Of Battles Past (Amgalant #1)

and asked the horse watchers whether they knew Hoelun, they directed him to Catchiun, who led him into the mountains.

  Hoelun stepped into her tent with thyme in her coatskirts that were hitched up in her belt, and leeks in her hat, that was off. The blue spire of bark she had worn as Yesugei’s wife never left her, but often did more than perch on her head. When she saw she had guests she blossomed in a twinkle into the great tent’s lady, and Catchiun blinked at his mother as she welcomed them like cousins and like kings.

  The boy turned out to be a pinch of both. After the initial cup over which questions are rude, he introduced himself: Jamuqa of Jajirat, he said, the father’s name left out, and Hoelun knew him, a future chief and Temujin’s sworn friend. Beside his bronze-clad escort he was geared up, not in a child-size silk suit but in child-size accoutrements of war, a quality sword scaled to his height, a torso case of hard leather, black stamped with a motif of animalia and with silver bars on the shoulders. In very chiefly fashion he told her Jajirat’s troubles. “We’ve got Merqot activity, worse than usual. Winter is for war with Oirat but spring’s to plunder us. It’s the mares that pull them, and we’ve squeezed our mares as upper on the Tola Gol as is half-legal... gifts have been dispatched to Uriangqot. So I spied my opportunity to chase down Temujin.”

  Temujin was at the foot of White Heights, rummaging in the winter’s blown-over trees; Jochi tore off to get him. The mother had concerns. There was a stark contrast between this boy with silver shoulder bars and her hairy urchin. Temujin didn’t talk about Jamuqa often, but that was because he kept him private; he kept the sacred relics of his clothes, and Hoelun thought he had converted him into an Imaginary Friend. Imaginary Friends needn’t be unhealthy, but a pity if the real one came along to disenchant him. A stark contrast, since they had met four years ago as equals, and hers an easy target for mockery or scorn. The boy Jamuqa had a self-possession and a casual style; whether this visit were significant to him or insignificant was impossible to tell. However, when they heard the pelt of feet he stilled, and his facial tint, a Uriangqot ivory, went quite wan.

  Temujin walked in, almost on tiptoe, but in the wildest excitement; his cheeks burnt and his eyes were never so queerly green and alight. Just inside the door he stopped. “Shove, Temujin,” said Jochi behind him and he did, to the side, but not forwards to his friend.

  His friend said, “Is that you, Temujin, or is that a yak?”

  “What I tell him,” murmured the mother.

  Jamuqa talked on, with pluck, or to hide his nerves. “Me and Jajirat, Temujin, have been pushed up the Tola. Never know, we might have to join you in the mountains. I’ve come to scout them out.”

  There he paused for take-up. But Temujin didn’t have the wit to say boo. It didn’t matter. Jamuqa left off too. They went into mime, and either didn’t know or didn’t care that they had witnesses. Moments on, when they hadn’t approached each other yet, when Temujin had uttered zip, Jochi tugged his bottom lip down, sideways and out. “What’s wrong with them?”

  What’s wrong with you? people had asked her, albeit not so outright, asked her over Yesugei alive and dead: what’s wrong with you? They had thought her exaggerated. They saw falsity and self-indulgence. Uriangqot say, nobody’s religion is his neighbour’s religion. Hoelun knew, no-one’s love.

  “How are your grannies?”

  “Frail, scrawny, but incorrigibly alive. They’ve shrunk, I swear. Old ladies do shrink.”

  “Or you’ve got bigger.”

  “That’s polite of you, Temujin, and in fact you’re right. I’m too big to flog. How’s your ugly?”

  “Not as big as he was, either.”

  “If you want me to stick him while I’m here, just say.”

  “Can you use that?” He nodded to Jamuqa’s sword.

  “It’s not a toy, Temujin,” he grinned. “Though hasn’t yet been baptised, much as I’d like to fib to you.”

  “You look terrific.”

  “Ta. You look like a yak, and he’s a great beast. Monarch of the mountains, wild and free. I envy you. Introduce me to your territory?”

  “Yes. How much time do we have?”

  “How much can you stand?”

  Temujin smiled.

  “I’m free from granny interference. They’ve sent me behind the lines, and I didn’t argue since I knew we’d be on your doorstep. The mares won’t shift now til summer’s over. The idea for me is drill from dawn to dusk with Havarr, but Havarr gets bored of drill himself. I tell him when I’m chief I won’t drill him if he won’t drill me. It stales you, see, too much drill.”

  Once more Temujin answered with his face. Later he was known for a direct, open face that fluently told his thoughts; this was practice. To the contrary Jamuqa became known for his deadpan, a deadpan so perfect you had to hold a piece of metal to his lips, but with Temujin, now and later, he dispensed with that.

  “Toghrul sends his affectionate remembrances. That’s a lot of syllables for his fond thoughts.”

  “Does he?”

  “He did ages ago, in case I catch up with you – he doesn’t know I have.” Without emphasis Jamuqa went on, “If ever you need a go-to, I can recommend my Uncle Toghrul. Not a bad old bird.”

  Temujin thought of what his mother had said about Toghrul Khan. He pulled at his mop, the mop a yak has between his horns and he had between his proper hair-tails. “Like this?”

  “Eh? Get a shave, if you feel you must. He doesn’t care. Turks don’t shave anyhow, like a bunch of girls.”

  Question and answer were both understood figuratively: Jamuqa didn’t think Toghrul too grand for them. “Thank him, Jamuqa, that he doesn’t forget us.”

  “There you see your dad in the stew,” Jamuqa told him with a finger out. “Toghrul tends to say that though he knew your dad only too short a while, no man has made more impression on him. Might be the way he rambles on about his anda that kept me in mind of mine. Fans of the family, see, my uncle and me.”

  So far Jamuqa had done most of the running. Temujin put in. “I sewed your clothes up into a cushion that I sleep on.”

  “Lumpy, isn’t it?”

  “No worse than travel bags or soldier’s kit.”

  “Did you wash them first?”

  “Of course they haven’t been washed.”

  “How’s your fleas?”

  “I guess they’re the trillionth great-grandfleas of yours.”

  Jamuqa nodded. “Feel at home, I imagine. We drank each other’s blood.”

  “Yes.”

  They met eyes and had a moment and had to glance elsewhere. A Mongol in any situation is a fanatic for a promise, and these boys had led insecure lives. “I know we were kids...” began Jamuqa again.

  “It was no less an oath,” maintained Temujin.

  “An oath’s an oath.” Jamuqa stated his credo. “Like it or not. Say we didn’t like each other, what we going to do? Oaths echo down to Irle Khan, and you have him on your back if you renege. Funny he’s the oath-keeper. You need a mean streak for defaulters. Til King Death do us part.”

  “Death doesn’t part us, neither deter us. An anda goes to Irle Khan and back for his anda.”

  “You’ve found your tongue.”

  “Sorry. Dumbstruck is sort of true-to-life for me.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” He screwed his face to say he didn’t mean that. He slapped his hands one on top of the other. “’Twasn’t ghouls and goblins but I made the big trip into the mountains. And here you know who I am.”

  Temujin didn’t underestimate the courage and the faith he had had to come. “It mayn’t be Irle Khan. It’s at least halfway.”

  Again they exchanged keepsakes, items of interest to a boy, updated from knucklebones. At twelve arrows were the rage, arrow-craft, as boys learnt to make their own. Jamuqa gave Temujin a whistler, used for signal, its head horn-slithers glued into a whorl for the wind to whistle through. “Like Mattyr the Hun’s,” said Temujin.

  “Watch where you point
it, then.”

  “Now I’m stuck for yours.”

  “Any old arrow for me. Give me a wonky one, since it’s to stash away not to shoot.”

  “What if I haven’t got a wonky one?”

  “I’m sorry to suggest you have.”

  “If I were a swindler I’d give you a Jochi arrow,” he said as he fingered through his quiver.

  “Don’t want a Jochi arrow.” Jamuqa leant against his arm to look. “I want a Temujin arrow.”

  “How about I give you one I like? It may be toenail clippings, but I liked the wood.”

  Jamuqa took the arrow, shy and shiny, as if at a handover of the crown jewels. “A knob end. Knocks a bird out, stuns a sable.”

  “I don’t know I’m a huge chance to do either. But I found the knot of hawthorn. It’s beeswaxed.”

  “Your arty type of arrow,” he teased gently. “Now we have to carve our signatures on the shafts. I write jomok, that’s the Turk original and means a legend. I’m going for a swashbuckler, like Puss-in-Boots. Got a signature?”

  “I use a fire symbol on my hooves.”

  “That’s for your hair?”

  They scratched their marks, and stashed each other’s arrows in the inside front corner of their quivers.

  Together they roamed the mountains, mostly, at this time of year, on foot. They frog-hopped in the bogs, and like the carts that bumped and bounced on the withies’ elastic purchase in the ooze, they trampolined on willow tangle. There was lightning to thrill Jamuqa – the summer lightning was tremendous here, and neck-and-neck with the floods there might be fire. Lightning