Chapter 80: Chapter 79

At dinner time, the officer who had conveyed Temük Khan's invitation returned. He was now dressed in full dress uniform, so Bodniev assumed that he was a high-ranking military man in the Khan's small army. They accompanied him walking about three hundred steps to the yurt that Temük used in his receptions and that the survivors already knew. As they approached, the exquisite aroma of meat being cooked on the spit reached their nostrils, and indeed they saw at a short distance from the house some men roasting various pieces of meat on iron rods in the shape of a cross driven into the ground.

When they entered the main yurt, the attendees were already organized around a long rectangular table. At one end of it sat Temük Khan and the Begum, and on either side of them were several younger people, no doubt relatives of the couple; other dignitaries sat on both long sides of the table, and at the opposite end were Orghana and the Colonel Khulan.