Chapter 925: Even Lackeys Must Compete for the Job!

This was the coldest season of the Khalkha Mongol steppe; as far as the eye could see, the vast grassland stretched in a single sheet of silver-white. Though the wind cut like a knife, no snow was falling, so the march went fairly smoothly. Along the banks of the Kerulen River, four or five hundred "Santa Clauses" rode short-legged Mongol horses, muskets slung on their backs, heavy battle-axes in hand, leading pack horses loaded with baggage, escorting forty or fifty horse-drawn sledges piled with goods, all heading west.

The leaders among these "Santa Clauses" were Oboi and De Belasco.

Oboi now had a thoroughly Russianized alias, Oboiski. His public identity was Mongol interpreter to Bekov, adjutant to the military governor of Yakutsk in Russia. Of course he was no Russian—he didn't look like one either! So he could only pass as a Kazakh who had taken Russian citizenship.

He now wore a red fur-trimmed hat and a long red robe. Fortunately his beard was not white, or he would have looked exactly like Santa Claus.

This "Santa Claus outfit" was the uniform of the Russian streltsy, and the battle-axe and musket were standard streltsy equipment. To pass themselves off as Russians, Oboi and De Belasco had gone to enormous trouble, even rushing to have the streltsy's Santa Claus uniforms made.

Besides all this, they had also reworked the more than one thousand Spanish light muskets they were escorting, grinding off the Spanish inscriptions. Among the fake Russians Oboiski had recruited there were a few who knew a little Russian, so they wrote "Made in Moscow, Russia" in Russian, and had Joseon craftsmen at Busanpo copy the lettering onto the guns.

Once everything was ready, Oboiski set out with Wu Keshan's son Birtakhar at the end of the eighth year of Hongxing on the journey to Khalkha Mongolia.

Khalkha Mongolia lay roughly northwest of Khorchin Mongolia. Because Khorchin had submitted to the Qing earliest, its territory was very large, taking in almost all the pastureland of the historical Eastern Mongols, so the ten banners under Khorchin were now living quite comfortably.

Precisely for this reason, Wu Keshan and his brothers knew they could never be tolerated by the Great Ming, so they no longer openly or covertly begged the Ming Emperor to show mercy. Instead they made two preparations: first, to huddle together with the remnant Qing forces led by Dodo for warmth; second, to prepare for a long migration west.

To migrate west, they naturally had to first build ties with the three Khalkha Mongol tribes, so that they could secure passage through their lands.

And whether they stayed in the Khorchin grasslands to keep contending with the Great Ming or simply left, they had to incite the three Khalkha tribes to resist the Great Ming.

Otherwise, even if the Khorchin migrated west, they would not be secure. The Great Ming could not possibly pursue them across ten thousand li to kill them, but once the Chahar Mongols and Tumed Mongols joined forces to unify the Eastern Mongols, then the Khorchin would be hunted down by the Chahar and Tumed!

To the Khorchin Mongols, the Chahar Mongols and Tumed Mongols were more dangerous than the Great Ming!

Because the Great Ming had too many enemies—the Khorchin Mongols did not even make the list—while to the Chahar and Tumed, how could they not crush the Khorchin Mongols, those traitors?

If not for the Khorchin Mongols leading the way, would the great khans and lesser khans of the Mongols have fallen so low?

So Wu Keshan could not even bother with the New Year. In the bitter cold he took his men to scout ahead for Oboiski, leading one or two thousand warriors along the Kerulen River to search for the winter camp of the Setsen Khan tribe.

The Setsen Khan tribe's territory lay in the eastern part of Khalkha Mongolia, very close to Nerchinsk, Russia's stronghold on the upper Amur River, so they had long had dealings with the Russians. Of course, these dealings mainly consisted of being bullied, because the Setsen Khan tribe had long been blockaded by the Qing and had no source of ironware or firearms, and their horses were inferior to the Cossack cavalry at Nerchinsk. So over the years the Russians had beaten them into terror!

Thus, while Oboiski was hurrying toward the Setsen Khan tribe's winter camp on the Kerulen River, Wu Keshan was desperately pleading with Setsen Khan Babu not to flee.

Inside the Setsen Khan's great tent, Babu Khan—who had only recently taken the throne and looked imposing enough to make one think at once of a great khan—was now pacing about like a headless fly. His servants were frantically packing things, while Wu Keshan, travel-worn and only just arrived, was talking himself hoarse in urgent persuasion.

"Prince Babu, do not be afraid."

Babu Khan stopped abruptly, his small eyes wide as he stared at Wu Keshan. "Prince Wu Keshan, what are you saying? The Russian red-coated musketeers are coming—how could I not be afraid?"

This time it was not even Cossacks, but "Santa Claus soldiers" even more formidable than Cossacks. The Cossacks might crush Mongols like dry weeds, but when they met the Tsar's "Santa Clauses," they too were beaten and strung up!

Babu Khan had heard from the Cossacks who bullied the Setsen Khan tribe how fearsome the "Santa Claus soldiers" were, so when Wu Keshan told him that five hundred red-coated Russian musketeers were coming along the Amur River to bring gifts to the Setsen Khan tribe, he was instantly so frightened he nearly wept.

Even five hundred Cossacks would be more than they could bear—now five hundred "Santa Clauses" were coming. If the Setsen Khan tribe did not flee, what were they waiting for?

Wu Keshan was also taken aback. He had not expected Babu to be so terrified of the Russians; otherwise he would not have let Oboiski bring so many fake Russians. To gather these fake Russians, Oboiski had gone to enormous trouble, not only pulling in many Ainu to make up the numbers, but also having the navy deliberately stage a loading accident so that two Spanish galleons stayed in Busan for the winter, allowing him to hire two or three hundred of their sailors for odd jobs—finally scraping together five hundred men.

Wu Keshan shook his head. "It is only five hundred men. What are you afraid of?"

"Only five hundred men?" Babu glared. "That is a great Russian army of five hundred! How can I not be afraid?"

"Five hundred men can count as a great army? Prince Babu, in your winter camp there must be at least twenty thousand men who dare to fight, no?"

"Dare to fight, my ass!" Babu stamped his foot. "In all these years on the Khalkha steppe, what Mongol has dared fight the Russian devils? A few years ago several thousand of us ambushed a hundred of them and were badly beaten. Now five hundred have come—that means the destruction of the Setsen Khan tribe!"

Five hundred Russians could destroy the Setsen Khan tribe?

Wu Keshan was a little stunned. He thought: that should not be! The Russians cannot fight—they are no match for the Spanish, the Ottomans, the French, the Swedes, the Dutch, the English, the Holy Roman Empire, or the Poles. In the West they do not even rank, do they?

"Prince Babu, you misunderstand. These Russians are good people. They have not come to destroy the Setsen Khan tribe—they have come by the Tsar's order to bring you muskets."

"What?" Babu Khan looked at Wu Keshan as if he were a fool. "Prince Wu Keshan, the Russians have deceived you. Why would they give us Mongols muskets? If we took muskets, whom would we shoot? The Russians themselves! We offered them high prices and they still would not sell—how could they possibly give them away?"

Indeed! Babu Khan's reasoning was quite sound!

Wu Keshan was momentarily speechless. Only after a long while did he recover. "They are giving you muskets so you can fight the Ming army!"

"Fight the Ming army? Why?"

"Of course because they do not want the Ming dynasty to unify the steppe!"

"What? The Ming dynasty wants to unify the steppe?" Babu was stunned again and again. "Old Prince, what era is this now? The Hongwu era or the Yongle era?"

"It is the Hongxing era now!" Wu Keshan's face was full of dread. "The present Hongxing Son of Heaven is the Hongwu Emperor reborn. He is terrifying! In just a few years he defeated the Great Qing and subdued the Chahar, Tumed, and Dzungar tribes as his running dogs. Any day now he will come to destroy us three Khalkha tribes and the Khorchin."

Babu's face turned a shade paler. "Is—is this true?"

"Of course it is true!" Wu Keshan said. "A storm of blood is about to sweep across the steppe. Prince Babu, if you do not trust the Russians, then keep their main force far from your winter camp and have them send a hundred men ahead with the muskets. Surely that will do?"