He spoke in a casual and humorous voice: “Thou knowest thou art a fool, of course, Jamuga?”
“Why didst thou speak so to them?” whispered Jamuga, still disbelieving.
Temujin shrugged. “Wouldst thou have me confess to them that the man I appointed in my place was a fool, and incompetent?” He grunted in amusement. “What would they think of mine infallible judgement, then?”
Desperate anger, thin but exhausted, turned in Jamuga’s weary heart.
“Do with me as thou wilt, Temujin, but do not mock me. I have endured enough.”
Temujin stared at him curiously. He seemed more amused than ever. “I can believe that,” he said. And then again he laughed aloud. “Drink thy wine. Go on; I command it.”
Jamuga forced himself to drink. He choked. The wine ran through his vitals like fire.
“No,” said Temujin meditatively, “it would never have done for me to confess that. That would have undermined authority. And that is something a ruler must never permit himself.”
He regarded Jamuga in a sudden silence, as though he could never be done staring at him in his curiosity and cold wonder.
“Thou art a fool, Jamuga,” he said at last, but there was no malignancy in the words, but even a glimmer of affection. “Dost thou not understand what thou didst? Dost thou not know that we are constantly surrounded by enemies, who hunger to destroy us, and that obedience and merciless discipline are our only protection, and unity our only invincibility? Weakness and disunity are always the signal for stronger enemies to attack. Dost thou not know this?”
Jamuga sighed. “I do not see that strength and unity are dependent upon cruelty, Temujin. Why is mercy to be forbidden in the name of unity?”
Temujin smiled, as at a silly child. “Mercy is the luxury of the strong. We are not strong enough yet.”
Jamuga’s head fell on his breast with a movement of complete collapse. But his whisper was steadfast: “I believe I did what was right, though idiots deny it. The wrong is not in what I did, but what thou hast done in the past. Thou didst make animals and babes out of thy people.”
He expected, now, that Temujin’s full wrath would fall on him. But only silence answered his fainting words. He looked up. Temujin was looking at him, smiling, and often affection was on his face, as well as amusement.
“I see thou wilt never understand, Jamuga. But thou art mine anda. I must forgive much, though I shall never be able to teach thee. Only to thee will I confess that I was a fool in leaving thee in my place.”
Jamuga listened in astonishment. He was not to die then, not to be punished. His astonishment and incredulity stood out on his tired face.
Temujin leaned his arm on Jamuga’s shoulder and looked into his eyes. “Thou art mine anda,” he repeated. “Twice thou didst save my life.” And he smiled.
When Jamuga was alone, his first emotion was one of almost hysterical relief and joy. It was not until he was lying on his couch that his heart grew cold again.
He hath not truly forgiven me, he thought. But why did he spare me?
And he knew that matters would never again be as they were before between him and Temujin. And it seemed to him that he had never before realized the full terribleness of Temujin, who had called himself his anda.
Chapter 29
They were soon on the way to the winter pastures, moving with great speed, for hourly, now, the wind grew harsher and the air more bitter. Sand mixed with snow flayed their faces. The women and children huddled in the yurts, wrapping themselves against the cold. Temujin rode at the head of his people, carrying his ivory baton, the mace of the general or leader. About him rode his nokud, his paladins, Subodai, Chepe Noyon, Kasar, Jamuga Sechen, Arghun, the lute player, Muhuli and Bayan and Soo, generals of great craft and masters of battle, and Borchu, who has almost as prodigious a crossbowman as Kasar, who disliked him. There were many others also, but these were his favorites.
On the way, they were joined by hundreds of other men and their families, wandering clans who were former enemies, but who now were struck with awe and admiration of this young Yakka Mongol who had conquered Targoutai and his brother, and many other former khans. Despite the fact that some of these clans were poorly supplied with food, and even hungry, and badly armed, Temujin, against the demurs and suggestions of his nokud and noyon, welcomed them with hearty eagerness. He said:
“I measure strength not by treasure nor gold, nor the crafty politics of townsmen, but in man-power. Loyal numbers, at the last, are more powerful than paid mercenaries bought with the gold of cities, and stronger than the walls of Cathay.”
He looked at the new members of his tribe, and said: “A leader must be successful if he is to merit loyalty. Only fools and dreamers follow lost causes and weak generals. At the end, he who feedeth his people and giveth them pastures is he who deserveth their love.”
“It is not so simple,” protested Jamuga.
“In what way?” asked Temujin.
But Jamuga was unable to answer, though he set his mouth stubbornly.
Once Jamuga asked Kurelen if there was any manner in which he could show his sympathy for Temujin, because of the death of Azara. Kurelen only smiled and asked if Temujin were displaying any prostrating grief. Jamuga was forced to admit that he was not. “Perhaps thou art fanciful, then,” said Kurelen.
Jamuga felt disappointed, and somehow cheated. For, as the days passed, the darkness on Temujin’s face lifted, and he went about his business with his usual sureness and invincibility. His strong voice was as quick and brief as ever. He smiled as ever, shortly and sardonically. If he laughed less, he had never laughed much, and only a very acute ear could have detected this. Jamuga was angered at this insensitiveness, and though he told himself that Temujin never valued women as human beings, he ought, at least, to have shown in some way that he remembered the girl who had died because of him.
Sometimes they rode by the sparsely grassed edges of a yellow river, and Temujin turned his head to watch the cold sun glittering brightly on it. Jamuga thought: Is he remembering Azara’s hair? And sometimes, when the western sky was radiant with rose-tints, he thought: Is he remembering her mouth? But if Temujin were remembering, nothing in his calm and immobile face showed that this was so. He looked at the river and sky as always, dispassionately.
Only Bortei and the other women uneasily suspected what Jamuga now doubted. For since his return, despite his susceptibility to women, and his need of them, he had remained in his own yurt, night after night, alone.
Behind Temujin rumbled his city of carts, and his thousands upon thousands of warriors rode steadily. Behind them all came the herds and the herdsmen, shouting and driving. At night, the campfires burned boldly, for by now few would dare to attack them. Occasionally they would encounter caravans. Most of them were under Temujin’s protection, and he would stop only long enough to greet the traders and collect his tribute of money, jewels, woolens, horses, or slaves. He acquired a troupe of gay painted dancing-girls, and at night they would dance in the open, for the air was becoming softer each day. But though he apparently enjoyed watching them, and openly admired some, he still slept alone in his yurt. This, his other wives conceded, was at least a small satisfaction, though they gossiped and complained among themselves enough.
Temujin’s greatest amusement at this time was Kasar’s growing arrogance. Others were not quite so amused, but Temujin indulged his brother and encouraged him to display this arrogance. For Kasar, the simple and not too discriminating, had suddenly begun to realize that he was brother and noyon to a great khan. The other noyon and paladins were annoyed by his childlike insolence, especially when he affected an air of being close to Temujin’s counsels, and nodded his head with superior mystery on occasion. “Ah,” he would say, during a discussion, “I know something ye do not know! I have heard my lord speaking, as if to himself!”
They did not really believe him, but were irritated. Some of them mocked him, and one or two hardy ones challen
ged him to a wrestling match. But he was exceedingly strong, and none too fair, and so there were no more challenges. He bragged; he strutted; he preened; he nodded his head with cryptic smiles, until they began to look at him murderously. Some of them questioned if there were any truth in what he said, and felt themselves affronted and hurt.
“Oh, let him alone,” said Chepe Noyon, laughing. “He is only an ox, and hath no wit. Our lord would certainly not consult him in anything more important than the breeding of a mare, or the flight of an arrow.”
They admitted they did not believe him, but they longed to kick him heartily. Jamuga complained contemptuously, as did Borchu and Bayan and two or three others, but Temujin only laughed. It amused him to see Kasar strut and posture, and strike heroic attitudes before the women. When they raided a caravan not under his protection, Temujin, with a solemn face, announced that Kasar was to have the first choice of the spoils. He did it only to encourage Kasar to fresh amusing displays of mysterious arrogance, but the others were silently enraged.
Houlun, infuriated that Temujin had not reprimanded or punished Jamuga for her imprisonment, was by now openly hostile to him, and railed at him even when he was among his noyon.
“Thy brother, Kasar, is a fool,” she said angrily. “But folly is like a crippled limb, and should inspire only contempt and sympathy in others. Thou dost encourage his folly as though it were some fine mark of character, superior to that of other men.”
“He doth amuse me,” replied Temujin, with a rare display of good temper. “And at present, I desire to be amused. Tomorrow, perhaps I may not laugh. Let me laugh tonight.” And he made Kasar sit at his right hand, though he had never done this before.
There was some wanton and womanish perversity in him these days, and he seemed to laugh silently in himself when he saw the glum faces of the others.
The days did not pass peacefully all the time. During the long march they encountered hostile clans, who assaulted them, or were assaulted. But these Temujin was able to subdue with appalling ease. Before the winter had ended, one hundred thousand yurts followed the young khan, and countless herds. Before the spring had really come, he had called Bortei to him, and when the summer migration started, she jubilantly knew she was with child again.
The city of the tents moved north once more behind Temujin. His dream of a confederacy of the nomad clans had begun to take definite shape. The old men had warned him that this would never take place. He had told them: “A great king is he who doth begin a task that can never be accomplished, and doth accomplish it.”
The people worshipped him. They said of him that he was the Hawk of Heaven, the Falcon of the Eternal Blue Sky, the Subduer of all men. His terrible courage, his ferocity, his cunning and his resistless power dazzled them. They knew he was feared on the Gobi, and they held up their heads, proud to belong to the ordu of such a khan.
“I shall extend my rule over all my neighbors,” he said to his noyon. “I shall make the Gobi one empire. And then—”
“And then?” asked Chepe Noyon.
But Temujin only smiled, and looked eastwards. It was noticed when he did so that hatred was like a cold light on his face.
Book Three
THIS DAY’S MADNESS
Yesterday This Day’s Madness did prepare;
Tomorrow’s Silence, Triumph, or Despair:
Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why.
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.
—RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM
Chapter 1
“When we attain union, then we can afford peace,” said Temujin. “For when a people is united, then its will can be forced upon weaker and inferior peoples ofttimes without war, and many times by mere intimidation and terror.”
He knew, now, the paralyzing psychological force of terror. His spies went among weaker, and even stronger, tribes, and whispered that there was something supernatural, something mystical and not to be resisted, in Temujin, khan of the Yakka Mongols. The tribes of the Gobi were fierce men and indomitable fighters; they never hesitated to attack or ferociously defend, when necessary, even if outnumbered. But they felt helpless before a man whom heaven itself seemed to help, and before whom the most selfless courage and strength were impotent. A feeling of doom pervaded them, like a noxious gas, chilling their blood and slowing down their hearts. Even when the spies were exposed, and murdered, their whispers went among the people like phantoms.
“Temujin hath no quarrel with you,” went the whispers. “He doth love you all like a father. His only wish is to make you kings among lesser men. Submit yourselves under his standard of the nine yaktails, and he shall lead you to victory, to riches and treasures, to countless fair women and many herds.”
“If you do not submit,” went still another whisper, “then he shall set upon you with remorseless terror and death, because you are traitors unto him, and his enemies. Struggle against him, and you shall surely die, for the lightnings have leaped out of heaven at his bidding, and the avenging waters have arisen to do his will.”
The superstitious tribes listened, wrinkling their dark bronzed faces. “It is the will of heaven that there be a confederacy of the clans of the Gobi,” said the spies. “For the gods have a mighty mission for the hordes, for the noble and irresistible people who range the barrens. The empires are in a state of decay; their men are eunuchs, their arms fat and feeble. God hath called us to destroy the abomination of this rottenness, this swollen greed which hath condemned the people of the steppes to poverty and hunger and hardship. The wealth and the treasures of the city-empires have been denied us, and starvation doth dog our heels through the long winters. We alone are good and strong, healthy and full of virility. We are called to deliver the earth from the stench and the disease of the bloated cities, and drive the trader-eunuchs from their warm cushions and their feasts.”
But Temujin had underestimated the intelligence of the nomad peoples, who loved their freedom even more than they loved their feasts and their women and their horses. Some of the bolder khans and chieftains spoke of the beastlike enslavement of those Temujin had conquered. “It is said that he doth regard men as animals, and doth bend them to his will without consulting them, and without their consent. ‘Go,’ he sayeth, and they have no choice.”
The spies laughed scornfully. “This is but for the moment. The confederacy of the Gobi is his first goal. To attain it in our lifetime he must be ruthless; he must be judge and general, lord and leader, without question. He must move rapidly. Countless wills and countless dissenting voices are delaying and dangerous, and render peoples impotent. For a time they must say ‘aye,’ in order to conquer. But when they have conquered, then their freedom shall be restored to them, and they shall rule the earth.”
“I wish to know what it is I die for, or fight for,” grumbled the older chieftains, who were too proud to follow and had a high respect for their own judgment. “I wish to be consulted. I wish to know where I must lead those who trust me.”
Again the spies laughed derisively. “In long argument is long weakness. When men quarrel over a campaign, the enemy rides in and overtakes them in the midst of their womanish gabble. But Temujin, himself, is only an instrument in the hands of destiny; he, too, serveth. What are you, that you dare defy the gods?”
But still many resisted, among them the dour Merkit, and the Uighurs, who were strong, proud men, willing to serve the tribe but jealous of their own individual freedom and wills. But many listened to the spies, plucking their lips, thinking that the loss of individual will was a small price to pay for glory and conquest, for dedication and the service of the gods. Romantic and worshippers of the hero, they listened eagerly to the tales of the red-haired young khan who had been known to smite down fifty men with his own sword, and emerge, scratchless. And then, too, he was foster son of the mighty Toghrul Khan, and it was whispered that Prester John loved him more than he did his own son, Taliph, and would make Temujin his sole heir. The myths a
ttending his birth went about. Many of the spies were shaman, and they whispered of the frightful auguries of this birth, and the spirits who had visibly tended his mother in her travail.
Over the vast expanse of the Gobi went the whispers, over the green-gray steppes, across the slow-winding yellow rivers, over the chaotic mountains and the dead sand. Men spoke doubtfully of them by campfires, and uneasily glanced at the horizon.
And now the younger men, the youths and the boys, became restless. Their hearts yearned towards one who was immortal youth to them, splendid and conquering, resistless and full of power. “The graybeards sit by the fires.” they said resentfully, “content to dip mutton in herb sauces and chew millet. The flame of strife hath gone out of them; they speak of freedom as though it were a joy, instead of an invitation to starvation and cold and danger.”
The graybeards shook angry withered fingers at them, and shrilled:
“Are we men, or cattle? We have our independence and our liberty, for which our fathers died, and ye young fools wish to destroy them for a fistful of gold and the pleasure of murder! Have ye no pride in yourselves as men, that ye must lay your heads down before such as this man, and ask him to put his foot upon them?”
But the young knew that only the old appreciate freedom and independence. Youth longs only for authority and obedience, for the privilege of being commanded and scorned, led and whipped. And the old men knew that maturity loves its pride and its manhood, its privilege of gazing into any man’s eye and saying, I am equal to thee, and thou art no greater than I.
Of this privilege in the years to come, the young were contemptuous.
The old men spoke of the glories of their tribe, and said scornfully of Temujin that he was of the Yakka Mongols, who were beggarly murderers and thieves. But the young had no pride of race, and said that Temujin was wise, in that he wished to consolidate all the peoples of the steppes and the barrens.
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