, and Great-Grandfather Khabul. Besides he’d love to be a battle-leader. Maybe mother did put me at the wrong teat.
Self-doubt struck too with Hoelun’s lessons; for instance, Mattyr the Hun. Tumen, chief-over-chiefs of the Huns, had a fine son in his teens named Mattyr, but Mattyr’s stepmother embittered his father against him for sake of her own infant son. Tumen sent Mattyr as his hostage to the Oosoon, and then attacked the Oosoon. About to pay the price of treaty-breach, Mattyr escaped on the Oosoons’ fastest horse; the Huns celebrated, although in his heart the father didn’t. Now he was obliged to name the hero his heir, and to grant him an army of his own, the Ten Thousand (tumens, we call our great regiments of ten thousand to this day). Mattyr took his Ten Thousand and trained them to obey him without question, without hesitation. On pain of death they must shoot at a target whereat he shot an arrow with a whistle. First Mattyr shot a whistler at the Oosoon horse that had saved his life. Several hesitated to shoot the horse; Mattyr gave the hesitators instant death. Next his whistler flew towards his most-loved wife. A few hesitated: Mattyr gave the hesitators instant death. In a third test he shot his whistler at his father’s war steed. None hesitated. After that, on a hunt, Mattyr shot his whistler at his father. Ten thousand arrows struck Tumen dead.
Though the punchline wasn’t new or unknown to the children, there were wows and gapes. They wondered how Tumen fit ten thousand arrows in him. When Hoelun went on to distil history from the legend, the youngest lost interest and she spoke to her upper-aged students.
History wasn’t less gruesome. In Tumen’s chieftaincy the First Emperor of China seized the Ordos, and did this while Tumen was away at war. In the Hun home camps the Chinese didn’t enslave, they slaughtered: orders were eradication. A huge labour force came on the heels of the army and threw up a wall across the Ordos; after the labourers came settlers. It is Tumen, then, who returned with his combatants to find the non-combatant Huns massacred and his territory walled off. What happened between Mattyr and his father happened after this; the soldiers Mattyr forged into a unit had had their wives and children slain in their absence. Whatever his actual methods, the legend stresses he was harsh. A father seeks to have his son killed, a son kills his father. What else, what similar, that isn’t in the tale, that the tale indicates?
When he was head of the Huns, Mattyr trapped the emperor in person out on campaign; at his mercy, which he was short on, the emperor agreed to Mattyr’s terms of treaty. The lesson in the legend? The fearsome, famous Huns, beforehand, were neither. Otherwise China might have thought twice about both its strategy and tactics. It is this near-fatal disaster that made the Huns the Huns we know: the people China had to treat with on equal terms – that is, the emperor had to address the head of the Huns as his equal. Do you have an idea how that not simply affronts but overturns China’s conceptions of itself and other peoples? China is Civilization. The humble-cake, and the cost, too, of the treaties, in the end drove them to launch an enormous war effort, decades of sweeps of the steppe, sweeps as far north as we are right now – once they reached the Sea of Origins – to hit them where they live, to finish the Huns, to finish with centuries of diplomacy and violations of space and skirmish. And they did have victories. But the exhaustion and expense brought the House of Han to the brink of ruin. Neither side can be said to have won that war.
“Their very first blow, occupation of the Ordos, was thought to be a fatal one and trouble-free. But the Huns were galvanised. Like the dread zombie, the corpse arose from the grave and clouted China. A thousand years ago. The lesson is forever. A people can suffer terribly, and yet draw strength.”
That was history. Hoelun had a third stratum to teach, about ways of life, and Temujin persevered though Jochi dropped off. “The First Emperor united China, and in opposition to him Mattyr assembled the first steppe-wide state. China has a self-definition of Civilization, as against outer primitivism. In a thimble, a Chinese observes ritual, where a non-Chinese behaves spontaneously, rawly. To quote disciples of Confucius, ritual diminishes feeling, and to follow one’s feelings is savagery. But we also have defined ourselves as Not China, and done so since way back before Mattyr. Under Mattyr we became a political unit. But we had been a unity in our way of life, and only that fact explains how one man from the Ordos pieced the steppe together like a jigsaw. When China started to form, to formulate its ideas – way, way back before the First Emperor – those who didn’t want to be a part left hamlets and villages and took to the alternative, the nomad life. It wasn’t about breed. People of a breed, of a bone split down the line of their affiliations. Hamlets and villages came under control of the governments and the ethic that were early China. The nomads walked away. We are the walkers-away. You might call us the Anti-Confucians. Quite consciously the early nomads were Not China: they wore badges, none of them went without a badge and the keen hung them by the dozen, nomads’ badges that are identical from end to end of the steppe, animal ornament, what else, symbol of our liberty, for on the hoof we were free. The Great-Antlered Stag, who always lies his antlers along his back, acrouch with his face up to the sky: he is here, he is on the Black Sea. Mattyr only had to send out a slogan, We of the Great-Antlered Stag, for them to understand him. Wherever people live in villages and towns China as a culture, and very often as a state, soaks them up. Only the nomads have been constant, constant over thousands of years, in rejection. In lean times, in fat times, Not China. Not us.”
Here was much material for Temujin to chew on. But to try to be a Mattyr?
The Uriangqot dwelt in triangular stick frames wrapped with hides – to the eye both rickety and draughty; but warmly snuggled in moss and deer skins, you can gaze cosily at the whirl of a blizzard through the tent. Deer skin is a great insulator, and damp-proof, even as a ground sheet. Their fundamental stock was elk, that browsed with heads submerged in the summer marshes, and like camels chomped the bark from trees. They got about on their elk, and Hoelun’s children loved to have rides; they felt they were inside a fairy tale, to sit astride an animal with antlers.

In his twelfth year Temujin saw Jamuqa again.
The mares weren’t elk, to feed underwater on bog greenery in spring; when meltwater with nowhere to go lay in the dales, mares had to exit the mountains to where the ground thawed and the melt meant streams and meadows. Uriangqot sent a member of camp out with their horses for the weeks of flood, and for this purpose Hoelun detached Catchiun. He had the dogs with him, Yesugei’s Rascal and Tiger the Second, and he had the severest caution on the subject of mushrooms. When Jamuqa and his escort, a knight in bronze armour (scale cuirass, arm-guards, helmet) rode from the west and asked the horse watchers whether they knew Hoelun, they directed him to Catchiun, who led him into the mountains.
Hoelun stepped into her tent with thyme in her coatskirts that were hitched up in her belt, and leeks in her hat, that was off. The blue spire of bark she had worn as Yesugei’s wife never left her, but often did more than perch on her head. When she saw she had guests she blossomed in a twinkle into the great tent’s lady, and Catchiun blinked at his mother as she welcomed them like cousins and like kings.
The boy turned out to be a pinch of both. After the initial cup over which questions are rude, he introduced himself: Jamuqa of Jajirat, he said, the father’s name left out, and Hoelun knew him, a future chief and Temujin’s sworn friend. Beside his bronze-clad escort he was geared up, not in a child-size silk suit but in child-size accoutrements of war, a quality sword scaled to his height, a torso case of hard leather, black stamped with a motif of animalia and with silver bars on the shoulders. In very chiefly fashion he told her Jajirat’s troubles. “We’ve got Merqot activity, worse than usual. Winter is for war with Oirat but spring’s to plunder us. It’s the mares that pull them, and we’ve squeezed our mares as upper on the Tola Gol as is half-legal... gifts have been dispatched to Uriangqot. So I spied my opportunity to chase down Temujin.”
Temujin was at the foot of White Heights, rummaging in the winter’s blown-over trees; Jochi tore off to get him. The mother had concerns. There was a stark contrast between this boy with silver shoulder bars and her hairy urchin. Temujin didn’t talk about Jamuqa often, but that was because he kept him private; he kept the sacred relics of his clothes, and Hoelun thought he had converted him into an Imaginary Friend. Imaginary Friends needn’t be unhealthy, but a pity if the real one came along to disenchant him. A stark contrast, since they had met four years ago as equals, and hers an easy target for mockery or scorn. The boy Jamuqa had a self-possession and a casual style; whether this visit were significant to him or insignificant was impossible to tell. However, when they heard the pelt of feet he stilled, and his facial tint, a Uriangqot ivory, went quite wan.
Temujin walked in, almost on tiptoe, but in the wildest excitement; his cheeks burnt and his eyes were never so queerly green and alight. Just inside the door he stopped. “Shove, Temujin,” said Jochi behind him and he did, to the side, but not forwards to his friend.
His friend said, “Is that you, Temujin, or is that a yak?”
“What I tell him,” murmured the mother.
Jamuqa talked on, with pluck, or to hide his nerves. “Me and Jajirat, Temujin, have been pushed up the Tola. Never know, we might have to join you in the mountains. I’ve come to scout them out.”
There he paused for take-up. But Temujin didn’t have the wit to say boo. It didn’t matter. Jamuqa left off too. They went into mime, and either didn’t know or didn’t care that they had witnesses. Moments on, when they hadn’t approached each other yet, when Temujin had uttered zip, Jochi tugged his bottom lip down, sideways and out. “What’s wrong with them?”
What’s wrong with you? people had asked her, albeit not so outright, asked her over Yesugei alive and dead: what’s wrong with you? They had thought her exaggerated. They saw falsity and self-indulgence. Uriangqot say, nobody’s religion is his neighbour’s religion. Hoelun knew, no-one’s love.

“How are your grannies?”
“Frail, scrawny, but incorrigibly alive. They’ve shrunk, I swear. Old ladies do shrink.”
“Or you’ve got bigger.”
“That’s polite of you, Temujin, and in fact you’re right. I’m too big to flog. How’s your ugly?”
“Not as big as he was, either.”
“If you want me to stick him while I’m here, just say.”
“Can you use that?” He nodded to Jamuqa’s sword.
“It’s not a toy, Temujin,” he grinned. “Though hasn’t yet been baptised, much as I’d like to fib to you.”
“You look terrific.”
“Ta. You look like a yak, and he’s a great beast. Monarch of the mountains, wild and free. I envy you. Introduce me to your territory?”
“Yes. How much time do we have?”
“How much can you stand?”
Temujin smiled.
“I’m free from granny interference. They’ve sent me behind the lines, and I didn’t argue since I knew we’d be on your doorstep. The mares won’t shift now til summer’s over. The idea for me is drill from dawn to dusk with Havarr, but Havarr gets bored of drill himself. I tell him when I’m chief I won’t drill him if he won’t drill me. It stales you, see, too much drill.”
Once more Temujin answered with his face. Later he was known for a direct, open face that fluently told his thoughts; this was practice. To the contrary Jamuqa became known for his deadpan, a deadpan so perfect you had to hold a piece of metal to his lips, but with Temujin, now and later, he dispensed with that.
“Toghrul sends his affectionate remembrances. That’s a lot of syllables for his fond thoughts.”
“Does he?”
“He did ages ago, in case I catch up with you – he doesn’t know I have.” Without emphasis Jamuqa went on, “If ever you need a go-to, I can recommend my Uncle Toghrul. Not a bad old bird.”
Temujin thought of what his mother had said about Toghrul Khan. He pulled at his mop, the mop a yak has between his horns and he had between his proper hair-tails. “Like this?”
“Eh? Get a shave, if you feel you must. He doesn’t care. Turks don’t shave anyhow, like a bunch of girls.”
Question and answer were both understood figuratively: Jamuqa didn’t think Toghrul too grand for them. “Thank him, Jamuqa, that he doesn’t forget us.”
“There you see your dad in the stew,” Jamuqa told him with a finger out. “Toghrul tends to say that though he knew your dad only too short a while, no man has made more impression on him. Might be the way he rambles on about his anda that kept me in mind of mine. Fans of the family, see, my uncle and me.” 
So far Jamuqa had done most of the running. Temujin put in. “I sewed your clothes up into a cushion that I sleep on.”
“Lumpy, isn’t it?”
“No worse than travel bags or soldier’s kit.”
“Did you wash them first?”
“Of course they haven’t been washed.”
“How’s your fleas?”
“I guess they’re the trillionth great-grandfleas of yours.”
Jamuqa nodded. “Feel at home, I imagine. We drank each other’s blood.”
“Yes.”
They met eyes and had a moment and had to glance elsewhere. A Mongol in any situation is a fanatic for a promise, and these boys had led insecure lives. “I know we were kids...” began Jamuqa again.
“It was no less an oath,” maintained Temujin.
“An oath’s an oath.” Jamuqa stated his credo. “Like it or not. Say we didn’t like each other, what we going to do? Oaths echo down to Irle Khan, and you have him on your back if you renege. Funny he’s the oath-keeper. You need a mean streak for defaulters. Til King Death do us part.”
“Death doesn’t part us, neither deter us. An anda goes to Irle Khan and back for his anda.”
“You’ve found your tongue.”
“Sorry. Dumbstruck is sort of true-to-life for me.”
“I didn’t mean that.” He screwed his face to say he didn’t mean that. He slapped his hands one on top of the other. “’Twasn’t ghouls and goblins but I made the big trip into the mountains. And here you know who I am.”
Temujin didn’t underestimate the courage and the faith he had had to come. “It mayn’t be Irle Khan. It’s at least halfway.”

Again they exchanged keepsakes, items of interest to a boy, updated from knucklebones. At twelve arrows were the rage, arrow-craft, as boys learnt to make their own. Jamuqa gave Temujin a whistler, used for signal, its head horn-slithers glued into a whorl for the wind to whistle through. “Like Mattyr the Hun’s,” said Temujin.
“Watch where you point it, then.”
“Now I’m stuck for yours.”
“Any old arrow for me. Give me a wonky one, since it’s to stash away not to shoot.” 
“What if I haven’t got a wonky one?”
“I’m sorry to suggest you have.”
“If I were a swindler I’d give you a Jochi arrow,” he said as he fingered through his quiver. 
“Don’t want a Jochi arrow.” Jamuqa leant against his arm to look. “I want a Temujin arrow.”
“How about I give you one I like? It may be toenail clippings, but I liked the wood.”
Jamuqa took the arrow, shy and shiny, as if at a handover of the crown jewels. “A knob end. Knocks a bird out, stuns a sable.”
“I don’t know I’m a huge chance to do either. But I found the knot of hawthorn. It’s beeswaxed.”
“Your arty type of arrow,” he teased gently. “Now we have to carve our signatures on the shafts. I write jomok, that’s the Turk original and means a legend. I’m going for a swashbuckler, like Puss-in-Boots. Got a signature?”
“I use a fire symbol on my hooves.”
“That’s for your hair?”
They scratched their marks, and stashed each other’s arrows in the inside front corner of their quivers.

Together they roamed the mountains, mostly, at this time of year, on foot. They frog-hopped in the bogs, and like the carts that bumped and bounced on the withies’ elastic purchase in the ooze, they trampolined on willow tangle. There was lightning to thrill Jamuqa – the summer lightning was tremendous here, and neck-and-neck with the floods there might be fire. Lightning is Tangr venting his energies, thunder his shout; to mortals half-fear, half-invigoration, blasts of a power and a beauty from beyond, with side-effects of screams and stampedes of wild and tame, shortlived violent firestorms in the larches, which left singed or suffocated victims for the pot. In most instances he just feels too big for his own sky, like when you feel too big for your skin. Intrusions of God: they terrorize, but you want to join in, too, seize the instant’s hook-up, even if you get singed. “I almost believe in God when I watch lightning,” said Jamuqa, a remark that Temujin had to work his way through. He hadn’t met the possibility of disbelief in God... who was being extra visible right now. To Temujin, Jamuqa felt God, and that was more important than what he thought he thought. He didn’t irritate him with this interpretation. The glory of the lightning staggered them alike, that was the point.
North and south slopes were opposites, inversions, like Irle Khan where day is night and night is day and left is right. On one hill the sunny side was populated by elegant spruces, as straight and stiff-leafed and neat as a quiver of towery arrows, but over on the wind’s side the spruces grew in a dwarved version, and near the crest they crawled up along the ground in tormented clumps at waist-height. Elsewhere was a hardy fir that stood bolt upright in the battery; however, the trunk had branches only on one side, stretched out due south, while its weather front was bald and scabby. The tuq tree, Temujin called this fir, like a blown standard.
Temujin took Jamuqa to his mountain. It was a trip over intriguingly different ground, with features he hadn’t gotten to the bottom of. They started a strenuous day in the glen of the Kherlen and for three hours went up by deer paths that pushed a tunnel through the bush. From one stifled trail you came out on an airy shelf on the mountainside, a sort of insects’ city, mounds in symmetry smothered by a gorgeous green-themed silk of mosses. Above insects’ city, on much steeper ascents, growth thinned and the trees became slowly misshapen, stunted by altitude, by the perpetual winter underground and by the wind. Roots stuck up, too, to live half-exposed, as if the trees’ toes didn’t fit in their nightskins. An hour upwards was another flat space, a gallery over the curves of dark fir forest and the glint of streams in serpent shapes. Here were the stone toadstools. He had no other name for them, and no idea what they were: patches of stones that boiled out of the earth, in splotchy circumferences, of different width, but the stones in each patch similar and roughly even-sized, like toadstools with spots, a big toadstool next to a half-grown. They petered out into a zone of jagged red rock.
Now they were up among the shoulders of the mountains, burly brown shoulders worn smooth by age. The Sacred Mountains aren’t tall and sharp and spectacular – newer ones are that. Jamuqa and he scrambled up heaps of shale which trickled away underneath them. The wind was thin and whippy, the air thin and raw and without odour. Between the loads of shale you saw that the rock had cracked or split quite apart in crystal-perfect sequences. Crusts of lichen tinted an otherwise grey stonescape, rust and amber and off-white. Ahead was a blunt boulder and only sky beyond. Over this last height, the wind stiff in their faces but a remote whistle in their ears, they were on top of the mountain.
The mountain has no name. That has been forgotten, like an idolised king’s, and only its title left: Holy Old Haldun, haldun an obsolete word for mountain. In address you say Great-Great Grandfather, what you call spirits. It is vastly old and has the feel of a cathedral. On its lichened stone head scores of cairns have been built out of the shards that lay about, little stacks augmented by metal, barbs, a jointed bit, rows of overlapped leaves from armour. Temujin and Jamuqa were quiet up on the vaults, where the altar is in mountains. And afterwards: Temujin didn’t try to talk about the sense he had there, and likewise Jamuqa. Whatever Jamuqa thought he thought, he felt he was on hallowed ground and behaved by what he felt. There are the lesser churches and there are the great cathedrals of the earth; the great cathedrals can be worn smooth with age and yet you feel them. The back of Jamuqa’s neck prickled to tell him where he was. That, and he didn’t want to irritate Temujin, either.
At eight they had sworn their oath in Jamuqa’s lightning tree. They swore twice-over on Temujin’s mountain, and drank each other’s blood with water from the spring of the Onon. They built a cairn and stowed within the knucklebones they had exchanged as children, to lie together, to draw them always together again though the world throw them apart.

Uriangqot gathered yearly for a festival where the scarp of White Heights butted onto Spirits’ Peak. In the crack between were caves of ice, that melted very late and little, but when they did, the thaw in the caves gave off thunderous claps and eery squeals and shrieks, known as the Ice Voices. Passages to the underground such as these caves were paths to the world of the dead, the kingdom of Irle Khan. To congregate at the mouth of a tunnel to the ghosts was the sort of thing only Uriangqot do. Hoelun took her children, on the guarantee of the known efficacy of their shamans. There were more shamans than you could shake a stick at. Uriangqot felt free to laugh at her fears; they were great ones for laughter, and at you just as often as at themselves.
In their isolation this was the social event of the year. For the children, cut adrift from clan and tribe, ignorant of tribal society, who saw not a quarter what they ought of rites and rituals, she thought the get-together vital. For her the Ice Voices meant contact: here she met Gombo’s nephew Iladur, whose mother was Uriangqot, and heard the news. In developments this year, Tarqutai had weighted his name with an epithet, Kiril-Tuq, and one for Todoyan, Girte. Unfortunately no-one in Iladur’s neighbourhood knew what they meant. “Turk antiquities, I believe. What’s an epithet when people don’t know what they say about you?”
“An exercise in mystique,” she answered.
“Last year introduced us to the Tayichiut Princes, lineal and lateral to Ambaghai. Prince Tarqutai Kiril-Tuq is his unabridged title. It’s in-house only, of course, so far – the princes. The rest of us make a saint of Ambaghai; they try to make, what, an ancient-style Turk king?”
“They are sillier yearly. But Qongdaqor, Ubashi, Monglig: what news of them?”
“They send their love, and in token for the children...”
They always sent tokens for the children, a bone flute, a straw lion, a hood with furry ears.
The way to the reverse-world of the dead is known as the night road; voyages thither are overnight events. From dusk to dawn at the festival there was a choice between the drama of the shamans at the caves’ mouth or the theatre of singers, out of earshot. Hoelun didn’t give hers a choice. Never mind the netherworld, Catchiun was in the seventh heaven, for this year a singer of Turk epic had come and in five night sessions, with his harp on his lap for flourishes and mood music and for join-in choruses, sang Joloi. Jochi liked the eponymous hero, a lazy slob, a glutton and a dim-wit drunk, although he flattened whole battalions when he fought. Hoelun liked his two wives who had to drag him up to fight, sisterly wives, one a fund of wisdom and the other a mistress of the sword, who held the story together. Temujin liked his son Bolot, exiled underground, who fought a mirror-battle there with monstrous spirits while Joloi fought a war with his human enemies above; over Bolot’s head fought the shaman girl Black Shash in the likeness of a hawk. Five nights was a short epic by Turk standards; one was rumoured to need six months.
Jamuqa took to the Uriangqot song-type known as quests. These were set in a mythic world of ayyy and abassy: the ayyy a spirit-creature of the light, like elves, the abassy monster-demons from the deep. Humans didn’t exist, then, or there. Perhaps he liked them because brains definitely won the day, not brawn, and size didn’t count for much (nor species – animals got their chance to save the day). More often than not the hero was an orphan. Along with orphans there was a strange spotlight on childlessness, on figures who had given up a normal life for occult knowledge. Childlessness is the saddest fate. The cosmic scheme was odd: there were nine spirits of the stratosphere whose amusement was to gamble amongst themselves on earthly events, a pastime that caused much grief beneath and triggered much plot. Riddle contests were on a cosmic scale, an ayyy against one of the nine or a dark genius against a light, and on cosmic subjects. Transport was magical, as was transformation; steeds flew, and talked of course, creatures changed shape. But just as a shaman tells of the weird universe he travels through with an easy-to-understand drama of emotion, so in the fabulous story was a strong moral line, told in bold strokes. Fealty to oath though the earth burn up, loyalty beyond death. Frequently the search, the quest, was to find the Water of Life for a loved one.
Ayyy and abassy were at permanent war. Perhaps the ogres and the goblins stood for Jamuqa’s grandmothers. Tell the flogged child that goblins don’t exist. Yet in this stark dark and light, a person can cross over to the other side. An angel is tempted into the wicked legions; they pickaxe the ice off a demon’s heart and he joins the angel-knights. These folk tales of the Uriangqot, of a high artistic finish, sung in a simple melody and a soft growl, were fantastic, they were black-and-white, and you mightn’t have picked them for Jamuqa, who was a skeptic in religion and a cynic in the world.
In the day, when people woke up, were games. At the children’s archery Jochi, set to targets, trounced the opposition and put his mother into an uncharacteristic flutter. For his prize was a bow, a child’s bow but not simplified – triple-layer, a maple stave, a belly of ibex horn, a back of antelope hind-leg sinews, that had been a year in construction (factors of temperature and moisture) and was worth a few horses. It drew like a dream and you felt the accuracy, with or without you. Jochi barnacled himself to the maker and leeched in know-how, while he had the chance. Their wrestler was Belgutei, whose giant status was in no doubt in spite of bulbs and tubers. Great-Uncle Cutula, though mad keen on the sport, never had wrestled, with his unfair size. Belgutei, mad keen and a talent, at risk of brashness and his comeuppance through technique, skipped his age bracket to enter the open. As his crier Bagtor introduced him to the spectators with a self-lampoon on how his kid brother mistook him for a stick and picked him up scratch his back or clean under his fingernails. Temujin almost liked him for a moment. Size won the day, and Jochi and Belgutei, in a giants’ club, punched and cuddled and roared for Borjigin.
Amiably Temujin said to Bagtor, “Kid brothers, eh?”
From out his baggage Jamuqa dug a bolt of ruby silk and cut sashes for the homegrown champions. The remainder he gave to Hoelun, who hadn’t seen silk in years.
Temujin’s brothers had nicknamed Jamuqa not Puss-in-Boots but Weasel, which wasn’t far off. An undersized weasel can blur on the muscular heels of a hare and sink its teeth straight into the brain. Weasels are audacious and no beast, no size differential deters them. Like other little attack-animals they tend to be hyper-clever. Along with these traits Jamuqa had a face like a weasel, a triangle of slants.
He got mistaken for a Uriangqot, until he said to Temujin, “Here’s my chance. Leave my kit in a puddle of blood, my sword half-chewed, and I’m Weasel of Uriangqot, who never heard of Jajirat.”

Those who swear to be brothers, between the two of them they have one life. Temujin and Jamuqa resolved to talk as if they had one head, an andas’ honesty, at a stratum of the mind beneath ordinary honesty. This was their ideal. Trials included Temujin’s depiction to Jamuqa of a night session of his mother and his father, who liked the vent open for the starlight. Jamuqa hadn’t lived with a mother and a father and he listened enthralled. “You’ve seen things, haven’t you, Temujin?” They were at an age to start to have an interest. At Jamuqa’s instigation they went to spy on the animals, which is what incipient adolescents do.
Of andas’ honesty Temujin made an escape clause. His father’s stipulation, that he inspect Jamuqa’s equipment, never was to be. I am too cruel to cut you off from your friend, his father had said. Temujin told Jamuqa what for three years he had interred. “Blimey,” said Jamuqa. “God mentioned you by name?”
Shortly he said also, “Anda, you had the best dad in the world. Take no notice of me.”
Temujin took notice. The skeptical attitude of Jamuqa – that under terms he couldn’t disguise – had slow and vast effects on his mental growth. Left to himself, he almost certainly wouldn’t have questioned his father.
“Not that I can’t see you’re cut out for great things.”
Already Temujin had begun to feel a load off. “I’m not cut out to be a Mattyr.”
“Blimey,” said Jamuqa once again. He added, “Who in a blizzard is?”
“Even in the mental satchel. You have twice my brains, Jamuqa. That isn’t modest, that’s just a fact.”
“Nobody likes you for brains. Nobody likes me.”
“Nobody likes you, Jamuqa?” he asked naively.
“I don’t ardently want them to, either. And that’s wrong for a chief. My father wasn’t liked, but he earnt what happened to him and he ain’t the chief I need to be. Neither are my grannies. No-one has to love me: let them fear me. That’s the theory they’ve tested on me, and given me the perfect example, because what they have bred in me? Respect? No. Not respect. I don’t know, Temujin. I’m screwed up. But I’ve seen chiefs, amongst them your father, and a chief likes and is liked. He has the social graces, the oil for the wheels. Tact lessons, pooh – I’m too busy with drill. Who do I like? I like you.” 
“I like you, Jamuqa.”
“See, I’m happy with that. I’m wrong for a chief.”
“You think you’ve got problems?”
They laughed at the future, which neither believed in right then. 
“Tell you what,” suggested Jamuqa. “When we grow up, how about you and me be a bit of Mattyr together?”
“Yes.” And he was happy with that.

Onset of autumn spelt great tragedy for Temujin and Jamuqa. In the lead-up they grew haggard. When the time came, crisis brought out the contrast in them, Temujin emotional, Jamuqa stoic. But the stoic one left as if to a grisly fate and told his friend not to grieve. At this intensity of theirs Temujin’s brothers thought them daft or mad. Hoelun thought of her joys, at the trifling cost of her sorrows.

9. Temujin Slays his Monster
As the savage beasts, so have been my sons.
Hoelun, The Secret History of the Mongols, passage 78
To the eyes of one watcher, Hoelun was in her glory in her early thirties. Five years’ strenuous, outdoors life in the hills and forest had left her fit, lean and muscular. Unlike most horse masters of the steppe, who when they have fifty yards to go, ride, she wasn’t ungainly on her feet, for she used them; she used her limbs and joints in the terrain, she climbed rough, steep ground and trees, she had the supple hips of a cat. With her hat on, a cone at the rear of the scimitar-curves and half-orbs of her face and head, her neck uncluttered, the shape and poise of her had a grace seen otherwise in Persian steeds and swans. With her hat off her hair swam like the glossy back of an otter in a river.
She flourished in her solitude by a stance of indifference to the things she did not have, or could not contrive. In the harshest months she found or had saved ahead of time substance for the pot. No material came into her hands that she did not turn to purpose. She was never ashamed or embarrassed by their hardships. When Jochi wore a dog’s pelt for a cloak, because they had no fleeces and no felt and had to trade for hides and dog was cheap, none of them felt a sense of indignity. Indignity was alien to her. The dog’s pelt only meant to them rich ore for humour, in which Jochi basked.
When one loves far above oneself, love can uplift. One can know the object superb, and be content. If she is kind to an insect like you she is a queen. Hoelun was a queen in her court in her weather-battered great tent in the wilds; there she answered to no-one, and she flourished; from winter to winter they were dependent upon her. Bagtor had no wish to be other than her hand-servant, her first courtier, even as a husband. He didn’t make Daritai’s mistake. He waited. For pity, yes. Despise her pity? He had thrived on her pity since he was a child. One thing alone he had to offer: that he loved her, which he told her through the fact, only through the fact, that he was twenty now and he did not spare a glance for other women.

Twelve, to Temujin, was once upon a time, an idyll. Now he is a teenager. Their shortages are more severe, they go hungry, and life has a grimmer cast altogether. Temujin has undergone two major changes, two upheavals.
He has lost a fight. It was a fight he was committed to, and he is unhappy with himself. He even avoids the thought of his father, who told him that virtues are like muscles and strengthen with exercise... because he has gone backwards. Tooth and nail he fought, for he fought not to be ignoble, not to sink into the quagmire with his foe, not to cut the ground out from under his stand, from under his standard. But he can’t deny he has lost, when his nostrils twitch in disgust at Bagtor’s scent. Under daily siege, he has learnt to meet hate with hate.
He has learnt to criticize his mother. This, too, about Bagtor. To start his fourteenth year on she had given him a speech of censure. “It is a grave disappointment to me to see my children and Goagchin’s children split into camps. She and I have been like Joloi’s wives who are both mothers of Bolot; I promised her that Yesugei’s children are equal in our home. Temujin, you will say you didn’t start the antagonism. But I am going to tell you where I blame you, and you won’t answer me but listen. In our single family of Yesugei’s children, Bagtor is the agha. You, Temujin, refuse to acknowledge him yours, and the children underneath you, my children, do as they see you do; and you act to them as an agha. Once I asked you to understand Bagtor’s resentment of your clan rank. Clan rank isn’t much in evidence where we are. But Temujin, there is his status in the family, which you, deliberately this time, have done him out of. You will say he doesn’t suit you as a guide in life, he doesn’t suit your ideas of an agha. However, an agha grows into his position, and Bagtor has been prevented – frustrated – he has an agha in him, seen in his shepherd’s care of Belgutei, whom he loves tenderly. But you, Temujin, stand between him and the other children; you deny him, and they turn to you. That is why I have to see you the cause of the division.”
So Temujin was to blame, even for Bagtor’s (half-confessed) unsuitability to be a guide in life for the children. And Temujin, when he tried to guide them, when they came to him, was a sort of usurper of the throne. Because you don’t vote for aghas. You can’t reject them for their defects. Temuge and Temulun – named to rhyme with him, so he didn’t forget them – to be sent on to Bagtor when they had a puzzle or a hurt, when they were listless and grizzly from undernourishment? The clan rank thing was out-of-date – Temujin possessed none he knew of, nor knew what he missed nor missed what he didn’t know; and function dictated by age was just empty-headed, like clans. If the kids turned to him, he wasn’t going to point them to that behavioural hazard over there.

Bagtor had green fingers, as Hoelun said; he enjoyed to forage with her and might have gone on, a happy gatherer. He felt no yen for the hunt. Nevertheless, when Temujin and Jochi began to fancy themselves getters of meat, and when they did get meat, and glory, and the adulation of the children, and told their hunt-tales over the pot, this struck at his sense of masculine inadequacy. With the fantasy of lugging home big game for Hoelun, he took out of its oil wraps Yesugei’s heavy bow. It was a bow for charges into armoured ranks, but had the pow, in Jochi’s words, to knock a bear head over heels. Jochi envied him, in spite of his much more versatile bow won in the kids’ archery. To wield the heavy bow, that had a draw-weight only to be coped with by a grown man, instantly blazoned him a man... now he just had to come home with meat. Belgutei teamed with him, Belgutei who owned an arm of abnormal proportions; but he said he found the war bow awkward for the purpose and he used a sling.
Humiliation lay in wait, which Bagtor met the way he had learnt, with humour. He had grown up a clown. Now, Temujin, notably, wasn’t a humourist (at least not to mask a hostility) and Bagtor managed to make him seem dour, a spoilsport. This was his greatest achievement. Inside, he was still – forever – the child other children threw stones at. Bully Temujin? When he dragged him to the fire by the hair-tails he was only fighting back. And why Temujin? That was easy. Temujin was one of those, a kids’ captain, Temujin was the sort who led the gang. The sort children gang up behind, close ranks with. Temujin had It.
It. It is agreed to be a lucky dip, you either have It or you don’t. Yesugei oozed It. People used to laugh at how much It Yesugei had. The grown men of his nokod spoke of love at first sight... love at first sight exists, but only for people with It. They’d have slept with him if he’d asked them (sorry, that was grubby). So, why did Temujin inherit a big dose and Bagtor a spectacular lack? Less Itty you can’t get, unless you’re a slug. When he was a sulky, nasty boy, children threw stones at him; he had learnt to have a sense of humour, he had learnt to spoof himself. Did that amend his situation? No. Doesn’t matter what you do. Bully Temujin? He’s fourteen, I’m twenty, but who’s the underdog here?
Temujin mightn’t have recognised this portrait, not yet, but Bagtor was perspicacious to see in him what scholars scratch their heads over. Modern biographers muse, as an unknown youth he seems to exert a magnetism, particularly with his own age group. There’s no call for Bo’orchu to throw down his milk pail and hop on horse, before they’ve even introduced themselves. And what makes the Suldu children eager to risk their lives for him, a stranger? If scholars have to ask these questions, then they stuck out like a sore thumb to Bagtor, on the ground, and with the sensitivity of the unpopular.
The hunt was nearly as important for what wrapped the meat. Though the ger’s heavy-duty felt layers ought to last ten years, the children grew out of their clothes. Recently Hoelun had sold a foal by Toghrul’s stallion to a Uriangqot for hunters’ coin, not luxury furs but a heap of daily-use pelts and skins, for bags and sacks, to waterproof the floor and to wear. Bagtor, last tailored for at seventeen and bursting at the seams, obtained a whole Uriangqot outfit in the transaction. As a Chinese defector once advised the king of the Huns: When the Han send you silks to corrupt your senses, put them on and ride through the briars and the brambles. In no time they’ll be torn to shreds, and your people can see for themselves, silks are no match for the utility and convenience of felt and leather garments. Silk suits had been the ruin of him, early. The Uriangqot outfit was lightweight, thin, soft and warm, with attached gloves that tucked away into the cuffs, a hood into which a face-sheet tucked away, and a dozen different-sized pockets. It was also camouflage.
The camouflage he used to creep up on Temujin and Jochi, solemnly ahunt, and start from the bushes in front of them with honks and hoots and yawps and yowls, with flaps and jiggles and waddles, with lumbers and lopes and knuckle-runs and trumpeting trunks.
“Bagtor,” bawled Jochi, “you arse, I’m on the trail –”
“Of what, Jochi? An orangutan, a panda bear? You’ll never get him.”
“Not with you around, you tit. It’s not funny,” he wailed.
“Face it, Jochi, you’re a target-shooter. Go hunt a toadstool, they stand still for you.”
“I’m a combat shooter,” he gnashed. “And next time you disrupt my hunt, I’ll have a shot at you.”
“Yes, yes. You’d better,” he told him as he gaily galumphed away. “Dress me up as boar. I hear people taste like pig and they mightn’t detect the hoax. As for you, Temujin,” he let soar from a distance, “your only hope,” he crowed, “is to sit the beasties in a row and tell them the rights and wrongs of the case until they expire. Boredom or old age? That’s the question, Temujin. Boredom or old age? Either way you’ve got them.”

Jochi took out his ire on a log, that he thumped. “Next time, I tell you, Temujin, I’ll unstitch his underarm seam. See how he enjoys that. See whether that’s funny.”
“I almost trust you to.”
“And I don’t much care if I miss.”
“I have a suggestion.”
“What?”
“You hunt. I’ll keep him amused.”
“That’s sort of truckling to him. We hunt as a team. The animals talk to you. Animals don’t talk to me.”
“It’s the fee-fi-fo-fum of the Borjigin giant.”
“I know, but my spots are my spots. How can you stomach to... keep him amused?” 
“The way I’d distract a enemy patrol,” answered Temujin without emotion. “And you never know, he may feel silly in the upshot.”
“I like my idea. I’ll pin him to the tree behind him then we’ll tie him up and hunt unmolested. – It’s childish. It’s to stop us getting more than he does. That’s what he thinks of, his ego, not what goes into the kids’ mouths. Temuge’s less childish than he is. Him an agha? I can see him an otchigin.”
“He has the instincts.” This was a comment over Jochi’s head. Jochi was a shade too young to have noticed what instincts he meant. Temujin himself was at a fastidious age; when he saw Bagtor glaze over at Hoelun he knew enough to know what daydream he was in – just enough to be revolted.
“It’s sabotage,” Jochi went on. “Sabotage. If he did that to a Uriangqot on hunt, he’d get skewered and roasted. Tolerant people, but not about a hunt. There’s food at stake.”
“There’s more than food at stake. There are the pieties.”
“Er, I can’t say I’m greatly ahead of him on the pieties.”
“You’re way ahead of him, Jochi.” Quietly Temujin persisted in exactly what Bagtor liked to mock him for. “You think of the food in the children’s mouths. When Uriangqot say spiritual, you only need to hear right and wrong. It’s wrong to ridicule what is life and death for the animal, sustenance for the hunter. It’s very wrong to interfere, and you’re right, they are tolerant, but they’d ban him from the hunt. That’s what ought to be done. He ought to be banned, have his bow confiscated and help his mother with camp chores.”
“He’d love that.”

The two hunt teams had set out from camp together. Stuck in their cheeks they had curd nuggets, to get them through til dinner on anticipation; gnawed on and dissolved, the nuggets lasted most of the day, like very hard candy.
A skylark burst singing out of a clump of grass. As fast and easy as the bird, in his own way as lovely, Jochi drew bow and arrow from their holsters on either hip, coupled them and loosed, without aim. Without aim that Temujin saw, but the arrow sped upon the bird and in a blur and a flutter they twirled from the sky together.
“Wow,” said Temujin. “How did you do that, Jochi?”
Jochi was thrilled, exhilarated. “I’ve no idea.”
“Aim must be for idiots like me.”
“Aim.” He waxed mystical. “Aim from the cockles of the heart and you can’t miss.”
In fact Jochi drew across his chest, which is quicker, while Temujin lifted up to the eye and like an amateur tried too hard, except amateurs have to. “When you can aim from any angle, any angle to your sight-line...” He let Jochi finish.
But Jochi declined bombast and grandiloquence this time. “I’ll be an archer.”
“At the gallop,” Temujin smiled.
“Of course.”
Meanwhile Bagtor had gone to pick up the lark. The limp bird he made into a hand-puppet: he propped up and wagged the limp head and talked in a trilly bird-voice. “Score Jochi. Uuhai, uuhai.” This was the spectators’ call for a fine shot in games, done at a birdy pitch, which put Bagtor’s mouth, behind the bird’s head, in a goofy contortion.
Temujin wanted to punch him in the eye. This was sheer instinct, since people didn’t punch in his culture. They very rarely wrangle with each other in words, and in physical fights or brawls, never, writes a European in his intelligence report. Temujin wanted to slap his face and induce a fight. That was done. That was frowned upon without cause serious enough to slay and be slain over. Ridicule of a dead bird mightn’t qualify. Moments ago the lark had trinkled music in the sky.
Is duel why you learn sword, dad? Your third or fourth weapon in war.
Quite on purpose Temujin thought of his father. Lately he felt bad when he did, but then the effect had its uses. He didn’t go up and slap Bagtor.
Belligerently Jochi told him, “Don’t muck about with my bird.”
In a human but official voice, “I’m afraid I’ll have to confiscate your bird, Jochi.”
“Confis-what? You?”
Bagtor swivelled his head to the bird and the bird’s head to him. “Confiscated for blasphemy. Confiscated for irreligion. Can’t have that, can we, Temujin?”
“Listen,” blared Jochi. “You put down what I hit. Right where he dropped.”
“Sorry, Jochi, you’ll just have to clean up your act.” He did a skip rearwards.
“Oi.” Jochi stretched an arm and finger at him, very straight. “Put down my bird.”
“It’s your foul tongue, Jochi. The animals run away with their paws over their ears. No, this bird’s for sacrifice, in the interests of piety. His smoke to feed the spirits and his leftovers to feed me.”
Jochi dropped his arm and blared like a horn. “You filthy thief. That’s for my sister.”
Citation of his sister meant he was upset. Temujin had to back him and said evenly, “Bagtor, if you take Jochi’s kill –”
“Oh, here’s Captain Right-and-Wrong to the rescue. Thank God for that. I was about to have an ethical confusion.”
Temujin waited for him and went on. “If you take Jochi’s kill you are a thief.”
Thief in Mongol ears had an evil. Adultery was only abomination number two; theft came first. 
But Bagtor, inside, had spent his youth under siege behind a wagon wheel, where the nutrients of his culture reached him patchily for patchy growth: in this sense he was malnutritioned, and didn’t get what they were on about. He had become a clown in contradistinction to Temujin; he thought a little step to become a thief.
Insouciantly, with high marks self-given for his satire, he walked away. Jochi howled after him, as upset as Temujin had ever seen him. “That’s for my sister. That’s for my sister.”
Off to the side stood Belgutei. Temujin and he met eyes. Neither spoke, and Belgutei plodded after his teammate.

“Can you be so petty? The both of you.”
In confrontations with her Temujin took on a low mutter and a posture bent forwards, as if wading against a great tow, trudging against a great wind. But he didn’t know how to give up. “It’s petty, yes. It’s an ounce of white flesh. We only catch petty game.”
Hunched in his dog’s cloak, Jochi did a rendition of the dog over the bone. “Wasn’t a bad shot. At risk of boast. As if by invisible hand, as they say, and not for him to filch and stuff his face with. I want my bird. Regurgitated, or if I have to plunge my fist into his gut. I want my bird.”
Temujin pursued, “It isn’t just the meat. Since he can thieve in front of Belgutei and Jochi, who are at least grown up, what’s to prevent him in front of the children?”
“Temujin, stop with that word. Theft is nothing to trivialize.”
His eyes flashed at her in exasperation. “I know.”
“You have had a dispute over game.”
“I know what theft is,” he muttered. “Jochi knows what theft is, when the hit was his.”
“Do you correct your mother?” 
He didn’t say yes, but he met his mother’s gaze.
“You won’t bring your squabbles to the hearth. You won’t exhibit them before the children. That is an end to the matter, Temujin.”
The boys exchanged glowers from underneath their brows, and went away.
Temujin didn’t know how to give up. Hadn’t he been taught?
When Hoelun, newly a wife, had left home and her father owed her honest criticism he had said: Strength of mind is not a fault, but can over-venture; even a strength can be over-invested in, can be unbalanced. Know when to relent. Know when to unlock the talons. My eagle unlocks her talons when I tell her to, and she, in musculature and in mentality, the strongest creature I know.
In Temujin she saw vivid glimpses of Yesugei, even here, with his it’s-the-principle, with his awkward, intense righteousness at fourteen, like a rough sketch of his father. But out of nowhere – with no hint until he was a teenager – he battled her with her own weapons. When her talon gripped tighter, why, so did his. An eagle doesn’t quit her hold. Come at her with a sword, she’ll grapple you with the other foot but not forsake her victim. Because she is intelligent she can be trained; you must conscript her intelligence, and not affront her. Never train an eagle by coercion or domination. It won’t work, and she can rip your arm off.
Hoelun had taken seven children into the wilds, away from their tribe and clan, away from society: this she had done instead of submit to governance and convention, instead of pay her Kiyat dues to Tarqutai, instead of sleep with Daritai. She seemed not to have taught Temujin the art of compromise.

Punching wasn’t on, and neither were unseemly exhibitions; over the hearth, before the children, Temujin had to mind the decencies, and he bottled up a lot. There was always the wrestle, to let off steam. Aside from the factor that his opponent had six years and six years’ size on him, to Temujin’s sensibilities a wrestle-out wasn’t much different than a dogs’ scrap, and anyway he had no intention of putting his grievance behind him. Bagtor too was one for intellectual fight, and to go physical didn’t occur to him. As a child Temujin had waited years in vain for Bagtor to hit him: if he hit him, that was actionable. But hitting had an honesty, whereas Bagtor hid behind the subterfuge of humour. Now he had stolen, next to which, hitting was paltry. It afflicted him that Hoelun took no action.
His father had been the Fixed Star to him in right and wrong, the Gold Stake; the Gold Stake had been unpinned and the teenaged Temujin felt the universe disintegrate. Society was in disintegration, people said daily. Tribes robbed each other, outside the mountains. Out there was a stage of violence and debauchery (whatever that involved), pilgrims to the Sacred Mountains told them. These complaints, laments scored into his mind, to whom ethics meant his father. Both ethics and sense had come to an end, then, with Yesugei’s days and ways.

He didn’t make a scene at the hearth, but he didn’t make an end of the matter either. As the lid came off the pot and the children clustered he said, “Haven’t you eaten, Bagtor?”
At once Jochi leant support. “Have you eaten? Eat out, you don’t eat at the pot.”
Half-heartedly Bagtor got stuck in on Jochi. “Sermons from you, with your swag like a cow?”
“My Borjigin bulk.”
“Kept bulky by the honey you guzzle and the fat roasts off with your Uriangqot friends.”
“When we eat with Uriangqot I have to fast like a Christian, and I do.”
In neutral tones Temujin said, “I thought you had a bite of meat today, Bagtor.”
The children’s eyes went from one to the other, side to side of the pot. Belgutei had a sprig of burnet in his big hand. This he swiped on the nose of the thin girl Temulun; she giggled; Belgutei fed the burnet to her from overhead. He didn’t put his hand in the pot again, Temujin noticed, although almost certainly he hadn’t partaken of Jochi’s bird.
Perhaps Bagtor hadn’t eaten the bird. That didn’t matter. The meat wasn’t in the pot.
Out of humour tonight, Bagtor noisily rattled his lips and flopped onto his back, only his gawky knees up to be seen in their circle.
From her couch – the seat in the north of the tent for master and mistress – Hoelun watched silently. Goagchin, by her own sense of etiquette, leant against the couch or on an elbow, comfy at Hoelun’s feet. Goagchin scarcely interacted with her son. She tiptoed about Bagtor, in dread of quips at her expense. The other children clubbed to her, and only had a laugh at her when she was very safely out of earshot.
To blow away bad air, Temujin told a story about a hungry contingent. His story had great amounts of comradeship and group spirit, of the sort described by Franciscan friars on mission to the Mongol court. The friars found the Mongols’ diet austere and their privations difficult to stand. One wrote, Whatever food they have they share amongst themselves, though there be little enough. They are extremely patient. When they have to go without altogether for one or two days they don’t change their cheer; no-one betrays irritation, but they sing and wassail as if they had feasted.
Imaginary feasts were a game for the children, or else they liked to be a hungry contingent with only the veins of their horses to drink from. Here Jochi got into the vein, and was likewise fertile on graphic starvation. When Jochi told the story, inevitably, the contingent drew straws and one in ten went to feed his comrades.
“We’ll just volunteer the fattest,” said Temujin.
“That’s Belgutei.”
And Belgutei was the type who’d have volunteered. 

Next day Hoelun sent the four hunters fishing. She was no-nonsense and none of them gainsaid her, as she instructed Temujin and Jochi to teach Bagtor and Belgutei the skill.
Fishing had been their earliest attempt at hachi, at return to their mother for what she did for them, running up and down the Onon Gol in search of nourishment. For nourishment for her they bent needles into fishhooks and tied dragnets and scoops, and with this homemade equipment caught (in memory, memory put into verse in the Secret History) maimed and misshapen fishes, fishes slowed by mishap, with one eye absent or a piece bitten out of them, fishes at their last gasp. Nevertheless, Hoelun strongly insinuated, their bag had been more ample when they fished. Fishing was a demotion in the food-getting scheme of things; Bagtor and Jochi, who had their sights on higher species, felt punished – Jochi unfairly, since Bagtor messed up his hunts – while Temujin knew himself chastised. Even so, memory warmed him towards his mother, the memory of the misshapen fishes and their eagerness to feed her. He said, “Yes, fishing gave us a yield. Fried sprats for dinner? Or a sturgeon or a trout, Jochi, if Mother Onon is generous. We never hauled in a big one. It must be almost as exciting as bear.”
“I’ll down a bear one day. By strangulation.”
“Don’t tell them – they’ll try and get you first.”
“Botheration. I’m telling you. What ears have they got on them? We’ve told the fish we’re on our way. Oi. To throw the whole crew of them into total confusion –” he dropped to a loud whisper – “let’s take the nets and rods and make for the river, and in a stratagem to out-fox the foxes, hunt instead.”
Bagtor pinched the bridge of his nose. “The entertainment in store. Swap brains with your bear, Jochi, when you get him.”
On the trip to the river Bagtor concentrated on Jochi. No doubt he found him easy game or rich material (Temujin liked to tease him too) but Catchiun was a butt for his art, Temulun for her red hair – the old stuff. Now and then he sideswiped at his true, his one and only target. “If I see you suck your teeth, Jochi, it’s no dinner for you tonight.”
Jochi got grumpy. Yesterday, unresolved, stewed in him and he started to answer tersely with, “Thief.”
Flourish of wit from Bagtor.
“Thief.”
Bagtor went for the short retort. “Fatso.”
“Rotten thief.”
Belgutei said, “Here’s the river, and we’d better put a sock in it. You have to be pretty quiet, don’t you, Temujin?”
“Yes, it’s about time to cut the chat.”
Belgutei asked a few questions about nets.
Behind his hand in a hoarse whisper Bagtor resumed. “Squealer. Run to mother, did we? Jochi’s lark? Jochi Report-to-the-Captain? Eh?”
But he failed to elicit an answer to this vital question. “Pizzle-lips.”
“Jochi, if you don’t mind. My pizzle’s in my pants and you’d only be flabbergasted if I swung it.”
“Go stick it in a rabbit.”
Bagtor gazed at him rather humourlessly.
With a gap, a chink in the armour, he followed up. “In and out and in and out and in and out of a rabbit.”
Temujin grappled his brother, with both arms from behind about his thick neck. “Is that pelt getting inside your head, Jochi? Do you have to be as lewd as the original wearer?”
“Ah, right, agha,” he said in chagrin.
“Khazar,” slid in Belgutei, with a crook of the mouth. “I’m going to call him Khazar whenever he merges identities with the wearer before him.”
“I never saw a Khazar mastiff poke a rabbit.”
Temujin observed, “You’ll only encourage him.”
That day – since they had a fate that day, Bagtor or Temujin or both – the Onon gave them a fish, enormous, splendid. It strewed jewels of light and water as it leapt on their hook in a pool. Temujin and Jochi had the line wound on a willow branch; from above in the tree they yelled and attempted to reel in. Belgutei charged into the river with the pole-scoop in both hands above his shoulder, like a sword. Their bent needle unbent, or the fish tore off the hook; armpit-deep, Belgutei tried to keep his feet, spot the fish and scoop the fish, none of them easy to do on their own. Just when hope was lost and the big one had got away, Bagtor, on the bank of the pool, flailed his arms and dived, on top of the fish. Between him and Belgutei, and shortly Temujin and Jochi with a draw-net, by violent, noisy and unusual fishing tactics, they dragged their catch aground.
The tactics tickled Jochi. “Bagtor, I like your moves. Fling yourself on top of him. Hah. If I’d thought of that one I’d have divebombed him from the branch. How’s his method, Temujin?”
Temujin said, “It was brilliant. As stunts go, there are those to imitate, and there are those to never undertake again.”
Flat on his back alongside the fish, Bagtor feebly wagged and gurgled, in a drama of the near-drowned. The fish seemed to be drowning in the air, flipping like the lame, like the hamstrung, in the alien element where his organs didn’t work, where his mechanics didn’t propel him. “Let’s not forget,” said Temujin.
In the Uriangqot ritual they knelt to grieve over the fish. Temujin squeezed out tears, Belgutei gripped his hair and wailed, Jochi pulled off a blubbery laugh. Bagtor lay there amused, but didn’t mock.
“We’ll be fishing forever now,” Belgutei warned Jochi as they went to unsnarl the net. 
“It’s not too late. We can throw it back in.”
Crouched at the fish’s head Temujin said, “Sshhh. He’ll think you’re serious.”
“Sorry, fish.”
“Fish stew, Jochi,” Belgutei tempted him. “A week of fish stew.”
“Blah,” from Jochi, and from Temujin, “Sshhh.”
“Look, Temujin, can’t you...” Jochi grimaced and nodded.
“I don’t know where.”
“What?”
“I don’t know where.”
“It’s not a sheep, just...” He mimed with the stab of a finger at his eye. “Behind there’s a brain cavity.”
Temujin announced, “Its gills are flat. – I don’t know much about fish,” he told them in apology.
“Can I talk?”
“Yes.”
Up on an elbow, eyes on the fish with glee, Bagtor wheezed, “High-risk sport, your fishing. I thought I was wrestling a wild boar, only greased.”
“What kind is he?” asked Belgutei.
Ignorant of the answer Temujin said, “In his glittering scales he has to be a knight-fish.”
“I’ll make his fins into a charm. He’s a sign: I’m meant for a fisher. What’s the odds of one his size, your first?”
“It’s been a team effort,” mentioned Temujin. “We’ll give him a bit of a parade home. Tell the kids he’s a knight of the ayyy in silver and pearl armour turned into a fish. I hope he isn’t. Jochi and Belgutei, you can take an end each.”
“Heads or tails?” Belgutei to Jochi.
“Not so fast with my fish, Temujin.” Bagtor climbed to his feet. “I’ll dispose of him, thank you. Where he belongs is on the shoulder of his conqueror.”
“Bagtor, he isn’t your fish. He’s ours.”
“Kid,” Bagtor began to him, on a high after his feat, “you can’t pick him up.” And Bagtor did, with a hoist and a heave, and slung the great fish neatly on his shoulder. “You see, kid, though you think you’re the man of the tent, you’re out by, what, two foot?”
Without concern as to his height Temujin stood up. “Put the fish down, Bagtor.”
“Make me.”
A surge of testosterone had Bagtor in an altered state.
Vexingly, Temujin walked straight through the testosterone, unaffected. “I’ll bring up the rear with the equipment. You,” he told Bagtor with a faintly sarcastic largesse, “can march out front. But we take him home as we caught him: in a team.”
He felt the point mattered. Without team spirit, what were they? A half-starved den of clawing, spitting kittens, where the weak are crushed underfoot and their own mother ceases to feed them, as waste of food. Team spirit, alone, saved them from that. Ask the wolves, who hunt as a group, who are interdependent, how crucial is team spirit, how detrimental self-interest. 
From the sidelines, Belgutei, piteously to Temujin. “It won’t hurt to let him. He did the most. He can have my rights in it.”
“No.” Flatly Temujin turned him down, this time, Belgutei whom he thought the most of, strictly, of his brothers. “He can’t.”
The chemical high tottered, a castle of smoke. Bagtor never knew what to do when stood up to, except switch from twenty to five again. “I’ll have my fish in spite of you, if I have to walk off and feed him to the vultures. Don’t push me, Temujin. That’s what I’ll do, before I give the fish to you.”
Had Temujin taken the view he was talking to a five-year-old, he might have dealt with him the way he dealt with Temuge in a squall. But he had no idea what a hornet’s nest he had stuck his hand into – what fantasies of a late, too-late adolescent in love, fueled by a childishly uninhibited want – and he took the view Bagtor ought to act his age. “That threat,” he said evenly, “if you went ahead with that threat...”
“What? Oh, what? Oh, what, Temujin, what? Am I thief again?” His humour came back with a vengeance and he started to bounce. “Am I a fish-thief today? I bet I am.” He bounced, under the load on his shoulder.
Humour was how to baffle Temujin, as Bagtor had learnt. “It’s no laughing matter,” Temujin seethed, asserted, clumsily, through his teeth.
“No laughing matter?” Bagtor bugled in enjoyment of this one. “Honestly, Temujin, for stodgy, you can out-grandfather fifty grandfathers. And for prim, for priggish, you can do the grandmothers into the bargain.” With the fish on his shoulder, three fingers in its mouth to hold it, Bagtor broke into a jig, his knees going up, his elbows going out, in time to a ditty of, “Thief, thief, thief, thief.” He was quite mad.
Bagtor lived with a sense of no-escape. His mind had closed him in, had stiffened into its cramped posture, a cower with an arm up in defence; he lost elasticity, as if he had grown old before his time, the way Temujin’s forelock is said to have gone grey overnight in his most desperate hour at Baljuna Lake. Time had a nightmarish go-slow for him, or go-nowhere. He’d always be a bully. He’d only have grown worse. And he knew. His love for Hoelun was like that too, no escape; at bottom he felt his love to be at one with the syndrome. 
Can I start again, can I have another go? He might almost have asked. The Secret History tells that at the end he sat down with his legs crossed and waited to be shot. Temujin didn’t understand this element of acquiescence, which he interpreted as a moment’s dignity. It didn’t stop him.
Temujin watched him dance a jig about being a thief, with feelings he couldn’t have explained, at the time, and that later he lost contact with himself, that certainly seemed to him overblown. So he never had a proper explanation. It’s easy and must be true to say he saw his own horror, he saw his nightmares, he saw his monsters. It had to do with his absent father. It had to do with absence – of principles, of God – concepts that went with his father. He saw a void and reeled in horror.
To terminate this scene Bagtor jigged up and spat, with a huff and a puff, malignantly, into Temujin’s face, from a distance of inches, “Thief.” After that he jigged away with the fish on his shoulder. Where the river bank steepened into a little cliff he lifted the fish over his head, turned towards them to see that he had their attention, and hurled. They heard the splash.

Often Belgutei felt he had to look after his big brother. Now he tried to excuse him, and even stigmatized him. “Temujin, he isn’t quite... he doesn’t have his quota. He’s an arrow short of a quiver. I don’t mean he’s dumb. He isn’t dumb.”
“I know what’s wrong with him: he has no principles whatsoever. We don’t throw away food. We do not throw away a week’s fish stew.”
“I’ll get the fish.”
“Belgutei –” Temujin was frantic, and they had never seen him frantic. “Blast the fish.” That was loose interjection, for Temujin.
“Belgers,” observed Jochi, who hadn’t been in the thick, for once, “I know he’s a sweetheart with you, and you’re true-blue to him. But he’s way out of line.”
Miserably Belgutei said, “I’m going to get the fish anyway.”
Belgutei went to get the fish. Ever afterwards he castigated himself for this as a sort of dodge. Because the fish was belly-up, out of his depth, and he set about the task in a disheartened fashion, without haste to return to the brotherly fray, and he wasn’t seen again until late afternoon, which was too late.

“How can four grown boys be so useless? How can you be less and less use the more you grow? I’ll tell you how. You aren’t out to find food. You are out to score points. You are out to prove your masculinity or your righteousness. I am not the slightest bit interested in either. If you can’t hunt you will fish. If you can’t fish you will pull up onions.”
But to teenage Temujin, this was crudely, crassly short-sighted. The mother only thought about their physical selves. There was a huge war going on she couldn’t see – like those invisible fights in the spirit, Bolot against the monsters. Temujin felt beset, like him; like him he felt his battle important. She didn’t see.
“Over a bird?” Hoelun begged for sense, for perspective. “Over a fish?”
It’s about the foundations of the earth, the existence of God. And Bagtor’s masculinity mattered infinitely more than food to him. They were hungry. Bagtor and Temujin, to judge by external indicators, by brittle nails and holes between the ribs, the hungriest: Bagtor because he had a man’s needs, Temujin because he put himself last and fasted like three Christians after he ate with Uriangqot. Both would have agreed to starve for days, without a pang, to spite each other or trump each other. Murders are rarely done over birds.
Jochi banged the door behind them (remembers the Secret History) which was rude. 

“We don’t hate a wolf who attacks the flock,” Temujin expounded in a slow, clotted voice, with slow, turgid hand gestures. “But a dog that turns on his own, untrustworthy, him we hate as if he were a traitor, a false-swearer. That’s what he is and we detest him and we do not suffer him to live. Him,” he went on with a heavy stress to indicate he meant Bagtor now, “whom we have had at our hearth, is that faithless dog, and I,” with an index finger up, “do not suffer him.”
Temujin was as weird as a werewolf with his fur out. His face, his eyes were hazy, fulgent, a blackly stifled sky with holes where a strange light swam. Yet none of this was altogether strange to Jochi: changes, changes in the aspect of men bent on manslaughter... the freaky stuff from the poetry wasn’t inaccurate, then.
The poetry didn’t go on and teach him that a man in this state ought to be stopped. It taught him that Temujin’s affairs were Temujin’s.
There’s a hungry contingent. There’s a pilferer of food. Jochi told himself the story. And the officer refuses, but the sergeant and the corporal know what needs to be done. “Kill him?” he ascertained.
The teeth grimaced as at salt water. “She –” and this meant their mother – “won’t so much as tell him off and never has.”
“Yep. It’s us to blame as usual.”
“It’s up to us, then. – To me.” Temujin’s hand went to his bow. Its flat case comes less than halfway up the bow, which slides in string-down – the steppe bow doesn’t have to be unstrung. The upper limb slants forward at your waist, just right to lean your hand on; you can pluck the string at your thigh, like a harp. Harps copy the shape, lap harps, the curly shape of Cupid’s bow, that came to him courtesy of the Scyths.
If Hoelun turned him out of doors he’d go to Jamuqa. Had Jamuqa baptised his sword yet? Temujin felt sublimely calm, he felt he lay in a boat on smooth waters. An odd image, as Mongols aren’t keen on boats. He smiled through a brief fiction: on Jamuqa’s doorstep after his manslaughter; Jamuqa told him he was a total idiot; he agreed. There are times you want to be an idiot, he said, no matter what.
Twice over, then, a part of his brain blew the trumpet of alarm.
So slowed down was he that only now Jochi answered. “Tem? That’s an us.”
“Not this time, Jochi.”
“Eh, Tem. It’s been us forever. What, ditch me, as soon as things get serious?”
“This is serious, this is manslaughter. I can’t involve you at twelve.”
“Neither of us are legal. Who waits until they’re legal? No-one famous. How about Tahamtam at thirteen? I’m a Tahamtam, at least a Tahamtam. Do you doubt me?”
“No, I don’t doubt you.”
“I shoot five years above my age, like Kid Karataz.”
“That happens to be an understatement.” Dimly he was bothered to hear Jochi thirst innocently for bloodshed. But he had the scent of blood in his nostrils himself, new to him and not what he imagined. They had only grown more ignorant, safely away from bloodshed in the Sacred Mountains. “These are my terms: come with me, but you must swear by what’s most holy to you, the fatal shot is mine.”
“He’s yours, Temujin, I know he’s yours.”
In a limbo, thought suspended, he found an unknown freedom; a limbo where he didn’t think or feel – he experienced, through senses vivid and slow. Thought seemed a buzz in the head and a dizzy veer from the past to the future; he was in the moment, the limbo, until he had his goal. So this is the clarity they describe, the concentration? 
Temujin didn’t talk much while they backtracked to where they had caught the fish – heard and ignored Belgutei – took up the trail, the scuff of Bagtor’s boots. But he wasn’t oblivious to Jochi, to Jochi’s youth, and he bolstered him with a hand, with a smile, a smile from that sublime calm of his.

People were their own constables, their own detective sergeants. This put an onus on them to behave as such. They weren’t vigilantes. They were licensed to kill, but if you kill on suspicion or to prevent a crime that hasn’t been committed yet, you’ll have trouble in court. He was on my grounds to nab my sheep, I know he was, makes a shaky case. Cases go to court, after the arrest, which you do yourself. People didn’t lie, and that helped. Tribal justice, whether in Scandinavia or on the steppe, had the inviolable oath to depend on; your statement, with character witnesses, proved a case. On the steppe, when a touchstone of truth was called for, people swore, instead of a holy book, on gold. Gold is incorruptible, therein eternal, hence akin to the truth. Further, gold was a cosmic standard and stood for the sun, as if you swore on Tangr’s tuq. Gold has always been a barbarian splendour, whether in Scandinavia or on the steppe – civilized nations found gold crude; China did, and their love and worship was for jade. On the steppe, gold, the sun, fire, kingship had been a symbol-chain from Scyths through Huns to Turks and onwards, onwards to Temujin who by a quirk, suggestively, wore majesty in his hair.
It is only fair to Temujin to be explicit on one point, the point of his honesty. In the Secret History the Bagtor episode is told as by eyewitness, very specific, with direct speech. Who else had been there? Jochi came to grief in China at the age of forty-five; Hoelun had gone to her husband. Belgutei lived, but he wasn’t known to tell tales against Temujin. Besides, the greatest Mongol ever, by his contemporaries’ general consent, must have had a say in his biography. It was being put together in his inner circle, in his last years. In his last years Tchingis Khan was the greatest monarch on earth, and might have had written what he liked. Other monarchs did. Image, disinformation, propaganda: these were understood concepts, heavily used in Central Asian states; and his Mongols were the cutting edge in psychological warfare – his employment of which in Turkestan has effect to this day (in brief, he encouraged fear of the Mongols, and did their reputation permanent damage. Scare tactics were old Hun craft in China. Neither Hun nor Mongol thought of our perceptions of them, only of the enemy’s perceptions.) But image-manipulation was a part of licensed untruth in wartime, and this was his life story. This was the Mongols’ first book. Mongols don’t lie. In his army he had a cult of honesty going, no less: take the famous case of the two night guards. For a soldier to sleep on nightwatch was grave dereliction; the consequences might be fatal to his comrades, and were fatal to the culprit. These two soldiers were charged on assumption. They hadn’t been seen asleep, but they were questioned in court: were you? Yes, they answered. We have report of the trial from a Tajik (native to Iran) who seems to have been upset by the element of self-harm. He was there with a Mongol friend, to whom he said: They’re under suspicion. It’s circumstantial. In your system the death sentence needs a confession. There are no witnesses to convict them of falsity. They only have to say they weren’t asleep. The answer from his friend? A Mongol doesn’t lie to save his life. Which was seen to be nothing other than the truth when they were led away for execution, the Tajik observer’s lunatics for honesty, but with Mongol homage to their championship of the standard, their exemplar of the phrase. Me, I hope and trust they went to the block with more pride than shame.
So, was Mongol number one to lie? Wasn’t he obliged to be hanged for a self-discovered crime? Yes, he thought so. A lie wouldn’t have been hard, no more than for the two soldiers. He only had to murmur, let’s not mention Bagtor. Because nobody did. In Rashid a-Din the half-brother simply drops out of the story – not Rashid a-Din’s only obfuscation or omission. Nowhere else is there found an account of his fate, nowhere else but in the Secret History, down to modern times. One can cover up a crime for centuries, without much trouble; Tchingis has the opposite trouble, he has to insist on dragging his sins into the light. That is, he’s the Scourge of God and the Accursed to enemy correspondents on the Turkestan campaign; information and disinformation both surge freely to blacken his name. But there is no-one to tell you he murdered his brother, like Cain. No-one but Temujin, a half-century after the deed.

Jochi’s conduct was that of a second in an affair of life and death: he didn’t interrupt or interfere, he followed instructions.
“I don’t want any accidents,” said Temujin. “We do this as simply as possible.”
“Right.”
“Save the fancy stuff for duels.”
“I get you.”
They talked within sight of Bagtor. Up on Olir Ulqu, Sour-Pear Promontory, he sat with his chin on his knee. Beneath in the river meadow grazed their nine cut mounts by Toghrul’s stallion. To watch the horses graze is Mongol slang for to be alone and think, and by his attitude he was doing that.
Had he been animal quarry they might have taken the shot, him on the knoll against the sky. Executions, however, want precision. Rear of him the ground lay flat and stony for thirty yards, then there grew clumps of sour-pear bush, waist-high. “I approach along the promontory. Jochi, you climb the trail from the river. On the trail he can’t see you unless he stands up. If he stands up, I’m on the level behind him and I always have a shot.”
“He can’t fire that bow.”
“On the off-chance he manages to we’d need rhinoceros hide. Exercise caution, Jochi, or this is your last time in action with me.”
Jochi answered with a noise that he translated as obedient.
“In a quarter hour I’ll emerge from the bushes. You be under the rim. Use the time and stalk quietly, as you can.”
“What say he doesn’t sit there?”
“I have him in sights. In case you startle him, in case of – I don’t know what, my end – act normal. What we’re here for won’t cross his mind, from you, unless you tell him.”
“Why not from me?”
“Don’t feel slighted.”
“He’s the first of a thousand for me.”
“Jochi.” He stopped. “A quarter hour: start now.”
The nine horses, like their sire cream in the coat with white manes and tails, were aware of them and bent their swan’s necks to investigate, from one to the other at Bagtor’s front and back. But they were accustomed to boys’ antics and dropped their heads to tear the sward again. Out of habit Bagtor did a once-about with the horses, and where he squirmed through the sour-pear Temujin had a glimpse of his face. Not judged, in his solitude, to wring the milk of human kindness from his murderer: morose and vindictive the tale of his thoughts.
At the end of a quarter-hour count in his head Temujin stepped out of the bushes. He had his arrow on the string, lightly drawn; his thumb, poised, held the inside-out coil of his bow, the pull-against-the-push. He said, “Bagtor.”
Gawkily Bagtor jumped up and about. What he saw he met with a puff, hah. Next he peered to see whether Temujin were serious. He determined that he was and did hah again. “Oh, Temujin.” He wagged his head. “Oh, Temujin.” He stooped to peer at him, once again, lest he had dreamt him up. “Captain,” he blew on a gale of laughter. “Here’s Captain Right-and-Wrong to the rescue. Oh, go ahead, Temujin, go ahead.”
In his suspension – his still float, the hover of the killer bird – Temujin wasn’t to be laughed at. He watched Bagtor’s laughter as the hawk watches, or hyper-watches, for he starts to see his target’s actions a fraction ahead of time. That is how engaged he is with the other creature. But he doesn’t talk to him.
It’s about the skill. The hawk’s faculty to construe his target. It’s the killers that are intelligent. Killer animals have their weapons forged onto the flesh, as clever as our contrivances for war. A tiger is a contraption, a superb one. The falcon has no equal but the bow. The bow, the ultimate for one thousand, two thousand years, unchanged, the bow has known perfectibility, like the falcon without a rival in her skies. With my bow I am akin to them, the running, flying arsenals, and theirs is the kingdom, the power and the glory, theirs is the joy in skill. Why? Because I can.
In Temujin’s ominous silence, Bagtor wasn’t intimidated from his laughter – he finished his laughter. Or he never quite finished, for he kept a gloat. Time must have slowed for him, too; Temujin saw his calculations in his incandescent face, in the crackle and spark. Then he decided what to do. Bagtor sat back down, crossed his legs and closed his eyes.
Steppe people sit with a foot underneath them and the other knee up, in a half-squat as springy as a cat’s crouch. Only Uighur mystics sit shut-eyed, their feet upon their thighs. It may have been the grovel of the wolf, don’t hurt me, I’m no harm to you. It may have been that Temujin did what he least expected, gave away to him the high ground, which he promptly sat on in the pose of a fresco saint. It may have been dignity.
It didn’t stop him. The hare’s last hope, to freeze, doesn’t stop the hawk. He stretched out his fatal feet, he tautly drew. Like most creatures that strike he went for death on the instant. It’s about the skill. It was about ballistics: he had selected a heavy gauge grooved for spin, that ill-made wobble horribly, that left the issue in no doubt. The hawk can go right through the hare, the falcon by mistake can scissor her catch in two. It drilled through rib in his left chest, skewered his heart, poked his garments inches out at the back. Bagtor jolted with its silent violence, skidded left to face away, sagged; his crossed legs kept him upright.
The tiger purrs with his muzzle in hot guts. For half a moment Temujin purred, or perched on his rabbit and neatened up his wrist ruffs.
It is often observed of him, in the books, that he didn’t indulge, enjoy, that he eschewed cruelty for cruelty’s sake, that what he did in war he did, at least, without the taint of lust. These were the inhibitions he put up, because of Bagtor. He never fought an individual, either, unless you count the foreign kings and governors whose heads he sought for treaty-breach, instigators of wars. Abstemption from the challenge, absence from the sack of the capital of China: how far wound the effects of Bagtor? He had no way to know. It came with a bad side, his divorce from the instinct, from animal innocence.
A shot not his rudely awoke him. To shoot your quarry twice, whether he twitches or not, puts him out of any misery he’s in. But when Jochi shot the sitting corpse and with surgical exactitude inserted his arrow alongside Temujin’s, when the corpse jerked around again to face him and flailed its arms like a zombie getting up...
It was Temujin’s character to hang onto an outward tranquillity, and as much of an inner as possible. He thought of his kid brother. “Stay where you are,” he called across to Jochi, and walked forwards.
Two arrows transfixed Bagtor, both out at the back, though neither had pierced his Uriangqot jacket. He slumped half-over in a lurch, stuck by the crossed legs, that had no dignity now. Obscurely Temujin felt a duty to order the bones, lie them decently. He took the shafts together in his hands and tilted Bagtor down, though he didn’t lie flat.
“Temujin, what are you doing?”
One by one he straightened the legs, in a mute determination.
“What are you doing?”
A bit bloody late to ask that.
After efforts grievously imperfect he trudged to Jochi, who boggled at him. “You haven’t got blood on you?”
“He didn’t bleed to mention.” Jochi had a squeak in the throat; he found he had a rasp. “He was dead as dead from mine. Yours... didn’t matter to him.” A statement for Jochi and for other ears that listened.
“We did this together, though. That’s why I put mine in, right by yours.”
Tender, perhaps, at the time, Temujin’s heart swelled. “You are staunch and stout, Jochi. For that I love you.”
Jochi, who wasn’t much of a one for declarations, boggled slightly again.
What do you do next? Temujin didn’t think he’d be at the funeral, and he began on a rudimentary one, on a litany. “His flesh for the birds and the beasts, as flesh of theirs fed him in his life. His soul to...”
At his stoppage Jochi thought he had forgotten. “To his fathers.”
“His soul,” said Temujin. And again the ground of Sour-Pear Promontory swam under his feet, in a blot, in a flood of black water. Black water lapped at him, he sank into black water.
A hand grasped his elbow. He must have threatened to faint. Gruffly Jochi said, “Come on, Tem, let’s not loiter. No-one wants us. Let’s go.”

From that point onwards Temujin went about in the dumb lumber of the zombie, that obeys an echo of its dead intelligence at ricochet in its empty head. He knew what he had to do, both that day and the next day, and did what he had to with the zombie’s blind obstinacy.
Zombies may have been suggested to him by the difficulty he seemed to have to walk. It seemed to demand a sedulous effort – one leg, two leg, bend the knee – but unless he questioned Jochi on his gait he couldn’t be certain whether the problem were actual. In fact he had had patches of this before, where he felt he had intercede to work his legs; since in later life his legs were normal, in hindsight he suspected malnutrition.
Calm, now, didn’t descend on him like the grace of God; he had to exert himself for every inch, every ounce. That is what he did. Jochi didn’t notice a catastrophic difference, on the way there, and back.
In the dumb knowledge that he had to, he stood through his mother’s tirade. They put his misshapen fishes into verse, and they put his mother’s tirade. When next he has to face her wrath he is in his forties – and he quakes in his boots, the Secret History tells us.
To confess to his mother wasn’t asked of him. Either she saw in their eyes or in the fire, for she whirled up at them from a crouch by the fire. Or else the children’s angels... claws, the claws of a black bird at the nape of his neck, tightened on him until he turned his head to the shelf of felt dolls; at a danger the angels scream; did Bagtor’s?
Hoelun’s black sheets of hair were the wings of crow or bat flapping in their faces. Stiffly Temujin turned back, into her forefinger. “That one – that one warned me from my very womb, and burst out with blood in his hand, a clot of black blood in his hand. A violent fate is his. Ah, had I known, had I known – had I understood, I had never freed him from the cord that joined us, I had strangled him. And he has led astray this other one, this shaggy beast, this ogre’s changeling.

Like a Khazar pup that gnashes at his belly’s umbilical,
Like the he-camel, fetid and red-eyed with his rut,
That hurtles at, that rams into his calves, his keeper,
Like an eagle amok who attacks her own shadow;
As an anggir can peck her clutch to death in her despair,
As a jackal pack tears to shreds an ostracised dog.

Bloody, bloody, with bloody hands and hearts, my sons come home to me. Are these my sons? I know them not. Who are they?”

His memory blacks out, until, at first light, he came to, under the wagon with the dog Rascal, sore-fingered from his clutch on his fur. Rascal woke too and licked his chin.
Where Jochi slept in the great tent (where they slept together head-to-foot) he whistled through the felt to wake him, and let him know his itinerary that day.
In the quiet of the outcast he followed Tungelig Stream down from the mountains. Along water you always run into people; by noon, at an intersection of waters and of ways, he came across a congregation of twenty. 
A manslaughter must be acknowledged within three days, nine if you are out of range. A concealed manslaughter becomes, by assumption of guilt, murder.
Wolfwhistles greeted Temujin, for his mount, that for a dam had a dumpy, hairy steppe type but for a sire a horse of heaven from Farghana. “What’s that you’re astride, lad? A swan?”
On his back sat Temujin in grimy goats’ hides, worn two years and inadequate, with his exposed skin greased against the spring wind and rain, his wrists rawly bony, his arms, under the grease, slightly blue; from beneath his unshorn hair crept tendrils of the noyon’s tails. He was a curiosity – a scarecrow on a dandy’s steed. 
Admiration of the horse led to how he had come by him. “Yesugei’s? You are Yesugei’s? Blow me down.”
The twenty gathered here had once been Kiyat. “The chief doesn’t like us to talk of your father’s days.”
“No. Kiyat’s a dirty word and Yesugei’s a worse. It’s Tayichiut and it’s Tarqutai and no sentimentals about the past.”
“Nostalgia’s a flogging offence.”
“We knew you was alive, lad, up in the mountains, but we keep that amongst ourselves, us ex-Kiyat. We think he thinks you succumbed years ago. Women and kids on your own, aren’t you?”
“Of course he’s heartbroken, to believe you can’t have survived a winter.”
“Just in case, though, he’s strict about where we camp. We’re not meant to stray this near the mountains, but we meet here to avoid his patrols. He makes out Uriangqot are a tribe of evil wizards and much given to theft of children. However, we don’t reckon Uriangqot are his problem.”
“He has a problem. You know, if only he forgot Yesugei, he’d give us a chance to. That’s envy for you. Envy of a man he understands was far above him.”
“You want to watch your step, Yesugei’s lad, in Tayichiut, which is where you are. On a wander, are you? Might be time to turn about.”
“Glad to meet you, lad, and don’t go without a whip-around. Here, have a piece of cheese. Maybe we can meet more often. But he does have patrols.”
Temujin told those close about him, “I have a matter to air.”
A man with a stringy moustache that hung past his jaw took charge of him. “You have a matter to circulate? – Quiet for Yesugei’s lad.” The man steered him into the midst of the twenty strangers. “He’s down from the mountains to put an item in circulation.”
Temujin stood with the piece of cheese he had been given in his hand and said, “I have slain a man. Yesterday, on Olir Ulqu of the upper Onon, where he lies. He was Bagtor, son of Yesugei of Kiyat and Goagchin of Jangsiut. I claim grounds on his offences and am ready to answer to my tribal judges on demand.”
There was silence, until one said, “Here’s a turn-up,” and another, “Here’s a fix.”
“Is he old enough?”
“Temujin, lad.” The man with the moustache. “You can’t be quite fifteen? Bor Nor baby, weren’t you?”
“No, I’m fourteen.”
Discussion began around him. “It’s the right thing to do.”
“He has to.”
“Pity the item circulates in Tayichiut.”
“He has to.”
“Can’t he circulate in Uriangqot?”
“No, he can’t. He isn’t Uriangqot.”
“Since when is he Tayichiut?”
“Kiyat are Tayichiut nowadays. There’s nowhere else for him. He can’t default, can he?”
“Might be safer to.”
“It’s frequently safer to default.”
“Unusual case. What can Tarqutai do with a case like that? His, um, his half-brother. What can’t Tarqutai do with that?”
“Arbitrary as he is when his rights are touched.”
“Yes, deaf in the defence ear if you’re not a big fan. We’ve seen the trumped-up charges. This is just to hand him over on a platter.” 
“He’s underage. Not even Tarqutai cuts heads off children.”
“For Tangr’s love. Be subtle.”
“Needs to bloody know, doesn’t he?”
“Temujin, lad.” The man with the moustache again. “You do rightly to acknowledge. Once we’ve heard you, we have a duty to pass on. This gives the victim’s kith and kin the chance to counter-accuse, and acquaints your chief with the case. Our duty is as solemn as yours. Once we’ve heard you. Me – ask my wife – I often need to be told twice. Do you want to go ahead?”
“Yes.”
“Right we are. I heard that. And he’s heard enough out of you people. Now, Temujin, you need three witnesses, who are to attend you at your trial. They testify to your prompt and free acknowledgement, and also to your character, that they know no reproach of you. My name is Arsorol son of Ardajab. I’ll stand witness for you.”
A short pause. “Bichac son of Bogdo. I undertake to attend you at your trial.”
“Golme son of Ganche. I’ll be there.”

By dusk he was home, and bivouacked under the wagon again with a mat and Rascal. There Jochi found him. He had eaten his cheese – his first bite to eat since yesterday sunrise – but he sent to the ger by Jochi the results of the whip-around, whatever aliment the twenty ex-Kiyat had on them.
Jochi delivered the bag and returned to him. “The kids are thrilled you’re back. Temulun, I don’t know where from, got the idea she’d never see you again. She was set to gallop after you – to spit fire in your aid, I guess, since she isn’t armed. They’re not allowed to come out.”
He didn’t venture on questions. He didn’t have to.
“Belgers, he’s been quiet – when isn’t he? – with his mother, mostly. But he’d have given me to know by now if he took against what we done. He’d have thumped me, and I say of Belgutei, a thump from him I’d feel. He hasn’t eyed me ill.”
Temujin didn’t altogether believe Jochi’s situation report, but he’d only tweak and you can’t tweak more than three-quarters the way from the truth. And that was comfort. “Has Hoelun banished me? Or ought I hide the axe?”
“How about me? I’m an ogre’s changeling. It’s a fair call. There’s a resemblance.” 
At this effort to cheer him up Temujin tried to smile. “I’m...” But he found too hard to say. There were areas he couldn’t enter into consciously. Areas to do with his father, and with the faith his father had put in that stupid tolgechi’s stupid interpretation of the stupid, stupid clot of blood. The omen that only meant he was going to slay his father’s son.
None of this Temujin more than half-thought: he thought the stupid, stupid and left the rest to lurk in the depths like a pike. 
“Oops,” said Jochi.
This was a caution or alarm: Hoelun had exited the tent. As she directed her step towards them in the gloom Temujin attempted to rally. “Promise me.”
“Yep.”
“If my head’s stuck on the battlements – I mean the lintel...” Halfway through he adjusted from a joke. “Deposit me on Holy Old Haldun. And tell Jamuqa –” he got into the spirit – “tell Jamuqa, don’t shoot your uglies. You might be sorry.”
Her tower hat cut out a triangle of starry sky. Her face was indistinct. Not in a scream she instructed, “Go inside, Jochi.”
“Tem and me...” he started, to be loyal.
“Jochi.”
With a pained mock-thump on Temujin’s knee he got up and traipsed towards the tent.
“Tell me what happened today, Temujin.”
He did. She cross-examined him for their comments on Tarqutai.
“Did you notice, Temujin, these three who offer to witness for you have to fear his mistrust, at least, incur his scrutiny? Quite possibly worse. You don’t want them to suffer for what they do for you?”
Uncertainly he shook his head.
“Tomorrow we can discuss this, Temujin. Tonight we need to eat and sleep. You’ll come into the tent and partake of what you have brought from them?”
His fingers curled in the dog’s ruff.
“Yesterday.” She tripped slightly. “Yesterday I was vehement. I don’t wish I had strangled you.”
He gave a nod.
As if involuntarily she went on, “There is... there is...”
He waited, with the wolf-fighter dog beside him and the heavy wagon chassis overhead. 
“I have a message for you,” she rushed out. “A message for you from your father. He insists I say, he insists.” In a gasp, “Yesugei has forgiven you.”
Right away, this, a statement he’d have gone quickly to his ruin without, didn’t seep far into his numb mind. That took time. Nevertheless, when, after a few moments, his mother reached to him, he clutched her hand as one who fears to drown.

How can I watch my loved ones in conflict? You wonder, but I watch with less pain than you imagine. It’s more my fault than any, for a start.
No.
Why, yes, Hoelun, though you don’t like to say. You have bent over backwards to make up to Bagtor. I never meant ill. I didn’t know what to do. In the cracks he got neglected. The plague demon began with a child neglected.
Don’t yoke together...
Oh, Bagtor won’t make a demon. Do you know what’s he said to me, up here?
No, Yesugei.
See, I’d admitted to him he wants to haunt me, from a row of the faulty, and he came out, he has too much of me in him, to haunt.
Yesugei’s thoughts paused and she kept a quiet in her mind.
I’d tell you, Hoelun, how affected I am, only, you know. Even a spirit can be lost for words. Don’t mind about us. Here where we are, for the first time we see each other fully. I do better with him up here, Hoelun, I promise you. Can I be sad, who never saw my loved ones until now?
Later in the night he spoke again.
I have less pain, because of how we spirits see. The trees in the forest we see as they see themselves: every tree a universe unto itself in its own experience. This ability of sight our shamans call a sorrow, and yet they’d never swap, of course. Shamans feel the grief of each and every tree, a great sorrow, a great gift. – To you, I dare say, we can’t see the forest for the trees. To you we’re in a muddle. 
It is just that we live on earth. Temujin does. On earth where we have earthly justice.
If you can find him a court. 
I can punish him.
Now, Hoelun. Hoelun, we have one of them there with you and one of them here with me. Let us love them for each other.
She was moved.
Isn’t a shaman the hero who always puts his foot in the spokes of a vicious circle?
I said that.
Yes. There’s only one sensible way to assail a vicious circle. No haunts, Hoelun, no haunts. It is my motto. No feuds, no vicious circles.
I won’t make him vicious. I won’t eject him to fend for himself. That is how to make a savage beast. But he can’t get off scot-free. 
Who ever got off scot-free? I never did in my life. I’m a skeptic on scot-free, scot-free’s a fantasy.
Yesugei, you are being too spiritual for me.
Try this simile for size. Perpetrators and victims? – insects at different stages of their life-cycle. The hairy caterpillar whom you’d never pick for a butterfly. The grub burgeoned into a huge green horsefly you want to swat – but do you want to, when you see him in his stages? When you see the whole of the cycle, blame becomes impossible.
Like the astrolabe whose rings-within-rings we failed to sort out.
Or that might be the right analogy for earthly justice. My judicial duties were a massive headache to me. First I had to learn the intricacies, then try to align the poor instrument to the heavens. A perfect analogy, Hoelun. Fortunately you and I don’t have to fiddle with the astrolabe, not in this case. It’s much simpler for us.
Simple, simple? she cried accusingly. You simplify, Yesugei. You are soft.
I can’t help that. It’s our great religious lesson. Toghrul tells me about a heresy popular on the steppe, Universalism, belief in the eventual salvation of the Devil and his legions, ultimately, their switch back to their angel origins. There’s our great religious lesson, still in the heads of the Christians. Our shamans are healers, our approach is medical. To the shaman’s instincts the Devil can only be a patient. Sick souls, damaged minds – why, our witch doctors see no evil. A circle is holy. We can only heal. That’s my lesson, Hoelun. We can only heal.
Have you talked to Toghrul lately?
Yes, I have. And he’s talked back to me.
Yesugei, are you here?
Either I’m here, or you’ve come over saintly.
Oh, you give yourself away. You’re me. Me, struggling to be you. What if I’ve got you wrong?
You’ve got me right.

10. A Yoke about his Neck 
If a sparrow in escape from a sparrowhawk flies for refuge to a bush, does the bush shut its branches? The bush opens its branches and saves the sparrow’s life.
The Secret History of the Mongols, passage 85
Above them the Milky Way splurged across the sky and lavishly, ostentatiously outshone the other stars. Bultachu liked to be outside. Their guests had gone in half an hour ago and yet he gazed overhead, without a change of face, without an avowal how he felt. The news about Yesugei’s son hadn’t been stressed, had almost been forgotten and left out, and Bultachu – speckled as he was with the pocks of random arrows – had grunted at most. 
What have we come to, wondered Prajna, that in a batch of news we can make noises in our throats to hear of strife at our hearths, our children murderers?
A man in her husband’s condition, who is pushed on wheels or pulled on a sled, lives while he finds reason. People gave him reason. People came on pilgrimage to him, the Last of the Old Mongols, as to a reliquary, to a shrine, and for like purposes: to ask for guidance, to be blest by a glimpse of a higher life in his reminiscences. It wasn’t a career he ever saw for himself, he said, his second, a holy hermit in a cave with incense thrown at him. But he made a fist of it.
People came because he answered them with hope. Discreet though he had to be on his specific cause for hope – on God’s promise – in the pessimism of the times his belief in the future drew them and lifted their spirits. If the old hero, crippled since Bor Nor, they thought, can stay in heart and not despair of us, then so can I.
How was he to answer them now?
Prajna consigned to the pit the idiot boy. Not for what he had done, but for what he had done to her husband. Disappointment was more a blow to him than to a man on his feet. She who had patched him up and put him back together again, the way she fixed the carts and wagons only far more often, she was afraid for him. A wife knows a healthy hurt from insidious harm and she fears most a troubled wound, as when he has seen too much for him or lost the fight. However flinty-faced he feels he has to be out there, at home his hurts are searched; and so she said, “A queer piece of news. A sad disappointment to you, my dear.”
Slowly he came out of his abstraction. He munched, like an old man. Then he declared, “What you have to do to get into the news. Five years and no word he’s alive. As though nobody cared. Dead heroes’ sons, I understand, are three-for-a-goat these days. Still, you’d think people might investigate and not say, they’re rumoured to have starved in the mountains. Our own queen hasn’t been spotted now three winters, and that’s the news they tell me. By damn and by blast we need leadership.”
This avoidance was unlike him. “The thirst is there – that’s why they flock to you. The cream of them do. We needn’t give up hopes to live to see, Bultachu, leadership, safe hands, a future, even if not from the one we had vested our faith in.”
“You’re quick to write off Temujin. But that’s traditional. They wrote his great-grandfather off.”
Avoidance, or worse? “For drunkenness...”
“There was what he got up to when he was drunk. That young hooligan Khabul? – he’ll end on the gallows afore he’s wived. These Daft Bodonjar lookalikes, they take after Bodonjar, they get off to a slow start, or a messy start. Bartan, he was overemotional, he’d explode like Chinese firecrackers and they didn’t think he’d live to breed. They’re always touch-and-go. It’s a mark. They correct themselves. That’s a mark too.”
“To murder his brother.”
“You never know, maybe the principle works in inverse ratio.”
Right. He had decided to be preposterous. “People won’t have him. They won’t have him, Bultachu, end of story.”
“I’m afraid he’s to be had. He’s next in. When Tangr sticks his neck out with a forecast, Tangr knows the weather. The lad isn’t going for sainthood. Even if he were, a few saints were sinners once. It’s how they earn their stripes.”
“Bultachu.” 
“Have a squint at the epics. In the epics, a hero, he never does things by halves. It’s how you tell him. I don’t mean us ha’penny ba’aturs, now, I mean the legends. Doesn’t matter what they do, they have to be wholehearted – wholehearted and a half.

Say have a draught of water – he gulps poison.
Say take off your hat, he twists off his head.
Say shed a drop of blood, he slits a belly.

Portrait of a hero. It’s the criteria. He overdoes. He goes too far. I don’t mean Cutula, now, who ate too much of a sheep. I guess that’s a rendition.”
“This is extravagance, my husband.” 
“Extravagance: you’ve put your finger on the word. Extravagant energies, an exaggeration. Aren’t I right?”
“I am in general happy for epic characters to stay in the epics.”
“Once were history, you know, once were history. Once were the history-makers. Take into account what he has on. Only to fight Bor Nor again and win. Only to trounce Tartary and China. If he came to me to ask me how, I’d be a dead loss to him. I’ll tell you how, though, my wife: through what the legends have. No, this time we need one of them. This time Khabul might be too tame. Lay him on with a trowel. The legend, he’s described to curl your hair, he’s the bristly brindled blue-maned wolf, he glares red when he’s roused. Beneath that once was a person. What was he like? He gave a few people the willies.”
“Here rests your case for him?”
“You can’t do things by halves when you’re out to trounce China. You have to have a tendency to overshoot.”
“It’s a positive sign?”
“Are you so certain-sure it isn’t?”
Conceivably he knew more about heroes. Or not. She had to live with one. And now and then, indeed, he went beyond the limits of lesser mortals. She had learnt when to let him have his way. “Husband, after forty years, you haven’t lost your powers to strike me speechless.”
Incongruously to sense, he wasn’t crumpled up from the blow; his chest inflated and he winked at his wife. “No, I haven’t, but a chap’s a horny goat, laid on his back.”
“Bultachu, honest to God, you are, with the worst of them, impossible.”
“Oh, I’m quite possible,” he said.

“The dribblers have teethed. The chicks who tumbled out of the nest live, and moult their infant down.”
Tarqutai Kiril-Tuq, on the other hand, ill concealed his disappointment. Straight away he dispatched an officer of his Scarlet Guard to call the young delinquent to trial.
The officer met with more than he bargained for in the delinquent’s mother. Then again he ought to have known what to expect: her old intransigence towards the late Orboi Queen was a tale, and years of self-ostracism in the mountains hadn’t ameliorated Hoelun. Officer Toj had to take back to Tarqutai her rejection, on the brat’s behalf, of his rights over her and hers, his claim to chieftaincy. Of the four tribal rights – grass and water, aid in need, aid against enemies, justice – from him she had felt the advantages of none; after five years he thought to exert the last, the last without the others? If ever he had had rights they were forfeit.
Next step, Tarqutai sent a squad of the Scarlet Guard to arrest Temujin.
A Uriangqot in the early marshes with his elk saw them, didn’t like the look of them and jumped on his stag to warn Hoelun. The outer bog had puzzled them but they were through, and now, he estimated from the feel in the ground, only an hour behind him. 
“They’ve come for me,” said Temujin.
“It is as I told you,” Hoelun answered swiftly. “You don’t think this eagerness sprouts from disinterested justice?”
“No, mother, I see.”
“Funnily enough, lamb, you threaten him. – Children, onto horse. Jochi... don’t forget your bow.”
Jochi’s face was fit to bottle as an elixir. “More like,” he spasmed on the quiet to Temujin.
Hoelun bustled them into the thickest of the forest. But they were kids on harebrained young horses and their pursuers a soldierly elite; shortly they glimpsed scarlet through the leaves. There was a fissure in a cliff with a narrow rear exit. They went to ground. Under-tens she sent into the dim, spiderwebby belly of the cave with the horses, and told Belgutei to pile branches across the mouth. Belgutei, boy giant, tore up trees the way others shred bark; Hoelun and Temujin stacked his wreckage into a barricade.
The squad, eleven guards and a guard-captain with scarlet rosettes on their breasts and a scarlet flag, both silk, trotted up and deployed in front of the cave. The captain announced, “We’re here to –”
“Miss them by a hair, Jochi,” were her instructions.
Arrows puffed past them and they flinched as from great snowflakes that nearly slapped into their faces. Out of the archer, at least, each close shave fetched a high-pitched pant. Squeal was unfair. Belgutei smiled to watch him. The squad backed off behind a screen of trees and the captain unslung his horn to talk. “There’s no need for that sort of an argument. We’re here to deliver Temujin to trial. He has undertaken to stand trial honestly. Why be idiots now? The rest of you, you’re of no interest to us – unless you harbour a fugitive. That’s what you’ll be, lad, a fugitive from justice, if you fail to answer to your chief. Be sensible, Lady Hoelun. Don’t force my hand.”
Resolutely – they had managed to scare him by this time – Temujin asked, “Do I go out, mother?”
“Yes. You go out the back.” She swivelled him by the shoulders towards the rear cranny of light. “Hide in the woods. Sit tight until you hear us call. Don’t be naive and listen to them, Temujin. Tarqutai’s motives leak out of the bag. Nowadays he is a big chief with aim to be the biggest, and we are rivals, the old chiefly family of Kiyat. I’d not be sworn he stickles at cutting heads off children, when they put their heads between his jaws. Even if he keeps you in the larder until you are fifteen. That isn’t far away.”
He gawped up over his shoulder. “I won’t be naive, mother.”
In one of her casual horoscopes she told him, “Why, you will live and die naive. Go.” She urged him with a shove.
On the upper side of the cliff Temujin had thought to slip into the deers’ tunnels. Instead he came out on an acre burnt naked. They hadn’t smelt the ashes in the cave. If he crossed the burnt ground he must be seen by the Tayichiut beneath. After the empty patch stood the eaves of Tergune Wood, untouched by fire. Not even deer had paths through Tergune Wood, trodden only by the light feet of birds, its triple crags of whitish stone a birds’ temple, said the Uriangqot. It was try his luck there or go back into the cave and start a serious fight. Aloud he petitioned the spirits of the wood, “May I come in? I have nowhere else to go.” And he pelted upslope.
The Tayichiut sighted him and gave chase. Glittery greens swathed the trees to their feet, like a stallion who has to toss his head to see. The undergrowth was a jumble, a jungle. Even if he had to unhorse and wriggle, he had twelve soldiers on his tail and he was keen to get in. Dead ahead he saw a dark hollow, roughly the size of a door. For once his horse didn’t jib but trotted right in with forward ears. With dark tangle either side of them they went as freely as on grass, without a twig or a root to lash or trip them. The spirits of the wood had answered him.
Echoey and indistinct of direction, he heard the squad blunder about the trees that obstructed them. “Where did he go in? Did you see where?” They made a comedy, if you listened from safety. They barged in and yelled the results: “No, I’m stuck. Can’t have been here. It’s too tight for a gorged snake.” They crawled and yet found nowhere to go.
“I humbly thank you, grandfathers,” whispered Temujin to the wood.
He wandered where the passage led – an aisle, arched over his head, as if a secret cloister for the spirits to walk in the flesh. He hoped to meet one. Down at the ankles of the most enormous cedars he had seen, the day was a green shadow, where dead trees listed into the arms of others, where great tents of moss hung and webs tough as string, where beetles, beetles in neat battalions and gem armour, ran like ambulant carpets. Up in the forest roof birds warbled and whistled, cackled and cawed. Funnily, he saw no trace of animals.
He sensed he had gone in a circle, when the green dusk changed to a green dawn ahead and a man spoke almost in his ear. “My whittle says we’ve lost him.”
Temujin stopped. Here he was at his door again, and had been about to wander right out.
“I don’t want your whittle.”
“What do you want?”
“Shagreen pouch?”
“My shagreen pouch says we’ve lost him.”
“Scored. You’re in a throwaway mood, Dar. He isn’t lost, he’s in the wood and we have the wood surrounded. Since when do we call off a chase? Captain won’t front His Royal Scarlet Arse without him.”
“I’ve got a hunch.”
“Last hunch you had turned out to be a humpback ape on a warlock’s leash and ripped your arm off.”
“We’ll see.”
“What’s up with you? Ain’t your inclination in?”
“I don’t know. His Scarlet Arse was a trifle strident. Yesugei’s kid, see. We might wait til he’s a size.”
“Dar.”
“What, you going to report me?”
“No, just don’t give me a headache.”
The Tayichiut had staked out the wood. That meant a patience test. He had known Uriangqot to poise a spear over a hole in the ice the whole day, as still as a tree with only the wind to rustle their hair, until a carp swam by. He had known a doe to outwait a wolf, hidden from his eye and ungettable-at in a thicket, until the wolf disbelieved his olfactory senses and went away, and that took time.
So Temujin made himself at home, perfectly safe and not fool enough to walk out to them: they’d get bored before he did, because he didn’t want his head cut off. He sat on boughs or the beetles ran straight over him. Not to freeze he slept in a leaf drift with its insects. The horse had never spent a night alone, without several of his kind in his ears and nostrils. He was about Temujin’s equivalent in age, cut from a colt three months ago and still in school. None of their mounts by Toghrul’s stallion had a name, because horses have description-names and they were so alike, whipped up of milk and cream with meltingly dark eyes. Temujin began to call his Pinky, for a spot on the lip. Most of the next day he took care of him. They found a sort of creeper he had a mind to eat, and he slurped the odorous damp from a log. Which Temujin lapped too, but what was he to eat? It wasn’t the time of year for cedar cones or berries, and any stalk or root he thought of, the beetles had eaten. Eat the beetles? He wasn’t that hungry, though tribes of the deep forest did. There were seriously no animals whatsoever: strictly birds and insects in the temple. As an animal Temujin saw how gracious they had been to take him in. A thorough search of his clothes came up with a forgotten cheese nugget and a little curl of dried meat, too old and dark to identify. These he counted as two meals.
On the third day he thought the squad might have given up. He had no way to tell, though he tried to keep an ear out through the noise of birds. Didn’t Tarqutai’s Guard have bigger fish to fry? He wasn’t much to fuss over. He’d been meant to wait for his family to call, only he’d never hear them over the birds.
I can’t stay here forever, can I?
He buckled up Pinky’s gear and led him on the path to the one way out he had found, the way they came in.
Behind him, very close behind, a slither and a big flop-thump. Temujin jumped and Pinky skittered. The horse gear lay on the ground, and daintily Pinky stepped his hind hooves out of the loop of the girth. How did that happen? He must have passed under a tree arm and the seat had been swept off. With the girth, that Temujin mightn’t have tightened. With the chest-strap still done up. That wasn’t even possible.
From head to foot he shivered, and yet felt suffused with warmth as if he had stepped into a sunbeam. Glued against Pinky he gazed at the trunks, bark split and peeled with age, the splayed tufts at the end of the branches like fingers, he smelt a mist of their fragrance and said directly to the cedars – since he didn’t know who had helped him – “Grandfathers, your care for me is far past my power of return. God keep you strong and green, and undisturbed here in your holy wood. Bless ye, bless Tergune’s birds, peace to their nests and increase to their beetle herds.”
He turned around and led his horse back into the wood.
By the sixth day both his horse and he were famished, and droopy, and slightly crazed with the blast of bird-talk. He felt he had been here a fair fraction of his life. He had stomached a few soft grubs. No squad was going to sit on their heels for six days for the sake of an underaged trial-dodger. Temujin took the path out again, his cream horse a ghostly green in a dawn more smelt than sighted.
Light struck into the eaves and smattered his unused eyes with fireflies. While these confused him he felt a quake, he heard a groany wheeze and glimpsed the crash of a missile through the trees. Did Tayichiut have catapults? Was he under siege? Instinct dropped him to the ground. A white hulk, the shape of a travel-tent, squatted in the path, a drift of spangled dust above. The triple crags of Tergune had thrown down a chunk of rock and plugged the gap.
In the quiet that ensued a Tayichiut swore, “Holy Mother of God.”
Temujin, from flat on his face, got onto his knees.
On the ninth day he lolled in musty leaves, sluggish, dull, listless and indifferent. Hours went by between the times he bothered to turn his head. There wasn’t much to look at, whereas his inner eye laid out for him a phantasmagoria of food. His intellect engaged deeply with kitchen questions. For instance, the great schism: boiling or roasting? The flock-owner, whose watchword is husbandry, twitches to see fat spitting into the air, juices hissing off in the flames. Boiling keeps the very last fatty globule in the pot. But in the forest, where wild animals belong to no-one but themselves, where Agha Rich gives freely of his pelf and pelts, parsimony is the only sin. And truth to tell, if Temujin had a choice, a crispy haunch of roast deer or boiled mutton...
A caw, bleak, pregnant with woe, as caws are, interrupted this fantasy. Temujin shook out of his glassy stare and focused on a huge crow, cock-headed on a tree’s foot level with his face. Its beady eye inspected him. It might be here to pluck my eyes out, Temujin thought, and on the other hand might be my guardian in fleshly vehicle. He went with the latter theory, to be safe. “Grandfather, you have given me asylum from my enemies, me, a snake’s sloughed skin, in your sanctuary where I trespass. But grandfather, Pinky and I are only animals and we have nought to eat.”
The crow opened its beak and uttered its poignant caw. It flew off.
He ate an insect he retched at and decided insects weren’t for him. A few were toxic, but unlike mushrooms he hadn’t been taught which ones. On his ninth day almost without sustenance – and he hadn’t had great store of fat to tide him over – he felt, with revulsion, the effects creep over him, cripple his ability to act... his ability to want to. There were two extreme options: birds and horse’s blood. Birds weren’t to be thought of and he drove the thought from his mind. And although he had fond memory of blood sausage, straight from the vein was another matter: an emergency food for soldiers, mostly, the portion the spirits eat at sacrifices, liquid blood, that disgusts a mortal stomach – Mongols don’t even like raw milk, which has to be churned at least. Temujin didn’t know where to bleed Pinky or how to patch him up. You can’t bungle these things. Spillages in butchery are very bad. Besides he thought he might be sick again.
It was meant to be thoroughly horrible to bleed to death, which is to watch your soul glug and gurgle out of you. The gash-weapons – battleaxe, blade – are for the strongest stomachs. Head-cutting, the criminals’ death, splashily lets blood, but quickly. He’d rather have his head cut off than this, this bleed, though not of blood, this extinguishment, physical and mental, slow. One by one his lights guttered and went out. He’d cease to care. He hated this. People want to go intact, but he wasn’t intact. Blood was piffle, obviously. The most miserable way to go? Chinese have a death by vivisection: on the first day they cut off your little fingers, five days to go through the digits of the hands, on the sixth day the wrists, the seventh we’re up to the elbows. Week two is little toes to knees. Their doctors suture the veins, their doctors treat each amputation and it’s shock that kills. Not in his mother’s lessons, that, but kids find out these things. He didn’t hurt, but he didn’t like this sensation, of what he was reduced, deducted from, of being less and less himself, more and more miserable a creature. Like the vivisected captive he just wanted to get out. If that cost him his head, fine. So this is starvation?
Kids told about Mogusi, sentenced to be hacked apart at the joints: the next question was, fast or slow? and the magistrate says, slow. And Mogusi – the spirit behind United Tartary – with Tartar grit goes, you can chop my limbs up, fast or slow, but you can’t lop up my people. Sadly, this hadn’t proven to be gospel, and yet remained a famous answer and him an inspiration. Why have I got Tartars on the brain?
A Mongol can have Tartar grit, if he has a bit of Tartar spirit. On your feet, Temujin. Don’t just lie there.
My brain’s curled up.
Put off til tomorrow and Irle knows he has you. Tonight, or finish here ingloriously without a name.
Without a name? It’s not as though I believe what I used to.
Weren’t you named for Tartar grit? Then again, how about you earn your own? On your feet, Temujin, or I’ll tell your dad I had to disown you.
What?
In the bird-quiet that meant night he staggered up and took Pinky by the ear. “It’s time to go, pet. I’ve talked to trees, I’ve talked to a crow, but I don’t know who I’m talking to now.”
He had to cut his way out with his whittle, in the hedge either side of the block of white stone, an outrage on his hosts, but he did. He battled through and pulled his horse, who was only twelve hands high, after him. He hadn’t had time to mount when a big hand caught hold of his coat-neck.
In their bivouac they gave him dinner leftovers: a carcass of baked hare with most of the meat attached. As he wolfed this down he grew back, like the lizard’s tail, from his stump of self, and when he wiped his mouth life, again, was more than food. However, possibly he had just bargained one for the other.
“Hit the spot, lad?” asked the guard captain. The whole squad, now, withdrawn from surveillance around the wood, sat and watched him.
Temujin said, “Sorry for the trouble. I won’t cause you any more.”
The captain scraped his cheek with a thumb. “No, we’ve had a few nights out, and we’ve seen a wad of forest. A youngster like you hasn’t much to be afraid of.” He glanced to one of his soldiers. “Dar, do you want to lead that horse off, in direction of his folks?”
Pinky wafted about beyond the fire circle. “Bye, Pinky,” said Temujin. When the soldier Dar turned his head he thought of the shagreen pouch and smiled at him.
With the sky grey in the east they tidied their site and the captain told him impassively, “In an arrest we yoke the party.”
“Oh,” said Temujin.
They clamped a prisoner’s yoke on him and fastened him in the wrist-slings either end. The neck hole, front and back, was smooth and dark from use, and he wondered who else had been in here and what happened to them. He felt vulnerable around the neck area. If they led him straight to the chop-block in this he’d never have an opportunity to fight. What if they did? No-one wants to be dragged. People walk, not to be dragged. Had to drag him, they say of rare and abject cases. There was Jamuqa to hear how he went. If I’m flogged to death before I’m fifteen, Temujin, I can tell you one thing: I never groveled.
A howl, neither human nor animal but from a creature not invented yet, punctuated their departure. It was Jochi’s battlecry, that he had worked on for years. Obviously, though, the squad of guard were inured: they had heard the caterwaul before, even if Temujin hadn’t, in the wood. “Yes, your brother’s kept an eye on us,” the captain told him.
“Can I...?”
“Eh?”
“Can I just call to him? No mischief.”
“You go ahead.”
In the yoke Temujin turned and shouted, “I decided to go with them, Jochi. Don’t worry. Look out for the kids. I’ll see you.”

“That’s him?”
Kiril-Tuq had wrinkled right over in disbelief. “That’s the defendant for trial, sir,” said Captain Amurat.
“You haven’t got me the twelve-year-old by mistake?” 
“No, sir. No, he’s tall for the age he is, stood up. On the thin side.”
“Thin?” Again Kiril-Tuq bent to peer through the lattice, then with a finger at the object of remark said accusingly to his guard captain, “He’s blue.”
Captain Amurat felt he had to apologise. “In effect we starved him out, I’m sorry, sir, and though we’ve fed him, you mightn’t see him at his best. Perhaps he’d shape up with a wash.” 
Kiril-Tuq shook his head and muttered, “What am I meant to do with this?”
The mutter told Captain Amurat plenty. It told him the kid’s sentence had been determined, but now? The chief had to think about perceptions.
Tarqutai did. He saw he had to change his strategy. When a lad who isn’t legal yet puts paid to his adult brother, you have grounds to treat him cautiously. To exhibit fear of... this... he’d be laughed at, but to be fair, you imagine a young dragon and you await an offer to sort out your old differences by axe and ox-hide targe. You think, here’s a type to demand his rights, to push his claims. This skin-and-bones child couldn’t swing a squirrel, never mind an axe, and the big fixed eyes in the grimy face were scared. This tatterdemalion a threat to his chieftaincy?
Nip the head off this, he’d be laughed at forever and there is nothing more pestilential to authority. There and then he adjusted his strategy. “Schedule him for today’s session. Leave him in the yoke. Don’t clean him up.”
“Yes, sir.”

Trumpets blew for the justice session and the Tayichiut Princes convened in the great tent. Slaves held sunshades over their heads, which is seen on the streets in China but in Persia is a royal prerogative. Silk umbrellas didn’t quite suit the burlier princes, like squat Uncle Gugah with his very Mongol walk. Temujin knew these people, had camped with them five years ago. It was hard to take them seriously in the pomp and circumstance. Perhaps he’d better, though, since he was up for trial.
He stood in the queue outside, his hands still hung at shoulder level. Over the lintel was set a stone mosaic with a wolf’s head in a helmet, certainly a Turk antiquity. Turks claim descent from a she-wolf who suckled a mutilated child left for the crows, and later had his children; and turk, they say, meant helmet.
Two or three times Tarqutai issued out to his porch, in between cases, to flare his nostrils and contemplate the distance. His coat was an astonishment: gilt stitchery on a glossy cream quilt, the kind of material that travels in a caravan from Samarkand. The kind of coat you picture for Attai Taiji’s, that he draped on Balaqachi’s shoulders when they cried the black-bones a hero. In a timeless fashion of the steppe one can never wear too much gold. However, you felt Attai had earnt his; and he gave his away.
The guard captain, in whose custody he remained, bent and said into his ear, “Gaudy, isn’t he? Usurps the sun. When your turn comes, step up bravely. It isn’t out to the axe for you. I happen to know.”
Most sincerely Temujin whispered back, “Thank you, sir.”
His turn came. For an interval Tarqutai laid aside the aspect of a judge and came forward to greet him; he touched Temujin behind his ears, in his cuffs with a heavy crust of gilt. “We are old friends. I hope you remember me?”
Yes. He had a face like a fish’s, because his eyes were wide apart and his lips pursed. When he stretched his lips from ear to ear like that he was very fishy.
After this fond exhibition he resumed his judgement seat. “I have already told my court, Temujin, I cannot try you. In legal terms you are a child. Yet neither can I quite exonerate you, or free you without demonstration of how seriously we see your offence. We are agreed to hold you in detention, a short detention but perhaps sufficient time for you to think about what you have done. The yoke stays on, Temujin. Even so, I won’t tether you to a stake by the dung heap to grow dull-witted. No, you can see life in my camp, a kind of life you haven’t been used to. Daily life, and attend people on their daily business; and spend the nights by turn in the tents of my headquarters. You were quick as a child, Temujin, and you’ll quickly pick up the spit and polish you have been deprived of. And my end? After a month or two I mean to take that yoke off and induct you into my Guard. We have a squires’ rank. You’ll learn and be among other boys your age. Come to me unequipped, for in your father’s stead, for sake of his old aid to me, I take on to outfit you, and once in my Guard, of course, I maintain you. It’s a career, Temujin. A forward lad like you, with a brain, with spirit, is assured to make an officer; we pride ourselves on our soldiership, you’ll acquire the skills, and I promise you won’t lack for excitement. This is my sentence.” He glanced either side, smiled gently and spoke to his court audience. “Mild, a father’s sentence, but I feel the boy hasn’t had a chance. Like a colt on the loose he has wildened in the mountains; I mean to school him, and I think he’ll turn out very nicely. He simply needs discipline, and the yoke is to teach him that; Temujin, you won’t like the yoke, but to be indulgent, try to understand, isn’t in your interests. Were your father alive he’d have told you no differently. When we school a colt, we discipline him out of love.” Gravely he surveyed his face, and then gave a nod to the guard captain. “Dismissed.” 

They unstrapped his hands at times he had need of them, that is to eat and to undo his trousers, but the yoke was to stay on night and day. The aches, the neck-crick gone crazy, the shortage of sleep, the want of a moment’s comfort: these were a way to wear him down, without infliction of the lash that’s too blatant. This let itself be called a gentle correction. From his punishment Temujin extracted the sense that Tarqutai had a subtle, cruel mind. Which wasn’t to say he was clever. Clever’s different. In fact he’d put him down as a lame-brain. His own Guard spoke of him slanderously, and no wonder, if this is how he conscripts them. And he has a fancy to be king, that’s obvious too. Yesugei had said: Men who have that perversion that is not the wish to be great, the thirst for glory, but is ambition. If the type I talk of saw their way, they would. That’s started, dad. He’s one of them. But there isn’t much fear – I can’t see him voted in.
Why the giddy round from tent to tent, a day and a night in each? To display his splendours? Temujin had seen life in a tribal headquarters; but perhaps Tarqutai hadn’t forgotten, perhaps he meant to make him hanker for life in the grand old style that once he had been used to. Join up with the Scarlet Guard, I can live like this. Maybe, too, to fix in people’s memory, before he joined the Guard, that he was a criminal and lived by grace of Tarqutai. Disarm him entirely, and then present him with arms and stick a rosette on his chest. And there his troubles began. He’d have to give Tarqutai his oath. He found out what oath the Guard swore: defend and serve, blah blah, unto my death or his or he acquit me. Temujin didn’t want to be a member of the Guard, and worse than that, to swear obedience to Tarqutai? It wasn’t possible. Once he did, Tarqutai might order him to arrest Jochi and he’d have to. It wasn’t possible to swear to Tarqutai; and when he didn’t? That was when his head felt unsteady again on his shoulders. Or no, that was when Tarqutai by accident threw him to his great big guard dogs, in the yoke, and said, oops, look what happened to him.
There was only one answer: he’d have to escape, before he had to refuse to swear an oath.

In a fortnight’s time he tried. It was the feast of the corona of the moon and the whole of headquarters were drunk. Furthermore, Temujin had been towed to the feast by a teenaged Prince of Tayichiut who wasn’t any more doughty than himself. After the carousal he found his chance. In a quiet lane Temujin pulled the lead out of his prince’s hand, upended the yoke – the end with his right wrist beneath – bashed him the once on the side of the head, and took to his heels.
Perhaps his assault wasn’t very efficient. “I’ve lost the prisoner! I’ve lost the prisoner!” bawled his prince pretty lustily. Do you have to boast about that?
He fled into the night. Except the night was nearly as light as the day, what with the moon in her corona. And Tarqutai was pitched in flat meadows, of thick summer grass, higher than his head along the Onon’s banks, but grass doesn’t feel like great defence and they had hounds to scent him out. Where’s the use to run, without a headstart? He’d taken his chance, his single chance. There was no question of his fate if caught.
On the bank of the Onon he had a brainwave. Great-Uncle Cutula had hidden from Tartars underwater, while the Tartars frisked the reeds and went right by him. Temujin slipped into the water. The wood of the yoke served as a float and buoyed him up when he hiked his knees. On that guarantee he wriggled to where the grass hung over, where his feet didn’t touch the bottom. The fishing he had done now came in handy; he paddled his legs to help the yoke keep him afloat. Still, a Mongol in the water wants his hands free. If Tarqutai were to offer him the method of his choice he wouldn’t say, I’d like to drown. And he wouldn’t say, unleash the hounds and chase me. Probably he’d say, can I eat the remains of your feast until I burst?
In these speculations he idled away the time. He honestly didn’t know what to do now, short of turn into an otter.
Then he heard what he knew to be a whip swept through the grass in search. He ceased to paddle. Moments on, right over his head, a quiet laugh. “There you are, you clever lad.”
The voice was familiar. He managed to twist in the water and look up: Syorqan Shar. Shar meant yellow, sun’s yellow, the Suldu chiefly title; but he was a chief enslaved. Temujin had spent a day with him; his boys Tchimbai and Tchilaun, from sympathy, had removed his yoke for the night.
“You’ve upset the princes, you have,” Syorqan Shar said quietly, crouched on his heels. “It’s your brains worry them. Brains aren’t amply distributed in the higher echelons of Tayichiut.” 
Temujin didn’t feel very brainy, stuck in the water. But in the Suldu chief’s ger talk had been none too unctuous about their masters Tayichiut; this one was on his side. “Are they out in search of me, Syorqan Shar?”
“Yes, the princely brigade are out in search. Unfortunately the princely brigade are blind drunk. As for the soldiers, they’d be ashamed to be found on their feet. Kiril-Tuq won’t keep them out. He can’t. He’s squiffy as a turtle himself. No-one can make out his orders – Uncle Gugah thinks he’s off on flights of Ancient Turk. Uncle Gugah was always the most sensible of them, and he’s threatened to wait for sun-up, and Mongol.” With enormous amusement, seen by the great globe of the moon, he gave Temujin a nod and wink, and went away.
In an hour he was back, and leant an elbow on his knee. “We’ve had attrition. Those stalwarts still in the game I’ve sent to search the ground they searched before, with a flea in their ear from Tarqutai. He knows you must be laid in the grass. Or I believe that’s what he said. I argued we’d only get confused to switch our search areas, and they were alive to the truth in that. The slave’s revenge is to be sober: I was at my churn while they were at their pots. I can keep this up the night, and send them round in circles where I know you aren’t.”
“Excuse me, sir,” intruded Temujin. “Would you unstrap my hands?”
At this his face changed and he got up off his heels. “I may be seen,” he mumbled. “On these flats. No gain in that for you. If you’re found where I paused I can say I heard a splash...” Swiftly he glanced to Temujin and hissed, “It’s certain death to help an escapee.”
“I understand, sir,” he bubbled. The water lapped over his yoke and got up his nose. “Magnificent of you not to tell.”
With the third quarter of the night the Suldu chief, whom he thought he might have seen the last of, came again. “Kiril-Tuq’s dismissed us to our nightskins. The search is over til tomorrow. But your kindred are whetting their teeth for you, my lad. They reason – yours truly reasoned for them – you can’t go far overnight in a yoke. You’ll have to get as far as you can. Lad, you won’t mention my name? Whether captured (spirits avert) or safely away. Tell about me elsewhere, the tale can wind back to Tayichiut.”
“No, Syorqan Shar, I’ll lock you in my heart.”
“Give us an interim to stagger ourselves in-doors, and you run off home to your mother and your kid brothers and your little sister.” 
For an interim Temujin dangled from his buoy. To set out across the steppe was obviously forlorn. Around them were the Tayichiut horse herds, watched by their slaves Besut, Balaqachi’s tribe, like Balaqachi fighting slaves, who on the whole are worse to face than their masters. You can’t conveniently steal a horse in a yoke, even if he meant to be a horse-thief next. The question was technical. He’d be galloped down tomorrow by grouchy princes, and quartered on the spot for their trouble.
Unless he sought help from the Suldu chiefly family, who had been so kind.
True, Syorqan Shar had backstepped when he asked too much of him. But people often want to afterwards, or change their answers or solicit to be asked again. A false bilig has the generous thought the first. It’s very often the second. He didn’t want to bother Syorqan Shar, he didn’t want to get them into strife. The thought that he might be caught with them and them be punished was too bad to think. But Temujin still had a warm sense of miracle, left over from Tergune Wood, that gave him faith in the happy end. Hadn’t his father forgiven him?
Wetly he went back into the lair, which felt like false bilig, but wasn’t. Dogs growled at him but they didn’t attack. They didn’t bark and wake the gers up, either. It isn’t too late, I can head into the night and walk through the wolves. The walk home should only take a year. I can graze on the grass.
The Suldus were his only real hope.
He located their ger by ear. It was a butter factory, where the churns went day and night. The family worked in shifts and slept to the swish and glug; their tribe carted in the daily milk to keep Tayichiut headquarters buttered up. Summer was the big time in the butter industry; what they did in winter he didn’t know, but he doubted they curled up fat on honey. On the night he spent with them they joked at each other: don’t lick your fingers. But they did lick their fingers, elaborately, and then Tchimbai told Tchilaun, “He’ll see where that went. That went on your flank, and he’ll pare off his scrape of butter.”
It was more than a little like home. Temujin felt at home, enough to join in: “Me, I’m in a pen getting fattened up. I was too skinny for his dinner.”
“If he wants you fattened, you can use a lick of butter. Here.” And Tchimbai dolloped butter into Temujin’s hand.
“Boys,” their father had warned. But after that he humphed and said in Temujin’s direction, “He weighs the milk, and then he weighs the butter, and our cows are reputed high in butter fat.”
“Yes, I’ve seen the Scarlet Guard at such employment.”
“See, dad, when he’s in the Guard he’ll let a bit of butter through.”
Over the dreamiest butter that ever melted in his mouth, Temujin took opportunity to say, “I don’t know I’ll make the Guard, but whatever I make, I won’t forget the butter.” One of his attempts to unload his gratitude for a night out of the yoke.
The boys ducked their heads. Until Tchilaun came up with the inquiry, “How’s your spit and polish these days, Temujin?”
“Not bad. I can spit five feet now, every time.”
Both of the boys were thirteen. Their father said, “Yes, the grass never grew that year, but my wives came over fertile.” That year was the year after Bor Nor, and Temujin believed there had been a rash of fertility. With them lived a grown-up sister, but no wives now.
He bumped his yoke against their door.
When Syorqan Shar saw him on his doorstep, like a stray mutt he had patted who now thought he had a new home, he waved his arms and mouthed his words much more vigorously than he said them. “No, no. Why did you follow me? Do you understand, we’re slaves? If we run away we’re hamstrung and God knows what, and if we help a runaway – no better. No better. Our hearts are cut out as untrue and fed to dogs. It’s in the oath we take, when we’re let loose to walk about.”
“I’m very sorry, Syorqan Shar. I’ll go before I’m seen.”
He had half-turned on the threshold when his elbow was grabbed and he was dragged inside. The door was softly shut behind him. This had been done by Tchimbai. Next to him Tchilaun stood, and his chest heaved at his father. “God’s sake,” he heaved out, damp at eye and mouth. “I’ll feed mine to the dogs myself, but we don’t give him up.”
More sombrely, Tchimbai. “Yes, father, he’s come to us. We cannot possibly say no. If a sparrow in escape from a sparrowhawk flies for refuge to a bush, does the bush shut its branches? The bush opens its branches and saves the sparrow’s life. Our arms are open for him.”
Their father, still of face, sidestepped around the group and went to roam his tent. For a while he nodded to the wall. He turned, hands at his waist, briefly cast a glance into his sons’ faces, and away. His left heel tapped on the floor. He turned. “Then take that torture instrument off him and burn the bastard.”
Which meant the yoke, not Temujin.
In the last quarter of the night Syorqan Shar and Temujin sat up together to churn, the boys asleep in spite of the excitement, the grown-up sister in her alcove behind a tapestry. Syorqan Shar issued a grunt. “Where’s Confucius when you need him?”
“Sir?” Temujin had the urge to be terribly polite. Also he churned to his uttermost.
“Filial piety.”
“Oh.” Into this he crammed apology.
“Confucius said, to become human is to conquer yourself and return to ritual. He conquered in himself four traits: opinionatedness, dogmatism, obstinacy and egoism. What do you, for instance, lad, make of the tenet?”
“Um,” began Temujin.
“To conquer yourself. Is that an aim of yours?”
He took a moment. “For who?”
“Ahh. Aren’t we smart? In the interests of society and the state, master Temujin, as your ancestors knew them, who knew better than you.” He held up a finger from his churn-stick. “The Confucian, as I, I admit dimly, understand him, is the arch-conservative, and with that a realist. He hates change – he fears violent change – and he hates an idealist, he hates and fears your messiahs and your utopias. New ones, anyway. Don’t you say he has his head screwed on?”
This was a bit much for Temujin. Still, he had a reputation to upkeep and he tried... with a quote, though. “Um, we believe in the revolution of the wheels.”
Syorqan Shar noised in his throat. “That’s a fact. We invented the bloody wheel. That’s a fact, too, and don’t let them tell you otherwise. China got the chariot off us ready-assembled and they had none of the parts. One has to ask, what did they do beforehand? That must be the age of liturgical stagnation Confucius harks to.”
“What’s liturgical?”
“By the prayer-book, lad, by the prayer-book. They have statesmen (in theory) whereas we have our charismatic kingships, we have, yes, messiahs. Is that a dirty word?”
“It’s Christian.”
“Oho. And he’s across the quip.”
“Sorry.”
“We’re individualistic and we’re popularist and – excuse my Christianity – we believe in messiahs.”
Temujin smiled at him, because he half-smiled.
“There’s plenty of violent change on the steppe, Temujin.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fast change. Fast. If theirs is the edifice, ours is the hoof. Let’s not be afraid of change, let’s not be afraid of our children. It’s as simple as that.”
Temujin smiled a bit more.
“So where do I wind up? At the end of this rigmarole, into your inoffensive ear, master Temujin.”
“I’m not a master.”
“I’m not a sir. Am I to instil in my sons the unConfucian traits? Certainly they haven’t learnt not to have opinions, and if theirs differs from their father’s, why, that’s when the other traits kick in.” He turned his head to where Tchimbai and Tchilaun sprawled asleep, stroked his chin. “Have I told you how proud I am of them?”

The sister, whose name was Hada, was wooed by several swains in the Scarlet Guard, the boys said. Interested – that is concerned – Temujin asked, without discourtesy, whether there were serious offers, from members of the Guard.
“Dad says a face like hers fetches a decent husband and a decent husband’s what she’ll have. They do trip over themselves. And because there’s three or four of them he can up the ante. He doesn’t demand a price for her, only respect.” 
Tchilaun added, “We tell him, if he plays them right, we can see challenges and blood spilt.”
Temujin was no judge of girls’ faces. “Your sister seems very nice.”
Of course, Tchimbai got the elbow out. “Do I sniff an offer in the air?”
He was above that line of attack. From the heights of fourteen he shook his head with pity down at thirteen and told him, “If I were an officer and a gentleman, yes.” 
Tchimbai grimaced daintily. “Eeeeew. It’ll be flowers next.”
Tchilaun, on his other side, grinned. “Don’t discourage him, ’Bai. We’ll have you, Temujin, and we’ll get father to agree. And a pox on the Scarlet Guard.” For comic effect he thundered, “I won’t have my sister tupped by a rosette.”
“’Laun.”
“What?”
The first day Temujin sat in Hada’s alcove, quiet as a mouse, amidst her girl-things. No-one went into the alcove. Then Syorqan Shar had a more ingenious idea on where to hide him: in the cart of wool out the back. Hada had been taken off the churn to card through a cart-load of Tayichiut sheep’s wool. They missed her on butter duty, but they had Temujin at nights. The wool was a hill-size heap, gritty, greasy and tangled, that a day’s work only put a dent in. It was perfect to hide Temujin.
So he lay, stifled in lanolin, at the bottom of the cart. It got a bit hot in the afternoons. Hada, at her work on the driver’s bench, kept a hole down to him for an air passage, but pulled the wool over if people came by. Through the hours of the day she sang softly to herself. Always love songs. The sad passion, asunder, of two streams that merge at last in the ocean; a bear who snatches a girl, is slain by her father, but the girl laments to her grave; an outlaw has a wolf-wife. None of her songs were about officers of the Scarlet Guard. None were about fourteen-year-olds who didn’t shave, either. He’d have to start to shave.
Where did that come from? That’s what mother tells me.
On one of his dead-of-night transits between cart and tent she asked him in her musical voice, “Where did you get your eyes, Temujin?”
He had no idea where he got his eyes. He thought of a lot of answers later. Nevertheless she smiled at him, kind, melancholy. It dawned on him how melancholy were her songs. He bumped into the cart.
Disaster struck on the fourth day. Tarqutai had scoured the steppe; today, he ordered the camp ransacked. From princes to slaves, were his very words. “My foe has found a sympathiser here, and whoever I discover that to be, he won’t get the carpet treatment. Not for treason.” This was Tarqutai in a black mood. The carpet treatment is what important persons have a right to expect if they incur a capital sentence: wrapped up in tapestry and smothered. What treason brought upon you no-one knew. They were big and thundery words he used: foe, treason. Too big for me, Temujin felt. What harm am I to him?
Privately to Syorqan Shar he suggested he crawl away and make like he had hidden under the vehicles.
“That doesn’t save my children. Who took your yoke off? He’ll beat that out of you or bloody try.”
“I did. I tore a wrist-sling on a nail.”
The Suldu chief shook his head. “This is big league, Temujin. This is political to him.”
“Yes.”
“Get in the cart as usual. It is still your best concealment. When you hear them go through our tent – if you hear us questioned, if you hear we are suspected, if he’s free with the whip – our lives depend on your silence.”
“I understand.” He did as he was told.
The day was havoc. For the First Prince of Tayichiut Tarqutai Kiril-Tuq to turn his Guard on his own clan, whom he had towed into princely title with him, unmasked Tarqutai the Tyrant, which also had a ring. The results came muffled to Temujin. Like the tempers, the heat hit boiling point that day. Temujin wasn’t supposed to move, but when his leg got a twinge and he tried, he found that the glue in his boots had gone liquid again and attached him by sticky strands to the cart bottom. He had never heard of that. The wool felt heavy on his chest, and he didn’t have Hada to keep his air hole open. If he smothered here he’d have a death fit for a prince. On his experience so far he didn’t know that was such a honour. For hours he lay and listened, and lost his sense of time. 
Footsteps to his cart. Terse soldierly instructions. “Dump this wool out. Empty the cart.” Creaks as two of them climbed up either side by the high wheels.
Fate spelt the end of his tale, then. Perhaps he ought to have noticed. Why, why had he involved the Suldus?
Less soldierly footsteps, and a voice he had heard a lot of: Syorqan Shar had joined them. In his rattle-on way he talked them through their work, and didn’t seem to mind whether he were listened to or not. “Funny old day. Tarqurs in a tizz. And you of the Guard cop the jobs, of course. My, you’re thorough. Have to admire you. A day like today, under that load of wool? If he’s silly enough to crawl in there he’s dead of heatstroke.”
Temujin, his wits at a high revolution, thought, that’s for me. Make like I crawled in here. 
The right wheel agreed, “It’s a hot one.”
The left wheel laughed, “He isn’t wrong. Turn out every chest, but this is ridiculous. The wool scorches me hands. It’s runny with the grease. Think I’m about to faint.”
“You can’t faint.”
“I tell you I can, lieutenant or not.”
“Come off the cart, you sad case. Before you go in head first. Syorqan, no joke, he’s drained as cheese. Got a drink for him?”
“Got a drink, yes. – Daughter.” His voice turned, turned back again. “Milk’s in the larder, six foot deep. Ought to do the trick.”
On the left wheel the lieutenant groaned, “I need my mother’s milk.”
“Eh. Buck up. That’s an order.” Each side of the cart the wheels creaked as both of them clambered down. “Bless you, lass,” said the one who wasn’t a lieutenant. “I wish you were our last tent, Syorqan, but you aren’t. God save you for the milk.”
“No trouble.” The three voices drifted away.
Much later, much much later, he heard Syorqan Shar again, and a hand groped. “Lad. Tell me you’re not dead of heatstroke.”
Temujin gasped and batted through wool for the hand. They pulled him out. It was night. They medicined him with milk, inside and outside too; Hada laid a milk poultice on his head. It helped. 
“Are you fit to set out tonight, lad, on horse? I have to urge you do. Not at once. In an hour or two.”
“Yes, I’ll be fit.”
In half an hour he was sitting up. To Syorqan Shar he said, “You were very brave. I thought we were goners – I thought I felt one of them scrape against my foot – and then you spoke up. As nonchalant as I don’t know what.”
“Way to go, dad.”
“I wasn’t very brave,” the father grumped as his boys grinned at him. “I was very hysterical on the inside. To lie there at risk of suffocation and trust to us, that’s sturdy. I ought to have known from the water, but I thought you’d bolt.”
“Mostly I was half flaked out. Glued down, too.”
“You were half dead, lad. And you didn’t lose your head.”
“No, I’m about to take leave of Tarqutai and I haven’t lost my head. It’s a wonder.”
Under the floor felt Tchimbai and Tchilaun kept two contraband arrows – the tribe of Suldu weren’t permitted arms. Told about these, Temujin had nodded keenly: two arrows? “They’ve got names. Kiril-Tuq and Girte.” Now they lent him Kiril-Tuq and Girte, along with a bow that was layers of reed stuck together. “It does work. It’s short-distance. Twenty yards accurate, forty yards wild.”
“It’s brilliant.”
Hada gave him a bag of butter, a sack of crisp curd biscuit and sun-dried mutton strips, out of the larder: a few weeks’ keep. The horse, the only one they had to get about on, was an ex-milch mare past her days of yield, who had never known more than a halter in her life; that was how he had to ride her. She was like the wild horses, a dull yellow with bristles of black hair, black legs, ears outlined and stripe down the spine, and she was almost as wide as tall from the summer grass. “She’ll walk forever, Temujin, but she has no sense of haste.”
“She’s lovely.” Where they had smuggled him and the mare, the moon still in her glory time of year, mottled of silver and iron in an enchantment of light, he left them with a little speech. “I’ll never forget what you’ve done. Now when the moon pours down her grace, wishes are most likely to come true. Mine is to meet again.”
And so he waddled away.

A murderer comes home. Does he?
If he felt home was better off without him, here was his opportunity, with the least mess and questions left. Simpler for the kids to believe he hadn’t survived. Like when you make your death look accidental.
And go where? Far away, to be fate unknown. Far in the west, boys without prospects or under a cloud give themselves up to the slave traders and join the mamlukes. They say families take to market boys who are only a mouth to feed. You wonder at that. But the red-head stranger, at the end of his contrivances to live, sold his child to Temujin’s ancestor. The west is where tribes and peoples are shoved in defeat, off the steppe or half off. Temujin’s own mother might have sold him for a soldier, since he was only trouble at home. At least they feed you and equip you, and they train you in barracks like towns that you don’t see the outside of until you graduate. They acquaint you with the great world you fight for, but they don’t teach you too much – a mamluke is for combat. They want their soldiers straight off the steppe. Though wives of their own ilk are shipped in, a mamluke’s son can’t be a mamluke, so quickly is the raw material diluted or sophisticated. It was uncannily like Tarqutai’s ideas for him. And had an attraction. Start again, new identity, leave his past life behind. To go for a mercenary soldier this end of the steppe wasn’t on, but what about the west end? Talent can take you anywhere. Sevuq Tegin, a Turk from Issyk Kul, captured as a child in a tribal war and sold in the slave markets, climbed to a governorship, out of which his son Mahmud of Ghazna built a vast kingdom across Outer Persia and North India with his mamluke army and his war elephants.
The case against? When they heard of the greatness of Mahmud of Ghazna, the Iron Khan and the Idiqut between them sent their congratulations and asked for his friendship, on the grounds he was steppe. But he answered, You are infidels. Convert, and I’ll have truck with you. It wasn’t much unlike this end of the steppe, then. Temujin had always thought he’d be a Mongol when he grew up.
Several books – scholarly, but here unscientific – assert that Temujin gave never a sign of a guilty conscience over Bagtor. You can’t make such statements, because there isn’t the evidence, either way. Perhaps he thrashed himself nightly with thorns and the information hasn’t come down to us. But that does seem unlikely for him.
For a start he didn’t have the self-division whereby you flagellate your sins. Because he didn’t have a cosmic division, God and the Devil or a Power of Light and a Power of Dark. His religion is often characterised as a religion of help, of practical help amidst the ills and sorrows of this existence, neither the priest – the shaman – nor his patient concerned with their scoresheet in the next. The shaman helps to help, not to rise in the spiritual ranks and reach a blessed state. His client wants to find his cow or cure his boils.
Zoroaster’s was the old religion where humans fought on God’s side as whole units, not their soul versus their matter, but both soul and substance on God’s side, against the negative, against the evils of death. So the old Persian chivalry were knights of God truly and untroubled, their undamned flesh a knight’s gauntlet, his equipment, that he keeps with pride, that he loves. Temujin’s religion wasn’t like that, but like that didn’t split him from himself. He healed faster, after errors that weren’t sins. And he had that optimism about the world that Zoroaster’s set used to have, before the self-conflict religions took over.
Temujin thought about these things: he thought about a healthy self, he thought that you don’t give up, no, not on yourself. He knew that knightly want to be active, he wasn’t going to lock himself up in a monastery. He saw no use, even, in sackcloth. His attitude boiled down to, I’ll have to do better. 
What did the people around him make of his case, how did others judge him? There, too, we have no direct evidence; but we can spot cultural factors. Analysis of justice, even for Chinese and Persian areas under Mongol government, remains in a tentative state. It seems that in China the Mongols weighed the scales, strongly, towards leniency: they halved capital offences. It seems that in Persia there was public confidence in Mongol courts, where important persons weren’t exempt. Tchingis Khan’s famous Great Jasaq or legal code is lost, guessed-at, doubted altogether, and was used in tandem with local justice. 
The Secret History, uniquely a Mongol document, is where to ferret for attitudes. In its pages I have been struck by the second chances and the third people can be given. I’ve thought, isn’t patience exhausted? I’ve thought, why haven’t they got rid of this guy? There’s a persistence with people that I don’t expect in the bloody tale.
It’s as though the nine-times amnesty is in silent operation. The amnesty, a traditional steppe grant for great services, frees from punishment unto nine crimes. When Tchingis distinguishes Jelme, for example, with this get-out-of-jail-free award, you can’t see Jelme going on a spree, and you don’t take the idea seriously – an empty honour, for the least likely. On the other hand, when I wonder at the number of chances, perhaps in fact they count to nine.
Now, they have a name to be scrupulous judges, with important persons not exempt. The amnesty goes counter, but comes into effect where they feel they owe. They have a huge sense of obligation, that’s always a mistake to underestimate. In the Secret History they cling to obligations, and one loyal deed isn’t quite undone until nine treacheries later – treachery that they hate like poison, but then they love loyalty like light and air. Without doubt, in the eyes of his Mongols, Tchingis had earnt an unofficial amnesty by the time he had his old crime written down. I imagine he scarcely caused a murmur, and that too is why the story didn’t travel. And this sets the scene for us, to understand young Temujin’s welcome home. His dedication to them had never come under question. Even his crime was for them.
Through him violence had irrupted into the Sacred Mountains, and yet the birds of Tergune Wood sheltered him from its intrusion. This chapter of his life, the weeks after he had slain Bagtor, with the phenomena around him seen under the influence of his father’s forgiveness, laid down strong lines in him, his encounter with grace and light. In his age they asked him, what was the zenith for you, what was the peak? The first time I felt the touch of divinity, he answered, with a yoke about my neck. The first time – not the last time – I was saved.

He had had a close shave, by the news. Bultachu fretted, “If the fake Turk king knew what he truly was... But Prajna, if Mongols knew what he was? There’d be no lack of hands – strong arms – to make sure he grows up. I can send them to him, Prajna.”
“Dear, doesn’t that create new dangers for him? To have the prophecy divulged.”
“Yesugei thought so. It isn’t up to me. I’m sworn to Yesugei, who’s beyond and can’t unswear me. But blast my fingernails, Prajna. I can’t just lie here.”
It obsessed him. Awake, asleep, and in sleep he had a dream.
He dreamt of deep, quiet waters, of rushes with the rusty flowers of summer, of birds abob fast asleep: Bor Nor. He stood on the shore, the lake to the horizon, the moon in the sky. From beneath the waters he heard gaiety, a carouse, the stallion’s lute, a fighters’ song in chorus. A glimmer in the water and up there swam, effortlessly like fish, two shadows, the figures of men. The first was Yesugei, his wide face in a laugh from the feast he had just left, his green velvet hat with bronze. He saw Bultachu and said to him, “I unswear you. Send him help.”
“You have a high old time here on our battleground, Yesugei.”
“What else, in high old company?”
Bultachu tangled eyes with the shadow beside him. “Who’s your comrade? He has silver in his nose.”
“Yes, the Tartar dead are with us.” Yesugei dropped a hand on the other’s shoulder. “We asked them to the feast.”
“And me?”
Now he smiled his mellow smile. “I’ve kept a cup aside.”
It wasn’t news. Bultachu had known in his bones lately. “Can I walk when I’m a shadow?”
“You can fly.”
“Or swim,” contributed the Tartar.
“Then I look forward to a drink with you, Yesugei. And your comrade.”
The water lapped and he awoke.
Bultachu set to, with urgency, for his time was short. When strong Mongols came to him and complained they rattled around like an unarticulated quiver, he sent them on assignment. “God has given us a khan. Go to him. Defend him in the anarchy of the times.”

A description of The Secret History of the Mongols
The Secret History of the Mongols is a life-and-times of Chinggis Khan, the Mongols’ first book. Why secret? It was kept in hoard by the royal clan, for insiders’ eyes only; it tells secrets, the clan seems to have felt, in later years as they grew more royal. No doubt there were controversies. There were internal wars, by Chinggis’ grandchildren’s day, with argument about what Chinggis stood for and which side was true to him. By that time, too, Chinggis was agreed to be an earthly god, whether factions listened to him or not, and the book isn’t the portrait of an earthly god – he is human, only too human. Today we suspect there was too much criticism of him, hence the secrecy. 
It strikes us as strangely honest, for a monument to great times and the Mongols’ greatest figure. Scholars have even speculated that an enemy of his wrote his official biography. Which doesn’t make sense, but why include the negative material? Why tell us that as a boy he was scared stiff of dogs, and that as a teenager he slew his half-brother? If the Secret History hadn’t saved that fact from oblivion we’d never have known: every other account sweeps the incident under the mat. Here it’s a story told intimately, told by one who was there, who heard what his mother had to say to him. Chinggis lived to sixty and no-one else who was there outlived him. Conclusion? Do we conclude Chinggis told this story?
It was the Mongols’ first book. But they weren’t without examples for how to write their own story. Perhaps he took as his example the stone inscriptions left by the Blue Turks, that are a monument to great times and to glory, yet are strangely honest and not uncritical. They analyse where the Blue Turks went wrong and where they went right. That is the point of them, and they end with an exhortation to brother peoples who come after them to avoid their mistakes. These are the Turks’ first records, inscribed in the name of Bilga Khaghan (the Wise King-of-Kings). Perhaps Chinggis Khan, often acknowledged an heir, in ideology, to the Blue Kingdoms five hundred years on, had a similar concept for his history, a history that teaches lessons. Self-criticism? Yes, he can do that, there are instances in the book. I conclude he was too honest for his grandchildren.
There’s another funny thing about the Secret History: the conquests, which take up the last twenty years of his life, are skimmed over with an almost total lack of interest. For the conquests you have to go elsewhere, you have to go – to upset the bilig – to the losers, with caution, for a history written by them has bequeathed to us a great comic-strip villain. In the eyes of his own, his big achievement was to unify the nomads – who had lived under one government before, with the Blue Kingdoms and the magnificent Uighurs, but in his age were worse fragmented than they had ever been. Indeed, this task cost him more time and effort than the steppe’s subsequent vengeance upon China and the cataclysmic accidents of Turkestan.
What is the Secret History of the Mongols like? Not only in the character of Chinggis Khan but throughout, the human is uppermost. War goes on, as punch to the human interest. But history was seen like that, or experienced that way: history was more personal then. Or there and then, for that’s a truth indigenous to barbarians, east and west, to the other type of society that isn’t civil or civic. The political tale is the tale of his emotional life, to an extent out of the dreams of fiction writers... and this, too, is why the off-steppe wars cease to have significance for the chronicler-poet, who can’t get an emotional fix on them. He’s in his element in episodes of great behaviour and ambiguous behaviour, in crises of ethics and in consequences of actions, in shades to the minds of the heroes and the villains (the villains are a grey lot, and scholars can’t quite decide who they are). Its spine is the friendship-enmity, the love-hate, of Temujin, the future Chinggis, and his sworn brother and rival Jamuqa, who between them run a plot you’d fear to invent. Believe me, I’d fear to, and don’t have to; but motives aren’t spelt out – for how were they to be known, beyond self-report? – and motives I have to construct from people’s acts and quotes. I can tell you that gets tricky as our two thicken the plot. The other focus is on Chinggis’ companions, on anecdotes of their courageous loyalty, a theme and style strongly redolent of the companions of Kings Arthur or Charlemagne. It has been called a Morte d’Arthur of the steppe.
Is it a great work of art? It is art, it’s an epic chronicle, it’s historical fiction, of course, a species much more ancient than history. Speeches are put into mouths and moments of drama have been put into verse. There is a school that laments the Secret History as written down too soon and left to be an in-between beast, neither fish nor fowl, half-digested, the Trojan War not yet transmuted quite into Homer. It isn’t quite Homer, but never mind: what we have is the portrait of a legend-in-the-make from those who had known him, one concerned to be both the truth and art. I follow in its footsteps; I’m not out to dissect the text for its facts; its art, explored, has every bit as much to tell us about how people were. 
Speed rescued the book from most sorts of censorship. There was a short addition on his son’s khanship, and while they were there, inserts of backdated or cosmetic titles (his father Yesugei gets to be Yesugei Khan, although no such thing). But that’s the only touch-up, after the end notice: Finished at a meet of the tribes in Hodoe Aral, the Month of the Roebuck, the Year of the Rat. To me the Rat Year has to be 1229, a year after Chinggis’ death. These are communal memoirs, but we assume a master-hand stitched them together. On who, most scholars give us three guesses. None of the three are original Mongols but they are Great Mongols, the name of his union of steppe peoples. There is Sigi Qutuqtu, a Tartar, his foster brother and his Chief Justice; Tartar Tonga, not a Tartar but a Uighur, who adapted the Uighur script for Mongol and taught Chinggis’ children to write; or Chingqai, a Hirai Turk, an old comrade of Chinggis and a major government figure until 1251, when he was a victim of the grandchildren’s first internal war.
In 1251 Chinggis turned in his (secret) grave, as a list of names found in his biography went the way of Chingqai in a purge. For if he had one boast, we know he wouldn’t boast about world conquest; he’d boast that those who live in felt tents were a single people, in a way they never had been before. Give him two boasts, and if he shares the Secret History’s sentiments he might pick this: I was loyal to my captains and my captains were loyal to me... which is more than Alexander can say. It’s more than any of his conqueror peers can say – no generals in revolt, from him no ugly attacks on his own – as has been observed in his defence. But isn’t this half, at least, a tribute to his people? The Mongols (original and Great, mostly original) are the hero of the book, scholars agree.

Acknowledgements
Firstly, I belong to the United Front of Barbarians, who see similarities in barbarian cultures a world apart. To me, old Germanic poetry can be a dead ringer for old Mongol. In support I’ll cite Christopher I. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present, 2009, on heroic societies east and west, and Karl Reichl, Singing the Past: Turkic and Medieval Heroic Poetry, 2000, a study that juxtaposes the art of the two. Like the Germanic, Old Turk and Mongol verse is structured on head-rhyme and a counterpoint syntax: qurdun aya ayala, qurcha bulqa bulqadu (to march a swift march, to fight a sharp fight). The one inserts pretty smoothly into the other.
Hoelun’s song on a love triangle in chapter 1: this is an Old English poem known as Wulf and Eadwacer. My translation is fairly strict; I’ve left nothing out but the other man’s name. Her verses in memory of Yesugei: from Beowulf, his funeral lament. Start Of the world’s kings and I can claim a straight translation; and glory is lof. Beowulf slew ogres and a dragon but this is what they said of him. I know he won’t mind to lend to a hero after his own heart.
Back to the steppe. The couple of lines on the willow in chapter 4 are from Shamans and Elders: Experience, Knowledge, and Power among the Daur Mongols by Caroline Humphrey with Urgunge Onon, 1996. As I do, I’ve taken the sense but changed the words – for one thing, I need rhyme. Here’s a book I have plundered: a marvelous account of Mongol religion and ritual, with chapters such as ‘Elegant Armour and Ancient Trouvailles’ on the shaman’s costume... a title I just had to quote.
Nora K. Chadwick and Victor Zhirmunsky, Oral Epics of Central Asia, 1969 (Chadwick’s material from her Growth of Literature, 1940) – old but never obsolete – was the major source for my sketch of a Uriangqot song-type in chapter 8, along with the plot of Joloi and Yesugei’s hymn to Irle Khan.
When I quote the Secret History of the Mongols I gather several translations for the sense and feel free on the written art. I am most fond of the translation by Francis W. Cleaves, who has run afoul of the majority for his attempt at a King James Bible English. He argued that he should be archaic, like his original, and that the King James style was ‘singularly consonant’ with the matter in hand. Dammit, he was right. Isenbike Togan defends this style, which grants to the oral tradition of history, not just its true dignity but its true weight and strength for people of the time. Cleaves is obscure, but often because he is over-exact.
In my story I spell Chinggis Tchingis. I’ll save that explanation for the next book, when he comes into his title.

From me
Find me at http://amgalant.com 
I’m a woman in spite of my name. Live in Sydney, Australia. In my latish forties now, though I can’t get used to that idea. I’ve always written, but kept publication amateur, until I found this subject. Expect nothing else from me; my writerly life is devoted to the subject.
After Of Battles Past you can go either to When I am King or to Amgalant One: The Old Ideal, which is both of these. I wrote them as a whole and like the two halves together, but want to give choice in sizes (might be important for the paperbacks) and a free first book. Next is Me and Atrocity and The Sheep from the Goats, which together make up Amgalant Two: Tribal Brawls.
As of 2012 I’m at work on Amgalant Three, the final, at this stage titled Wonders and Horrors. I can’t promise speed: I’m a slow writer, fiddle with scenes fifty times and have been at the project so far nine years. But I’ll finish if I live, that I promise.