Lords of the Bow

‘It will take all my strength to bring the spirits to your son. I will need a goat to take in the growth and another to cleanse him with blood. I have the herbs I need, if I am strong enough.’

‘What if you fail?’ Borte asked suddenly.

Kokchu took a deep breath, letting it shudder from his lips.

‘If my strength fails as I begin the chant, I will survive. If I reach the final stage and the spirits take me, then you will see me torn out of my body. It will live for a time, but without the soul it will be empty flesh. This is no small thing, old mother.’

Hoelun watched him, once more suspicious. He seemed so plausible, but his quick eyes were always watching, seeing how his words were received.

‘Fetch two goats, Borte. Let us see what he can do.’

It was dark outside and while Borte brought the animals, Kokchu used the cloth to wipe Temuge’s chest and belly. When he pressed his fingers into Temuge’s mouth, the young man woke again, his eyes bright with terror.

‘Lie still, boy. I will help you if I have the strength,’ Kokchu told him. He did not look round as the bleating goats were brought in and dragged to his side, his attention fully on the young man in his care.

With the slowness of ritual, Kokchu took four brass bowls from his robe and placed them on the ground. He poured grey powder into each one and lit a taper from the stove. Soon, snakes of white-grey smoke made the air chokingly thick in the ger. Kokchu breathed deeply, filling his lungs. Hoelun coughed into her hand and flushed. The fumes were making her dizzy, but she would not leave her son alone with a man she did not trust.

In a whispering voice, Kokchu began to chant in the most ancient tongue of their people, almost forgotten. Hoelun sat back as she heard it, remembering the sounds from the healers and shamans of her youth. It brought back darker memories for Borte, who had heard her husband recite the old words on a night long before, butchering men and forcing slivers of burned heart between her lips. It was a language of blood and cruelty, well suited to the winter plains. There was no word in it for kindness, or for love. As Borte listened, the ribbons of smoke seeped into her, making her skin numb. The tumbling words brought a rush of vicious images and she gagged.

‘Be still, woman,’ Kokchu growled at her, his eyes wild. ‘Be silent while the spirits come.’ His chant resumed with greater force, hypnotic as he repeated phrases over and over, growing in volume and urgency. The first goat bleated in desperation as he held it over Temuge, looking into the young man’s terrified eyes. With his knife, Kokchu slit the goat’s throat and held it while its blood poured and steamed over Hoelun’s son. Temuge cried out at the sudden warmth, but Hoelun touched her hand to his lips and he quietened.

Kokchu let the goat fall, still kicking. His chant grew faster and he closed his eyes, reaching deep into Temuge’s gut. To his surprise, the young man remained silent and Kokchu had to squeeze the lump hard to make him cry out. The blood hid the sharp twist as he undid the strangled piece of gut and shoved it back behind the wall of muscle. His father had shown him the ritual with a real tumour and Kokchu had seen the old man chanting while men and women screamed, sometimes yelling back over their open mouths so that his spittle entered their throats. Kokchu’s father had taken them so far past exhaustion that they were lost and they were mad and they believed. He had seen obscene growths shrink and die after that point of agony and faith. If a man gave himself utterly to the shaman, sometimes the spirits rewarded that trust.

There was no honour in using the craft to fool a young man with a torn stomach, but the rewards would be great. Temuge was brother to the khan and such a man would always be a valuable ally. He thought of his father’s warnings about those who abused the spirits with lies and tricks. The man had never understood power, or how intoxicating it could be. The spirits swarmed around belief like flies on dead meat. It was not wrong to make belief swell in the camp of the khan. His authority could only increase.

Kokchu breathed heavily as he chanted, rolling his eyes up in his head as he pushed his hand deeper into Temuge’s belly. With a cry of triumph, he made a wrenching movement, pulling out a small piece of calf’s liver he had hidden from sight. In his grip, it jerked like something alive and Borte and Hoelun recoiled from it.

Kokchu continued to chant as he yanked the second goat close. It too struggled, but he forced his hand past its yellow teeth, though they gnawed at his knuckles. He pushed the foul meat down the gullet until the animal could do nothing but swallow in jerking spasms. When he saw the throat move, he stroked it hard, forcing the liver into the goat’s stomach before letting it go.

‘Do not let her touch the other animals,’ he said, panting, ‘or it will spread and live again, perhaps even get back into your son.’ Sweat dripped from his nose as he watched them.

‘It would be better to burn the goat to ashes. She must not be eaten as the flesh contains the growth. Be sure with this. I do not have the strength to do it again.’

He let himself slump as if his senses had left him, though he still breathed like a dog in the sun.

‘The pain has gone,’ he heard Temuge say wonderingly. ‘It is sore, but nothing like it was before.’ Kokchu sensed Hoelun lean over her son and heard him gasp as she touched the place where his gut had come through his stomach muscle.

‘The skin is whole,’ Temuge said. Kokchu could hear the awe in his voice and chose that moment to open his eyes and sit up. He was dull-eyed and squinted through the haze of smoke.

His long fingers hunted in the pockets of his deel, pulling out a piece of twisted horsehair stained with old blood.

‘This has been blessed,’ he told them. ‘I will bind it over the wound so that nothing may enter.’

No one spoke as he took a grubby ribbon of cloth from his deel and made Temuge sit up. Kokchu chanted under his breath as he wound it around the young man’s gut, covering the stiff piece of hair with line after line of cloth and heaving each one tight until it was hidden from view. When he had knotted it, Kokchu sat back, satisfied that the gut would not pop out and spoil all his work.

‘Keep the charm in place for a turn of the moon,’ he said wearily. ‘Let it fall and perhaps the growth will find its home once more.’ He closed his eyes, as if exhausted. ‘I must sleep now, for tonight and most of tomorrow. Burn that goat before you leave her to spread the growth. She will be dead in a few hours at the most.’ Given that he had laced the liver with enough poison to kill a full-grown man, he knew he spoke the truth. There would be no suspiciously healthy animal to spoil his achievement.

‘Thank you for what you have done,’ Hoelun said. ‘I do not understand it …’

Kokchu smiled tiredly.

‘It took me twenty years of study to begin my mastery, old mother. Do not think to understand it in a single evening. Your son will heal now, as he would have done if the growth had not begun to writhe in him.’ He thought for a moment. He did not know the woman, but surely she would tell Genghis what had happened. To make certain, he spoke again.

‘I must ask that you do not tell anyone of what you have seen. There are still tribes where they kill those who practise the old magic. It is seen as too dangerous.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is.’ With that, he knew the tale would spread right through the camp before he woke the next day. There were always some who wanted a charm against illness, or a curse on an enemy. They would leave milk and meat at his ger, and with power came respect and fear. He longed for them to be afraid, for when they were, they would give him anything. What did it matter if he had not saved a life this time? The belief would be there when another life hung in his hands. He had dropped a stone in the river and the ripples would go far.

Genghis and his generals were alone in the great ger as the moon rose above the host of his people. The day had been busy for all of them, but they could not sleep while he remained awake and there would be yawns and bleary eyes the following day. Genghis seemed as fresh as he had that morning, when he had welcomed two hundred men and women from a Turkic tribe so far to the north-west that they could not understand more than a few words of what he said. Still, they had come.

‘Every day brings more of them, with two moons left of summer,’ Genghis said, looking round proudly at men who had been with him since the first days. At fifty years of age, Arslan was growing old after the years of war. He and his son Jelme had come to Genghis when he had nothing but his wits and his three brothers. Both had remained utterly loyal through hard years and Genghis had let them prosper and take wives and wealth. Genghis nodded to the swordsmith who had become his general, pleased to see the man’s back as straight as ever.

Temuge did not attend their discussions, even when he was well. Of all the brothers, he had shown no aptitude for tactics. Genghis loved him, but he could not trust him to lead others. He shook his head, realising that his thoughts were wandering. He too was weary, though he would not allow it to show.

‘Some of the new tribes have never even heard of the Chin,’ Kachiun said. ‘The ones who came this morning dress like nothing I’ve ever seen. They are not Mongols, as we are.’

‘Perhaps,’ Genghis said. ‘But I will make them welcome. Let them prove themselves in war before we judge them. They are not Tartars, or blood enemies to any man here. At least I will not be called to untangle some grudge going back a dozen generations. They will be useful.’

He took a draught from a rough clay cup, smacking his lips at the bitterness of the black airag.

‘Be wary in the camp, my brothers. They have come because not to come invites us to destroy them. They do not trust us yet. Many of them know only my name and nothing else.’

‘I have men listening at every fire,’ Kachiun said. ‘There will always be some who seek an advantage in such a gathering. Even as we speak here, there will be a thousand other conversations discussing us. Even whispers will be heard. I will know if I have to act.’

Genghis nodded to his brother, proud of him. Kachiun had grown into a stocky man with an immense breadth of shoulder from his bow practice. They shared a bond that Genghis could claim with no one else, not even Khasar.

‘Still, my back itches when I walk through the camp. While we wait, they grow restless, but there are more to come and I cannot move yet. The Uighurs alone will be valuable. Those who are already here may test us, so be ready and let no insult go unpunished. I will trust you in your judgement, even if you throw a dozen heads at my feet.’

The generals in the ger met each other’s eyes without smiling. For every man they had brought to the great plain, two more had come. The advantage they held was that not one of the strongest khans knew the extent of their support. Anyone riding into the shadow of the black mountain saw a single host and gave no thought to the fact that it was composed of a hundred different factions, watching each other in mutual mistrust.

Genghis yawned at last.

‘Get some sleep, my brothers,’ he said wearily. ‘Dawn is close and the herds have to be moved to new grass.’

‘I will look in on Temuge before I sleep,’ Kachiun said.

Genghis sighed.

‘Let us hope the sky father makes him well. I cannot lose my only sensible brother.’

Kachiun snorted, throwing open the small door to the outside air. When they had all left, Genghis rose, cracking the stiffness out of his neck with a swift jerk of his hands. His family ger was nearby, though his sons would be asleep. It was one more night when he would thump into the blankets without his family knowing he had come home.

CHAPTER TWO (#u9dcd50fd-a8ab-56bf-9348-d34592ddcee4)

Genghis eyed his younger brother with disquiet. Temuge had spent the morning telling anyone who would listen about the cure Kokchu had wrought. The camp was a stifling place despite its size and any news spread quickly. By noon, it would be in the mouths of the newest wanderers off the plains.

‘So how do you know it was not a strangled bit of gut?’ Genghis said, watching him. Temuge seemed to stand a little taller than usual in the family ger and his face was lit with excitement and something more. Whenever he mentioned Kokchu’s name, his voice would dip almost to a murmur. Genghis found his awe irritating.

‘I saw him pull it out of me, brother! It squirmed and writhed in his hand and I nearly vomited to see it. When it was gone, the pain went with it.’ Temuge touched his hand to the place and winced.

‘Not completely gone, then,’ Genghis noted.