LITMIR.BIZ

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outside, Tolui noticed a heavy-set dog come ambling out from behind the ger. The animal was too old to hunt and stared at the strangers with whitish eyes that suggested he was almost blind. Tolui bared his teeth at the dog and it responded with a low growl, deep in its throat. He chuckled then, stringing his bow in swift, sure movements. Basan watched frowning as Tolui sent a shaft through the dog’s throat. The animal spasmed, making coughing sounds as they dug in their heels and rode away.

      Tolui seemed to be in a fine humour when they cooked a meal for themselves that night. The dried mutton was not too old and the cheese was slightly rancid, sparkling on the tongue as they chewed and swallowed.

      ‘What are the khan’s orders for when we find them?’ Basan asked.

      Tolui glanced over at the older man, frowning as if the question were an intrusion. He enjoyed cowing other warriors with his glares, backed always by a strength that could knock a pony to its knees with a single blow. He did not answer until Basan had looked away from him and another little struggle had been won.

      ‘Whatever I choose, Basan,’ he said, savouring the idea. ‘Though the khan wants the older boys dragged back. I will tie them to the tails of our mounts and make them run.’

      ‘Perhaps these are not the ones we are looking for,’ Unegen reminded the young warrior. ‘They have gers and ponies, after all.’

      ‘We’ll see. If they are, we’ll bring the mounts back with us, as well,’ Tolui said, smiling at the thought. Eeluk had not imagined there could be spoils, but no one would dispute Tolui’s right to take the possessions of the family of Yesugei. Their fate had been shown on the day the tribe left them. They were outside the laws of hospitality, mere wanderers with no khan to protect them. Tolui belched to himself as he pulled his hands inside his deel for sleep. It had been a good day. A man could hardly ask for more.

      Temujin wiped sweat from his eyes as he tied the last crosspiece of wood together to make a small corral for their sheep and goats to give birth. The small herd had grown, with only a few mouths to feed, and two years before, the brothers had gone amongst the wanderers to trade wool and meat for felt. They had bartered for enough to make two small gers and the sight of them never failed to raise Temujin’s spirits.

      Khasar and Kachiun were practising their archery nearby, with a target made from thick layers of felt wrapped in cloth. Temujin stood and stretched stiff muscles, leaning on the fence to watch them and thinking back to the first months when death and the winter stalked every step. It had been hard on them all, but their mother’s promise had been good. They had survived. Without Bekter, the brothers had grown a bond of trust and strength between them as they worked every hour of daylight. It had hardened them all, and when they were not working with the herd or preparing goods for trade, they spent every moment honing their skills with weapons.

      Temujin touched the knife at his belt, kept sharp enough to slice through leather. In his ger there was a bow the equal of anything his father had owned, a beautiful weapon with an inner curve of shining horn. It was like pressing a knife edge to the fingers to draw its string back, and Temujin had spent months hardening his hands to bear the weight. It had not yet killed a man, but he knew it would send a shaft straight and true if he needed it.

      A cool breeze came across the green plains and he closed his eyes, enjoying the way it dried his sweat. He could hear his mother in the ger with Temuge and little Temulun, singing to both her youngest children. He smiled at the sound, forgetting for a time the struggle of their lives. He did not often find peace, even in fragments. Though they traded with single herdsmen and their families, it had come as a surprise to find there was another society beneath the great tribes grazing across the land. Some of them had been banished for crimes of violence or lust. Others had been born without the protection of a khan. They were a wary people and Temujin had dealt with them only to survive. To one born in a khan’s ger, they were still tribeless men and women, beneath contempt. Temujin did not enjoy being one of their number and his brothers shared the same frustration. As they grew into men, they could not help but remember the way their lives should have run. A single day had stolen all their futures and Temujin despaired when he thought of scratching a life with a few goats and sheep until he was old and weak. That was what Eeluk had taken from them. Not just their birthright, but the tribe, the great family that protected each other and made life bearable. Temujin could not forgive those hard years.

      He heard Kachiun shout with pleasure and opened his eyes to see a shaft in the very centre of the target. Temujin straightened and strolled over to his brothers, his gaze automatically scanning the land around them as he had a thousand times before. They could never be safe and they lived with the fear that they would see Eeluk riding back with a dozen grim men at any moment.

      That sense of foreboding was a constant in their lives, though it had dulled with time. Temujin had seen that it was possible to live beneath the notice of the great tribes as other wanderer families did. Yet it could all be taken from them by a single raiding party out for sport, hunted like animals and their gers torn apart or stolen.

      ‘Did you see the shot, Temujin?’ Kachiun said.

      Temujin shook his head. ‘I was looking the other way, my brother, but it is a fine bow.’ Like the one in his ger, the double-curved length had been dried for a year before the boiled strips of sheep horn were glued and overlapped onto the frame. The fish glue had made the gers stink for weeks afterwards, but the wood had become iron hard with its new layers and they were proud of what they had made.

      ‘Take a shot,’ Kachiun said, holding the bow out to his brother.

      Temujin smiled at him, seeing again the way his shoulders had filled and the new height that seemed to come in bursts. Yesugei’s sons were all tall, though Temujin had grown beyond the others, matching his father’s height in his seventeenth year.

      He took a firm grip on the shaft of the bow and notched an arrow with a bone head, drawing it back on the calloused pads of his fingers. He emptied his lungs and, at the moment when he might have taken a breath, he released the arrow and watched it plunge home beside Kachiun’s.

      ‘It is a fine bow,’ he said, running a hand along the yellow length of horn. His expression was sombre as he faced them, and Kachiun was the first to notice, always sensitive to his brother’s thoughts.

      ‘What is it?’ Kachiun asked.

      ‘I heard from old Horghuz that the Olkhun’ut have come back to the north,’ Temujin said, looking out over the horizon.

      Kachiun nodded, understanding immediately. He and Temujin had shared a special bond since the day they had killed Bekter. At first, the family had struggled simply to live through the winter and then the next, but by the third, they had enough felt for the gers and Temujin had traded a bow and wool for another pony to match the tired old mare they had taken from the herdsmen in the first days. The new spring of the fourth year had brought restlessness on the wind for all of them, though it affected Temujin particularly. They had weapons and meat and camped close enough to woods to hide from a force they could not handle. Their mother had lost her gauntness and, though she still dreamed of Bekter and the past, the spring had woken something of the future in her sons.

      In his own dreams, Temujin still thought of Borte, though the Olkhun’ut had vanished from the plains, with no way of following them. Even if he had found them, they would have scorned a ragged wanderer. He did not have a sword, nor the means to barter for one, but the boys rode for miles around their little camp and they talked to the wanderers and listened for news. The Olkhun’ut had been sighted in the first days of spring and Temujin had been restless ever since.

      ‘Will you fetch Borte to this place?’ Kachiun asked, looking around at the camp.

      Temujin followed his gaze and he swallowed back bitterness at the sight of their rough gers and bleating sheep. When he had seen Borte last, it had been with the unspoken promise that she would marry him and be the wife of a khan. He had known his worth then.

      ‘Perhaps she has already been given to another,’ Temujin said, sourly. ‘She will be what? Eighteen? Her father was not a man to leave her waiting for so long.’

      Khasar

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