The Tiger Queens (12 page)

“You shouldn’t speak of such things,” I hissed under my breath, making a great show of rearranging the plates.

Jamuka gave me a sidelong glance that made my knees tremble like a newborn foal’s. “I’d fight as many men as there are stars in the sky if it meant I might see you smile at me with true happiness.” He drew a tortured breath. “I’ve tried to fight my feelings for you, Borte Ujin, but it would be simpler to forever darken the Golden Light of the Sun. With Temujin serving under me, I’ll be Great Khan one day, but that vision is complete only with you as my Great Khatun.”

His words were so similar to Temujin’s earlier that day that I almost choked.

“That can never happen,” I whispered.

“I know.” His voice quivered with emotion. “Yet honor and loyalty seem poor replacements for what might have been.”

I’d thought much about how my life would have been different had I refused to marry Temujin, if I’d somehow become Jamuka’s bride instead. Yet this life would be wasted with worries of what could never be.

“Temujin has his own ambitions about becoming the Great Khan,” I said.

“Temujin is a strong warrior, but he’ll never be more than a minor khan, not with his black bones and Yesugei’s blood in his veins.” Jamuka spoke without spite, the tension apparent around his eyes.

“I, too, am black boned,” I said, clutching the dented iron plate in my hands.

“Yes,” he said sadly. “Yet you’re not positioning yourself to become the Great Khan, are you?”

I set down the plate and stared at him then, seeing a man grown thinner since the night of the raid, the circles under his eyes darker than I remembered. Love and ambition had taken their toll on him; I wondered if one might destroy him in the end.

I wanted to touch him then, but Mother Khogaghchin was at my elbow, grinning her toothless grin. “I need you, Borte Ujin. One of the goats has gone missing—”

I scowled, but her knobby hand tightened on my arm and she pulled me away from Jamuka.

“Which goat is lost?” I asked as the crush of people thinned and I could almost breathe again. “The sickly white one?”

Khogaghchin dropped my arm. “The only thing that’s lost here is your good sense.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Yet I did, all too well.

“Hoelun is watching you, and Temujin, too.” Khogaghchin smacked her gums. “It’s not difficult to guess what they all see.”

“And what might that be?”

Khogaghchin stared at me like I was a small child. “My poor girl,” she finally said. “After all you’ve suffered, don’t throw away your chance at happiness.”

I wasn’t throwing it away. I was clinging to it like a drowning woman.

“I won’t. I promise.” I touched her cheek to mine, reminded of the last embrace I’d shared with my mother. Khogaghchin tweaked my nose and shuffled off into the night, several shaggy goats trailing close behind her.

Temujin kissed my palm as I took my place beside him again, and my heart lurched as Jamuka emerged from the crowd and sat alone. Hoelun and Teb Tengeri whispered together, a pairing I didn’t care for, and their eyes darted to me far too often.

We were no longer at war, yet danger surrounded me on all sides.

*   *   *

Ong Khan may have offered to make my husband leader of his warriors, but I wondered again whether he would someday fear the power my
charismatic young husband wielded in the name of the aging leader. Yet the khan wasn’t my immediate concern, for as autumn turned to winter, and winter to spring, I felt the danger in staying so close to Jamuka. I was blind without the bones and I worried for my impending delivery, the hours when I would labor supported by only Mother Khogaghchin and scowling Hoelun. Even more, I was terrified that the child might arrive bearing the black eyes and thick lips of his blood father. Temujin filled his days with hunting and fishing, withdrawing from me so some days we spoke rarely or not at all, as if he needed this time to harden his heart against what the future might bring.

One afternoon I walked toward the river despite the cramp in my side and my swollen ankles, needing the chatter of the water to soothe me. Once there, I threw off my boots and stepped into the calmest bend, gasping at the snowmelt of the creek as I curled my toes around the polished rocks. The spotted trout fry darting between my feet and the river and racing clouds overhead made me feel alive, and the baby’s visible movement under my caftan reminded me that soon I would be responsible for bringing another life into this world. I wished I could ask my mother if she’d felt the same terror before I was born, if she’d worried that she’d forget to feed me or that death might claim her before she could gift me with my name.

Barefoot and with my boots in hand, I was glad for the sun peeking out of the clouds when I decided to return home. I didn’t get very far, for halfway along the river path two men on horseback stopped me in my tracks. Mounted on a white stallion was a Tatar chief, his red cone headdress in brilliant contrast against the gray sky and gold coins sparkling on his horse’s bridle. I forgot to breathe for a moment, and then I retreated, stepping on silent feet so the enemy chief wouldn’t hear me, but I swallowed a curse as the second man turned to reveal his profile.

The gurgle of the river carried Jamuka’s words downstream as he calmly conversed with the Tatar chief. It was the Tatars who had poisoned Temujin’s father, and they continued to despise his son’s clan. There was no good reason Jamuka should be speaking to our sworn enemy instead of slitting the man’s throat while he had the chance.

I huddled behind the skirt of a towering pine while they spoke; neither man smiled, but nor did they argue. The Tatar handed Jamuka two small brown pouches before bowing his head and galloping away. Jamuka turned his horse about, and with the blood roaring in my ears, I crouched low to avoid him seeing me. Hooves pounded in my direction and he tore past like the wind, taking with him my chance at confrontation. Something small and brown tumbled unnoticed from his pack.

The Tatar chief’s gift was lumpy in my hand when I retrieved it from the grasses. A mound of gold coins lay nestled inside the burlap sack, clinking like wind chimes and smelling of the countless hands that had touched them over the years.

Tatar coins.

Surely they meant nothing, perhaps a payment in exchange for trading horses. But I knew of no horses that would fetch so much gold.

I tucked the bag into the pocket that once held my divining bones, my mind roiling with the question of how to confront Jamuka when I returned to camp.

I was saved from making that decision by a more immediate issue.

The birth pangs started slowly at first, as if my morning meal of dried goat meat and wild pasqueflower roots disagreed with me. I pushed the belt of pain across my belly with the heel of my palm, focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

Somehow I made it back to camp, although I had to stop with each pain. Temujin was the first to see me, and he jogged along the path. “What’s wrong?” he asked, looping his strong arm under mine. “Is it time?”

I only moaned, sinking to my knees as a fresh pain ripped along my abdomen. My insides threatened to turn to water and I clenched fistfuls of grass to keep from crying out. Temujin knelt behind me, rubbing my back and the nape of my neck.

“My mother,” I panted as the pain ebbed. “To my mother’s tent.”

Never before had I so craved my mother’s vinegary tongue and gentle touch, but I could only hope her spirit would guide the other women’s hands to massage my belly and catch my son.

And usher me to the sacred mountains if I should die tonight.

Temujin scooped me up and I clung to him, drawing upon his warmth and strength for the battle yet to come. When I next opened my eyes I was in my mother’s
ger
, as if I were a little girl again, awakening from an unpleasant dream. Temujin set me on the dead brown grasses and breathed deeply, filling his soul with my scent.

Perhaps I wasn’t the only one who feared I might die tonight.

“I’ll fetch the mothers for you.” His hands were light when he pulled me to him, as if he feared he might further injure me. “I love you, Borte Ujin. Never doubt that.”

The fresh pain that snaked around my abdomen stole my ability to speak. I sank into darkness as Temujin left, focused on the burden of each inhale and exhale. Too late did I realize I’d let him leave without a response.

If only I knew what I would have said.

*   *   *

The next day was a blur of pain, a solitary war all women must fight. Sometimes fragments of memory return to me, treasures from a world suspended somewhere between life and death.

Soft hands on my brow.

Pain ripping across my abdomen.

Gentle murmurs and the tang of sheep fat rubbed into the tender skin between my legs.

Straining naked on all fours, mesmerized by the fire’s hypnotic dance and tasting the salt of my sweat and tears.

A final scream, ripped from my own throat.

A baby’s wail and cries of joy.

Light.

*   *   *

Red-faced and with one ear smashed into his head like he’d laid on it the entire time he’d been in my belly, my son was perfect.

He lay curled on my bare stomach, tiny clots of black blood embedded in the creases of his arms and legs while he squinted at me with solemn eyes. He bore no trace of his true father, a precious blessing from the Earth Mother and the Eternal Blue Sky.

My womb was strangely empty, but my heart was overfull.

Mother Khogaghchin forced me to drink fresh colt’s blood from a special bone cup carved to resemble a pregnant woman’s belly, clucking at my tiny sips of the fortifying brew and then rubbing more of the blood on my son’s pink gums. His tongue darted between crimson-stained lips, but he didn’t cry as I expected. Hoelun’s face crinkled as she massaged my stomach to ease the afterbirth. I would bury it tomorrow, my first duty as I emerged from my childhood
ger
no longer merely a woman, but a mother.

“He’s a fine boy.” Hoelun gently packed clean felt and moss between my legs and covered me with an oxhide blanket. The rags would be burned tomorrow, for the first blood of a mother must be offered to the Eternal Blue Sky. “Strong with bright eyes, although no blood clots in his hands.”

I smiled, for the story of Temujin’s birth and the blood clots in his fists was famous within his clan, so that even the smallest children could recite it around the main fire. I wondered who had decreed that such a sign meant future greatness for so small a child, if perhaps it had been a story created by Hoelun to reassure herself after Yesugei kidnapped her. I kissed my son’s head, the thick black hair still tangled with traces of my womb, as Temujin burst into the tent.

“Leave the way you came, you feebleminded goat!” Hoelun screeched at her son. “Men are forbidden in birthing tents!”

The air inside the
ger
was still fresh with the salty tang of blood, but my husband rarely followed any rule that didn’t suit him. He was bloodied, too—his palms stained red from the required sacrifice. A brown-and-white colt lay tucked on the threshold as if merely asleep, the same animal that had offered its blood to sustain both my son and me after the birth. Hoelun continued to curse at her son, but Temujin paid no attention to his mother. Instead, my husband’s gaze flicked to the child I held; then he stared at me as if he’d never seen me before.

Sitting with my breasts bare, my son nursing greedily and the battle behind me, I was stronger than the fiercest warrior. Now I understood how soldiers felt when they returned triumphant from the battlefield.

“I’m already here, Mother,” Temujin said slowly. “And not even your foulest insults could chase me away.”

“Borte delivered a boy,” Hoelun said grudgingly, and Temujin stared at me awestruck. “They need to rest,” she added. Mother Khogaghchin stoked the fire a final time, but Hoelun laid a hand on Temujin’s arm and whispered something in his ear. There was no hiding the shadow that passed over his eyes.

Not even childbed shielded me from the whispers and secrets. My teeth clenched and my arms tightened around my son.

Temujin crouched beside me, his eyes dark as the hide flap fell behind his mother. “My son,” he said, his huge hand with its battle scars cradling the baby’s delicate head. He breathed deeply, drawing in his first breath of my son’s soul.

“What will you name him?” I had borne the child, but tradition dictated that his father should name him.

My husband’s gaze flicked to mine, then dropped to the child at my breast. “He shall be called Jochi.”

Jochi.
Guest.

My throat was too tight to swallow, much less breathe. I knew then what Hoelun had whispered: of my bloods before the Merkid raid, that this child couldn’t belong to Temujin. I waited for my husband’s fury at my deception, for the words that would cast us both out to a drawn-out death as winter and starvation stalked us.

Instead, Temujin’s face filled with light stolen from the sun as he watched Jochi drift to sleep. Perhaps my husband would accept my son, my firstborn, the boy who should one day inherit Temujin’s position as leader. Jamuka had once claimed the clans would never accept a black-bone as their leader, and I knew with a painful certainty that no one would accept a khan believed to be sired by our sworn enemy.

I looked down at the boy I’d woven of sinew and bone, overwhelmed by the need to protect him. My son would have to fight for his place in this world from this day forward.

And I would teach him to survive.

1184 CE

YEAR OF THE BLUE DRAGON

W
e shared the same camp with Jamuka for nine more months, until the summer’s first moon, the Red Circle Day. Our cluster of tents swelled as more clans came to join the peaceful circles of
gers
ruled by the famous blood brothers, so that it was soon impossible to hear one’s thoughts above the din of voices and animal sounds. All knew that Ong Khan was an old man and either Jamuka or Temujin would one day replace him. So renowned were my husband and his
anda
that even the Tayichigud returned with their famous yellow bridles, the clan of my husband’s birth and the same sour-faced elders who’d cast out Hoelun and her children after Temujin’s father had died. Hoelun raged against their return, but Temujin ignored her protests and, despite my objections, directed them to set up their tents near Jamuka’s.

A traitorous clan camped near a possible traitor. I’d doubted what I’d seen with my own eyes, yet Jamuka had become distant and occasionally even cruel in the months since Jochi’s birth, whipping his horses until their flanks ran with blood and once picking a fight with Temujin over the spoils of a recent raid. The argument would have come to blows had Temujin not acquiesced and gifted the entire cart to Jamuka.

Our camp grew, and so, too, did my son. Many believed Merkid blood
flowed in Jochi’s veins; others knew not what to think, only that Temujin treated him as his firstborn, despite his name.

My husband would dandle Jochi on his knee, tickle his ribs, and throw back his head with untamed laughter at the little boy’s bubbles of spit. I’d seen Temujin roar in anger at his men and I often winced at his crass jokes when he thought I wasn’t listening, but around us my husband was nothing but tender and kind. And although I felt a pang to hear it, my heart fluttered with relief when my son spoke his first word as he and Temujin rode together.

“Da.”

At night my son nestled into my chest, his mouth warm on my nipple as he nursed in his sleep, Temujin’s comforting heat on my back. And, many months after my son’s birth, I finally allowed Temujin to become my husband again, opening my robe one night and letting his body cover mine. Tears slipped from my eyes when he entered me, but then he kissed my eyelids.

“I’ll stop,” he said. “We don’t have to do this.”

I drew a shuddering breath and wound my arms around his neck. His familiar scent comforted me. “Yes, we do,” I said. “I want this.”

It wasn’t like before, leaving me breathless and trembling for more, but feeling Temujin inside me reminded me that things were as they should be. I wanted nothing more than to mend the ragged edges of my soul, rent apart by Chilger and the Merkid. The scars on my spirit and face would always remain, but I’d learned that I could survive much on my own, and I knew that Temujin was a different sort of man entirely than Chilger had been. I also realized that although my husband wasn’t perfect, I might one day learn to love him.

Yet we continued to live under Jamuka’s shadow, making it impossible for me to truly open my heart to Temujin, even as I gave him my body. Jamuka seemed to have withdrawn his pursuit of me after Jochi’s birth, yet I’d seen him watching us once with an anguished expression worthy of a mortal wound. I learned to avoid him, and therefore avoid the confusion of my heart.

Still, Jamuka’s words from the night of the raid would come to me unbidden as I drifted to sleep or repaired the stitching on Temujin’s leather quiver.

He gains all and I lose everything.

Perhaps Jamuka sought to gain against his
anda
in the alliance with the Tatars, but
I refused to face the hell and destruction of another raid.

It was then, when I finally felt secure in my husband’s affections, that I dared speak of what I’d seen on the morning before Jochi was born. We were alone in our tent, our bellies full after a meal of mutton stew, when I broached the question.

“How well do you trust Jamuka?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.

“With my life,” Temujin answered. He tucked a camelhair blanket around our sleeping son, Jochi’s cheeks still flushed from the games they’d played while I’d scraped our soup bowls clean.

“Would you trust him with all of our lives?” I stacked the iron bowls on our low table, next to a silver platter Temujin had kept from the Merkid raid. “Not just my life and Jochi’s, but your mother, Khasar, and Temulun’s? Mother Khogaghchin and all the other allied clans as well?”

Temujin’s brows furrowed and for a moment I saw anger flicker over his features. I had yet to bear the brunt of his fury, but I was willing to take that chance now.

“You know not what you speak of,” he said. “If it wasn’t for Jamuka, I’d have died long ago—”

“I saw him meeting with the Tatar chief on the day that Jochi was born. The Tatar gave him this.” I pulled the burlap sack from where I’d hidden it under my mattress these past months, still filled with the filthy Tatar coins.

Temujin gave the bag a puzzled look as he thumbed through its contents. “I’m sure Jamuka has an explanation for this. Perhaps he was trading . . .”

“Or perhaps he’s planning something with the Tatars. We’ll pass by their border when we leave this camp, won’t we?”

Temujin nodded slowly.

I took the bag from his hands, dropping it on the silver platter with an
unsettling jangle of gold. “So I ask you again, do you trust him with our lives?”

“Jamuka would never betray me,” Temujin said, but there was a brittleness to his words and I knew he was thinking of Jamuka’s recent coolness. “And I will protect you and my family to my dying breath, Borte Ujin. You know that.”

I did know that, but I feared it might not be enough. Somehow, I would find a way to cleave my husband from his dangerous
anda
.

Finally we had to move to find fresh pastures, yet Temujin planned to share our winter camp with Jamuka, despite my urging to join Ong Khan’s camp instead.

“I’m no more than a slave in Ong Khan’s camp,” my husband said, helping me remove the last of our
ger
’s felt panels. “Here with Jamuka, I’m an equal.” His smile showed off straight teeth, except for the back molar he’d lost in a recent boxing match with his brother, Khasar. “Jamuka stood by me when no one else would,” Temujin said. “My
anda
has asked us to remain with him and so we shall.”

“This camp is too small for two leaders, especially when you’re one of them,” I said, grunting to pull down a stubborn framing pole. It wouldn’t budge, so finally I kicked it until it collapsed. Sometimes I wished I could kick sense into my husband as easily.

“Promise me you’ll speak to him,” I said, glowering at the tent, my husband, and the steppes beyond.

“If it will make you happy,” he answered, yet I could see that the thought of such a confrontation was far from pleasing to my husband.

“It will make me happier than if we all wound up dead,” I muttered.

My husband would never believe a word against Jamuka until he looked down and saw the shaft of his
anda
’s spear buried in his stomach. Yet I was determined that would never happen.

*   *   *

The lines of white
gers
melted like piles of snow until only the pressed grasses and worn trails attested to the time we’d spent camped on the Tuul River. The first days of our journey would be perilous as we remained on the periphery of Tatar territory, the same place where they’d once poisoned
Yesugei when he’d returned from arranging Temujin’s betrothal. Jamuka and Temujin rode their
anda
horses, the leaders of two lines of people and animals like brown snakes creeping over the spine of the giant steppe. I hadn’t pressed the issue of the Tatars with Temujin again, but the palpable tension between the two blood brothers made me guess that Temujin had broached the subject, perhaps unsuccessfully. Behind Jamuka rode his favored warriors, surly and silent after a celebratory bout of
airag
and wrestling the night before. I rode behind Temujin on a mare the color of wet earth, Jochi in his sling on my back, where he liked to chew on my braid as his new teeth came in. Hoelun drove her cart behind us, pulled by two of the most stubborn camels I’d ever met.

We traveled by day and slept under the dark blanket of sky those first nights. People laughed and sang, happy to be on the move again, their songs joining the braying of cattle and yaks, the bleating of sheep and goats. Finally, only two nights after our departure, Jamuka reined in at the base of the mountains, the most treacherous part of our journey. Dusk stretched pink fingers across the Eternal Blue Sky. Hoelun and I had fallen behind but lifted our heads to see Temujin riding toward us with his wretched shaman trailing.

“Jamuka wishes to stop,” he said, reining in beside his mother. Teb Tengeri halted as well, giving his mare free rein to search for some shred of grass not yet trampled back into the earth. “He believes we should camp at the base of the mountains, his clans to the east and ours to the west.”

That would put us nearest to the Tatar tribes. If Jamuka was our enemy, now would be the time to strike.

Hoelun pursed her lips. “This isn’t even half as far as we’d planned to travel.”

Further up the line, the carts continued their steady procession, but Jamuka gazed at us from his horse, as rigid as a boulder on the horizon. In later years, I would wonder if I should have held my tongue that night. But I had not cast the bones in too long and thus stumbled blind into the chasm of the future. I knew only one thing: I would not allow Jamuka to betray my family or my people.

“This is the perfect place for the Tatars to attack us,” I told my husband. “Did you speak to Jamuka?”

Temujin’s scowl was black. “I did. He claimed the coins were payment for several of the Tatars’ best horses.”

Not even a child would believe that story, yet I could see in Temujin’s expression how he struggled to reconcile the idea of his beloved
anda
as a liar and possible traitor. I nudged my horse closer to his. “How do you know Jamuka isn’t hoping we’ll be ambushed?”

Temujin’s bushy brows drew tighter. “Why would he want that?”

“Jamuka would do anything to be the Great Khan one day,” I said. “To be greater even than his
anda
.”

Temujin gave a bark of laughter, but it rang hollow. “Jamuka would never betray me.”

I recalled the promise I’d once made to Jamuka to keep his future secret, but I couldn’t allow words so carelessly given to now endanger my family. “I cast Jamuka’s future when you sent him to the Festival of Games. He will betray you, and one of you will destroy the other,” I said. “I saw it in the bones.”

“Bah.” Temujin waved that away. “We took a sacred vow that we would never harm each other, that we would keep no secrets from each other. I will not believe such evil of my
anda
.”

“I, too, have seen it in the bones,” Teb Tengeri said. I found it convenient that the shaman had waited until now to speak his opinion, but as he agreed with me for once, I held my tongue. Yet Temujin still refused to leave his blood brother.

I clasped the pommel of my saddle. “Do you see now? Jamuka is only loyal when it serves him.”

“He told me he wants to be Great Khan one day, after Ong Khan dies,” Temujin said, staring into the distance. And in the meantime, Ong Khan would support whichever
anda
he believed would prolong his own reign, never wishing to see himself toppled from power by either young leader.

“There can only be one khan over our clan,” I said. “Jamuka sees you as competition.”

Competition for our khan’s helmet, me, and so much more.

“Jamuka will forever carry your blood,” Hoelun said. “But he is a false
anda
if what Borte Ujin says is true. You must do as she says, or put your clan in danger. We cannot risk a battle against Jamuka and the Tatars.”

Everything Hoelun did was to protect her children, an impulse I could now understand. I knew something had shifted if Hoelun now supported me, but I was glad for the backing.

“We’ll be safer away from these mountains,” I said. “We can pass him in the night, use the river to cover our sounds. Surely some of the clans will choose to join us over Jamuka.”

Temujin’s grip on his reins tightened, his lips almost white. “I’ll inform Jamuka we’ve agreed to camp here.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off with a sharp glare. “Then we’ll ride through the night.” He kicked his horse then—the same one Jamuka had given him at their final
anda
ceremony—and rode off, spewing angry clouds of dust.

*   *   *

I scarcely breathed as we tiptoed past Jamuka’s distant camps that night, as silent as winter hares despite the river’s helpful noise. Mothers kept their infants at their breasts and even the wagon wheels ceased to creak, so all I could hear was the steady beat of my heart in my ears.

I waited for Jamuka to emerge from his tent and order us to stop, but his clans slumbered in the distance, their cook fires glowing like red eyes in the night. Sometime before dawn, we became aware that we were being followed. We urged our horses faster, fearing Jamuka’s clan and the Tatars. Yet this was not the fast-moving attack of soldiers bent on slaughter and revenge, but the plodding dust cloud of women and children, old men and their herds. We halted at dawn to count all those who had chosen Temujin over Jamuka. Rings of camping circles spread behind us, smoke from fires and the scent of roasting meat filling the cool morning air.

They would grow like weeds as the days slipped into weeks.

I began to doubt myself, to believe that I’d accused Jamuka of conspiracy when there was none, but the others seemed to sense the battle to come. I knew not the colors of the clans’ bridles, but Temujin pointed to them from the top of a hill shaped like a camel’s back.

“Geniges, Boroghul, Manghud. The Besud, Suldus, Khongkhotan, and the Sukeken. The Ol Khunug, Ohorolas, Duberi, Saghayid, Jurkin, and the Barulas.”

Assembled like herds on a grassy knoll, spread before us were more clans than I had ever seen in one place, all here to show their support for my husband. Some were tribes already close to Temujin, but others were so close to Jamuka they might have shared the waters of the same womb. My husband gestured to the final group, their yellow bridles so bright none could miss them. “And the Tayichigud.”