Chapter 264: The Gei Qu

Southeast of Nangqian, a dozen swift horses raced through the river valley of the Gei Qu.

The horses carried four men, bloodstains on their bodies, their armor and clothing bearing many scars; the only one not wearing armor was a youth named Danba, his shoulder-baring brocade robe bulging and lumpy, his expression panicked.

The master and three servants ignored the villages of serfs clustered along the Gei Qu and headed straight for the manor on the hill.

This was a fortress in a mixed Han-Tibetan style, built during the Yuan dynasty, once the seat of the native chiliarchy office under the Longda Guard of the Ming dynasty.

But ever since that Yang Yinglong in Bozhou went to war with the imperial court, the Sumang native chiliarch, deep in the heartland of Do Kham, had stopped sending tribute to the Ming.

The slaves in the manor recognized Danba and knelt one after another to salute him.

Danba asked where Lord Sumang was, threw down the reins, and ran into the manor himself.

On a stone wall on the second floor of the manor stood a chiming clock as tall as the ceiling.

The stout, portly Lord Sumang sat in a rocking chair facing the chiming clock.

He wore a shoulder-baring robe of subtly patterned brocade, adorned with amber and dzi bead pendants; a pipe in his left hand, a wine bowl under his right, he stared at the chiming clock with a look of rapt intoxication.

"Uncle, what time is it already, and you're still looking at that thing — you've been looking at it for how many years now!"

Lord Sumang raised an eyebrow, lifted his eyes, and said cheerfully: "Every time you come, every time you mock my clock. Today you didn't laugh... what's happened?"

Danba sighed.

This chiming clock had been sold by the Portuguese to Indian nobles, then made its way circuitously into Shigatse; in his youth, Sumang had gone into Tibet to pay homage to the Buddha and bought it at a high price.

Danba, as the nephew, always laughed because when the great clock was brought back, Danba was still small and saw a few characters engraved on the base; not recognizing them, he asked his uncle, and his uncle took one look and vomited.

He really did vomit. What was written on it were Chinese characters: Made in Foshan.

To be fleeced three or four times over for no good reason — anyone would vomit at that.

But the clock itself was genuinely excellent; even now it still represented the world's first-rate handcrafted quality, losing only a quarter of an hour each day.

If you wanted it to chime on the hour accurately, you either adjusted it every day, or you didn't adjust it for three months.

Danba dropped into a chair, his body clanking and rattling; he stood up, reached into his bosom, and tossed a small bundle onto the table.

Sumang frowned. "What is it, so heavy?"

A ten-catty gold bar.

"Gama is back."

Danba leaned against the back of the chair. "Relying on his backer, he's made a slave brat into an official, come back to take revenge on us."

"So soon?"

Sumang sat up straight. He knew Gama would go north to fetch reinforcements, but he hadn't expected him to return with an army so quickly.

After thinking, he asked hurriedly: "Did he strike only you, or did he sweep through everyone who surrendered to Donyo Dorje?"

Danba said: "He wants to seize the lands of all nobles who surrendered to Béri!"

The nephew's surrender to Donyo Dorje had been, for the most part, at his suggestion.

In this region, Sumang's territory had Nangqian to the northwest and Béri to the southeast; caught between the two for so long, offending neither side, he had managed to keep the peace.

Whenever Donyo Dorje conscripted troops, Sumang had always let him conscript — in any case, when soldiers were raised, it was those serfs and landless peasants who provided the men.

The landless peasants and serfs were simply two grades of agricultural serf.

There were only two kinds of people here.

One kind were the monks and nobles; status between them could flow — a noble could be a monk-official, and a monk-official could be a noble.

The other kind were serfs, landless peasants, and house slaves; status between them could also flow — a serf could become a landless peasant, and a landless peasant could become a house slave.

If you divided the people here into a thousand, then roughly five were great monks and nobles, and forty-five were lesser monks.

The remaining nine hundred and fifty were two hundred and fifty serfs, three hundred landless peasants, and four hundred slaves and house slaves.

Performing corvée for the lord was, in the first place, the obligation of those serfs and landless peasants.

The corvée was the name of the labor service, divided specifically into two kinds: one called gangzhuo, meaning "going on foot," the other called ladun, meaning "carrying out by hand."

The former was labor service, the latter was collection in kind — both were unpaid obligations; they had to render both labor service and pay taxes in grain and money.

Sumang was a kind-hearted noble, disliked serving monks, and arranged little corvée for his subjects.

Other nobles usually made their serfs perform half a corvée each year — one hundred and eighty days of unpaid labor.

But in his territory, he only made the serfs perform one-third, that is, one hundred and twenty days; people all called him the kind-hearted Lord Sumang.

When King Donyo Dorje of Béri attacked, on the question of whether to ally with Nangqian to resist the murderous Béri army, Lord Sumang had done some calculations.

His territory was mostly pastureland, with only eight manors; each year, the fields cultivated by corvée yielded six thousand measures of highland barley, and rented-out land yielded three thousand measures — a total income of one thousand eight hundred dan.

Six yak farms kept two thousand four hundred yaks; two sheep farms kept one thousand eight hundred sheep.

Each year they collected fifty thousand catties of butter and six thousand catties of milk residue.

Adding surplus handicraft and debt income, Sumang should originally have lived a fairly comfortable life.

But every year, five or six hundred lamas passed through his territory, came to chant sutras, stayed a month and a half, eating and taking as they went — and fifty thousand catties of grain and seven thousand catties of butter went down the drain.

Then add in monthly offerings to the Three Jewels five times, serving tea at the monastery twice, annual tribute to the great monasteries of Tibet... half his income vanished without a trace — poof, gone.

King Béri, who came with his troops, was different — very considerate.

Without asking a single question, without a word, he drove all the monks away; the four monasteries in his territory each received its own torch and were burned clean to the ground — like a living bodhisattva who rescues from suffering and relieves distress.

For such toilsome work, the reward King Béri demanded was merely a tribute of five hundred head of cattle.

Five hundred head of cattle was no small sum for him, but this tribute would not be paid every year; what Sumang thought at the time was, once the monk Gama of Nangqian brought back reinforcements and drove out the Béri army, this land would still be his — and without monks.

Compared to that benefit, five hundred head of cattle was negligible.

So Sumang surrendered very smoothly, and even dragged his nephew next door into surrendering with him, so that the bodhisattvas of the Béri army could go over and do a bit of work there too.

But he had never, ever imagined that the monk Gama would actually dream of reclaiming all the nobles' lands.

The chiming clock on the wall began to sound.

Sumang narrowed his eyes, pondering a countermeasure; when the chiming stopped, he glared and said: "You stay here and rest easy. Let me see which of those slave brats dares to cross the Gei Qu."

"That monk Gama — retaking lost territory is one thing, but does he think he can swallow me up too?"

Danba thought his uncle was too optimistic. Although crossing the Gei Qu meant leaving Nangchen territory, he didn't believe Gama would stop his advance.

He had fled from the northwest and had truly escaped with his life. Shaking his head, he still felt the lingering fear: "Uncle, you didn't see it. The nangsen on every estate have grown restless, and even the duiqiong and chaba are volunteering to serve as soldiers for them."

Danba snorted, his eyes like those of a trapped beast: "As if that brat called Basang could become a lord, and they could become lords too."

Sumang's eyes widened. After a moment's thought, he narrowed his eyes and said cautiously: "Monks are insatiably greedy. Gama couldn't have done this."

"Exactly!"

Danba nodded with certainty: "The way I see it, this is most likely the doing of the backers behind him, those Han people... The sky is about to change."

Sumang sat in his chair and blew out a puff of smoke. Gripping the pipe stem, he shook his head with a scoff: "Change my ass."

With that, he raised a foot and kicked the nangsen kneeling beside him holding a silver tray, then tapped his pipe against it: "Go fetch the steward."

Once the nangsen had left, Sumang said to his nephew: "Only those outsiders don't use the ula corvée. They abolish the ula, and everyone whose land borders Nangchen will oppose them. Tell me, in this region, are there more who want to abolish the ula, or more who rely on it?"

He snorted: "Gama is walking to his own death."

"But the slaves will all run to them."

Danba had indeed been beaten into fear. He said, Uncle, you didn't see it.

"The Mongol cavalry surrounded my estate. The slave brats were hurling stones inside and charging in with torches raised. My few matchlock men couldn't even get up onto the parapet wall. When one brat finally plucked up the courage to climb up, four or five firelances flashed from a hundred paces away. He didn't die right off, just wailed like a ghost, and the others were too terrified to go up."

As he spoke, Danba lifted his one-shoulder robe and the padded jacket beneath, revealing a bloody welt on his arm: "Over twenty men rode out on horseback. Mima and the others all died, and I lost two horses as well."

Sumang reflected that he had indeed never witnessed such a scene.

He had seen Mongol herder-soldiers, slave soldiers, and even the Han army from west of the river, but he had never seen three armies fighting together in coordination.

"You're right, the slaves all want to run. But who is letting them run?"

Sumang raised a hand and rapped on the table: "What do you do when sheep run off? You send the dogs after them, of course. Flay the skin off whoever dares to run. Get a few good hides, and who will dare to run then?"

"Uncle, don't always go on about flaying, flaying."

Danba scrunched his eyes in disgust: "Once you flay the hide, the brat is gone. Three brats, one tongue, one eye — drive a stake into the ground, tie them with a rope, and they can still farm a ke of land, and you can still breed them."

"Ha!"

Sumang's face showed no cruelty, as if he were merely discussing tonight's meat. He praised him: "Well said. Lead them out from the field for a walk every day, and see who still dares to run!"

Before long, the one-handed steward, dressed in a satin jacket, walked briskly over. He bowed and asked: "Master called for me?"

Danba knew the steward. In his youth, the man had been a cavalryman kept in his uncle's household. Later, he lost a hand in battle and became a senior chaba managing a single estate, and only later became steward.

"Send word to the eight estates to levy men bearing arms to protect the official stronghold. Dispatch shepherds along the Gei Qu to keep watch on the opposite bank. If you see slave brats or Mongols roaming about, seize them and report back immediately."

After the steward received his orders and departed, Danba still shook his head: "Uncle, a wolf that eats whole horses cannot fill its belly on sheep. They will come sooner or later. We must make an extra preparation."

"I know. You mean to seek out the Béri forces deployed along the Chamdo line?"

Sumang turned and pointed at Danba, asking: "Have you considered this? Why would the Han army have Gama grant titles to slaves? They could clearly collect the tamba tax from Gama. If Gama loses his slaves, he can't deliver goods to them either. What benefit is it to them?"

Danba froze for a moment, then shook his head.

He had never thought about this. He had been too busy fleeing for his life along the way to ponder such things.

Now that his uncle mentioned it, it dawned on him: "Right, what benefit is it to them?"

Master Sumang, full of confidence, asked again: "Did you see the Han army?"

Danba shook his head, then nodded: "I saw a few officers, wearing helmets and padded armor, among the brat units."

"Then you haven't seen the army."

"I didn't see them." Danba thought for a moment and added: "But the ones firing volleys with several firelances from the woods — that must have been the Han army, right? Where would Gama and the Mongols get firelances? And even if they had them, they couldn't shoot straight."

"That settles it!"

Sumang tapped the tabletop heavily twice with his finger and spoke with absolute conviction: "Troop strength. The slaves can serve as soldiers for them. The Han cannot hold out in Amdo... They lack troop strength!"

Danba craned his neck, eyes wide: "Uncle, how long has it been since you last went out? The whole of Kham is buzzing with wild rumors. The Han leader, called Liu something-or-other, claims the title of Grand Marshal and has led twenty thousand Han troops and forty thousand Mongols into Nangchen."

This time it was Sumang's turn to stare wide-eyed.

He indeed had not left his territory for a very long time. The last time he went out was two years ago, to Ganden Monastery.

But twenty thousand Han troops and forty thousand Mongols?

"The whole of Nangchen doesn't even have twenty thousand people. Where would they get rations for sixty thousand? They would have already come in a furious rush to plunder every estate. It's impossible to bring that much grain from Han territory."

Sumang followed this line of reasoning. The so-called sixty thousand crack troops were absolutely a lie. Even if the Han army numbered twenty thousand, the Mongols could not possibly have forty thousand.

The whole of Qinghai could barely muster forty thousand Mongol troops.

Something that the Mongol taijis themselves had failed to achieve — how could a newly arrived Han warlord, on what grounds, unite the scattered sand of Mongol nobles?

Impossible.

"But they really do have quite a lot of Mongols."

"Mongols are Mongols. They want to enter Tibet. They couldn't possibly travel a thousand li all the way here just to recover lost territory for that monk Gama."

Danba asked: "Then what does Uncle plan to do?"

"Same as you were thinking: ask the Béri King's army for help. Now we know the Han forces are not large in number, which is why they've been stalling, stirring up the slave brats to serve as their soldiers."

Sumang smiled: "They're quite shrewd. But now we know. If we can persuade the Béri King to commit his troops, the battlefield will be at the Gei Qu River. They think they'll be dealing with a few hundred of us, but in reality, they'll face the Béri King's army of over ten thousand."

He shook his head: "Let me think about how to persuade the Béri King to move his army here and set a heavy ambush for them."

Danba's face lit up with great joy: "Then, my territory?"

"There's no other way, anyway. If you want your land back, you must take part in this battle, and you must stand on the Béri King's side, contributing your strength to the fight. When the war ends and the Béri King wins, the land will naturally belong to you."

Sumang let out a breath and shook his head: "If Gama wins, then you'll have truly lost your land."

"Then let's do it! I'll follow your lead in everything." Danba nodded repeatedly and slammed his fist heavily on the table: "Then we fight. It's perfect timing — the slave brats at home are all dead. We'll use this battle to capture more prisoners and bring them back to farm my land!"

The uncle and nephew, both slave masters, discussed the matter in fine detail, making their plan thorough, and soon began preparing gifts for the Béri King, Dönyö Dorje.

Of course, the two did not forget to gather intelligence thoroughly. They also dispatched several trusted nangsen to cross the Gei Qu River, heading toward the advancing Nangchen army to scout for information.