The rider came out of the east in the middle of the afternoon, and Temüjin saw him first, because he had been looking east for a month.
He was up on the slope with the sheep when the dot showed on the skyline. One man, and a second horse on a lead beside him. Nobody led a spare unless he was in a hurry. It was the shape of a man who had somewhere to be and had already decided not to stop for rest on the way.
Temüjin sat down in the grass.
He had wondered, in a distant way, what he would feel when it came. He had not been able to guess, and had stopped trying.
He had never met his 'father'.
The boy who had ridden into this camp beside Yesügei had lasted a few days and then gone under a fever. Whatever memories that boy had carried about his father had gone into the ground. Current Temüjin could not have picked Yesügei out of a line of three men. He had a name, a reputation, a date, and a cause of death. Every one of those had come to him from a book.
So the anxious feeling he was having was entirely for different reasons. He was anxious because he didn't know for sure whether the man coming knew the dead Temüjin, or if he did, how much.
In the end, he decided to let his feelings show on his face. Then he would not have to lie once. He would only have to stay in the ger and let all adults misunderstand about what was going on in his head.
He got the sheep down the slope. And headed for the camp.
***
By the time he reached the ring, the camp already had the man.
Two boys had the horses fed. A woman had a bowl out to him before he was properly out of the saddle, and he drank standing like a man finding an oasis. They walked him to Dei Sechen's ger. Somebody went for the good airag. Somebody else was already pulling curds and dried meat onto a board.
Nobody asked him why he had come.
That was the age-old custom. A man off the road was watered, and seated, and fed before everything else. His business waited until he had eaten. A hungry man in a hurry gave a poor account of himself, and a household that didn't feed the guest first would be one that had traded a meal for an irritated guest.
Temüjin sat in his usual place and guessed that the news was already in the ger. But he didn't start asking. He let the conversation start without himself. Less chance of making a blunder.
In the century he came from, news arrived in a flash, at the speed of light. Here it travelled at the speed of a horse, and was made to sit down and eat.
He kept his hands still and listened to the adults talking to the guest.
The man was ordinary. Weathered, unhurried, with a face like a boot and a way of answering questions slightly slower than he needed to. He was uneasy underneath the slow replies. Temüjin could see that because he was the only person present who knew what the man was worried about.
Then the meat board went round again, and Dei Sechen set his bowl down and asked what had brought him.
"The boy's mother is ill," the man said. "She is asking for him."
There was a small movement in the ger, murmurs and hushed tones flied around.
Temüjin did not show anything with his face.
There was nothing to do with it. He could only looked at the fire with his hands had gone awkwardly placed.
A hand came down on his shoulder and stayed there. Dei Sechen was looking at him, sympathy evident on his face.
They were all being extremely kind to him about the wrong thing.
"He'll go," Dei Sechen said. Then, after a moment, he continued.
"He is promised here. There is service owed. Years of it. And he had only been here one month."
"His mother is ill," the guest said again, in the tone of somebody who knew he held the winning card.
And everyone in the ger knew it. A son must go when his mother asked. Dei Sechen could have refused a man asking for a herder, a hostage, a hand at the felting. He could not refuse a mother asking for a son.
Temüjin watched him not want to allow it. It showed on his face, plain as weather. He had dreamed about a falcon and had spent a month watching a boy for signs. Now he was being told the boy was leaving for the reason he could not argue with.
"Bring him back," Dei Sechen said at last.
"That is not mine to promise."
"No." Dei Sechen drank. "Tell his father I said it anyway."
Temüjin looked at the fire and kept looking at it.
***
They left at first light, which meant the goodbyes happened in the dark, which suited him.
Börte came out to the horses while he was seeing to Khar. She did not help and did not pretend to. She stood with her arms folded against the cold and watched him work the girth.
"Everyone was watching my father," she said.
"Was I supposed to watch your father?"
"Everyone was watching my father," she said again, "and I was watching you."
He did not turn around. The girth was fine. He went on doing things to it.
"Your face didn't change when you heard the news," Börte said.
"I heard my mother's sick."
"Mm," said Börte.
He finished with the girth and turned round. She looked at his face and then stepped back, and went off between the gers in the morning light without a word.
She had never once said goodbye to him. She did not start.
The man was already mounted. Temüjin got up onto his horse and turned her east, toward a camp of people who had known him for nine years, every one of whom he was about to meet for the first time.
***
Terms
- guest-right — the obligation a household owes anyone who arrives off the road. The rule binds host and traveler both, and it is the reason a man alone on the steppe can cross it at all — and the reason Yesügei ate what the Tatars put in front of him.
- the remount — a spare horse led alongside. A rider with one intends to change onto it and keep going, so a man leading a remount is a man who does not mean to stop for the night. On the steppe it is read at a distance, the way a flag is read.
- dried curd — hard, sour milk-curd dried in the sun, the staple preserved food of the steppe. It keeps for months, travels well.
- girth — the strap that passes under a horse's belly and holds the saddle on.