The Tiger Queens (13 page)

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.

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 into 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.

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, too, 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.