Upriver, Chiledu was intent on his game, his bow raised. A shadow moved under the trees across from Hoelun; a twig cracked. She turned towards the sound and saw a man with a falcon on his wrist. The stranger leaned forward on his horse, his shoulders broad under his long, open coat, his eyes tilted, but also long and oddly pale, unlike any eyes she had seen. She tried to cry out; her voice caught in her throat. The man suddenly vanished among the trees.
The spell of those strange eyes was broken. “Chiledu!” she shouted as she tugged at the horse. “Husband!” Chiledu had not even sensed the stranger's presence; she wondered how long the hunter had been watching them. “Come quickly!”
He ran towards his horse, his game forgotten. She glimpsed the stranger riding around a small hill before trees hid him once more.
“What is it?” Chiledu called out as he reached her.
“I saw a man there, under the trees.” She pointed. “He rode away. You had better go after him and see—”
“And leave you unprotected?”
“He was alone,” she said.
“He might want me to follow him. He could have friends nearby. Water the horses, and then we'll go on.”
They crossed the Onon and moved north-west. Chiledu rode ahead of the cart. Hoelun touched the flank of her horse lightly with her whip. Here, the land sloped into hills, slowing her pace.
The cart rattled as she rounded one grassy slope. The stranger had not greeted them, or held out his hands to show that he meant no harm, but maybe he had not wanted to provoke Chiledu by gazing openly at his unclad wife.
Such thoughts were not keeping her fears at bay. Clans of Mongols roamed the lands to the south, and she knew that they were enemies of the Merkits; Chiledu had told her about their raids. Resentment clogged her throat. She would not be worrying about the unknown hunter now if Chiledu had kept his men with him instead of sending them ahead to his camp after the wedding. He should have been more alert, and not so certain that he could protect his bride alone. He had been thinking only of how he could enjoy his new wife during the journey, instead of waiting until she raised her tent in his lands.
“You should have gone after him,” she muttered, “and put an arrow into his back.” Chiledu was silent. The sun hung overhead; she thought of the cool shade under the distant willows where they might have rested.
She urged her horse on, then heard the distant thunder of hooves. She looked back. Three riders were moving towards them from the south. A small hill hid the men for a moment, before they reappeared.
Chiledu rose in his stirrups, then galloped towards a nearby hill, trying to lead the men away from her. She lashed at her horse and the cart bounced and swayed as the animal broke into a trot. The three men raced past her after Chiledu; she recognized the stranger. He grinned at her, his greenish-brown eyes filled with a wild joy.
The men soon disappeared behind a distant hill on which an obo stood. The shrine was a small pile of stones with a spear jutting from the mound; she whispered a prayer to whatever local spirits the obo honoured.
Chiledu could not have carried her on his horse; that extra burden would have ensured his capture. His only chance was to outrun his pursuers. She trembled with rage at her helplessness. Her husband had failed her. Maybe that meant he deserved to lose her.
Chiledu burst out from behind a hill; he was riding back to her. She tensed, then stood up as he galloped towards the cart.
“What are you doing?” she shouted, as his chestnut gelding skidded to a halt. “I saw their faces when they passed—they mean to kill you.”
The young man panted for breath. “I can't leave you here.”
“You'll die if you don't. Go—you can always find another wife.” Her words were more bitter than she intended. “You may call her Hoelun in memory of me, but save your own life now!”
He hesitated. The three strangers rounded the hill. “Listen to me.” How could she convince him to save himself? She clutched at her shift, then pulled it over her head and threw it at him. “Take this as a keepsake, to remember my scent. Go to your people, and come back for me with your men later.”
Chiledu pressed the garment to his cheek. “I will come for you, Hoelun — I promise you that.”
“Go now!”
He lashed at his horse, then galloped away. His looped braids beat against his back, then were tossed forward as he glanced back at her one last time. The three strangers neared her; they whooped and circled the cart. For a moment, she thought they would let Chiledu escape, but then they rode after him. She stared after them until she could see only four small clouds of dust on the horizon.
Hoelun sank to the seat of the cart. Despite Chiledu's brave promise to come after her, it was not likely his people would trouble themselves over one stolen bride. The Merkits would wait before they sought vengeance for this wrong. By then, Chiledu would have another wife to console him.
She was still naked, except for her oxhide boots. She reached for her robe, pulled it on, and tied the strings at her waist. Even if she fled on the spare horse, she did not know where she could find safety. Her bow lay behind her, but she made no move to fetch it; forcing the strangers to kill her would gain her nothing. The pale eyes of the hunter had told her that he wanted her alive.
2
The three strangers rode back along the river-bank, following the stream towards Hoelun's cart. Chiledu had evaded them. They would have taken his horse and weapons, and perhaps his head as a trophy, if he were dead.
The three trotted up to her. Unable to control herself, Hoelun began to cry; the pale-eyed man burst into laughter. His smile enraged her. As he leaped from his horse, she lashed at him with her whip. He grabbed it from her, nearly pulling her to the ground, then climbed into the cart.
“Cry all you like,” he said. “Tears won't help you.” He pushed her down to the seat and jerked the reins from her hands.
“Be grateful,” one of the other men said. “Being a Borjigin's woman is better than being a Merkit's.” He reached for the reins of the pale-eyed man's horse. Their speech was much like her people's, easier to grasp than Chiledu's northern dialect had been at first.
“He'll come back for me,” Hoelun gasped between sobs.
“I might, if I had lost such a wife,” the man next to her said. “That Merkit won't.” He urged her horse forward. One of his companions rode ahead to lead the way; the third trotted at their side.
“You made my husband leave me. He rides into the wind, fleeing for his life,” Hoelun wailed. “I call out his name, but he can't hear me.” Her grief tore at her, yet she was dimly aware that her captors expected such lamentations; they would not think much of a woman who forgot her loyalties too quickly. “You drove him away, you—”
“Be quiet.” The man riding next to the cart had spoken, in a voice that sounded like a boy's.
Hoelun shrieked; the pale-eyed man winced. “My master Yeke Chiledu—”
“Be quiet!” the younger man said again. “He can't hear you now.”
“You're finished with him,” the man next to her muttered. “I won't have all that wailing under my tent.” She hated him even more then.
“So you mean to keep her,” the younger man said.
“Of course,” the man with Hoelun replied.
“You have one wife already.”
“Do you expect me to give her to you? I saw her first. Go find your own woman, Daritai.”
“Very well, brother,” the younger man said. “I should have known you wouldn't—”
“Stop this talk!” The man riding ahead of them turned in his saddle. “You two fight enough without having a woman come between you.”
So her captor had a wife. She would be the second, with a lesser place; she regretted the loss of Chiledu more than ever.
“We had so little time, Chiledu and I.” Hoelun dabbed at her eyes with a sleeve. “We were wed only a few days ago.”
“Good,” the pale-eyed man replied. “That will make it easier
to forget him.”
She covered her face, then peered through her fingers at the stranger. He was taller than Chiledu, and broader in the chest. Long moustaches drooped on either side of his mouth, but now that she was closer to him, she saw that he was not much older than her husband.
“What's your name?” he asked. She refused to answer. “Do I have to beat it out of you? What are you called?”
“Hoelun.”
“These two are my brothers.” He gestured at the man leading the way. “Nekun-taisi is the eldest.” The rider grinned back at them with a smile as broad as his brother's. “Daritai Odchigin rides at our side. When I rode back to tell them of the beauty I'd seen, they were on their horses in an instant. I am Yesugei.”
“Yesugei Bahadur,” the one called Daritai added. Bahadur—the Brave. Hoelun wondered what the man had done to merit such a title.
“Bartan Bahadur was our father,” Yesugei said. “Khabul Khan was our grandfather, and Khutula Khan our uncle.”
“The voice of Khutula Khan,” Daritai said, “could fill a valley and reach to the ears of Tengri. He could eat a whole sheep and still hunger. He could lie by a burning forest and brush away the flames as if they were cinders. Once, he and his men were attacked while out hunting, and he fell from his horse. Everyone believed he was lost, and our people gathered for his funeral feast, but no sooner had his wife shouted that she didn't believe he was dead than he rode into camp, alive and with a herd of wild horses he had captured on the way.”
Empty boasts, Hoelun thought, the proud words of those whose pride was greater than their possessions. She knew something of the Borjigin Mongols. Their clan had been powerful once, but the Tatars, aided by an army of the Kin, had crushed them. Khutula, the Khan who sounded so invincible in Daritai's words, was dead, along with his brothers.
“And who is Khan now?” Hoelun asked boldly. Yesugei scowled. “You have no Khan—that's what I have heard.” She wanted to anger this man, to pay him back somehow. “You lost two Khans—the one your brother brags about and the one who led you before him. Isn't that so?”
“Be quiet,” Daritai muttered.
“The Tatars killed your uncle,” she continued, “and the Kin killed the one before him.”
Yesugei's jaw worked; for a moment, she thought he would strike her. “Ambaghai Khan was going to the Tatars to make peace,” he said, “when the Tatars seized him and sold him to the Kin. They impaled him on a wooden donkey in front of their Golden King, and the Kin mocked him as he died, but in his last message to us, Ambaghai Khan told our people not to rest until he was avenged. The cursed Tatars will suffer for that.”
“So of course you have to fight,” Hoelun said. “The Kin will help the Tatars to keep you from growing stronger, but if the Tatars grow too powerful, the Kin may turn to you. It keeps Khitai safer, having such battles outside their Great Wall.”
“What would you know about such things?”
“Only that wars here serve the Golden King of Khitai more than they serve us.”
Yesugei gripped her arm hard, then let go. “You've said enough, woman.”
She rubbed at where he had bruised her. “I think you had enough enemies without stealing me.”
“You may be worth a few more.”
Hoelun closed her eyes for a moment, afraid she might start crying again. A sudden gust swayed the trees. She thought of Chiledu, riding on alone with the hot wind burning his face.
South of the grove where Hoelun had first seen Yesugei, the land was flatter and empty of trees. A small herd of horses grazed in the distance.
“Ours,” Daritai said as he waved a hand towards the horses and the men guarding them.
Hoelun was silent. “My brother Yesugei,” the young man continued, “is the anda of Toghril, the Kereit Khan, who lives in a tent of golden cloth.” So Yesugei and the Kereit Khan had sworn an oath of brotherhood. Daritai shifted in his saddle. He had already told her that Yesugei was chief in his camp and head of his subclan of Kiyat Borjigins, with followers from other subclans. “They swore their oath after Yesugei fought against Toghril Khan's enemies and restored him to his throne. An uncle of Toghril's claimed the Kereit Khanate for himself, but our forces defeated him, and Toghril was so grateful that he offered my brother a sacred anda bond. The Kereits are rich, and Toghril Khan a strong ally.”
“So your brother has some friends,” Hoelun said. “I thought his only skill might be stealing brides from their husbands.”
Daritai shrugged. “Men of the Taychiut clan live in our camp, and Khongkhotats, and many more of Bodonchar's descendants follow us in war.”
She soon glimpsed Yesugei's camp on the horizon. Circles of yurts, looking like large black mushrooms, stood on the lower grassland near the river; plumes of smoke floated up from the smoke-holes in the roofs. Carts sat at the sides of each dwelling. She guessed that about three hundred people lived in this camp, but after Daritai's bragging, she had expected more.
“Stop the cart,” she said. “I want to be suitably clothed.”
Yesugei lifted his brows. “You weren't so modest by the river.” The cart rolled to a stop; she grabbed her trousers and climbed under the covering, then rolled down the flap over the opening. She found another shift in one of her trunks, pulled on her trousers, adjusted her silk robe, and tied a blue sash around her waist.
Yesugei was fidgeting when she sat down next to him. The cart rolled forward as she picked up her bocca; the hollow head-dress, decorated with a few mallard feathers, was almost a foot tall. She secured the bocca on her head, pushed her braids under its hood, and tied the ends under her chin.
The pale-eyed man snickered. “Now you look respectable.”
Nekun-taisi's horse broke into a trot. In the camp, the work of the evening was under way. Amid the cattle at the edge of the camp, women squatted to milk the cows; other women and children were tending the sheep. Foals were tethered to a long rope stretched between two stakes while men milked the mares. Outside a large tent, other men churned mare's milk in large leather sacks; their arms rose and fell as they pushed at the heavy sticks. Hoelun thought of her father's camp, where her family would be going about the same tasks, and felt a pang.
Several young men rode out to them, calling greetings to Yesugei. “The Bahadur's made his capture,” one man shouted; another laughed. Hoelun looked down, hating the way they stared at her.
“We'll celebrate tonight,” Yesugei said. Hoelun tensed at his words.
Yesugei's camping circle was in the north end of the camp. His standard, a long pole adorned with nine horse-tails, jutted from the ground near the northernmost yurt. Yesugei lifted Hoelun down from the cart, led her between the two fires outside the circle to purify her, then unsaddled his mount. A boy hurried to the brothers to lead their horses away.
“I see why the Bahadur went riding out of here,” a woman's voice said. A group of women had gathered by the cart to stare at Hoelun. Outside a camping circle to the west of Yesugei's, two old women in tall head-dresses were watching her; with such boccas, they had to be important.
Yesugei's brothers returned, and Daritai unhitched the horse in front of Hoelun's cart, while Nekun-taisi moved off with one of the women, who seemed to be his wife. Yesugei waved his arms at the others. “Get to your work,” he said. “We'll feast later.”
“I must put up my yurt,” Hoelun said.
“Tomorrow,” Yesugei said in a low voice. “You'll stay under my tent tonight.” His fingers dug into her arm.
A young woman stepped through the doorway of Yesugei's tent; a baby was tied to her back. She came towards them, gazed steadily at Hoelun with her large, dark eyes, then bowed from the waist. “Welcome, husband,” she said softly.
He smiled. “She's called Hoelun.” He pushed Hoelun forward. “This is my wife, Sochigil.”
Hoelun bowed. Some women did not like it when their husbands took another wife, but Sochigil's face was calm. “My son.” Yesugei waved at the infant on the woman's back
. “His name is Bekter.”
So the pretty young woman had already given him a son. Her place as his first wife was assured; she had little to fear from Hoelun.
Two large black dogs bounded up and snarled; Yesugei scratched one behind the ears. “Leave us,” he said to Sochigil. His wife lowered her eyes and moved towards the yurt to the east of his.
The door flap had been rolled above the entrance. Yesugei entered from the left, to avoid bad luck; Hoelun stepped carefully over the threshold out of respect for the household spirit that it harboured. A small couch was just inside the door; the dirt floor was covered with dried grass and felt rugs. This dwelling was larger than her own. Two felt dolls, images of household spirits, hung from the wooden framework at the back of the tent with an ongghon, a carved mare's udder; she averted her eyes from the wooden bed with felt cushions and a blanket beneath them.
An older man was hanging a joint of meat on the western side of the tent. He rushed towards Yesugei and embraced him. “That was quick work,” the man said.
“This is Charakha,” Yesugei said to Hoelun. “He's been with me since I was a boy.”
The older man grinned and said, “You'll want to be alone,” then left them.
Hoelun looked around uneasily. The hearth, a circle of curved iron bands, stood on six metal legs in the centre of the tent; a pale stream of smoke drifted up from the fire towards a hole in the roof.
Yesugei reached for her; she stepped back. “I saw two old women outside,” she said hastily, wanting to distract him with talk. “They were standing in the circle to the west of yours.”
Ruler of the Sky: A Novel of Genghis Khan Page 2
