by Joshua Fogel
For a long time, Temüjin stared at the face of the infant lying beside Börte in bed. Just as he tormented himself over whether or not Mongol blood flowed in his own veins, this child would in future bear such doubts. And just as he would have to prove that there was Mongol blood in his body by becoming a wolf, so too would Jochi have to become a wolf and bear up under the destiny toward which he was necessarily headed.
“I shall be a wolf, and you too are to become a wolf!” said Temüjin in his heart. These were the first words Temüjin offered to his eldest son Jochi. As words of a father to his son in this context, they were said with an unsurpassable, profound love.
Börte remained silent, in no way indicating her will with respect to the name Jochi that Temüjin had given the baby. Was she satisfied? Did she disapprove? From the expression on her face, there was no way to tell what was in her heart of hearts. Eventually, she quietly turned her face toward Temüjin. Although she was still quite weak, her face had a brightness unusual for a woman just out of childbirth. But from the eyes on her bright face, tears were welling up and flowing onto her cheeks in two clear lines.
Temüjin left the baby’s side and looked down on the face of the beautiful one for whom he had so long been searching.
“I have sent a messenger to the Unggirads,” he said to his wife, for the first time speaking in gentle words. “Your father, Dei Sechen, and your mother, Chotan, were both very happy.”
Temüjin’s view of women generally at this time was fixed as a stationary concept and was not to change throughout his life. Although he could recognize a woman’s beauty, love, and fidelity, he could not believe that such things were constant. Whatever had any value would always be unstable to the extent that women possessed it. And neither his wife, Börte, nor his mother, Ö’elün, was an exception to this rule. There was always the defect that she could give birth to “a guest.” If his wife or, for that matter, his mother could give birth to a wolf with Mongol blood, then she could just as easily give birth to a Merkid, a Tatar, or a Kereyid. She was a container that bore a child who strangely and generously accepted the blood of any ethnic group at all. How was it that the wife who loved him and whom he loved could give birth to a child with enemy blood?
Although Temüjin trusted the men under his command for their loyalty, their courage, and their sacrifice, he could not trust women in the same way. There was no basis on which to establish such trust. Once a woman had something, only while she possessed it were her beauty, her love, and her fidelity her own. The men he commanded would never change, even if conquered by and forced to submit to another lineage, but aside from when a man embraced a woman in bed, she was troublesome because he could never consider her his own.
Temüjin wanted to have Börte as his wife forever. To that end he realized he would have to be so strong that no one would ever be able to take her from him.
“From now on, I shall never be more than a moment away from you,” he said. “And you shall always remain perfectly faithful.”
He did not say that he loved her or that he had always loved her. Such words were powerless and of no value at all. Temüjin merely announced that he possessed her, though this was a confession on his part of his love for her.
3
Overlordship on the Mongolian Plateau
TO’ORIL KHAN AND JAMUGHA kept their troops stationed at their campsites for about one month longer, with no apparent desire to withdraw. Although they had divided up all the women and possessions equally and nothing of pressing urgency remained to be accomplished, there were reasons for avoiding an earlier pullout. Temüjin was from the start suspicious of the attitudes of these two armed forces, but on reflection felt the situation was only natural for people engaged in battle. Had one side departed earlier and borne malicious feelings toward those who remained, there was the strong possibility that they would be attacked from the rear. Thus, both sides wished to avoid taking a dangerous position.
Temüjin learned many an important lesson from these two leaders. To’oril Khan and Jamugha had sworn a blood-brother (anda) allegiance in both life and death, but their actions revealed that neither trusted the other in the least. One further thing that caught Temüjin’s attention was the fact that To’oril Khan’s decision to dispatch troops was in no way motivated by his concern to come to the aid of Yisügei’s eldest son and help him succeed. When Temüjin requested arms to be able to launch an attack on the Merkids, To’oril Khan’s decision to send his own forces provided a perfect excuse for him to dispatch troops against the Merkids. He had undoubtedly been looking for an opportunity to wipe them out, but just had not yet found a pretext that conformed to the appropriate principles of duty. The wrongful act committed by the Merkids in raiding the tent of the weak Temüjin and seizing Börte could not go unpunished, and returning his wife to the son of Yisügei would certainly not be criticized by anyone. When To’oril Khan sent his troops off, it also had the effect of inciting Jamugha to increase the troops’ strength, but even more important was the fact that by adding Jamugha, who belonged to the same Borjigin lineage as Temüjin, he was further legitimizing his own actions. The way To’oril Khan proposed the plan was by no means disadvantageous to Jamugha, and the latter was sufficiently attracted to readily accept. Temüjin only got his wife, Börte, back, but To’oril Khan and Jamugha split the enormous wealth of an entire lineage, each carrying off half.
In this instance, Temüjin thought it advisable to subordinate his own camp to either To’oril Khan’s or Jamugha’s. There was, indeed, no better way to make his own small settlement rapidly grow larger. Temüjin chose Jamugha. They were both of Borjigin stock, and he reasoned that to stave off further Tayichi’ud depredations, it would be better to rely on Jamugha’s protection. In addition, many of those from his father Yisügei’s day had fallen under Tayichi’ud control and later thrown in their lot with Jamugha’s settlement; in this they shared a certain disposition as well.
Standing between To’oril Khan and Jamugha, Temüjin casually proposed that on the same day both withdraw and move off in opposite directions. Together with Jamugha, Temüjin retreated toward the Qorqonaq Valley of the Onon River, while To’oril Khan headed toward his own encampment in the Black Forest by the shores of the Tula River with Mount Burqan behind him. To’oril Khan mobilized his troops in a rather leisurely manner, while continuing to hunt.
Temüjin and Börte returned to their own settlement halfway up Mount Burqan near the source of the Onon and Kherlen rivers. However, their own numbers had increased by two small people. One was Jochi, and the other was an adorable five-year-old child they had found in the Merkid village wearing a sable hat and footwear made of the skin of doe’s feet. His name was Kuchu. Temüjin brought him to his mother, Ö’elün’s, tent as a present. Ö’elün’s five children were now grown, her youngest, Temülün, having already reached age seventeen, and she was thus exceedingly pleased with this gift of a youngster. All the men of Kuchu’s people had now been put to death, making this child alone the sole repository of pure Merkid blood, a small treasure of sorts.
Temüjin soon moved his encampment from the Mount Burqan area to a site in the Qorqonaq Valley neighboring Jamugha’s camp. The following day Temüjin swore an anda oath of brotherhood with Jamugha. The ceremony was carried out in an open area above the Qorqonaq Escarpment, with trees on one side. Temüjin placed on Jamugha a golden belt he had seized from an enemy commander in the fighting with the Merkids, and he similarly placed Jamugha on a black-maned horse he had taken in plunder. For his part Jamugha presented Temüjin with a golden belt looted from a Merkid officer and placed him on a white horse that looked like a horned lamb. They both then called out to each other loudly: “Anda!” The banquet that brought the villagers together was begun at the sound of the two men’s voices, and it lasted throughout the night. Instruments were played, people sang, and young Merkid girls whose husbands, fathers, and brothers had all been executed danced before the conquerors.
Temüjin took a seat next to Jamu
gha at the banquet, although he didn’t believe that the oath sworn between the two men was of any value whatsoever. Jamugha would use it as long as it could be used, and when circumstances took a turn for the worse, he would discard it like an old hat. Although he had seen Jamugha’s kindly face with its unflappable smile during the daytime, it struck Temüjin as altogether different when half of it was bathed in the light of the moon. Something cruelly bitter was beginning to dawn on Temüjin, making even him shudder.
There were many benefits, though, for Temüjin in having forged this anda bond with Jamugha and living in such close proximity. Wool was more easily sold off, and he could increase his stock of horses and sheep as he wished, should he desire to do so. One other advantage that he had not foreseen was the fact that his group of men and women of Borjigin ancestry lived far from the Tayichi’uds, so gradually many more came to join them. The number of yurts seemed to grow daily, with sometimes as many as ten tents joining the settlement at once. Such a phenomenon, needless to say, incurred the enmity of the Tayichi’uds, but Jamugha’s presence as Temüjin’s anda kept them at bay. Jamugha effectively restrained the Tayichi’ud leader Targhutai from being able to intervene behind the scenes.
Even within Jamugha’s camp, there were many who were by inclination more sympathetic to Temüjin. The means by which Jamugha and Temüjin managed their neighboring settlements were altogether different. While Jamugha divided all profit fairly, Temüjin divided his people into various rankings for allocating goods. Each received advantages in proportion to the labor they exerted, and accordingly those who worked hard received a larger quota. While lazy elements in Jamugha’s settlement benefited, exceptional young men lost out. For this reason, the numbers of those who pondered moving over to Temüjin’s settlement grew steadily.
This was certainly known to Jamugha. When a year and a half had passed since the two men had sworn their anda oath, Temüjin unexpectedly received an invitation from Jamugha to join a hunt. Had he known that this was not hunting season, he might have been concerned, and Temüjin had sensed several days earlier that something unusual was going on in Jamugha’s camp.
Temüjin immediately consulted with Qasar, Belgütei, Bo’orchu, and Jelme. All four of them had the same thought, that it would be unwise to accept this invitation, but their views on what had been happening earlier differed widely: “Let’s wait for Jamugha to make a move.” “If he’s misunderstood something, let’s dispel it.” These and other views were all voiced.
Temüjin invited Ö’elün and Börte in and asked their opinions as well. When they had heard his entire explanation, before Ö’elün so much as opened her mouth, Börte abruptly spoke out, and her tone was sharp:
“We need to move the whole settlement tonight. It may be too late tomorrow morning.”
Temüjin remained silent, as did the others. It was not going to be easy to speedily dismantle the settlement in an orderly fashion and abandon the expansive pasturelands that they had gone to such pains to manage. Then Börte looked Temüjin squarely in the face and said:
“I am pregnant.”
This was the first Temüjin knew of it.
“I am pregnant,” she repeated. “Would you like to name our second child Jochi too?” With Börte’s words, Temüjin made up his mind.
Qasar, Belgütei, Bo’orchu, and Jelme all rushed out of Temüjin’s tent. In short order the nearly one hundred yurts comprising their settlement were in a state of utter confusion. One by one they finished folding up all the tents, and small groups left one after the next from the Qorqonaq Valley, traveling parallel to the river and headed north. There were flocks of sheep and horses between the tents and the procession was in considerable disarray, but the whole party nonetheless extended in a long, thin line like a string of thread pulled away from the site of the settlement. When the thread from the spool completely ran out, a hundred or more men forming an armed guard mounted their horses and brought up the rear.
The movement continued without stop. When they came upon a settlement en route, the brothers Chimbai and Chila’un rode their horses into the settlement and announced in a loud voice that Temüjin’s camp was moving. Their intent was to invite anyone who wished to do so to join them.
When they passed a camp of the Besüd people of the Tayichi’uds, Temüjin finally allowed his men and women a short rest. They entered the Besüd settlement, and all the Taiyichi’uds scattered, leaving every tent vacant. Temüjin saw one young child sitting on the ground in front of a tent.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Kököchü,” the child replied. Although he asked again several times, the word that came back each time was “Kököchü.”
“Are you all alone?”
“I’m in charge while everyone’s away,” he answered.
Temüjin lifted the child who had assumed such a task for several dozen tents in his arms and passed him to Qasar. He was to be given to Ö’elün.
Just as they were leaving this settlement, the light of dawn began to fill the air. With night about to come to an end, three young brothers of the Jalayir lineage joined the tail end of their procession. They took their first respite on the incline of the plateau. Momentarily thereafter, groups of people from small settlements scattered about the area came one after the next to join Temüjin’s camp. Some led their horses while others rode in on horseback in small groups. There were parties of women and of the old as well. The great majority of them were distant relations of Yisügei, men and women who had been subordinated to the Tayichi’uds.
The company moved on and pitched camp that evening by the shore of a small lake. Roughly three hundred new people had now joined them. Upon Bo’orchu’s investigation, this included people from all manner of different family lines in the region. We have already noted the Jalayirs, but in addition to Mönggedü Kiyan, there were as well men and women from the Targhud, the Barulas, the Mangghud, the Arulad, the Besüd, the Suldus, the Qongqotan, the Negüdei, the Olqunu’ud, the Ikires, the Noyakin, the Oronar, and the Ba’arin lineages.
Leading his suddenly swelling number of followers, Temüjin proceeded the next day toward the Kimurgha Stream. And that day too his party grew in size as they remained on the move. Ögelen Cherbi, the younger brother of Bo’orchu, left the Arulads to join them, and Jelme’s two younger brothers, Cha’urqan and Sübe’etei, both left the Uriangqans to link up with Temüjin.
They reached the banks of the Kimurgha Stream that afternoon, and there settled down for a time by making camp at a divide in the terrain where small hills undulated like waves. It was additionally a well-placed site to defend against attack from pursuing troops sent by Jamugha, and it was not at all bad land for pasturage.
From the time they stopped moving until evening, people who had separated from Jamugha and come toward them could be spotted here and there on the hilltops, disappeared in the valleys between hills, and gradually became visible again as they approached camp. One of those who had abandoned Jamugha was a man about sixty years of age by the name of Qorchi of the Ba’arins. He was a miserable-looking old man and was accompanied by people comprising some twenty tents in all.
When Qorchi arrived at Temüjin’s camp, he said:
“I’ve never been apart from Jamugha, and I had no particular reason for it now. Jamugha’s always been very good to me. But a divine oracle said Temüjin was going to become king of the entire Mongolian plateau and that I should go to his base. That’s why I’ve come here.” This was his way of announcing his arrival. Although he did not appear to be the sort of good-for-nothing person one would want to go out of one’s way to welcome, Temüjin nonetheless listened to Qorchi’s words with a sense of the man’s deep feeling. Only one man had come in the belief that he, Temüjin, was to become sovereign of the Mongolian plateau. The other newcomers to Temüjin’s camp had all assembled there so as to make their lives better, to bring some small happiness to their families. Qorchi was different, for he had come in response to a heavenly oracle.
Temüjin stared fixedly at the plentiful wrinkles on Qorchi’s face, lit up by the light of the setting sun, as he stood before him. After a while, he responded:
“If such a day does come when I do, in fact, become king of the Mongolian plateau, at that time I shall make you chief of 10,000 households.”
Temüjin realized then that he must never forget the crimson redness of that day’s setting sun, when he had escaped from the jaws of death at the hands of Jamugha and sought to restore order at his new encampment with its abruptly swollen numbers. And he must never forget as well the face of Qorchi, bathed in the evening’s red glow, who had told of the oracle.
Then Qorchi said with apparent disapproval:
“What joy would I get out of becoming chief of 10,000 households? What I’d like, once I’ve become a chief of 10,000 households, is to be able to freely choose women to my taste from among the beautiful women and girls of the state. Thirty of them would do fine. I’d like to have 30 beautiful women of my own.”
“It shall be so,” replied Temüjin to this rather lecherous oracle.
Temüjin was very busy for the next few days. The number of people in the settlement had now climbed to over 3,000, and ordinary affairs could no longer be handled in the simple manner that they had been heretofore. Temüjin made Bo’orchu and Jelme leaders of the settlement, and gave them the authority to control and issue orders in all matters. Bo’orchu and Jelme acquitted themselves well in everything. While Bo’orchu skillfully disposed of all matters on the surface, Jelme followed up, straightened things out, and shored up whatever was lacking.
They made camp at this site for roughly one month, and during that time Temüjin brought a number of settlements under his umbrella. A camp of the Keniges lineage came to join them, as did camps of Jadarans, Saqayids, and Yürkins. Temüjin was now able to assemble the more important figures among his close relatives together with their camps. This included: Temüjin’s uncle Daritai Odchigin, his cousin Qochar, his elder cousins Seche Beki and Taichu who were brothers, Altan (son of Qutula Khan), and Altan’s younger cousin Yeke Cheren.