other in words, and in physical fights or brawls, never, writes a European in his intelligence report. Temujin wanted to slap his face and induce a fight. That was done. That was frowned upon without cause serious enough to slay and be slain over. Ridicule of a dead bird mightn’t qualify. Moments ago the lark had trinkled music in the sky.
Is duel why you learn sword, dad? Your third or fourth weapon in war.
Quite on purpose Temujin thought of his father. Lately he felt bad when he did, but then the effect had its uses. He didn’t go up and slap Bagtor.
Belligerently Jochi told him, “Don’t muck about with my bird.”
In a human but official voice, “I’m afraid I’ll have to confiscate your bird, Jochi.”
“Confis-what? You?”
Bagtor swivelled his head to the bird and the bird’s head to him. “Confiscated for blasphemy. Confiscated for irreligion. Can’t have that, can we, Temujin?”
“Listen,” blared Jochi. “You put down what I hit. Right where he dropped.”
“Sorry, Jochi, you’ll just have to clean up your act.” He did a skip rearwards.
“Oi.” Jochi stretched an arm and finger at him, very straight. “Put down my bird.”
“It’s your foul tongue, Jochi. The animals run away with their paws over their ears. No, this bird’s for sacrifice, in the interests of piety. His smoke to feed the spirits and his leftovers to feed me.”
Jochi dropped his arm and blared like a horn. “You filthy thief. That’s for my sister.”
Citation of his sister meant he was upset. Temujin had to back him and said evenly, “Bagtor, if you take Jochi’s kill –”
“Oh, here’s Captain Right-and-Wrong to the rescue. Thank God for that. I was about to have an ethical confusion.”
Temujin waited for him and went on. “If you take Jochi’s kill you are a thief.”
Thief in Mongol ears had an evil. Adultery was only abomination number two; theft came first.
But Bagtor, inside, had spent his youth under siege behind a wagon wheel, where the nutrients of his culture reached him patchily for patchy growth: in this sense he was malnutritioned, and didn’t get what they were on about. He had become a clown in contradistinction to Temujin; he thought a little step to become a thief.
Insouciantly, with high marks self-given for his satire, he walked away. Jochi howled after him, as upset as Temujin had ever seen him. “That’s for my sister. That’s for my sister.”
Off to the side stood Belgutei. Temujin and he met eyes. Neither spoke, and Belgutei plodded after his teammate.
“Can you be so petty? The both of you.”
In confrontations with her Temujin took on a low mutter and a posture bent forwards, as if wading against a great tow, trudging against a great wind. But he didn’t know how to give up. “It’s petty, yes. It’s an ounce of white flesh. We only catch petty game.”
Hunched in his dog’s cloak, Jochi did a rendition of the dog over the bone. “Wasn’t a bad shot. At risk of boast. As if by invisible hand, as they say, and not for him to filch and stuff his face with. I want my bird. Regurgitated, or if I have to plunge my fist into his gut. I want my bird.”
Temujin pursued, “It isn’t just the meat. Since he can thieve in front of Belgutei and Jochi, who are at least grown up, what’s to prevent him in front of the children?”
“Temujin, stop with that word. Theft is nothing to trivialize.”
His eyes flashed at her in exasperation. “I know.”
“You have had a dispute over game.”
“I know what theft is,” he muttered. “Jochi knows what theft is, when the hit was his.”
“Do you correct your mother?”
He didn’t say yes, but he met his mother’s gaze.
“You won’t bring your squabbles to the hearth. You won’t exhibit them before the children. That is an end to the matter, Temujin.”
The boys exchanged glowers from underneath their brows, and went away.
Temujin didn’t know how to give up. Hadn’t he been taught?
When Hoelun, newly a wife, had left home and her father owed her honest criticism he had said: Strength of mind is not a fault, but can over-venture; even a strength can be over-invested in, can be unbalanced. Know when to relent. Know when to unlock the talons. My eagle unlocks her talons when I tell her to, and she, in musculature and in mentality, the strongest creature I know.
In Temujin she saw vivid glimpses of Yesugei, even here, with his it’s-the-principle, with his awkward, intense righteousness at fourteen, like a rough sketch of his father. But out of nowhere – with no hint until he was a teenager – he battled her with her own weapons. When her talon gripped tighter, why, so did his. An eagle doesn’t quit her hold. Come at her with a sword, she’ll grapple you with the other foot but not forsake her victim. Because she is intelligent she can be trained; you must conscript her intelligence, and not affront her. Never train an eagle by coercion or domination. It won’t work, and she can rip your arm off.
Hoelun had taken seven children into the wilds, away from their tribe and clan, away from society: this she had done instead of submit to governance and convention, instead of pay her Kiyat dues to Tarqutai, instead of sleep with Daritai. She seemed not to have taught Temujin the art of compromise.
Punching wasn’t on, and neither were unseemly exhibitions; over the hearth, before the children, Temujin had to mind the decencies, and he bottled up a lot. There was always the wrestle, to let off steam. Aside from the factor that his opponent had six years and six years’ size on him, to Temujin’s sensibilities a wrestle-out wasn’t much different than a dogs’ scrap, and anyway he had no intention of putting his grievance behind him. Bagtor too was one for intellectual fight, and to go physical didn’t occur to him. As a child Temujin had waited years in vain for Bagtor to hit him: if he hit him, that was actionable. But hitting had an honesty, whereas Bagtor hid behind the subterfuge of humour. Now he had stolen, next to which, hitting was paltry. It afflicted him that Hoelun took no action.
His father had been the Fixed Star to him in right and wrong, the Gold Stake; the Gold Stake had been unpinned and the teenaged Temujin felt the universe disintegrate. Society was in disintegration, people said daily. Tribes robbed each other, outside the mountains. Out there was a stage of violence and debauchery (whatever that involved), pilgrims to the Sacred Mountains told them. These complaints, laments scored into his mind, to whom ethics meant his father. Both ethics and sense had come to an end, then, with Yesugei’s days and ways.
He didn’t make a scene at the hearth, but he didn’t make an end of the matter either. As the lid came off the pot and the children clustered he said, “Haven’t you eaten, Bagtor?”
At once Jochi leant support. “Have you eaten? Eat out, you don’t eat at the pot.”
Half-heartedly Bagtor got stuck in on Jochi. “Sermons from you, with your swag like a cow?”
“My Borjigin bulk.”
“Kept bulky by the honey you guzzle and the fat roasts off with your Uriangqot friends.”
“When we eat with Uriangqot I have to fast like a Christian, and I do.”
In neutral tones Temujin said, “I thought you had a bite of meat today, Bagtor.”
The children’s eyes went from one to the other, side to side of the pot. Belgutei had a sprig of burnet in his big hand. This he swiped on the nose of the thin girl Temulun; she giggled; Belgutei fed the burnet to her from overhead. He didn’t put his hand in the pot again, Temujin noticed, although almost certainly he hadn’t partaken of Jochi’s bird.
Perhaps Bagtor hadn’t eaten the bird. That didn’t matter. The meat wasn’t in the pot.
Out of humour tonight, Bagtor noisily rattled his lips and flopped onto his back, only his gawky knees up to be seen in their circle.
From her couch – the seat in the north of the tent for master and mistress – Hoelun watched silently. Goagchin, by her own sense of etiquette, leant against the couch or on an elbow, comfy at Hoelun’s feet.
Goagchin scarcely interacted with her son. She tiptoed about Bagtor, in dread of quips at her expense. The other children clubbed to her, and only had a laugh at her when she was very safely out of earshot.
To blow away bad air, Temujin told a story about a hungry contingent. His story had great amounts of comradeship and group spirit, of the sort described by Franciscan friars on mission to the Mongol court. The friars found the Mongols’ diet austere and their privations difficult to stand. One wrote, Whatever food they have they share amongst themselves, though there be little enough. They are extremely patient. When they have to go without altogether for one or two days they don’t change their cheer; no-one betrays irritation, but they sing and wassail as if they had feasted.
Imaginary feasts were a game for the children, or else they liked to be a hungry contingent with only the veins of their horses to drink from. Here Jochi got into the vein, and was likewise fertile on graphic starvation. When Jochi told the story, inevitably, the contingent drew straws and one in ten went to feed his comrades.
“We’ll just volunteer the fattest,” said Temujin.
“That’s Belgutei.”
And Belgutei was the type who’d have volunteered.
Next day Hoelun sent the four hunters fishing. She was no-nonsense and none of them gainsaid her, as she instructed Temujin and Jochi to teach Bagtor and Belgutei the skill.
Fishing had been their earliest attempt at hachi, at return to their mother for what she did for them, running