The Tiger Queens Page 14

  Teb Tengeri had been wrong. The Field of Seventy Marshes had been a decisive victory for Jamuka, and many of our men still lay where they’d fallen, their bones stripped bare by black vultures and left to dry in the sun. More had been taken prisoner.

  Silence fell over the camp and the air refused to stir, so no one dared even to whisper as frantic wives and mothers searched the sea of filthy faces for the men they loved. I gathered the reins of my husband’s warhorse as he dismounted, the weight of all he’d seen slumping his proud shoulders. Our warriors clustered around him, their eyes red with exhaustion and visions of death.

  “When will we fight again?” they asked.

  “Soon,” Genghis answered. “So long as we have blood in our veins, we’ll fight.”

  The men mustered a cheer, but a riderless white warhorse distracted me. It raced toward camp as if being whipped, and the faces at the back of the crowd began to swivel away from my husband. I knew something was wrong before the animal slowed and a woman’s scream ripped the air. The crowd parted, more shrieks joining the cacophony until even the winds seemed to join the cry, the sound forever searing my mind. Genghis lurched toward the horse and grabbed its flapping reins. The beast wheeled about and I moaned into my fist, seeing the nightmare that had made even the winds screech with horror.

  A man’s head dangled from the matted tail, black blood crusted at the jagged flaps of skin where it had been hacked off. The eyes crawled with flies, the jaw hanging limp and the tongue pale and dry. I recognized the man from the gold ring still attached to his ear. He was Chaghagan Uua, one of the archers who had ridden out so proudly behind my husband only three short days ago.

  The woman screamed again.

  Uua’s wife. Now his widow.

  Tying Uua’s head, the most sacred part of his body, to the unclean hind end of the warhorse had defiled the soldier’s eternal soul, leaving his body lost and his family shamed. His spirit would never be whole again, would never fly to the sacred mountains to greet his ancestors.

  My voice rose with those of the rest of our camp’s women, keening for the unjust loss of such a warrior instead of singing the song that would have ushered his soul to the sacred mountains. This was the work of a monster, yet the Jamuka I knew was no such demon.

  Genghis’ sword flashed silver, and the white warhorse bowed to its knees with a spurt of scarlet. Blood spattered my husband’s boots and the desecrated beast collapsed to the ground with a gurgled exhale.

  “Gather fresh horses and provisions.” Genghis raised his fist in the air. “We ride to seek revenge for Chaghagan Uua!”

  Despite the men’s exhaustion, his words were met with a lusty cheer this time. Saddles were transferred to new warhorses, raw meat and milk paste packed in their bags, and waterskins refilled in a flurry of dust. The soldiers mounted their horses in a thunder of hooves, leaving the women to deal with Uua’s decomposing remains. As khatun, it was my duty to help Uua’s widow prepare his body, but I could do more for our clans elsewhere.

  I whistled to my mare and was already in the saddle when a surly voice stopped me.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Hoelun glowered at me, arms crossed under her sagging breasts and the white hairs on her chin quivering like bristles on a boar’s snout. “There’s a body to clean and a horse to butcher,” she said, almost shouting to be heard over the sounds of keening.

  “Uua is past saving,” I said, “but I might be able to stop Jamuka from killing more of our people.”

  “You’ve seen this in the flames?”

  I thought to lie, but instead I shook my head. Nothing I’d seen had been able to stop this war, so I still saw no reason to read the messages of bone and marrow.

  Hoelun grabbed the bridle. “Jamuka won’t stop this war for you, Borte Ujin. Not anymore.”

  “You knew?”

  “About Jamuka’s feelings for you?” she scoffed. “I’m almost as old as the hills, but I’m not blind. My only concern was whether you reciprocated his feelings.”

  “Is that why you told Genghis about Jochi’s father?” Even now I refused to speak Chilger’s name; I still sometimes woke from nightmares of him hovering over me, leering at me with twisted teeth and foul breath.

  Hoelun shrugged. “It wasn’t until the night that you urged my son to leave Jamuka that you proved where your loyalties lay. Too much has happened since then for Jamuka to end this war.”

  I jerked the leather from her hands. “We won’t know unless I try.” Jamuka had overstepped the bounds of warfare today; perhaps I’d return only as a head tied to my mare’s saddle.

  “What about your children?” Hoelun asked. “And the babe in your belly?”

  My hand brushed my stomach, the solidness of new life there. “The Earth Mother and Eternal Blue Sky will watch over us.” I patted the wide sleeve of my deel, revealing the sheathed dagger I always kept there. “And I don’t go unarmed.”

  Hoelun sighed. “You’re fiercer than a tiger guarding her cubs, Borte Ujin. I’m afraid I misjudged you when you first came to us.”

  “We do what we must to keep safe those we love.” I understood her protectiveness over her son now, her willingness to hurt others—even me—in order to shield him. I gestured to the thirteen circles of white gers over her shoulder. “I now have many to protect.”

  Hoelun gave my knee a resigned squeeze. “Then may the Earth Mother watch over you.”

  I kicked my heels, heart in my throat as I followed my husband and his men, letting the caterwauling of the women fade into the distance. A blind man could have followed the army’s path, the clods of broken dirt and crushed petals of white and purple wildflowers that would never nod their heads to the sun again.

  I trailed their dust cloud until my legs grew numb in my saddle and darkness started to fall. The soldiers traveled with reserve horses, so they rarely had to stop to rest the animals, but I had only the mare beneath me, and a layer of white lather covered her flanks. I was saved from having to make the decision whether to stop as a terrible sound reached my ears over the pounding of her hooves. The low keening of hundreds of men rumbled into the Eternal Blue Sky, and for a moment the wind shifted so I thought I heard the wails of grief from the women in our camp mingled with the howls of our men. Trapped in the middle, I almost turned back, but I was drawn inexplicably forward, as if the hands of the dead nudged the small of my back and tugged my horse’s reins.

  I came upon them, and the men parted to let me pass, recognizing their khatun despite their glistening eyes. I wished later they’d cursed me and stopped my horse from taking another step. The air danced with the smells of an abandoned feast, full of cooking meat and campfires.

  Inside the vast circle of men were the charred remains of campfires hastily doused, some with wisps of white smoke like departing souls swirling in the air. The barren field was pocked with almost a hundred priceless iron cauldrons, too expensive to leave behind, as tall as a man’s chest and wide enough to boil half a horse.

  I edged my mare closer to one of the giant pots and peered over just as Genghis saw me.

  “Borte, don’t!”

  But it was too late.

  A man stared at me from under brackish water, the flesh of his cheeks boiled away and his eyes gaping sockets. Strands of hair floated on the surface like black weeds in a pond, and his lips curled back in a silent scream.

  It was the face of a man boiled alive.

  I tumbled off my mare and retched, clutching handfuls of earth as the stench of boiling meat seeped into my nose and there was only air in my stomach.

  Jamuka had done this. There had been bloody battles, raids, and skirmishes between our peoples these past six years, but the man I had once known no longer existed. Hatred closed around my heart like a fist but loosened as guilt pummeled me. I had urged my husband to break from Jamuka, so my hands, to
o, were stained with these men’s blood.

  And for that I could never forgive myself.

  “Remember this, People of the Felt.” Genghis’ voice broke above me, then gained strength to pulse with barely restrained fury. “That devil Jamuka has destroyed our brothers’ souls. Let no man’s ears be empty of this travesty. The Golden Light of the Sun and the Eternal Blue Sky will not suffer such a crime to go unpunished.”

  There was silence, then gentle hands on my waist as Genghis helped me back onto my horse.

  “Stop him,” I hissed, trying to find somewhere to look that didn’t scream of death. I settled on my husband’s eyes, slate gray with sadness and flecked with molten anger.

  “I will,” Genghis said. “I swear it.”

  I shuddered to pass the watery graves, letting my mare find her way through the maze of death. It was then, while passing the last of the cauldrons, that I felt the first emphatic kick of the babe in my womb. I hadn’t sought the future in a long time, but many believed a child’s destiny could be foretold in part by the spirits that first urged it to life while in the womb. My mother had been caught in a spring rainstorm when she felt me jump like a fish in water, and Hoelun claimed the wild air of summer had breathed life into Genghis while she galloped across the steppes.

  The babe in my womb had been urged to life by the vengeful spirits of the departed. And thus, this child I carried would forever be touched by death.

  * * *

  We received more news from Jamuka’s camp as winter settled around us, freezing the ground solid and stalling the war as we all struggled to keep our herds alive.

  Genghis had laid waste to the Naiman clan before the Field of Seventy Marshes, ordering his outnumbered men to light five campfires each so the petrified enemy would believe our soldiers to be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Their clan was destroyed, but there was a rumor that five women had escaped and sought refuge with Jamuka. Now we learned that Jamuka had claimed the beautiful young widow of the warrior Chuluun and made her his wife, and that she declared that Genghis and his people never bathed, that we smelled like fresh camel dung, and that our clothes were filthier than the underside of a yak’s belly.

  Gurbesu.

  Again the specter of my girlhood friend taunted me from afar, first from Toregene’s lips and now this. Jamuka cast his web wide, increasing the number of ties that bound us while also placing my friends and family in harm’s way.

  I wondered if perhaps that was his intent.

  * * *

  I was brought to the birthing tent past my time and labored while the sun twice rose and set, alternating between fighting for life and wishing for death to claim me. Finally, my daughter fell into this world, howling like a wild dog gnawing its own afterbirth, dark eyes glaring and fists clenched. She almost killed me in the process, ripping me so Hoelun was scarcely able to sew together my ravaged skin. “This girl tried to send you to the sacred mountains,” she muttered, a sinew string between her lips as she threaded a bone needle. It was difficult to hear her over the squalling child. “This should be the last foal you give my son.”

  To move required more effort than I could manage as she began stitching so I stared at the soot-stained ceiling, gripping handfuls of damp bedcovers. “I’m Genghis’ wife,” I murmured weakly, between clenched teeth. “It’s my duty to fill our ger with children.”

  Yet all I wanted to do now was sleep, despite the shadow of death that still lurked at the entrance of the tent.

  “You are also khatun,” Hoelun said from between my legs. “Which you can’t very well be from the sacred mountains.”

  Mother Khogaghchin, now beyond ancient, crooned and washed my crying daughter’s naked pink body with a damp rag. Her gnarled hand smoothed the baby’s shock of black hair into lying smooth against her forehead, but it sprang back up. My child’s hair looked like a porcupine had made its den atop her head.

  Quiet finally fell as Mother Khogaghchin laid her on my chest and the babe found my nipple. Already I had the breasts and stomach of an old woman, but the Earth Mother and Eternal Blue Sky had blessed me with four strong children. For that I was grateful.

  I drifted toward sleep as my daughter nursed, scarcely noticing as Hoelun left to summon Genghis while Khogaghchin finished wiping my daughter with a rag. The old woman’s shocked exclamation startled me, pulling my nipple from the baby’s mouth so the tent erupted in so savage a howl that my ears rang.

  “What is it?” I rearranged myself so my daughter could continue nursing, her glare fiercer than ever as she sucked greedily.

  “Her hand.” Mother Khogaghchin stared as if the child might be missing a thumb, but all ten of her fingers curved like talons. Khogaghchin pried open a little fist—earning a sharper glare—to reveal a shiny blood clot like a black pearl. “Just like her father,” she whispered, removing the clot gently, reverently, as if it were a precious gem. I took it, watching it stain the creases of my palm as Genghis pushed into the tent, looking as haggard as I felt. It was only as he entered that the shadow of death was finally banished from the birthing tent, as if the familiar foes had greeted each other too often on the battlefield.

  Genghis crouched at my bedside, shadows under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept in days. “My mother claims it was a difficult birth.” He took my hand in his, mingling the blood of my womb with that of the birth sacrifice. “She says I might lose you if you go again to the birthing tent.”

  “We’ll worry about that when the time comes.” I tried to pull my daughter off the nipple, but she gave me a scowl that so reminded me of her father that I chuckled, although the movement cost me dear. “Right now you should meet your very greedy little girl.”

  Genghis touched one of her tiny fists. After a moment’s hesitation, the child’s fingers opened like the petals of a mountain daisy, still streaked with blood and tipped with ragged nails. My husband filled his lungs with her soul and exhaled.

  Only then did I see the tears in his eyes.

  “I’d call her Alaqai,” I said, smoothing her furrowed brow. Genghis might name our sons, but I would name our daughters. The child stared at her father, as if memorizing his every feature. Her lashless eyes blinked, then finally fluttered closed. “This was in her hand,” I said, revealing the black clot of blood. Genghis drew a sharp breath and looked at the child with new eyes.

  Alaqai. Palm of the Hand.

  I protected Jochi like a mother wolf, but my sons needed little of me after they tired of my milk. This girl would be my own, the daughter I would teach to pound felt and carry the stories of our clan. For the first time in so many years, I felt the urge to scry again, my fingertips itching to hold the bones, to teach her how to read the cracks and shadows in the marrow.

  “Alaqai,” Genghis said, letting the name linger on his tongue. “A fitting name for a warrior born with a clot of blood in her fist.”

  “A warrior?”

  “Of course.” Genghis pressed his lips to my forehead so I felt his smile. “She’ll be the fiercest marmot on the steppes.”

  “Marmot?” I arched an eyebrow and sniffed the air. “Have you been too deep into the airag already?”

  “Not yet, although there’s a jug or two waiting for me outside.” He chuckled and ruffled our daughter’s damp hair, earning a gentle slap from me lest he wake her. “Alaqai has another meaning outside Palm of the Hand, at least among the clan of my birth.”

  “And what is that?”

  He laughed, a low rumble that started deep in his chest. “Siberian marmot.”

  I laughed then, and Alaqai’s eyes fluttered open. This time it was Genghis who shushed me with a mock frown.

  “I’ll teach this little scrap of fur how to ride,” he said when she’d settled back to sleep. “To throw a spear and launch an arrow.”

  I knew he worried for my safety while war raged around us, and now we had a da
ughter to protect. I patted the blanket next to me so we might rest together. “And if she’d rather spend her days felting and cooking your stew?”

  “She can learn it all,” he answered. I let my husband curl around me, his warmth seeping into my battered bones and flesh as he stroked Alaqai’s forehead. I wanted that moment to last forever, yet his next words stole the breath from my lungs. “I’d die before I let anyone touch you, or the children,” he said. “And that day may yet come.”

  I couldn’t imagine a life without Genghis now, or our family. They had filled my heart and made me whole again, but also left me vulnerable. “Train her, then, but know that nothing is going to happen to you.”

  I’d endured much already, but I doubted I’d survive if tragedy ever befell my children.

  * * *

  After the Field of Cauldrons, it seemed we played a child’s game of find-and-catch with Jamuka. We would charge and he would feint; then we would switch places, neither side gaining any discernible advantage.

  One night while the boys were with their father—Alaqai was a fussy baby and her screams often drove them to sleep with the horses—Mother Khogaghchin shuffled into my tent, closing my new birchwood door behind her. My husband’s raids had yet to end the war, but they occasionally brought a wealth of trade goods from the south and the east, precious salts and iron weapons and finally even a proper door, emblazoned with painted images of the Five Snouts that never failed to entrance Alaqai.

  I was already abed that night, bone weary from a long day of tending to my daughter and beating felt with the other women. Khogaghchin’s white hair framed her leathery face like the glow of the moon, and for a moment I glimpsed what she might have been as a young woman, strong and determined. Then I blinked and the image was gone, replaced with an old and feeble crone.

  She sat at my bedside, her hands cool and dry over mine. “I’ve come to sit by you, Borte Ujin,” she said.

  I moved to rise, but she clucked her tongue at me. “Rest, daughter of my heart. You’ve earned it, spending your days caring for us all with little thought to your own spirit.” She paused for breath, bracing her hands against her knees for support. “I realized tonight when I couldn’t sleep that I am now an old woman, and you are my family. I thought I might sleep better closer to you.”