The four brothers were on the riverbank with fishing lines out, which happened perhaps twice a summer and had happened that morning for no particular reason.
It was a good morning, Khasar had his boots off and his feet in the river and was talking about nothing; Belgütei had caught the only thing anybody had caught in an hour and had put it back because it was too small, albeit reluctantly. The water went by. It was warm and it was going to stay warm.
Then Temüjin's line went hard and stayed hard.
What came up over the bank was not one of the mean paltry ones. It was a dace the length of his forearm, deep through the shoulder and bright as a pristine blade in the sunlight, and it came down in the grass and flexed there and went on flexing, and the bent needle held.
Nobody had taken a fish like it out of that river. Not this summer and the one before it. It was not something to be mushed into a broth. It was a proper meal, for nine people, out of a river that had given them nothing else since first light.
All four of them looked at it, and for a moment nobody said anything at all.
Bekter picked it up.
He did it without hurry and without any statement in it, and Belgütei was already on his feet holding the basket open for him.
"That's ours." Khasar had come up out of the water without putting on his boots. "Temüjin had that on his own line."
"It's the household's."
And there was no arguing with that because it was true. Khasar prepared to argue again but Temujin put a hand on his brother's chest to signal him to stop.
He stood on the bank with the wet line in his hand and watched the two brothers leave. And felt something in his own chest lurched just like a student realizing the time is up.
***
They went to their mother, both of them, and it came out of Khasar first because he was the most indignant.
"They took our fish."
Hoelun was at the fire and did not turn round. "Who did."
"Bekter. Belgütei held the basket."
"And the fish is where?"
"In the basket."
"Then it is in the camp," Hoelun said, "and it will be eaten in the camp by all of us, including you."
She turned round then, and looked at the two of them standing in her doorway with the light behind them, and scrutinised their faces for a while. It was a woman who knew the habits and tells of her sons inside and out. At least for Khasar.
"No spite in this ger. I mean it. Stop."
"Mother—"
"Why are you like this with each other? Big brothers and little brothers." She put down what she was holding.
"We have no friend but our shadow and no whip but our horse's tail. There is nobody. There is not one soul between this fire and the Onon who would ride out for us if we called, and we only have this many of people we can call family. Just us. Do you understand? Even knowing that the two of you cannot leave a fish alone."
Neither of them said anything.
"Like Alan the Fair's five sons," she said. "They waited until she was in the ground. Then they split the herds four ways and told the youngest one he was no brother of theirs."
Khasar looked at the floor. Temüjin did not.
"Stop it," she said.
It was a good speech. It was the whole of the case. She was right and no amount of grievance could flip the reasoning.
Temüjin heard all of it. He heard it the way you hear rain when you have already decided to ride.
***
"They took the lark yesterday," Khasar said, once the brothers have distanced enough from the ger. "The same way. Nobody said anything then either. How are we supposed to go on living with them?"
Temüjin stopped and looked into the distance.
"Go back."
"What?"
"Go and sit down somewhere. I'll be a while."
Khasar looked at him carefully. Temüjin tried to hide his decision in his eyes by avoiding his brother's gaze. Then as if he have made up his mind right then and there, turned and went to the ger and came out again with his bow, ready to draw and did not say one word about any of it.
Temüjin had many things ready to say. He had been getting them ready since four years ago.
Every one of them required him to explain what he was about to do and why, and it was not about the fish. And he had never wanted his brother to shoulder the burden of the decision that he only made.
"Khasar."
"Which way's he sitting?"
***
Bekter was on top of the little rise east of the camp with the nine light-bay geldings spread below him, one knee up, watching them, without any thoughts behind his head.
Belgütei was not with him, still down at the river with the lines, where the two of them had left him.
Temüjin went up the back of the rise into the wind. Khasar went wide and low along the bottom and came up into the grass in front of him, and neither of them hurried.
They were inside forty paces when they drew their bows, directed to the hilltop.
There was no signal. Temüjin had not arranged one and did not need one; he had spent a year of mornings listening to his brother's string come up beside him, and Khasar had spent the same year listening to his.
Both arrows went at once.
***
Bekter came off his knee sideways and went down into the grass on his shoulder.
He got a hand under himself and pushed himself half up, and looked at what was standing out of him chest, and did not seem to comprehend what he was looking at.
Then he looked up and saw Khasar in front of him with his bow still in his hand.
It came into him slowly what was happending. But he was not angry or afraid. He did not understand, and he went on not understanding, because nothing had ever happened between the four of them that could serve as the trigger.
His head went round to the slope behind him and saw Temüjin coming up the slope and stopped in front of him.
"The Tayichiud took everything we had," Bekter said.
He stopped for a moment, wheezing, struggling to get air into his lungs.
"Everything. And we sit here. Nine horses. We still don't know if any of us can make them pay tenfold of what they did to us."
The wind came up the slope.
"We have no friend but our shadow," he said, looking into the brothers' eyes.
Neither of them answered.
The arm he was holding himself up on had begun to go. He shifted his weight onto the other one, and shifted his gaze to the plains of the steppe.
"Don't put my mother's fire out. Whatever this is—don't let it go out."
"It stays hers," Temüjin said. "Nobody puts it together with anybody's."
Bekter nodded, and continued.
"And Belgütei. He doesn't know anything about anything. He'll do whatever you tell him for the rest of his life. Don't do this to him."
"Nothing happens to Belgütei," Temüjin said. "Ever."
Bekter nodded again and did not say anything else.
Then he let the arm go and sat on his knees. He turned his head to Temüjin and looked at his eyes for final confirmation.
He walked four paces ahead of Bekter and notched an arrow again.
The sound of an arrow in flight was particularly loud that evening.
***
Terms
- dace — a river fish, silver and hard-fleshed.
- Alan the Fair's five sons — the founding story every Mongol child is raised on. A widow's five sons fell out, and she sat them down and gave each of them a single arrow to snap, and then a bundle of five that none of them could break. She died, and the four elder brothers divided the herds between them and gave the youngest nothing, and said he was a halfwit and no brother of theirs. Not every mother goes on to that part.
- breaking of the arrows — a mother's whole answer to sons who have started turning on each other. It is also the last thing she can do. There is nobody she can call, nothing she can take away, and no second thing to try if it does not work.