termed these consignments neighbourly donations or other polite phrases. Very polite, the Chinese. In their fashion.
Never mind; there’d be a lot of salvage, a lot of re-use, with a sideline in scrounge. A blade’s none the worse for a history – rust is romantic. As a matter of fact the steppe is littered with weaponry, from flint to bone to copper to bronze to unlikely Indian steel. And found things are special, the chanced-upon, the happy accident, ours to purposes unknown; found things are tangrilar, whatever they are: dropped from the sky. Even if it’s a coin stamped Out of Beshbaligh. That’s not the point. We are in God’s hands. Heaven must find us metal, and half a chance. Cutula didn’t talk like that aloud.
He dispatched information-scroungers. Among these, Balaqachi, into the zone he had won through on his own – the zone of the Odds-and-Ends, the mercenary army, China’s outer guard of nomads, from the great breed of collaborators. Attai, butter-hearted, tried to get him off the hook, but Cutula requisitioned him, to achieve his feat over again. “We’ll make you sorry you’re a hero.”
3. To Avenge Ambaghai Khan
His shout cracked the ears like thunder in the mountains. His hands were the paws of a bear and could snap a strong man’s spine the way you snap an arrow. On winter nights he slept naked at the foot of a great tree on fire, and felt neither the sparks that spat out nor the branches that collapsed on him; when he woke he thought he had been nipped by fleas.
Rashid a-Din, Persian historian, on the tall tales of Cutula
And the bitter twist? China wasn’t, strictly, China. The north half of China, with which they had to do, was run by collaborators. Erstwhile barbarians, traitors who have abjured the tribal way of life (that cause, that is a cause, a cultural fight and quite conscious. Who wants to be Chinese? Koryo – Japan – Tangut, a state of civilized social climbers out of the very fiercely independent Tibet – almost the whole world on every side wants to be Chinese. Not us). Here was a different Wall, of more actual use and function and painstakingly maintained, behind which true China as seldom as possible fought a nomad. So what happens when a handy barbarian climbs onto the emperor’s throne? That was the big question, of shake-the-earth consequence to China and the steppe – the question Khabul had solicited an answer to when he pulled the emperor’s beard.
He wasn’t just drunk, Yesugei defended his grandfather’s behaviour to Hoelun. He had a reason, although the why and wherefore tends to drop out of the tale.
“Why did he pull the emperor’s beard?”
“To test whether it was glued on or grew out of his chin.”
“That is self-evidently as sober as a judge, and moved by a laudable spirit of inquiry.”
“You listen, my wife.” It starts with the Kingdom of Qatay. Qatay lies beyond Great Khingan Mountains; Tartary this side, on the far side Qatay; there is steppe, though with the sea air the Khingans block from us, the sea that evens out temperatures and slows the weather down; rainy steppe and mild. “Only by our standards, of course. Still crazy to a Chinese.”
“Over west, the other side of Altai Mountains, lies steppe smooth and lush; you lick the butter from the grass; the clouds dribble cream. The Huns said they had found Nirvana.”
“I don’t envy other people’s steppe. Tangr gave me steppe with teeth, because I’m up to it.”
“I am from desert steppe.”
“Leave out the steppe. Steppe’s where a horse can score a feed.”
“You are astray.”
China went through a time of turmoil, and the Qatat on their sea-blown steppe – a cautious, slow people, not rash – quietly grew strong. A general in mutiny – no true Chinese but a hired Turk – purchased their aid; they lent him fifty thousand troops and he took China’s throne. Briefly; one of a dozen usurpers of the age. But Qatat’s wages had been the corner of China they abutted on, with two cities, Tatung and Zhongdu, and they kept their wages. Under the House of Song China came together again, only without this north-east corner, a hole in their map. Song were obsessive about Lost or Alien China and tried and tried and tried again, but merely had to sign a worse and worse treaty. The Kingdom of Qatay lived richly on the damages paid by the Song. “And yet, Hoelun, at their height, these exactions amounted to the emperor’s income from a single city, and he counts his cities the way I count my sheep.”
On their side, Qatat – a cautious people – were content with what had been ceded to them, nor thought of conquests. Their kingdom, that included city and steppe, they were slow and sensible with; they had a Chinese government for the Chinese and a tribal government for the tribals; him at the head was both the Liao Emperor and the Iron Khan; folk lived by their different systems. Of course, Qatat changed, at least those interested to change. They took in science and scholarship, but not the Chinese evaluation of them. Their values were their own, for instance medicine was prized, the trades and crafts and practical sciences that China scorns. The steppe loves know-how, the technical: keep your effete calligraphers, give us an engineer. Their kingdom tried to be the best of both worlds. A hazardous course, but one they steered for two centuries, and they can’t be said to have succumbed on the cultural front. It was an achievement, the Kingdom of Qatay.
“Iron Khans dabbled in calligraphy.”
“There’s nothing wrong with calligraphy. It just doesn’t get you far.”
“Perhaps the finer points are lost on those who do not write.”
“No doubt the finer points are lost. Much else was lost, much hard to define in the round, easy to point the finger at in specifics. There’s the cultural front, and then there is another hazy front. Rot set in. Can you be the best of both worlds, Hoelun?”
“I do not know.”
“It was an experiment. But they grew unjust, which is where Jurchen come in.”
Song found themselves an ally to the rear of their foe, up in the forests and along the sea-coast, on the margins of Qatat’s steppe. In secret contacts by boat on the ocean they struck agreement for a joint attack. It is China’s historic strategy to set barbarians against barbarians: back a weak barbarian against a strong, back a far barbarian against a near. This was a wild people; even to Qatat they were the Wild Jurchen; the Song ambassadors met their King Akuta enthroned on twelve tigers’ skins and were entertained with dramas of the boar-hunt and of battle. Though they belonged to the kingdom, through two hundred years they had remained uncontaminated by culture from the south. “And, my wife, they fought as the savage fight, while Qatat were soft and half-civilized, and the upshot was what the upshot is.” Song were caught out by the usual upshot: the Jurchen revolt went so fast they didn’t have time to do their stipulated bit. By agreement the Song and the Jurchen were to have one of Qatat’s Chinese cities each. Song failed to seize their city, Zhongdu; they asked King Akuta for help; without too much trouble he obliged, and as per the agreement vacated his prize for the Song. On that note of strength and honour he went to his ancestors, and to the worship of his people, while there are Jurchen, which he earnt.
With the great man gone Song began to bicker about the line of the frontier. Shortly they infringed the treaty. They miscalculated: Akuta’s brother Arzat tore up the treaty, took Zhongdu a second time – for Jurchen – and after that took the Song capital and took prisoner the emperor and his heir. A new pact was negotiated. Now Alien China wasn’t the north corner but the north half.
It was Arzat who asked our khan to dinner in Zhongdu, along with other peoples’ khans. He had a Chinese name that hurt the tongue but his guests from the steppe were to call him Arzat, Anjuhu Khaghan, that is golden in Jurchen, for a holy river in his home. There were Tartar princes; the great Marquz Khan was there; the redoubtable Inanch as a boy at the side of his father; even the Idiqut of Uighur.
Khabul spoke of Akuta to his brother. “Fifteen years ago the Iron Khan in his yearly rounds came to celebrate First Fish Feast with his river tribes. The custom was for his under-kings and chieftains to offer him first catch and dance for him. One by one they
laid fish at his feet and danced, until your brother’s turn, but he did not get up to dance. They gave him three chances; three times he refused; whereupon the Iron Khan flew into a rage and told his soldiers to swipe off his head on the spot. A member of his suite saved your brother’s life, coaxed him to retract his order; the disgruntled chief was beneath his notice, an object of scorn but not of fear. What Akuta meant by his no-dance demonstration was to draw attention to his people’s grievances – grievances they had often forwarded to court without result. These grievances were four. First, that the sea-eagles and gyrfalcons, the tribute that they paid, had become onerous and caused them hardship, since with recent wars they had to fight through hostile territory to the birds’ nest-grounds on the coast. Second, that when Jurchen came to town to trade the merchants abused their trust and ignorance to grossly cheat them. Third, that government officials, with frequency, flogged the clan heads who dealt with them, no matter though they be grandfatherly and frail. Fourth, and most egregious, that such officials, at their whim, detained Jurchen women for usage obscene. – From these grievances,” Khabul concluded, “we see the Age of Iron had grown unjust and corrupt and had learnt vices.”
“Thus we feast in the