Of Battles Past (Amgalant #1)
joints: the next question was, fast or slow? and the magistrate says, slow. And Mogusi – the spirit behind United Tartary – with Tartar grit goes, you can chop my limbs up, fast or slow, but you can’t lop up my people. Sadly, this hadn’t proven to be gospel, and yet remained a famous answer and him an inspiration. Why have I got Tartars on the brain?
A Mongol can have Tartar grit, if he has a bit of Tartar spirit. On your feet, Temujin. Don’t just lie there.
My brain’s curled up.
Put off til tomorrow and Irle knows he has you. Tonight, or finish here ingloriously without a name.
Without a name? It’s not as though I believe what I used to.
Weren’t you named for Tartar grit? Then again, how about you earn your own? On your feet, Temujin, or I’ll tell your dad I had to disown you.
What?
In the bird-quiet that meant night he staggered up and took Pinky by the ear. “It’s time to go, pet. I’ve talked to trees, I’ve talked to a crow, but I don’t know who I’m talking to now.”
He had to cut his way out with his whittle, in the hedge either side of the block of white stone, an outrage on his hosts, but he did. He battled through and pulled his horse, who was only twelve hands high, after him. He hadn’t had time to mount when a big hand caught hold of his coat-neck.
In their bivouac they gave him dinner leftovers: a carcass of baked hare with most of the meat attached. As he wolfed this down he grew back, like the lizard’s tail, from his stump of self, and when he wiped his mouth life, again, was more than food. However, possibly he had just bargained one for the other.
“Hit the spot, lad?” asked the guard captain. The whole squad, now, withdrawn from surveillance around the wood, sat and watched him.
Temujin said, “Sorry for the trouble. I won’t cause you any more.”
The captain scraped his cheek with a thumb. “No, we’ve had a few nights out, and we’ve seen a wad of forest. A youngster like you hasn’t much to be afraid of.” He glanced to one of his soldiers. “Dar, do you want to lead that horse off, in direction of his folks?”
Pinky wafted about beyond the fire circle. “Bye, Pinky,” said Temujin. When the soldier Dar turned his head he thought of the shagreen pouch and smiled at him.
With the sky grey in the east they tidied their site and the captain told him impassively, “In an arrest we yoke the party.”
“Oh,” said Temujin.
They clamped a prisoner’s yoke on him and fastened him in the wrist-slings either end. The neck hole, front and back, was smooth and dark from use, and he wondered who else had been in here and what happened to them. He felt vulnerable around the neck area. If they led him straight to the chop-block in this he’d never have an opportunity to fight. What if they did? No-one wants to be dragged. People walk, not to be dragged. Had to drag him, they say of rare and abject cases. There was Jamuqa to hear how he went. If I’m flogged to death before I’m fifteen, Temujin, I can tell you one thing: I never groveled.
A howl, neither human nor animal but from a creature not invented yet, punctuated their departure. It was Jochi’s battlecry, that he had worked on for years. Obviously, though, the squad of guard were inured: they had heard the caterwaul before, even if Temujin hadn’t, in the wood. “Yes, your brother’s kept an eye on us,” the captain told him.
“Can I...?”
“Eh?”
“Can I just call to him? No mischief.”
“You go ahead.”
In the yoke Temujin turned and shouted, “I decided to go with them, Jochi. Don’t worry. Look out for the kids. I’ll see you.”
“That’s him?”
Kiril-Tuq had wrinkled right over in disbelief. “That’s the defendant for trial, sir,” said Captain Amurat.
“You haven’t got me the twelve-year-old by mistake?”
“No, sir. No, he’s tall for the age he is, stood up. On the thin side.”
“Thin?” Again Kiril-Tuq bent to peer through the lattice, then with a finger at the object of remark said accusingly to his guard captain, “He’s blue.”
Captain Amurat felt he had to apologise. “In effect we starved him out, I’m sorry, sir, and though we’ve fed him, you mightn’t see him at his best. Perhaps he’d shape up with a wash.”
Kiril-Tuq shook his head and muttered, “What am I meant to do with this?”
The mutter told Captain Amurat plenty. It told him the kid’s sentence had been determined, but now? The chief had to think about perceptions.
Tarqutai did. He saw he had to change his strategy. When a lad who isn’t legal yet puts paid to his adult brother, you have grounds to treat him cautiously. To exhibit fear of... this... he’d be laughed at, but to be fair, you imagine a young dragon and you await an offer to sort out your old differences by axe and ox-hide targe. You think, here’s a type to demand his rights, to push his claims. This skin-and-bones child couldn’t swing a squirrel, never mind an axe, and the big fixed eyes in the grimy face were scared. This tatterdemalion a threat to his chieftaincy?
Nip the head off this, he’d be laughed at forever and there is nothing more pestilential to authority. There and then he adjusted his strategy. “Schedule him for today’s session. Leave him in the yoke. Don’t clean him up.”
“Yes, sir.”
Trumpets blew for the justice session and the Tayichiut Princes convened in the great tent. Slaves held sunshades over their heads, which is seen on the streets in China but in Persia is a royal prerogative. Silk umbrellas didn’t quite suit the burlier princes, like squat Uncle Gugah with his very Mongol walk. Temujin knew these people, had camped with them five years ago. It was hard to take them seriously in the pomp and circumstance. Perhaps he’d better, though, since he was up for trial.
He stood in the queue outside, his hands still hung at shoulder level. Over the lintel was set a stone mosaic with a wolf’s head in a helmet, certainly a Turk antiquity. Turks claim descent from a she-wolf who suckled a mutilated child left for the crows, and later had his children; and turk, they say, meant helmet.
Two or three times Tarqutai issued out to his porch, in between cases, to flare his nostrils and contemplate the distance. His coat was an astonishment: gilt stitchery on a glossy cream quilt, the kind of material that travels in a caravan from Samarkand. The kind of coat you picture for Attai Taiji’s, that he draped on Balaqachi’s shoulders when they cried the black-bones a hero. In a timeless fashion of the steppe one can never wear too much gold. However, you felt Attai had earnt his; and he gave his away.
The guard captain, in whose custody he remained, bent and said into his ear, “Gaudy, isn’t he? Usurps the sun. When your turn comes, step up bravely. It isn’t out to the axe for you. I happen to know.”
Most sincerely Temujin whispered back, “Thank you, sir.”
His turn came. For an interval Tarqutai laid aside the aspect of a judge and came forward to greet him; he touched Temujin behind his ears, in his cuffs with a heavy crust of gilt. “We are old friends. I hope you remember me?”
Yes. He had a face like a fish’s, because his eyes were wide apart and his lips pursed. When he stretched his lips from ear to ear like that he was very fishy.
After this fond exhibition he resumed his judgement seat. “I have already told my court, Temujin, I cannot try you. In legal terms you are a child. Yet neither can I quite exonerate you, or free you without demonstration of how seriously we see your offence. We are agreed to hold you in detention, a short detention but perhaps sufficient time for you to think about what you have done. The yoke stays on, Temujin. Even so, I won’t tether you to a stake by the dung heap to grow dull-witted. No, you can see life in my camp, a kind of life you haven’t been used to. Daily life, and attend people on their daily business; and spend the nights by turn in the tents of my headquarters. You were quick as a child, Temujin, and you’ll quickly pick up the spit and polish you have been deprived of. And my end? After a month or two I mean to take that yoke off and induct you into my Guard. We have
a squires’ rank. You’ll learn and be among other boys your age. Come to me unequipped, for in your father’s stead, for sake of his old aid to me, I take on to outfit you, and once in my Guard, of course, I maintain you. It’s a career, Temujin. A forward lad like you, with a brain, with spirit, is assured to make an officer; we pride ourselves on our soldiership, you’ll acquire the skills, and I promise you won’t lack for excitement. This is my sentence.” He glanced either side, smiled gently and spoke to his court audience. “Mild, a father’s sentence, but I feel the boy hasn’t had a chance. Like a colt on the loose he has wildened in the mountains; I mean to school him, and I think he’ll turn out very nicely. He simply needs discipline, and the yoke is to teach him that; Temujin, you won’t like the yoke, but to be indulgent, try to understand, isn’t in your interests. Were your father alive he’d have told you no differently. When we school a colt, we discipline him out of love.” Gravely he surveyed his face, and then gave a nod to the guard captain. “Dismissed.”
They unstrapped his hands at times he had need of them, that is to eat and to undo his trousers, but the yoke was to stay on night and day. The aches, the neck-crick gone crazy, the shortage of sleep, the want of a moment’s comfort: these were a way to wear him down, without infliction of the lash that’s too blatant. This let itself be called a gentle correction. From his punishment