Temujin extracted the sense that Tarqutai had a subtle, cruel mind. Which wasn’t to say he was clever. Clever’s different. In fact he’d put him down as a lame-brain. His own Guard spoke of him slanderously, and no wonder, if this is how he conscripts them. And he has a fancy to be king, that’s obvious too. Yesugei had said: Men who have that perversion that is not the wish to be great, the thirst for glory, but is ambition. If the type I talk of saw their way, they would. That’s started, dad. He’s one of them. But there isn’t much fear – I can’t see him voted in.
Why the giddy round from tent to tent, a day and a night in each? To display his splendours? Temujin had seen life in a tribal headquarters; but perhaps Tarqutai hadn’t forgotten, perhaps he meant to make him hanker for life in the grand old style that once he had been used to. Join up with the Scarlet Guard, I can live like this. Maybe, too, to fix in people’s memory, before he joined the Guard, that he was a criminal and lived by grace of Tarqutai. Disarm him entirely, and then present him with arms and stick a rosette on his chest. And there his troubles began. He’d have to give Tarqutai his oath. He found out what oath the Guard swore: defend and serve, blah blah, unto my death or his or he acquit me. Temujin didn’t want to be a member of the Guard, and worse than that, to swear obedience to Tarqutai? It wasn’t possible. Once he did, Tarqutai might order him to arrest Jochi and he’d have to. It wasn’t possible to swear to Tarqutai; and when he didn’t? That was when his head felt unsteady again on his shoulders. Or no, that was when Tarqutai by accident threw him to his great big guard dogs, in the yoke, and said, oops, look what happened to him.
There was only one answer: he’d have to escape, before he had to refuse to swear an oath.
In a fortnight’s time he tried. It was the feast of the corona of the moon and the whole of headquarters were drunk. Furthermore, Temujin had been towed to the feast by a teenaged Prince of Tayichiut who wasn’t any more doughty than himself. After the carousal he found his chance. In a quiet lane Temujin pulled the lead out of his prince’s hand, upended the yoke – the end with his right wrist beneath – bashed him the once on the side of the head, and took to his heels.
Perhaps his assault wasn’t very efficient. “I’ve lost the prisoner! I’ve lost the prisoner!” bawled his prince pretty lustily. Do you have to boast about that?
He fled into the night. Except the night was nearly as light as the day, what with the moon in her corona. And Tarqutai was pitched in flat meadows, of thick summer grass, higher than his head along the Onon’s banks, but grass doesn’t feel like great defence and they had hounds to scent him out. Where’s the use to run, without a headstart? He’d taken his chance, his single chance. There was no question of his fate if caught.
On the bank of the Onon he had a brainwave. Great-Uncle Cutula had hidden from Tartars underwater, while the Tartars frisked the reeds and went right by him. Temujin slipped into the water. The wood of the yoke served as a float and buoyed him up when he hiked his knees. On that guarantee he wriggled to where the grass hung over, where his feet didn’t touch the bottom. The fishing he had done now came in handy; he paddled his legs to help the yoke keep him afloat. Still, a Mongol in the water wants his hands free. If Tarqutai were to offer him the method of his choice he wouldn’t say, I’d like to drown. And he wouldn’t say, unleash the hounds and chase me. Probably he’d say, can I eat the remains of your feast until I burst?
In these speculations he idled away the time. He honestly didn’t know what to do now, short of turn into an otter.
Then he heard what he knew to be a whip swept through the grass in search. He ceased to paddle. Moments on, right over his head, a quiet laugh. “There you are, you clever lad.”
The voice was familiar. He managed to twist in the water and look up: Syorqan Shar. Shar meant yellow, sun’s yellow, the Suldu chiefly title; but he was a chief enslaved. Temujin had spent a day with him; his boys Tchimbai and Tchilaun, from sympathy, had removed his yoke for the night.
“You’ve upset the princes, you have,” Syorqan Shar said quietly, crouched on his heels. “It’s your brains worry them. Brains aren’t amply distributed in the higher echelons of Tayichiut.”
Temujin didn’t feel very brainy, stuck in the water. But in the Suldu chief’s ger talk had been none too unctuous about their masters Tayichiut; this one was on his side. “Are they out in search of me, Syorqan Shar?”
“Yes, the princely brigade are out in search. Unfortunately the princely brigade are blind drunk. As for the soldiers, they’d be ashamed to be found on their feet. Kiril-Tuq won’t keep them out. He can’t. He’s squiffy as a turtle himself. No-one can make out his orders – Uncle Gugah thinks he’s off on flights of Ancient Turk. Uncle Gugah was always the most sensible of them, and he’s threatened to wait for sun-up, and Mongol.” With enormous amusement, seen by the great globe of the moon, he gave Temujin a nod and wink, and went away.
In an hour he was back, and leant an elbow on his knee. “We’ve had attrition. Those stalwarts still in the game I’ve sent to search the ground they searched before, with a flea in their ear from Tarqutai. He knows you must be laid in the grass. Or I believe that’s what he said. I argued we’d only get confused to switch our search areas, and they were alive to the truth in that. The slave’s revenge is to be sober: I was at my churn while they were at their pots. I can keep this up the night, and send them round in circles where I know you aren’t.”
“Excuse me, sir,” intruded Temujin. “Would you unstrap my hands?”
At this his face changed and he got up off his heels. “I may be seen,” he mumbled. “On these flats. No gain in that for you. If you’re found where I paused I can say I heard a splash...” Swiftly he glanced to Temujin and hissed, “It’s certain death to help an escapee.”
“I understand, sir,” he bubbled. The water lapped over his yoke and got up his nose. “Magnificent of you not to tell.”
With the third quarter of the night the Suldu chief, whom he thought he might have seen the last of, came again. “Kiril-Tuq’s dismissed us to our nightskins. The search is over til tomorrow. But your kindred are whetting their teeth for you, my lad. They reason – yours truly reasoned for them – you can’t go far overnight in a yoke. You’ll have to get as far as you can. Lad, you won’t mention my name? Whether captured (spirits avert) or safely away. Tell about me elsewhere, the tale can wind back to Tayichiut.”
“No, Syorqan Shar, I’ll lock you in my heart.”
“Give us an interim to stagger ourselves in-doors, and you run off home to your mother and your kid brothers and your little sister.”
For an interim Temujin dangled from his buoy. To set out across the steppe was obviously forlorn. Around them were the Tayichiut horse herds, watched by their slaves Besut, Balaqachi’s tribe, like Balaqachi fighting slaves, who on the whole are worse to face than their masters. You can’t conveniently steal a horse in a yoke, even if he meant to be a horse-thief next. The question was technical. He’d be galloped down tomorrow by grouchy princes, and quartered on the spot for their trouble.
Unless he sought help from the Suldu chiefly family, who had been so kind.
True, Syorqan Shar had backstepped when he asked too much of him. But people often want to afterwards, or change their answers or solicit to be asked again. A false bilig has the generous thought the first. It’s very often the second. He didn’t want to bother Syorqan Shar, he didn’t want to get them into strife. The thought that he might be caught with them and them be punished was too bad to think. But Temujin still had a warm sense of miracle, left over from Tergune Wood, that gave him faith in the happy end. Hadn’t his father forgiven him?
Wetly he went back into the lair, which felt like false bilig, but wasn’t. Dogs growled at him but they didn’t attack. They didn’t bark and wake the gers up, either. It isn’t too late, I can head into the night and walk through the wolves. The walk home should only take a year. I can graze on the grass.
The Suldus were his only real hope.
/> He located their ger by ear. It was a butter factory, where the churns went day and night. The family worked in shifts and slept to the swish and glug; their tribe carted in the daily milk to keep Tayichiut headquarters buttered up. Summer was the big time in the butter industry; what they did in winter he didn’t know, but he doubted they curled up fat on honey. On the night he spent with them they joked at each other: don’t lick your fingers. But they did lick their fingers, elaborately, and then Tchimbai told Tchilaun, “He’ll see where that went. That went on your flank, and he’ll pare off his scrape of butter.”
It was more than a little like home. Temujin felt at home, enough to join in: “Me, I’m in a pen getting fattened up. I was too skinny for his dinner.”
“If he wants you fattened, you can use a lick of butter. Here.” And Tchimbai dolloped butter into Temujin’s hand.
“Boys,” their father had warned. But after that he humphed and said in Temujin’s direction, “He weighs the milk, and then he weighs the butter, and our cows are reputed high in butter fat.”
“Yes, I’ve seen the Scarlet Guard at such employment.”
“See, dad, when he’s in the Guard he’ll let a bit of butter through.”
Over the dreamiest