Daughter of the Yellow Dragon Chapter 1

Ongud Territory – Eastern Mongolia – Spring 1464

A warm breeze ruffled the hem of Mandukhai’s riding deel—a simple tunic wrap worn by the Mongol people. The spring breeze carried with it the promise of a coming summer, and she closed her eyes, smelling the fresh grass in the air and savoring this moment of peace.

All around her, the Ongud tribe busied themselves loading carts with the promised bride price. Women fussed over linens and chests of precious silver and jewels. Men checked the horses and oxen to ensure they were prepared for the journey ahead. Mandukhai did her best to ignore them all, to ignore her fate. The bones had been cast; the bargains struck.

Mandukhai would marry Manduul Khan, the ruler of the Mongol nation and a man she had never laid eyes on.

Ten steps away, her mother and step-father consulted with the soothsayer once more before her departure to be certain Mandukhai’s journey would be without peril. She wished she could not hear their conversation, but the breeze also carried with it the hushed words.

“It is assured,” Soothsayer Getei said confidently. He glanced her way. She pretended not to notice. “Your daughter will become the queen and bring honor to your family and her father’s name.”

Mandukhai had only just turned sixteen, and the last thing she dreamed of was becoming a queen. As a girl, her father had told her stories of Khutulun, the fierce warrior princess and daughter of Qaidu Khan of the Chagatai Khanate nearly two hundred years ago. Khutulun earned the respect of the men around her with her superb fighting skills. The tales Mandukhai’s father had spun depicted Khutulun as superhuman, able to ride into enemy ranks and snatch captives as easily as a hawk could snatch a chicken. Mandukhai could also ride with proficiency, shoot with accuracy, and hunt with stealth. Her father instilled a deep desire to be strong and respected like Khutulun.

I do not want to be a queen, father, she thought, folding her hands into the sleeves of her deel. I want to be a warrior, like Khutulun.

But a bargain had been struck between Mandukhai’s tribe and the Great Khan’s advisors. The Oirat had a stranglehold on the Great Khan’s trust, and after Mandukhai’s father betrayed Esen, khan of the Oirat, when she was only four, the Ongud had struggled to maintain peace between the opposing sides of a war. Mandukhai was the peace offering. Daughter of the Ongud and of the very man who betrayed Esen, she was the perfect choice. They had promised her to another Great Khan, years before, but he died before Mandukhai came of age. She had hoped that his death would bring about her freedom.

She never envisioned herself as a prize or a Khan’s wife. The young dreamer in her had always fantasized about meeting a strong man able to best her in wrestling or archery, someone who understood how to read the Eternal Blue Sky and predict the weather. Someone who knew how to live the life of a nomad as she did. A man who could see her for who she was and not just as a potential womb for sons.

“It is time,” her mother said, guiding Mandukhai’s horse by the reins.

Mandukhai shuddered.

Her mother’s forehead creased in sympathy. “Any girl would be thrilled to make such a match. You have been gifted a great honor, Mandukhai. You will be respected and cared for. Your marriage brings us peace, and your children will inherit the Nation.”

But Mandukhai didn’t want to be cared for. She was perfectly capable of caring for herself—to ride with proficiency, shoot with accuracy, and hunt with stealth.

Knowing this was goodbye, and that she may never see her mother again, Mandukhai thrust her arms around her mother and hugged her tight. Such displays were for children, but if these were her final days as a child, Mandukhai intended making the most of them.

Her mother hugged her back and whispered in her ear, “Remember what I told you about men. Be wary of who you trust. Keep Nergui close. He is sworn first to protect you above all others.”

“I will,” Mandukhai murmured back before letting go.

The withdrawal of her mother’s arms sharpened the cool spring air. Mandukhai wanted to retreat back into her embrace.

“Lady Mandukhai,” Nergui said from several feet away, mounted and ready to ride.

Mandukhai spun around, scanning the carts and seeking any excuse to delay the inevitable.

They had packed her felts onto a cart—felts she had dedicated years to pressing from wool for the future structure her husband’s family would provide. All was in order.

Once more, Mandukhai said goodbye to her mother, who sniffed one cheek. Mandukhai prayed her mother would not sniff the other. When she did, Mandukhai’s heart fell into the pit of her stomach. Her mother did not expect to see her again.

Raising her chin proudly, afraid of showing any sign of weakness to her tribe, Mandukhai mounted her horse and started her journey away from the eastern steppes of her Ongud tribe to Mongke Bulag where Manduul Khan had established his capital. She didn’t look back as her mother made offerings of milk to the earth mother.

The saddle creaked as Mandukhai rode beside Nergui, surrounded by a distant guard of men. Only one servant accompanied Mandukhai. The rest would be supplied by the Great Khan once they married.

Two young girls from the tribe had come along, but one had died one week into the trip after drinking unboiled river water. The other girl had had a fever. Mandukhai had attempted mixing silver shavings into the girl’s tea each night so the magical properties of the metal could heal her. The fever finally took the second girl as well. None of the silver could heal the girl’s ailment. Mandukhai’s one job was to protect them and keep them in the Great Khan’s court until they found a suitable marriage match. She had failed before even arriving.

At night, she heard the men whisper when she was supposed to be sleeping. Such death proved an ill omen. Once she was delivered and they had attended the marriage festivities in honor of the Ongud, they would return home and leave her to her fate. Only Nergui and Tuya would remain behind to protect her. The men sounded eager to wash their hands of her.

The hushed conversations drove Mandukhai closer to Nergui’s side on days such as today, where the men rode in a ring far enough that even their arrows would not reach her.

Nergui observed their surrounds as if expecting attacks to come from thin air. His vigilance was admirable, but she felt it a bit unnecessary with so many others around them.

Their group was set to arrive in Mongke Bulag before sundown. A rider had been sent ahead to alert the Great Khan’s men of her arrival.

“What can you tell me of Lady Yeke?” Nergui asked for the hundredth time.

The politics of the court had been hammered into Mandukhai’s memory for months, and Nergui tested her knowledge every day to be sure she retained the information.

“Lady Yeke is Manduul Khan’s first wife, and daughter of the Great Khan’s Vice Regent, Bigirsen of the Uyghur,” Mandukhai recited, followed by a puff of irritation. “Her marriage to the Great Khan created an alliance between the southern tribes and the Yuan.”

Nergui watched her, waiting. She knew what he waited for.

“Lord Bigirsen is a warlord and the Great Khan’s senior military advisor. He also controls what remains of the Silke Route,” Mandukhai spouted, allowing the boredom to bleed through her tone.

“And his allegiance?”

“To the Great Khan.”

Nergui frowned at her in a way that narrowed his eyes.

“To the Uyghur and Oirat,” she sighed.

The Oirat who murdered her father after he betrayed their leader, Esen, ten years ago. Mandukhai loathed the Oirat and was well aware that her new husband had an Oirat mother. Regardless of what she thought of her marriage to Manduul Khan, Mandukhai recognized the significance. Lady Yeke brought the southern tribes to the Great Khan’s circle, and Manduul himself hailed from Oirat-Borjigin bloodlines, which left Mandukhai’s tribe alliances in the east. This union would bring all corners of the Mongol Nation together for the first time in centuries. It offered her some solace.

As they crested a hilltop, a field of hundreds of domed ger homes covered the expanse of the valley along the edges of the Orkhon River. Even from a distance, Mandukhai could make out Manduul Khan’s home among them, a larger, taller dome with blue banners fluttering on the gentle breeze.

A small party rode out to greet them as Mandukhai’s own guards closed their circle and formed ranks around her.

“How do you address the Khan?” Nergui asked under his breath as they rode close.

“My old Lord Khan,” Mandukhai said, smirking.

Nergui grunted. “Get it out of your system now, girl, because the moment we are within earshot you must show respect.”

“My father taught me respect is earned,” she said, sitting straighter in the saddle.

“Where did that get him?”

The words were as good as a blow and she flinched, sinking back. No amount of garnered respect had saved her father from Oirat arrows. They killed him just the same.

“What about wrinkled old Khan?” she asked, hoping to inject humor back into the tense moment.

“Joke all you want, but he will be your husband,” Nergui responded. “Old, young, wrinkled, hairy, smooth, you will perform your duty regardless.”

The food in her stomach churned at the thought. Her mother had instructed her on how to act and what to do when the time came to consummate the marriage. Mandukhai wanted no part in it. The entire act sounded horrific.

The capital nestled in the heart of the Orkhon Valley, along the eastern shores of Orkhon River that fed through all the surrounding land. Across the river, a birch forest encroached on the rocky banks. And at the forest’s back, the looming Khangai Mountains. It was a beautiful, rich land for herding.

“Enough now,” Nergui muttered as they drew close enough to be heard.

Mandukhai scanned the party that came to welcome her. Several men clad in black armor sat on horseback, alongside a woman in silk with a boqta headdress that marked her out as Lady Yeke and a young man with bushy eyebrows and a warm smile. Surely that was not Manduul Khan. He looked far too young, though she supposed she could consider him attractive.

“Welcome to Mongke Bulag, Lady Mandukhai,” the young man said. “Manduul is preparing for the ceremony. Lady Yeke and I have come to escort you to her ger as Manduul’s men construct yours.”

“Thank you, my Lord,” Mandukhai said in an even voice she practiced for this day.

The corner of his mouth curled up in a crooked grin. “Please, call me Togochi. No lording necessary for you.”

Mandukhai simply inclined her head and followed the welcome party, casting glances toward Lady Yeke. The woman was hardly a great beauty with her large, hooked nose, long face, and sharp features cast in perpetual anger. The way Lady Yeke rode in her saddle was stiff and straight, uncomfortable, unlike Mandukhai’s own natural ease.

The swell of music and general merriment had begun already all throughout the maze of gers making up Mongke Bulag. Mandukhai had never loathed such sounds as much as she did this day.

And tonight, she would be a wife. Again, her stomach churned.

High Heavens, give me the courage and spirit of Lady Khutulun.