The Tiger Queens Page 17

  I mounted my mare and rode toward the mountains with Khasar and Shigi beside me, knowing that when the sun rose again I would confront the crooked mountain and my vision.

  The trampled grasses were like a rabbit warren, trails left by deserting men and fleeing horses leading in every direction across the steppes. By the time we reached the foothills, my legs felt as if they were full of needles and all the warmth had drained from my hands. The silver sickle of the moon emerged with dusk, and the men and I dismounted as we approached the ravines. I led my mare by her bridle to keep her from tripping, but I stumbled over something the size of a rotten log. It was more giving than the cold earth and smelled worse than any forest decay. My horse reared and I scrambled back from the dead man, gagging on the stink of his spilled entrails and feeling the icy fingers of death reach inside me to wrap around my heart. His face was frozen in a rictus of terror and my hands shook as I scrambled back, trying not to breathe, but still smelling the taint of death.

  How many souls could I carry with me? Already I carried fragments of my mother and father. Genghis. My sons and daughter. And I’d once breathed in part of Jamuka’s soul, snaring my future with his and urging us all closer to this war we now fought. Now this nameless man stained my soul with his impure blood on my skin and his death in my lungs. The weight of all their spirits pulled me down as if their hands reached from the earth, knowing that my own soul would wish to fly away once the sun rose.

  Silent tears streamed down my cheeks as I thought of Genghis’ and Jochi’s bodies sprawled like this, possibly already crawling with ants. I swallowed a sob at the thought of my firstborn nestled in the high grasses as he’d once been cradled in my womb. I’d sworn to protect him, and I’d failed.

  “We can’t go farther until daybreak,” Khasar said, clearing his throat. Clouds obscured the full moon, making it dangerous to continue.

  “Fine.” I dashed my sleeve across my eyes. “We’ll find them when the sun hits the ridge of the camel-backed mountain.”

  Shigi gave me a strange look in the dark. I realized that he hadn’t heard my prophecy, but I didn’t elaborate. It didn’t matter if we searched through the night—nothing would change what I would soon discover.

  Occasional groans came from the rocks throughout the night, uttered from the throats of men more dead than alive. I slept not at all, curled in my deel against a boulder and shivering as the air chilled. The early dawn filled the ravine and revealed a battlefield in the shadow of the crooked mountain. Corpses and dead horses lay scattered among the boulders, their eyes staring endlessly at the images of the sky and earth that they carried with them to the sacred mountains. Khasar, Shigi, and I stumbled from body to body, and I dreaded the moment when I would stare into my husband’s sightless eyes.

  And then I saw it and time stood still: a hand splayed over a gray rock, the green grasses rustling in the breeze, and the sun crowning the camel-backed mountain above us.

  I willed the moment to disappear, yet nothing had changed when I forced open my eyes.

  It was his face among the broken grasses and the crushed blue flowers. His one long braid was like a black snake on the earth, his shins still covered by the leather greaves I’d help tie. The lips that had kissed me only yesterday were still now, pale and stiff.

  “Get away from him!” bellowed a man’s voice behind me.

  I whirled around with the dagger from my sleeve poised to strike. I was no warrior, but I would kill whoever had done this. Khasar raced toward me, an arrow already notched in his bow.

  But it was no warrior who’d crept behind me, sword raised.

  “Jochi?” I said.

  “Mother?” He gave a cry of relief, no longer the brave soldier who had ridden into battle yesterday, but only a frightened young man who needed his mother.

  “Thank the spirits you’re alive,” I said, crushing him to me, reveling in his warmth and heaving chest. “I’ll never let you out of my sight again.”

  We stayed that way for a long while, Khasar and Shigi standing a ways off and pretending not to see a warrior weep with his mother. Finally, I peered through bleary eyes at the hand still in the grass. “And your father?” I asked, my voice trembling. “Was it a clean death?”

  Jochi shook his head, and for a moment I imagined all manner of atrocities Jamuka might have committed against Genghis. “He’s alive,” Jochi said. “He took an arrow to the neck, but it wasn’t deep.” He pulled an elegant quarrel from the back of his belt, its tip stained with blood. “I couldn’t bear to leave it as it was.”

  The words penetrated my brain slowly, like sunshine after a dense fog. “Alive?” I sank to my knees and felt at his neck, first with my fingers and then kissing the faint tremor of life there. The other side of Genghis’ neck was packed with a crimson rag; a thin leather thong held the bandage in place. Only then did I notice the dried blood staining Jochi’s lips. It was an invitation to the black spirits of death to spill one’s blood into the ground, and so my son had taken my husband’s blood into his body, had bound their souls as closely as if Genghis’ seed had sired him.

  “I swallowed as much of the blood as I could,” Jochi said, “but there was so much that I had to spit the rest onto the ground once my belly was full.” To touch death or another’s blood made one unclean. My son cringed as if fearing a reprimand for defiling himself with his father’s blood, but he continued when the rebuke never came. “He called for something to drink so loudly that I had to sneak into the Tayichigud camp to steal milk.” He gestured to a worn leather bucket on the ground, then pulled back the stained cloth to reveal shiny white lumps floating in hazy water. “I couldn’t find milk, but I fed him the water from these yak curds all night.”

  I stared at him, then burst into laughter, becoming so hysterical that Jochi and Khasar both stepped back and the crows that feasted on the dead fluttered into the air, casting their beady eyes at me while Shigi’s pen scraped over his paper. My husband was alive, and all because of my son’s quick thinking and a pail of yak curds. Jamuka had once claimed that life changes us, and he was right. This life was full of surprises, and I was thrilled and humbled that my sight had shown me only the worst of this day, that I’d been bested by Teb Tengeri.

  I continued laughing until a clammy hand clasped my wrist. Then I screamed and scrambled to my feet.

  “I scarcely think that’s the appropriate response to welcome your husband back from the dead.” Genghis stared at me from the ground, his speech slow, as if he’d drunk too much airag the night before. I fell to my knees and took his face in my hands, covering him with kisses.

  “If you ever pull a foolish stunt like this again,” I said, “I swear I’ll kill you myself.”

  “I feel like you already tried.” He recoiled from the pool of dark blood on the ground before looking to Jochi. “I heard what you said, son of my body, and I’m happy to owe you my life,” he said, making my heart soar as Khasar tore grasses to cover the defiled earth and spare our eyes. “But I have one question.”

  “Yes, Father?”

  Genghis winced. “Couldn’t you have spit the blood farther away?”

  Chapter 12

  1204 CE

  YEAR OF THE WOODEN RAT

  We gathered the spoils from the Tayichigud camp and left their bodies to feed the grasses. In all our years of fighting, none of Genghis’ Dogs of War or his Valiant Warriors had ever deserted, yet we heard reports that Jamuka’s clans—even the Jadarin of his birth—were abandoning him for his cowardice in fleeing when the storm and battle turned against him at the crooked mountain. Genghis’ generals advised pursuit, but my husband was in no condition to traipse over the steppes in search of his anda, nor would he allow anyone else to confront his blood brother. I offered a prayer of thanks to the Earth Mother when the first frost hardened the grasses and hoped that the winter snows would bring peace and much- needed recovery for my weak
ened husband.

  It wasn’t only his clans that left Jamuka, but his wife, too. The first snows came early that year, bringing a lone woman to our lines of gers as thick white flakes fell overhead. It had been years since I’d seen Gurbesu, yet I recognized my childhood friend at once when Khasar shoved her into our tent. Jealousy fluttered in my chest as I touched my chapped lips and crossed my arms under my tired breasts, which had suckled my children, for Gurbesu’s lips were still plump and her deel remained tight across her ample chest.

  “A Jadarin spy,” Khasar said, pointing his spear at Gurbesu as she stumbled onto the beaten brown grass inside my ger, smelling of the cold. My husband stood before her, legs planted wide and his hands hidden inside the wide sleeves of his deel, where he kept at least one dagger, usually more.

  “I’m no Jadarin,” Gurbesu said, still on all fours on the ground, the snow on her hair melting to water before the heat of the fire. “Although I’ll admit I was Jamuka’s wife before he cast me out.”

  Genghis let her linger on the ground. “I believe you once claimed that my people smelled like fresh camel dung and our clothes were filthier than the underside of a yak’s belly. You must be here on important business to brave such barbarians as stand before you now.”

  She dared to look up then, first at Genghis and then at me. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open, revealing a jaw of still-perfect teeth. “Borte Ujin,” she breathed, her gaze falling on the wolf-tooth necklace I still often wore. “Is that you?”

  “Borte Khatun now,” I said, trying to keep a serene expression, but she squealed as if we were children tossing the air-filled bladder of a goat.

  “It is you,” she said, scrambling to her feet. “I told you we’d meet again, but you didn’t believe me—”

  “Don’t take another step,” Genghis snarled. Khasar reached for his sword and Genghis glowered first at Gurbesu and then at me. “You know this woman?”

  “We were children together,” I answered. “Gurbesu married Chuluun of the Naiman after the Festival of Games, before you sought me out the second time.”

  Of course, that was also the first time Gurbesu had laid eyes on Jamuka. I remembered her lying by the river, annoyed when he rebuffed her advances so that I might scry for him. So much had changed since then, it seemed as if I were viewing the memory through someone else’s eyes.

  Gurbesu sobered at the mention of her first husband. “Chuluun was killed in battle, but I was too young to be widowed. Jamuka recalled me from the Festival of Games and claimed me for his wife.” She threw back her shoulders as if riding into battle. “Jamuka and I argued when I said he wouldn’t win this war. He knows he will lose, but he refuses to beg his anda’s forgiveness for the good of his people.” She snorted. “What few there are left of them, anyway.”

  “So he cast you out?” I didn’t wish to probe, but neither did I want a spy endangering my people and my family.

  She nodded, her lips twisted tight. “Over a week ago.”

  Genghis scoffed. “I cannot believe that Jamuka would so dishonor the wife of his heart.”

  Gurbesu snorted. “Jamuka’s heart had been claimed long before he took me.” She gave me a pointed look so I felt as if we were seventeen winters old once again, and discussing which man I should take first to my bed. “I had to travel across the steppes as the frost hardened the ground,” she continued. “I thought I would die amongst the grasses when the first snow began to fall tonight, but then I saw the smoke from your fires.”

  “And your children?”

  Again, the battle stance, chin tilted and shoulders squared as if defying the world. “I lost my only babe—a son—after Chuluun was killed. Born too early,” she said. “Jamuka’s seed never took root in my womb.” Her hands fluttered; then she clasped them in front of her. “Chuluun arranged the betrothal of his only daughter after we married. I never knew her.”

  “Toregene.”

  Gurbesu stared at me then, her expression clear that she thought I’d seen this in the bones. “I met her,” I said. “When she was with the Merkid.”

  “You did?” Gurbesu’s eyes clouded with confusion, then cleared as she likely recalled the story of my capture. “Is she here now?”

  My heart grew heavy as it always did when I thought of Toregene. “She ran into the forest when the Merkid were raided. That was many years ago, and I never saw her again.”

  Gurbesu’s face fell. “So she’s dead, like so many others.”

  I was surprised to see tears shine in her eyes. “Many died that night,” I said. “But I’ve always hoped to one day find Toregene.”

  And yet the years had passed, still with no trace of her. Hope was a difficult thing to keep alive after so long.

  Only the pop and hiss of the fire interrupted the silence before Genghis finally cleared his throat. “Borte Khatun,” he said, catching both our attentions with my formal title. “Will you vouch for Gurbesu of the Unigirad?”

  His was no simple question; I knew not the woman Gurbesu had become in the years since we’d been girls or whether her word could be trusted. Still, I craved her company and this link to my childhood.

  “I will.”

  Gurbesu’s face lit in a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She linked her arm in mine. “It’ll be like old times between us, Borte Uj—” She caught herself. “Borte Khatun.”

  Even then, I knew that to be untrue. Too much had changed since I’d last hugged Gurbesu and watched her step over the horizon with her first bridegroom for things to ever be the same.

  Still, it would be pleasant to have Gurbesu around again, to listen to her chatter like birdsong and to laugh at the gossip that always followed in her wake. Yet, as I watched Khasar and the other men’s greedy eyes follow her swaying hips from the tent, I wondered whether allowing Gurbesu into our camp might be more trouble than it was worth.

  * * *

  Unable to sit idle even as his wound mended, my husband negotiated with the clans while the snows drifted deeper, casting a wide net for the betrothals and alliances that would bind all the People of the Felt closer together. Yesui and Yesugen both became pregnant—neither wife seemed strong enough to do anything without her sister doing it as well—and birthed my husband two more daughters. A girl from the west was found for Chaghatai to marry in the spring, and Ong Khan’s brother offered to marry his only daughter into our family.

  I had sniffed at that. As I’d often worried, our alliance with Ong Khan had recently disintegrated. The treacherous old chief recognized my husband’s growing power and denounced us as he’d done to Jamuka before the Battle of Seventy Marshes, claiming that Genghis sought to topple him from his throne once Jamuka was finally defeated. Ong Khan’s duplicity had cost him dearly this time; he encountered a guard at the old Naiman border who refused to believe that the old man was the Khan of Khans, and it took one bloody slice to promptly relieve old Ong Khan of his head. It was rumored that the befouled head had been placed on a sacred cloth of felt in the back of a Naiman ger and danced to amidst the music of a horse-head fiddle before finally being kicked outside once maggots hatched from its eyes. Such outrageous sacrilege could scarcely be tolerated, even against our enemy, but secretly I thought the punishment just for the old khan’s betrayal.

  “Sorkhokhtani is a Kereyid princess,” Genghis said one night shortly after we’d received the marriage offer from Ong Khan’s brother. Our remaining children slept huddled near the hearth, just Ogodei, Alaqai, and Tolui, now that our elder sons were grown. “Jamba Gamu seeks to right the wrong done against us by his brother. Her blood will bind us to the old order.”

  Genghis rubbed the new lines seared into his cheeks. “If we kept Sorkhokhtani close she could care for us in our old age.”

  “You would marry her to Tolui, then?” I whispered, gingerly lifting the quiver of arrows from the crook of Alaqai’s arm as she lay among her bedcl
othes. Despite my protests, my daughter slept with her weapons, and I feared that one night she’d gouge her eyes out with the tip of a quarrel. I’d come to accept that this daughter of mine was a shadow of her father—who also slept with an assortment of weapons—especially after I’d made several mangled attempts to teach her the skills she’d one day need as a wife and mother. She excelled at driving the horses that rolled the heavy bundles of rolled wool for felting, but she’d almost burned down our tent while making horsemeat stew. I took no pride in realizing that my daughter’s future husband would likely starve to death.

  Alaqai would marry one day and leave us for her husband’s clan, as our sons would leave our circle of gers to forge their own camps. All save one. As our last son, Tolui would remain with us always, our Prince of the Hearth.

  Genghis and I smothered smiles as Tolui snored openmouthed. “I hope Sorkhokhtani doesn’t need much sleep,” I muttered, wincing as Tolui’s snores turned to outrageous gurgles. “Your son snores louder than a herd of yaks.”

  “He gets that from his mother,” Genghis said, looking entirely serious.

  I chucked Alaqai’s muddy boot at him, but he dodged it. “Keeping Sorkhokhtani near us will renew our alliance with Ong Khan’s clan.”

  That, more than anything, would determine our children’s matches. As my marriage to Genghis had been made to keep the peace, so, too, would our sons and daughter find their mates. I wished to stall time, to keep my remaining children under my ger, but I thanked the Earth Mother for each day the sun shone on my happy family. Still, the puckered scar on my lip and the fresh pink flesh on my husband’s neck were reminders that such joy was tenuous at best.