The Tiger Queens (15 page)

We heard the men’s songs and whoops of joy before we could make out their expressions, and the sound of sweet victory rolled across the camp, the women and children calling to the men like summer cranes.

Flanked by his younger brother, Khasar, and his general Belgutei, my husband rode his warhorse at the front of the men, his cheeks ruddy and his smile like a beacon of sunshine. Before I could stop her, Alaqai squirmed down from Jochi’s shoulders and darted forward, her little legs pumping and black hair streaming out behind her. I thought she might be trampled and lunged after her, but she dodged between the horses, chortling with golden laughter that made me want to nuzzle her close and never let go. The daughter I thought would be only mine grew more like her father with each passing day, making me proud and lonely at the same time.

Genghis joined her laughter and scooped her into the saddle before him. He galloped close, then dismounted and pulled me into a hug so tight I could scarcely breathe.

“By the Earth and Sky, I missed you,” he whispered into my ear.

I peered at the river of wagons making itself seen behind the men, creaking loudly with the weight of the spoils of war. “You were too busy raiding to have time to think of me.”

“This is the first time I’ve known you to be wrong,” he said. “For I always think of you, Borte Ujin.” He kissed me then, a kiss that broke every rule about propriety and made the men around us whoop and holler, bringing fire all the way to the tips of my ears. Still, I kissed him back, glad to have my sweat-stained, dusty wolf of a husband home.

Genghis finally released me and bowed to his mother, then swept her off her feet with a roar of laughter. Hoelun laughed with him, her white braids tied with blue string flying behind her. All around us, mothers and wives were pulled into similar embraces, and triumphant fathers tossed squealing children into the air.

Genghis climbed onto a boulder and silence fell like a hammer as every face turned to him. “People of the Felt,” he cried. “The Tatars have been routed and their dust scattered into the wind. Never again shall they raid our horses, steal our women, or murder our children.”

I hugged Tolui tight and squeezed Alaqai’s shoulder, but she stared at Genghis with the rapt attention she reserved only for him.

“Today your men bring you the spoils of war,” my husband continued, “but tonight we feast!”

The people let out a deafening cheer so loud the mountains might have trembled, and Genghis sprang from the boulder and wrapped his arm around my waist, as giddy as if he were wooing me. “Come see the treasures I’ve brought home.”

He led us to the carts, lifting Alaqai onto his shoulders. A brown wool blanket covered the first wagon like a mound of earth.

“This is it?” I asked, a smile dancing on my face. “You fight the Tatars and all you have to show is an old horse blanket and a cart?”

“I let the men divide the spoils.” As leader, Genghis was entitled to all the booty, but giving it to his soldiers was his common practice, making his men love him even more. He grinned, then whisked off the blanket in a cloud of dust. “But I kept a little something for us.”

I coughed, then gasped. Gleaming in the sunshine was a giant silver cradle carved with flowing willow branches and intricate flowers, more delicate than a spider’s web. Genghis reached inside and retrieved a silk blanket, as pale as the morning sky and covered with tiny seed pearls gleaming like tears. “They belonged to the Tatar chief,” Genghis said. “To his son, actually.”

I didn’t ask what had happened to the child.

The second gift was a Tatar boy-child, tied in the corner of the cart and cowering like a lamb about to be slaughtered. Gold rings glinted in his nose and ears, and a band of yellow silk lined with sable still shone proudly around his waist. Hoelun joined us then, and reached out her hand to touch the child’s shoulder. The boy flinched. “A nobleman’s son,” she said. “Does he have a name?”

Genghis shook his head. “None that we know. He spent most of his nights in camp writing in the dirt in the Tatar script, but he doesn’t speak, or if he did, he has forgotten how. I thought you might care for him, seeing as you excel at raising wild boys.”

“He shall be called Shigi,” she said, waving my children over. They
poked the gold ring in his nose and admired his belt. “Give him a few days and he’ll be tearing about like the rest of your herd.”

Our children giggled and ran off with the Tatar boy, more interested in his people’s stolen horses than in a cradle of silver gleaming in the sunshine or the fact that he could write. That was a skill none of my children possessed, and already I saw this child and his talent as more valuable than any cart of gold or silk.

“There’s still one more treasure,” Genghis said, chuckling as Hoelun shuffled after them, hollering.

“You have another Tatar child hidden in the sleeve of your
deel
?”

“No.” A smile teased his lips. “A new title. Ja’ud Khuri. Ong Khan finally decided to ally with us, and he promised to award me the title Jautau as well once this war is over.”

The Pacifier. And perhaps one day, the Peacemaker.

I looked askance at my husband and saw the pride in his face, the happiness reflected in his eyes.

Peace and happiness.

But I knew my husband. Genghis had surpassed his father and almost every other man in living memory, no mean feat for the abandoned son of what had once been the weakest clan on the steppes. This war had shown him his talent for commanding men and directing battles, had whetted his appetite for conquest and power.

For the first time, I realized that conquering Jamuka might not be enough for him.

“There’s something else,” Genghis said, but the smile had faded from his face.

I traced the intricate flowers on the cradle with my fingertip, marveling at the workmanship. “Is this something as grand as a silver cradle or a new title?”

“Not exactly.” My husband heaved a great sigh. “We captured two Tatar noblewomen—Yesui and Yesugen—the daughters of the Tatar chief. Yesui was recently married—her husband tried to return for her, but I ordered his head cut off after my men captured him.”

I waited for him to continue, cocking my head when he didn’t speak. “I take it these women are slaves now?”

“Not precisely.” Genghis clasped his elbows over the leather armor he still wore. “I married them.”

I stared at him, aghast. “You married them?” I wanted to sputter or rage at him, but my mind reeled and I forced myself not to scream, not here where people might overhear. “Without even consulting me?”

“They’ve requested to share a single tent, far removed from camp.” My husband reached out as if to touch my hands, but one look at my face and his arms dropped at his sides. “I encourage my men to intermarry with those we’ve conquered,” he said. “There is no better way to bind the Tatars to me—”

“Than to take their women as wives.” I recoiled in disgust at the image that rose in my mind, my husband entwined with two beautiful sisters while I boiled mutton over a hot fire to feed his sons and daughter. “And just how many other women do you plan to take to your bed?”

“They’re my wives in name only, Borte,” he said. “I made a promise to you, but I could no longer ignore my generals’ urgings.”

“They told you to do this?”

He nodded. “My Four Dogs of War have never understood why I have only one wife, but I was able to put them off until . . .”

“Until I could no longer be your wife.” My anguish was so thick it almost choked me. My ruined body had brought this upon me, proclaiming my uselessness to the world. Painful moments passed and I touched my scarred lip, thinking of all I’d endured for this man.

I’d endured much, but I’d also been given much. I squared my shoulders, ignoring the roar of blood in my ears. “Then I release you from your promise.”

“I don’t wish to be released from my promise. You are the only wife of my heart,” Genghis said, bringing my hand to his chest so I could feel his heartbeat. “You and no one else, Borte Ujin. I’ll set the women aside if you ask it.”

How I longed to demand it at that very moment, yet I knew I could
never speak the words. I was khatun, not the wife of a petty herder, and I’d known there were sacrifices I’d have to make.

If only I’d realized how painful those sacrifices would be.

“Keep your wives,” I finally said. “But you’ll swear now, and again before your Four Dogs, that only the children of my womb shall be your heirs. I am your khatun, not some old crone to be pushed aside by these Tatar princesses.”

“I’ll gladly swear it,” Genghis said. The silver fire in his eyes was banked now, as if something between us had been irrevocably destroyed. We would always be man and wife, but our relationship now would be forever changed. “I could never have asked for a better wife, or mother of my people.”

And then my husband bowed to me, a gesture of such reverence and respect that tears sprang to my eyes. “Go,” I said. “Bring your women to me tomorrow before your generals and I will welcome them as a khatun should.”

And I would clutch that title and my dignity with my last shred of strength, so that they could never be wrested from me as my husband had been.

1201 CE

YEAR OF THE WHITE ROOSTER

Y
esui and Yesugen were fair skinned, with gleaming black hair and waists unthickened by the future children my husband would surely get on them. It was petty, but I contented myself with the fact that Yesui’s nose resembled a hawk’s beak and Yesugen squinted as if she were an old woman losing her vision. I wore my
boqta
, the towering khatun’s headdress made of willow branches and covered with green felt, bedecked with a male mallard’s feathers and strings of polished jade beads. With a false smile, I welcomed my husband’s wives to the clan with a ceremony of salt tea and hearth smoke, although the fires were built with dung, as I refused to sacrifice precious pinewood for the women. Genghis kept his word, so I rarely saw the Tatar sisters, allowing me to almost forget their presence in the face of more pressing matters. We gained strength and numbers after decimating the Tatars, but shortly after the New Year, Jamuka summoned a
khurlatai
, a conference to decide the new khan. Men voted with their presence, and Jamuka’s followers cleaved to him in droves. We woke one morning to discover that the Tayichigud, the clan of Genghis’ birth, had deserted us, just as they had after Yesugei had been poisoned by the Tatars. They and Jamuka’s other clans sacrificed a mare and a stallion, then bestowed upon him the title Gur-Khan.

Khan of Khans.

It was the ultimate risk and it played out precisely as I knew Jamuka had hoped. Furious at his newly declared rival, Ong Khan sent a messenger to Genghis. The man’s horse was drenched with streaks of white lather and was half-dead by the time he reached us.

“We attack Jamuka’s forces on the day of the full moon,” the messenger exclaimed, panting. His face was stained with soot in preparation for battle and his braids threaded with black string.

Black, the color of vultures and rotting flesh.

Jamuka had grown too powerful, so once again, Ong Khan sought to balance the power between the two
anda
. My husband consulted with his Four Valiant Warriors—the four most daring and courageous of his many generals—and agreed to join Ong Khan in this final battle against Jamuka. If Genghis and Ong Khan won this battle, they would likely win the war and my husband would one day wear the headdress of the Great Khan.

If they failed, I would soon stand among the People of the Felt as a widow.

*   *   *

Tolui whimpered in his sleep the night before the full moon, but Alaqai crooned a lullaby to her little brother before I could get up. I lifted to one elbow to see my children in the silver cradle, my daughter’s arm wrapped around her brother as she made up new verses more to her liking. A two-stringed horsehair fiddle often accompanied the common milking song, but her sweet voice needed no instruments.

“The mare’s milk flows like

The green grasses of the steppes

And the cow lows for her calf.

The rivers ripple with sunlight,

Goats cluster like woolly clouds,

Leaving their dung all around.”

I stifled a chuckle at the last line, for at least we knew my daughter wouldn’t end up a singer or plucking a
shant
. Ogodei and Chaghatai snored through the song on the boys’ side of the
ger
, but Jochi slept under the stars
with the soldiers. My solemn son had just taken his first wife and was eager to prove himself, to rid himself of the stain of his birth, and thus he’d asked to be allowed to join his father on the field. I’d protested until my voice was hoarse, but Genghis had remained steadfast, convinced this was something my son needed to do.

“You can’t protect Jochi forever,” Genghis had said. “He’s a man now. It’s time the clans viewed him as such.”

Yet never before had both my husband and my son ridden to battle at the same time.

Realizing I wouldn’t win the argument, I spent the day beseeching the Earth Mother and doubling my offerings of milk to the spirits. At dawn, the two armies would charge at each other, riding up and down the sides of the mountain, reforming and charging like waves. My firstborn would be among them, leaving me wondering whether all mothers felt so terrified and powerless as their children ignored their admonitions to stay small and instead grew into adults with minds of their own.

Genghis tossed in his sleep next to me and finally woke, his lips moving in a silent prayer so his first words of the day would be dedicated to the khan of the mountains and the Golden Light of the Sun. I waited for him to finish, then traced the line of his jaw, and he stared at me with such intensity that I almost blushed. Then he kissed me.

My husband never left for battle without first kissing me, but we both sensed this time was different. He rolled atop me and I threw caution to the winds, opening my legs to receive him and seeking to hold him for as long as I could, even as the sunlight stole precious time. I hadn’t allowed Genghis into my bed since he’d returned with his new wives, so our coupling was silent but fierce, an urgency in our grappling flesh and swallowed cries. He withdrew before his seed spilled into me, protecting me even now, and afterward, as the children stirred, he caressed my cheek.

“You are the light in my sky, Borte Ujin,” he said, breathing deeply. “I love you.”

I touched the pale scar on his chin, and another on his shoulder. “And I love you, even though there are times when I’d rather strangle you.”

I helped him dress in his leather armor, tying his leather greaves and
handing him his domed helmet. He gave me a lingering look, as if he would say something more, but then stepped into the dawn, leaving me to ready the children. I swore to the ancestors I’d remain dry-eyed when we bid him good-bye before all the clans. There would be time for tears later.

The children dressed hurriedly, all except for Ogodei, who dawdled as he always did. I snapped at him and finally tied the sash on his
deel
too tightly. Together we stepped outside to the acrid tang of storm clouds and rain on the horizon. A great storm arose from the wooded mountains across the steppe, angry clouds racing across the sky and blotting out the sun.

Jochi waited with Shigi on the other side of the camp, where Genghis spoke to Khasar, his younger brother. Shigi, the young Tatar captive raised by Hoelun these past years, now filled out the shoulders of his boiled leather jerkin. He would accompany the men today not as a soldier, but as a scribe, recording the exploits of my husband and his warriors in the new Mongolian script my husband had commissioned him to create.

“It bears little difference to the Uighur script,” I’d heard him murmur to Alaqai during one of their infrequent lessons.

“But I don’t understand Uighur either,” Alaqai had said, wrinkling her little nose. “The marks all look like the scratchings of a drunken chickadee to me.”

Genghis had commanded Shigi to write for a nation, but I bade the Tatar scribe to instruct my unruly brood in reading and writing, a skill I myself lacked. I wasn’t sure whose was the more difficult commission.

The sable edge of Genghis’ helmet rustled now in the wind and he stared at the nearest mountain—one with a crooked back like a camel’s—where Jamuka and his soldiers were camped. The storm clouds cracked and growled overhead with an unnatural ferocity, the lightning tearing the sky in two and making the children shriek and clutch my legs. I’d heard stories of this from my mother, ancient battles in which powerful seers called on the spirits of the winds to destroy their enemies. My throat tightened at the idea of both my husband and my son riding into a battle fought in part by spirits.

“It’s their shamans,” I said, sinking to my knees and spreading my fingers into the earth. The reverberations of enemy drums pulsed up
through my knees and palms. The ground in my vision swayed then and I gasped, eyes screwed shut against the vertigo.

Genghis lay sprawled in the jade green grass, his dried lifeblood staining a path from his neck to where it had watered the earth. His white warhorse had been skewered through the spine, the shaft of the arrow buried in his hide, and a lifeless hand lay open on a slate-colored rock, palm up to the Eternal Blue Sky. The early morning light warmed the spine of a camel-backed mountain on the horizon.

My eyes snapped open to the flesh-and-blood version of my husband, hale and solid as he mounted his white warhorse, the same animal I’d just seen dead on the steppes. The beast snorted and stamped its front hooves while the winds ripped around us. The mountain behind them was the same as in the vision and the grass an identical shade of brilliant green, damp with dew.

I had forsworn my gift of sight, yet it sought me anyway.

I rose slowly, glad for the solid earth below me. “Jochi,” I said, my knees threatening to buckle. “Fetch a cup of milk to offer to the ancestors before you and your father ride out.”

“But—”

“Fetch a cup of milk.” My voice brooked no argument. Jochi looked about to protest, but Shigi cleared his throat.

“Perhaps we should make an offering as well,” Shigi said, smiling. “Asking that I don’t drop my brushes and ink during the battle.”

My son kicked a rock and stalked off with an exaggerated sigh. “Don’t go,” I said to Genghis, waiting until my son was just out of earshot. Our relationship had been strained since the Tatar raid, but I couldn’t imagine my world without my husband, empty of his constant grin, his deep rumble of a laugh, his warmth against my back at night. “I saw the outcome of this battle. You will be wounded.” I couldn’t bring myself to say the rest.

I saw you dead.

Genghis chuckled. “You’ve seen my scars, wife of my heart. I’m often wounded.”

I dragged my gaze to his, the wind whipping hair into my eyes. “This time you’ll be more than wounded.”

I watched the understanding dawn in his eyes. “You saw my death?” he asked, and I could only nod. A vein in his neck throbbed and I longed to kiss it, to feel the life pumping through it. “When?”

“A moment ago. The vision came to me unbidden.”

He dismounted so we stood almost eye to eye, and I knew he believed me. “It will happen today?”

“Today, tomorrow . . . I couldn’t see, only that it was here, in this battle,” I said, remembering the slant of sunlight on the crooked mountain. My husband would die here, unless I could keep him from battle. “You were wounded in the neck.”

A man cleared his throat behind us. Teb Tengeri stood in my shadow, leaning on his cane, his features as smooth as river ice. He was dressed in the full regalia of a seer today, swathed in a
deel
sewn with colorful silk tassels and gold discs to reflect the spirit world, and crowned by an iron helmet mounted with yellowing antlers. “The Great Khan will indeed fall in this battle,” he said to Genghis, looking past me. “But he shall not die.”

My hands curled into fists and I wanted nothing so much as to sink my nails into the shaman’s face. I had seen it—my husband would bleed his lifeblood into the steppes today. “I saw his wound, the death mask on his face,” I growled.

Teb Tengeri shrugged, an elegant movement for a half man with a beard that looked as if it might harbor a den of shrews. “Perhaps your vision is faulty.”

I hissed with rage, but the shaman paid less attention to me than to the buzzing of an errant fly.

“What about the storm?” Genghis asked, stepping between us. “I cannot risk losing men to the winds.”

Teb Tengeri glanced at the approaching clouds, his braids whipped by gusts that cut through my
deel
like knives. He crouched to the earth and tasted the film of dirt on his thumb, then lifted his shoulders in an unconcerned shrug. “The storm is hollow as a bone. I could chase it away.”

“Do it,” Genghis snapped. “Send it back where it came from; make it hail and sleet upon their heads.”

Teb Tengeri clasped his hands before him, fingers as twisted as the Great Branching Tree. “As you wish.”

“He lies,” I muttered as he walked away. “None of us can stop this storm.”

And no one could stop the spirits if they decided to call my husband to the sacred mountains today.

“Perhaps not.” Genghis touched my cheek with the same hands that knew precisely how to touch me in the dark of our
ger
,
the same hands that held our children when they were first presented to the Eternal Blue Sky. “What will be, will be. It is not my place to fight it.”

“Please don’t go.” My throat felt as if someone had cinched a harness around it so I could scarcely swallow. “I can’t bear to watch you leave, knowing what I’ll see the next time I look upon you.”

“Then you’ll have to close your eyes.” Genghis pulled me into an embrace, and his chest expanded in a deep inhale, drawing my scent—my soul—inside his lungs, a piece of me to carry into his final battle. Greatness did not come without risks, and today my husband was prepared to make the greatest gamble of them all.

“You’re a miserable piece of horse dung,” I said, stepping back and swiping at my eyes as Jochi reappeared. “I’ll never forgive you if you die now.”

Genghis threw his head back and roared with laughter, making me smile through my tears. How could the Earth and Sky be so greedy as to claim such a man?

My son handed me the cup of milk I’d ordered and I chanted a prayer, letting the earth and its spirits drink the offering as I poured the liquid into the ground. Genghis kissed our children, then paused to unwind a red string from his braid and tie it around Alaqai’s wrist. “Be good for your mother while I’m gone, little marmot,” he said, tweaking her nose.

“I’ll try,” Alaqai said, fingering her new bracelet with a sigh. “But it’s so hard to be good.”

Jochi touched my shoulder then and produced a lopsided grin. “Don’t worry, Mother,” he said, giving me a jaunty wink. “I’ll keep an eye on Father.”

Shigi offered a smile as well, although his eyes lacked any spark of mirth. “And I’ll keep an eye on your son, Borte Ujin,” he murmured.

Winter gripped my heart in its icy embrace. My husband and son stood before me, strong boned, the blood still pumping through their hearts, and yet I’d seen other men race into battle only to have their broken bodies sprawled in the grasses later that day.