LITMIR.BIZ

      Khasar waited in the deep snow, his face numb despite the covering of mutton fat. He could not help feeling a little sorry for himself. His brothers seemed to have forgotten, but this was his sixteenth birthday. On impulse, he stretched out his tongue and tried to catch a few of the cold flakes. He had been there a long time and he was weary and bored. He wondered idly if he would find himself a woman in the Tartar camp, as he stared at it over a hundred paces of white ground. The wind was bitter and the clouds scudded by at great speed overhead, driven like pale goats before a storm. Khasar liked the image of the words and repeated them to himself. He would have to remember to tell Hoelun when they came back from the raid. Khasar considered sipping his airag to keep him warm but he remembered Arslan’s words and resisted. The swordsmith had given him only a cupful of the precious fluid in a second leather bottle.

      ‘I do not want you drunk,’ Arslan had said sternly. ‘If the Tartars reach you, we’ll need a steady hand and a clear eye.’

      Khasar liked the father and son Temujin had brought back, particularly the older man. At times, Arslan reminded him of his father.

      A distant movement distracted Khasar from his wandering thoughts. It was difficult to stay focused on the task at hand when he thought he was slowly freezing. He decided to drink the airag rather than be too cold to act. He moved slowly so as not to disturb the layer of snow that had built up on his deel and blanket.

      It stung his gums, but he gulped it quickly, feeling the warmth spread in his lower chest and up into his lungs. It helped against the cold, and now there was definitely activity in the Tartar camp. Khasar lay just to the west of them, invisible under his covering of snow. He could see running figures and, when the wind dropped, he could hear shouting. He nodded to himself. Temujin had attacked. Now they would know if it really was only a small group of Tartars or the ambush Arslan had warned about. The Tartars had offered a blood price for the small group of raiders who had come north into their lands. If anything, it helped Temujin to recruit warriors from the wanderer families, taking their wives and children into his protection and treating them with honour. The Tartars were helping Temujin to build himself a tribe out in the icy wastes.

      Khasar heard the flat smack of arrows being released. From such a distance, he could not tell if they were from Tartar bows, but it did not matter. Temujin had told him to lie at that point with a white blanket over him and that is what he would do. He could hear dogs barking and he hoped someone shot them before they could threaten Temujin. His brother still feared the animals and it would not be right for him to show weakness in front of new men, some of them still wary and untrusting.

      Khasar smiled to himself. Temujin preferred to take warriors with wives and children. They could not betray him with their loved ones back at the camp under Hoelun’s care. The threat had never been spoken and perhaps it was only Khasar who thought of it. His brother was clever enough, though, he knew, cleverer than all of them.

      Khasar narrowed his eyes, his pulse doubling in a jerk as two figures came racing out of the camp. He recognised Temujin and Jelme and saw that they were sprinting with bows and shafts ready. Behind them came six Tartars in their furs and decorated cloth, baying and showing yellow teeth in the pursuit.

      Khasar did not hesitate. His brother and Jelme belted past without looking down at him. He waited another heartbeat for the Tartar warriors to close, then rose up from the snow like a vengeful demon, drawing back to his right ear as he moved. Two arrows killed two men, sending them onto their faces in the snow. The rest skidded to a stop in panic and confusion. They could have fallen on Khasar then, tearing him apart, but Temujin and Jelme had not deserted him. As soon as they heard his bow, each man had turned and gone down onto one knee, punching arrows into the snow ready for their snatching hands. They hammered the remaining Tartars and Khasar had time for one last shot, sending it perfectly through the pale throat of the man closest to his position. The Tartar warrior pulled at the shaft and almost had it out before he fell still. Khasar shuddered as the man died. The Tartars wore deels much like his own people, but the men of the north were white-skinned and strange and they seemed to feel no pain. Still, they died as easily as goats and sheep.

      Temujin and Jelme recovered the arrows from the bodies, cutting them out with quick chops of their knives. It was bloody work and Temujin’s face was spattered as he handed Khasar half a dozen shafts, wet and red down their full length. Without a word, he clapped Khasar on the shoulder and he and Jelme dog-trotted back into the Tartar camp, running almost crouched with their bows low to the ground. Khasar’s racing heart began to slow and he arranged the bloody arrows neatly in case he had to kill again. With great care, he wrapped a piece of oiled cloth over his bowstring to keep it strong and dry, then settled himself back in position. He wished he had brought a little more of the airag as the cold seeped into his bones and the falling snow began to drift over him once more.

      ‘No ambush, Arslan!’ Temujin called across the Tartar camp.

      The swordsmith shrugged and nodded. It did not mean it could not come. It meant this time it had not. He had argued against them raiding so often into Tartar lands. It made a trap too easy to set if Temujin pecked at every single opportunity they gave him.

      Arslan watched the young khan stride among the gers of dead men. The wailing of women had started and Temujin was grinning at the sound. It signified victory for all of them, and Arslan had never known a man as remorseless as the son of Yesugei.

      Arslan looked up into the softly falling flakes, feeling them alight in his hair and on his eyelashes. He had lived for forty winters and fathered two sons dead and one alive. If he had been alone, he knew he would have lived the last years of his life away from the tribes, perhaps high in the mountains where only the hardiest could survive. With Jelme, he could think only as a father. He knew a young man needed others of his own age and a chance to find himself a wife and children of his own.

      Arslan felt the cold bite through the padded deel he had taken from the body of a dead Tartar. He had not expected to find himself holding a tiger by the tail. It worried him to see the way Jelme hero-worshipped Temujin, despite him being barely eighteen years old. Arslan thought sourly that in his youth a khan was a man tempered by many seasons and battles. Yet he could not fault the sons of Yesugei for their courage and Temujin had not lost a man in his raids. Arslan sighed to himself, wondering if the luck could last.

      ‘You’ll freeze to death standing still, swordsmith,’ came a voice behind him.

      Arslan turned to see the still figure of Kachiun. Temujin’s brother maintained a quiet intensity that gave nothing away. He could certainly move silently, Arslan admitted to himself. He had seen him shoot and Arslan no longer doubted the boy could have taken them from cover when they rode back to the cleft in the hills. The whole family had something and Arslan thought they were heading for fame or an early death. Either way, Jelme would be with them, he realised.

      ‘I don’t feel the cold,’ Arslan lied, forcing a smile.

      Kachiun

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