Of Battles Past (Amgalant #1)
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