Wolf of the Plains by Conn Iggulden

Author:Conn Iggulden [Iggulden, Conn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780440336860
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-10-30T07:00:00+00:00

Eeluk did not think to search the gers of the families. His initial good humor faded visibly as the second day passed and then the third with no sign of the fugitive. At the end of the fourth day, Basan returned to Temujin to report that Arslan and his son had also vanished. They had ridden north that morning with one of the bondsmen, but none of them had returned by sunset and Eeluk was beside himself with rage. He had sent men to the ger he had given the swordsmith and found that his most valuable tools had vanished along with him. No one was expecting the bondsman to come back, and the wailing of his family could be heard long into the night. The mood of the Wolves had soured and Eeluk had knocked a man unconscious for questioning his decision to send them out again.

Temujin could barely remember the first two days. A fever had set in, perhaps from the stinking air of the pit. The freezing river had cleaned his skin and may have saved him. Basan’s wife had tended his wounds with stern efficiency, bathing away the worst of the remaining filth and dabbing at the blood and pus with a cloth dipped in boiled airag. He had groaned at her touch and had a memory of her hand over his mouth to stifle the sound.

Basan had left them to join the other men each morning, after stern warnings to his two sons not to say a word to anyone. They watched Temujin with owlish curiosity, frightened by the stranger who said nothing and bore such awful wounds. They were old enough to understand that their father’s life depended on their silence.

Eeluk had taken to drinking more and more heavily as his search parties returned empty-handed day after day. By the end of a week, he gave a drunken order for the families to continue farther north, leaving the pit and their bad luck behind them. That night, he retired to his ger with two of the youngest girls in the tribe, and their families had dared not complain. Basan took a late watch from midnight until dawn, seeing a chance to spirit Temujin out of the camp at last. The families were unhappy and nervous and he knew there would be eyes watching and listening whenever he moved. Though it was fraught with danger, Temujin would be discovered when the gers were dismantled, so it was that night or nothing.

It was hard to do anything in the tight-knit society of the tribe without it being noticed. Basan waited as close to midnight as he could, leaving the top felt off the ger and peering up at the stars as they crept across the bowl of sky above. As a result, they were all shivering by the time he judged the tribe was as quiet and still as it was going to get. Those who were still awake would not remark on a trusted bondsman going out to take his watch, though Basan had agonized over giving Temujin one of his ponies.

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