Wolf of the Plains. Conn Iggulden

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СКАЧАТЬ him. The old man held a wooden bucket, and as Temujin took it, he picked up another, pressing it into his free hand.

      ‘Fill them and come back quick, boy,’ he said.

      Temujin nodded, turning towards the sound of the nearby river. He wished Khasar and Kachiun could have been there. He missed them already and it was not hard to imagine the peaceful scene as they awoke in the ger he had known all his life, with Hoelun stirring them to begin their chores. The buckets were heavy as he headed back, but he wanted to eat and he did not doubt Sholoi would starve him if he gave him an opportunity.

      The stove had been lit by the time he returned and Borte had vanished from her blankets. Sholoi’s grim little wife, Shria, was fussing around the stove, nursing the flames with tapers before shutting the door with a clang. She had not spoken a word to him since his arrival. Temujin looked thirstily at the pot of tea, but Sholoi came in just as he put the buckets down and guided him back out into the quiet darkness with a two-fingered grip on his bicep.

      ‘You’ll join the felters later, when the sun’s up. Can you shear?’

      ‘No, I’ve never had …’ Temujin began.

      Sholoi grimaced. ‘Not much good to me, boy, are you? I can carry my own buckets. When it’s light you can collect sheep turds for the stove. Can you ride herd?’

      ‘I’ve done it,’ Temujin replied quickly, hoping he would be given his pony to tend the Olkhun’ut sheep and cattle. That would at least take him away from his new family for a while each day. Sholoi saw his eagerness and his toothless mouth curled like a wet, grubby fist.

      ‘Want to run back to your mother, boy, is that it? Frightened of a little hard work?’

      Temujin shook his head. ‘I can tan leather and braid rope for bridles and saddles. I can carve wood, horn and bone.’ He found himself blushing, though he doubted Sholoi could see in the starlit darkness. He heard the old man snort.

      ‘I don’t need a saddle for a horse I don’t have, do I? Some of us weren’t born into pretty silks and furs.’

      Temujin saw the old man’s blow coming and slipped it, turning his head. Sholoi wasn’t fooled and thumped at him until he fell sideways into the darker patch where the urine had eaten at the frost. As he scrambled to get up, Sholoi kicked his ribs and Temujin lost his temper. He sprang up fast and stood wavering, suddenly unsure. The old man seemed determined to humiliate him with every word, and he couldn’t understand what he wanted.

      Sholoi made a whistling sound of exasperation and then spat, reaching for him with his gnarled fingers. Temujin edged backwards, completely unable to find a response that would satisfy his tormentor. He ducked and protected himself from a rain of blows, but some of them found their mark. Every instinct told him to strike back and yet he was not sure Sholoi would even feel it. The old man seemed to have grown and become fearsome in the dark, and Temujin could not imagine how to hit him hard enough to stop the attack.

      ‘No more,’ he cried out. ‘No more!’

      Sholoi chuckled, holding the edge of Temujin’s deel in his unbreakable grip and panting as if he had run a mile in the noon sun.

      ‘I’ve broken ponies better than you, boy. With more spirit, too. You’re no better than I thought you were.’

      There was a world of scorn in his voice and Temujin realised he could see the old man’s features. The sun’s first light had come into the east and the tribe was stirring at last. Both of them sensed they were being watched at the same time, and when they turned, Borte was there, staring.

      Temujin flushed with shame more painful than the actual blows. He felt Sholoi’s hands fall away under Borte’s silent scrutiny and the old man seemed discomfited somehow. Without another word, he pushed past Temujin and disappeared into the fetid darkness of the ger.

      Temujin felt an itching drip of blood come from his nostril onto his top lip and he smeared it with an angry gesture, sick of all of them. The movement seemed to startle Sholoi’s daughter and she turned her back on him, running away into the dawn gloom. For a few precious moments he was on his own and Temujin felt lost and miserable. His new family were little better than animals from what he had seen, and it was only the beginning of the first day.

      Borte ran through the gers, dodging obstacles and flying past a barking dog as it tried to chase her. A few swift turns and it was left behind to yap and snarl in impotent fury. She felt alive when she ran, as if nothing in the world could touch her. When she stood still, her father could reach her with his hands, or her mother take a whip of silver birch to her back. She still carried the stripes from knocking over a pail of cool yoghurt two days before.

      The breath rushed cleanly in and out of her lungs and she wished the sun would stay frozen on the distant horizon. If the tribe remained asleep, she could find a little quiet and happiness away from their stares. She knew how they talked of her and there were times when she wished she could be like the other girls in the tribe. She had even tried it when her mother had cried over her once. One day was enough to become tired of sewing and cooking and learning how to ferment the black airag for the warriors. Where was the excitement in that? She even looked different from the other girls, with a thin frame and nothing more than tiny buds of breasts to spoil the rack of ribs that was her chest. Her mother complained she did not eat enough to grow, but Borte had heard a different message. She did not want big cow bosoms that would hang down for a man to milk her. She wanted to be fast like a deer and skinny like a wild dog.

      She snorted as she ran, revelling in the pleasure of feeling the wind. Her father had given her to the Wolf puppy without a second thought. The old man was too stupid to ask her whether she would have him or not. No. He would not have cared either way. She knew how hard her father could be and all she could do was run and hide from him, as she had a thousand times before. There were women in the Olkhun’ut who let her spend the night in their gers if old Sholoi was raging. Those were dangerous times, though, if their own men had been at the fermented milk. Borte always watched for the slurred voices and sweet breath that meant they would come grasping at her after dark. She had been caught once like that and it would not happen again, not while she carried her little knife, at least.

      She raced past the final gers of the tribe and made a decision to reach the river without being conscious of it. The dawn light revealed the snaking black line of the water and she felt the speed was still there in her legs. Perhaps she could leap it and never come down, like a heron taking off. She laughed at the thought of running like those ungainly birds, all legs and pumping wings. Then she reached the river bank and her thighs bunched and released. She flew and, for a moment of glory, she looked up into the rising sun and thought she would not have to come down. Her feet caught the far edge of the shadowed river bank and tumbled her onto grass still stiff with frost, breathless at her own flights of imagination. She envied the birds who could drift so far from the land beneath them. How they must delight in the freedom, she thought, watching the sky for their dark shapes rising into the dawn. Nothing would give her more pleasure than simply to be able to spread wings and leave her mother and father behind like ugly specks on the ground. They would be small beneath her, she was sure, like insects. She would fly all the way to the sun and the sky father would welcome her. Until he too raised his hand against her, and she had to fly again. Borte was not too sure about the sky father. In her experience, men of any stripe were too similar to the stallions she saw mounting the mares of the Olkhun’ut. They were hot enough before and during the act, with their long poles waving around beneath them. Afterwards, they cropped the grass as if nothing had happened and she saw no tenderness there. There was no mystery to the act after living in the same ger as her parents all her life. Her father took no account of his daughter’s presence if he decided to pull Shria to him СКАЧАТЬ