The Tiger Queens Page 13

  “You know not what you speak of,” he said. “If it wasn’t for Jamuka, I’d have died long ago—”

  “I saw him meeting with the Tatar chief on the day that Jochi was born. The Tatar gave him this.” I pulled the burlap sack from where I’d hidden it under my mattress these past months, still filled with the filthy Tatar coins.

  Temujin gave the bag a puzzled look as he thumbed through its contents. “I’m sure Jamuka has an explanation for this. Perhaps he was trading . . .”

  “Or perhaps he’s planning something with the Tatars. We’ll pass by their border when we leave this camp, won’t we?”

  Temujin nodded slowly.

  I took the bag from his hands, dropping it on the silver platter with an unsettling jangle of gold. “So I ask you again, do you trust him with our lives?”

  “Jamuka would never betray me,” Temujin said, but there was a brittleness to his words and I knew he was thinking of Jamuka’s recent coolness. “And I will protect you and my family to my dying breath, Borte Ujin. You know that.”

  I did know that, but I feared it might not be enough. Somehow, I would find a way to cleave my husband from his dangerous anda.

  Finally we had to move to find fresh pastures, yet Temujin planned to share our winter camp with Jamuka, despite my urging to join Ong Khan’s camp instead.

  “I’m no more than a slave in Ong Khan’s camp,” my husband said, helping me remove the last of our ger’s felt panels. “Here with Jamuka, I’m an equal.” His smile showed off straight teeth, except for the back molar he’d lost in a recent boxing match with his brother, Khasar. “Jamuka stood by me when no one else would,” Temujin said. “My anda has asked us to remain with him and so we shall.”

  “This camp is too small for two leaders, especially when you’re one of them,” I said, grunting to pull down a stubborn framing pole. It wouldn’t budge, so finally I kicked it until it collapsed. Sometimes I wished I could kick sense into my husband as easily.

  “Promise me you’ll speak to him,” I said, glowering at the tent, my husband, and the steppes beyond.

  “If it will make you happy,” he answered, yet I could see that the thought of such a confrontation was far from pleasing to my husband.

  “It will make me happier than if we all wound up dead,” I muttered.

  My husband would never believe a word against Jamuka until he looked down and saw the shaft of his anda’s spear buried in his stomach. Yet I was determined that would never happen.

  * * *

  The lines of white gers melted like piles of snow until only the pressed grasses and worn trails attested to the time we’d spent camped on the Tuul River. The first days of our journey would be perilous as we remained on the periphery of Tatar territory, the same place where they’d once poisoned Yesugei when he’d returned from arranging Temujin’s betrothal. Jamuka and Temujin rode their anda horses, the leaders of two lines of people and animals like brown snakes creeping over the spine of the giant steppe. I hadn’t pressed the issue of the Tatars with Temujin again, but the palpable tension between the two blood brothers made me guess that Temujin had broached the subject, perhaps unsuccessfully. Behind Jamuka rode his favored warriors, surly and silent after a celebratory bout of airag and wrestling the night before. I rode behind Temujin on a mare the color of wet earth, Jochi in his sling on my back, where he liked to chew on my braid as his new teeth came in. Hoelun drove her cart behind us, pulled by two of the most stubborn camels I’d ever met.

  We traveled by day and slept under the dark blanket of sky those first nights. People laughed and sang, happy to be on the move again, their songs joining the braying of cattle and yaks, the bleating of sheep and goats. Finally, only two nights after our departure, Jamuka reined in at the base of the mountains, the most treacherous part of our journey. Dusk stretched pink fingers across the Eternal Blue Sky. Hoelun and I had fallen behind but lifted our heads to see Temujin riding toward us with his wretched shaman trailing.

  “Jamuka wishes to stop,” he said, reining in beside his mother. Teb Tengeri halted as well, giving his mare free rein to search for some shred of grass not yet trampled back into the earth. “He believes we should camp at the base of the mountains, his clans to the east and ours to the west.”

  That would put us nearest to the Tatar tribes. If Jamuka was our enemy, now would be the time to strike.

  Hoelun pursed her lips. “This isn’t even half as far as we’d planned to travel.”

  Further up the line, the carts continued their steady procession, but Jamuka gazed at us from his horse, as rigid as a boulder on the horizon. In later years, I would wonder if I should have held my tongue that night. But I had not cast the bones in too long and thus stumbled blind into the chasm of the future. I knew only one thing: I would not allow Jamuka to betray my family or my people.

  “This is the perfect place for the Tatars to attack us,” I told my husband. “Did you speak to Jamuka?”

  Temujin’s scowl was black. “I did. He claimed the coins were payment for several of the Tatars’ best horses.”

  Not even a child would believe that story, yet I could see in Temujin’s expression how he struggled to reconcile the idea of his beloved anda as a liar and possible traitor. I nudged my horse closer to his. “How do you know Jamuka isn’t hoping we’ll be ambushed?”

  Temujin’s bushy brows drew tighter. “Why would he want that?”

  “Jamuka would do anything to be the Great Khan one day,” I said. “To be greater even than his anda.”

  Temujin gave a bark of laughter, but it rang hollow. “Jamuka would never betray me.”

  I recalled the promise I’d once made to Jamuka to keep his future secret, but I couldn’t allow words so carelessly given to now endanger my family. “I cast Jamuka’s future when you sent him to the Festival of Games. He will betray you, and one of you will destroy the other,” I said. “I saw it in the bones.”

  “Bah.” Temujin waved that away. “We took a sacred vow that we would never harm each other, that we would keep no secrets from each other. I will not believe such evil of my anda.”

  “I, too, have seen it in the bones,” Teb Tengeri said. I found it convenient that the shaman had waited until now to speak his opinion, but as he agreed with me for once, I held my tongue. Yet Temujin still refused to leave his blood brother.

  I clasped the pommel of my saddle. “Do you see now? Jamuka is only loyal when it serves him.”

  “He told me he wants to be Great Khan one day, after Ong Khan dies,” Temujin said, staring into the distance. And in the meantime, Ong Khan would support whichever anda he believed would prolong his own reign, never wishing to see himself toppled from power by either young leader.

  “There can only be one khan over our clan,” I said. “Jamuka sees you as competition.”

  Competition for our khan’s helmet, me, and so much more.

  “Jamuka will forever carry your blood,” Hoelun said. “But he is a false anda if what Borte Ujin says is true. You must do as she says, or put your clan in danger. We cannot risk a battle against Jamuka and the Tatars.”

  Everything Hoelun did was to protect her children, an impulse I could now understand. I knew something had shifted if Hoelun now supported me, but I was glad for the backing.

  “We’ll be safer away from these mountains,” I said. “We can pass him in the night, use the river to cover our sounds. Surely some of the clans will choose to join us over Jamuka.”

  Temujin’s grip on his reins tightened, his lips almost white. “I’ll inform Jamuka we’ve agreed to camp here.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off with a sharp glare. “Then we’ll ride through the night.” He kicked his horse then—the same one Jamuka had given him at their final anda ceremony—and rode off, spewing angry clouds of dust.

  * * *

  I scarcely breathed as we tiptoed past Jamuk
a’s distant camps that night, as silent as winter hares despite the river’s helpful noise. Mothers kept their infants at their breasts and even the wagon wheels ceased to creak, so all I could hear was the steady beat of my heart in my ears.

  I waited for Jamuka to emerge from his tent and order us to stop, but his clans slumbered in the distance, their cook fires glowing like red eyes in the night. Sometime before dawn, we became aware that we were being followed. We urged our horses faster, fearing Jamuka’s clan and the Tatars. Yet this was not the fast-moving attack of soldiers bent on slaughter and revenge, but the plodding dust cloud of women and children, old men and their herds. We halted at dawn to count all those who had chosen Temujin over Jamuka. Rings of camping circles spread behind us, smoke from fires and the scent of roasting meat filling the cool morning air.

  They would grow like weeds as the days slipped into weeks.

  I began to doubt myself, to believe that I’d accused Jamuka of conspiracy when there was none, but the others seemed to sense the battle to come. I knew not the colors of the clans’ bridles, but Temujin pointed to them from the top of a hill shaped like a camel’s back.

  “Geniges, Boroghul, Manghud. The Besud, Suldus, Khongkhotan, and the Sukeken. The Ol Khunug, Ohorolas, Duberi, Saghayid, Jurkin, and the Barulas.”

  Assembled like herds on a grassy knoll, spread before us were more clans than I had ever seen in one place, all here to show their support for my husband. Some were tribes already close to Temujin, but others were so close to Jamuka they might have shared the waters of the same womb. My husband gestured to the final group, their yellow bridles so bright none could miss them. “And the Tayichigud.”

  I leaned my head against his shoulder. “The clan of your birth has come full circle, then.”

  “Indeed they have.” He preened like a hawk but then sobered. “The Tatars have announced their alliance with Jamuka. They claim to honor an agreement made with him from long ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. Temujin only nodded.

  “This was his doing,” he said, his voice edged with iron. “I gave him my blood, but it wasn’t enough.”

  “This new Jamuka isn’t the same man you swore vows to,” I said. “His lust for power has overcome his love for you, for everything.”

  Even his love for me. Or perhaps his love for both Temujin and me had withered away, leaving behind only his black jealousy and naked ambition.

  We had hoped to separate peacefully, but that night a Tatar rider came from Jamuka bearing an official declaration of war, returning a bag of brass knucklebones, the golden Merkid belt, and the yellow-and-black warhorse: everything Temujin had ever given him save the blood in his veins. I feared that one day Jamuka might demand that, too.

  In return, the leaders of the largest clans, some of them Temujin’s distant uncles and cousins, asked to meet with my husband. Teb Tengeri also joined them and stared vacantly into the fire, his arms tucked into his wide sleeves and his snowy beard brushing his lap. I sat cross-legged on the women’s side of the tent while the rest of the men drank cups of fresh goat milk—no airag tonight to muddle their minds—and faced Temujin with somber faces.

  “We wish you to be our khan,” the head of the Jurkin said. He was twice Temujin’s age, but he bowed to my husband. “Lead us, Temujin, son of Yesugei the Brave, and we’ll gather the finest spoils of war: the greatest tents, finest women, and strongest geldings. If we forsake you, may you take away our children, wives, and tents.”

  Temujin’s face belied none of the shock I felt; instead, he gave a wry chuckle. “My friends, I have my own tent, wife, and child.” He hesitated, drumming his fingers on his knee for a moment before answering. “Yet I’ll gladly accept your alliance.”

  The Jurkin raised his head. “Then you shall lead us to victory over the white-boned imposter Jamuka!”

  The men pounded the ground with their fists, but Teb Tengeri’s voice broke through the drumming of earth and flesh. “You have done a great deed in uniting these great clans,” the false shaman claimed, “and although there is more work to be done, the whispers of the spirits swirl in my ears tonight.”

  I snorted in derision. Several of the men glanced at me with startled expressions, so well had I hidden myself in the shadows. Yet my husband was spellbound, leaning forward as if riding into battle. “And what do the spirits say?” he asked his seer.

  “They no longer recognize the boy Temujin, replaced as he has been with a great leader. From this night forward, they wish to call you by a new name, one befitting the future Great Khan and leader of the People of the Felt.” Teb Tengeri stared eerily at my husband, his eyes unblinking. “They wish you to be called Genghis Khan.”

  Genghis. The name meant all-powerful.

  This was a gift my husband could not refuse, though it came from the mouth of an imposter. There were few things we could carry with us to the sacred mountains, yet our names traveled with us even after death, and to change them was no small decision. My husband’s gaze caught mine. I recognized the raw hunger there, the desire to prove himself that I, too, had felt since leaving my mother’s tent and the same I’d often recognized in Jamuka’s eyes.

  But Jamuka had already declared war; there was no going back now.

  I gave an almost imperceptible nod, and my husband grinned.

  “I accept the name the spirits have chosen for me,” he said. “Just as I accept these new alliances!”

  The men leapt to their feet and roared their approval, splashing the grass with milk and clapping one another on the back as if celebrating a simple wrestling match. I slipped outside, into the bracing night air and the realization that my husband was no longer a common man dreaming the simple dreams of driving his animals to fresh pastures and ruling his blood kin.

  And as the wife of a khan, that meant I was now a khatun.

  That night the men sacrificed a black stallion and a white mare to sanctify their new alliance. Then Temujin—Genghis now—replaced the white banner outside our ger with one made of black horsehair.

  Black, the color of death and war.

  My words in the dark had done more than separate Temujin and Jamuka.

  They had started a war.

  Chapter 10

  1190 CE

  YEAR OF THE IRON DOG

  I stood next to the fast-rushing creek, alternating between pounding my boys’ shirts on a sun-soaked boulder and dunking them in an iron basin of water, listening to the other wives and mothers speculate about the battle being fought at this moment. I might be khatun, but here at the river, I was just another woman caring for her family. Six years had passed since we’d broken from Jamuka, and in that time more clans had flocked to join us. Three days ago Genghis—the name still sometimes felt foreign to me—had ridden out with thirty thousand men to challenge Jamuka in the Field of Seventy Marshes. Battle scars riddled my husband’s body, and he was both loved and feared now, an able leader who drew men like bees to a fragrant summer globeflower. Genghis was proclaimed a bataar—a hero—for conquering the unconquerable more times than anyone could remember, and the People of the Felt sang songs to him each night around the fires. Teb Tengeri had predicted a victory at this coming battle, but to me that promise was worth less than the time he used to speak it. I worried for my husband as I always did, picking at the skin on my thumb until it bled. I was uneasy for Jamuka, too, though I’d never admit it to anyone. I was unable to reconcile the elegant noble I’d once kissed with the brutal warrior he’d become.

  Even amidst the death and destruction of war, life went on. Genghis and I now had three sons—Jochi, Chaghatai, and Ogodei. Several leaders had proposed to marry their sisters or daughters to Genghis as lesser wives, but each time he refused them, claiming he needed no wife other than me, and preferring instead to negotiate betrothals for our boys despite their youth. Ong Khan had once denied Genghis’ request to marry in
to his family—the old fox would never commit to a permanent alliance with either Genghis or Jamuka—so my husband sent an emissary to discuss bonding Chaghatai or Ogodei with the daughter of Ong Khan’s brother. Due to the cloudiness of the blood in Jochi’s veins, no mention was ever made of marrying the lovely Sorkhokhtani to him. I wasn’t sure whether to be angry or relieved that my eldest son was often ignored when it came to the intrigues of power and alliances.

  Ogodei lifted his caftan and let loose a stream of yellow waters into the creek, but my barked reprimand sent him scuttling toward the bushes so he didn’t further defile the river. He finished and gave me a mischievous grin, then yawned into his pudgy hands. This youngest son of mine preferred to sleep and drink both his days and nights away, growing quite fat in the process. I dearly loved to nibble the rolls on the backs of his knees. I stretched my back and rubbed my belly, weighted like a stone with the new child I’d recently discovered I carried inside. This one felt different already, bringing a strange craving for river trout and the return of my dreams of Toregene, dancing in a field with three other faceless girls.

  Toregene. I pushed away the memory and let the sunshine warm my cheeks. We’d never found Sochigel, but I’d heard whispers of a girl with mismatched eyes sighted amidst Jamuka’s clan. I dared to hope, but I doubted whether I’d ever see the child again. Instead, I prayed that her god with the silver cross would keep her safe from harm.

  Ogodei settled down to stacking rocks, and I shielded my eyes from the sun to see a disturbance on the horizon. The lazy dust cloud clung to a smaller contingent of heavy-footed men and horses than had departed three days ago, devoid of victory songs and trudging, as if they’d grown weary of life in the time they’d been away. My heart lodged in my throat until I found Genghis at the front of his men, dust streaked and weather-beaten, but alive. My sons ran up behind me, clutching my deel as the army approached, but Jochi took one look at his father’s face, then herded his younger brothers away.