Of Battles Past (Amgalant #1)
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
&n
bsp; 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