Джек Уезерфорд - Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

The third option was to follow the Tuul River, which flowed toward the southwest, to seek the help of Ong Khan, to whom he had given the sable coat. At that time, Temujin had declined the offer to make him a subordinate leader under Ong Khan’s authority. Now, only a year later, with the life he had chosen instead shattered by the Merkid raiders, Temujin still seemed reluctant to plunge into the internecine struggle of khan against khan, but there seemed no other way to get back his bride.

Though he had sought to create a quiet life apart from the constant turmoil of steppe warfare, the Merkid raid had taught him that such a life was simply not to be had. If he did not want to live the life of an impoverished outcast, always at the mercy of whatever raiders chose to swoop down on his encampment, he would now have to fight for his place in the hierarchy of steppe warriors; he would have to join in the harsh game of constant warfare he had thus far avoided.

Aside from all the issues of politics, hierarchy, and spiritual power, Temujin showed how desperately he missed Borte, the one person in a short and tragedy-laden life who brought him happiness. Despite the emotional reserve that Mongol men were expected to show in public, particularly in the presence of other men, Temujin made a strong emotional affirmation of his love for Borte and of his pain without her. He lamented that not only had the attackers left his bed empty, but they had cut open his chest, broken his heart.

Temujin chose to fight. He would find his wife, or he would die trying. After those three difficult days of pondering, praying, and planning on the mountain, Temujin followed the Tuul River down to search for the camp of Ong Khan and seek his help. But he would do so not as a lonely outcast; he would do so as the rightful son who had already brought the powerful Ong Khan a prize sable coat and allegiance.

When Temujin found Ong Khan and explained that he wanted to launch a raid on the Merkid, the old khan immediately agreed to help. Had he not wanted to fight, Ong Khan could easily have deferred and instead offered Temujin another wife from the women in his own encampment. The old khan, however, had a lingering feud of his own with the Merkid, and Temujin’s request offered him a pretext to attack and loot them once again.

Ong Khan also sent Temujin to seek additional support from a rising young Mongol ally of the khans, one who had been proving himself an adept warrior and had attracted a sizable following. This man was none other than Temujin’s sworn anda, Jamuka of the Jadaran clan. Jamuka readily agreed to the summons from his khan to help his young blood brother fight against the Merkid. Together they would form the steppe ideal of a good army, with Ong Khan leading the Right (west) Wing, and Jamuka leading the Left (east) Wing. The armies of Ong Khan and Jamuka gathered with Temujin’s small band at the source of the Onon River near Burkhan Khaldun, from whence they would cross the mountains and drop down on the steppes into Merkid territory along the Selenge River, in the direction of Lake Baikal.

Temujin had survived many difficult scrapes in his short life, without engaging in an actual raid. In this raid, he would prove himself up to the task, though the raid was really more of a rout. Some Merkid on a night hunt in the mountains saw the attacking army and rushed word back to alarm their people, arriving only a little ahead of the invading horsemen. The Merkid began fleeing for safety downstream, and panic overtook the whole string of encampments. As the raiders began their looting of the Merkid’s gers, Temujin is said to have raced from camp to camp among those left behind crying out Borte’s name, but Borte, who had been given as a wife to an older Merkid warrior, was loaded into a cart and sent away from the battle. She did not know who was attacking her new home and did not want to be kidnapped again; she had no reason to suspect that the attack was launched to rescue her.

The Secret History describes in detail how suddenly, from amid the confusion and turmoil around her, Borte heard a voice crying out her name and recognized it as Temujin’s. Jumping from the cart, she raced through the darkness toward the voice. Temujin twisted frantically in his saddle as he peered out at the night and shouted her name again and again. He became so distraught that he did not know her as she ran toward him, and when she grabbed the reins of his horse and snatched them from this hand, he almost attacked her before he recognized her, whereupon they “threw themselves upon each other” in an emotional embrace.

Although the other two women were not rescued, Temujin had won his wife back again, and nothing else mattered now. He had inflicted upon the Merkid the same pain that they had caused him, and he was ready to return home. The Secret History reports that he said to the attacking troops, “We have made their breasts to become empty. . . . And we have made their beds to become empty. . . . And we have made an end of the men and their descendants. . . . And we have ravished those who remained. . . . The Merkid people being so dispersed, let us withdraw ourselves.”

After the decisive victory over the Merkid and Borte’s emotional reunion with Temujin, the newly reunited couple, still well under twenty years of age, might have hoped to live joyously together, at least for awhile. But as happens in life, the solution to one problem can create another. Temujin