Birth of an Empire

by Conn Iggulden

  “We had better hope Khasar brought something back to eat,” he said. When Kachiun did not respond, Temujin took Bekter’s weapons, pulling the drawn bow up around his shoulder.

  “If the others see Bekter’s knife, they will know,” Kachiun said, his voice sick with misery.

  Temujin reached out and held his neck, steadying himself as much as his brother. He could hear the panic in Kachiun and felt the first echo of it himself. He had not thought about what would happen after his enemy was dead. There would be no revenge for Bekter, no chance to win back their father’s gers and herds. He would rot where he lay. The reality of it was only beginning to sink in, and Temujin could hardly believe he had actually done it. The strange mood before the shot was gone, and in its place, he had only weakness and hunger.

  “I will tell them,” Temujin said. He felt his gaze drawn down to Bekter’s body once more as if pulled by an unseen weight. “I will tell them he was letting us all starve. There is no place here for softness. I will tell them that.”

  They walked down into the cleft once more, each taking comfort from the other’s presence.

  CHAPTER 13

  HOELUN SENSED SOMETHING was wrong the moment she sighted the two boys returning to the camp. Khasar and Temuge sat with her, and little Temulun lay on a scrap of cloth near the fire’s warmth. Hoelun rose slowly from kneeling, her thin face already showing fear. As Temujin came closer, she saw he carried Bekter’s bow and she stiffened, taking in the detail. Neither Temujin nor Kachiun could meet her eyes, and her voice was just a whisper when it came at last.

  “Where is your brother?” she said.

  Kachiun stared at the ground, unable to reply. She took a step forward as Temujin raised his head and swallowed visibly.

  “He was taking food, keeping it for himself…,” he began.

  Hoelun let out a cry of fury and slapped him hard enough to knock his head to one side.

  “Where is your brother?” she demanded, shrilly. “Where is my son?”

  Temujin’s nose was bleeding in a red stream over his mouth, so that he was forced to spit. He bared red teeth at his mother and the pain.

  “He is dead,” he snapped. Before he could go on, Hoelun slapped him again, over and over, until all he could do was curl up and stagger backwards. She went with him, flailing in a misery she could not bear.

  “You killed him?” she wailed. “What are you?”

  Temujin tried to hold her hands, but she was too strong for him and blows rained down on his face and shoulders, wherever she could reach.

  “Stop hitting him! Please!” Temuge called after them, but Hoelun could not hear him. There was a roaring in her ears and a rage in her that threatened to tear her apart. She backed Temujin up against a tree and grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking his thin frame with such violence that his head lolled weakly.

  “Would you kill him as well?” Kachiun cried, trying to pull her away.

  She tore her deel from his grasp and took Temujin by his long hair, wrenching his head back so that he had to look her in the eye.

  “You were born with a clot of blood in your hand, with death. I told your father you were a curse on us, but he was blind.” She could not see through her tears and he felt her hands tighten like claws on his scalp.

  “He was keeping food from all of us, letting us starve,” Temujin cried. “Letting you starve!” He began to weep under the onslaught, more alone than he had ever been. Hoelun looked at him as if he were diseased.

  “You have stolen a son from me, my own boy,” she replied. As she focused on him, she raised a hand over his face and he saw her broken nails shiver above his eyes. It was a moment that lasted a long time as he stared up in terror, waiting for her to tear at him.

  The strength in her arms faded as suddenly as it had come, and she collapsed in a limp pile, senseless. Temujin found himself standing alone and shivering in reaction. His stomach cramped, forcing him to retch, though there was nothing but sour yellow liquid.

  As he stepped away from his mother, he saw his brothers were staring at him and he shouted wildly at them, “He was eating fat marmots while we starved to death! It was right to kill him. How long do you think we would have lived with him taking our share on top of his own catch? I saw him take a duck today, but is it here to give us strength? No, it is in his belly.”

  Hoelun stirred on the ground behind him and Temujin jumped, wary of another attack from her. His eyes filled with fresh tears as he looked at the mother he adored. He could have spared her the knowledge if he had thought about it, perhaps inventing a story of a fall to explain Bekter’s death. No, he told himself. It had not been wrong. Bekter had been the tick on the hide, taking more than his share and giving nothing back while they died around him. His mother would see that in time.

  Hoelun opened bloodshot eyes and scrabbled to her knees, moaning in weary grief. She did not have the strength to come to her feet again, and it took Temuge and Khasar to help her up. Temujin rubbed a bloody smear on his skin and faced her sullenly. He wanted to run away rather than have her look at him again, but he forced himself to stand.

  “He would have killed us,” he said.

  Hoelun turned an empty gaze on him and he shivered.

  “Say his name,” she said. “Say the name of my firstborn son.”

  Temujin winced, suddenly overwhelmed by dizziness. His bloody nose felt hot and huge on his face and he could see dark flashes in his vision. All he wanted was to collapse and sleep, but he remained there, staring up at his mother.

  “Say his name,” she said again, anger replacing the dullness in her eyes.

  “Bekter,” Temujin replied, spitting the word, “who stole food when we are dying.”

  “I should have killed you when I saw the midwife open your hand,” Hoelun said in a light tone more frightening than her anger. “I should have known then what you were.”

  Temujin felt he was being torn inside, unable to stop her hurting him. He wanted to run to her and have her arms wrap him against the cold, to do anything but see the awful vacant misery that he had caused.

  “Get away from me, boy,” his mother said softly. “If I see you sleeping, I will kill you for what you’ve done here. For what you have taken from me. You did not soothe him when his teeth came in. You were not there to draw out his fevers with herbs and rock him through the worst. You did not exist when Yesugei and I loved the little boy. When we were young and he was all we had.”

  Temujin listened, dull with shock. Perhaps his mother had not understood the man Bekter had become. The baby she had rocked had grown into a cruel thief, and Temujin could not find the words to tell her. Even as they formed in his mouth, he bit down on them, knowing they would be useless, or worse, that they would rouse her again to attacking him. He shook his head.

  “I am sorry,” he said, though as he spoke, he knew that he was sorry for the pain he had caused, not the killing.

  “Take yourself away from here, Temujin,” Hoelun whispered. “I can’t bear to look at you.”

  He sobbed then and turned to run past his brothers, each breath hoarse in his throat and the taste of his own blood in his mouth.

  They did not see him after that for five days. Though Kachiun watched for his brother, the only sign of him was in the prey he brought back and left at the edge of their small camp. Two pigeons were there the first day, still warm, with blood running from their beaks. Hoelun did not refuse the gift, though she would not speak about what had happened to any of them. They ate the meat in miserable silence, Kachiun and Khasar sharing glances while Temuge sniffled and wailed whenever Hoelun left him alone. Bekter’s death might have been a relief for the younger boys if it had come while they were safe in the gers of the Wolves. They would have mourned him and taken his body for sky burial, taking comfort from the ritual. In the cleft in the hills, it was just another reminder that death walked with them. It had been an adventure for a while in the beginning, until starvation stretched their skin over their b
ones. As things stood, they lived like wild animals and tried not to fear the coming winter.

  Khasar had lost his laughter in the cleft in the hills. He had begun to brood after Temujin went away, and it was he who cuffed Temuge for troubling their mother too often. In Bekter’s absence, they were all finding new roles and it was Khasar who led the hunt each morning with Kachiun, his face grim. They had found a better pool farther up the cleft, though they had to pass where Bekter had been killed to reach it. Kachiun had searched the ground and seen where Temujin had dragged the body away and covered it with branches. Their brother’s flesh attracted scavengers, and when Kachiun found a lean dead dog at the camp’s edge on the second evening, he had to force himself to swallow every vital mouthful. He could not escape the vision of Temujin killing the animal as it worried at Bekter’s body, but Kachiun needed the food and the dog was the best meal they had found since coming to that place.

  On the evening of the fifth day, Temujin strode back into the camp. His family froze at his step, the younger ones watching Hoelun for her reaction. She watched him come and saw that he held a young kid goat in his arms, still alive. Her son looked stronger, she realized, his skin darkened by days spent on the hills in the wind and sun. It was confusing to feel such a wave of relief that he was all right and, at the same time, undimmed hatred for what he had done. She could not find forgiveness in her.

  Temujin took his find by the ear and prodded it into the circle of his family.

  “There are two herders a few miles to the west of here,” he said. “They are alone.”

  “Did they see you?” Hoelun said suddenly, surprising them all.

  Temujin looked at her and his steady gaze became uncertain.

  “No. I took this one when they rode behind a hill. It might be missed, I do not know. It was too good a chance to ignore.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he waited for his mother to say something else. He did not know what he would do if she sent him away again.

  “They will look for it and find your tracks,” Hoelun said. “You may have brought them here after you.”

  Temujin sighed. He did not have the strength for another argument. Before his mother could protest, he sat down cross-legged by the fire and drew his knife.

  “We have to eat to live. If they find us, we will kill them.”

  He saw his mother’s face become cold again and he waited for the storm that would surely follow. He had run for miles that day and every muscle in this thin body was aching. He could not bear another night on his own, and perhaps that fear showed in his face.

  Kachiun spoke to break the awful tension.

  “One of us should scout around the camp tonight in case they come,” he said.

  Temujin nodded without looking at him, his gaze fixed on his mother.

  “We need each other,” he said. “If I was wrong to kill my brother, it does not change that.”

  The kid goat bleated and tried to make a dash for a gap between Hoelun and Temuge. Hoelun reached out and gripped it around the neck, and Temujin saw she was crying in the firelight.

  “What should I say to you, Temujin?” she murmured. The kid was warm and she buried her face in its coat as it cried out and struggled. “You have torn my heart out and perhaps I do not care about whatever is left.”

  “You care about the others, though. We need you to live through the winter, or we’re all finished,” Temujin said. He straightened his back as he spoke and his yellow eyes seemed to shine in the light of the flames.

  Hoelun nodded to herself, humming a song from her childhood as she fondled the ears of the little goat. She had seen two of her brothers die from a plague that left them swollen and black, abandoned on the plains by her father’s tribe. She had heard warriors scream from wounds that could not be healed, their agonies going on and on for days until the life was dragged out of them at last. Some had even asked for the mercy of a blade opening their throat and been granted it. She had walked with death all her life and perhaps she could even lose a son and survive it, as a mother of Wolves.

  She did not know if she could love the man who killed him, though she ached to gather him in and press away his sorrow. She did not, instead reaching for her knife.

  She had made birch-bark bowls for the camp while her sons were hunting, and she tossed one to Khasar and Kachiun. Temuge scrambled forward to take another and then there were only two of the crude containers left and Hoelun turned sad eyes on her last son.

  “Take a bowl, Temujin,” she said, after a time. “The blood will give you strength.”

  He lowered his head on hearing the words, knowing that he would be allowed to stay. He found his hands were shaking as he took his bowl and held it out with the others. Hoelun sighed and took a firmer grip on the goat before jamming in the blade and cutting the veins in its neck. Blood poured over her hands and the boys jostled each other to catch it before it was wasted. The goat continued to struggle as they filled the bowls and drank the hot liquid, smacking their lips and feeling it reach into their bones, easing the aches.

  When the flow was just a trickle, Hoelun held the limp animal in one hand and patiently filled her own bowl to brimming before she drank. The goat still pawed at the air, but it was dying or already dead, and its eyes were huge and dark.

  “We will cook the meat tomorrow night, when I am sure the fire will not bring the herdsmen looking for their lost goat,” she told them. “If they come here, they must not leave to tell where we are. Do you understand?”

  The boys licked their bloody mouths as they nodded solemnly. Hoelun took a deep breath, crushing her grief somewhere deep, where she still mourned Yesugei and everything they had lost. It had to be locked away where it could not destroy her, but somewhere, she was crying, on and on.

  “Will they come to kill us?” Temuge asked in his high voice, looking nervously at the stolen goat.

  Hoelun shook her head, pulling him toward her to give and take a little comfort.

  “We are Wolves, little one. We do not die easily.” As she spoke, her eyes were on Temujin, and he shivered at her cold ferocity.

  With his face pressed against the frozen white grass, Temujin stared down at the two herdsmen. They slept on their backs, wrapped in padded deels with their arms drawn into the sleeves. His brothers lay on their bellies at his side, the frost seeping into their bones. The night was perfectly still. The huddled gathering of sleeping animals and men were oblivious to those who watched and hungered. Temujin strained his eyes in the gloom. All three boys carried bows and knives and there was no lightness in their expressions as they watched and judged their chances. Any movement would have the goats bleating in panic, and the two men would jerk to wakefulness in an instant.

  “We can’t get any closer,” Khasar whispered.

  Temujin frowned as he considered the problem, trying to ignore the ache in his flesh from lying on frozen ground. The herdsmen would be hard men, well able to survive on their own. They would have bows close by and they would be used to leaping up and killing a wolf as it tried to steal a lamb. It would make no difference if the prey was three boys, especially at night.

  Temujin swallowed past a hard knot in his throat, glaring down at the peaceful scene. He might have agreed with his brother and crept back to the cleft in the hills if it had not been for the scrawny pony the men had hobbled nearby. It slept standing up, with its head almost touching the ground. Temujin yearned to have it, to ride again. It would mean he could hunt much farther away than before, dragging even large prey behind him. If it was a mare, it might have milk, and his tongue tasted the sourness in memory. The men would have any number of useful things on their person, and he could not bear to simply let them go, no matter what the risk. Winter was coming. He could feel it in the air and the stabbing needles of frost forming on his exposed skin. Without mutton fat to protect them, how long would they last?

  “Can you see the dogs?” Temujin murmured. No one replied. The animals would be lying with their
tails tucked in against the cold, impossible to spot. He hated the thought of them leaping at him in the dark, but there was no choice. The herdsmen had to die for his family to survive.

  He took a deep breath and checked that his bowstring was dry and strong.

  “I have the best bow. I will walk to them and kill the first man to rise. You come behind and shoot at the dogs when they go for me. Understood?” In the moonlight, he could see how nervous his brothers were. “The dogs first, then whoever I leave standing,” Temujin said, wanting to be certain. As they nodded, he rose silently to his feet and padded toward the sleeping men, coming from downwind so his scent would not alarm the flock.

  The cold seemed to have numbed the inhabitants of the tiny camp. Temujin came closer and closer to them, hearing his own breath harshly in his ears. He kept his bow ready as he ran. For one who had been trained to loose shafts from a galloping horse, it would not be hard, he hoped.

  At thirty paces, something moved on the edge of the sleeping men, a dark shape that leapt up and howled. On the other side, another dog lunged toward him, growling and barking as it closed. Temujin cried out in fear, desperately trying to keep his focus on the herdsmen.

  They came out of sleep with a jerk, scrambling to their feet just as Temujin drew and loosed his first shaft. In the dark, he had not dared to try for a throat shot, and his arrow punched through the deel into the man’s chest, dropping him back to one knee. Temujin heard him calling out in pain to his companion and saw the second roll away, coming up with a strung bow. The sheep and goats bleated in panic, running madly into the darkness, so that some of them came past Temujin and the brothers, veering wildly as they saw the predators amongst them.

  Temujin raced to beat the herdsman to the shot. His second shaft was in his waistband and he tugged at it, cursing as the head snagged. The herdsman fitted his own shaft with the smooth confidence of a warrior and Temujin knew a moment of despair. He could not free his own and the sound of snarling on his left made him panic. He turned as one of the dogs leapt at his throat, falling backwards as the herdsman’s arrow hummed over his head. Temujin cried out in fear as the dog’s teeth closed on his arm, and then Khasar’s shaft hammered through its neck and the snarling savagery was cut off.