On the frozen steppes, the Wolf khan Yesugei cuts down a Tartar raiding party and rides home to a second son born clutching blood in his fist—a sign the boy will walk with death forever. Twelve years on, young Temujin scales a deadly red hill for an eagle's nest, only to learn that being a khan's...

Sent to live among his mother's people, twelve-year-old Temujin learns that a betrothal to the fierce, untamed Borte comes bundled with a year of beatings, scorn, and the rule his father drilled into him: never let them see you flinch. But as the boy swallows his fury in a stranger's ger, Yesugei...

As Yesugei lies poisoned and delirious, his loyal first warrior Eeluk feels his old vows loosening, while far away Temujin learns of the ambush and races home through the night. The boy reaches his father in time for a final word—"the Tartars"—but no sooner is the great khan in the ground than Ee...

Cast out to starve in a wooded ravine, Hoelun and her sons cling to life on fish bones and marmot blood while the eldest, Bekter, hoards his catch and lords what little power remains over the rest. When Temujin discovers his brother eating his fill as the family wastes away, he makes a cold choic...

Four years on, the fat and faithless Eeluk dispatches a brutal young bondsman, Tolui, to hunt down whatever remains of Yesugei's family. The brothers fight off the raid from a thorn-laced tree line, but Temujin draws the killers away and is run to ground, captured, and forced to watch as Tolui sl...

Dragged back to the Wolves to be sacrificed, Temujin is beaten, thrown into a freezing pit, and dragged bloody behind a horse for Eeluk's pleasure—until a newly arrived swordsmith bound by an old oath to Yesugei cuts him loose into the night. Hunted across the steppe, he survives by burying himse...