Kiyat, Yesugei, with his family, found their pride in poverty. He himself sent twice the head-of-sheep to the Tribute Wall than Kiyat with the biggest flocks.
One day, over the flats at a slow dance-step, rode a troop, a square, a hundred in ranks of ten, towards their camp. Strange men, tall and thin with bulgy brows and great eagle’s noses, astride horses out of legends of Farghana in the west: high and slender and next to a shaggy steppe horse almost naked, with a glint in the light like metal, horses of copper or bronze or argent. The men glittered too and jingled in elaborate armour, bronze and iron, silver and gold, copper and tin. A flag embroidered with a winged lion about to pounce into the air, and a tuq with a hawk for a top-piece, paraded at the right and left stirrups of the leader.
There had been a tedium to daily life in late years. The approach of this rich and strange troop, which spelt adventure, had the whole camp up on wagons in that section of the ring, agape. By contrast, Yesugei awaited them at the gateway without the least astonishment, as if he had asked them to visit. Possibly he had. “Hirai,” he announced to those of his nokod in earshot. “From the royal house of Hirai. That is the flag of Marquz Khan, who knew Khabul, and suffered the death of Ambaghai.”
“Why are they so peculiar? I thought Hirai were Turks.”
“They are. They went Turk a while back. Much like Borjigin, they’re none too certain on their origins. Don’t ask them where on earth they come from – they can’t tell you and the question’s rude. A history their ancestors chose to forget.”
“Borjigin dropped from the sky.”
“And Hirai blew in with the wind.”
“Do they know what direction? North wind, south wind? East wind, west?”
“Their advent in Altai Mountains has to do with the tribal upheavals at the foundation of Tangut. Then Naiman thrust them out of the Altai, east to Orqon Gol, to be our neighbours. It’s the royals and the nobility who are least Turk in physiognomy.”
“Pushed around. No wonder they’re a bit dizzy and can’t recall.”
Near the wagon ring the hundred-square halted and their leader dismounted. Yesugei walked forward to him. On his heap of curly hair he wore a crown – battlements, two battlements one inside the other, with prongs of silver and prongs of gold. It was hard to judge with the curls and the crown but he had at least an inch on Yesugei, perhaps up to two, which Yesugei’s people weren’t used to see – but narrow as a stick, where their captain was a wide trunk of a tree – no contest, if matters came to a wrestle. “A glad welcome to my guest,” said Yesugei.
“Do I have the honour to greet the grandson of Khabul Khan, marshal of the Kiyat, Yesugei Baghatur?”
“Yesugei is my name.”
“My grandfather was Marquz Khan, and an old hearty of your grandfather. And a couple of fine old khans they were. I am Toghrul, and again, honoured to meet you.” Very freely and frankly, although he wore a crown, he held out his right arm.
In the comrades’ clasp they took each other’s arm, which disarmed Yesugei’s people, for Turks can be haughty with Mongols, on account of their art with metal and their ancient kingdoms.
“My other claim to fame,” the Turk went on, “or foot into your graces, is that I had a Mongol mother, although she has left more trace in my upright heart, I hope, than in my face.”
This was arrant flattery. Yesugei’s people didn’t mind. The captain laid on him one of his smiles, that always knocked his victim off his feet. “Three times welcome, guest, for your grandfather, your mother and yourself. Are you thirsty from your journey? I have milk white or black for you and yours.”
This was a lie. There were a hundred of them and he didn’t. To lie in such circumstances isn’t dishonest but sublime. He’d find the milk, and find meat for his guests, if he had to chop off his leg. A leg is not so precious as one’s reputation as a host.
“I’ll have to explain myself,” answered the royal guest, “but you see me an itinerant beggar. In my rear I have my wagons and my flocks, and what I beg is permission to camp hereabouts for a night or two. If you grant me, I’ll dismiss these and tell my people they can pause and enjoy a sheep-boil. As for me, Yesugei, I won’t say no to a black milk. I rarely do.”
Yesugei took him in like a stray. In the seat of honour in the great tent he smacked his lips over his spirits-of-milk. “Velvety,” was his verdict. “Slips down only too easy. Nectar of the gods. Your lady wife?” Yesugei’s nokod watched. He had a knobbly forehead, hollow cheeks and a hawk’s beak, to go with his name, toghrul a kite. Instead of a Turk’s jet and amber and crescent eye, both his hair and skin were a dark peat-brown and his eye as round as a cow’s... to go with his name, hirai the crows, as in black as. Who called Borjigin outlandish? The captain sent them an eye that meant rude to stare. “I’ll admit at once, Yesugei, I didn’t wander past by haphazard. I am here a suitor to you.”
“To me?” For the first time Yesugei gave off a slight sense of the unexpected. “In what way can I help you?”
“There’s a story attached, as tangled as a sheep’s intestines – my story. But I came to you on the strength of your story. It is reported on the steppe that of the Mongol tribes, mulcted by the Throne Over Civilization (North), Marshal Yesugei’s retains the behaviour of old, where others nab sheep from their neighbour tribes to meet demands and even, the rumour goes, steal each other’s children.”
He didn’t know the captain, to start him. The captain knew he didn’t know him and went with great restraint. “The rumour is without grounds. I have that from the Jurchen themselves. They told us, if we cannot pay in stock we can pay in slaves. Who are we to enslave? we asked and they answered, your children. This engendered the rumour, one I look into yearly at the Tribute Wall, but there have been no instances. Mongols have not sold their children to China.”
The guest saw he had touched on a sore point, and listened gravely. Then he changed his tack – as courteous as a king. Was he a king, or what? He hadn’t said. “My people must admire yours for action, while we are inactive in spite of what they did to my grandfather. My grandmother Herigji took her vengeance on the instrumental Tartar prince, and hid a hundred volunteers in cart-vats – full, she told him, of fermented milk for his banquet. That banquet was a Tartar abattoir when her vats were trundled in. Alas, however, we haven’t gone to war with Jurchen. Nobody has. I’m afraid Mongols served them for their object lesson, and suffer the frequent fate of the brave: to warn others off.”
Mildly Yesugei said, “I’m not sorry we went to war.”
A nokor up and told him, “You haven’t learnt your lesson, captain.”
On the topic, Yesugei got an air of let’s consult him since we have him here. “From that perspective, perhaps, I can see the why of their annual expedition to the Tribute Wall, which, I have to suspect, doesn’t pay for itself. Is there value for them in the lesson?”
“Yes, they have a quiet steppe and can turn attention to the Song. I’d say their aim is achieved.”
“We have the constant fear, of course, that the Tribute Wall can swiftly be built up into a military wall. It isn’t, at the moment, quite occupation. They occupy us in the autumn, and trot our animals along to the Argun and the Gan, from there beyond the Khingans and we feed the Jurchen in their northern home. We can’t feed China, China’s too far to drive our stock and that’s the excuse. The actuality is a permanent pincer movement with the Gobi wall and a demonstration that they have us north and south.”
Their neighbour agreed, “It does lower over us. From Great Khingan Mountains, across the top of Tartary and on between your Onon Gol and Kherlen Gol, to stop just short of Khentei Mountains, and that isn’t far short of Hirai. It’s only a bump of earth and livestock pens, and goes right through your grounds for Mongols’ own convenience, and yet we feel the threat. Underneath us the Gobi wall, and the east Gobi’s a no-go: given into the charge of Onggot, the Black Watch, who were transported in, not to be too Tartar-heavy – seems Jurchen don’t trust Tartars either. The On
ggot have set up towns along their wall, Hohhot, Togto, Orchar. The sprawl of town where once the horses roamed, and even where the camels did. It subtracts from your Ongirat a swathe of Camel Steppe, and strikes two-thirds the way to your battle site of Bor Nor. That and the wall to close the gap under the Khingans: the bottom third of Tartary that used to be, and Tartary split into Conscripted Tartary and Unconscripted (But Auxiliary). A strategic area, as the Ordos was strategic. What’s within, to China, is now the Inner Steppe, or the Outer Territory, or Independent Onggot. A wall is hard to argue with. It’s not hard to attack, funnily, the steppe has galloped straight through walls time without number. But when it merely stands there, in the midst of you, what are you meant to do? Tell it to go home?”
This rehashed what Yesugei knew, sympathetic, slightly gassy, not much use. Yesugei crinkled his eyes. “I often apostrophise that Tribute Wall and tell it where to go. For want of other answers.”
“Not much help with answers, am I? There is one, a hoary old answer. The steppe is spacious. The steppe stretches west, above the Aral Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea and onwards. Our sea of grass. Load up your wagons and ride away, and His Celestial Muck-a-Muck can’t extract tribute from you.”
“This is true,”