Of Battles Past (Amgalant #1)

guide them, when they came to him, was a sort of usurper of the throne. Because you don’t vote for aghas. You can’t reject them for their defects. Temuge and Temulun – named to rhyme with him, so he didn’t forget them – to be sent on to Bagtor when they had a puzzle or a hurt, when they were listless and grizzly from undernourishment? The clan rank thing was out-of-date – Temujin possessed none he knew of, nor knew what he missed nor missed what he didn’t know; and function dictated by age was just empty-headed, like clans. If the kids turned to him, he wasn’t going to point them to that behavioural hazard over there.

  Bagtor had green fingers, as Hoelun said; he enjoyed to forage with her and might have gone on, a happy gatherer. He felt no yen for the hunt. Nevertheless, when Temujin and Jochi began to fancy themselves getters of meat, and when they did get meat, and glory, and the adulation of the children, and told their hunt-tales over the pot, this struck at his sense of masculine inadequacy. With the fantasy of lugging home big game for Hoelun, he took out of its oil wraps Yesugei’s heavy bow. It was a bow for charges into armoured ranks, but had the pow, in Jochi’s words, to knock a bear head over heels. Jochi envied him, in spite of his much more versatile bow won in the kids’ archery. To wield the heavy bow, that had a draw-weight only to be coped with by a grown man, instantly blazoned him a man... now he just had to come home with meat. Belgutei teamed with him, Belgutei who owned an arm of abnormal proportions; but he said he found the war bow awkward for the purpose and he used a sling.

  Humiliation lay in wait, which Bagtor met the way he had learnt, with humour. He had grown up a clown. Now, Temujin, notably, wasn’t a humourist (at least not to mask a hostility) and Bagtor managed to make him seem dour, a spoilsport. This was his greatest achievement. Inside, he was still – forever – the child other children threw stones at. Bully Temujin? When he dragged him to the fire by the hair-tails he was only fighting back. And why Temujin? That was easy. Temujin was one of those, a kids’ captain, Temujin was the sort who led the gang. The sort children gang up behind, close ranks with. Temujin had It.

  It. It is agreed to be a lucky dip, you either have It or you don’t. Yesugei oozed It. People used to laugh at how much It Yesugei had. The grown men of his nokod spoke of love at first sight... love at first sight exists, but only for people with It. They’d have slept with him if he’d asked them (sorry, that was grubby). So, why did Temujin inherit a big dose and Bagtor a spectacular lack? Less Itty you can’t get, unless you’re a slug. When he was a sulky, nasty boy, children threw stones at him; he had learnt to have a sense of humour, he had learnt to spoof himself. Did that amend his situation? No. Doesn’t matter what you do. Bully Temujin? He’s fourteen, I’m twenty, but who’s the underdog here?

  Temujin mightn’t have recognised this portrait, not yet, but Bagtor was perspicacious to see in him what scholars scratch their heads over. Modern biographers muse, as an unknown youth he seems to exert a magnetism, particularly with his own age group. There’s no call for Bo’orchu to throw down his milk pail and hop on horse, before they’ve even introduced themselves. And what makes the Suldu children eager to risk their lives for him, a stranger? If scholars have to ask these questions, then they stuck out like a sore thumb to Bagtor, on the ground, and with the sensitivity of the unpopular.

  The hunt was nearly as important for what wrapped the meat. Though the ger’s heavy-duty felt layers ought to last ten years, the children grew out of their clothes. Recently Hoelun had sold a foal by Toghrul’s stallion to a Uriangqot for hunters’ coin, not luxury furs but a heap of daily-use pelts and skins, for bags and sacks, to waterproof the floor and to wear. Bagtor, last tailored for at seventeen and bursting at the seams, obtained a whole Uriangqot outfit in the transaction. As a Chinese defector once advised the king of the Huns: When the Han send you silks to corrupt your senses, put them on and ride through the briars and the brambles. In no time they’ll be torn to shreds, and your people can see for themselves, silks are no match for the utility and convenience of felt and leather garments. Silk suits had been the ruin of him, early. The Uriangqot outfit was lightweight, thin, soft and warm, with attached gloves that tucked away into the cuffs, a hood into which a face-sheet tucked away, and a dozen different-sized pockets. It was also camouflage.

  The camouflage he used to creep up on Temujin and Jochi, solemnly ahunt, and start from the bushes in front of them with honks and hoots and yawps and yowls, with flaps and jiggles and waddles, with lumbers and lopes and knuckle-runs and trumpeting trunks.

  “Bagtor,” bawled Jochi, “you arse, I’m on the trail –”

  “Of what, Jochi? An orangutan, a panda bear? You’ll never get him.”

  “Not with you around, you tit. It’s not funny,” he wailed.

  “Face it, Jochi, you’re a target-shooter. Go hunt a toadstool, they stand still for you.”

  “I’m a combat shooter,” he gnashed. “And next time you disrupt my hunt, I’ll have a shot at you.”

  “Yes, yes. You’d better,” he told him as he gaily galumphed away. “Dress me up as boar. I hear people taste like pig and they mightn’t detect the hoax. As for you, Temujin,” he let soar from a distance, “your only hope,” he crowed, “is to sit the beasties in a row and tell them the rights and wrongs of the case until they expire. Boredom or old age? That’s the question, Temujin. Boredom or old age? Either way you’ve got them.”

  Jochi took out his ire on a log, that he thumped. “Next time, I tell you, Temujin, I’ll unstitch his underarm seam. See how he enjoys that. See whether that’s funny.”

  “I almost trust you to.”

  “And I don’t much care if I miss.”

  “I have a suggestion.”

  “What?”

  “You hunt. I’ll keep him amused.”

  “That’s sort of truckling to him. We hunt as a team. The animals talk to you. Animals don’t talk to me.”

  “It’s the fee-fi-fo-fum of the Borjigin giant.”

  “I know, but my spots are my spots. How can you stomach to... keep him amused?”

  “The way I’d distract a enemy patrol,” answered Temujin without emotion. “And you never know, he may feel silly in the upshot.”

  “I like my idea. I’ll pin him to the tree behind him then we’ll tie him up and hunt unmolested. – It’s childish. It’s to stop us getting more than he does. That’s what he thinks of, his ego, not what goes into the kids’ mouths. Temuge’s less childish than he is. Him an agha? I can see him an otchigin.”

  “He has the instincts.” This was a comment over Jochi’s head. Jochi was a shade too young to have noticed what instincts he meant. Temujin himself was at a fastidious age; when he saw Bagtor glaze over at Hoelun he knew enough to know what daydream he was in – just enough to be revolted.

  “It’s sabotage,” Jochi went on. “Sabotage. If he did that to a Uriangqot on hunt, he’d get skewered and roasted. Tolerant people, but not about a hunt. There’s food at stake.”

  “There’s more than food at stake. There are the pieties.”

  “Er, I can’t say I’m greatly ahead of him on the pieties.”

  “You’re way ahead of him, Jochi.” Quietly Temujin persisted in exactly what Bagtor liked to mock him for. “You think of the food in the children’s mouths. When Uriangqot say spiritual, you only need to hear right and wrong. It’s wrong to ridicule what is life and death for the animal, sustenance for the hunter. It’s very wrong to interfere, and you’re right, they are tolerant, but they’d ban him from the hunt. That’s what ought to be done. He ought to be banned, have his bow confiscated and help his mother with camp chores.”

  “He’d love that.”

  The two hunt teams had set out from camp together. Stuck in their cheeks they had curd nuggets, to get them through til dinner on anticipation; gnawed on and dissolved, the nuggets lasted most of the day, like very hard candy.

  A skylark burst singing out of a clump of grass. As fast and easy as the bird, in his own way as lovely, Jochi drew bow and arrow fr
om their holsters on either hip, coupled them and loosed, without aim. Without aim that Temujin saw, but the arrow sped upon the bird and in a blur and a flutter they twirled from the sky together.

  “Wow,” said Temujin. “How did you do that, Jochi?”

  Jochi was thrilled, exhilarated. “I’ve no idea.”

  “Aim must be for idiots like me.”

  “Aim.” He waxed mystical. “Aim from the cockles of the heart and you can’t miss.”

  In fact Jochi drew across his chest, which is quicker, while Temujin lifted up to the eye and like an amateur tried too hard, except amateurs have to. “When you can aim from any angle, any angle to your sight-line...” He let Jochi finish.

  But Jochi declined bombast and grandiloquence this time. “I’ll be an archer.”

  “At the gallop,” Temujin smiled.

  “Of course.”

  Meanwhile Bagtor had gone to pick up the lark. The limp bird he made into a hand-puppet: he propped up and wagged the limp head and talked in a trilly bird-voice. “Score Jochi. Uuhai, uuhai.” This was the spectators’ call for a fine shot in games, done at a birdy pitch, which put Bagtor’s mouth, behind the bird’s head, in a goofy contortion.

  Temujin wanted to punch him in the eye. This was sheer instinct, since people didn’t punch in his culture. They very rarely wrangle with each