Volume Two元朝秘史 卷02

Munglik went to Dei Sechen as Yesugei had told him, and said, "Yesugei thinks of Temujin and grieves for him bitterly, and he has sent me to fetch him." Dei Sechen said, "If he thinks of him so, let the boy go and see him and come straight back." So Munglik took him and went back.

That spring, when Orbei and Sokhatai, the two wives of Emperor Ambaghai, made the offering to the ancestors, Hoelun came late and was given none of the offering food. Hoelun said, "Because Yesugei is dead, do you think my sons will never grow up? Why do you not give me the share of the offering meat that goes to the elders? You see me before your eyes and give me no food. Is this not a sign that you will not call us when the camp moves?"

Orbei and Sokhatai, those two wives, said, "You keep no manners of asking and being called; wherever there is food you would simply eat. Because Emperor Ambaghai is dead, are we to be spoken to like this by Hoelun?"

"Since it has come to this, let us leave this mother and her sons at the camp site and not take them with us." The next day, when they set out, Targutai Kiriltug and Todoyen Girte and the rest did indeed leave the mother and her sons behind. When an old man named Charakha tried to stop them, Todoyen Girte said, "The deep water has dried up, the bright stone has broken." He would not listen to him, and as he set out he ran a spear into old Charakha's back.

When old Charakha lay wounded in his tent, Temujin came to see him. The old man said, "They have taken away the people your father gathered, the people of us all, and when I tried to stop them they wounded me like this." Temujin went out weeping. Hoelun mounted her horse herself, had her people take up the spear with the standard, and led them out, and turned half of the people back. But the half she turned back would not stay either, and all of them followed the Taichiud away.

When the Taichiud brothers left the mother and her sons behind, Hoelun was hard and able, and she gathered fruit and dug up grass roots and kept her sons alive. In such hard times she raised her sons, and as they grew they all had the bearing of kings.

The sons Hoelun raised on herbs all grew well, and could stand up to any man. To feed their mother they bent a needle into a hook and fished in the Onon River, and they wove a net and caught fish, and so fed their mother.

One day the four brothers Temujin, Khasar, Bekter and Belgutei sat fishing together. Temujin caught a golden fish, and his half brothers Bekter and Belgutei took it from him. Temujin and Khasar, the two brothers, came home and said to their mother, "I caught a golden fish, and Bekter and Belgutei took it from me." Their mother said, "Why do you brothers act so?" Then she spoke in a likeness: "Beside our shadows we have no companion, beside our tails we have no whip. We cannot even repay the suffering the Taichiud brothers have laid on us. Why then are you as unpeaceful as the five children of Lady Alan long ago? Do not act so."

After that Temujin and Khasar, the two brothers, were not pleased with their mother's words, and said again, "The other day I shot a sparrow, and that too was taken from me; this time I caught a fish, and again it was taken. How are we to live in one place like this?" When they had said it, the two brothers threw back the door curtain and went out. Bekter was then sitting on a small hill, grazing the horses. Temujin hid behind him and Khasar in front of him, and as they drew their arrows to shoot him, Bekter saw them and said, "You cannot bear the suffering the Taichiud brothers lay on us, so how will you ever take revenge? Why do you look on me as a hair in the eye, a thorn in the mouth, and cannot bear me? If I die, I die; but do not cast off my younger brother Belgutei." When he had said it, he sat cross-legged and waited for their arrows. The two brothers, from before and from behind, shot Bekter dead.

When Temujin and Khasar came home, their mother Hoelun saw the look on the faces of her two sons and knew it in her heart, and said, "When you were born, you came holding a clot of black blood in your hands. You are like a dog that eats its own afterbirth, like a wild beast that charges a cliff, like a lion that cannot hold back its rage, like a python that swallows living things whole, like a falcon that strikes at its own shadow, like a great fish that swallows without a sound, like a maddened camel that bites the hocks of its own calf, like a wolf that trusts the blizzard to kill, like a mandarin duck that eats its young when it cannot drive them along, like a jackal that guards its den, like a tiger that seizes without a moment's doubt, like a wild beast that attacks whatever comes. Beside your shadow you have no companion, beside your tail you have no whip. You cannot even bear the suffering the Taichiud brothers lay on you, so how will you take revenge? When you think of that, you should know how to live — and yet you do this." So she drew on the words of the old people and reproached her sons.

While they were living so, Kiriltug of the Taichiud said, "Temujin and his mother, whom we left behind, must by now have grown their feathers like the young of birds, and grown big like the young of beasts." And he led his companions and came to see. When Temujin and his mother saw them coming, they were afraid in their hearts. Belgutei broke wood in the thick forest and set up a palisade, and hid the three little ones, Khachiun and Temuge and Temulun, in a cleft of the cliff. While Khasar and the Taichiud shot at one another, the Taichiud cried out in a loud voice, "Give us only your elder brother Temujin. The rest of you we do not want." At this Temujin was afraid, and he mounted and fled into the mountain forest. The Taichiud saw him and gave chase as far as a mountain named Tergune. Temujin pushed into the thick forest, and the Taichiud could not go in, and kept watch all around it.

Temujin passed three nights in the thick forest, and as he came out leading his horse, the saddle he had tied on slipped and fell to the ground. He went back and looked, and the breast strap and the girth were buckled as before. He said, "If the girth were buckled and the saddle slipped, that might still be. But with the breast strap buckled as well, how could the saddle have slipped? Is Heaven not stopping me?" So he went back and stayed three days more. When he came out again, a white rock as big as a tent had rolled down and blocked the mouth of the forest. Temujin said, "Is Heaven not stopping me?" And he went back again and stayed three days more. In all he stayed nine days, and having nothing to eat he said, "Rather than die here without a name, it is better to go out." With the knife he used to shave arrows he cut away the wood beside the rock that blocked the mouth, and led his horse down the mountain, and the men the Taichiud had set to watch seized him and took him away.

Targutai Kiriltug took Temujin away and gave an order among his people that he should be kept one night in each camp and passed along. It was the sixteenth day of the fourth month. The Taichiud held a feast on the bank of the Onon River, and broke it up as the sun went down. At that time one young and weak man was set to guard Temujin. Temujin saw that the people had scattered, and struck the young weak man on the head with the end of the cangue and knocked him down, and fled. He went to the woods on the bank of the Onon and lay down, and fearing that he would be seen, he went into the current of the Onon River and lay on his back, his body in the water and only his face showing. The man who had lost him cried out in a loud voice, "The prisoner has escaped!" At the cry the Taichiud who had scattered came together, and in moonlight as bright as day they lined up and searched the woods on the bank of the Onon. Temujin lay in the current, and a man of the Suldus, Sorkhan Shira by name, came searching past him and saw him plainly, and said, "It is just because you have such wits that the Taichiud brothers envy you and mean to harm you. Be careful, lie just as you are. I will not tell them." So saying, he passed on.

When the Taichiud came back and talked of lining up to search again, Sorkhan Shira spoke once more. "You lost the man in broad daylight; how will you find him in this black night? Go back along the way you came, search with care the places you have not yet seen, then scatter, and gather again tomorrow to look. Where can a man in a cangue go?" So he said, and as they turned back to search, Sorkhan Shira passed by again and said to Temujin, "We will line up and search this one time, and then go back, and come again tomorrow to look. Now, after we have scattered, go and find your mother and your brothers. If you meet anyone, do not say that I saw you." When he had said it, he passed on.

After they had scattered, Temujin thought in his heart and said, "The other day, when each camp in turn was set to guard me, I slept in the house of Sorkhan Shira, and his two sons, Chimbai and Chilaun, took pity on me and loosed the cangue at night and let me sleep at ease. Now Sorkhan Shira has seen me and would not tell the others, and has passed by several times. If I go to him now, he will surely save me." So he went along the Onon River to look for Sorkhan Shira.

The mark of that house was that they churned mare's milk from night until dawn. He went following that mark with his ears, and heard the sound of the churning of mare's milk, and came to the house. When he went in, Sorkhan Shira said, "I told you to go and find your mother and your brothers. Why have you come again?" His two sons, Chimbai and Chilaun, said, "When a sparrow is driven by a hawk into the thicket, even the thicket saves its life. Grass can do that much; if we cannot save a man who has come to us, are we not worse than a thicket?" So they struck the cangue off Temujin and burned it, and hid him in a cart loaded with wool behind the house, and charged their sister, Khadaan by name, to watch over him, saying, "Say nothing of this to anyone."

On the third day the Taichiud brothers said, "Has someone not hidden Temujin? Let us search our own households." So they searched as far as the house of Sorkhan Shira, through the rooms and the carts and under the beds, and last of all they climbed onto the cart loaded with wool and threw the wool out from the front of the cart until they reached the back. Then Sorkhan Shira said, "In heat like this, if there were a man inside the wool, how could he bear it?" At that the searchers got down from the cart and went.

After the searchers had gone, Sorkhan Shira said to Temujin, "You all but put out my smoke and my fire. Now go and find your mother and your brothers." And he gave him a mare that had never foaled, licorice yellow with a white muzzle, and no saddle on her, and boiled a fat lamb that had sucked two mothers and put it in a leather bucket for him, and gave him mare's milk, and gave him besides a bow and two arrows. He did not give him a fire steel, and sent him off so.

Temujin went, and following the traces at the place where they had made their palisade, he went up along the Onon River. There was a river named Kimurkha, running west into the Onon. On the bank of that small river he saw the traces of people who had passed, and he went up along that small river, looking. On the bank of that small river there was a mountain named Beder, and at the foot of that mountain there was a lone hill named Khorchukhai, and there he met his mother and his brothers.

After Temujin met them there, he went on to a mountain named Gurelgu in front of Mount Burkhan. In that mountain was the Senggur River, and on its bank a small hill named Khara Jirugen, and there was a blue lake. They made their camp there and lived, catching marmots and field mice and eating them.

One day eight pale white geldings of Temujin's were driven off from the camp by thieves. There was also one licorice yellow horse, which his brother Belgutei had ridden out to catch marmots, and in the evening he came back with the marmots loaded on it. Temujin said, "My horses have been driven off." When he had said it, Belgutei said, "I will go after them." Khasar said, "You cannot. I will go after them." Temujin said again, "Neither of you can. I will go." And he mounted that licorice yellow horse and followed the track the eight horses had swept, and rode three nights. Early that day, among many herds of horses on the road, he saw a brisk young man milking a mare, and asked him, "Have you seen eight pale white geldings pass this way?" The young man said, "Before sunrise this morning eight such horses were driven past here. I will show you the track they took." When he had said it, he let loose the horse Temujin was riding and gave him a white horse with a black back to ride instead. He did not go home either, but covered the leather bucket and the leather pail he had been milking into with grass, and said to Temujin, "You have come a very hard road. A man's hardships are all alike. I will be your companion and go after them with you. My father is called Nakhu Bayan, and he has only me for a son. My own name is Boorchu." When he had said it, they followed the track and rode three nights more. At nightfall they came to the pen of some people, and saw the eight horses standing outside the pen. Temujin said, "Companion, stand here. I will go and drive these horses out." Boorchu said, "I have come as your companion. How should I stand here?" They galloped in together and drove the horses out.

Men came chasing after them one after another. One man on a white horse, a lasso pole in his hand, drew little by little up to them. Boorchu said, "Give me the bow and arrows. I will shoot it out with him." Temujin said, "I fear you will be hurt on my account. I will shoot it out with him." And he turned back and shot it out with him. The man on the white horse pointed his lasso pole at Temujin and said, "Stand there." After him the companions of those thieves came chasing up as well. When the sun had set and dusk had come and the sky was dark, the men who came behind all halted and fell back.

From that night they rode three days and nights without stopping, and came back to Nakhu Bayan. Temujin said to Boorchu, "Had it not been for you, how would I have got these horses? The two of us may divide them. How many will you take?" Boorchu said, "I saw that you had come in hardship, and so I helped you and went as your companion. How should I take what is yours as if it were a windfall? My father has only me for a son, and the property he has made is enough and more for me. I will not take what is yours. If I took what is yours, what good would there have been in going as your companion?" So he said.

When they came to the house of Nakhu Bayan, they found him shedding tears and weeping because he had lost his son Boorchu. Suddenly he saw that they had come, and looking at his son he wept on one side and scolded on the other. His son Boorchu said, "I do not know what the trouble is. I saw this good companion come in hardship, and I went with him as his companion, and now I have come back." When he had said it, he rode off and brought back the leather bucket and the leather pail he had covered over, and killed a fat lamb that had sucked two mothers, and filled a leather bucket with mare's milk, and made it all ready to be loaded, for Temujin's food on the road. Nakhu Bayan said, "You are both young. Look to each other always, and never cast each other off hereafter." Temujin took his leave and rode three days and nights, and came to his home on the bank of the Senggur River. His mother Hoelun and his brother Khasar and the rest were in the midst of their sorrow, and when they saw him come back they were very glad.

In the beginning, when Temujin was nine years old, he had parted from Borte Ujin, the daughter of Dei Sechen. Now he went with his brother Belgutei along the Kerulen River to look for her, and came between the two mountains Chekcher and Chigurgu, and found the house of Dei Sechen. When Dei Sechen saw Temujin he was very greatly glad, and said, "I heard that the Taichiud brothers envied you, and I grieved bitterly and gave up all hope; and today at last I see you." When he had said it, he gave his daughter Borte to Temujin as his wife. Dei Sechen and his wife Chotan together saw Temujin and his wife on their way. When they came to the edge of Ulakh Chol on the Kerulen River, Dei Sechen went home. Chotan saw her daughter all the way to Temujin's house.

Chotan saw her daughter to Temujin's house and went home. Afterwards Temujin wished to have Boorchu for his companion, and sent Belgutei to call him. When Boorchu saw Belgutei, he did not even tell his father, but mounted a yellow horse with an arched back, loaded a blue woolen coat on it, and came together with Belgutei. From that time he was his companion, and they never parted again.

They moved from the bank of the Senggur River and came to the foot of a bank named Burgi at the head of the Kerulen River, and made their camp and lived there. Borte Ujin, the daughter of Chotan, had brought a black sable coat as her gift on meeting her husband's parents. Temujin said, "In former days our father Emperor Yesugei swore friendship with Ong Khan of the Kereit, and so he is as a father to me. He is living now in the black forest on the bank of the Tola River, and I will give him this coat." So Temujin and his two brothers took the coat and went. When they saw Ong Khan, Temujin said, "In former days you swore friendship with my father, and so you are as a father to me. Now I bring the gift my wife brings on meeting her husband's parents, and give it to my father." And at once he gave him the black sable coat. Ong Khan received the coat, and in great gladness he said, "Your people who have left you, I will gather for you; the people who have scattered, I will bring together for you. I will keep this well in my heart."