Is he Saint Tchingis? Has he grown a monster? Perceptions differ. From the arse end of the steppe, out of nowhere, now he towers over other kings. The other kings club together, as he threatens the very idea of aristocracy, in a last stand of the steppe against Tchingis. Where does old Toghrul stand, the Hirai king who has been to him as a father? And Jamuqa - the only one to have beaten him in battle, a man Temujin is said to be in awe of - Jamuqa is quite a catch for the enemy side, even brainsick, even with his ambivalent past. Because Temujin knows, although he'd never say, there are two great men on the steppe.

Bryn Hammond (she/her, and queer) lives in a coastal town in Australia, where she likes to write while walking in the sea. She grew up on ancient and medieval epics, the Arthur cycle original and modern, nineteenth-century novelists, particularly Russian and French, and out of fashion poets, namely Algernon Swinburne. Always a writer ? to the neglect of other paths in life that might have been more sensible -- she found the perfect story in The Secret History of the Mongols, a thirteenth-century prose and verse account of Chinggis Khan.