by Joshua Fogel
Then, out of nowhere, daredevil Uru’ud and Mangghud troops appeared at the front with complete surprise in pursuit of the retreating enemy, and they circled the chariots, cut off the cavalry troops, and began to surround the foot soldiers. The Uru’ud and Mangghud troops had been sharply reduced in manpower by the earlier fighting, but they had incorporated even more dauntless soldiers into their companies.
With their appearance, the enemy army began to retreat farther.
“Ah,” called out Temüjin, “the giant python is moving. Shake your head, go forward!”
Qasar, commanding the front-line forces, appeared on the plains at the head of the entire army now under him. His small frame seemed to Temüjin like a large python three fathoms in length. The python opened its immense mouth to consume a three-year-old horse or ox, and now to devour the entire Naiman army, he began to dash around the great plain. The Naimans were forced to retreat yet farther, taking one battle position, then a second and a third, all in retreat.
Temüjin issued an attack order to the rear guard under his command. Riding down the hill slowly and waiting for his company to arrive, he stood in the front. Bending forward low on horseback, together with several dozen brigades to either side, he advanced as if he were going to outflank the entire plain. The Naiman troops crumbled and sought refuge on Mount Naqu behind them. The Mongol wolves pressed the attack and climbed to every spot near the foot of the mountain.
Temüjin surrounded Mount Naqu that night and pitched camp there. The attack could not be relaxed even at nightfall. Reinforcements were then sent into the mountains from the foothills. At dawn, the Naimans were cornered at the peak of the mountain and repeated a frantic counterattack. Only about one third of their troops escaped to the peak, about one third fell down into the valley, and the remaining third were captured by the Mongols.
On the day after the defeat of the Naimans’ main force at the pinnacle of Mount Naqu, Temüjin’s army captured Tayang Khan, ruler of the Naimans, and took control of the Naiman settlements scattered over the southern slopes of the Altai mountain range.
From the prisoners, Temüjin learned that Jamugha had come and joined the Naiman encampment. When he heard the name Jamugha, Temüjin was taken with a profoundly nostalgic sensation. This heroic figure who was once known as master of the northern wastelands had fled to To’oril Khan’s camp after his own camp had been lost. Now that To’oril Khan had been defeated, he had cast his lot with the Naimans. The past three years had not been easy for him.
The image of Jamugha’s face, always smiling, came into Temüjin’s mind. He had completely devoted his life to fighting Temüjin and now, Temüjin thought, he might still be alive. Men of the Jadaran, Qatagin, Salji’ud, Dörben, Tayichi’ud, and Unggirad peoples commanded by Jamugha all came until the evening of that day to surrender at Temüjin’s base. No one brought news of Jamugha himself.
Temüjin took Tayang Khan’s mother prisoner, and when he noted that she still had a youthful appearance, he made her one of his concubines. Temüjin was gradually beginning to acquire an unusual interest in making women of conquered peoples his own. Beginning two years earlier, after pacifying remnants of the Tatars and making the enemy ruler’s two daughters, Yisügen and Yisüi, his concubines, he had taken any number of young women in this manner. To be sure, he never laid hands on women of his own lineage, but when he discovered women of other, defeated lineages who struck him as even the least bit interesting, he peremptorily brought them into his personal service.
After a battle, when Temüjin saw numerous women tied up in a row being marched off as prisoners, he was always stirred by an indescribable, savage inclination. He remembered that both his mother, Ö’elün, and his wife, Börte, had been hauled off in this way. Although Temüjin would always select women who interested him from groups of captives and invite them into his tent, not one of them ever attempted to resist his advances and protect their bodies. Whether it was due to something he said or of their own free will, they never made a pained or saddened face.
Temüjin understood women not at all. While men were prepared even to die for a battle, women without exception were submissive to enemy men when their side lost. Temüjin could never trust women, and that included Ö’elün and Börte. The perception he had held on to since his youth had not changed in the least.
At one point in time, his younger brother Qasar had argued that the dividing up of captive women to the troops after each battle violated military discipline. Laughing, Temüjin had said loudly to him:
“When you win a battle, it’s perfectly fine to spread enemy women over your bed and sleep with them as cushions. Impregnate them and make them give birth to Mongol children. Do women have any other purpose?”
Temüjin spoke in a rather disdainful manner, and Qasar was taken aback by the dark look on his face. More than twenty years had passed since Temüjin first entertained doubts about whether he himself bore Mongol blood, and he still had not been able to fully resolve the question. As in his own case, so too no definitive judgment had been reached on the blood of his eldest son Jochi. Some things about Jochi resembled his father and others did not.
Temüjin was now the sole power controlling the Mongolian plateau, and whether the blood coursing through his veins was Mongol or Merkid was not of major import, but he knew then, as he had hoped in his heart as a youngster, that he wanted to be a descendant of the Mongolian blue wolf.
Upon returning home from the Naiman conquest, Temüjin heard of a turbulent atmosphere prevailing among the remaining Merkids, and he decided to go and attack soon. When he had defeated the Merkids earlier, he and his forces had carried out a mass execution leaving no men alive, but with roots as strong as weeds, the Merkid remnants had somehow gathered together and were forming themselves into a lineage anew.
Temüjin took a merciless attitude toward the Merkids, as he had toward the Tayichi’uds and the Tatars in the past. He could not tolerate, from men who might have the same blood as his, that which he might have allowed from other lineages.
In the early autumn, Temüjin went to war against the Merkid chief Toghto’a and quickly defeated him. His forces then proceeded to despoil then entire region. At this time, a man by the name of Dayir Usun came forward with the following proposal: “I have the most beautiful woman, my daughter, of our people, and if you wish to have her, I would like to present her to you.” Temüjin ordered that she be brought forward. When she learned what was about to take place, however, she ran away and hid from her father’s view. Temüjin immediately ordered that troops be sent to search for her and bring her in.
She was discovered by the soldiers about ten days later. Her clothes were covered in mud, and her face and hair were filthy. Temüjin had her brought before him.
“What’s your name?”
“Qulan.” She spoke in a clear tone of voice, responding with eyebrows raised in a somewhat resistant manner.
“Where were you hiding for those ten days?” She replied by offering the names of a number of ethnic groups among whom she had been hiding.
“Why didn’t you just stay in one place?” asked Temüjin.
“Wherever I went,” said Qulan with an expression of anger on her face, “the young men of that lineage attacked me. Men are all barbarian beasts.”
What Qulan said seemed to ring true. With the fighting having only just stopped, massacres ensued everywhere, and order had not been fully restored. Women who had no special protectors, when put in such a situation, knew without having to articulate it what fate awaited them.
Temüjin was overcome by profound antipathy for this young woman who was rejecting presentation of her body to him and had become a plaything for insurgents of other lineages. Rejection by a woman of an ethnic group he had himself conquered was a new experience for Temüjin. That by itself would have been more than enough to earn his wrath, but in addition, the fact that she had been raped by several other lineages seemed to him to be an act of spite directed solely at hi
mself.
“You and the men who violated you,” said Temüjin, as if issuing a manifesto, “will all be apprehended and executed.” Qulan looked at him severely.
“I will not be raped. I have always defended against this with my life as my sword. If I am fated for such an experience, I shall choose death.”
“What are you babbling about, Merkid female!”
Temüjin put no confidence in Qulan’s words. He did not believe her capable of such things. But with a composure that only someone who has accepted death as inevitable could muster, she said:
“I am speaking to the deities. Only they believe me.” Then she smiled, with her eyes glittering frigidly at Temüjin and her face covered with dirt. Temüjin had never seen a smile such as that adorning Qulan’s face. Her face was filled with pride, and her voice reverberated with it.
“Tie up the woman!” Temüjin ordered a man at his side to escort Qulan to a room in a private home.
Two days later, he visited this room where she was confined. Qulan was sitting on a bed, but when she recognized the figure of Temüjin standing in the doorway, she got off the bed and braced herself:
“Don’t you come in! You take one step in this room, and I shall end my life,” she said sternly.
“By what means have you chosen to die?” asked Temüjin.
“If I bite through my tongue,” she said, “death will come easily to me.”
A sensibility was detectable here that only someone who had settled upon a matter in his mind would possess. Temüjin, who had made every race of people on the entire Mongolian plateau tremble, lacked such power as he stood before Qulan. And he hesitated before approaching her any further.
It seemed to him that Qulan was now different from the way she had been when they first met. The dirt had been cleaned from her face, revealing what could justly be called the finest beauty among the Merkids. She was not only, as far as Temüjin was concerned, a great beauty for a Merkid, but also arguably the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He had once been enchanted by the glistening beauty of his wife, Börte, but the woman standing before his eyes now was much lovelier than she and, it seemed, much more intelligent. There was a darkness tinged with sorrow to her deeply notched face, like a work of sculpture, that Börte had no trace of. Her hair was half golden and her eyes had a slight touch of blue.
Temüjin left that day as he had come, but the next day and the one following he visited the home where Qulan was being held. The words she spoke remained unchanged, and Temüjin had to leave with the satisfaction only of having seen her face.
To pacify the Merkids, Temüjin remained in the Merkid settlement for two months, and during that time he called on Qulan any number of times. It was strange, to say the least, that Temüjin would be treated in this manner by a woman who was an enemy prisoner. Had she not been Qulan, she would have been executed on the spot, but Temüjin could not bring himself to do this.
The night before his company was to depart for their triumphal return, Temüjin visited her again one last time and said: “I thought you were someone else.”
He didn’t believe such words could come from his own mouth and thus startled himself. Once the words were out, though, there was no way to retrieve them.
“I’d like you to serve in my tent,” he said. Qulan then looked directly at Temüjin with her dark face and said:
“How can you say such a thing in all seriousness?”
“My words come from my heart,” he replied. “Can you understand that?”
“What you say is probably true,” she said with something of an intimate tone, altogether different from her usual manner. “Were it not so, death would already have paid me a call. Is what you feel for me now love?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“You say it’s love now, but is this love greater, deeper than you feel for all other women?”
“Much more so.”
“Even more than for your wife?” asked Qulan. Temüjin was astonished and could not quickly respond. “If indeed your love for me is stronger and greater than for your wife, then you may take my body. If your love is not so strong, then no matter what means you may use, I shall not be yours. I am prepared for death at any time.”
Rather than say something in reply, Temüjin took a step and then another into the room. He approached Qulan. She shrank back, but did not utter anything rejecting him. When he embraced her, Temüjin honestly believed that his love for her was stronger than he had ever felt for anyone.
Unexpected for Temüjin was the fact that Qulan had a body of perfect purity. When she had first been brought before him, she had proudly claimed that she had risked her life to protect her virginity, but Temüjin hadn’t believed it. It hardly seemed likely for a young woman to have been able to do so, during ten days in the prevailing chaos. True to her word, though, she was still a virgin. As if some sort of evidence of how difficult this had been, a number of contusions had left black-and-blue marks on her white body: on her fleshy shoulder, between her well-formed, protuberant breasts, and at her neat and trim waist.
When he left Qulan’s room the following morning, Temüjin thought that he loved this woman more than any other and that he would continue to love her his entire life. The vow he made to Qulan was surely not the sort of thing he was going to break.
Having pacified the Merkid remnants, Temüjin set off on his return home. In the evening he pitched camp at a site about one day’s travel from his own settlement in the foothills of Mount Burqan, and before Temüjin entered his tent, he thought about informing his wife, Börte, of Qulan in advance. With his other women, Temüjin had not made a special point of notifying Börte. If he did not inform her, she would of course learn of Qulan; they would each ignore it, and somehow things would settle down. Börte surely did not believe that, over the course of such a long military expedition, Temüjin in the peak of his years would spend his time without female companionship.
The case of Qulan, however, was different, and Temüjin wanted Börte to somehow recognize her existence. It might be that Börte would require special treatment in future vis-à-vis his other concubines, and as best he could, he wanted to avoid the eruption of any troublesome quarrels with her.
Temüjin sent Muqali to Börte as a messenger. A commander eight years Temüjin’s junior, he was known for his faithfulness on any matter whatsoever. He returned the following day and conveyed a message from Börte to Temüjin:
“Temüjin, ruler of our beloved Mongolian plateau. Should you return home triumphantly to the settlement, you will find a new tent decorated with new furniture next to the tent of your wife, Börte. I pray that the young Qulan who will live there will compensate for the areas in which I am insufficient and will be a wellspring for your extraordinary strength.”
Börte’s language struck Temüjin as altogether satisfactory. Whatever he might have anticipated, he really couldn’t expect anything more agreeable. Börte would lose nothing of her dignity as the legal wife, and she had demonstrated magnanimity for the respect her husband was paying her.
Soon after his return from the Merkid expedition, a group of Merkids based at Mount Tayighar rose in revolt, and Temüjin immediately dispatched a punitive force. As commander, Temüjin appointed the son of Sorqan Shira, the short and big-headed Chimbai. Chimbai was a bold commander, perturbed by nothing at all, but this was the first time that he was assuming a post of such considerable responsibility. With a physique so small that, it was said, he could not ride a horse without someone offering a hand, Chimbai had suffered losses on the battlefield. In this expedition, though, he acquitted himself splendidly, compelling the enemy commander Toghto’a and his son Qudu to flee far away to the south.
Temüjin would not remain long in his own camp, though, for that year he was to lead his entire army across the Altai Mountains again to attack the Naimans. That winter the snows were heavy, and he could not hope to cross the mountains. He therefore had no choice but to pass the time with all of his forces
stationed in the northern foothills of the Altai Mountains. He was accompanied on this expedition by Qulan alone.
Following the new year came spring, and Temüjin led his entire armed forces over the Altai Mountains for a third time to invade the Naimans once again. They battled a joint army composed of Merkid and Naiman remnants at the basin of the Buqdurma River and defeated them. The leaders of the remnant forces split into small groups and scattered in all directions.
Temüjin appointed Jelme’s younger brother Sübe’etei, who had posted stunning achievements the previous year during the attack on the Naimans, to lead a combat chariot made of iron in pursuit of enemy remnant fighters. Having just turned thirty, Sübe’etei was a young commander, and Temüjin counseled him when he was setting off on his mission:
“Should the enemy escapees acquire wings and fly off at great speed into the sky, Sübe’etei, you shall become a great falcon and seize them. Should they dig deep into the earth to hide themselves, you shall become an iron hoe and bore into the soil after them. Should they become fish in the lakes and the sea, you shall become a net to catch them. You have already traversed high peaks and crossed great rivers. This expedition will last incomparably longer than before. Remember the great distances to be covered, and be compassionate to the war horses that they not grow too gaunt. Replenish your provisions before they are depleted. No matter how many wild beasts you encounter on your way, do not hunt them down to the point of emaciating the horses. Go, and may divine protection come to the brave Mongol warriors who carry out this mission to allow not a single enemy soldier to escape.”
Sübe’etei then set off, and he acted as he was instructed. Defeated remnant troops hiding in the southern foothills of the Altai Mountains were attacked one by one, taken prisoner, and beheaded.
As Sübe’etei’s thorough mopping-up war was continuing, Jamugha was brought into Temüjin’s base camp, shackled to five of his subordinates.