That time she laughed.
He said, “Shan, I am a leader of whatever we have left, and there are those who want to destroy us. We can’t always choose the times into which we are born.”
“We can’t ever choose those,” she corrected. “You should sleep, if you are leaving in the dark.”
“If I sleep,” he remembered saying, “I lose time with you.”
“No you don’t,” she said.
She sang him to rest, an old song, her voice low, almost a whisper, her hand in his hair.
He’d awakened before dawn. She was beside him, still awake, looking at him. He’d dressed and left, on a road that had led him north and west, a shadow in winter, moving quickly, gathering men and sending them south, tracking the barbarians. He’d ended up back at the Great River now, near East Slope again, and it seemed to be springtime.
“There they are!” said Kang Junwen, beside him in the boat. Junwen had been with him when they’d rescued the prince and had never left him since.
Daiyan peered into rain. A moment later he heard sounds, then he saw the smaller Altai boats and the horses labouring in the water. They’d be swimming a long way in a swift, cold current, but these were the best horses in the world, excepting the legendary ones from the west that no one living had ever seen.
He didn’t like killing horses, and he needed as many as he could get. That was one part of this risky, elaborate plan: to strip the Altai of their horses, providing mounts for the Kitan cavalry he wanted.
So Daiyan and his force, in larger boats with forty men each—a fleet of these assembled and brought downriver from the west—were as precise as they could be with that vast herd in the river. The horses were being guided by some men riding them (brave men); others of the Altai were in among them in the boats they’d made and carried to the water in the night.
They began by wounding horses to cause panic. Then they concentrated on the boats as they came among them. Ramming them, setting fire to them with arrows. There was a legendary association of fire with war and victory here. He didn’t mind adding to that.
They were a devastating surprise, utterly unexpected, and the steppe riders knew nothing of watercraft. Daiyan began shouting, his men in their boats did the same. They wanted the sounds of fighting and fear to reach the southern bank. They could hear Altai screaming as they were plunged from broken boats into the water. Their small craft were shattered in collisions or they caught fire and men leaped from them. Die in water, die in flames.
They should not be here. They had made a mistake coming here.
Few horsemen of the steppe ever learned to swim.
It was morning now, still raining, but he could see what he was doing. He fired steadily, arrow after arrow. The captain of his boat was a river pilot, most of them were. Men who plied their trade bringing goods up and down the Great River, or across it, many of them sons of sons of sons doing the same thing for generations.
This was their land, their home, their river. Their rivers and mountains. The steppe riders had been unspeakably brutal as they’d swept through the lands above and below the Wai. They had left a trail—and a tale—of ugly death. They had intended that, wanted to terrify Kitai into a crouched, huddled submission, make it fear to fight back, to bond behind a new, young emperor.
It was, in purely military terms, a good idea. It wasn’t going to work, Commander Ren Daiyan had decided. They couldn’t choose the times in which they lived, but they could face their days and nights with courage. And cleverness mattered, too. Shan had said it for him, their last night.
He’d had spies in the Altai force, among those conscripted to build their boats. They’d kept their heads down, those men, cutting trees, hammering, and kept their ears open, listening.
He’d had scouts ranging widely, marsh outlaws many of them, trained by a lifetime of hiding (as he had been), skilled in stealth. He had known about the boats being built west of the Altai main camp. He had known their size, their numbers. He knew where the horsemen intended to make a landing on the south bank of the river—because it was the only easy slope up from that shoreline for fifty li.
Ziji and the best men they had were waiting for them there. Men who’d won the battle north of Yenling.
The barbarians were deadly on horseback, no one rode like them, had horses like theirs. But sweeping to their battles in a thunder of hooves, they were not, Daiyan had decided, as subtle as the Kitan. As subtle as he was.
You won wars, you defended your people, with what you could, with all you could. That included gathering men and boats even farther upriver, and killing any horsemen who ventured so far on raiding sweeps. They had done that. They had done it with a hard joy. No one was tortured or mutilated (they were not barbarians) but none of those riders went back east along the river, or home to their grasslands.
Then word had come: the small boats were being carried to the bank. It would be tonight, the first landings timed for sunrise.
He knew Ziji would be receiving these same tidings, and he knew Ziji understood his task. It didn’t mean he could do it, or that Daiyan could, here on the water, but you kept those doubts to yourself. None of your men needed to see or hear them in you. An army won when it thought it could win. Or, perhaps, when men thought about what would happen if they did not.
Here they stop, Daiyan had told his soldiers and watermen upriver. Here is where the tide starts back.
The sun had been setting red into a long bank of clouds. The rain had not yet come. They’d untied their own craft and cast off. He’d shouted his words as loudly as he could, heard them picked up and echoed from boat to boat, carrying to those out of range of his voice.
The Commander, they called him by then. No one thought of him as young that spring. They thought he was the man who might save Kitai.
Boys younger than he had been when he left his village, their features stiffened into masks by horror, farmers and labourers, bandits, workers from the salt and iron mines, men from the south and his own far west, bitter northerners fleeing charred cities and villages—all came to find Ren Daiyan.
The horsemen knew about the broken army of Kitai. They’d smashed most of those forces last summer and autumn. They did not know, or cause themselves to learn, how many there were in the new army taking shape in the rice lands of the south, or about the river craft assembling west of where their own two-pronged crossing was to happen.
They paid a great price for this, on the river and beside it, as a rain-swept morning dawned.
YOU LEARNED TO WAIT, Ziji thought. It was not a skill that could be extracted from military texts or barracks conversations. You needed to be in battles, commanding, holding back your anxious, eager (frightened) men until the moment that spoke to you and said, Now. Now we go.
He heard that voice in his head above the riverbank and he unleashed the best archers and foot soldiers Kitai had. The soldiers with their horse-killing swords and the archers trained in, among other things, how to protect arrows and bowstrings and kill with them in rain.
On this bank the Altai were mostly on foot, only a few of the horses had yet made it across. The screaming from the river was loud now, panic-stricken, and the light was growing brighter, allowing his archers to pick out targets from where they were positioned up a farther slope, in bushes and low trees, defended by men in front of them.
The archers were the first attack, rapid volleys cutting down the Altai as some of them tried to rush the slope and others turned helplessly back towards the water where their companions were dying in boats.
Ziji could imagine their terror, their rage: they were trapped and dying on water, far from their grasslands, in this wet, congested land. And it went against all expectations—after the effortless campaign that had drawn them south in the sure and firm belief Kitai was theirs.
“Forward now!” Ziji roared. He heard it taken up by his captains along the line. His battle rage was up, driven by memories of the north, knowledge of what these barbarians
had done. He had seen an elderly woman in front of an isolated farmhouse, lying on the path to her own door. Her hands and feet had been cut off, were lying beside her, and her belly had been ripped open. The horsemen had wanted to overwhelm and terrify. He and Daiyan had discussed it, explained it to others. They understood this, fear as a tactic of war. That didn’t take away a need to kill, it drove that desire forward, like a tidal bore.
The fight changed. Once he and the ground troops moved, their archers had to stop—they became a rear guard now, picking off Altai who broke through, either to rush them or flee south, since there was no escape into the water.
They couldn’t swim, and Daiyan’s men were here now, timing the current for dawn, crashing into the Altai boats, setting fire to them, killing with arrows—and being slain, some of them, for the barbarians would always fight.
It had been, in truth, a clever plan for crossing the river. Clever, that is, as far as steppe riders were concerned, whose warfare was about fear and the shock of thunder. But the glorious empire of Kitai had known more than a thousand years of warfare and rebellion—and writing about both of those, and this Twelfth Dynasty still had some leaders here on the bank, and on the river.
With a full heart and a hard rage, Zhao Ziji came from his place of concealment and he led his men crashing down into the Altai on the riverbank, the ones sent first, to secure a landing place.
It was never secured. They fought bravely, the barbarians. You could never deny them courage. But this dawn ambush in rain was so sudden and unexpected and fierce. It wasn’t supposed to have been like this at all. Even brave men could see their own death coming, and be undone.
Ziji’s men smashed into them like a felled tree rolling down a slope. His were natural foot soldiers, fighting against men who were at home (only at home) on horseback. And the river and the wet slope meant there was nowhere for them to go.
On the water, some of the Altai boats slipped through to the shoreline, men were struggling to get out and join this fight. His archers, Ziji was unsurprised to see, were already responding. Arrows flew over the heads of those fighting up here, killing those trying to clamber from the boats. Horses were dying, too, though he saw some thrashing ashore. He didn’t like killing horses, but this was war, it would be savage. What else would it be?
He blocked a blow with his small shield, angling it to have the sword glance and slide, controlling the impact. He swung his blade sideways and low, feeling it bite into the thigh of the man he was facing. The sword hit bone. The Altai’s face contorted, his mouth gaped, he went down into the mud. Ziji kicked him hard in the head with a booted foot, moved on towards the river in the rain.
TO THE EAST, on the north bank, Wan’yen, war-leader of the Altai, was drinking earlier, and more, than he customarily did on campaign. He was using the skull-cup his brother had made. He told people he did this to remember his brother.
He had been awake and outside his damp yurt, waiting for a signal, when morning dawned with cold rain. He knew tidings would take time to come from the west, but he hadn’t slept well, and was on edge and angry, ready for battle. This was almost as bad as a siege. You built boats. And waited.
The river was far too wide to see across even in sunshine, and in this morning mist you’d have to get very close on the water to discern anything at all on the southern bank.
He hated the river. Hated it by now as if it were a living thing, an enemy in itself, an ally of his foes. Compared to this, the Golden River in the north, though lethal when it flooded, was nothing to cross. This one he thought of as some monster. The Kitan pictured it that way, he knew. There were river gods, and water spirits in the form of dragons. Or of women who would come to lure and drown you. He needed to conquer this river by crossing it.
He sent for a messenger and ordered four boats out. They were to get as close to the other side as they dared, then watch and listen. He understood that it would be difficult, wearying, for the boatmen to keep their craft in one place, fighting the current and the wind. Was he supposed to care?
He needed to know the moment word reached the Kitan army that the Altai had made landfall to the west. The opposing force would begin moving then. Panicking armies weren’t quiet. They’d hear the sounds in those boats on the water, maybe even see movement through this intolerable greyness as the Kitan rushed off, most of them, to face the riders who’d crossed.
At which point his own force would move. They’d master this river, thrusting farther into Kitai than any foe had ever gone. It aroused him, thinking of it.
This wasn’t even a proper empire any more. That prince they’d held captive might call himself an emperor, but what did that mean? For one thing, his father and brother were alive! The Lords of Muddled Virtue and Doubly Muddled Virtue. They still amused him, the names he’d given those two before shipping them north in a cart like the plunder they were.
By evening today he expected to be across this river and riding for Shantong, where that prince was hiding, probably pissing his bed.
He went down to the water for a time, looking into nothingness, the heavy, dark current. Rain lashed him. He decided this was foolish, it was going to take at least the morning, probably longer, for word of a dawn landing to come to the Kitan, then across to him. He went back to his yurt. He ate. He drank from his brother’s cup. Men came and went, cautiously. They offered him a girl. He declined. He wondered if it would stop raining. He went out again, came back in.
No word came, and no word came. And then they learned.
YUN’CHI OF THE ALTAI had no immediate desire to kill anyone. Not in those first terrible moments of mud, chaos, and blood on the south side of the river as the light grew, showing dead and dying companions all around him. His desire was for escape. Anything else—everything else—could wait.
He was a steppe rider. He felt half a man without a horse. He couldn’t even think of fleeing on foot, and there was no way to get back across this accursed river.
Sword out, but twisting away from the slippery, savage, losing battle, he ran west, then back towards the water. And there, by the grace of the Lord of the Sky, he found a horse on the bank. Tied-high reins, no saddle. He confirmed it was unhurt and he swung up.
A Kitan soldier came at him in the rain, sword out. He was running a jagged course, to be a harder target. Yun’chi shot him from horseback. His people were the terror of the steppe, of the world.
He fled, kicking the horse away from the fight, then up the treacherous slope from this sodden place. There was screaming. The ground was terrible, the horse exhausted from the river. Yun’chi was as frightened as he’d ever been. They had been told this would be a simple landfall, a glorious deception. They had only to endure the water and come ashore.
Instead, they had been ambushed on the bank and on the water, and he found himself alone in alien country on the wrong side of the river.
He reached a muddy track and decided to head east, towards where the main body of their own army would be (on the other side!). He was incapable of any clear thought as to how to get back across.
He saw that his hands were unsteady, holding the reins. A humiliation! He was no unblooded youth, his son was with him in their invading force. Yun’chi had been part of the rising from its beginning. Not a man of status in the tribe, but a true Altai nonetheless. They had cut through the other tribes like a blade through summer grass. And even more easily down to Hanjin and then south, destroying, to this river.
They’d been weary, yes, after so long a campaign, but there’d been so much wealth won here, and Wan’yen and Bai’ji were generous with their riders.
Bai’ji was dead. Slain pursuing an escaped prisoner. There seemed to be a Kitan general who was equal to the brothers. They never spoke his name, a superstition.
Yun’chi, urging a stumbling horse towards the sun, wondered if it was that Kitan commander who’d done this to them here.
Bai’ji, he thought, would have said he was being a coward, for leaving his
fellow riders. Fuck Bai’ji, he thought savagely. Fuck Bai’ji, dead months ago.
He had no good idea what to do. His first thought: find a fisherman, force him to cross north, sword at throat. He was a steppe rider, a figure of terror here, but he was alone, and terror, he was discovering, could slide the other way.
He was also wet and tired, and realized he was hungry. They had been in the boats most of the night. He had been sick on the river. He wasn’t the only one. Men were not intended to be on rivers so wide, especially not in rain at night, in a swift current.
It was better on a horse, though this one was close to breaking down beneath him. He slowed it to a walk, had no choice. He saw no one on the road for a long time. Word of the Altai force along the river would have driven people away.
Late in the morning he overtook a solitary bullock cart. He killed the driver, left him in his seat, sprawled in death. The cart was empty, though, and the driver had no food, not even a flask of wine. He was old.
Yun’chi began to worry about outlaws in the woods he passed. He was alone, after all. He kept himself as alert as he could, although between exhaustion and fear it was difficult.
Just past midday the rain stopped. The clouds began to break up and he saw the sun. It was still cool. The wind was behind him. He heard birds singing. It felt as if they were mocking him. He wondered if his son was dead.
Some time later he saw smoke rising from a farmhouse chimney. They had been raiding isolated farms all winter long, taking whatever they wanted, including pleasure, leaving ashes and bodies. Through his tiredness, a nudge of anger rose within Yun’chi. Whoever was living here, away from the river, would not get him north, but there would be food in there, and smoke meant warmth—and vengeance could be taken.
He could feed the horse. Maybe find a saddle. He spoke to it, told it they were going only a little farther now. He called it my heart, which was what he’d called every horse he’d ridden since he was a boy.
ZIJI LOOKED CLOSELY at Daiyan as he came ashore. He seemed unhurt. He himself had a cut on his left arm, no memory of when he’d received it.