The Tiger Queens Read online

  My soul lightened at this child’s simple hope, the tentative way her fingers crept toward mine. “I think that would make him the luckiest baby in the world,” I whispered. “Although that would make you my daughter as well.”

  She giggled, her hands splayed over her mouth. “I’d like that.”

  And that night, instead of searching for sleep amidst Chilger’s snores and my body’s fresh pains, I recalled Toregene’s smile and the happy lilt of her humming, which carried me to my dreams.

  * * *

  Days passed into a week. Or perhaps two.

  Khogaghchin and Toregene kept me drugged with poppy juice, but despite their gentle hands, the pain and terror of my beating often followed me into my nightmares. Once I woke to see Chilger hovering over me, felt him moving inside me, and cried out in agony.

  I knew not whether that was a nightmare or reality.

  I emerged from a restless sleep to the angry screech of a hawk, yet it took my drugged mind a moment to realize that clamor outside was no bird, but the garbled screams of horses and men, terrified mothers and children. Alone in the ger, I scrambled from my pile of blankets and crawled to the door, opening it to reveal a scene worse than any nightmare.

  The setting sun scalded the horizon and raiders swarmed over the camp like bloodthirsty locusts, hacking with swords and spears at anything in their path—horses, carts, and even human flesh. Blood spattered the earth before me and tents at the edge of camp were already aflame, the air full of angry sparks and horrified screams.

  I cried out in fear as someone stumbled toward me, then sagged with relief at Mother Khogaghchin’s wrinkled face. She hauled me to my feet with surprising strength for one so ancient. “Do you think I’d nurse you back to health just to see you slaughtered by a band of raiders?” she asked.

  “Toregene.” I grasped Khogaghchin’s wrist. “Where is she?”

  “I saw her flee into the woods,” she said. “We’ll find her.”

  I ignored my aching bones and we plunged into the maelstrom, but we didn’t take more than a few steps before a Merkid woman saw us. She stopped suddenly, her mouth open in a silent scream. A gush of crimson spilled down her chin and over her deel, and then she fell forward, revealing a soldier with gnarled black hair and a blade smeared with her blood. His lips split in a maniacal grin at the sight of Mother Khogaghchin and me.

  We ran.

  Hand in hand, we skirted gers aflame like pitiful piles of kindling. Raiders crawled over tents not yet burning, jumping down the smoke holes to slaughter those within before setting torches to the felts. Others beat down tent frames and trampled the scorched wool panels, stomping them into the mud and blood. One soldier carried an armful of Spirit Banners while another hacked down Toghtoga’s doorway, the home of his guardian spirit. These men sought the annihilation not only of Toghtoga’s earthly clan, but of their ancestors, too.

  A man’s voice cut through the dark. “Find the women!”

  A horse charged out of the crowd and into the darkness, the rider’s bloody sword held high. He snarled like a demon wolf dragged from the spirit world, but beneath the mask of bloodlust, I knew that face.

  “Temujin!”

  I ran to him, the moon and crackle of fire behind me, to seize the reins of his horse. His blade hovered over my head, and I waited for it to come down, to end this terrible ordeal. Then Temujin dropped the sword and in a breath he was down from his horse, clasping me to him so hard I thought my bruised ribs would shatter.

  He kissed me, tasting of smoke and death. Despite the destruction around us, I felt safe for the first time in months.

  Temujin’s hands wove into my hair, as if he feared I might slip away. “The mountain spirits led me here, Borte Ujin.” He leaned back then and his expression fractured. “Gods, Borte, what have they done to you?”

  I winced as he touched my scarred lip. All the emotions I’d held at bay these past months pummeled me then, but I swallowed the sobs and bile that welled in my throat. Temujin motioned to the crowd of soldiers behind him, and two mounted men stepped forward. The first was Khasar, his younger brother, but the second was a face I knew too well.

  Jamuka.

  There was a flash of some emotion across his face, and then his expression smoothed into its perpetual mask. “We searched long and hard for you, Borte Ujin,” he said, but his voice was as taut as a bowstring pulled too tight.

  It took me a long moment to recover from seeing both him and Temujin. “I’d have died many deaths had it not been for Mother Khogaghchin,” I finally said, gesturing to the old woman behind me. I knew now that the spirits had sent her to protect and guide me, a precious well of strength disguised by her many years and fragile bones.

  Temujin clenched his fist across his heart and bowed to Khogaghchin, giving her an honor I’d never seen bestowed on a childless widow. “Then there shall always be a place for you before my hearth.”

  “Thank you, Temujin of the Borijin.” Khogaghchin stuttered for a moment, then bowed her head. “I’ve never encountered such kindness in all my years on this earth.”

  “The Merkid are finished,” Jamuka said to my husband, the screams behind us having fallen silent, replaced with the hiss and heat of hungry flames. “Shall we stay or return to the hills?”

  “I’ve found what I came for.” Temujin’s arm around me tightened, his stiff armor cutting into my skin and reminding me I was still alive. “We’ll camp here tonight and then return to the mountains.”

  “And the rest of the Merkid?” Jamuka gestured to the piles of burned felt that had been the Merkid tents, their wild-eyed horses rearing as they were rounded up as spoils of war, along with a huddle of pitiful women and sobbing children.

  “Take them as slaves,” Temujin said.

  He looked about to say more, but just then a man broke from the shadows, a battle cry erupting from his throat that would have turned the knees of the most hardened warrior to water. He barreled toward us, bare chested and drenched in blood.

  Chilger.

  I screamed in terror as Jamuka pitched forward, his curved sword flashing with fire and moonlight. His blade caught Chilger’s side and the Merkid beast howled in pain. Fury and terror toward this man overwhelmed me, but I found myself rooted where I stood at the same time Jamuka knocked him to the ground, using the wrestling move I’d once witnessed on a crisp autumn day, lifetimes ago. Khasar poised his sword over Chilger’s heaving chest. Temujin motioned him to lower the blade, then glowered down at him as if he were some sort of insect.

  “We’ll shed no more Merkid blood,” he said.

  But Chilger leered at me, stretching out his thick neck as if to taunt Khasar. “Who is this, Borte?” he asked.

  Temujin glanced at me and then stared at Chilger, studying his fat face and the arms as thick as birch trunks. “Borte,” he said slowly, keeping his eyes on Chilger. “How does this man know you?”

  The words wouldn’t come, blown into the wind like seeds on a summer day.

  “He is Chilger the Athlete,” Mother Khogaghchin finally spoke. “Chiledu’s younger brother. They gave Borte to him.”

  Jamuka uttered a curse under his breath and Temujin’s face darkened like a thundercloud passing over the sun. Chilger spat at my feet. “I took Borte into my tent,” he said, “and in return, the she-wolf has caused a plague to rain upon my clan. I wish I’d killed her when I had the chance.”

  And then, before the blade could come down, Chilger jumped to his feet and punched Khasar in the face, doubling him over. Then Chilger took off in the direction of the nearby canyons, where only weeks before I’d almost taken my own life.

  Jamuka launched himself onto his horse to pursue, but Temujin’s barked order stopped him. My husband’s face was etched as hard as a mountain. “Let him go,” he said. “The canyons are no place for a man alone. He’ll be dead by morning.”
<
br />   Jamuka’s hands tightened into fists that mirrored my own. “He has dishonored Borte. For that he deserves to die a most terrible death.”

  “My wife has not been dishonored.” My husband touched my arm and I flinched when he caressed a cut on my brow, still healing. “It seems to me she still bears the scars of a battle well fought.”

  “Then let me end the battle,” Jamuka protested, his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword. “For your honor.”

  “We brought honor to my clan today,” he said to Jamuka, “because you and Ong Khan’s soldiers joined me to retrieve the wife of my heart. We’ve watered the steppes with the blood of the Merkid warriors and emptied their beds of their sons.” His arm tightened around me. “And now we’ll return home as soon as their women have scattered the ashes of the dead.”

  I wanted to scream and rail against him then. Chilger should suffer for what he’d done to me; I should have the revenge of watching his lifeblood leak from the demon’s body. But as I looked around me at the smoldering ruin of the Merkid camp, I realized with a shudder that too much blood had already been spilled in my name. Despite all my sacrifices, my prophecy had come to pass in a storm of blood and fire.

  My hand brushed my belly, the promise of life amidst so much death, and I cringed. It mattered not what happened to Chilger, for I’d never be free of him.

  * * *

  I woke to a darkness as black as the longest winter night, the fire having burned out after I’d finally crawled onto a horse blanket in Temujin’s hastily erected tent. Ong Khan’s men had returned with word of a Borijin woman wearing embroidered slippers who had fled into the woods rather than return to her family and had yet to be found. Sochigel was too proud to return now that she’d been dishonored by the Merkid, and while I envied her silent conviction, I found that my greed for life was too great to yearn for death any longer.

  The ashes of the dead Merkid clung to my skin and nose, filling my mouth with the despair and lost hopes of the dead. I reached out a frantic hand for Temujin, needing his solid warmth to banish the terror that crowded my heart.

  But there was no reassuring heat from my husband’s side of the pallet, not even an indent from his body. He’d never returned to the ger.

  I sat on the pallet, legs crossed, my anger at Temujin increasing tenfold with each passing moment. My husband hadn’t apologized for abandoning me the night of the raid, hadn’t asked toward my treatment by the Merkid, but instead he’d left me again to go gallivanting about in the dark, probably to seize more Merkid treasures for himself. I drew deep, calming breaths and had almost swallowed my craving for the poppy juice when footsteps prowling around the ger made my heart skip a beat.

  My thoughts flew to Chilger, returned from the canyon to steal me again, and I searched for a weapon, but my fingers found only my discarded leather boots. I held one ready to lob at my intruder as the tent flap lifted, revealing the dull orange glow of a nearby fire.

  “Borte?”

  I expected an angry Merkid bent on revenge, or Temujin returning from wherever he’d disappeared to. My heart thudded a nervous beat at the unexpected voice.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Jamuka.”

  He exhaled and I caught a hint of his smell—pine and man. I didn’t know whether to stop breathing or draw the scent deep into my lungs.

  “I heard you cry out,” he said, ducking to step over the threshold of the tent. He straightened, almost a full head taller than Temujin. “Are you all right?”

  “Did you find Toregene?” I asked, ignoring his question. It was only after the men had promised to search for her that I’d agreed to rest. Now I wondered if that had been a mistake, if I should have combed the woods for her myself. Toregene was an intelligent child; she’d know not to come to a strange man calling her name.

  “No, but we’ll keep looking.” His eyes must have adjusted to the darkness, for he laughed then. “What were you going to do with the boot? Throw it at me?”

  I hadn’t realized I still held it. I set it down with a laugh, small chortles at first that quickly transformed into a torrent of tears that poured down my cheeks. “I’m not right in the head just now,” I finally choked out. “I fear I may never be again.”

  I knew then that Chilger had damaged my spirit as well as my body. Jamuka let my words settle in the dark before he responded. “Life changes us, Borte Ujin. In ways we could never anticipate.”

  I caught a glimpse of his face, the glow of firelight making sharp the angles and hollows of his cheekbones. But it was his eyes that stole my breath, the naked yearning exposed there.

  “Where is my husband?” My voice was too loud, threatened as I was by this fresh danger.

  “He’ll return soon,” he said, his eyes as mournful as they’d been the night of my marriage.

  “Thank you for helping Temujin,” I said, for there was nothing else to say. Still, my words seemed pitifully inadequate.

  “I didn’t do it for Temujin,” he said. “I did it for you.”

  My mind was a flurry of emotions, none of which made any sense. “Jamuka—”

  “I left after your marriage to avoid disgracing myself with my feelings for my anda’s wife,” he said. “And I’ll never forgive myself for not being there to protect you when the Merkid came.”

  All the right words, all from the wrong man.

  “I’ve tried so hard to fight this.” Jamuka’s voice rasped and I caught the faint scent of airag on his breath. Suddenly the grace of Jamuka’s white-boned heritage fled and he stood in front of me, just a man before a woman.

  The anguish on Jamuka’s face was raw, more powerful than his words. He shuddered when I touched his cheek and he clasped his hand over mine, our fingers twining tight as if they belonged together.

  “I love you, Borte Ujin,” he said. “From the moment I laid eyes on you.”

  I drew away. “You can’t say such things—”

  “No,” he said. “I must say them. I swore if we found you that I’d tell you how I felt, come what may. I might be a fool, but I’m not a coward.” He held both of my hands, the touch of our palms so insignificant and yet so intimate. “What do you want, Borte? To stay here with Temujin?”

  It was an unfair question, come too soon after this second raid, yet I could see that it cost him dearly when I didn’t answer.

  “You’ll stay with him, won’t you?” he asked. His shoulders slumped and the fire in his eyes banked. “Because it’s the honorable thing to do.”

  I laid my hand on the thick leather armor over his chest. “I’m far from honorable,” I said, tasting the bitter tang of the words before I spoke them. “I’m pregnant.”

  He stepped back as if I’d scalded him. “You carry Temujin’s son?” He gave a strangled cry. “He gains all and I lose everything.”

  I didn’t have a chance to correct him. Men murmured outside and Jamuka widened the distance between us as the tent flap opened. Temujin’s unmistakable scent of smoke and horseflesh filled the ger.

  “There you are,” I said, quashing my flutter of nerves at being caught alone with Jamuka, but if Temujin thought it odd that his anda was in his tent, he gave no indication. “Where have you been all night?” I asked.

  He grunted. “Dealing with the rest of the Merkid.”

  “So you left me alone and unprotected?” My voice turned frigid. “Again?”

  I couldn’t see my husband well in the dark, but his head jerked toward Jamuka as he kicked his boots off. “I didn’t leave you alone. Jamuka returned from the woods to stand guard.”

  If only he knew the danger Jamuka posed. “Did you accomplish all you intended?” Jamuka asked, once again the white-boned noble.

  Temujin grunted. “I did.”

  “Good.” Jamuka glanced at me in such a way that I knew they were hiding something. “Then I’ll leave you now to assist with dire
cting the distribution of the Merkid spoils.”

  “My share must be divided evenly,” Temujin said. “Make sure every man who fought receives his portion.”

  Jamuka bowed over his fist. “As you wish.”

  “Jamuka was the first to answer my call to arms to search for you,” Temujin said after the tent flap fell behind him. “He’s the best man I’ve ever met.”

  “Better than you,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  “You let the Merkid take me,” I said, despising the note of hysteria that crept into my voice. “I thought you’d come back for me, and now you’ve let Chilger escape—”

  I pressed my fist against my lips to stop myself from saying more. I expected him to hit me then, but he only offered his hands in surrender.

  “I don’t deserve anything from you,” Temujin said, “but I beg one favor from you, wife of my heart.”

  I glared at him. “And what is that?”

  “Hit me. Or kick me. As hard as you can. And as many times as you want.”

  My jaw fell to my chest. “You’ve gone mad.”

  He shrugged, but the effort seemed to cost him. “You’re angry. When a man is angry, he hits things. Or kills someone. As you’re stronger than most men I know, I suspect that the same could be said for you. I’ve no wish to die, but it can’t hurt to let you beat me.”

  I scoffed, but after a moment’s hesitation I let my fists fly and kicked him as hard as I could manage, releasing all the pent-up rage of the past months, growing ever angrier when I realized my full force wasn’t affecting my husband. At first he stood as still as a boulder, but he changed tactics once my nails came away with skin. “I made a terrible mistake, Borte Ujin, one I’ll never make again,” he murmured into my ear even as I jerked away and he struggled to subdue me. “I’ll protect you to my dying breath, but you have to let me.”

  I finally allowed the warmth of his body and the rhythm of his breath to calm me. Only then did I realize his chest was damp.

  I drew back, half-blind in the dark. His shirt smelled not of the salt of sweat, but of a familiar metallic tang, there above the smoke and horseflesh.