Chapter 287: The Naval Office

The officials of the Tea-Horse Office returned to the bureau one after another, their minds at ease.

Because the new surveillance eunuch dispatched by the imperial court, on the second day after his arrival, had his request to meet Liu Chengzu denied; he settled for the next best thing and met Wang Kun, who was in charge of the Ju'erwan market.

After that, Eunuch Zhang transferred a great many tea bricks from Sichuan and threw himself into the booming smuggling enterprise as well.

Even the palace eunuch sent by the court to monitor the Tea-Horse Office had joined the smuggling — what did the other officials have left to fear? Everyone simply clocked in when they should and drank tea when they should.

Only Chengzu's father-in-law Wang Kun knew what had actually happened in between.

Wang Kun was a litigation master by background; he had never experienced the war between Liu Chengzong and the Great Ming, and had even spent the entire rebellion living comfortably in Yan'an Prefecture City under the protection of Liu Laoye and Chengzu — the most he ever got involved in was the grain trade and paying the salaries of the prefectural officials.

He did not like war, and still held the Great Ming court in considerable awe; in his view, the best state of affairs between the Qinghai Marshal's Office and the Great Ming was simply not going to war.

On this point, the eunuch Zhang Yuanheng could reach a consensus with him.

Once they had that consensus, everything else was easy to negotiate.

But what Zhang Yuanheng had in mind was not smuggling, but fulfilling his own mission; the court's mission for him was to monitor the Tea-Horse Office, and the deeper objective was to make the Xining Tea-Horse Office send horses to Guyuan.

Because the Great Ming's northwest was critically short of warhorses.

That sounded like a joke — how could the northwest be short of horses?

Originally it wasn't, but Liu Chengzong paid a visit, and then it was.

Wherever Liu Chengzong passed, the horse pastures were emptied; where he hadn't gone, warhorses continued to drop dead in an unending stream. In the past, they could still get over a thousand warhorses a year from the horse-tribute tribes, but now the horse-tribute tribes no longer paid tribute in horses.

Guyuan was critically short of warhorses.

Zhang Yuanheng wanted results; this was the only chance he would get in his entire life, and he had to seize it firmly.

In any case, the garrison eunuch of Guyuan had said that as long as no war broke out, he was free to do whatever he wanted... Was getting horses really so hard?

In the past, they traded tea for horses; now tea could no longer buy horses. But if they put the official tea into smuggling, they could trade it for sheep, and then use the sheep to buy horses from the civilian population in the northwest — wasn't that also a way to solve the problem?

In truth, Wang Kun rather disliked this method; he would have preferred Zhang Yuanheng to trade tea bricks with him for mules to deliver to the court, but Zhang Yuanheng insisted on sheep, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Because Zhang Yuanheng wanted to use sheep to trade for horses with the acculturated tribes from Hezhou and Taozhou, southeast of Xining — places that lay outside the Qinghai Marshal's Office's sphere of control.

Wang Kun did not decide on his own authority; he only told Zhang Yuanheng to transfer the tea first, saying he would send someone to Kangning Prefecture to ask the Grand Marshal's opinion.

The man sent to inquire had only been on the road a few days when a military man, reeking of bloodshed and battle, arrived from the south. His manner was exceedingly arrogant, and he showed not the slightest courtesy to this surveillance eunuch: "The Grand Marshal wants to see you. Depart immediately."

There was not a moment's reprieve, leaving Zhang Yuanheng seething inwardly but not daring to show it.

He had had dealings with the garrison banner troops of Xining Guard and the camp soldiers of Zhenhai Barracks; aside from the different accent, the soldiers here gave him almost the exact same feeling as his eldest brother, who served in the capital training divisions.

During the days when the Tea-Horse Office had no officials, his daily meals were delivered by the garrison banner troops. In five days, he had eaten donkey-meat huoshao twice, and one of those even had donkey meat stuffed inside.

Zhang Yuanheng initially thought this was a thoughtful gesture from Liu Chengzu, the commander of Xining Guard, knowing he was from Baoding — but when he asked, he found out that every soldier in this city ate the same thing. If it weren't for the fact that there were relatively more sheep and fewer donkeys lately, their ten-day menu would have included three meals with meat stuffed inside.

People said this was a famous northern Shaanxi delicacy, the Henan donkey-meat huoshao, just ninety-eight years short of being a century-old establishment.

The soldiers in Xining City were well-equipped; many wore military uniforms different from the mandarin-duck battle jackets — the material was sturdy and hard-wearing, the workmanship very fine. Some soldiers had the battle-hardened air of men who had long garrisoned the frontier, yet they were very respectful toward eunuchs.

Others showed him no respect, but carried the sly, earthy air of farmers from field and furrow, whispering and murmuring from a distance — yet when he actually walked up to them, that indifferent nonchalance vanished from their replies.

But the soldiers who came from Kangning Prefecture were not like that.

Beneath their armor were crudely made, dirt-yellow uniforms; they had the battle-hardened air of frontier troops but none of the frontier troops' respect for eunuchs. The way they looked at him was like staring at a piece of meat.

This was the first time he truly realized that although Xining Guard could no longer be called the court's frontier defense, it was still far from being enemy territory.

Being hemmed in by the guards of the Qinghai Marshal's Office and taken west of Xining, setting foot on the road to Kangning Prefecture — that was what you called true enemy territory.

Massive military encampments, enormous marketplaces, and at the mouth of the valley, soldiers in bright armor shouted with stern ferocity, directing slaves captured in war to haul stone and build additional small wooden-and-stone fortresses.

The arrow towers of the fortresses, built against the mountain, were heavily guarded; long gun and cannon barrels protruded outward, aimed at the tribal folk and Tatars driving their livestock to trade at the market.

The veteran soldier escorting him north of the lake said those were not slaves, but nobles, chieftains, stewards, and soldiers from the south who refused to surrender. The Grand Marshal called this labor reform — letting them know how bitter a slave's life was.

Zhang Yuanheng did not care about nobles or slaves; he himself was a physically incomplete, neither-man-nor-woman eunuch, with no interest in the hierarchies of the mortal world. A slave might not be human, but he was certainly not human.

What he cared about more was the enormous arms bureau in the river valley at the source of the Huangshui River. He struggled to describe whether those long, thin tubes should be classified as large muskets or small cannons; in any case, all the firearms protruding from those small fortresses came from the great arms workshops in the river valley.

People called the lands west of Xining the Qinghai Marshal's Office, and he wanted to know just where the Qinghai Marshal's Office actually was.

West of Xining Guard, the place closest to the Qinghai Marshal's Office was north of the lake; there was a large town there, roughly the size of an inland township, but it had no city wall yet. In the distance all around were pastures, nearby were farmlands, and the innermost market town was protected by chest-high low yellow-earth walls and a ditch.

The Qinghai Marshal's Office was not there either. He saw tall wooden archways and enormous storehouses stretching all the way to the lakeshore; only when he drew near did he discover that the archway bore six large characters — Qinghai Naval Office.

But when he looked out over the sea, he could not see a scene of naval oared sails blotting out the sky and sun; instead, there were quite a few simply built oared fishing boats, with soldiers leisurely sailing them upon the sea, looking quite carefree and at ease.

Far off in the deep-water area, a single smallish sailing ship lay anchored, looking extraordinarily lonely.

The escort soldiers had always been too lazy to bother with Zhang Yuanheng, and besides, he was afraid of these military attendants who looked ready to kill at the drop of a hat. However, at the Qinghai Naval Office, he met an official.

The nominal second-in-command of the Qinghai Pacification Commissioner's Office, the Assistant Commissioner Zhou Riqiang.

Zhou Riqiang had once served as Prefect of Ningzhou, and was very pleased at Zhang Yuanheng's arrival. He had originally wanted to invite him to stay a few days at the Naval Office, but upon hearing that the Grand Marshal had summoned him, he dropped the idea.

After some inquiries, Zhang Yuanheng pried out the classified intelligence of the Naval Office: the Naval Office under the Qinghai Marshal, in its table of organization, had nineteen officers including Zhou Riqiang, commanding a single four-hundred-liao paddle-wheel warship.

There were no sailors; all eighteen Arhats of the navy were officers.

It was said that after the Grand Marshal launched his southern campaign, Zhou Riqiang had assembled the entire remaining garrison and searched for anyone who could handle sails and rudders or was skilled in water — he found exactly these eighteen men, immediately promoted them in rank and title, and now every one of them held an instructor's post.

But the Naval Office had only instructors and no soldiers, because recruitment was extremely difficult; within the territory ruled by the Qinghai Marshal's Office, recruiting sailors was far harder than recruiting carters.

The veteran frontier guards were willing to ride boats but unwilling to sail them, willing to eat fish but unwilling to fish. Besides, the Grand Marshal was sweeping through the south like dry twigs and rotten wood, and they were all hoping for the next war to begin. Being a sailor on Qinghai Lake meant becoming a local hegemon of Qinghai — in this lifetime, there might never be a maritime overlord who could rival them, essentially losing all opportunity for war.

But that was only the secondary reason.

The main reason was that Zhou Riqiang's position in the Qinghai Marshal's Office was awkward — nominally second only to one man, but in reality, just a little higher than a toe.

Thus Zhou Riqiang was the person in the entire Qinghai Marshal's Office who most wished for Liu Chengzong to return in triumph. Without Liu the Lion's token of authority, he could control no one apart from the Eighteen Arhats, and could accomplish nothing at all.

Even when he had his eye on some large sun-dried timbers from the Haixi tribal section and wanted to requisition them, no one would step forward on his behalf.

Otherwise, they should have had two paddle-wheel warships by now.

The paddle-wheel warship's formal name was the wheel-paddler; its earliest form dated to the Tang dynasty, with paddle wheels fitted on both sides of the ship and connected internally by an axle — one axle with two wheels made one set. From the Tang to the Ming, ships with anywhere from two to thirty or forty wheel-sets existed.

In the Ming dynasty, however, such ships were already rare. It was a type of war vessel and troop carrier, valued primarily for carrying as many soldiers as possible, suitable for relatively narrow waterways. Because the hull was heavy and drew deep water, it could not be used in shallows; if the hull was tall, narrow, and long, it could not withstand sea winds, so it was typically used on large lakes and for river defense.

In a great unified dynasty, the need for large-lake and river defense was relatively low, so they were more commonly used during the Song dynasty.

During the Battle of Xiangyang, Zhang Gui and Zhang Shun once built over a hundred wheel-boats at the Danjiangkou on the Han River, loaded them with salt, cloth, and supplies, massed them to charge the lines, and broke through into besieged Xiangyang, bringing immense encouragement to the trapped Song troops inside the city.

Zhou Riqiang had run the numbers: for the Qinghai Naval Force, if the ships carried no cannons, only firearms, and prioritized sailing speed for north–south runs, the cargo demand wouldn't be huge — paddlewheel boats were a perfect fit.

The paddlewheel warship moored out at sea was a two-sail, two-wheel configuration, carrying seventy soldiers, twenty boatmen and treadle-drivers, using sails and terrifying upright apes as motive power — fuel consumption: twenty bowls of fried noodles per hundred kilometers.

When Zhou Riqiang pulled Zhang Yuanheng over to introduce the warship, Zhang Yuanheng found it quite novel and felt rather pleased.

Until a shore cannon set up on the dock was fired — a Folangji piece hauled down from the Xining Guard city wall, a Jiajing-era antique, poorly maintained through wind, sun, and rain, with severe gas leakage, but it sure made a loud bang.

Amid the cannon's roar and the horn calls, the drifting fishing boats turned back one after another. The Eighteen Arhats were summoned to Zhou Riqiang's side, and the whole group cheerfully escorted Zhang Yuanheng onto a fishing boat. Joining them aboard were twenty Mongol treadle-driver conscripts who had come from the surrounding market towns. The grand flotilla of fishing boats set course for the paddlewheel ship.

Zhang Yuanheng gradually sensed something was off: "Wait — Lord Zhou, why are we taking a boat? Riding horses was perfectly fine."

Zhou Riqiang was thrilled. The escort troops weren't just here to fetch Zhang Yuanheng — they also let Zhou Riqiang report the Naval Office's situation to the south. To him, what could be more persuasive than having the escort troops sail across Qinghai Lake?

"Riding horses can't compare to this. Let me tell you, this boat is fast."

Without further debate, the fishing boat was rowed alongside the paddlewheel ship. Everyone climbed the ropes in turn — those ahead pulled up, those behind pushed — and before Zhang Yuanheng could hesitate, he was already standing on the paddlewheel ship.

This vessel had two decks. The lower hold could store some cargo; the upper cabin sat amidships, half below the main deck and half above. Two axles ran through the middle, and the hull sides jutted out a foot to shield the upper halves of the wheels.

Moments later, the sails were raised. Twenty treadle-drivers on deck split between the two wheels, ten to a row, facing the stern as they stood before the pedal-fitted axles, hands gripping the guardrails before them. Chanting work songs, they stepped onto the pedals. As the paddlewheel ship slowly got underway, the four round wheels on the hull's sides began turning, the resistance growing lighter and lighter.

These treadle-drivers were all handpicked fat men. As human-powered drive, the pedals couldn't be moved by strength alone — like climbing stairs, they followed the drumbeats from the forecastle, using body weight and muscle to accelerate the ship.

Zhang Yuanheng had no leisure to admire this crystallization of human ingenuity — his heart was in turmoil.

When a man's feet cannot stand upon solid earth, unease always sets in. Especially since he still regarded the Qinghai Grand Marshal's Office as a hostile power, this only intensified his panic.

It left Zhang Yuanheng restless, and in a low voice he asked the radiant Zhou Riqiang: "Lord Zhou, you didn't call me aboard to do me in, did you?"

"Oh?"

Zhou Riqiang adjusted the wide sleeves of his official robe — in Qinghai, he was probably the only one still wearing Ming court attire — and smiled as he asked Zhang Yuanheng: "How would this Zhou do you in?"

Zhang Yuanheng stepped back at the edge of the upper deck, chopped his palm down at the waves parting before the bow, his wide eyes full of terror and unease: "Drown me."

"Hahaha!"

Zhou Riqiang burst out laughing: "What foolish talk, Eunuch Zhang. You and I serve the same court — why would this Zhou drown you?"

Serve the same court?

Zhang Yuanheng's pupils sharply contracted. The court you speak of… which damn court is it?

But he dared not ask.

Watching Zhang Yuanheng's jittery demeanor, Zhou Riqiang felt like laughing. He'd been the same when Yang He first dispatched him to Liu Chengzong's side — no better than Zhang Yuanheng.

And now? He'd found his peace of mind. Wherever you draw your salary and do your work, isn't it all the same?

Apart from a touch of homesickness, nothing was different. There was just a bit more worry about momentous events looming — but that worry had always been there, even back in Ningzhou.

In Ningzhou, hadn't he worried about the peasant army taking the city and killing him? Hadn't he worried about the Later Jin breaching the passes and harming his family?

It was all the same.

Only now, he worried more about Liu Chengzong breaching the passes, and the court harming his family back in Baoding.

At that thought, Zhou Riqiang turned to Zhang Yuanheng: "Rest easy. If the Grand Marshal wants to see you, he won't harm you. Think carefully — if he truly meant you harm, would he need this Zhou to invite you aboard and then shove you into the sea? Where around Xining couldn't bury your dozen or so men?"

Zhang Yuanheng mulled it over — it did seem that way.

"How about this: if you're worried, and the Naval Office has nothing else pressing, I'll escort you to Kangning to see the Grand Marshal. But when we return, you'll do me a favor."

Zhang Yuanheng's impression of Zhou Riqiang was still quite favorable — at least far better than those scowling escort troops. He asked: "Lord Zhou, please speak."

"I'll send a few men to Baoding. They'll come back after the New Year." Zhou Riqiang spoke, then looked at Zhang Yuanheng: "Under your Tea and Horse Office's name — say they're your attendants, returning home to handle a matter."