The Great Khan

He is born on the frozen Onon with a clot of blood in his fist and named for a man his father has just killed. At nine his father is poisoned at an enemy’s fire. At ten his own clan strikes its tents and leaves his mother and her children on the river to starve. This is the life of Temüjin from that winter to the day a hundred thousand people name him Chinggis Khan. He kills a half-brother over a fish. He wears a wooden yoke for a season and escapes by floating in a river. His wife is carried off because the camp has too few horses. His sworn brother, Jamukha, wins their first battle and then boils seventy prisoners alive, and loses the steppe for it. Beaten and hunted, he drinks muddy water with nineteen men of nine peoples and swears an oath with them. The story follows the old sources, chiefly The Secret History of the Mongols. The thoughts and the dialogue are invented. A prologue and forty short chapters in six parts, with a note on sources. The Prologue and the first chapter are free.

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