Eeluk would not give up, Temujin was certain. If the first hunt failed, he would send the entire tribe out to search for him, covering the land for a day’s ride around the camp. They knew he could not have gone farther, and they would certainly find him eventually. He lay staring up at the sky and realized there was only one place to go.

As the sun set, Temujin staggered to his feet, shivering so powerfully it felt as if he would shake himself apart. When his legs failed him, he crawled for a time across the grass. The torches of the camp could be seen from far away, and he realized he had not come such a great distance in his weakened state. Most of the hunters had probably taken a wider path to search for him.

He waited until the last rays of the sun had gone and the land was dark again and cold. His body seemed to be willing to bear him onward for a little longer, and he had long ceased to wonder at how far he could push his broken, damaged limbs. The river had unstuck his swollen eye and he found with relief that he could see out of it a little, though everything was blurred and it watered constantly, like tears.

He dreaded the dogs of the camp, though he hoped the river mud would keep his scent down. The thought of one of those vicious animals running out to savage him was a constant fear, but he had no other choice. If he stopped his hobbling crawl, he would be found in the second sweep of hunters in the morning. He went on, and when he looked back, he was surprised to see how far he had come.

He knew the ger he wanted and thanked the sky father that it was close to the edge of the quiet camp. He lay on his belly for a long time, at the edges, watching for the slightest movement. Eeluk had placed his sentries looking outward, but they would have needed the sight of an owl to see the muddy figure creeping forward on the dark earth.

After an age, Temujin reached out to touch the felt wall of a ger, feeling its dry coarseness with something like ecstasy. Every sense was heightened, and though his pain had returned, he felt alive and light-headed. He thought of trying to gain an entry under the wall, but it would have been pegged down and he did not want someone to shout in fear or think he was a wolf. He grinned to himself at the thought. He made a very ragged wolf, stealing down from the hills for warmth and milk. Clouds hid the stars and, in the darkness, he reached the little door to the ger and pushed it open, closing it behind him and standing panting in the deeper dark within.

“Who is it?” he heard a woman ask. To his left, he heard a rustle of blankets and another deeper voice.

“Who is there?” Basan said.

He would be reaching for a knife, Temujin knew.

“Temujin,” he whispered.

Silence greeted his name and he waited, knowing his life hung in the balance. He heard the strike of flint on steel, the flash lighting their faces for an instant. Basan’s wife and children were all awake and Temujin could only stare dully at them while Basan lit an oil lamp and shuttered the flame down to barely more than a glowing cinder.

“You cannot stay here,” Basan’s wife said.

Temujin saw the fear in her face, but he turned in mute appeal to his father’s bondsman and waited.

Basan shook his head, appalled at the shambling figure that stood hunched in his home.

“They are looking for you,” Basan said.

“Hide me, then, for a day, until the search is over,” Temujin replied. “I claim guest rights.” He did not hear an answer and he slumped suddenly, the last of his strength vanishing. He slid to his knees and his head lolled forward.

“We cannot send him away,” he heard Basan tell his wife. “Not to be killed.”

“He will kill us all,” she said, her voice rising in volume.

Blearily, Temujin watched Basan cross the ger to her, holding her face in both his hands.

“Make him tea and find something to eat,” he told her. “I will do this for his father.”

She did not respond, though she moved to the kettle and began stoking the little iron stove, her face hard. Temujin felt himself lifted in Basan’s strong arms and then darkness overwhelmed him.

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. He had eleven and loved them all as his children. In the end, he had chosen a small black mare and brought her to the door of his ger, tying on saddlebags with enough food to keep Temujin alive for the trip.

Temujin stood in the deepest shadow and struggled to find words to express his gratitude. He had nothing to give even the children, and he felt ashamed for the burden and fear he had brought into their home. Basan’s wife had not warmed to him, though Basan’s oldest son seemed to have lost his nervousness and replaced it with awe when he heard who the stranger was in their home. The little boy had visibly summoned his courage when Basan told them it would be that night, and approached Temujin with all the self-consciousness of his twelve years. To Temujin’s surprise, the boy had gone down on one knee and reached out for his hand, pressing it down on the top of his head, where Temujin could feel his scalp lock of hair against the bristly skin.