MONGOL

Mongol

Prologue: 1182 (17 yrs. old)

As it flew above the treetops, the eagle soared on the drafts created by the collision of air against the mountainside. Delicate twitches of tiny feathers at the end of each wing maneuvered it round and round as the eagle watched the actions of the people below.

Twilight’s first gleaming. The transient moment when daylight begins its task of easing the darkness westward. With the sky still black, dawn slithered its way across the land, pushing the dark before it. Night changed from indigo to an insipid gray. Dawn gathered momentum as the sun burst over the horizon.

There was a hint of mist in the air. The travelers, ten of them, guided their animals through the wooded mountainside towards the cluster of birchbark huts nestled in the tiny valley.

It was so quiet the riders could imagine hearing the faint whistle of the wind through the extended wings of the eagle as it circled above, looking for prey. The swish of tree branches brushed aside by horse and rider, and the occasional snort of the horses blowing vapor clouds into the cool dawn air, heralded the approach of danger. Leather creaked as the riders resettled on hard saddles. Muffled tack deadened the ring of metal hitting metal. Bindings on the horses’ feet prevented the click of iron shoes against any rocks. A peaceful scene.... the eagle, the riders, the soft grass underfoot, pine trees nodding in the early morning breeze and the flat silvery light of another day chasing the night away.

Fierce-looking riders, their Weather-beaten faces burnished by the sun and wrinkled by exposure to the biting winds of the mountaintop. Long, unkempt hair, wispy beards, moth-eaten sheepskin coats, long bows slung on their backs with sword belt and quiver straps crisscrossing their chests. To keep the cold out, they wore baggy trousers tied at the waist and ankle with leather thongs. The riders wore peculiar conical hats formed from horse leather hardened in urine and covered with fur. These men dressed with care, for fall in the mountains was cold. They spoke in whispers, their breath pluming in the frosty air.

The men had not eaten for several days and hunger roiled in their bellies, cramping and gnawing away at their innards. They had survived the terrible thirst by sucking on snow collected on the mountaintops they had been crossing for the last few days. They approached the village with anticipation and stealth.

Temujin hoped for no dogs in the village. He hated dogs, even feared them. He had shared his plan with the men only thirty minutes ago at the first hint of smoke-tainted air. Smoke meant fire. Fire meant men. Men meant food.

A simple plan. Temujin still fretted, worrying if his warriors could remember the roles they had to play and if they could stick to the plan, or fight the way they always did?

As their leader, Temujin led by strength and cunning. He wanted to try a raid using new tactics requiring his men to fight as a team, not as individuals slashing their way through the foe.

The plan? A good one. Two men were to limp into the village, walking their horses through the clearing. The rest of the warriors waiting amongst the trees, forming an arc around the small cluster of huts. The two point-men were to draw the villagers’ attention away from the rest of the raiders and keep them occupied while the others got into the ambush position.

If the villagers were hostile, the two warriors were to run back to the trees, drawing the men towards them. If friendly, the decoys were to distract the villagers with conversation while the main force slipped around the village and crept up behind their unsuspecting hosts.

Each man hoped for a good fight.

The men had been riding a long time. Boredom had settled upon them. A good fight might sharpen their hunger, and maybe the miserable villagers might have a few stout women tucked away in their huts.

They dismounted inside the tree line and the two men led their horses into the clearing. The stocky plains’ animals, seldom seen around these parts, plodded behind the men who led them, lending added illusion to the effect being created.

Harholden and Whitehar limped into the glade, heads hanging, an air of terrible suffering hovering over them. One horse stepped on a dry branch, snapping it with a loud cracking noise. The horse did not rear, well trained in the games of war men played.

The noise was loud enough to bring a villager stumbling out of his hut to investigate. After taking one look at the two warriors, he scampered across the clearing towards the warning bell.

As the man scrabbled for the long wooden clapper, the one with the leather-wrapped stone bound onto the end with thongs, Harholden reached inside his sheepskin coat, drawing the throwing ax he kept there. Harholden’s accuracy with the ax was legendary. He did not aim, just casually tossed it towards the terrified villager, grinning as he did so. It was as if he could see the exact passage the ax would take through the air on its dreadful flight. Most thought he guided it with a mystical power.

The ax flew straight, seemingly in slow motion as it covered the distance between hand and back. It landed with a soft “thunk”, embedded between the villager’s shoulder blades, below the neck. Harholden heard the low grunt the villager made as his knees buckled out from under him. As the man slid to the ground, fingers curling, his outstretched hand brushed the handle of the clapper he so desperately wanted to reach. Only nerves. His brain had not yet realized his body was dead. This pleased Harholden. His aim still true. Fire raged through his blood. The killing began.

As the villager lay felled in the mud under the village bell, Harholden and Whitehar vaulted onto their horses and galloped straight towards the huts. Harholden swung low from his saddle to snatch his throwing ax from the back of the still twitching villager. They crashed through the walls of the first hut, stomping over the young boy and the woman who slept there.

The rest of the warriors charged from their hiding places into the clearing, yelling the traditional high-pitched battle cry. This eerie yodeling noise and the thundering of the horses’ hooves brought the rest of the villagers staggering from their huts. Most of them had the wits to scoop up their weapons... axes, swords and long handled scythes. Despite fighting with courage, the villagers stood no chance against men mounted on such beasts.

There were individual scenes of bravery. By fighting together, two villagers pulled a warrior from his horse. One stabbed the horse to halt the fearsome charge, the other pulled the rider from the saddle. Sumput, the downed warrior, lashed out with his sword as he fell and decapitated one villager. The other, swinging his weapon in an uncoordinated arc, lopped off Sumput’s left hand at the wrist before taking a fatal sword-thrust through the heart.

Several minutes later, the village men were dead. Temujin’s men had perfected the technique of slashing at the back of the knees of a dismounted man. This had the effect of felling the enemy forthwith, to be killed by a cut to the head by either ax or sword.

After the scattered women and children were rounded up, the raiders tied them together with leather ropes. Temujin’s men killed the surviving village men. He intervened and stopped a somewhat addled lad from being killed. This villager had “eyes of fire” and Temujin commanded the young man to be roped together with the women and children.

After the killing was over, the raiding party gathered around the village meeting-square to assess their wounds. Sumput, the worst of the wounded, the rest only had nicks and bruises. Temujin’s warriors poked at Sumput and made fun of him for being bested by mere villagers. Temujin was furious at the loss of a horse.

With a nod from Temujin, the group’s medicine man, Kokchu, began his preparations for dealing with Sumput. He made a fire and stirred it until it burned down to red-hot embers. After poking through his private hoard of special herbs and salves, he found the right items to treat the wound.

When the fire became hot enough, he had Sumput sit on a log with four warriors to hold him still. Kokchu performed his magical dance. Round and round he whirled, skipping in and out of the fire’s smoky wreaths, muttering unintelligible gibberish to the gods of healing. He himself did not believe in the nonsense of gods, but other men did, and they expected him to call on a supreme intervention to make sure the healing took hold. They needed more of a ritual than the actual placing of medicines and bandages on wounds.

When Kokchu saw the warriors were suitably impressed with his rapport with the gods, he moved towards Sumput. kokchu seized hold of Sumput’s left arm and tucked it under his own right shoulder and trimmed the ragged stump with his finely honed healing knife. Kokchu favored his left hand, another sign of his affinity with the gods. Sumput bore this pain with a stolid indifference. He knew the greater pain had yet to come.

Kokchu finished the trimming, then told the four warriors holding Sumput to bring him to the fire. Sumput put up a valiant fight, but he was no match for his wardens. The medicine man plunged Sumput’s left arm into the heart of the fire, thus cauterizing the stump. Sumput screamed, thin and reedy, sounding the same as the shriek of a young virgin being raped by soldiers victorious in battle.

A plume of steam hissed into the air as the fire vaporized the blood seeping from the stump. The sickly sweet smell of roasting human flesh permeated the village. Sumput fainted from pain. Kokchu applied his special salve to the stump and sprinkled a mixture of herbs and leaves on it. After cutting the thong Sumput had tied around his arm to stop himself bleeding to death, Kokchu replaced it with a leather bag bound onto the stump. He then made fine adjustments to make sure the end of the bag did not rub on the roasted flesh. He tied Sumput’s arm across his belly to immobilize it and prevent Sumput from banging the stump and re-opening the wound.

Temujin stood watching this with impatient anger.

“Piss on a stick.” he cursed to his friend Harholden.

Harholden muttered, “We’ll have to stay here a day or two until Onehand is well enough to walk.”

Smirking, Temujin said, “Onehand. Hah, a fitting name for a careless soldier.”

Temujin bellowed to the rest of his men, “Sumput is no more. From now on, he will be called ‘Onehand’. All of you will remember how he let two little village men kill his horse and cut off his hand. This is so because I say it to be so.”

Harholden and Temujin walked off to inspect the women and children huddled together by the village shrine. They strolled through the terrified captives, poking and pinching, assessing their strength and amusement value.

“Is there any food in this flea-bitten village?” Temujin growled at an old crone.

The terrified woman could only stutter and make pitiful gurgling noises in her throat.

Harholden cut her free from the others and shoved her towards the rest of the men. Aware of what was to happen, they walked towards the woman, laughing and joshing each other as if they were little kids going to witness a forbidden delight.

After forming a circle around the old woman, the men started pushing her from one side of the circle to the other. Every time she fell, they hassled her until she stood up, then resumed their pushing.

One warrior grabbed at her tunic, tearing the rotted garment off her body. The men guffawed at the pathetic sight of the naked old woman standing in the middle of their circle. Her body shook with fear, and urine dribbled on her legs as she tried to cover herself with her hands. Whitehar, the most sadistic of the men, pulled out his penis and pissed on the woman, producing a roar of laughter from his peers. One by one, they each took their turn.

Temujin strutted up to the crone. Unsheathed his sword he said, ‘When I ask a question, my wish is you answer me.’

He killed her with one quick thrust of his sword and dragged her body over to the other women.

“Temujin asked a question; she refused to answer. You will remember what happens when I am disobeyed. Know now, Temujin has spoken and everybody trembles at my anger.”

With this declaration, he sheathed his sword, folded his arms and looked almighty and wonderful in his glory.

Harholden pulled another woman from the group and asked her if there was food in the village.

“Yes sir, there is food.”

“Take two of your peasants and prepare a feast fit for these magnificent men.” demanded Harholden.

Looking at his leader, Harholden asked, “What are we to do with the addled boy?” Temujin told him to leave the boy tied with the women and children, and he would decide what to do later.

Chapter 1 (1165: born.)

“My name is TEMUJIN.

You know me as another...

I will tell you more, later.

My story will unfold before you, and it is important you pay attention. This account will set the record straight. History remembers me as a tyrant, as a monster. I am neither.

Born on the right bank of the Onan River in 1165, here is what I remember. My mother, Hoelun Ujin, left her husband’s tent and walked to the riverbank. With a stick between her teeth to bite on when the birth pain was unbearable, she squatted and pushed hard with the powerful muscles of her womb.

I remember it.

Feeling of calm, lying cushioned by a warm bath of viscous fluid. Moving my arms and legs (not knowing what these appendages were called). In this relaxed state, I had been building my strength for months now, living in a world of water. Breathing water. Thinking maybe the time had come for change.

As if on cue, the water, supporting me during this time, disappeared with a rush. What a thrill it was. To be relaxed and quiet one moment and have my whole environment abruptly changed, just as I was thinking of it. I knew my destiny was greatness.

A powerful pressure started at my feet, working along my body, urging me to move downward. As one ripple finished, another, more powerful, took its place. There was no point resisting. I began sliding downwards. There was still enough coating on the sides of the chute to allow me to slide effortlessly. At one point I was moving too fast for my liking, so I grabbed the side of the chute with a hand to slow my progress. A few minutes later, I burst into a bright light. My eyes screwed up with the pain of it. It was a harsh world into which I was born.

My Mother cut the cord connecting me to her and washed me in the clean water of the Onan River.

Icy water.

My body convulsed with the shock of it, expelling a ball of phlegm from my throat, clearing the way for a lusty yell of outrage.

Strange new sensations.

Parts of my body, once lifeless, became movable.

Lungs drawing in the cool steppe air.

Ecstasy of air breathing.

Feeling hungry.

Mother lifted me from the water and wrapped me in warm fur. Pulling up the top of her shift, she poked her nipple at my lips. I sucked on this delicious piece of flesh. To my amazement, a warm liquid squirted in my mouth and ran down my throat. It tasted incredible. I sucked and sucked until a heavy lassitude overcame me and I slept.

There was great rejoicing when I was born. My father, Yesugei Baatur, killed a few of his sheep and bled one of his horses. Our entire tribe feasted on roasted mutton and mare’s milk mixed with blood.

The tribe’s shaman, summoned for the occasion, said, “My name is Kokchu. I am the tribe’s shaman. It has always been so. It will always be so. This son, born to the clan Borjigid of the tribe Kiyat, comes into the world clenching a clot of blood in his fist. This is a sign from heaven. Tengri, who is all-powerful, wants us to know this new son will be courageous and victorious in life. His name shall be Temujin. Drink, eat and rejoice in the presence of this, our new son.”

Well named.

Temujin.

Blacksmith.

Only Tengri and Kokchu knew one-day I would forge a nation.

This nation, so large it would cover most of the world.