The Journeyer

by Gary Jennings

  “If my Wang will permit me,” said the Orlok. “That is all very likely true. But my Wang has himself mentioned the egregious flaw in that argument. I would be utterly surrounded. If I may draw a parallel, I submit that the most practical way of extinguishing a fire is not to plump one’s bare rump down on it.”

  “Hm,” said Ukuruji. “Well … suppose you ventured only a portion of your troops, and held others in reserve … to swoop down when the Yi had collected behind the first columns … ?”

  “Wang Ukuruji,” the Orlok said patiently. “The Yi are shifty and elusive, but they are not stupid. They know how many men and horses I have at my disposal, and probably even how many women usable for warriors. They would not be drawn into such a trap unless they could see and count that I had committed my entire force. And then—who is in the trap?”

  “Hm,” Ukuruji murmured again, and subsided into a thoughtful silence.

  The chabi returned, bringing the brass ball, and I explained to the Orlok all the incidents leading up to its contrivance, and how the Firemaster Shi had seen in it a new potential for military usefulness. When I had done, the Orlok champed his teeth some more, and gave me much the same look with which he had received the Wang’s tactical advice.

  “Let me see if I understand you correctly, Polo,” he said. “You have brought me twelve of these elegant baubles, right? Now, correct me if I am wrong. From your own experience, you can assure me that each of the twelve will effectually demolish two persons—if they are both standing closely over it when it ignites—and if they are both unarmored, delicate, incautious and unsuspecting women.”

  I mumbled, “Well, true, it happened that the two I spoke of were women, but—”

  “Twelve balls. Each capable of killing two defenseless women. Meanwhile, down the farther valleys to the south, there are some fifty thousand staunch Yi men—warriors encased in leather armor stout enough to turn a blade. I cannot really expect them to huddle close when I roll a ball among them. Even if they did, let me think, fifty thousand minus, um, twenty-four … leaves, um … .”

  I coughed and cleared my throat and said, “On my way hither, along the Pillar Road, I was struck by a notion for a different use of the balls than just to project them among the enemy. I perceived that the mountains hereabout are not much subject to landslides or rockslides—like the Pai-Mir, say—and these mountain people are evidently unwary of any such occurrences.”

  For a change, he did not munch his teeth at me, but regarded me narrowly. “You are right. These mountains are reliably solid. So?”

  “So if the brass balls were to be securely tucked into tight crevices of the high peaks along both crests above a valley, and all ignited at the same and proper moment, they should set loose a mighty avalanche. It would thunder down from both sides and completely fill the valley and mash and bury every living thing in it. To a people who have for so long felt safe among these mountains, even sheltered and protected by them, it would be a cataclysm immense and unexpected and inescapable. The avalanche would come down upon them like God’s boot heel. Of course, as the Wang has said, it would be necessary to arrange that all the foe be congregated in that one valley … .”

  “Hui! That is it!” Ukuruji exclaimed. “First, Bayan, you have heralds make that proclamation proposed by my Royal Father. Then, as if that had given you mandate for a full-scale assault, you send your whole force into the likeliest valley, the mountains alongside it having previously been seeded with the huo-yao balls. The Yi will think you have taken leave of your senses, but they will take advantage of it. They will filter down from their hiding places and collect and cluster and prepare to assault from your sides and rear. And then—”

  “Honorable Wang!” the Orlok bleated, almost pleadingly. “I should have to take leave of my senses! Not enough that I commit my entire five tomans—half a tuk—to be surrounded by the enemy. Now you wish me to condemn my fifty thousand men as well to a devastating avalanche! What good for us to wipe out the Yi warriors and have all Yun-nan prostrate before us, if we have no troops of our own left alive to take it and hold it?”

  “Hm,” said Ukuruji yet again. “Well, our troops would at least be expecting the avalanche … .”

  The Orlok refrained even from dignifying that with a comment. Just then, one of the serving chabis came out of the Pota-lá onto the terrace, bringing a leather flask of arkhi to refill our drinking horns and skull cups. Bayan, Ukuruji and I were sitting now with our eyes pensively fixed on the tabletop, so my gaze was caught by the bright garnet sleeves of that young Bho man dispensing the liquor. Then my eyes, idling on those movements of color, caught the similarly idling gaze of Ukuruji, and I saw his eyes quicken with light, and I think the garnet sleeves inspired in both of us the same outrageous idea at the same instant, but I was glad to let him do the expressing of it. He leaned urgently toward Bayan and said:

  “Suppose we do not risk our own men to bait the trap. Suppose we send the worthless and expendable Bho … .”

  YUN-NAN

  1

  IT had to be done either quickly or in a secrecy so strict that it would have been almost impossible to sustain. So it was done quickly.

  The first thing done was the posting of pickets all around the Ba-Tang valley, alert day and night to stop any Yi scouts from sneaking into the area, or any already planted Yi spies from sneaking out with word of what we were up to.

  I have seen animal flocks march willingly to a slaughter pen when led by a Judas goat, but the Bho required not even that much cajolery or duress. Ukuruji merely outlined our plan to the lamas he had evicted from the Pota-lá. Those selfish and heartless holy men were all too anxious to do anything that would get the Wang and his court out of their lamasarai and themselves back into it—and the Bho would do anything their holy men told them to do. So the lamas, evincing no fatherly concern for their Potaist followers, no feeling for their fellows, no loyalty to their own country or reluctance to aid their Mongol overlords, showing no qualms or scruples whatever, made proclamation to the people of Ba-Tang that they must obey every order the Mongol officers gave them, and go anywhere they might be sent—and the mindless Bho complied.

  Bayan immediately had his warriors begin corralling every able-bodied Bho in the city and environs—men, women, boys and girls of sufficient size—and begin outfitting them with cast-off Mongol arms and armor, giving them the more worn horses for mounts, and forming them into columns complete with pack animals and yurtu-carrier wagons, Bayan’s own orlok flag, the yak tails of his sardars, other suitable pennants and guidons. Except for the lamas and trapas and chabis, only the very oldest, youngest and frailest Bho were spared to be left behind—plus a few others. Ukuruji kindly excepted the several culled-out women he had been keeping for the enjoyment of himself and his courtiers, and I likewise sent Ryang and Odcho safely to their homes, each with a necklace of coins to help her further her career of bedding toward a prospect of wedding.

  Meanwhile, Bayan sent heralds under white flags of truce riding southward to bellow over and over, in the Yi language, something like this: “Your traitor spy in the capital of Kithai has been exposed and overthrown! You have no more hope of standing under siege! Therefore this province of Yun-nan is declared annexed to the Khanate! You are to throw down your arms and welcome the conquerors when they come! The Khan Kubilai has spoken! Tremble, all men, and obey!” Of course, we did not expect the Yi either to tremble or to obey. We merely trusted that they would be enough bemused and distracted by those heralds arrogantly riding through the valleys that they would not notice the other men flitting furtively along the mountaintops—engineers finding the best places to secrete the brass balls, and then hiding near them, ready to fire their wicks on a signal from me.

  In case the Yi had any watchers of excellent eyesight posted far beyond our pickets surrounding Ba-Tang, the whole bok was struck and the yurtu tents collapsed, and all that equipment and the wagons and animals not going with the pretended invasion were hidden
away. All the thousands of real Mongol men and women moved into the evacuated buildings of the city. But they did not don the drab and dirty civilian clothing of the displaced Bho. They—and I and Ukuruji and his courtiers as well—stayed clad in battle dress and armor and accouterments, ready to move out on the track of the doomed columns as soon as we got word that the trap was sprung.

  It was necessary to send some real Mongols along with those decoy columns of mock Mongols, but Bayan only had to call for volunteers and he got them. The men knew they were volunteering to commit suicide, but these were warriors who had bested death so often that they firmly believed their long service under the Orlok had imbued them with some power always to do so. Any few who survived this latest perilous mission would simply rejoice in Bayan’s having once again proved their indestructibility, and the dead would not reproach him. So a band of the men rode at the front of the simulated invasion army, playing on musical instruments the Mongols’ war anthems and marching music (which the Bho, for all their willingness, would not have known how to play), and, with that music, setting the alternate canter-walk-canter pace for the thousands behind. At the tail end of that army had to ride another troop of real Mongols, to keep the columns from straggling, and also to send couriers back to us when the Yi—as we hoped—began to congregate for their assault.

  The Bho knew very well that they were posing as Mongols, and their lamas had commanded them to do so with a will—though I doubt that the lamas had told them it was probably the last thing they would ever do—and they entered into the pretense most heartily. When they learned that they would be led by a band of military musicians, some of them asked Bayan and Ukuruji, “Lords, should not we chant and sing, as real Mongols do on the march? What should we chant? We know nothing but the ‘om mani pémé hum.’”

  “Anything but that,” said the Orlok. “Let me think. The capital of Yun-nan is named Yun-nan-fu. I suppose you could go clamoring, ‘We march to seize Yun-nan-fu!’”

  “Yun-nan-pu?” they said.

  “No,” said Ukuruji, laughing. “Forget about shouting or chanting.” He explained to Bayan, “The Bho are incapable of enunciating the sounds of v and f. Better have them not voice anything at all, or the Yi may recognize that deficiency.” He paused, struck by a new idea. “One other thing we might have them do, though. Tell the leaders always to lead the column to the right around any holy structure, like a mani wall or a ch’horten stone pile, leaving that on their left hand.”

  The Bho made a feeble wail of protest at that—it would be an insult to those monuments to the Pota—but their lamas quickly stepped in and bade them obey, and even took the pains to say a hypocritical prayer giving the people special dispensation on this occasion to insult the almighty Pota.

  The preparations took only a few days, while the heralds and the engineers went on ahead, and the columns moved out as soon as they were finally formed up, on a beautiful morning of bright sunshine. I must say that even that mock army made a magnificent sight and sound as it left Ba-Tang. Up front, the band of Mongol musicians led with an unearthly but blood-stirring martial music. The trumpeters sounded the great copper trumpets called karachala, which name could rightly translate as “the hellhorns.” The drummers had tremendous copper and hide drums like kettles, one slung on either side of the saddle, and they did marvels of twirling and flailing their mallets and crossing and uncrossing their arms as they hammered the thunderous beat for the march. Cymbalists clashed immense brass platters that flashed a flare of sunlight with every stunning ring of sound. Bell players beat a sort of scampanio —metal tubes of various sizes arranged in a lyre-shaped frame. Between and among the louder, blaring noises could be heard the sweeter string music of lutes made with specially short necks for playing while riding.

  The music moved on and gradually diminished as it blended into the sound of the thousands of hoofs clip-clopping along behind, and the heavy rumble of wagon wheels, and the creak and jingle of armor and harness. The Bho, for once in their lives, looked not pathetic or contemptible, but as proud and disciplined and determined as if they had actually been going out to war, and on their own account. The horsemen rode rigidly upright in their saddles and facing sternly forward, except to do a very respectable eyes-right when they passed the reviewing Orlok Bayan and his sardars. As the Wang Ukuruji remarked, the decoy men and women did indeed resemble genuine Mongol warriors. They had even been persuaded to ride using the long Mongol stirrups—which enable a hard-riding bowman to stand for better aim with his arrows—instead of the short, cramped, knees-up stirrups favored by the Bho and the Drok and the Han and the Yi.

  When the last column’s last rank and its rear guard of real Mongols had disappeared downriver, there was nothing for the remainder of us to do except wait and, while waiting, try to maintain, for the benefit of any putative keen-eyed watchers from afar, the illusion that Ba-Tang was an ordinary, nasty Bho city going about its ordinary, nasty Bho business. In the daytimes, our people thronged the market areas and, at twilights, gathered on rooftops as if praying. Whether we ever really were spied upon, I do not know. But if we were, our stratagem could not have been discovered by the Yi down south, for it worked exactly as planned—up to a point, anyway.

  About a week after the leavetaking, one of the rear-guard Mongols came galloping to report that the decoy army had got well within Yun-nan, and was still proceeding forward, and the Yi apparently had been fooled by the imposture. Scouts, he said, had seen the scattered individual snipers in the mountains, and outpost groups of them, beginning to collect together and to move downhill like tributary streams converging to become a river. We waited some more, and in another few days another rider came galloping to report that the Yi were unmistakably massing in force behind and on both rear quarters of our mock army—that, in fact, he had had to ride most evasively to get around the gathering Yi and get out of Yun-nan with that information for us.

  So now the real army rode forth, and—though it moved as discreetly as possible, with no marching music—that must have been a really magnificent sight to see. The entire half a tuk surged out of the Ba-Tang valley like an elemental force of nature on the move. The fifty thousand troops were divided into tomans of ten thousand, each led by a sardar, and those divided into the flag-captains’ thousands, and those into the chiefs’ hundreds—each riding in broad ranks of ten in files of ten—and each hundred riding far enough apart not to be suffocated by the dust kicked up by those ahead. I say the departure must have made a magnificent spectacle, because I did not get to see it go past me. I rode out well ahead of it, in company with Bayan, Ukuruji and a few senior officers. The Orlok, of course, had to go first, and Ukuruji was in the forefront because he wished to be, and I was there because Bayan ordered me to be there. I had been provided with a special, immense banner of brilliant yellow silk, and I was to unfurl that at the proper moment to signal for the avalanche. Any trooper could have done the signaling, but Bayan insisted on regarding the brass balls as “mine,” and their employment as my responsibility.

  So we cantered a good many li in advance of the tuk, following the river Jin-sha and the broad, trampled track beside it that was the spoor of the mock army. After only a few days of hard riding and spartan camping, the Orlok grunted, “Here we are crossing the border into Yun-nan Province.” A few days farther on, we were intercepted by a Mongol sentry, one of that army’s rear guard set to wait for us, and he led us off the river route, taking us to one side of the line of march and around a hill. At the far side of that hill, in late afternoon, we came upon eight more of the Mongol rear guard, where they had made a fireless camp. The captain of the guard respectfully invited us to dismount and share some of their cold rations of dried meat and tsampa balls.

  “But first, Orlok,” he said, “you may wish to climb to the top of this hill and look over. It will give you a view down this valley of the Jin-sha, and I think you will recognize that you have come just in time.”

  The captain led the way, as
Bayan, Ukuruji and I all made the climb on foot. We did it rather slowly, being stiff from our long ride. Toward the top, our guide motioned for us to crouch and then to crawl, and at last we only cautiously poked our heads over the grass at the crest. We could see that it was well we had been intercepted. Had we followed the river and the tracks for a few hours more, we should have rounded the other side of this hill and entered the long but narrow valley opening before us, in which our mock army was camped. The Bho, as instructed, were behaving more like an occupying force than an invading one. They had not erected any tents, but they had camped this evening as nonchalantly as if they had been invited by the Yi to Yun-nan and were welcome there—with innumerable camp fires and torches twinkling throughout the twilit valley, and only a few guards negligently posted around the camp perimeter, and much movement and noise going on.

  “We would have ridden right into the camp,” said Ukuruji.

  “No, Lord Wang, you would not,” said our guide. “And I respectfully suggest that you subdue your voice.” Keeping his own voice low, the captain explained, “All down the other side of this hill are the Yi, lurking in force, and at the entrance to the valley, and on the farther slopes—in fact, everywhere between us and that camp, and beyond. You would have ridden right into their rear, and been seized. The foe are massed in a great horseshoe, around this end and both valley sides of the decoy camp. You cannot see the Yi because, like us, they have lighted no fires and they are concealed in every available cover.”