Читать книгу Conqueror: The Complete 5-Book Collection - Conn Iggulden - Страница 38

Khasar waited in the deep snow, his face numb despite the covering of mutton fat. He could not help feeling a little sorry for himself. His brothers seemed to have forgotten, but this was his sixteenth birthday. On impulse, he stretched out his tongue and tried to catch a few of the cold flakes. He had been there a long time and he was weary and bored. He wondered idly if he would find himself a woman in the Tartar camp, as he stared at it over a hundred paces of white ground. The wind was bitter and the clouds scudded by at great speed overhead, driven like pale goats before a storm. Khasar liked the image of the words and repeated them to himself. He would have to remember to tell Hoelun when they came back from the raid. Khasar considered sipping his airag to keep him warm but he remembered Arslan’s words and resisted. The swordsmith had given him only a cupful of the precious fluid in a second leather bottle.

‘I do not want you drunk,’ Arslan had said sternly. ‘If the Tartars reach you, we’ll need a steady hand and a clear eye.’

Khasar liked the father and son Temujin had brought back, particularly the older man. At times, Arslan reminded him of his father.

A distant movement distracted Khasar from his wandering thoughts. It was difficult to stay focused on the task at hand when he thought he was slowly freezing. He decided to drink the airag rather than be too cold to act. He moved slowly so as not to disturb the layer of snow that had built up on his deel and blanket.

It stung his gums, but he gulped it quickly, feeling the warmth spread in his lower chest and up into his lungs. It helped against the cold, and now there was definitely activity in the Tartar camp. Khasar lay just to the west of them, invisible under his covering of snow. He could see running figures and, when the wind dropped, he could hear shouting. He nodded to himself. Temujin had attacked. Now they would know if it really was only a small group of Tartars or the ambush Arslan had warned about. The Tartars had offered a blood price for the small group of raiders who had come north into their lands. If anything, it helped Temujin to recruit warriors from the wanderer families, taking their wives and children into his protection and treating them with honour. The Tartars were helping Temujin to build himself a tribe out in the icy wastes.

Khasar heard the flat smack of arrows being released. From such a distance, he could not tell if they were from Tartar bows, but it did not matter. Temujin had told him to lie at that point with a white blanket over him and that is what he would do. He could hear dogs barking and he hoped someone shot them before they could threaten Temujin. His brother still feared the animals and it would not be right for him to show weakness in front of new men, some of them still wary and untrusting.

Khasar smiled to himself. Temujin preferred to take warriors with wives and children. They could not betray him with their loved ones back at the camp under Hoelun’s care. The threat had never been spoken and perhaps it was only Khasar who thought of it. His brother was clever enough, though, he knew, cleverer than all of them.

Khasar narrowed his eyes, his pulse doubling in a jerk as two figures came racing out of the camp. He recognised Temujin and Jelme and saw that they were sprinting with bows and shafts ready. Behind them came six Tartars in their furs and decorated cloth, baying and showing yellow teeth in the pursuit.

Khasar did not hesitate. His brother and Jelme belted past without looking down at him. He waited another heartbeat for the Tartar warriors to close, then rose up from the snow like a vengeful demon, drawing back to his right ear as he moved. Two arrows killed two men, sending them onto their faces in the snow. The rest skidded to a stop in panic and confusion. They could have fallen on Khasar then, tearing him apart, but Temujin and Jelme had not deserted him. As soon as they heard his bow, each man had turned and gone down onto one knee, punching arrows into the snow ready for their snatching hands. They hammered the remaining Tartars and Khasar had time for one last shot, sending it perfectly through the pale throat of the man closest to his position. The Tartar warrior pulled at the shaft and almost had it out before he fell still. Khasar shuddered as the man died. The Tartars wore deels much like his own people, but the men of the north were white-skinned and strange and they seemed to feel no pain. Still, they died as easily as goats and sheep.

Temujin and Jelme recovered the arrows from the bodies, cutting them out with quick chops of their knives. It was bloody work and Temujin’s face was spattered as he handed Khasar half a dozen shafts, wet and red down their full length. Without a word, he clapped Khasar on the shoulder and he and Jelme dog-trotted back into the Tartar camp, running almost crouched with their bows low to the ground. Khasar’s racing heart began to slow and he arranged the bloody arrows neatly in case he had to kill again. With great care, he wrapped a piece of oiled cloth over his bowstring to keep it strong and dry, then settled himself back in position. He wished he had brought a little more of the airag as the cold seeped into his bones and the falling snow began to drift over him once more.

‘No ambush, Arslan!’ Temujin called across the Tartar camp.

The swordsmith shrugged and nodded. It did not mean it could not come. It meant this time it had not. He had argued against them raiding so often into Tartar lands. It made a trap too easy to set if Temujin pecked at every single opportunity they gave him.

Arslan watched the young khan stride among the gers of dead men. The wailing of women had started and Temujin was grinning at the sound. It signified victory for all of them, and Arslan had never known a man as remorseless as the son of Yesugei.

Arslan looked up into the softly falling flakes, feeling them alight in his hair and on his eyelashes. He had lived for forty winters and fathered two sons dead and one alive. If he had been alone, he knew he would have lived the last years of his life away from the tribes, perhaps high in the mountains where only the hardiest could survive. With Jelme, he could think only as a father. He knew a young man needed others of his own age and a chance to find himself a wife and children of his own.

Arslan felt the cold bite through the padded deel he had taken from the body of a dead Tartar. He had not expected to find himself holding a tiger by the tail. It worried him to see the way Jelme hero-worshipped Temujin, despite him being barely eighteen years old. Arslan thought sourly that in his youth a khan was a man tempered by many seasons and battles. Yet he could not fault the sons of Yesugei for their courage and Temujin had not lost a man in his raids. Arslan sighed to himself, wondering if the luck could last.

‘You’ll freeze to death standing still, swordsmith,’ came a voice behind him.

Arslan turned to see the still figure of Kachiun. Temujin’s brother maintained a quiet intensity that gave nothing away. He could certainly move silently, Arslan admitted to himself. He had seen him shoot and Arslan no longer doubted the boy could have taken them from cover when they rode back to the cleft in the hills. The whole family had something and Arslan thought they were heading for fame or an early death. Either way, Jelme would be with them, he realised.

‘I don’t feel the cold,’ Arslan lied, forcing a smile.

Kachiun had not warmed to him the way Khasar had, but the natural reserve was slowly thawing. Arslan had seen the same coldness in many of the newcomers to Temujin’s camp. They came because Temujin accepted them, but old habits were hard to break for men who had lived so long away from a tribe. The winters were too cruel to trust easily and live.

Arslan knew enough to see that Temujin chose his companions on the raids very carefully indeed. Some needed constant reassurance and Temujin let Khasar handle those, with his rough ways and humour. Others would not give up their simmering doubts until they had seen Temujin risk his life at their shoulder. For raid after raid, they saw that he was so completely without fear that he would walk up to drawn swords and know he would not be alone. So far, they had gone with him. Arslan hoped it would last, for all their sakes.

‘Will he raid again?’ Arslan asked suddenly. ‘The Tartars will not stand for this much longer.’

Kachiun shrugged. ‘We’ll scout the camps first, but they are dull and slow in winter. Temujin says we can go on like this for months more.’

‘But you know better than that, surely?’ Arslan said. ‘They will draw us in with a fat target and men hidden in every ger. Wouldn’t you? Sooner or later we are going to walk into a trap.’

To his astonishment, Kachiun grinned at him.

‘They are just Tartars. We can take as many as they want to send against us, I think.’

‘It could be thousands if you provoke them all winter,’ Arslan said. ‘The moment the thaw comes, they could send an army.’

‘I hope so,’ Kachiun said. ‘Temujin thinks it is the only way to get the tribes to band together. He says we need an enemy and a threat to the land. I believe him.’

Kachiun patted Arslan on the shoulder as if in consolation before strolling away in the snow. The swordsmith allowed the touch out of sheer astonishment. He didn’t have a tiger by the tail after all. He had it by the ears, with his head in its mouth.

A figure came padding by him and he heard the only voice he loved.

‘Father! You’ll freeze out here,’ Jelme said, coming to a halt.

Arslan sighed. ‘I’ve heard the opinion, yes. I am not as old as you all seem to think.’

He watched his son as he spoke, seeing the bounce in his step. Jelme was drunk on the victory, his eyes shining. As Arslan’s heart swelled for his son, he saw the young man could hardly stand still. Somewhere nearby, Temujin would be holding his war council once again, planning the next assault on the tribe who had killed his father. Each one was more daring and more difficult than the last, and the nights were often wild with drinking and captured women away from the main camp. In the morning, it would be different, and Arslan could not begrudge his son the company of his new friends. At least Temujin respected his skill with a bow and sword. Arslan had given his son that much.

‘Did you take a wound?’ he asked.

Jelme smiled, showing small white teeth. ‘Not a scratch. I killed three Tartars with a bow and one with the blade, using the high pull stroke you taught me.’ He mimed it automatically and Arslan nodded in approval.

‘It is a good one if the opponent is unbalanced,’ he replied, hoping his son could see the pride he felt. He could not express it. ‘I remember teaching it to you,’ Arslan continued lamely. He wished he had more words, but a distance had somehow sprung up between them and he did not know how to breach it.

Jelme stepped forward and reached out to grip his father by the arm. Arslan wondered if he had taken the habit of physical contact from Temujin. For one of the swordsmith’s generation, it was an intrusion and he always had to master the urge to slap it away. Not from his son, though. He loved him too much to care.

‘Do you want me to stay with you?’ Jelme asked.

Arslan had to snort with barely suppressed laughter, tinged with sadness. They were so arrogant it pained him, these young men, but with the wanderer families, they had grown themselves into a band of raiders who did not question their leader’s authority. Arslan had watched the chains of trust develop between them and, when his spirits were low, he wondered if he would have to see his son killed before him.

‘I will walk the perimeter of the camp and make sure there are no more surprises to spoil my sleep tonight,’ Arslan said. ‘Go.’ He forced a smile at the end and Jelme chuckled, his excitement bubbling back to the surface. He ran off between the white gers to where Arslan could hear the sound of revelry. The Tartars had been far from their main tribe, he thought to himself. For all he knew, they had been looking for the very force that had crushed them mercilessly. The news would filter its way back to the local khans and they would respond, whether Temujin understood it or not. They could not afford to ignore the raids. In the east, the great cities of the Chin would have their spies out, looking always for weakness in their enemies.

As he walked around the camp, he found two other men doing the same thing and adjusted his view of Temujin yet again. The young warrior listened, Arslan had to admit, though he didn’t like to ask for help. It was worth remembering.

As he crunched his way through the deepening snow, Arslan heard soft sobbing coming from a thicket of trees near the outskirts of the Tartar gers. He drew his sword in utter silence at the sound, standing like a statue until the blade was completely clear. It could have been a trap, though he didn’t think so. The women of the camp would have either stayed in the gers or hidden at the edges. On a summer night, they might have been able to wait out the raiders before making their way back to their own people, but not in the winter snow.

He hadn’t reached forty years of age without sensible caution, so Arslan had his sword still drawn when he looked on the face of a young woman, half his age. With a pleased grin, he sheathed the blade and held out a hand to pull her to her feet. When she only stared at him, he chuckled low in his throat.

‘You’ll need someone to warm you in your blankets tonight, girl. You’d be better off with me than one of the younger ones, I should think. Men of my age have less energy, for a start.’

To his immense pleasure, the young woman giggled. Arslan guessed she wasn’t kin of the dead men, though he reminded himself to keep his knives well hidden if he intended to sleep. He’d heard of more than one man killed by a sweetly smiling capture.

She took his hand and he pulled her up and onto his shoulder, patting her bottom as he strode back through the camp. He was humming to himself by the time he found a ger with a stove and a warm bed to shut out the softly falling snow.

Temujin clenched a fist in pleasure as he heard the tallies of the dead. The Tartar bodies would not talk, but there were too many to be a hunting trip, especially in the heart of winter. Kachiun thought they had probably been a raiding party much like their own.

‘We’ll keep the ponies and drive them back with us,’ Temujin told his companions. The airag was being passed around and the general mood was jubilant. In a little while they would be drunk and singing, perhaps lusting after a woman, though without hope in that bare camp. Temujin had been disappointed to find that most of the women were the sort of hardy crones men might take into the wilderness to cook and sew rather than as playful objects of lust. He had yet to find a wife for Khasar or Kachiun and, as their khan, he needed as many loyal families around him as possible.

The old women had been questioned about their menfolk, but of course they claimed to know nothing. Temujin watched one particularly wizened example as she stirred a pot of mutton stew in the ger he had chosen as his own. Perhaps he should have someone else taste it, he thought, smiling at the idea.

‘Do you have everything you need, old mother?’ he said. The woman looked back at him and spat carefully on the floor. Temujin laughed out loud. It was one of the great truths of life that no matter how furious a man became, he could still be cowed by a show of force. No one, however, could cow an angry woman. Perhaps he should have the food tasted first, at that. He looked around at the others, pleased with them all.

‘Unless the snow covered a few,’ he said, ‘we have a count of twenty-seven dead, including the old lady Kachiun shot.’

‘She was coming at me with a knife,’ Kachiun replied, nettled. ‘If you’d seen her, you’d have taken the shot as well.’

‘Thank the spirits you weren’t hurt, then,’ Temujin replied with a straight face.

Kachiun rolled his eyes as some of the other men chuckled. Jelme was there with a fresh covering of snow on his shoulders, as well as three brothers who had come in only the month before. They were so green you could smell the moss on them, but Temujin had chosen them to stand by his side in the first chaotic moments of the fight in the snow. Kachiun exchanged glances with Temujin after looking in their direction. The small nod from his older brother was enough for him to embrace them all as his own blood. The acceptance wasn’t feigned, now that they had proved themselves, and the three beamed around at the others, thoroughly enjoying their first victory in this company. The airag was hot on the stove and each of them gulped as much as he could to keep the cold out before the stew gave strength back to tired limbs. They had all earned the meal and the mood was light.

Temujin addressed the oldest of them, a small, quick man with very dark skin and unkempt hair. He had once been with the Quirai, but a dispute with the khan’s son had meant he had to ride away with his brothers before blood was shed. Temujin had welcomed them all.

‘Batu? It’s time to bring my brother Khasar in from the cold, I think. There will be no more surprises this night.’

As Batu rose, Temujin turned to Jelme, ‘I imagine your father is out checking the camp?’

Jelme nodded, reassured by Temujin’s smile.

‘I would expect no less,’ Temujin said. ‘He is a thorough man. He may be the best of us all.’ Jelme nodded slowly, pleased. Temujin signalled to the old Tartar woman to serve him the stew. She clearly considered refusing him, but thought better of it and gave him a large portion of the steaming mix.

‘Thank you, old mother,’ Temujin said, ladling it into his mouth. ‘This is good. I do not think I have ever tasted anything better than another man’s food eaten in his own ger. If I had his beautiful wife and daughters to entertain me, I would have it all.’

His companions chuckled as they received their own hot food and laid into it, eating like wild animals. Some of them had lost almost all traces of civilisation in their years away from a tribe, but Temujin valued that ferocity. These were not men who would think to question his orders. If he told them to kill, they killed until they were red to the elbows, regardless of who stood in their way. As he took his family north, he had found them scattered on the land. The most brutal had been alone, and one or two of those were too much like mad dogs to be trusted. Those he had taken out away from the gers, killing them quickly with the first blade Arslan had forged for him.

As he ate, Temujin thought of the months since coming back to his family. He could not have dreamed then of the hunger he saw in the men around him, the need to be accepted once again. Yet it had not always gone smoothly. There had been one family who joined him, only to steal away in the middle of the night with all they could carry. Temujin and Kachiun had tracked them down and carried the pieces back to his camp for the others to see before they left them for wild animals. There was no return to their previous lives, not after they had joined him. Given whom he had decided to take in, Temujin knew he could not show weakness, or they would have torn him apart.

Khasar came in with Batu, blowing and rubbing his hands together. He shook himself deliberately close to Temujin and Kachiun, scattering snow over them. They cursed and ducked against the soft pats of snow that spattered in all directions.

‘You forgot about me again, didn’t you?’ Khasar demanded.

Temujin shook his head. ‘I did not! You were my secret, in case there was a last attack when we were all settled.’

Khasar glared at his brothers, then turned away to get his bowl of stew.

As he did so, Temujin leaned close to Kachiun and whispered, ‘I forgot he was out there,’ loudly enough for them all to hear.

‘I knew it!’ Khasar roared. ‘I was practically frozen to death, but all the time I kept telling myself, “Temujin won’t have abandoned you, Khasar. He will be back any moment to call you in to the warm.”’

The others watched bemused as Khasar reached into his trousers and rummaged around.

‘I think a ball has actually frozen,’ he said mournfully. ‘Is that possible? There’s nothing but a lump of ice down there.’

Temujin laughed at the wounded tone until he was in danger of spilling the rest of his own stew.

‘You did well, my brother. I would not have sent a man I couldn’t trust to that spot. And wasn’t it a good thing you were there?’

He told the others about the rush of Tartar warriors that Khasar and Jelme had put down. As the airag warmed their blood, they responded with stories of their own, though some told them humorously and others were dark and bleak in tone, bringing a touch of winter into the warm ger. Little by little, they shared each other’s experiences. Little Batu had not had the sort of archery training that had marked the childhood of Yesugei’s sons, but he was lightning fast with a knife and claimed no arrow could hit him if he saw it fired. Jelme was the equal of his father with a sword or bow, and so coldly competent that Temujin was in the habit of making him second in command. Jelme could be depended upon, and Temujin thanked the spirits for the father and son and everyone who had come after them.

There were times when he dreamed of being back in that stinking pit, waiting to be killed. Sometimes, he was whole, his body perfect. Other times, it was roped with scars or still raw and bleeding. It was there that he had found the strange thought that still burned inside him. There was only one tribe on the plains. Whether they called themselves Wolves, or Olkhun’ut, or even tribeless wanderers, they spoke the same language and they were bound in blood. Still, he knew it would be easier to sling a rope around a winter mist than to bring the tribes together after a thousand years of warfare. He had made a beginning, but it was no more than that.

‘So what next when we’ve finished counting our new horses and gers here?’ Kachiun asked his brother, interrupting his thoughts. The rest of them paused in their eating to hear the answer.

‘I think Jelme can handle the next raid,’ Temujin said. Arslan’s son looked up from his meal with his mouth open. ‘I want you to be a hammer,’ Temujin told him. ‘Do not risk my people, but if you can find a small group, I want it crushed in my father’s memory. They are not our people. They are not Mongols, as we are. Let the Tartars fear us as we grow.’

‘You have something else in mind?’ Kachiun asked with a smile. He knew his brother.

Temujin nodded. ‘It is time to return to the Olkhun’ut and claim my wife. You need a good woman. Khasar says he needs a bad one. We all need children to carry on the line. They will not scorn us when we ride amongst them now.

‘I will be gone for some months, Jelme,’ Temujin said, staring at Arslan’s son. His yellow eyes were unblinking and Jelme could not meet them for long. ‘I will bring back more men to help us here, now that I know where to find them. While I am gone, it will be your task to make the Tartars bleed and fear the spring.’

Jelme reached out and they gripped each other’s forearms to seal the agreement.

‘I will be a terror to them,’ Jelme said.

In the darkness, Temujin stood swaying outside the ger Arslan had chosen and listened to the sounds within, amused that the swordsmith had finally found someone to take the edge off his tension. Temujin had never known a man as tightly bound as the swordsmith, nor one he would rather have stood with in battle, unless it was his own father. Perhaps because Arslan was from that generation, Temujin found he could respect him without bristling or proving himself with every word and gesture. He hesitated before interrupting the man at his coupling, but now that the decision was made, he intended to ride south in the morning and he wanted to know Arslan would be with him.

It was no small thing to ask. Anyone could see how Arslan watched his son whenever the arrows were flying. Forcing him to leave Jelme alone in the cold north would be a test of his loyalty, but Temujin did not think Arslan would fail it. His word was iron, after all. He raised a hand to knock on the small door, then thought better of it. Let the swordsmith have his moment of peace and pleasure. In the morning they would ride back into the south. Temujin could feel bitterness stir in him at the thought of the plains of his childhood, swirling like oil on water. The land remembered.