‘Be careful, Jochi,’ Chagatai warned him loudly. ‘He will strike you too.’

Jochi glared. He wanted to contradict him, but he could not boast of his speed while his father stood and bled.

‘Have you hunted one of these tigers, in Koryon land?’ Jochi asked.

Chagatai shrugged.

‘They are not common around the king’s palaces.’ Under Jochi’s flat stare, he could not help going on. ‘I would have taken part, if one had been found.’

‘Perhaps,’ Jochi said, frowning. ‘Though I doubt Jelme would have risked the life of a young boy against such a monster.’

Chagatai’s whole face flushed as some of the men chuckled. Moments before, he had been the master of the crowd. Somehow, his father and Jochi had stolen his moment from him, so that he had to defend his pride. At fifteen years old, he had only spite and he lashed out without a thought at the only one he dared challenge.

‘You think you could face a tiger, Jochi? I would wager a fortune to see that.’

Jelme opened his mouth, but Jochi’s anger leapt and he spoke rashly.

‘Name your terms, brother,’ he said. ‘I will consider teaching your cat a little respect. He has shed my father’s blood, after all.’

‘This is drunken foolishness,’ Jelme snapped.

‘No, let him try,’ Chagatai replied as fast. ‘I will wager a hundred cartloads of my share of the Koryon tribute. Ivory, metal, gold and lumber.’ He waved a hand as if it mattered nothing. ‘If you kill the tiger, it will be yours.’

‘And you will kneel to me, in front of all the tribes,’ Jochi said. Anger consumed him, making him reckless. His eyes glittered as he stared up at Chagatai, but the younger man still sneered.

‘For that, you will have to do more than kill a tiger, brother. For that you will have to be khan. Perhaps not even that will be enough.’

Jochi’s hand dropped to his sword hilt and he would have drawn if Jelme had not laid a hand on his wrist.

‘Will you fight like children in front of the camp? On the night my father is honoured? The tiger is a king’s gift to the khan. No one else may decide what is to be done with him.’ His eyes were furious and Chagatai dipped his gaze, instantly meek. During his training, he had endured harsh punishments and scathing lectures from the general. The habit of obedience ran deep.

Genghis spoke at last, having watched the entire exchange.

‘I accept the gift,’ he said. His yellow eyes seemed the same colour as those of the big cat yowling at their backs. Jochi and Chagatai bowed their heads low rather than have the khan’s temper erupt. When he was drunk, Genghis was likely to knock a man down for staring.

‘We could pack a circle with armed warriors,’ Genghis said thoughtfully, ‘pointing swords and lances to the centre. One man could face the beast then, if he wanted.’

‘These animals are more dangerous than anything else I have seen,’ Jelme said, his voice strained. ‘With women and children all around…’ He was caught between the need to obey his khan and the madness of what Genghis seemed to be considering.

‘Move the women and children back, general,’ Genghis replied with a shrug.

Jelme’s training was too ingrained to argue and he bowed his head to the inevitable. Chagatai did not dare look at him.

‘Very well, lord. I could have my men tie heavy planks together all the way around. We could use the catapults to form the structure.’

Genghis nodded, not caring how the problems were solved. He turned to Jochi as the young man stood stunned at where his bickering and pride had led. Even Chagatai seemed awed, but Genghis was making all the decisions and they could only look on.

‘Kill this beast and perhaps your brother will bend a knee to you,’ Genghis said softly. ‘The tribes will be watching, boy. Will they see a khan in you?’

‘Or a corpse, or both,’ Jochi said without hesitation. He could not back down, not with his father and Chagatai waiting for it. He looked up at the tiger in its cage and knew it would kill him, but somehow he could not care. He had ridden with death before, in Tsubodai’s charges. At seventeen, he could gamble with his life and think nothing of it. He took a deep breath and shrugged.

‘I am ready,’ Jochi said.

‘Then form the circle, and place the cage within it,’ Genghis said.

As Jelme began to send his men for wood and ropes, Jochi beckoned to Chagatai. Still stunned, the younger brother leapt lightly down, rocking the cart and bringing a snarl from the tiger that scraped along the nerves.

‘I will need a good sword if I am to face that animal,’ Jochi said. ‘Yours.’

Chagatai narrowed his eyes, fighting to hide his triumph. Jochi could not survive against a tiger. He knew the Koryons would not hunt one without at least eight men and those well trained. He was staring into the eyes of a dead man and he could not believe his luck. On a sudden impulse, he unstrapped the sword Genghis had given him three years before. He felt the loss as its weight left him, but still his heart was full.

‘I will have it back when that beast has torn your head off,’ he murmured. No one else could hear.

‘Perhaps,’ Jochi said. He could not resist a glance at the animal in the cage. Chagatai saw the look and chuckled aloud.

‘It is only fitting, Jochi. I could never have accepted a rape-born bastard as khan.’ He walked away, leaving Jochi staring at his back in rage.

As the sun set, the circle took shape on the plains grass. Under Jelme’s watchful eye, it was a solid construction of oak and beech brought from Koryo, bound with heavy ropes and buttressed at all points by catapult platforms. Forty paces across, there was no entrance and no escape from the ring. Jochi would have to climb over the barricades and open the cage himself.

As Jelme ordered torches lit all round the circle, the entire nation pressed as close as they could. At first, it looked as if only those who could climb the walls would have a view, but Genghis wanted the people to see, so Jelme had used carts as platforms in an outer ring, raising men on pyramids of pine ladders, nailed roughly together. They swarmed over the towers like ants and more than one drunken fool fell onto the heads of those below, packed so tightly that the ground was hidden from sight.

Genghis and his generals had the best places on the ring and the khan had led them in drinking themselves almost blind as the third day wore on. Arslan had been toasted and honoured, but by then the whole camp knew a khan’s son would fight a foreign beast and they were excited at the closeness of death. Temuge had come with the last of the carts from the camp by the Orkhon river. He took most of the bets from the warriors, though only on the length of the fight to come. No one gambled on Jochi to win against the striped horror that lashed its tail and padded back and forth, staring out at them.

As night fell, the only light on the plains was that circle, a golden eye surrounded by the heaving mass of the Mongol nation. Without being asked, the drummer boys had begun to beat the rhythms of war. Jochi had retired to Jelme’s own ger to rest that afternoon and they waited on him, eyes turning constantly to catch the first glimpse of the khan’s son coming out.

Jelme stood and looked down on the young man seated on a low bed, his father’s sword across his knees. Jochi wore the heavy armour Tsubodai had given him, layered in finger-width scales of iron over thick cloth, from his neck to his knees. The smell of sour sweat was strong in the ger.

‘They’re calling for you,’ Jelme said.

‘I hear,’ Jochi replied, his mouth tightening.

‘I can’t say you don’t have to go. You do.’ Jelme began to reach out with his hand, intending to place it on the younger man’s shoulder. Instead, he let it fall and sighed. ‘I can say that this is a stupid thing to be doing. If I’d known how it would turn out, I’d have turned the cat loose in the Koryon forests.’