least one in your charge. Worst, no less than sin, is to strike a creature’s head. That upsets Tangr, for he feels that. At the crown of the head of every creature is a spot, an empty spot, a bob of air, a pop of gas, an atom at one with the atmosphere. Ultimately, Temujin, if you listen to that spot, you can discover your right path. You feel a sense of going with the scheme of things, you feel a harmony, the jot of heaven in your head with the overhead heavens. When you have that sense, Temujin, don’t doubt. Do as you’re told. His father nodded, gazed off. In a while, as they rode side by side, he squeezed his shoulder and examined him. “Who’s that bird, and what’s he on his way to?”
Tsolmon is the twilight star, that ignites at the times of transition, day into night, night into day; the star shamans image on their drums, which are their slingshots or their catapults; Tsolmon creates the comets, a star of great energies, wild and lovely and perhaps not for such as us. Altan Hadas, the Gold Stake, is how we know the fixed star, the axle of the spectacle of stars that wheel. Time wheels as the stars do; time is a circle and infinite; there is no time; to a shaman there is neither time nor space, only infinities in touch. These are mysteries, said Yesugei, perhaps you can help me with later. Let’s try the weather, to baffle and defy us. There is a study that never ends. “And with the weather we shade into religion again.”
“What are the clouds?”
“God’s very thoughts, that coalesce and drift. His softest thoughts, as soft as thistledown or weasel’s belly or your baby sister; his fiercest, from which we cower. A gift to us, God’s shaven head, or more intimate than that.”
Temujin liked to ask him these questions and hear his answers. “Is our sky the bluest in the world?”
“Blue, wide blue, for we are high, and high in God’s heart.”
“Why?”
“So high are our heights of the steppe, to walk is almost, almost to fly, is the poise of the bird, is the skitter of the stork across the water. We yearn to fly and we are light on our feet. We don’t clog and cumber ourselves with baggage and belongings, neither do we rifle the flesh and bones of the earth, rip her up and scar her. We aspire to the sky. We nearly float. A few of us do.”
Temujin laughed entranced. “I want to float.”
“Like a membrane balloon, like a kite.”
“Can I be a shaman, father?”
“Ah... you know a tyke doesn’t get a choice, Temujin. The spirits call or else they don’t. Likewise for the rest of us. We have our fates. How about a captain of men? Does that dash your hopes?”
“Like you?”
“More or less like me. Possibly the less the better.”
“I’m no use in a battle. I won’t be a baghatur.”
“Blue heavens, Temujin, have you tried a battle and not told me?”
Also Yesugei said a few things about wives. A very few, as he didn’t need the information right away. “Your first wife – she’s chief. She owns the lion’s share of you. Wives understand that emotions won’t be alike, but you must be scrupulously equal in maintenance. Sister-wives are keen to get along, if only you don’t muck things up. Quarrelsome wives: it’s unsightly, it’s uncommon and the husband gets the blame. You do your duty by each of them, and you do your rounds. Never cheat on your rounds. Dodge a night, you won’t be forgiven. A man can wind up with several homes, or none. Your first wife’s your first chance, you don’t know whether she’s your only, and in short, try to have a home with her, Temujin.”
“You only have Hoelun.”
“Yes. Yes. Your mother and I don’t tire of each other. She hasn’t kicked me out the tent. Mind, I fear I have been greedy of her. Your mother has had five children and that is toil. I have heard women say – not your mother – give me my few and leave me youth and strength. They aren’t ewes, my boy, to be impregnated year in year out. There are different kinds of women: there are those who mate to mate, which is pretty much what men do, and there are those who mate for children. But this is an area that can wait.”
“Right, dad.”
At night they lay behind their horse-seats for a shelter from the wind, in their overcoats to keep the frost off. Temujin was warm and cosy with his head underneath his father’s chin. One night he woke at a rank scent of wolf, saw the eyes yards away and jerked his elbow back. Yesugei, in a trice up on his arm, snarled viciously at the wolf, who vanished. “A poor outcast, at his last contrivances to live. Otherwise he’d never poke his snout at you and me.”
“In Jehol the wolves hunt people and tear them down from their horses. People daren’t go out alone.”
“In Jehol, eh? Maybe they cross-breed with dragons, in Jehol. Who told you that?”
“Monglig.”
“Might have guessed. He’s telling you whoppers, my boy.”
“Are there werewolves on the Ob, or is that a story?”
Yesugei nestled his chin over his head again. “I don’t rightly know. A man can but go armed and stay alert. Sees you through most dangers, and the one that’s yours is yours. I’d be famous, though, if I fell to a werewolf. More famous if I skinned him.” There he fell asleep.
Next day he taught about wolves. “Our Father Wolf, we say; Turks say, Our Mother Wolf. Of animal ancestors, wolf’s most popular. We see ourselves in him. There’s fat in that, Temujin – I’d talk the day away on that – but here’s a tidbit for thought. Wolves are like people because...” he held up a finger. “Great characters. Very strong on individuality. As strong on fellowship. Gregarious animal, with big teeth. It is the major effort of their lives to avoid strife with their loved ones. How to live together, Temujin. Turks take the identification a step further and tell you, what’s native to them in government comes from the wolf.”
“Ours last night was an outcast.”
“Perhaps he was a quarreller. Perhaps he was a brute. They get their own back on a brute, at opportunity. Perhaps he interfered with what wasn’t his. Those who upset the vats too often, wolves can treat very roughly. It’s hard not to pity him, however he got on the wrong side.”
“You didn’t want him to eat me, though.”
“No, my charity only stretches so far.”
Words lightly spoken. There followed a more serious attempt to eat Temujin, by the wolves’ tame kin. Dogs guard the flocks against wolves and are bred to be a match; the ultra-breeds are Tibetans or Khazar mastiffs like Yesugei’s Tiger and Rascal. On a milk stop, as Temujin ran rings about the ger, he ran smack into the chest of a Tibetan, who promptly took him by the throat and gnashed. Temujin had his fur hood up, which got gnashed instead of his neck. He gargled, and the dog chomped growlingly; the adults charged out of the tent and the dog’s owner hauled him off.
Yesugei flipped out his knife and eyed the dog, whom their host had by the scruff. Temujin didn’t hear their exchange, but only reluctantly did his father sheathe. You can’t rid your host of his dog, if your host doesn’t recognise the need. That was what he said to Temujin when they left. “I’m sorry, my boy. If that brute were mine... Keeps him for Tartars, my arse. For Tartar boys of nine? If I hadn’t drunk his milk...”
Shaky and faint, Temujin tried to jest. “I wouldn’t have been so famous, dad, killed by a dog, like a rabbit.”
“Oh yes you would,” seethed Yesugei. “I’d have gone through him, his owner, his kindred and his clan. And I’d curse them and crack their bones,” he went on, and his eyes were moist, “and I’d find you the Water of Life though that be but a tale.”
“I’m fine, dad.”
Yesugei wiped an arm across his face. “Remind me sew your hood up before your mother sees.”
“It’s in tatters, isn’t it?”
“Yep. Did your mother tell you keep your hood on?”
“No, that was my hat.”
Yesugei pulled on Temujin’s ear.
“Irle Khan missed out on me.”
“Shhh. I’ll say a hymn to the black god, though.” He did. He said:
Throned on black beaver pelts thou suppest, Irle Khan;
r />
The breastbone of a corpse serves thee for platter,
Thy cutlery shrivelled fingers, sharpened nails, from a tomb.
Thy great hips girt with thine sword in verdigris,
In iron scales, in ancient braid and epaulet, thou comest stalking,
Thou stretchest forth thy hand to our heroes, to our steeds.
Irle Khan, like a black coal thy countenance glitters,
Like tides in the ocean wave thy waxy black tresses:
Mighty, mighty art thou, lovely art thou, Irle Khan.
This was to flatter the King of the Dead, frustrated of his prize. “And I didn’t give him the dog as a sop,” muttered Yesugei and ruined the effect of his hymn.
Near sunset that day he shot a goose and they halted for the night on a temporary rain-lake where the sunset smeared. Temujin walked monster-tracks in the sand with the goose’s feet, while Yesugei sat quiet and abstracted over the spit-roast. In the dusk they ate. “You like goose.”
The boy had four fingers in his mouth, along with a hunk of goose. “Goose is terrific.”
Yesugei picked at his. “See me. I have trouble.”
“What’s up with it?” he mumbled.
“There are those who’d tell you they have a religious scruple, to kill a thing with wings, but I’d be kidding you. Bodonjar ate goose when he was down on his luck, and that’s what a goose means, to my age. Before Bor Nor we were shepherds and lived on the fat of our flocks. There was no meat like mutton, no meat but mutton, and the chase was strictly sport. That gamey