“I got away, but they wounded Mayu and knocked him from his horse. I got away, tethered my animal, and came back to see if I could free him. There were five Han soldiers, blue padded shirts with armor, conical helmets… they tied him to a bush and used him for target practice. It was horrible.” You don’t have to tell it all.
“I couldn’t take it anymore. I took down two of the five with arrows, then charged in. I don’t remember drawing my sword, or fighting. The next thing I remember was blood all over me, not mine, and three men dead by my sword. And Mayu, my love, dead with an arrow in his chest.”
“I buried him, cut off the Han ears and left their bodies to rot, and rode back to the encampment. I went into Bei’s yurt, and he asked where Mayu was. I said we were ambushed, he was killed, and I threw the ten ears on the floor of the tent, said he was avenged, and left.”
“I have never had another friend or lover since. I can’t. You are a good man, Galosga,” she said tenderly, putting her hand on his arm, “but I have nothing to offer you.”
“What you have given me, Hina, I will treasure. You are a powerful woman, to have lived the life you live. And that is more than just an interesting story.”
“Thank you. Mayu’s spirit said last night that telling this story would be like lancing a boil.”
Now squeeze the boil and push the rest of the puss out, Hina.
Go away, Mayu!
Do it, it is time, it will only hurt a little, then it will heal.
She took a very deep breath, exhaling it in a very long sigh. “All know that part. Now there is the part I have always kept hidden. You will not think well of me when I tell that part, but I must.” She took another deep breath, paused and continued.
“Mayu and I went on patrol together often to be alone and make love. We were shirking our duty, but… we were in love. I invited him to make love that morning, and he turned me down, then a little later, he said it didn’t look like we were going to find any Han, so why not? But the Han almost rode over us, we barely had time to get up and on our horses. He was knocked off before he could mount.” Her eyes were beginning to burn and she rubbed them hard. “We can tell this without tears! Damn you, Mayu, help to get through this without tears!
“They not only used him for target practice, being very careful to not hit anything fatal, but then they gelded him like a horse, they held up his man parts and laughed, then threw them in the dirt! My first arrow was for him, he was hurting, the blood pouring down between his legs, and he would never again be whole. He smiled… when he saw me aim for his chest. He mouthed the words ‘I love you!’ as I shot him.” A tear trickled down her cheek.
Good job, Hina! I will always love you, but I think I will leave you two alone now.
I will always love you, too, Mayu. Thank you for making me do this.
Eight years of dammed up emotions broke in an instant, she gasped, sobbed and seized Galosga with all her might, burying her head in his shoulder, hanging onto him as though her life depended on it. She cried for Mayu, she cried for herself, she cried for crying, and she cried for not having cried a long time ago.
“Let it out, huldaji, let it all out. It’s been in there way too long,” while he stroked her gently. Finally, the sobbing subsided, and she rested in his arms.
CHAPTER 62: THE MIGRATION BEGINS
Galosga and Hina returned to the encampment by midmorning. They had not made love after her cathartic storytelling; it would have seemed anti-climactic. He just held her for a very long time until she went to sleep in his arms. They rode back slowly in silence. On arrival, they each went to their respective yurts, with the simplest of farewells.
Hina’s arban had nearly completed dismantling the ten-foot yurt, her traveling bags and bedroll stacked neatly outside. She was greeted by Hadyu, her second-in-command. “Good morning!” he said cheerily. “We moved your stuff out so we could start early. Good ride?”
“Yes, it was, indeed, Hadyu, a very good ride,’ she said as she dismounted and rearranged her clothing.
“Is the Tiger Lady maybe taking a mate?” he asked with a grin. “You have never taken the same man twice.”
She punched him on the shoulder in mock anger, and said with the faintest of smiles, “We had a good ride. Leave it at that.”
“Something is up! I thought I saw her smile!” he said to his fellows.
Me, take a mate? He’ll be gone in a few months, going west to try to get back to his home in the mountains. But, still, why not? Nearly every other person in the whole thousand has a ‘mate,’ either a wife or a partner, except me. Well, I will think on this later.
She turned a hand with bundling the big yurt and its support poles, which was reduced to a reasonably small package to be loaded onto a complaining camel.
When Galosga got to the Da Qin encampment, he also took some kidding from the group. “I’m sure you are worn out after a morning with Hina, so we put you in the oxcart to recover!” quipped Shmuel.
“No need, Shmuel, just a good ride!” he said, laughing.
Ibrahim had procured a white yurt for the group to replace the light two-person tents for the winter. Still bundled up, it had already been loaded onto the oxcart, over the folded two man tents they had been using. The oxcart was fairly large, about five feet wide and ten feet long. It was big enough to haul all their belongings and several passengers, sheltered from the weather by a circular white felt canopy stretched over bamboo half-circle ribs over the wagon bed.
After midday meal, Bohai bid the Da Qin party farewell and headed south back to Tongchuan, after dropping off one last package of goods to the Shanyu.
The migration began. While the group was a tenth the size of what had been the usual Xiongnu encampment, thousands of people and tens of thousands of animals on the move at once is still an impressive sight. Gaius and Antonius, part of the southern perimeter security, had galloped up to a rise, on the watch for Han, hostile Xiongnu, or bandits.
They conversed in Latin, now so seldom used that they were afraid they might forget it entirely. “Look at that line! Must be five miles long!” said Antonius.
Five hundred slow moving oxcarts, each with several horses in tow, and as many heavily laden camels, made up the center of the moving mass, with hundreds of people, dogs and goats milling among them on foot. The white canopies of the oxcarts dipped and lurched rolling over the rough roadless steppe grassland. Following them was a herd of horses, with riders whipping back and forth around the unmounted animals, directing them with whoops, whistles and calls, keeping them generally moving in the same direction. Ahead of the convoy were thousands of camels, sheep and goats. Some of their herdsmen were on foot, some on horseback, using dogs to shepherd the animals. From a mile away, Gaius and Antonius could hear the barking dogs, screaming children, calls of the herdsmen, bells of the sheep and goats, and complaining grunts from the camels, the cacophony of a small city on the move.
On either side, more mounted guards, uniformly clad in beige and black, cantered along beside, riding in a never-ending wheel clockwise around the center body of the migration, their flags snapping in the crisp early October air.
“I thought our oxcart days were over,” said Gaius, shifting in his saddle. “They’ll be lucky to make ten or fifteen miles a day!”
“Aye, an’ a few more of them than us when we were on the road. They do this twice a year and cover thousands of miles in both directions.”
“Tough people!”
Back in Luoyang, the taiwei military commander had received intelligence of Shanyu Bei’s imminent departure from the Hetao plateau on his route west. This was be the last one, as indications were the Huyan clan had decided to join the rest of the beaten northern Xiongnu around the Altai mountains thousands of li to the west. Good riddance. Bei’s clan was the biggest of the few remaining holdouts. The taiwei gave orders that they be allowed to trade enroute at Bayan Nur, Yinchuan, and Liqian, with further stops to be determined by the weather. They were not be molested
by the army unless they launched raids; the band was too minuscule to cause much trouble.
Since they were stopping at Liqian, he notified the weiwei, as the minister of guards had dispatched Wang Ming to Gansu Province, against the chance that Si Huar and Si Nuo might attempt to contact family there. And if so, they would lead them to the other Da Qin. The Son of Heaven had issued strict orders that they not be harmed if found, and returned for consultation with him and then freed to return home. Si Huar was Ming’s, to do with as he wished.
Gaius and Antonius found the daily routine to be not at all unlike a Roman army route march, in which the troops might cover twenty miles in a day while engineers scouted ahead for a suitable campsite. The Xiongnu seemed to follow a similar pattern, at night re-erecting their yurts in predetermined secure locations, in the morning taking them down to move on.
The two, with their military experience, had been invited to participate in Shanyu Bei’s planning sessions, conducted in han-yu for their benefit. There was, however, little for them to contribute. The Xiongnu knew the terrain intimately, and their skirmishing plan left the soldiers little to improve upon, hundreds of riders constantly circling the main body to protect against any intruder.
But Xian Bohai’s last package, dropped off in the morning, was something of considerable interest.
Bei produced some packages wrapped in rice paper. “Bohai left twenty of these for us this morning. He said they were very hard to come by. They appear to be a disassembled crossbow of some sort.” The zuun company commanders peered at the parts, as did Gaius and Antonius.
Antonius picked up the large rectangular box, eighteen inches long, six inches wide, and two inches thick. The long thin top was open, and the box was hollow inside. A small round hole about an inch in diameter penetrated the front side. The other pieces were a two-foot crutch-like stock ending in a curved brace about six inches long, an unstrung and unmounted bow, and a fist-sized paper wrapping containing small metal parts.
“I think I know what this is, Bei! I saw one of these up in the bowmaker’s shop in Luoyang, remember, Gaius? He demonstrated it, but wouldn’t let us touch it. A state secret.”
“Yes, I think you’re right, Antonius. It’s disassembled, but that’s what it is. He called it a lian-nu, a continuous crossbow, or something like that. Did Bohai provide arrows?”
One of the zuun commanders opened a paper package to disclose several hundred arrows. Antonius picked one up. “Yes, that is what they are. No fletches, very small dart-like point. Bei, do you have someone here who works on crossbows? We don’t know how to put one together, but he can probably figure it out, if we show him where the strange pieces go.
They summoned the bowsmith, and he quickly had one assembled in working order.
“It’s too dark now. We’ll try this out tomorrow, but it looks right. That bowmaker worked it like this,” Antonius said, bracing the crutch-like bar on the end of the weapon against his thigh. “And he got off ten shots about as fast as I could count… one, click-clack, two, click-clack, that fast. You have a hell of a weapon here. If we can train some people to use these, together they can get off about a thousand shots a minute. Not too accurate, no fletches and no way to aim, but it will sure make someone put their heads down. You might want to have your arrowsmiths make up some more arrows though, you’ll go through that pack in a few minutes.”
They agreed for a test firing the next day. After the meeting, Hina approached Antonius. “May I join you at your yurt?” she asked.
“Sure, come with us and share dinner and some kumis,” answered Antonius. “You don’t have reputation for socializing, though.”
“In your case, I will make an exception. I find you all interesting. Antonius, you and Marcia remind me of some people I once knew.” And once was!
They arrived at the yurt, where Marcia and Demosthenes were preparing dinner outside for the group. Everyone else, including Galosga, were out.
“Hello, domina, looks like unexpected company.”
Marcia wiped sweat from her brow and ran her hand through her scraggly black hair. Although the weather was cool, the fire was not. She put down the ladle, wiped her hands on her trousers, and came over to extend her hand. “Hello, Hina. Still talking to me?”
“I am always happy to talk to you,” she said with a shy smile, her first in many years, accepting Marcia’s in a firm soldier’s wrist clasp.
“Even after my terrible display of swordsmanship? Your people seemed to be very pleased that I lost so fast.”
“Actually the opposite. They expect me to fight, as they expect any of their men to fight, no matter the odds. But for someone like you to choose to fight when the odds are all against you, that is high courage, especially if you lose. They were cheering for you, Marcia”
“That makes me feel better, but I still can’t fight.”
“We will talk about this later. I am hungry.”
They sat down to eat and drink, then as the sky turned dark, they shared more kumis.
“I want to talk about Marcia. I understand what you are doing, and Antonius, you want Marcia, if she has to fight, to be able to defend herself.”
“I’m not sure I want her fighting at all. It’s her idea, but I think she can only get herself killed. I keep trying to show her that it’s out of the question,” answered Antonius. Marcia sat silently, clasping her knees to her chest as they talked about her.
Hina shifted her attention to speak to Marcia. “You remind me of myself a long time ago. You’re not as big, but you are as stubborn, and I like that.”
“Thank you, but I agree with Antonius, it seems hopeless.”
“Antonius, you are teaching Marcia how to fight like a man, and she will lose to a man that way, every time. Almost every man a woman fights will have the advantage in weight, strength, reach and experience, like you over me. And if you hadn’t gloated over your victory before you had it, you would have beaten me.”
She turned back to the girl. “Marcia, I would like to teach you to fight like a woman. I had to learn that the hard way, without a woman to guide me. But you have me to help you.”
“I think I would like that.”
“I don’t think you will like it at all. I am going to teach you the art of fighting, and it won’t be fun. It will involve pain, getting knocked down, hurt to the point of crying, getting back in the fight when you don’t think you can.” Hina turned back to Antonius. “You and she are lovers, and you can’t do that, though you know, as a soldier, exactly what I mean.”
“She’s right, Antonius, I have seen you use your centurion’s hickory stick quite routinely on your troops, and I can’t see you using it on her, no way,” added Gaius, smiling.
“What is different about fighting as a woman?” asked Marcia.
“Many things. If the man is the bigger and stronger, you are the faster and lighter. And you must anticipate what he is about do, before even he knows it. Antonius probably understands some of what I am saying, but not all.”
“You make sense, Hina. Do you want to take over her training?” asked Antonius.
“No, I want you to continue the sword drill, it’s a good strength and agility training. Teach her the science of fighting, I will teach her the art. And the camp loves to watch. It’s the fun part of training, and at least some training should be fun.
“This pain… blood or broken bones?” he said, fixing Hina with a suspicious gaze.
“Not very much blood, nothing needing more than a bandage. Bruises, not breaks, mostly not intentional,” she said, with another uncharacteristic smile.
“I think you sound like a centurion,” using the Latin phrase. “That’s what I am, a leader of many men. That’s what you should be some day. I have had the same concerns, so what you say is good. If she insists on fighting, I want her to be good.”
Marcia agreed with some enthusiasm, “Yes, I’ll do it. When do we start?”
“Good, I want to do our training out of the sight of th
e clan, on the road tomorrow, after Antonius finishes some work with my arban and my mid-morning patrol. You continue with the wooden swords, and enjoy them. And be careful, Antonius, she will put you down someday!”
“It would be my pleasure to take a fall from her, Hina. Some more kumis?”
“Please.” Antonius led them into the yurt against the gathering chill, and brought out leather sacks of the liquor, while Marcia and Hina sat cross-legged on the floor. Marcia had adopted that style from her, finding it much comfortable to sit for a long time that way.
Hina accepted the sack from Antonius, who joined them on the floor. She took a swig and passed it to Marcia. A fire, fed by pungent dung, illuminated the yurt adequately. Around the wall were sleeping rolls. “So, Marcia, have you ever been beaten in your life?”
Marcia laughed heartily, and Antonius sprayed kumis through his nose in a guffaw. “Several times a month, since I was twelve. No broken bones, but a chipped tooth, more bruises and black eyes than I could count. It is the reason the Hanaean government is searching for us!”
“Well, that is not the answer I was expecting. Your husband?”
“My consort. I was brought from Liqian to be trained in court han-yu, along with my brother Marcus, and several others, because we were fluent in Da Qin and han-yu. I was the only girl, so they put me in the concubinage and assigned me to the tender mercies of Wang Ming, who beat me regularly. Mostly I think he just enjoyed it. My brother, they… settled him down. But it allowed him to visit me in the concubinage.”
“May Tengri strike the bastards dead! I thought you were a piece of palace fluff, with the way your polished court language shows through, but you and your brother have been through hell. Did you ever see your family after they took you to – where?”
“Luoyang. No. We were not allowed to write. Even when we passed Liqian on our way west six years ago, we were not allowed to stop and see them. I don’t even know if they are still alive, but that is why it is important for us to go to Liqian.”
The Eagle and the Dragon, a Novel of Rome and China Page 48
