quarrel elsewhere. Tutuqliut and Ariyiut were there for winter sports, to loot their neighbour of his ill-gotten gains, what Tartar princes not in with China do. Outnumbered three to one (and not by infantry) Bultachu bargained as far as to suggest to them the loot was theirs, if the Wolfhound’s hide were his. However, Tartars clubbed together, against Mongols.
Ambaghai had wooed Jali the Bull away from China: detach one, encourage others. Jali had secretly leagued with a prince he was at feud with, to renege. Beyond Tartar perfidy, what was going on? Princely rivalry China itself instils and exploits; they tussle with each other, they cut each other’s throat to serve China and be paid, and that suits China. So what was going on?
The Tayichiut contingent came off almost unscathed. Bultachu told them this wasn’t the time to fight. But his renowned nokod made a rear-guard for them. Men who join a nokod are distinguished from tribal troops in attitude, too. Tribal troops fight when they are mustered to a fight, or in private feud, but sheep are their daily business. Nokors have sworn service, as individuals, to a particular man; their tradition of strength lent to the worthy gives them an ethical cast, and a nokod captain feels they are his to use to right purpose. When there is call he asks them to sacrifice life, which isn’t asked of shepherds under arms – a chief or marshal can avouch, there are none of those to squander. Few of Bultachu’s nokod came back. But they knew they had prevented a slaughter.
Yesugei was gutted, mostly by the thought, I’d never equal him, in emergency at the call or in countenance afterwards. Not that I ever set up to equal him. Start on a lark, he had said to him. Just the thing for a song, Bultachu had said. Yesugei was gutted.
Survival: he thought of his uncle’s walk on the ice. Sacrifice: if only they were to be sung. That matters. Much has been done, unsung.
Next they had news from the south.
Monghe limped from his single-sheet asylum, his hip at its clumsiest in the first half hour up. With his hot broth he did his libations, drops flicked from his fingers. South for fire: dawn struck a light on the sandstone canyon, marigold, Shiraz wine. East for air: the air you had to snatch out of the wind and gulp, as if to breathe were to catch flies. West for water: gulls from the ocean roam here in search of an ancient sea. North for the dead.
Daily, when he did north for the dead, he thought of a specific, a graphic member of that greater tribe. Monghe’s brigade had given escort to Yorgi Wolfhound who had the king of the Mongols prisoner. Prince Yorgi had led him in a yoke on foot behind his horse and they rode through the streets of Zhongdu. The crowd had jeered and thrown things, thrown fruit and garbage and abuse to do with animals. But his death was orderly, up on a hill, a cordon of guards at the bottom. Ambaghai sat straight, his gaze straight ahead on the horizon, and silent, silent when they hammered nails into his thighs, silent to the end. Oikon Bartaq sang. On his hurdle ten yards down the hill, his hurdle with a straw tail and donkey ears from a farce, he sang, in Mongol, which Monghe understood, for three days and three nights, hoarsely, yes, but with his heart and soul. Only when Ambaghai slumped did Oikon cease to sing. They were left to rot on the donkeys. Monghe, as you do, had gone along, often in the days, and at last had succumbed and stood vigil. Those songs Monghe heard in his dreams and woke with them in his head, and that was why he thought of Ambaghai when he did north for the dead.
Even without stalkers.
He was a major in the army, and that was his crime. Joined up as a lad. Matter of fact, Tartary had been too cut-throat for him. Who wants to stay in Tartary, unless you’re a prince? To garrison walls – it’s not a bad life. There’s the comradeship. Discipline is tribal, not Chinese. You mind your sheep, you sit on a wall and you yarn. It’s not a bad life, and beats Tartary these days. His soldiers were get-outs from Tartary, they didn’t expect to make great fortunes, they weren’t very bad men. The Odds-and-Ends is us: ordinary. Your usual soldier in foreign service, cynical, cheery. Just soldiers.
Cooked. Or half-baked, maybe, but in China parlance, a barbarian is cooked or else he’s raw. The lot on his tail were pretty raw. They were Jorkimes (the Resolute, in Turkic) a band hand-picked by Khabul Khan to guard his first son Oikon Bartaq. Monghe could quote verses on old Khabul’s selection criteria:
Those with grit, those with guts,
Nimble thumbs on the bow,
Bellow lungs and huge hearts.
They must steam from the mouth...
And so on.
Barbarians in the raw tend to be simple-minded on what to do with a foe. Either you kill him or you don’t. No permutations. These might learn fast, for him. Chinese are artistic in torture; the steppe does more in the way of desecrations of the dead and trophies, quivers from your skin, cups from your skull. Maybe, for the worst of both worlds, they could skin him alive, chat to him while they sewed the quiver. Was that adequate? He’d be an ornamental quiver, align his tattoos.
The worst of both worlds: he sat on the throne of China, he was the Emperor Tikunai. Only the trouble with the worst of both worlds seemed to be, neither world can own him. The staunch Jurchen set nickname him the Han Ape for his go-Chinese agenda; he interdicts Jurchen language, Jurchen costume. But on the streets he’s a legend for lechery and a bogglingly bloody style of politics, which ain’t Confucian. Where did he come from? The worst of both worlds, obviously, worse than the worst of either.
If Tikunai had dreamt up the wooden donkey, Monghe might have understood. No, Arzat had, for Marquz, and Arzat wasn’t insane.
Monghe, a major in the army, didn’t know much. But he knew he hadn’t signed up for torture. And his Tartar soldiers felt the like. They weren’t vocal, they were scarcely articulate, but they didn’t care for torture. You can tell them they’re dainty, you can have a laugh at them. But you can’t tell them they’re not human. When they drag Ambaghai through the streets and hear the insults to do with animals, they have to start to think, what am I, then? When they watch his torture as a public spectator sport... I don’t know how things work in the city. We’re from the steppe, and on the steppe, your physical courage, your stoicism to pain, is important to you; you seldom get a day’s comfort, the weather what it is. Insensibility – you grow callouses head to foot, so’s you can grab your lamb shank from the cauldron on the boil and wash with ice, because that’s the summer and the winter. Big part of your identity. To watch that undone, to watch that dismantled – how can you not feel got at? The city’s sheltered. Whether they’re more scared of pain, or less, he didn’t know. Obviously they can be distanced. Perhaps it’s simple: they don’t identify with Ambaghai. He’s an animal.
Jurchen are pigs. I don’t mean that rudely. Their totem is the boar and sow. Ile are named Ile after an ancient stallion cult; Qatat were steppe; Jurchen aren’t, you can tell, or they wouldn’t find the mock-up donkey such a joke. But take a pig, do gruesome, ludicrous things. How would they feel?
Monghe didn’t need stalkers to make him think.
And what was the wooden donkey for? To intimidate? If so, Monghe might have told them, had they asked him: a trifle asinine. The emperor wasn’t out here, see. Monghe was out here, and these samples weren’t intimidated near as much as pissed off. His Tartars had the willies. They thought to be inside-out Tartars, the moment the stalkers spied their chance. Tartars have a bad name with Mongols just lately. Just soldiers.
That chance didn’t come about. Monghe had kept to open ground and kept on course towards the wall. Today, in an equation of time, distance and where the reinforcements were, he crossed an invisible line to safety. The stalk seemed to be over, the victims acknowledged to have got away. This he knew because they came up close, to jostle him and flaunt their tuq, to tell him, we know where you live. His tailenders waved at them in answer, see you later.
However, they hadn’t quite finished with him. They drew up in a row, very neat and at-attention. From beside the standard a single horse threw out its front feet and catapulted into a run. The rider urged, tchoo, tchoo, and the horse flattened down
desperately fast, although no other animal before or behind was in motion – his army had stopped to see what this was. A one-man onslaught? The rider wore a hide vest ornamented with bone and poised a battle-axe, the butt of the head gilt, scarlet haft. Monghe’s rearmost stood and gawped at him. Until he was about in spitting distance and whirled his axe at them and battlecried. And the rank of Mongols – like a line of bulbuls, the honour-guard in stone that flanks a grave – came to life and stood your hair on end and yelled, yelled in grief and rage, Ambaghai.
His soldiers had to shoot. They shot, a lot of them together, triggered to action by the cry. Again there was silence. The horse, unhit, skidded to miss his lines, trotted back to its rider on the ground, blew from its nostrils and whickered, wondered what had happened.
The bulbuls sat and stared. Not at the corpse. Straight at him.
“Go and see who that is,” he said to his lieutenant.
“Reckon we know him?”
“He knew me.”
Idige went gingerly to peer (one eye on the bulbuls) came back and mumbled, “Yeah. It’s Oikon Bartaq’s brother. Bartan.”
Monghe nodded.
“Daft old gaffer, isn’t he?” said a Tartar.
“Shut up,” said another.
“I just mean. Why’d he have to do that for?”
“What did that prove? What the hell was the point of that?”
Indeed. The age for loyal self-slaughter was past. The age for loyal self-slaughter had been past in the seventh century, when a few nostalgic Turk generals in mercenary service to the T’ang sought permission to do themselves in for a Chinese emperor. For a Chinese emperor. No, you can’t, said the Chinese, none of your barbarous customs to mar the funeral. One grizzled Turk general went ahead anyhow and marred the funeral (oi, stop that suicide) laid on the tomb like a dog. T’ang Taizong didn’t mind the barbarity; T’ang Taizong, alone of emperors, understood the steppe and that inspired devotion.
“Move on,” said Monghe.
As his officers dispersed one said harshly to those by, “It proves they know they’re as near as they’re getting to Zhongdu. Right here in Buzzard’s Gorge.”
Yes. For now. But he won’t be the last. Was that what he tried to say? Here’s how we feel. Why does an emperor deliberately inspire hatred? That was the bit Monghe didn’t get.
An idiot paused to ask him, “Do we, ah – take his horse, or –”
“Christ, soldier, if you want his friends to chop you to pieces, go and strip him. Otherwise, move on.” He shouted in general, “Move on.”
Still Monghe lingered and gazed at the avenger on the ground. One day you’ll be sorry for Ambaghai. Should he tell the emperor? Message to Your Celestial from the Mongols. By suicide post. One day you’ll be sorry.
The emperor can go fuck a goat. The emperor can find out.
Jorkimes had laid him in sandstone cliffs, which Tamaja described, once water-cut, wind-scoured since into spirits’ castles. They had gone too high up for his horse. “On the way down he went height-shy. Quite obstreperous, though he’d climbed gamely with your father and they don’t always like a dead load. No doubt you know the horse: aged-ash, faint dapple on the quarters, dark legs. Old horse.”
“Olja,” Daritai answered. “Olja, Booty. A prize from Ambaghai. He’s had that horse... eight years, Yesugei?”
Yesugei only shook his head. Mengetu had listened to the whole with his face in his hat.
“As we pulled and pushed the horse, Bombogor here saw what the matter was. Didn’t you, Bombogor?”
“Aye.”
Bombogor was an intermittent talker. Tamaja had to quote him. “He said, the mount is like the man: old-fashioned. Isn’t there a custom we’ve forgotten? So we led him back where your father lay, and slew his horse beside him.”
This hauled Mengetu out of his hat. Huskily he told them, “You did right,” and groped an arm over Yesugei’s shoulders. “You did right, Jorkimes. Had our father lived a thousand years ago, they’d have known him. He was steppe.” Mengetu nodded (ignored his blubbered face) and slapped on Yesugei’s far shoulder. “Three things are forever: the steppe, the sky, a brave’s love for his chief. When he cannot offer him his enemy he offers him that love, and goes to guard him where they have sent a thousand foes.”
“Ambaghai wasn’t a big slaughterer.”
“Hell, Twig.”
“Dad was in his day.”
“Yup.”
Daritai felt left out. “In our epoch we grudge the dead a horse and let our finest walk. You know what he’d say?”
“What, Daritai?”
“It’s effing Christian.”
“No, he wouldn’t, Daritai.”
“A bit strong,” Mengetu agreed. “He’d go toenails.”
“Balls. I’ve heard him. Several times.”
“Mother’s was tea leaves.”
“Yes, that was fairly lame.”
“Tea leaves. You used to wonder whether she’d got the right idea. Of course I never queried her.”
“She’d have tea-leaved you, twice over before milk.”
The Jorkimes interrupted. Tamaja did, gently, and matched Mengetu at threes. “Three things are steadfast: a hawk’s fealty, a hound’s faith, a warhorse’s devotion. I slew the horse. When he went down I saw your father lift his ghostly arm to claim him. What I saw, Bombogor and Joro say they saw. That’s why Attai sent we three to tell you. – Bombogor?”
This time he rumbled, from out his cloak of an uncut bear’s pelt, front paws crossed on his chest, claws intact. “Aye. He’d shorn his horse’s mane with a tassel left to hang onto. I saw him grasp the tassel. And why not?”
“Why not, Bomb?” Tamaja encouraged him.
“I’d seen his spirit once in the day. Hadn’t I?”
Through these witness statements Mengetu wagged his head. Right now he’d only have been astonished if they hadn’t seen his ghost. “A spirit no way alien in the age of bronze and chariots,” he maundered. “But out of his time in the Year of the Pig, Century of the Wooden Donkey. The Huns never had that. It’s modern. And I have a suspicion. They invented the donkey for Marquz Khan, whose folk, like three-quarters of folk from the Khingans to the Altai, without only the Tartars and us, have gone over to the Cross. You know what? It’s effing Christian. And here we are, people, where my dad knew we were: at the last stand of the steppe.”
“The war isn’t over,” Yesugei suggested. “Either of them.”
“Here’s for the war. Here’s for the last hur-ah.”
Upbeat, man, upbeat, as the large gentleman said.
The third Jorkimes, Joro, had cheeks like russet onion bulbs, popping out of the ground when he smiled. “To glimpse ghosts... I don’t mean to be a fatalist nor yet a forecaster, but for us to glimpse ghosts...” His eyes swerved to the shaman. “Are we far behind?”
Bamsi Shaman caught the smile as it wobbled off his face. “Don’t be afraid. He has gone to lend Olja back to him who gave him, just as you’d do, in life, if you found your captain unhorsed. Don’t grieve. I too have seen them. I see them now. Bartan goes on foot by his stirrup, glad; Ambaghai is proud upon his horse; Oikon Bartaq sings a hymn. They are saints in the sky.” His countenance, alight from within and from the fire, shone around them like an orb from above, until he gazed on Yesugei with such a lively love, Yesugei saw the meadows of the clouds, the ideal meadows we imagine for our ideal dead.
4. Bad Times, Great Traditions
The tribes had disintegrated and were in perpetual hostilities. Only too often the brave and the active mistook robbery and debauchery for worthy feats of arms. What they owned was squeezed from them by the Golden Khaghan of China until they lived in the grimmest poverty. They wore the skins of dogs and rats, ate the flesh of these and of animals found dead. Iron stirrups were the sign of a great emir: from this can be imagined their other luxuries.
Juvaini, 13th century Persian historian, on the state of the Mongols before Tchingis Khan
T
hat winter of the war Hoelun spent pregnant; although for days on end, until late along, she simply forgot the fact, due to the war. She must have been pregnant at the hur altai, and only Bartan’s stance, that Yesugei first approach her family, had saved her from uncertainty as to the father – for which she felt great gratitude. She had been ignorantly pregnant the day in answer to Goagchin she said Jol Jayagachi needn’t be in haste to bless her, which ought to be a lesson to her that felt effigies have ears. Yesugei had his ideas on precisely when she had acquired a child, but his ideas were more sentimental than mathematical. “I can certify him a true child of the steppe.”
“Can you quite certify, Yesugei? Or did you just...”
“What?”
“Enjoy that time the most?”
“No. In honesty untrue. Funnily that always seems to be the last time.”
“I see. Then what stands out?”
“On the hoof. Wind in the heart, speed in the blood.”
“As fathers before you have popularly claimed.”
“Am I going to be a father?”
“Yes, Yesugei.”
“I like to hear you say.”
She stroked his face. “You have lost yours, Yesugei.”
“I have. And I never have, or I don’t exist: my foundations are him. I am glad this one inside you exists, Hoelun.”
“He is a child of war.”
They knew he was a he. An otoshi had warned Hoelun she ran to boys and had lean hopes for a girl. “Then I won’t have to teach embroidery,” she answered, “and that is pains spared.”
Pregnancy came with discomforts, inabilities, odd taboos and a queer tantrum of jealousy from Bagtor, who had been told he mustn’t be a bother to her when she had a baby of her own. And Yesugei wasn’t more grown up, to have to share her. He made a genuine effort to like her transmogrified figure, but once said he missed her. “Not half as much as I do,” she retorted. As she grew heavy Galut found less and less for her to do towards the upkeep of the camp, and Ubashi left a cask, as if by accident, next to her tethered mount. At least Yesugei did not send her home, even though she was eight months gone before the ceasefire of spring.
War is a winter pursuit. With spring they must turn attention to the horses, who were half-starved, and to the foals, lambs and calves; and likewise she had attention for her young. As a spring station Yesugei chose Dolion Tor, an old site of his family’s, where his father had led home his mother, where these days he had a difficult time to tell a ghost from a fond memory. He came over reminiscent; he took Hoelun on slow walks and conjured up the ghosts, those he knew firsthand or hand-me-downs. On these walks she waddled, and he went with the awkward gait of a Mongol off his horse; they laughed at each other for unlovely.
Dolion Tor stood out from ground flat for thirty miles around, a cone shape with a kink, or as