Chapter 336: Pretty Good in a Fight

Hutun Bileg Khan led his iron-hoofed horse across the desolate Gobi flats, yellow sand stretching boundless before his eyes, every direction steeped in bleakness and despair.

In truth, it was not only Liu Chengzong on the other side of the Qilian Mountains cursing Chuoketu in his heart — Hutun Bileg north of the Qilian Mountains was doing the same; Chuoketu's letter had come at the worst possible time.

Ever since launching the eastern campaign last winter to attack the Khorchin, who had already surrendered to the Jin, the Chahar and the Later Jin had been at daggers drawn, waiting only for a decisive battle.

But Hutun Bileg knew perfectly well that even if he swept through the Three Tumen of the Right Wing, he still could not defeat Hong Taiji.

Because the nomadic cavalry he had, Hong Taiji had too; the regular infantry and artillery he lacked, Hong Taiji also had... and even among the same nomadic cavalry, his Mongol army was weaker than the Later Jin's Mongol army.

Nomadism is not about the "wandering" but about the "herding"; in fact, given the choice, Mongols were quite happy to settle permanently in one place and farm.

Whether Xiongnu, Xianbei, or Mongol, in the northern, southern, and western reaches of the Gobi, they all farmed.

It was just that in this vast world, all the good land had long been snatched up by their southern neighbors; forced to live on land unfit for cultivation, they had no choice but to adopt nomadism. Even so, through tenacity and hard endurance, they still managed to carve out patch after patch of tiny farmland on the Mongolian Plateau.

But the harvests were truly nothing to boast about; the most important mode of production in nomadism could only ever be herding. Agriculture, like trade, raiding, and hunting, could only ever take a back seat as a supplement.

In practice, each tribe was like an enormous mobile town, moving along fixed routes in cycles of several years and encamping at fixed positions.

The migration routes worked out by the tribes over generations kept strictly to their own paths, with summer camps on high ground safe from flooding and with few mosquitoes, and winter camps in sheltered places to keep warm.

Merchants knew where to go to sell their wares, craftsmen knew where to ply their trades, and the great nobles knew at what time each tribe would appear at what place.

These migration routes woven together formed the entire steppe, like countless connect-the-dots puzzles. A Han could not match every pasture to every Mongol tribe, just as a Mongol could not tell whom the little donkey cart on the Sorghum River belonged to.

But which pasture belonged to which tribe — that was common knowledge among the herders.

Hutun Bileg's Chahar migration west had wrecked the Tumed's old production routes; Hong Taiji's western campaign had likewise destroyed the Chahar's very foundation for survival.

A nomad who leaves his fixed pasture, even when standing on new grassland, is like a roving bandit who has fled his home in Han territory — duckweed without roots.

Because on unfamiliar pasture, people do not know where the good grass is and where the land is poor, do not know where the cold winds blow and where to shelter from the cold.

And in the front loop of the Tumed's Guihua City region, the even graver problem was that the land was no longer fit for farming. Had Boshugtu possessed even half the military strength of Altan Khan, the Chahar could never have dreamed of subduing the Three Tumen of the Right Wing.

The nobles who had sworn allegiance to the Chahar Khan were busy scouting out pastures around Guihua City when they suddenly heard that the Later Jin's Hong Taiji was inciting the various tribes, preparing to raise a great army and march west for a decisive battle. For a time, panic spread among them.

Hutun Bileg believed that as the Chahar Khan, he could rule with absolute personal authority, but in truth he could not.

Beset by troubles within and without, a letter arrived from Chuoketu Taiji, saying he had seized the Han Marshal's headquarters in Qinghai to build his own estate, and inviting the Khan to come to the high plateau to recuperate and rebuild the supreme glory of the Mongol Khan.

On one side, a powerful foe he could not defeat; on the other, the lone loyal remnant of the Great Mongol Empire in the southwest. How to choose? Migrate west.

In truth, what Hutun Bileg wanted from migrating west was not to occupy Qinghai, but to use Qinghai as a springboard to leap into Ü-Tsang. In short... to get as far away from Hong Taiji as possible.

Yet now, with the entire Mongol Khan's court encamped at the edge of an oasis beyond Liangzhou in Gansu, Hutun Bileg Khan's heart was exceptionally heavy.

He had trekked a vast distance and finally reached this place closest to Qinghai, only to be told that Chuoketu was dead, killed at the hands of a man named Liu Chengzong.

Hutun Bileg had always believed he could rule with absolute personal authority, but as he kept on ruling, he found he was ruling himself to death.

By now, the road he had come by was no longer passable; migrating back east through wind and snow would likely freeze yet more of his people to death. Moreover, his Mongol Khan's court had become a loose coalition during the westward migration, and even if he returned east, they might not still obey him.

Even if they did, Guihua City might already have been seized by Hong Taiji.

To the north lay the great desert — that road was impassable. The only choices left were west and south.

West was impossible; that was the territory of the Oirat, the old loose-coalition friends of the Tatars, who decades ago had often served as mercenaries for the Ming court, secretly working mischief to cut off Altan Khan's route into Qinghai.

Those Forest Folk were also mortal enemies of the Chahar Khan and would never offer him provisions.

To the south lay the Gansu border garrisons, and behind the Gansu border garrisons, Liu Chengzong was waiting for him.

On the Gobi flats, Hutun Bileg looked around in utter bewilderment... the Later Jin, the Oirat, the Gansu border garrisons, the Marshal's headquarters — against none of them did he have any certainty of victory!

The tribal structure of the Mongols dictated that pasture was the life of the Mongol people; to leave the pasture meant to forfeit one's life. So not everyone was willing to migrate west with him.

In fact, at first the tribesmen had been willing — until Hutun Bileg led them to the next pasture. As the great host surged westward in mighty force, many people fell further and further behind, and in the end they simply stayed behind on other people's pastures to recuperate.

So much so that when they reached the border of Liangzhou and took a census of people and livestock, he had only sixty-seven thousand people left under him. Worse still, of those, barely fifty thousand men, women, and children could ride and shoot, yet they had only a little over forty thousand horses and forty thousand head of livestock.

This situation left Hutun Bileg wavering and unable to decide. The long, narrow Gansu corridor was very easy to break through; in the past, the Tumed had entered Qinghai by repeatedly crossing Ningxia and Gansu, sometimes even bypassing Gansu to cross northwestern Shaanxi. The Ming had very few people in the northwest, and in the face of a sudden crossing, it was very difficult to organize a defense.

But after crossing Gansu, he would still have to cross the Qilian Mountains. If he were caught halfway across and given a sound thrashing by Liu Chengzong, Hutun Bileg would be finished.

So he decided to swallow his pride and write a letter to Liu Chengzong, seeking a chance to avoid war, and sent his younger brother, Chaktu Taiji, ahead to Qinghai.

Upon receiving this mission, Chaktu Taiji, bearing his elder brother's charge and the courage of a Mongol Empire warrior, bid farewell to his family. That very day, his wife went and gave the Khan a thorough scolding, and had she not been dragged away by Hutun Bileg's younger sister, she might well have laid hands on him.

In the years since Hutun Bileg Khan had taken charge of the state, due to his guiding principle of "first settle the interior, then deal with the exterior," nearly two hundred thousand people in Southern Mongolia had died in battle, and even Hutun Bileg's own main tribe had lost forty thousand.

Hutun Bileg had never personally crossed swords with the Later Jin's Hong Taiji; he had been busy fighting his own people all along.

And in this climate of western resentment and eastern enmity, the mortality rate of Hutun Bileg's envoys likely ranked highest among their peers in all the states under heaven.

Early on, when Hutun Bileg sent a letter to Nurhaci, both sides detained each other's messengers and killed each other's envoys. Later, when the Chongzhen Emperor ascended the throne and abolished the rewards, Hutun Bileg sent his brother-in-law, the commander of the Chahar main tribe's central army, Guiyingqia Taiji, to demand the rewards from the Ming court — and his sister became a widow.

Chaktu Taiji accepted the mission with the conviction that he would die, but his wife had no desire to become a widow like the Grand Princess.

Disguised as a pilgrim the whole way, Chaktu Taiji proceeded with extreme caution. The Gansu border garrisons did not obstruct these people much; entering Tibet in the name of paying homage to the Buddha was an old trick inherited from the time of Altan Khan, and it had always worked very well on the Ming border guards.

It had originally begun because, after the peace treaty with Altan Khan, the higher officials tended to look after the Mongols of the Three Tumen of the Right Wing, and later it became a habit at the grassroots level.

For a long time, the northwestern border troops had eaten the least grain and taken the worst beatings. Their mission was not to make this defensive line impregnable — it was enough that it was not occupied by enemy forces.

Besides, they could not defend it even if they tried. The oases of Gansu had drastically degenerated into desert, and by now the lower reaches of the Hexi Corridor were completely abandoned, leaving only Zhangye and the northern Qilian Mountains still struggling to survive on melting snow water.

To these pilgrims, the defensive line was practically nonexistent. As long as they handed over some money, the border troops did not care whether a handful of Mongols crossing the border were going to offer incense or to visit a grave.

This lightened Chaktu Taiji's mood somewhat, but no sooner had he crossed the Qilian Mountains than Chaktu Taiji was nabbed over a single sheep.

There was no clearly demarcated boundary between the Marshal's headquarters' Haibei County and Gansu Garrison. The tribal peoples living in the Qilian Mountains were on one side horse-tribute tribes of the Great Ming, and on the other side registered households of Haibei County. Even this autumn, the Junior Lozun had run off into Ü-Tsang, and there were still tribal chieftains coming out of the mountains, driving tribute grain to deliver to the Junior Lozun.

The local population had virtually no mobility, so when several Mongols who looked like nobles suddenly appeared, claiming they wanted to buy a sheep and saying they were pilgrims entering Tibet —

the tribal chieftains in the Qilian Mountains were absolutely delighted. At this late date, the Marshal's headquarters' statue of the Lady Wencheng had already been built all the way to the summit of Sun Moon Mountain, the Tumed were gone — what decent person still went into Tibet to offer incense?!

Chaktu Taiji was grabbed by the scruff of the neck and escorted straight into Chen Qindai's Haixi County yamen.

Fortunately, Chen Qindai had Mongol blood. As soon as he heard it was a letter for the Mongol Khan, he personally escorted them to Ju'erwan, and only then did Chaktu Taiji step into the Marshal's headquarters as the fifth year of Chongzhen drew to a close.

On New Year's Eve, the Marshal's headquarters in the new city was at its liveliest moment of the year.

Aside from the commanders and magistrates stationed at border posts, the many officers of the Marshal's headquarters were gathered together in one hall, and the many tusi of Xining had also been invited, bringing their families.

All thirteen tusi families of Xining had come, regardless of whether their relations were good or bad, though some brought their families and some did not. Their states of mind, however, were not the same.

Li Tianyu's expression was uneasy; he had been looking for a chance to be alone with Liu Chengzong, but Liu the Lion had given him no such opportunity.

Qi Guoping seemed more like someone who had come to gather intelligence — outwardly at ease, but inwardly so tense he could barely stand it, his eyes darting furtively across the faces of the officers attending the gathering.

As for the other minor tusi, they all seemed to be jealous that Chen Shiwen had obtained the post of Chiliarch of Eight Corner City, and had come hoping to secure an official position for their own families as well — or else they wanted to hear the Grand Marshal's plans for Gulf Bay next year and see how they might make some money from it.

Just then, a guard outside the hall came to report that Chen Qindai had arrived, bringing the Shazha Taiji with him.

Liu Chengzong first called Chen Qindai in and asked who this Shazha Taiji was; only then did he have the guard bring Shazha Taiji forward.

Shazha had not expected to meet Liu Chengzong under the full gaze of so many eyes, but his composure was decent enough. After bowing in salute, he stammered, "I am an envoy of the Great Khan, bearing a letter from the Great Khan, to be presented to General Liu Chengzong."

General?

The expressions of everyone in the hall turned rather strange. Chen Qindai's eyes went wide as he rebuked him, "I told you long ago this is the Grand Marshal's residence — what nonsense are you spouting?"

Liu Chengzong's hand, holding a wine cup, froze for a moment. He set the cup down and raised a hand to signal Chen Qindai not to say more. "Have him read the letter. You will translate."

Chen Qindai immediately acknowledged the order and stood to the side, urging Shazha Taiji to read the letter.

In truth, Shazha Taiji was also very uneasy. He had not meant to put on airs deliberately, but after all, the Mongol Great Khan was the counterpart of the Great Ming Emperor — there was no way he could bow and scrape before Liu Chengzong.

Seeing that Liu Chengzong had not flared up in anger, Shazha Taiji swallowed hard, took out the letter, and drew several deep breaths.

Liu Chengzong and the others were just beginning to wonder when they heard him recite in one breath: "Ligdan Khutugtu, Sacred Warrior, Genghis, Great Ming Sechen, Ever-Victorious, Supremely Great, Chakravartin, Taizong, Heaven of Heavens, Jade Emperor of the Cosmos, Golden Wheel-Turning Dharma King, sends this letter to Lord Liu, Master of Qinghai Lake."

Having finished, Shazha Taiji — his face red, his neck thick, his eyeballs practically bursting — finally gasped for air like a dying fish. He looked even more exhausted than if he had butchered a horse, and turned his gaze to Chen Qindai.

Chen Qindai was completely dumbfounded. He mumbled out a few indistinct syllables, muttering under his breath, "This is just too damn cruel," then shook his head and said to Shazha Taiji, "You — say it again."

Shazha Taiji's eyes bulged in desperation. "Are you trying to torment me?"

"Enough, Qindai. I've more or less understood."

Liu the Lion realized that his own Sea North County Magistrate's Mongolian was not much good either. Shaking his head in exasperation, he said, "Hudun Rabbit, Genghis Khan, Chechen Khan, Batu, Daiching, and whatnot — damn it, that's several people. Who are they trying to scare? Do they want to declare war on me?"

Chen Qindai thought to himself, Marshal, with your level of Mongolian, please don't show off. Frantically waving his hands and shaking his head, he said, "No, Marshal, it's just the Mongol Great Khan alone. They're all titles."

At these words, the tense atmosphere in the hall instantly dissolved. The assembled tusi, who had been holding back their laughter, all burst out — no one knew who started it first.

Liu Chengzong found himself caught between tears and laughter as well. Watching the crowd roar with mirth and Shazha Taiji standing there utterly ill at ease, he waved a hand and said, "Forget it. Give the letter to Qindai first and have him read it to me. Are you Hudun Rabbit's younger brother?"

By the time Chen Qindai finished translating, Shazha Taiji was still inwardly cursing his elder brother's lengthy titles. Seeing that the airs he had risked putting on had been completely undone by that very title, he simply handed the letter over and nodded. "Yes."

"And don't just stand there in the middle. A guest who comes is a guest — find yourself a seat, eat if you want to eat, drink if you want to drink." Having said that, Liu Chengzong turned to Chen Qindai. "Come, read me the letter."

In truth, aside from the rather convoluted titles, the letter's content was quite simple. The gist was that Hudun Rabbit, master of four hundred thousand bowstring Mongols, had entered Qinghai at the invitation of Choktu Taiji, yet Choktu had been killed by Liu Chengzong.

Although there had been no enmity between him and Liu Chengzong in the past, his own man had been killed by Liu Chengzong. If he made no show of it, no one would ever again heed his mighty name. Therefore, Liu Chengzong must offer reparations and an apology, and cede a stretch of grazing land.

The scale of the reparations and apology must be no less than forty thousand sheep or forty thousand taels of silver. If so, he would be willing to invest General Liu with the title of Marshal of Qinghai.

Otherwise, this would become a matter between the two of them alone, and Heaven would decide who is the true master of Qinghai.

After Liu Chengzong heard Chen Qindai finish reading the letter, he looked around at everyone in the hall. Whether tusi or subordinate general, every face wore a complicated expression.

There was no anger, no fear — only blank looks exchanged, a baffled and absurd sense of utter incomprehension.

Because even a fool could tell that Hudun Rabbit wanted sheep. And the price of sheep — in more expensive places, they went for about six or seven qian of silver apiece; in Xining, three to four qian.

The most absurd thing was Shazha Taiji. In the brief time it took Liu Chengzong to listen to Chen Qindai read the letter, the man had vanished.

Looking more carefully, Liu Chengzong spotted the fellow squeezed in next to Xie Erhu, tearing into the tableful of dishes with gusto. The one eating most heartily in the entire hall was this outsider among outsiders; his food-demolishing ability was worth at least eight Chen Tusi.

Shazha Taiji had not originally intended to find a seat, but when he glanced at the other tables, it was all meat, not a single vegetable in sight... as if moved by some ghostly impulse, he had plopped right down.

"I — I'm not greedy." Although cannibalism had already appeared among the Chahar, Shazha Taiji still stuffed his mouth full of meat as he explained to Xie Erhu, "I'm willing to swear on half my brother's titles, it really isn't greed. Your food — it tells whether you can fight."

Suddenly, he heard Chen Qindai calling him. Hurriedly swallowing and wiping the grease that Dongpo pork had smeared all over his mouth, he gulped down two mouthfuls of water before saying to Xie Erhu, "Pretty capable. Pretty capable of fighting."