Conqueror: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Conn Iggulden
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his children alone on the plains. It is as bad as killing them yourself.’
‘Get away, old man. A khan must make hard decisions. I will not shed the blood of children or women, but if they starve, my hands are clean.’
Chagatai’s face grew dark with wordless fury and he scrabbled at Eeluk’s armour, battering at him. His nails scored the flesh of Eeluk’s neck and the reaction was instantaneous. Eeluk drove his blade into the old man’s chest and shoved him off it onto his back. Blood came from Chagatai’s open mouth and Hoelun sank to her knees, weeping and rocking while her sons stood stunned. There were other screams at the murder and some of the warriors came to stand between Eeluk and the family of Yesugei, their hands ready on their swords. Eeluk shook himself and spat at Chagatai as his blood poured into the parched soil.
‘You should not have interfered, you old fool,’ he said, sheathing his sword and walking stiffly away.
The warriors helped Hoelun to her feet and women came to help her back to the ger. They turned their faces from the crying children, and to Temujin that was as bad as anything else that had happened that night. The families had deserted them and they were lost.
The gers of the Wolves left black circles on the hard ground when they were dismantled, littered with scraps of old bone and pieces of broken leather and pottery. The sons of Yesugei watched the process as outsiders, standing miserably with their mother and sister. Eeluk had been ruthless and Hoelun had needed all the others to hold Bekter back when the bondsman ordered their ger and everything in it to be packed with the rest. Some of the women had cried out at the cruelty, but many more had kept silent and Eeluk had ignored them all. The khan’s word was law.
Temujin shook his head in disbelief as the carts were loaded and the herds urged into place with sticks and blows. He had seen that Eeluk wore Yesugei’s sword as he strode about the encampment. Bekter had set his jaw tight as he noticed the blade, his fury evident. Eeluk had smiled to himself as he walked past them, enjoying their impotent glares. Temujin wondered at how Eeluk had kept such ambition hidden inside for so many years. He had sensed it when Yesugei gave him the red bird, but even then he would not have believed it possible to have Eeluk betray them so completely. He shook his head as he heard the eagle chicks crying when their wings were wrapped tight for the journey. He could not take it in. The sight of Chagatai’s sprawled body tugged at his eyes over and over, reminding him of the night before. The old storyteller was going to be left where he had fallen, and that seemed as great a crime as any of the rest to the boys.
Though her sons were pale with despair, Hoelun herself radiated a cold rage that punished anyone foolish enough to meet her eyes. When Eeluk had come to order the khan’s ger dismantled, even he had not looked at her, staring instead into a middle distance while the work went on. The great layers of heavy felt had been untied and rolled and the wooden lattice collapsed into its sections, the knots of dried sinew cut with quick slashes. Everything inside had been taken, from Yesugei’s bows to the winter deels with their lining of fur. Bekter had cursed and shouted when he saw they would be left with nothing, but Hoelun had simply shaken her head at Eeluk’s casual cruelty. The deels were beautifully made and too valuable to be wasted on those who would not survive. Winter would snatch them from life as surely as an arrow when the first snows came. Still, she faced the families with dignity, her face proud and dry of tears.
It did not take long. Everything was designed to be moved, and by the time the sun stood above them, the black circles were empty and the carts loaded, with men heaving at the ropes to tie everything down.
Hoelun shivered as the wind blew stronger. There was no shelter now that the gers had gone, and she felt exposed and numb. She knew Yesugei would have drawn his father’s sword and taken a dozen heads if he were there to see it. His body lay on the turf, wrapped in cloth. In the night, someone in the families had wound an old piece of linen around Chagatai’s withered frame, hiding his wound. They lay side by side in death and Hoelun could not bear to look at either of them.
The herdsmen shouted as Eeluk blew his horn, using sticks longer than a man to snap the animals into movement. The noise grew as sheep and goats bleated and ran to escape the stinging touch and the tribe began to move. Hoelun stood with her sons like a stand of pale birch and watched them go. Temuge was sobbing quietly to himself and Kachiun took his hand in case the little boy tried to run after the tribe.
The open ground quickly swallowed the cries of the herdsmen and their charges. Hoelun watched them until they were far away, at last breathing out some small part of her relief. She knew Eeluk was capable of sending a man circling back to make a bloody end to the abandoned family. As soon as the distance was too far for them to be seen, she turned to her sons, gathering them around her.
‘We need shelter and food, but most of all, we need to get away from this place. There will be scavengers coming soon to sift through the ashes of the fires. Not all of them will walk on four legs. Bekter!’ Her sharp tone snapped her son out of his trance as he stared after the distant figures. ‘I need you now to look after your brothers.’
‘What is the point?’ he replied, turning back to watch the plain. ‘We’re all dead.’
Hoelun slapped him hard across the face and he staggered, his eyes blazing. Fresh blood started from where Eeluk had hit him the night before.
‘Shelter, and food, Bekter. Yesugei’s sons will not go quietly to their deaths, as Eeluk wants. Nor will his wife. I need your strength, Bekter, do you understand?’
‘What will we do with … him?’ Temujin said, looking at his father’s body.
Hoelun faltered for an instant as she followed his gaze. She clenched her fist and shook with anger.
‘Was it too much to leave us a single pony?’ she said under her breath. She had a vision of tribeless men pulling the sheet from Yesugei’s naked body and laughing, but there was no choice. ‘It’s just flesh, Temujin. Your father’s spirit is gone from here. Let him see us survive and he will be satisfied.’
‘We leave him for wild dogs, then?’ Temujin asked, horrified.
It was Bekter who nodded. ‘We must. Dogs or birds, it doesn’t matter. How far could you and I carry him, Temujin? It’s already noon and we need to get up to a tree line.’
‘The red hill,’ Kachiun said suddenly. ‘There is shelter there.’
Hoelun shook her head. ‘It’s too far to reach before night falls. To the east, there is a cleft that will do until tomorrow. There are woods there. We’d die on the plains, but in woods, I’ll spit on Eeluk ten years from now.’
‘I’m hungry,’ Temuge said, snivelling.
Hoelun looked at her youngest son and her eyes filled with shining tears. She reached into the folds of her deel and brought out a cloth bag of his favourite sweet curds. Each of them took one or two, as solemn as if they were swearing an oath.
‘We will survive this, my sons. We will survive until you are men, and when Eeluk is old, he will wonder if it is you coming for him every time he hears hooves in the darkness.’
They looked into her face in awe, seeing only fierce determination. It was strong enough to banish some of their own despair and they all took strength from her.
‘Now walk!’ she snapped at them. ‘Shelter, then food.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A thin drizzle fell as Bekter and Temujin sat huddled together, wet to the bone. Before dark, they had reached a wooded cleft in the hills where a stream dribbled through sodden, marshy ground. The narrow crease in the land was host to black-trunked pines and silver birches as pale as bones. The echoing spatter of water was strange and frightening as the boys shivered on a great nest of dark roots.
Before the light faded, Hoelun had set them to lifting fallen saplings, dragging the great broken lengths of rotten