the crossed legs, that had no dignity now. Obscurely Temujin felt a duty to order the bones, lie them decently. He took the shafts together in his hands and tilted Bagtor down, though he didn’t lie flat.
“Temujin, what are you doing?”
One by one he straightened the legs, in a mute determination.
“What are you doing?”
A bit bloody late to ask that.
After efforts grievously imperfect he trudged to Jochi, who boggled at him. “You haven’t got blood on you?”
“He didn’t bleed to mention.” Jochi had a squeak in the throat; he found he had a rasp. “He was dead as dead from mine. Yours... didn’t matter to him.” A statement for Jochi and for other ears that listened.
“We did this together, though. That’s why I put mine in, right by yours.”
Tender, perhaps, at the time, Temujin’s heart swelled. “You are staunch and stout, Jochi. For that I love you.”
Jochi, who wasn’t much of a one for declarations, boggled slightly again.
What do you do next? Temujin didn’t think he’d be at the funeral, and he began on a rudimentary one, on a litany. “His flesh for the birds and the beasts, as flesh of theirs fed him in his life. His soul to...”
At his stoppage Jochi thought he had forgotten. “To his fathers.”
“His soul,” said Temujin. And again the ground of Sour-Pear Promontory swam under his feet, in a blot, in a flood of black water. Black water lapped at him, he sank into black water.
A hand grasped his elbow. He must have threatened to faint. Gruffly Jochi said, “Come on, Tem, let’s not loiter. No-one wants us. Let’s go.”
From that point onwards Temujin went about in the dumb lumber of the zombie, that obeys an echo of its dead intelligence at ricochet in its empty head. He knew what he had to do, both that day and the next day, and did what he had to with the zombie’s blind obstinacy.
Zombies may have been suggested to him by the difficulty he seemed to have to walk. It seemed to demand a sedulous effort – one leg, two leg, bend the knee – but unless he questioned Jochi on his gait he couldn’t be certain whether the problem were actual. In fact he had had patches of this before, where he felt he had intercede to work his legs; since in later life his legs were normal, in hindsight he suspected malnutrition.
Calm, now, didn’t descend on him like the grace of God; he had to exert himself for every inch, every ounce. That is what he did. Jochi didn’t notice a catastrophic difference, on the way there, and back.
In the dumb knowledge that he had to, he stood through his mother’s tirade. They put his misshapen fishes into verse, and they put his mother’s tirade. When next he has to face her wrath he is in his forties – and he quakes in his boots, the Secret History tells us.
To confess to his mother wasn’t asked of him. Either she saw in their eyes or in the fire, for she whirled up at them from a crouch by the fire. Or else the children’s angels... claws, the claws of a black bird at the nape of his neck, tightened on him until he turned his head to the shelf of felt dolls; at a danger the angels scream; did Bagtor’s?
Hoelun’s black sheets of hair were the wings of crow or bat flapping in their faces. Stiffly Temujin turned back, into her forefinger. “That one – that one warned me from my very womb, and burst out with blood in his hand, a clot of black blood in his hand. A violent fate is his. Ah, had I known, had I known – had I understood, I had never freed him from the cord that joined us, I had strangled him. And he has led astray this other one, this shaggy beast, this ogre’s changeling.
Like a Khazar pup that gnashes at his belly’s umbilical,
Like the he-camel, fetid and red-eyed with his rut,
That hurtles at, that rams into his calves, his keeper,
Like an eagle amok who attacks her own shadow;
As an anggir can peck her clutch to death in her despair,
As a jackal pack tears to shreds an ostracised dog.
Bloody, bloody, with bloody hands and hearts, my sons come home to me. Are these my sons? I know them not. Who are they?”
His memory blacks out, until, at first light, he came to, under the wagon with the dog Rascal, sore-fingered from his clutch on his fur. Rascal woke too and licked his chin.
Where Jochi slept in the great tent (where they slept together head-to-foot) he whistled through the felt to wake him, and let him know his itinerary that day.
In the quiet of the outcast he followed Tungelig Stream down from the mountains. Along water you always run into people; by noon, at an intersection of waters and of ways, he came across a congregation of twenty.
A manslaughter must be acknowledged within three days, nine if you are out of range. A concealed manslaughter becomes, by assumption of guilt, murder.
Wolfwhistles greeted Temujin, for his mount, that for a dam had a dumpy, hairy steppe type but for a sire a horse of heaven from Farghana. “What’s that you’re astride, lad? A swan?”
On his back sat Temujin in grimy goats’ hides, worn two years and inadequate, with his exposed skin greased against the spring wind and rain, his wrists rawly bony, his arms, under the grease, slightly blue; from beneath his unshorn hair crept tendrils of the noyon’s tails. He was a curiosity – a scarecrow on a dandy’s steed.
Admiration of the horse led to how he had come by him. “Yesugei’s? You are Yesugei’s? Blow me down.”
The twenty gathered here had once been Kiyat. “The chief doesn’t like us to talk of your father’s days.”
“No. Kiyat’s a dirty word and Yesugei’s a worse. It’s Tayichiut and it’s Tarqutai and no sentimentals about the past.”
“Nostalgia’s a flogging offence.”
“We knew you was alive, lad, up in the mountains, but we keep that amongst ourselves, us ex-Kiyat. We think he thinks you succumbed years ago. Women and kids on your own, aren’t you?”
“Of course he’s heartbroken, to believe you can’t have survived a winter.”
“Just in case, though, he’s strict about where we camp. We’re not meant to stray this near the mountains, but we meet here to avoid his patrols. He makes out Uriangqot are a tribe of evil wizards and much given to theft of children. However, we don’t reckon Uriangqot are his problem.”
“He has a problem. You know, if only he forgot Yesugei, he’d give us a chance to. That’s envy for you. Envy of a man he understands was far above him.”
“You want to watch your step, Yesugei’s lad, in Tayichiut, which is where you are. On a wander, are you? Might be time to turn about.”
“Glad to meet you, lad, and don’t go without a whip-around. Here, have a piece of cheese. Maybe we can meet more often. But he does have patrols.”
Temujin told those close about him, “I have a matter to air.”
A man with a stringy moustache that hung past his jaw took charge of him. “You have a matter to circulate? – Quiet for Yesugei’s lad.” The man steered him into the midst of the twenty strangers. “He’s down from the mountains to put an item in circulation.”
Temujin stood with the piece of cheese he had been given in his hand and said, “I have slain a man. Yesterday, on Olir Ulqu of the upper Onon, where he lies. He was Bagtor, son of Yesugei of Kiyat and Goagchin of Jangsiut. I claim grounds on his offences and am ready to answer to my tribal judges on demand.”
There was silence, until one said, “Here’s a turn-up,” and another, “Here’s a fix.”
“Is he old enough?”
“Temujin, lad.” The man with the moustache. “You can’t be quite fifteen? Bor Nor baby, weren’t you?”
“No, I’m fourteen.”
Discussion began around him. “It’s the right thing to do.”
“He has to.”
“Pity the item circulates in Tayichiut.”
“He has to.”
“Can’t he circulate in Uriangqot?”
“No, he can’t. He isn’t Uriangqot.”
“Since when is he Tayichiut?”
“Kiyat are Tayichi
ut nowadays. There’s nowhere else for him. He can’t default, can he?”
“Might be safer to.”
“It’s frequently safer to default.”
“Unusual case. What can Tarqutai do with a case like that? His, um, his half-brother. What can’t Tarqutai do with that?”
“Arbitrary as he is when his rights are touched.”
“Yes, deaf in the defence ear if you’re not a big fan. We’ve seen the trumped-up charges. This is just to hand him over on a platter.”
“He’s underage. Not even Tarqutai cuts heads off children.”
“For Tangr’s love. Be subtle.”
“Needs to bloody know, doesn’t he?”
“Temujin, lad.” The man with the moustache again. “You do rightly to acknowledge. Once we’ve heard you, we have a duty to pass on. This gives the victim’s kith and kin the chance to counter-accuse, and acquaints your chief with the case. Our duty is as solemn as yours. Once we’ve heard you. Me – ask my wife – I often need to be told twice. Do you want to go ahead?”
“Yes.”
“Right we are. I heard that. And he’s heard enough out of you people. Now, Temujin, you need three witnesses, who are to attend you at your trial. They testify to your prompt and free acknowledgement, and also to your character, that they know no reproach of you. My name is Arsorol son of Ardajab. I’ll stand witness for you.”
A short pause. “Bichac son of Bogdo. I undertake to attend you at your trial.”
“Golme son of Ganche. I’ll be there.”
By dusk he was home, and bivouacked under the wagon again with a mat and Rascal. There Jochi found him. He had eaten his cheese – his first bite to