“I was thinking about my ma,” Guo Jing answered.

“You are a brave fighter. An excellent fighter.” He pointed to the fires. “And
so are they! We Mongols have so many brave men, but all we seem to do is fight
and kill each other. If we were united,” he said, looking out to the horizon, “we
could make all the world’s grasslands ours!”
Temujin’s words stirred Guo Jing’s heart and he felt his admiration for him
grow. “Great Khan, we will never be defeated by a coward like Senggum!”
“Exactly. Remember those words,” Temujin said with a smile. “If we survive
this, you will forever be a son to me.” He leaned down and embraced the young
man.
The sun was starting to climb in the sky and enemy horns began echoing
around the plain.
“It doesn’t look like help will be coming,” Temujin said eventually. “I don’t
expect to make it down from here alive.” Among the blasts of horns, sounds of
weapons clanging and neighing horses drifted up on the wind. A dawn attack.
“Great Khan, my horse is swift. Why don’t you ride it back and get help? We
will hold them off. We won’t surrender.”
Temujin smiled and stroked the young man’s neck. “If I, Temujin, were
capable of abandoning my friends and generals in order to save myself, I would
not be the Khan you see before you.”
“You are right, Great Khan. I was wrong.”
Temujin, his three sons, and his officers and soldiers all took their positions
behind the mounds of earth they had piled up the previous day. Bows were
aimed and ready.
Before long, three men broke free of the enemy ranks and approached under
Senggum’s yellow banner, followed by four soldiers on foot, dressed in black.
Senggum on the left, Jamuka on the right, and there in the middle, the Sixth
Prince of the Jin, Wanyan Honglie. He wore a suit of armour made of gold and
carried an equally resplendent shield on his arm. “Temujin, how dare you betray
the Jin Empire?”
Temujin’s eldest son Jochi shot an arrow at the Prince but one of their retinue
leapt up and caught it.
“Bring me Temujin!” Wanyan Honglie shouted. The black­clad foot soldiers
began running up the hill at an unusual speed.
Guo Jing watched in amazement. They were using qinggong lightness kung
fu; these were no ordinary fighters from the steppe. Jebe, Bogurchi and the
others began firing arrows but the men skipped between them. Our men are
brave and strong to be sure, Guo Jing said to himself, but they cannot compete
with such accomplished masters of the martial arts. What are we going to do?
One of the men made it to the top. Ogedai tried to block him with his sabre,