Conqueror: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Conn Iggulden
had seen the same coldness in many of the newcomers to Temujin’s camp. They came because Temujin accepted them, but old habits were hard to break for men who had lived so long away from a tribe. The winters were too cruel to trust easily and live.
Arslan knew enough to see that Temujin chose his companions on the raids very carefully indeed. Some needed constant reassurance and Temujin let Khasar handle those, with his rough ways and humour. Others would not give up their simmering doubts until they had seen Temujin risk his life at their shoulder. For raid after raid, they saw that he was so completely without fear that he would walk up to drawn swords and know he would not be alone. So far, they had gone with him. Arslan hoped it would last, for all their sakes.
‘Will he raid again?’ Arslan asked suddenly. ‘The Tartars will not stand for this much longer.’
Kachiun shrugged. ‘We’ll scout the camps first, but they are dull and slow in winter. Temujin says we can go on like this for months more.’
‘But you know better than that, surely?’ Arslan said. ‘They will draw us in with a fat target and men hidden in every ger. Wouldn’t you? Sooner or later we are going to walk into a trap.’
To his astonishment, Kachiun grinned at him.
‘They are just Tartars. We can take as many as they want to send against us, I think.’
‘It could be thousands if you provoke them all winter,’ Arslan said. ‘The moment the thaw comes, they could send an army.’
‘I hope so,’ Kachiun said. ‘Temujin thinks it is the only way to get the tribes to band together. He says we need an enemy and a threat to the land. I believe him.’
Kachiun patted Arslan on the shoulder as if in consolation before strolling away in the snow. The swordsmith allowed the touch out of sheer astonishment. He didn’t have a tiger by the tail after all. He had it by the ears, with his head in its mouth.
A figure came padding by him and he heard the only voice he loved.
‘Father! You’ll freeze out here,’ Jelme said, coming to a halt.
Arslan sighed. ‘I’ve heard the opinion, yes. I am not as old as you all seem to think.’
He watched his son as he spoke, seeing the bounce in his step. Jelme was drunk on the victory, his eyes shining. As Arslan’s heart swelled for his son, he saw the young man could hardly stand still. Somewhere nearby, Temujin would be holding his war council once again, planning the next assault on the tribe who had killed his father. Each one was more daring and more difficult than the last, and the nights were often wild with drinking and captured women away from the main camp. In the morning, it would be different, and Arslan could not begrudge his son the company of his new friends. At least Temujin respected his skill with a bow and sword. Arslan had given his son that much.
‘Did you take a wound?’ he asked.
Jelme smiled, showing small white teeth. ‘Not a scratch. I killed three Tartars with a bow and one with the blade, using the high pull stroke you taught me.’ He mimed it automatically and Arslan nodded in approval.
‘It is a good one if the opponent is unbalanced,’ he replied, hoping his son could see the pride he felt. He could not express it. ‘I remember teaching it to you,’ Arslan continued lamely. He wished he had more words, but a distance had somehow sprung up between them and he did not know how to breach it.
Jelme stepped forward and reached out to grip his father by the arm. Arslan wondered if he had taken the habit of physical contact from Temujin. For one of the swordsmith’s generation, it was an intrusion and he always had to master the urge to slap it away. Not from his son, though. He loved him too much to care.
‘Do you want me to stay with you?’ Jelme asked.
Arslan had to snort with barely suppressed laughter, tinged with sadness. They were so arrogant it pained him, these young men, but with the wanderer families, they had grown themselves into a band of raiders who did not question their leader’s authority. Arslan had watched the chains of trust develop between them and, when his spirits were low, he wondered if he would have to see his son killed before him.
‘I will walk the perimeter of the camp and make sure there are no more surprises to spoil my sleep tonight,’ Arslan said. ‘Go.’ He forced a smile at the end and Jelme chuckled, his excitement bubbling back to the surface. He ran off between the white gers to where Arslan could hear the sound of revelry. The Tartars had been far from their main tribe, he thought to himself. For all he knew, they had been looking for the very force that had crushed them mercilessly. The news would filter its way back to the local khans and they would respond, whether Temujin understood it or not. They could not afford to ignore the raids. In the east, the great cities of the Chin would have their spies out, looking always for weakness in their enemies.
As he walked around the camp, he found two other men doing the same thing and adjusted his view of Temujin yet again. The young warrior listened, Arslan had to admit, though he didn’t like to ask for help. It was worth remembering.
As he crunched his way through the deepening snow, Arslan heard soft sobbing coming from a thicket of trees near the outskirts of the Tartar gers. He drew his sword in utter silence at the sound, standing like a statue until the blade was completely clear. It could have been a trap, though he didn’t think so. The women of the camp would have either stayed in the gers or hidden at the edges. On a summer night, they might have been able to wait out the raiders before making their way back to their own people, but not in the winter snow.
He hadn’t reached forty years of age without sensible caution, so Arslan had his sword still drawn when he looked on the face of a young woman, half his age. With a pleased grin, he sheathed the blade and held out a hand to pull her to her feet. When she only stared at him, he chuckled low in his throat.
‘You’ll need someone to warm you in your blankets tonight, girl. You’d be better off with me than one of the younger ones, I should think. Men of my age have less energy, for a start.’
To his immense pleasure, the young woman giggled. Arslan guessed she wasn’t kin of the dead men, though he reminded himself to keep his knives well hidden if he intended to sleep. He’d heard of more than one man killed by a sweetly smiling capture.
She took his hand and he pulled her up and onto his shoulder, patting her bottom as he strode back through the camp. He was humming to himself by the time he found a ger with a stove and a warm bed to shut out the softly falling snow.
Temujin clenched a fist in pleasure as he heard the tallies of the dead. The Tartar bodies would not talk, but there were too many to be a hunting trip, especially in the heart of winter. Kachiun thought they had probably been a raiding party much like their own.
‘We’ll keep the ponies and drive them back with us,’ Temujin told his companions. The airag was being passed around and the general mood was jubilant. In a little while they would be drunk and singing, perhaps lusting after a woman, though without hope in that bare camp. Temujin had been disappointed to find that most of the women were the sort of hardy crones men might take into the wilderness to cook and sew rather than as playful objects of lust. He had yet to find a wife for Khasar or Kachiun and, as their khan, he needed as many loyal families around him as possible.
The old women had been questioned about their menfolk, but of course they claimed to know nothing. Temujin watched one particularly wizened example as she stirred a pot of mutton stew in the ger he had chosen as his own. Perhaps he should have someone else taste it, he thought, smiling at the idea.
‘Do you have everything you need, old mother?’ he said. The woman looked back at him and spat carefully on the floor. Temujin laughed out loud. It was one of the great truths of life that no matter how furious a man became, he could still be cowed by a show of force. No one, however, could cow an angry woman. Perhaps he should have the food tasted first, at that. He looked around at the others, pleased with them all.
‘Unless the snow covered a few,’ he said, ‘we have a count of twenty-seven dead, including the old lady Kachiun