The Earth Is the Lord's

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  “Where is Bektor?”

  Kasar was a simple youth, but when he saw Temujin’s face, he knew his purpose. His own face paled a little, but its simple lines did not alter. He answered: “Bektor is out with the horses, to the east. Belgutei is with him.”

  Temujin said: “Come with me!”

  First he went into his yurt, and slung his bow and arrow case over his shoulders. When he came out, Kasar was already armed. They mounted their horses and rode away, still without hurry. Temujin rode ahead, and Kasar a little behind. Temujin rarely had much to say to his brother, and spoke little more to him than he spoke to his white stallion, in whom he felt the same simple devotion and unquestioning obedience.

  The cream-colored clay of the desert, hard and dry, rang to their horses’ hoofs. Lizards scuttled across their path, like slim jewelled creatures. The red hills in the distance were a low broken ring. The sky grew hotter and bluer. There was no shade anywhere, except that like inky pools beside the scattered boulders, which stood ageless and immobile, over the desert floor. Once a desert bird rose with a shrill and dreadful cry from some tufts of dry grass, and floated over their heads, menacingly. The wind moved like an invisible flow of water over them, not dimming the eternal and blinding glare.

  They descended a shallow terrace of stone and clay, and there below them lay the vivid and dazzling green of a narrow fertile valley, an oasis, in which were a clump of palms with thin leaves like scimitars. The small herd of horses grazed here, with bent absorbed heads, their manes fluttering in the wind. On a stone, under the palms, sat Belgutei and Bektor.

  Belgutei saw Temujin and Kasar first, and raised a shout in greeting. He came out to meet them, waving his arm. The horses lifted their heads, and shrilled to the approaching beasts. But Bektor got up slowly and reluctantly, and emerged from the palms. Even at a distance, his figure was embued with dark bitterness and silence.

  Belgutei reached Temujin’s horse, smiling. He began to speak, lifting his head. But when he saw Temujin’s face, his voice died in his throat. He lifted his hand as though to clutch Temujin’s bridle, and then it fell to his side, nerveless. His color became the yellowish tint of the desert. He did not move. A curious expression moved over his features, and his eyes glinted inscrutably. He was like a man confronted with a remorseless destiny.

  Temujin passed him. Kasar paused for a moment, and took an arrow from his bowcase. Then, he, too, had passed Belgutei. Temujin held his sword in his hand. He rode up to Bektor, who waited, scowling. He looked down at Bektor, and their eyes fastened together.

  Instantly, the hapless Bektor knew what had brought Temujin here. His face became the color of iron. His body bent backwards. But his lips grew hard and still, and his eyes were unflinching and quiet. Above the high collar of his coat a purple pulse sprang out.

  Kasar came up to Temujin. The arrow was fitted to his bow. All at once, a frenzy seized him. He could not bear the look on Bektor’s face. It was a gesture of self-defense, almost as if he threw up his arm to hide the sight, that made him draw back the string of his bow and let fly an arrow at Bektor. One arrow was usually sufficient to kill, for he was exceedingly skillful, but at the last moment his hand shook and the arrow pierced Bektor in the belly.

  The poor youth staggered backwards. His hands flew to the quivering shaft sunken deep in his entrails. Instantly, blood welled up through his fingers. He bent double. He sank to his knees. But he did not groan. Nor did his eyes shift from Temujin’s.

  Temujin looked at Kasar with a terrible expression. “Thou fool, thou bungling fool,” he said quietly. He seized the bow from his brother’s nerveless hands, and with calm deliberation he fitted one of his own arrows to it. Then he paused. He looked down at the kneeling and bleeding form of his half-brother. Bektor was bent double. From between his clutching fingers the bright red blood dripped down to the thirsty earth.

  “I would have spared thee this,” said Temujin.

  For the last time, they stared at each other. An awful quietness held them. Belgutei stood at a distance, watching. Kasar’s head was bent. They might all have been statues of stone in the passionate and burning glare of the sunlight.

  Bektor’s eyes were already glazing with death and agony. Bubbles of blood appeared at the corners of his white lips. Blood trickled from one nostril. His hands were wet and scarlet, about the shaft of the arrow. Yet, he could look at Temujin like this, steadfastly and silently.

  Temujin drew back the string. The bow bent. Like a flash of light the arrow left the bow, and sank itself in Bektor’s heart. Without a sound, he fell forward on his face, rolled impotently to his side. Yet, to the very last, as his eyes rolled upward, transfixed in death, he looked at Temujin.

  Temujin returned the bow to his brother. He wheeled his horse about. The animal’s nostrils flared at the smell of blood and death, and he trembled. Kasar followed. He had begun to retch. Temujin rode up to Belgutei, and stood, looking down at him. Belgutei returned his look, without fear, and even smiling faintly with his pale lips.

  “Am I to die, also?” he asked at last, almost indifferently.

  Temujin was silent for a long moment, then he said in a low voice:

  “Follow me.”

  He rode on. Kasar trailed him, slowly. Belgutei mounted a horse, called to the herd, which followed, making a wide and skittish circle about the dead Bektor.

  Temujiri rode ahead, faster now, and yet, not as one who flees. To Kasar, watching him with dim eyes, he loomed like a figure from some other world, straight and baleful and gigantic, followed with a shadow of doom.

  Chapter 23

  Kurelen said, coldly and with disgust: “Thou must be exceedingly proud, to kill a defenseless boy.”

  Temujin replied quietly: “Had he been defenseless, I should not have killed him.”

  Kurelen was unwillingly silent a moment, considering this, and angrily acknowledging its truth to himself. Then he said, his eyes still averted from his nephew:

  “Thou couldst have betrothed him to a girl of another tribe, and so have gotten rid of him that way.”

  Temujin smiled grimly. “That, too, would have taken time. I have no time.”

  Then Kurelen looked at him curiously and attentively. He said to himself: That is true. Nevertheless, he was seized with a fear rare with him. He had flattered himself that he had had an enormous influence over Temujin, and that, in anything of importance, his nephew would have consulted him in his circuitous way. Yet, Temujin had not consulted him. Therefore, he, Kurelen, had lost his influence. And if he had lost his influence, he, in reality, did not know Temujin at all. This was a stranger standing before him, locked in the black fortress of his own soul, which could be entered by no one. Kurelen’s vanity smarted. The interpreter of men was no interpreter. He knew no more than the veriest simpleton. He thought: I have been wrong. There is no scale with which to measure and weigh all men. Each man is a law and a type unto himself. He who sayeth he understandeth men is without understanding, and is only a conceited fool. An attempt at understanding resolveth only in confusion and bafflement.

  He had believed for a long time that there was a strange and frightful force in Temujin. Now he knew it. He was always appalled at tremendous force, which seemed reasonless and terrifying, a sort of cataclysm of nature before which men must stand, impotently aghast. Yet, as he looked now at Temujin, he knew this force in him was not reasonless, not stupidly cataclysmic. It was even more terrible, for it was deliberate and reasoning. He was not merely ruthless by nature; he was ruthless by intention. And that was the most appalling violence.

  He said, lamely and somewhat incoherently: “Go. I cannot bear to look at thee.” But he knew that it was his own futility, his own broken vanity, at which he could not bear to look. He said to himself, bitterly: “I know nothing at all.”

  Houlun, learning that night of Temujin’s foul deed, wrapped herself in her cloak and pulled her hood over her head. She went to the tent of Bektor’s mother. The poor woman was s
tricken tearless with grief. When she saw Houlun, she could only stare at her with bright dry eyes. Houlun knelt before her, and kissed her feet, weeping.

  She cried: “Forgive me, that I have given birth to a murderer!”

  The Karait woman was illiterate and simple and stupid. Yet, with a simplicity deeper than intelligence, she raised Houlun up and embraced her. She said: “Thou hast deeper reason to mourn than I. Let me comfort thee.”

  The enmity between the two women was washed away in their tears.

  In death, this poor woman still retained her son. But Houlun knew that she no longer had Temujin. She knew that never again would she completely love him, for she could never trust him. Between them, this murder would stand like a bloody shadow. And all at once, with a sickening and frenzied certainty, she thought of her daughter-in-law, and hated her with a murderous hatred.

  She went to Temujin, sitting alone in his yurt with Kasar. Her terror and grief and despair distorted her face, made her expression wild and filled her eyes with fire. Her hair, as though catching the disorder of her mood, was dishevelled. Her breast heaved with anguished breath. She looked down at the two youths with passionate scorn and fury. But she spoke to Temujin, who looked up at her with eyes dark and inscrutable and cold as ice.

  “Thou coward and monster!” she cried. “The man who lifteth his hand against his brother is accursed! Take heed for thyself! Guard thy shadow, lest it rise up and smite thee down! Guard thy heart, for no other man’s heart will beat trustingly for thee again. Hold close thy whips, for no other man’s whip will rise in thy defense. Sharpen thy sword, for thou hast only this one to protect thee. Call in the Shaman, to stand guard before thy yurt, for the spirits shall seek vengeance on thee!”

  Temujin listened in silence, but when his mother had finished he smiled slightly. For some reason this slight smile afflicted her more than his deed had done, and filled her with a greater terror.

  He answered her at last, in a quiet voice:

  “Go to thy yurt, Mother, and calm thyself. Thy words are extravagant. I do only the things which I must do, and there was no anger in me against Bektor. But thou art only a woman, and cannot understand. Go.”

  And paralyzed and bewildered by her terror, she went, her lips cold and her eyes blind. Later, when the Karait woman came to her yurt, she threw herself in this woman’s arms and wept wildly.

  Temujin sat alone, with Kasar, whose face was white but resolute. He waited. And then, one by one, his friends came to him, as he knew they would come. Subodai came. The beautiful youth’s eyes were intensely bright, his expression calm. He looked at Temujin in silence for a long moment. Then he knelt down before him, lifted Temujin’s hand and placed it on his head.

  He spoke in his dulcet voice: “To the end, I will ward off thy foes. I will be thy sword. I will be the yurt that protecteth thee from the wind. That, to the end of my life, is what I shall be to thee.”

  Temujin was unendurably touched. For he knew that this loyalty, which was not blind, was the greatest loyalty of all.

  Then Chepe Noyon came, pale but brilliantly smiling. It was evident that he had rehearsed what he would say to Temujin. But once in the yurt, and confronted with the man whose hands were still red with the blood of his brother, he could not speak for a moment or two, and could only smile his false and determined smile. Then all at once, the smile vanished from his face, and a look of intense gravity and sternness replaced it—a strange look for the gay adventurer. He knelt before Temujin, but he looked him straightly in the eye.

  “Thou art my khan,” he said, and his upper lip lifted as though the words were painful to him.

  Temujin thought: He will still be loyal to me, for I have convinced him I will stop at nothing.

  He made himself smile, and touched Chepe Noyon lightly on the shoulder. “And thou art Chepe Noyon, my paladin,” he said. With profound wisdom, he knew that only the light touch, the light smile, were the approach to Chepe Noyon.

  And then Belgutei came. The others were dimly surprised at this, but Temujin was not surprised. He held out his hand to Belgutei, and said: “My brother! Sit by my side.”

  Belgutei, with a smooth expression that none could read for all the faint redness about his eyelids, sat down at Temujin’s left hand. He, as well as Chepe Noyon, acknowledged the perfection of Temujin’s words and gestures. Less penetration would have made a mortal enemy of Belgutei. But now Belgutei knew beyond all doubt that Temujin was worth loyalty.

  They all continued to wait, in unspeaking silence. Each knew why they waited. They were waiting for Jamuga, the anda of Temujin. As time passed, and Jamuga Sechen did not come, Kasar’s simplicity glowed with anger. How dared his brother’s anda affront him this way? He looked about him, his nostrils distended, his eyes glaring, as though he challenged them all. But Temujin’s expression was tranquil. None knew the perturbation that quickened his heart. He thought to himself: If Jamuga hath not come before the dawn, then I know he hath violated our brotherhood. But this realization saddened instead of enraging him. If Jamuga did not come, he would suffer the greatest loss he could ever suffer. Sorrow grew heavier in him, like lead. He could not endure the thought of losing the love and friendship of Jamuga. At last, all the power of his nature was concentrated in a wordless cry that Jamuga come to him, if only to reproach him. He no longer cared for Jamuga’s forgiveness; he did not want his understanding. He wanted only Jamuga’s physical presence.

  The dawn was already running in a pale ragged fire along the eastern horizon when Jamuga finally came. He came so silently that they were not aware of his presence until he stood among them.

  Temujin was aware of him first. When he looked up at his anda, standing there so motionlessly before him, his heart gave a quick leap. And then he saw that Jamuga was whiter than a corpse and that he looked like a man who had been suffering intolerably over a long period. His own lips moved several times before he could speak, for there was something in Jamuga’s dry and steadfast eyes that shamed him.

  He said: “Jamuga, I had no enmity against Bektor.”

  Jamuga continued to gaze at him unmovingly. Then in a faint voice, he asked:

  “Temujin, didst thou try to poison Bektor a night or two ago?”

  Temujin stared at him with unfeigned astonishment.

  “Poison Bektor? Art thou mad, Jamuga?”

  He stopped, for Jamuga had suddenly burst into tears. He waited, still astounded, as Jamuga slowly knelt before him. Jamuga gazed at him with his streaming eyes.

  He said simply: “Thou art mine anda.”

  And he took his place at Temujin’s right hand.

  Again they waited, in silence. Temujin waited for the Shaman.

  At first, he had thought of going to Kokchu himself. And then a moment’s swift reflection pointed out the danger. If he went to Kokchu, then Kokchu would be the final victor. Dawn was bright in the skies, when Temujin said to Chepe Noyon:

  “Go to the Shaman and tell him to come at once to me.”

  Chapter 24

  When the Shaman entered the yurt, he was very calm, though his face was lined and gray and wizened. Yet he had never been more dignified, more magnificent. He did not know what to expect. Was it death? How much did Temujin know? Was the young man too violent for reason? But though there was a possibility of death by torture, the punishment of traitors, Kokchu walked with quiet dignity, and if he felt fear, he did not betray it.

  He did not look at any one but Temujin, sitting arrogantly and silently in the midst of his young heroes. But when he saw Temujin’s eyes, eyes now as soft and gray and luminous as a dove’s, he prepared himself for the worst. Craft turned Temujin’s eyes innocently blue; rage colored them with blazing emerald. But murder threw a dim soft shadow of gray over them.

  Kokchu did not kneel. He thought to himself: If he hath decided to kill me, he shall not first enjoy my humiliation. But he inclined his head gravely, and waited.

  Temujin began to speak in a gentle voice, the tende
r gray deepening in his eyes:

  “I know thou didst love Bektor, Kokchu, and that his death is grievous to thee.”

  Kokchu’s eyelids quivered, but he answered in a low voice:

  “Thou art the khan, Temujin, and a poor priest hath no choice but to find all acts of his khan virtuous and just.”

  Temujin smiled. He affected an air of kingly gratification. But now the gray was deepening to emerald in his eyes.

  “Because thou didst love Bektor as a son, I feel constrained to explain mine act. And because thou art so simply loyal, I need thine assistance with the people. I have heard reports they are stunned and horrified at a deed which was necessary.”

  Kokchu was silent. But he fixed his gaze unwinkingly on Temujin. He asked himself: Is it possible he is afraid? But a moment later he regretfully decided that Temujin was not afraid.

  Temujin said, his voice still ominously soft:

  “Had there not been traitors among my people. I should not have killed Bektor, who might have been a sword in their hands against me. So, I found it necessary to slay him. The odium of the deed, therefore, lieth not with me, but the traitors. On their hands is his blood.”

  Despite his calm, Kokchu’s heart leapt, then settled down to a fearful trembling.

  “However,” continued Temujin, in a voice of sad reason: “I wish to have done with violence. I hope the death of Bektor will be a warning to the traitors.” He paused, then loudly and harshly he added: “Dost thou understand, Kokchu?”

  Through pale steady lips the Shaman replied: “I understand, O my khan.”

  Temujin relaxed, smiled his terrible smile. “Thou art a man of sense, Kokchu, as well as a priest. But mine uncle hath often said that priests are men of sense. They inevitably support the strong against the weak. I am not weak, Kokchu.”

  The Shaman inclined his head reverently. He thought: I am not to die, then? He was contemptuously amazed at the sudden weakening of his legs with a profound relief.