They were soon on the way to the winter pastures, moving with great speed, for hourly, now, the wind grew harsher and the air more bitter. Sand mixed with snow flayed their faces. The women and children huddled in the yurts, wrapping themselves against the cold. Temujin rode at the head of his people, carrying his ivory baton, the mace of the general or leader. About him rode his nokud, his paladins, Subodai, Chepe Noyon, Kasar, Jamuga Sechen, Arghun, the lute player, Muhuli and Bayan and Soo, generals of great craft and masters of battle, and Borchu, who has almost as prodigious a crossbowman as Kasar, who disliked him. There were many others also, but these were his favorites.
On the way, they were joined by hundreds of other men and their families, wandering clans who were former enemies, but who now were struck with awe and admiration of this young Yakka Mongol who had conquered Targoutai and his brother, and many other former khans. Despite the fact that some of these clans were poorly supplied with food, and even hungry, and badly armed, Temujin, against the demurs and suggestions of his nokud and noyon, welcomed them with hearty eagerness. He said:
“I measure strength not by treasure nor gold, nor the crafty politics of townsmen, but in man-power. Loyal numbers, at the last, are more powerful than paid mercenaries bought with the gold of cities, and stronger than the walls of Cathay.”
He looked at the new members of his tribe, and said: “A leader must be successful if he is to merit loyalty. Only fools and dreamers follow lost causes and weak generals. At the end, he who feedeth his people and giveth them pastures is he who deserveth their love.”
“It is not so simple,” protested Jamuga.
“In what way?” asked Temujin.
But Jamuga was unable to answer, though he set his mouth stubbornly.
Once Jamuga asked Kurelen if there was any manner in which he could show his sympathy for Temujin, because of the death of Azara. Kurelen only smiled and asked if Temujin were displaying any prostrating grief. Jamuga was forced to admit that he was not. “Perhaps thou art fanciful, then,” said Kurelen.
Jamuga felt disappointed, and somehow cheated. For, as the days passed, the darkness on Temujin’s face lifted, and he went about his business with his usual sureness and invincibility. His strong voice was as quick and brief as ever. He smiled as ever, shortly and sardonically. If he laughed less, he had never laughed much, and only a very acute ear could have detected this. Jamuga was angered at this insensitiveness, and though he told himself that Temujin never valued women as human beings, he ought, at least, to have shown in some way that he remembered the girl who had died because of him.
Sometimes they rode by the sparsely grassed edges of a yellow river, and Temujin turned his head to watch the cold sun glittering brightly on it. Jamuga thought: Is he remembering Azara’s hair? And sometimes, when the western sky was radiant with rose-tints, he thought: Is he remembering her mouth? But if Temujin were remembering, nothing in his calm and immobile face showed that this was so. He looked at the river and sky as always, dispassionately.
Only Bortei and the other women uneasily suspected what Jamuga now doubted. For since his return, despite his susceptibility to women, and his need of them, he had remained in his own yurt, night after night, alone.
Behind Temujin rumbled his city of carts, and his thousands upon thousands of warriors rode steadily. Behind them all came the herds and the herdsmen, shouting and driving. At night, the campfires burned boldly, for by now few would dare to attack them. Occasionally they would encounter caravans. Most of them were under Temujin’s protection, and he would stop only long enough to greet the traders and collect his tribute of money, jewels, woolens, horses, or slaves. He acquired a troupe of gay painted dancing-girls, and at night they would dance in the open, for the air was becoming softer each day. But though he apparently enjoyed watching them, and openly admired some, he still slept alone in his yurt. This, his other wives conceded, was at least a small satisfaction, though they gossiped and complained among themselves enough.
Temujin’s greatest amusement at this time was Kasar’s growing arrogance. Others were not quite so amused, but Temujin indulged his brother and encouraged him to display this arrogance. For Kasar, the simple and not too discriminating, had suddenly begun to realize that he was brother and noyon to a great khan. The other noyon and paladins were annoyed by his childlike insolence, especially when he affected an air of being close to Temujin’s counsels, and nodded his head with superior mystery on occasion. “Ah,” he would say, during a discussion, “I know something ye do not know! I have heard my lord speaking, as if to himself!”
They did not really believe him, but were irritated. Some of them mocked him, and one or two hardy ones challenged him to a wrestling match. But he was exceedingly strong, and none too fair, and so there were no more challenges. He bragged; he strutted; he preened; he nodded his head with cryptic smiles, until they began to look at him murderously. Some of them questioned if there were any truth in what he said, and felt themselves affronted and hurt.
“Oh, let him alone,” said Chepe Noyon, laughing. “He is only an ox, and hath no wit. Our lord would certainly not consult him in anything more important than the breeding of a mare, or the flight of an arrow.”
They admitted they did not believe him, but they longed to kick him heartily. Jamuga complained contemptuously, as did Borchu and Bayan and two or three others, but Temujin only laughed. It amused him to see Kasar strut and posture, and strike heroic attitudes before the women. When they raided a caravan not under his protection, Temujin, with a solemn face, announced that Kasar was to have the first choice of the spoils. He did it only to encourage Kasar to fresh amusing displays of mysterious arrogance, but the others were silently enraged.
Houlun, infuriated that Temujin had not reprimanded or punished Jamuga for her imprisonment, was by now openly hostile to him, and railed at him even when he was among his noyon.
“Thy brother, Kasar, is a fool,” she said angrily. “But folly is like a crippled limb, and should inspire only contempt and sympathy in others. Thou dost encourage his folly as though it were some fine mark of character, superior to that of other men.”
“He doth amuse me,” replied Temujin, with a rare display of good temper. “And at present, I desire to be amused. Tomorrow, perhaps I may not laugh. Let me laugh tonight.” And he made Kasar sit at his right hand, though he had never done this before.
There was some wanton and womanish perversity in him these days, and he seemed to laugh silently in himself when he saw the glum faces of the others.
The days did not pass peacefully all the time. During the long march they encountered hostile clans, who assaulted them, or were assaulted. But these Temujin was able to subdue with appalling ease. Before the winter had ended, one hundred thousand yurts followed the young khan, and countless herds. Before the spring had really come, he had called Bortei to him, and when the summer migration started, she jubilantly knew she was with child again.
The city of the tents moved north once more behind Temujin. His dream of a confederacy of the nomad clans had begun to take definite shape. The old men had warned him that this would never take place. He had told them: “A great king is he who doth begin a task that can never be accomplished, and doth accomplish it.”
The people worshipped him. They said of him that he was the Hawk of Heaven, the Falcon of the Eternal Blue Sky, the Subduer of all men. His terrible courage, his ferocity, his cunning and his resistless power dazzled them. They knew he was feared on the Gobi, and they held up their heads, proud to belong to the ordu of such a khan.
“I shall extend my rule over all my neighbors,” he said to his noyon. “I shall make the Gobi one empire. And then—”
“And then?” asked Chepe Noyon.
But Temujin only smiled, and looked eastwards. It was noticed when he did so that hatred was like a cold light on his face.