Nobody spoke on the way down.
Halfway, Temüjin's legs stopped taking instruction.
He got a hand onto a rock that was there and went down onto one knee in the grass and threw up again and again with nothing left to come up his stomach, and couldn't get his hands to stop shaking.
This was his first killing since arriving in this world. With the case of old man Charaqa, he was just the witness but this time, he was the active participant. He directly cause the death of another person, before his time has come. And Temüjin knew this wouldn't be the last if he were to walk his chosen path.
Nothing in his mind palace had prepared his hands for this. There was no version of it in any book he had ever read. The books had the year and the fact of it and moved on, and none of them said that a man that close does not go quiet, and does not go fast.
Khasar stopped a little way down the slope and waited without coming back up, looking out at the river, and did not say anything at all.
Then Temüjin got up, and wiped his mouth on his forearm, and they went the rest of the way in.
***
The camp was where they had left it. Somewhere off to the right Sochigel was at her own fire, doing something with both of her hands, and she did not look up, and neither of them looked at her.
They came in through the felt door of their mother's ger one after the other.
Hoelun was sitting where she had been sitting. She first looked at Khasar, and then at Temüjin, and she realized what had transpired.
He had known this was coming. The books record it just as half a line: she reproached them bitterly. But he knew better. He knew he had crossed the bridge of no return when it came to how his mother looked at him.
She came across the ger at him.
She got a hand round his jaw and turned his face up to hers and held it there.
"When he came out of me,", her eyes shaking slightly, trying to contain her fury, "when he tore his way out of the heat of me, he came out with his fist shut on a black clot of blood. I was afraid of my own son before he had drawn breath. I have never said that to a living soul, and I am saying it now, out loud, in front of your brothers."
Her voice rose higher than she started at.
"You are a dog that turns round and eats what it came out of! A camel that bites the heel of its own calf! A duck that eats the ducklings it cannot keep in line!!"
She was shouting, and it was still arriving in order. Every one of the sayings, older than her and her mothers and grandmothers, and women had been putting them on their sons since there were tribes on this steppe, and she had never had to use a single one, until now.
She let go of his face but did not step back.
"A lion that cannot hold its own anger for the length of one breath. A wolf that comes in behind the snow so that nothing smells it coming. A dog off the hills that goes in with the pack, and only when it is safe, and never on its own." She was close enough that he felt her say it. "A hawk that stoops at its own shadow."
Temüge had got round behind Khasar at some point. Nobody in the ger moved, and nobody made a sound, and she was not finished.
"You have killed."
Then she stopped to breathe, inhaling in and out, gathered herself before she continued.
"We have no friend but our shadow. No whip but our horse's tail. I said it to you this morning across that fire and you stood there and heard me say it."
She tried to keep her voice steady but couldn't in the end. "We are nine people who were left on a riverbank to die by our own kin, and we did not die, and I do not know yet how we did not. And EVERY NIGHT I lie there praying to the Tengri that we may get through another winter, and my sons went up the hill to kill their own brother!"
"How am I supposed to stand it," she said. "And what is it you think you have done?"
Temüjin had nothing. He had spent a year finding out that he had no satisfying answer. Was it because he did not want to see Bekter claim his mother? Or was it because he knew from the start that Bekter was in his way to a great destiny?
Even he himself didn't know if it was both reasons or just one of them.
Then she went back to what she had been doing before they came in. Because despite everything that happened, they still needed to survive, even if one member short.
She banked the fire. She put the pot on and sent Temüge out for water. She asked Khasar whether the bay had been favouring the near fore again, but did not look at Temüjin again.
She did not ask him another question that night, or for a long time after it.
***
Sochigel went up the rise herself after Hoelun told her about the transgression and brought Bekter down before dark.
You do not leave a body out in the open, as the customs dictate. That was the whole of what could be done that day, and it was hers to do, and she did not ask anyone for help.
The burial needed a horse killed over him, and they had nine, and they did not have a spare for Bekter. It needed his own dwelling pulled down, but the ger he had slept in his whole life was Sochigel's. And years from now, when there was nothing left of him but bones, they would have to go somewhere high.
Nobody said anything about it at the fire.
There were two gers in that camp and two smoke holes.
Hoelun's had smoke going up out of it, thin and steady, into a sky that was still light at the top. The other one had nothing coming out of it at all.
Sochigel's door had been down since the middle of the afternoon and it stayed down. Belgütei was sitting outside it on the grass with his arms round his knees. Somebody had put food on the ground beside him and there wasn't a single trace that he had touched it since.
Nobody in the camp made a sound.
He had read in the books that a death on the steppe is loud. A woman who has lost a son is heard, from a long way off, and the wails are heard by everybody, and there is no version of it she does alone.
He stood in a camp of eight people and the only sounds he got were the horses and the river.
He had given his word about that fire a few hours ago to the dying man. Nobody had put it out. It had gone out because the owner of the fire had not come out of her ger to do anything about it.
And just like Hoelun's never ending work, somebody had to watch the horses.
Temüjin went up and did it himself, and stayed up there until it was properly dark. From the top he could see all of it—two gers, a meat pole, one fire.
The door stayed down. No smoke came.
***
Terms
- the burial — it comes in two stages, and they can be years apart. On the day of the death, the body is taken out of sight. It is not a funeral. The second part of burial waits until the flesh is gone and there are only bones. Those bones are then carried to somewhere high and laid to watch over the family they came from. Doing it complete is expensive so a poor household can owe the second stage for years.
- the wailing — the sound a death of a family member makes, and it is public. Loud, unrestrained, and kept up for a long time; everyone in the camp joins in, and a woman who has lost a son is heard first, heard longest, and heard from furthest away.