Authors: Conn Iggulden
“The red hill,” Kachiun said suddenly. “There is shelter there.”
Hoelun shook her head. “It’s too far to reach before night falls. To the east, there is a cleft that will do until tomorrow. There are woods there. We’d die on the plains, but in woods, I’ll spit on Eeluk ten years from now.”
“I’m hungry,” Temuge said, sniveling.
Hoelun looked at her youngest son and her eyes filled with shining tears. She reached into the folds of her deel and brought out a cloth bag of his favorite sweet curds. Each of them took one or two, as solemnly as if they were swearing an oath.
“We will survive this, my sons. We will survive until you are men, and when Eeluk is old, he will wonder if it is you coming for him every time he hears hooves in the darkness.”
They looked into her face in awe, seeing only fierce determination. It was strong enough to banish some of their own despair, and they all took strength from her.
“Now walk!” she snapped at them. “Shelter, then food.”
CHAPTER 11
A
THIN DRIZZLE FELL
as Bekter and Temujin sat huddled together, wet to the bone. Before dark, they had reached a wooded cleft in the hills where a stream dribbled through sodden, marshy ground. The narrow crease in the land was host to black-trunked pines and silver birches as pale as bones. The echoing spatter of water was strange and frightening as the boys shivered on a great nest of dark roots.
Before the light faded, Hoelun had set them to lifting fallen saplings, dragging the great broken lengths of rotten wood through the leaves and mud to heave them into the crook of a low tree. Their arms and chests were scratched raw, but she had not let them rest. Even Temuge had carried armfuls of dead needles and piled them over smaller branches, tottering back again and again for more until the crude shelter was finished. It was not large enough for Bekter and Temujin, but Hoelun had kissed them both in gratitude and they had stood proudly as she crawled into the space with the baby. Khasar curled up like a shivering dog between her legs, and Temuge crept in after them, sobbing gently to himself. Kachiun had stood with his older brothers for a while, swaying gently from exhaustion. Temujin had taken him by the arm and pushed him after the others. There was hardly room even for him.
Their mother’s head had sunk slowly onto her chest as the little girl nursed. Temujin and Bekter had moved away as quietly as they could, looking for anything that would keep the rain off their faces long enough to get to sleep.
They did not find it. The mass of roots had seemed a little better than simply lying down in the wet, but unseen lumps and twists made them ache however they lay. When sleep did come, a splash of icy water would strike their faces and bring them back for bleary moments, wondering where they were. The night seemed to last forever.
As Temujin woke yet again and moved his cramped legs, he thought about the day. It had been strange to walk away from his father’s body. They had all looked back to see the pale speck growing smaller. Hoelun had seen the wistful glances and been annoyed with them.
“You have always had the families around you,” she had said. “You have not had to hide from thieves and wanderers before. Now we
must
hide. Even a single herder can kill us all, and there will be no justice.”
The hard new reality had chilled them as much as the rain that began to fall, dampening their spirits still further. Temujin blinked against a drip of water from somewhere above. He was not sure he had slept at all, though he sensed time had passed. His stomach was painfully empty and he wondered what they would do for food. If Eeluk had even left them a bow, Temujin could have fed them all on fat marmots. Without one, they could starve to death in just a few days. He looked up and saw that the rain clouds had passed, letting the stars shine through to the land beneath. The trees still dripped all around, but he hoped the morning would be warmer. The dampness had soaked every part of him, and his clothes were caked in mud and leaves. He felt the slippery muck on his fingers as he clenched a fist and thought of Eeluk. A pine needle or a thorn dug into his palm, but he ignored it, silently cursing the man who had betrayed his family. Deliberately, he clenched until his whole body shook and he could see green flashes under his eyelids.
“Keep him alive,” he whispered to the sky father. “Keep him strong and healthy. Keep him alive, for me to kill.”
Bekter grumbled in his sleep next to him, and Temujin closed his eyes again, aching for the hours to slip away until dawn. He wanted the same as the younger ones: to let his mother wrap him in her arms and solve all their problems. Instead, he knew he had to be strong, both for her and for his brothers. One thing was certain: they would survive and one day he would find and kill Eeluk and take Yesugei’s sword from his dead hand. The thought stayed with him as he fell asleep.
They were all up as soon as it was light enough to see each other’s dirty faces. Hoelun’s eyes were puffy and bruised-looking with exhaustion, but she gathered her children around her, watching as the single water bottle was passed from hand to hand. Her tiny daughter was fussing and already slippery with fresh excrement. There were no spare cloths and the infant began a red-faced fit of screaming that showed no sign of lapsing. Hoelun could only ignore the cries as the baby refused the teat again and again in its distress. In the end, even their mother’s patience was exhausted, and she left her bare breast hanging while the little girl clenched her fists and roared to the sky.
“If we are to live, we need to make somewhere dry and organize fishing and hunting,” she told them. “Show me what you have with you, so that we all can see.” She noticed Bekter hesitate and turned on him. “Hold nothing back, Bekter. We could all be dead in a single turn of the moon if we can’t hunt and get warm.”
In the dawn, it was easier to find a place where the thick mat of needles was damp rather than soaking. Hoelun removed her deel, shivering as she did so. They could all see the dark slick down her side where their sister’s bowels had emptied during the night. The smell wafted over them all, making Khasar put a hand to his face. Hoelun ignored him, her mouth a thin line of irritation. Temujin could see she was barely holding her temper as she spread the deel on the ground. Gently, she placed her daughter on the cloth, the movement startling the tiny little girl into staring around at her brothers with tear-filled eyes. It hurt to see her shivering.
Bekter grimaced and took a knife from his belt, laying it down. Hoelun tested the blade with her thumb and nodded. She reached around her own waist to untie a heavy cord of braided horsehair. She had hidden it under her deel on the last night, looking for anything that would help them in their ordeal. Its coils were narrow but strong and it joined the blades of the brothers as they put them down in a pile.
Apart from his own small knife, all Temujin could add was the winding cloth that held his deel to him, though that was long and well woven. He did not doubt Hoelun would find some use for it.
They all watched in fascination as Hoelun brought a tiny bone box from one of the deep pockets in the deel. It contained a small piece of ridged steel and a good flint, and she laid those aside almost with reverence. The dark yellow box was beautifully carved and she rubbed her thumbs over it in memory while they watched.
“Your father gave this to me when we were married,” she said, and then she picked up a stone and smashed the box into pieces. Each shard of bone was razor sharp and she sorted them with care, picking the best and holding them up.
“This one for a fishhook, two more for arrowheads. Khasar? You’ll take the twine and find a good stone to grind the hook. Use a knife to dig for worms and find a sheltered spot. We need your luck today.”
Khasar gathered his share without a trace of his usual light manner.
“I understand,” he said, winding the horsehair length around his fist. “Leave me enough to make a snare,” she told him as he stood. “We need gut and tendons for a bow.”
She turned to Bekter and Temujin, handing a sliver of sharp bone to each boy.
“You take a knife each and make me a bow from the birch. You’ve seen it done enough times.”
Bekter pressed the point of the bone into his palm, testing it. “If we had horn, or horsehide for the string…” he began.
Hoelun grew very still and her stare silenced him. “A single marmot snare won’t keep us alive. I didn’t say I wanted a bow that would make your father proud. Just cut something you can kill with. Or perhaps we should simply lie down in the leaves and wait for cold and hunger to take us?”
Bekter frowned, irritated at the criticism in front of the others. Without looking at Temujin, he snatched up his knife and strode away, his bone shard held tightly in his fist.
“I could lash a blade to a stick and make a spear, perhaps for fish,” Kachiun said.
Hoelun looked gratefully at him and took a deep breath. She picked up the smallest of the knives and passed it into his hands.
“Good boy,” she said, reaching out to touch his face. “Your father taught you all to hunt. I don’t think he would ever have guessed it would matter this much, but whatever you learned, we need.”
She looked at the pitifully small number of items left on the cloth and sighed.
“Temuge? I can light a fire if you find me something dry to burn. Anything.”
The fat little boy stood up, his mouth quivering. He had not yet begun to recover from the terror of their new situation, nor its hopelessness. The other boys could see Hoelun was on the nervous edge of breaking, but Temuge still saw her as a rock and reached out to be embraced. She allowed him a moment in her arms before she eased him away.
“Find what you can, Temuge. Your sister can’t take another night without a fire.”
Temujin winced as the little boy broke into sobbing and, when Hoelun refused to look at him, ran away under the looming trees.
Temujin reached out clumsily to try to give his mother some comfort. He took her shoulder and, to his pleasure, she tilted her head so that her face briefly touched his hand.
“Make me a killing bow, Temujin. Find Bekter and help him,” she said, raising her eyes to his.
He swallowed painfully against his hunger and left her there with the baby, the wailing cry echoing amongst the wet trees.
Temujin found Bekter by the sound of his blade hacking into a birch sapling. He whistled softly to let his older brother know he was approaching and received a surly glare for his trouble. Without a word, Temujin held the slender trunk steady for his brother’s blade. The knife was a solid piece of edged iron and it bit deeply. Bekter seemed to be taking his anger out on the wood, and it took courage for Temujin to hold his hands still as blow after blow thumped near his fingers.
It did not take long before Temujin was able to press the sapling down and expose the whitish fibers of the young wood. The bow would be near to useless, he thought glumly. It was hard not to think of the beautiful weapons in every ger of the Wolves. Boiled strips of sheep horn and ground sinew were glued to birch cores and then left for an entire year in dry darkness. Each bow was a marvel of ingenuity, capable of killing over a distance of more than a hundred alds.
The bow he and his brother sweated to make would be little more than a child’s toy in comparison, and this was the one on which their lives would depend. Temujin snorted in bitter amusement as Bekter closed one eye and finally held up the length of birch, still ragged with its paper bark. He saw Bekter’s jaw clench in response and watched in surprise as his brother brought the length of wood back sharply and broke it over another trunk, throwing the splintered birch to the leaves.
“This is a waste of time,” Bekter said furiously.
Temujin eyed the knife he was holding, suddenly aware of how alone they were.
“How far can they travel in a day?” Bekter demanded. “You can track. We know the guards as well as our brothers. I could get past them.”
“To do what?” Temujin asked. “Kill Eeluk?” He saw Bekter’s eyes glaze for a moment as he tasted the idea, then shook his head.
“No. We’d never get to him, but we could steal a bow! Just a single bow and a few arrows and we could eat. Aren’t you hungry?”
Temujin tried not to think about the ache in his stomach. He had known hunger before, but always there was the thought of a hot meal waiting at the end. Here, it seemed worse and his gut felt sore and painful to the touch. He hoped it was not the first sign of the loose bowels that came from disease or poor meat. In such a place, any weakness would kill him. He knew as well as his mother that they walked a thin edge between survival and a pile of bones come the winter.
“I am starving,” he said, “but we’d never get into a ger without the alarm being raised. Even if we did, they’d track us back here and Eeluk would not let us go a second time. That broken stick is all we have.”
Both boys looked at the ruined sapling and Bekter grabbed it in a show of mindless anger, wrenching at the unyielding wood and then throwing it into the undergrowth.
“All right, let’s start again,” he said grimly. “Though we don’t have a string, we don’t have arrows, and we have no glue. We have as much chance of catching an animal by throwing stones at it!”
Temujin said nothing, shaken by the outburst. Like all of his father’s sons, he was used to someone knowing what to do. Perhaps they had become too used to that certainty. Ever since he had felt his father’s hand go limp in his own, he had been lost. There were times when he felt the strength he needed begin to kindle in his chest, but he kept expecting it all to end and his old life to come back.
“We’ll braid strips of cloth for a string. It will hold long enough to take two shots, I should think. We only have two arrowheads, after all.”
Bekter grunted in reply and reached out to another birch sapling, supple and as thick as his thumb.
“Hold this steady, then, brother,” he said, raising the heavy blade. “I’ll make a bow good for two chances at the kill. After that fails, we’ll eat grass.”
Kachiun caught up with Khasar high into the cleft between the hills. The figure of his older brother was so still that he almost missed him as he climbed over rocks, but his gaze was drawn to where the stream had widened into a pool and he saw his brother on the edge. Khasar had made himself a simple rod with a long birch twig. Kachiun whistled to let him know he was there and approached as silently as he could, staring down into the clear water.
“I can see them. Nothing larger than a finger so far,” Khasar whispered. “They don’t seem to want the worms, though.”
They both stared at the limp scrap of flesh that hung in the water an arm’s length from the bank. Kachiun frowned to himself, thinking.
“We’re going to need more than one or two if we’re all to eat tonight,” he said.
Khasar grunted in response. “If you have an idea, then say it. I can’t
make
them take the hook.”
Kachiun was silent for a long time, and both boys would have enjoyed the peace if it had not been for the ache in their bellies. At last, Kachiun stood and began to unwind the orange waist cloth from his deel. It was three alds long, stretching as far as three men lying head to toe. He might not have thought to use it if Temujin had not added his own to Hoelun’s pile. Khasar glanced up at him, a smile touching his mouth.