Of Battles Past (Amgalant #1)

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