Conn Iggulden - Genghis, Birth of an Empire

Still, he had expected to be welcomed by fearful men. Finding the Olkhun’ut already in alliance had changed the value of his warriors. He had been going to demand a full half of the spoils and, instead, he found the sons of Yesugei were coolly arrogant toward him. Yet he had committed himself. He could not simply leave them on the plain and take the Wolves back. His control of the tribe would suffer after seeing him turned away. In the flickering torches, he could see dozens of gers stretching around him into darkness. Just the sight of so many warriors matched his dreams. What could a man achieve with so many at his back? If Yesugei’s sons died in the battle, their men would be lost and frightened. They could swell the ranks of the Wolves.

“My men will follow your orders, through me,” he said at last.

Temujin leaned forward. “But afterwards, when the Tartars have been gutted, we will settle an older debt between us. I claim the Wolves, as the oldest surviving son of Yesugei. Will you meet me with that sword you wear as if it were your own?”

“It is my own,” Eeluk replied, his face tightening.

A hush fell on the camp around them. Togrul glanced at the two men, observing the hatred barely masked by civility. Eeluk forced himself to stillness as he pretended to consider. He had known Temujin would want him dead. He had considered the chance of absorbing surviving raiders into the Wolves, taken from Temujin’s dead hands. Instead, he faced the khan of the Olkhun’ut and the prize was a hundred times greater. Perhaps the spirits were with him as they had not been before.

“When the Tartars are broken, I will meet you,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “I will welcome the chance.”

Temujin stood suddenly, causing many hands to reach for their swords. Eeluk sat like stone and looked up at him, but Temujin’s gaze was elsewhere.

Hoelun walked slowly toward the gathering, as if in a trance. Eeluk turned to see who had captured Temujin’s attention, and when he saw Yesugei’s wife, he too rose with Tolui to face her.

Hoelun was pale and Eeluk saw how she ran the point of her tongue over her bottom lip, a sliver of red like a snake’s warning. As he met her eyes, she rushed forward, holding up her arm to strike.

Kachiun stepped between them before she could reach the khan of the Wolves. He held his mother firmly as she swiped her hand out like a claw, straining for Eeluk’s face. The nails did not touch him and Eeluk said nothing, sensing Temujin standing ready at his back. Hoelun struggled, her gaze finding her eldest son.

“How can you let him live after what he did to us?” she demanded, fighting Kachiun’s grip.

Temujin shook his head. “He is a guest in my camp, Mother. When we have fought the Tartars, I will have the Wolves from him, or he will have the Olkhun’ut.”

Eeluk turned to him then and Temujin smiled bitterly.

“Is that not what you want, Eeluk? I do not see more gers in your camp than when you left us on the plains to die. The sky father has abandoned the Wolves under your hand, but that will change.”

Eeluk chuckled and flexed his shoulders. “I have said all I came to say. When we ride, you will know a better man holds your wing. After that, I will have a hard lesson for you and I will not let you live a second time.”

“Go back to your gers, Eeluk,” Temujin said. “I will begin training your men at dawn.”

As the Tartars came south into the green plains, smaller tribes fled before their numbers. Some never paused as they sighted the host Temujin had assembled, skirting them so that they appeared as dark moving specks drifting across the hills far away. Others added their number to his warriors, so that the army grew daily in a trickle of furious riders. Temujin had sent messengers to the Naimans, the Oirats, any of the great tribes who could be found. Either they could not be reached or they would not come. He understood their reluctance, even as he scorned it. The tribes had never fought together in all their history. To have bound even three into a single force was astonishing. They had trained together until he thought they were as ready as they could ever be. Yet in the evenings he had been called time and again to forbid blood feuds, or punish fighting bands as they remembered grievances from generations before.

He had not visited the gers of the Wolves. Not one of the old families had spoken up for his mother when she was left to die with her children. There had been a time when he would have given anything to walk amongst the people he had known as a boy, but as Hoelun had discovered before him, they were not the same. While Eeluk ruled them, it would not bring him peace.

On the twentieth dawn after the arrival of the Olkhun’ut, the scouts came racing in to report the Tartar army on the horizon, less than a day’s march away. With them came another family of wanderers, driven before them like goats. Temujin blew the signal to assemble and there was quiet in the camps as the warriors kissed their loved ones goodbye and mounted their horses. Many of them chewed packages of hot mutton and bread to give them strength, pressed into their hands by daughters and mothers. The wings formed, with Eeluk’s Wolves taking the left and Kachiun and Khasar leading the Olkhun’ut on the right. Temujin held the Kerait in the center, and as he looked right and left along the line of horsemen, he was satisfied. Eight hundred warriors waited for his signal to ride against their enemies. The forges of the Kerait and Olkhun’ut had been fired night and day, and almost a third of them wore armor copied from the sets Wen Chao had given them. Their horses were protected by leather aprons studded with overlapping plates of iron. Temujin knew the Tartars had seen nothing like them. He waited while the women moved back, seeing Arslan reach down and kiss the young Tartar girl he had captured, then taken for a wife. Temujin looked around, but there was no sign of Borte. The birth was overdue and he had not expected her to come out of the gers. He remembered Hoelun telling him that Yesugei had ridden out on the night of his own birth, and he smiled wryly at the thought. The circle turned, but the stakes had grown. He had done everything he could and it was not hard to imagine his father watching his sons. Temujin caught the eye of Khasar and Kachiun, then found Temuge in the second rank to his left. He nodded to them and Khasar grinned. They had come a long way from the cleft in the hills where every day survived was a triumph.

When they were ready, the shaman of the Olkhun’ut rode to the front on a mare of pure white. He was thin and ancient, his hair turned the color of his mount. Every eye was on him as he chanted, raising his hands to the sky father. He held the fire-cracked shoulder blade of a sheep, and he gestured with it as if it were a weapon. Temujin smiled to himself. The shaman of the Kerait had not been as thirsty for war, and Temujin had chosen the right man for the ritual.

As they watched, the shaman dismounted and pressed himself on the earth, embracing the mother who ruled them all. The chant was thin on the breeze, but the ranks of warriors sat in perfect stillness, waiting for the word. At last, the old man peered at the black lines on the bone, reading them as he ran his gnarled fingers along the fissures.

“The mother rejoices,” he called. “She yearns for the Tartar blood we will release into her. The sky father calls us on in his name.” He broke the shoulder blade in his hands, showing surprising strength.

Temujin filled his lungs and bellowed along the line. “The land knows only one people, my brothers,” he shouted. “She remembers the weight of our steps. Fight well today and they will run before us.”

They raised their bows in a great roar, and Temujin felt his pulses beat faster. The shaman mounted his mare and passed back through the ranks. Out of superstitious fear, none of the warriors would meet the eye of the old man, but Temujin nodded to him, bowing his head.