Of Battles Past (Amgalant #1)

up and down the Onon Gol in search of nourishment. For nourishment for her they bent needles into fishhooks and tied dragnets and scoops, and with this homemade equipment caught (in memory, memory put into verse in the Secret History) maimed and misshapen fishes, fishes slowed by mishap, with one eye absent or a piece bitten out of them, fishes at their last gasp. Nevertheless, Hoelun strongly insinuated, their bag had been more ample when they fished. Fishing was a demotion in the food-getting scheme of things; Bagtor and Jochi, who had their sights on higher species, felt punished – Jochi unfairly, since Bagtor messed up his hunts – while Temujin knew himself chastised. Even so, memory warmed him towards his mother, the memory of the misshapen fishes and their eagerness to feed her. He said, “Yes, fishing gave us a yield. Fried sprats for dinner? Or a sturgeon or a trout, Jochi, if Mother Onon is generous. We never hauled in a big one. It must be almost as exciting as bear.”

  “I’ll down a bear one day. By strangulation.”

  “Don’t tell them – they’ll try and get you first.”

  “Botheration. I’m telling you. What ears have they got on them? We’ve told the fish we’re on our way. Oi. To throw the whole crew of them into total confusion –” he dropped to a loud whisper – “let’s take the nets and rods and make for the river, and in a stratagem to out-fox the foxes, hunt instead.”

  Bagtor pinched the bridge of his nose. “The entertainment in store. Swap brains with your bear, Jochi, when you get him.”

  On the trip to the river Bagtor concentrated on Jochi. No doubt he found him easy game or rich material (Temujin liked to tease him too) but Catchiun was a butt for his art, Temulun for her red hair – the old stuff. Now and then he sideswiped at his true, his one and only target. “If I see you suck your teeth, Jochi, it’s no dinner for you tonight.”

  Jochi got grumpy. Yesterday, unresolved, stewed in him and he started to answer tersely with, “Thief.”

  Flourish of wit from Bagtor.

  “Thief.”

  Bagtor went for the short retort. “Fatso.”

  “Rotten thief.”

  Belgutei said, “Here’s the river, and we’d better put a sock in it. You have to be pretty quiet, don’t you, Temujin?”

  “Yes, it’s about time to cut the chat.”

  Belgutei asked a few questions about nets.

  Behind his hand in a hoarse whisper Bagtor resumed. “Squealer. Run to mother, did we? Jochi’s lark? Jochi Report-to-the-Captain? Eh?”

  But he failed to elicit an answer to this vital question. “Pizzle-lips.”

  “Jochi, if you don’t mind. My pizzle’s in my pants and you’d only be flabbergasted if I swung it.”

  “Go stick it in a rabbit.”

  Bagtor gazed at him rather humourlessly.

  With a gap, a chink in the armour, he followed up. “In and out and in and out and in and out of a rabbit.”

  Temujin grappled his brother, with both arms from behind about his thick neck. “Is that pelt getting inside your head, Jochi? Do you have to be as lewd as the original wearer?”

  “Ah, right, agha,” he said in chagrin.

  “Khazar,” slid in Belgutei, with a crook of the mouth. “I’m going to call him Khazar whenever he merges identities with the wearer before him.”

  “I never saw a Khazar mastiff poke a rabbit.”

  Temujin observed, “You’ll only encourage him.”

  That day – since they had a fate that day, Bagtor or Temujin or both – the Onon gave them a fish, enormous, splendid. It strewed jewels of light and water as it leapt on their hook in a pool. Temujin and Jochi had the line wound on a willow branch; from above in the tree they yelled and attempted to reel in. Belgutei charged into the river with the pole-scoop in both hands above his shoulder, like a sword. Their bent needle unbent, or the fish tore off the hook; armpit-deep, Belgutei tried to keep his feet, spot the fish and scoop the fish, none of them easy to do on their own. Just when hope was lost and the big one had got away, Bagtor, on the bank of the pool, flailed his arms and dived, on top of the fish. Between him and Belgutei, and shortly Temujin and Jochi with a draw-net, by violent, noisy and unusual fishing tactics, they dragged their catch aground.

  The tactics tickled Jochi. “Bagtor, I like your moves. Fling yourself on top of him. Hah. If I’d thought of that one I’d have divebombed him from the branch. How’s his method, Temujin?”

  Temujin said, “It was brilliant. As stunts go, there are those to imitate, and there are those to never undertake again.”

  Flat on his back alongside the fish, Bagtor feebly wagged and gurgled, in a drama of the near-drowned. The fish seemed to be drowning in the air, flipping like the lame, like the hamstrung, in the alien element where his organs didn’t work, where his mechanics didn’t propel him. “Let’s not forget,” said Temujin.

  In the Uriangqot ritual they knelt to grieve over the fish. Temujin squeezed out tears, Belgutei gripped his hair and wailed, Jochi pulled off a blubbery laugh. Bagtor lay there amused, but didn’t mock.

  “We’ll be fishing forever now,” Belgutei warned Jochi as they went to unsnarl the net.

  “It’s not too late. We can throw it back in.”

  Crouched at the fish’s head Temujin said, “Sshhh. He’ll think you’re serious.”

  “Sorry, fish.”

  “Fish stew, Jochi,” Belgutei tempted him. “A week of fish stew.”

  “Blah,” from Jochi, and from Temujin, “Sshhh.”

  “Look, Temujin, can’t you...” Jochi grimaced and nodded.

  “I don’t know where.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know where.”

  “It’s not a sheep, just...” He mimed with the stab of a finger at his eye. “Behind there’s a brain cavity.”

  Temujin announced, “Its gills are flat. – I don’t know much about fish,” he told them in apology.

  “Can I talk?”

  “Yes.”

  Up on an elbow, eyes on the fish with glee, Bagtor wheezed, “High-risk sport, your fishing. I thought I was wrestling a wild boar, only greased.”

  “What kind is he?” asked Belgutei.

  Ignorant of the answer Temujin said, “In his glittering scales he has to be a knight-fish.”

  “I’ll make his fins into a charm. He’s a sign: I’m meant for a fisher. What’s the odds of one his size, your first?”

  “It’s been a team effort,” mentioned Temujin. “We’ll give him a bit of a parade home. Tell the kids he’s a knight of the ayyy in silver and pearl armour turned into a fish. I hope he isn’t. Jochi and Belgutei, you can take an end each.”

  “Heads or tails?” Belgutei to Jochi.

  “Not so fast with my fish, Temujin.” Bagtor climbed to his feet. “I’ll dispose of him, thank you. Where he belongs is on the shoulder of his conqueror.”

  “Bagtor, he isn’t your fish. He’s ours.”

  “Kid,” Bagtor began to him, on a high after his feat, “you can’t pick him up.” And Bagtor did, with a hoist and a heave, and slung the great fish neatly on his shoulder. “You see, kid, though you think you’re the man of the tent, you’re out by, what, two foot?”

  Without concern as to his height Temujin stood up. “Put the fish down, Bagtor.”

  “Make me.”

  A surge of testosterone had Bagtor in an altered state.

  Vexingly, Temujin walked straight through the testosterone, unaffected. “I’ll bring up the rear with the equipment. You,” he told Bagtor with a faintly sarcastic largesse, “can march out front. But we take him home as we caught him: in a team.”

  He felt the point mattered. Without team spirit, what were they? A half-starved den of clawing, spitting kittens, where the weak are crushed underfoot and their own mother ceases to feed them, as waste of food. Team spirit, alone, saved them from that. Ask the wolves, who hunt as a group, who are interdependent, how crucial is team spirit, how detrimental self-interest.

  From the sidelines, Belgutei, piteously to Temujin. “It won’t hurt t
o let him. He did the most. He can have my rights in it.”

  “No.” Flatly Temujin turned him down, this time, Belgutei whom he thought the most of, strictly, of his brothers. “He can’t.”

  The chemical high tottered, a castle of smoke. Bagtor never knew what to do when stood up to, except switch from twenty to five again. “I’ll have my fish in spite of you, if I have to walk off and feed him to the vultures. Don’t push me, Temujin. That’s what I’ll do, before I give the fish to you.”

  Had Temujin taken the view he was talking to a five-year-old, he might have dealt with him the way he dealt with Temuge in a squall. But he had no idea what a hornet’s nest he had stuck his hand into – what fantasies of a late, too-late adolescent in love, fueled by a childishly uninhibited want – and he took the view Bagtor ought to act his age. “That threat,” he said evenly, “if you went ahead with that threat...”

  “What? Oh, what? Oh, what, Temujin, what? Am I thief again?” His humour came back with a vengeance and he started to bounce. “Am I a fish-thief today? I bet I am.” He bounced, under the load on his shoulder.

  Humour was how to baffle Temujin, as Bagtor had learnt. “It’s no laughing matter,” Temujin seethed, asserted, clumsily, through his teeth.

  “No laughing matter?” Bagtor bugled in enjoyment of this one. “Honestly, Temujin, for stodgy, you can out-grandfather fifty grandfathers. And for prim, for priggish, you can do the grandmothers into the bargain.” With the fish on his shoulder, three fingers in its mouth to hold it, Bagtor broke into a jig, his knees going up, his elbows going out, in time to a ditty of, “Thief, thief, thief, thief.”