Jeremy Bufford

When Oirat horsemen burn the high pastures, the Kyrgyz clans scatter like ash in wind. Only old Bakai, the manaschy who carries genealogies in his cracked voice, insists a child of prophecy will come-and with him, the colt born in the same hour. That child is Manas. Strong enough to break an axe handle before he can read, generous enough to give away his father's finest coat, reckless enough to invite the enemy's net.
As Joloy the Oirat commander closes in, Manas gathers forty companions at a ridge and turns fame into a blade pointed at fragmentation itself. From white-felt councils where insults cut deeper than swords, to the ice-slick carnage of Kara-Su Ford, Forty Tribes Rising is mythic historical fiction inspired by the Kyrgyz Epic of Manas-immersive and human, one novelistic path through a living oral tradition, not a translation or scholarly reconstruction.
Kanykei watches from distant Samarkand, stitching ciphers into silk. Almambet swears blood-oath beside a burning bridge. Chiyirdi holds the women's felt when men would war themselves empty. This is the story of how a legend becomes a khan-and what unity costs the boy who never asked to be sung.