Chapter 660: Tiger of the Hezhen Tribe

Yang Qi knew that Liu Chengzong had never been interested in heads.

If he could have sold the heads, he would never have sent Bai Wenxuan to make this trip.

The truth was, the Ming court was impeaching his kinsman Yang Sichang so fiercely that Yang Sichang was on the verge of cutting ties with him and would absolutely refuse the heads in his possession.

The main issue was the awkward location of Monan; when Yang Qi saw that Yang Sichang had no interest in the heads, he proposed selling them privately to Fu Renxi.

Unfortunately, Vice Commander Fu didn't want them either. He wrote Yang Qi a letter, rather bluntly: "Fu guards the Shahukou Pass at Datong, facing the Tumed of Fengzhou Beach directly. If my troops hand over a pile of eastern slave heads, does the Commander-in-Chief think that would be appropriate?"

Yang Qi thought it over — it did seem to make sense.

So he wrote Fu Renxi a reply, saying they'd first cure the heads with lime, seal them in wooden boxes, dig a cave dwelling and hang them from the rafters, and wait until next year when the Later Jin army came — then they could do a little business.

But that was just talk; Yang Qi himself didn't believe these skulls could be properly preserved until next year. He figured seven or eight months would be the limit, and what if the enemy didn't come next year after all?

Besides, if they came again next year, there'd be next year's heads to cut and sell.

That was why he sent someone to ask Liu Chengzong.

Whether there were dates on the tree or not, might as well give the branch a whack first.

If the Marshal's manor didn't want them, it was no loss to him anyway.

He figured Liu Chengzong had no interest in heads, but would certainly be very interested in people — this wild-man Tatar they'd captured was far too novel.

At Huayan Temple outside Xi'an, two Feathered Forest Guards with goose-quill sabers at their sides brought the captives into the hall.

The Khorchin captive was unremarkable, with a small queue left at the back of his head, looking like a Mongol squad leader attached to the Eight Banners. He knew proper etiquette and knelt the moment he entered.

He'd probably been kicked around plenty by Tumed Mongol soldiers in Guihua City after Yang Qi captured him — half his face was swollen, and the skin around his eye socket was still bruised.

The one standing beside him, though, must have been the wild-man Tatar Yang Qi had mentioned.

Liu the Lion had originally assumed that "wild-man Tatar" in Yang Qi's letter was merely a slur.

He never expected that the man brought up truly looked like a wild man.

The man was of medium height, wearing nothing on his upper body beneath a sleeveless, studded cloth-faced half-armor, his two arms bare; below he wore padded trousers and a pair of iron-plated Liaodong army boots.

The two garments and one pair of boots on his entire body were all ill-fitting, all stained with old blood and mud, so that neither their original color could be discerned nor how many hands they had passed through.

Liu Chengzong would have believed it if someone said they'd been stripped from a defeated soldier at Sarhu over a decade ago.

But what drew the eye was not this old, worn armor and clothing, but the man's two exposed arms.

Those arms were truly thick, nearly as solid as his chest and back; the whole man was built like a door plank.

Such a physique was not rare in the Marshal's manor, which was full of formidable men, but the manor's men were mostly lean and tough from hard labor and training despite poor nutrition — not like this wild-man Tatar, who had not only thick muscle but a substantial layer of fat over it.

This was extremely rare in this era.

Liu Chengzong had originally guessed that such a physique could only be found by the sea; he never expected the northeast would produce such a man too.

What was peculiar was that atop this exceptionally powerful frame sat a face both old and young.

The short hair on his head showed he'd once kept a queue at the back, but it had been at least seven or eight months since it was trimmed, the little braid growing wild at the back of his head into a tangled mess.

As for "old and young," it was because the deep wrinkles on his face and his extremely rough skin made him look very old.

Yet the timid look in his eyes and the thin, short mustache made Liu Chengzong clearly sense that this was a young man of about twenty.

This wild-man aura was all too familiar to Liu Chengzong; he unconsciously turned his eyes toward Zhang Xianzhong.

Amusingly, Zhang Xianzhong was also looking at him at that very moment. Their eyes met, and each saw the other's gaze flick away.

Both were absolutely certain they were thinking the same thing.

This man exuded from head to toe the air of someone who had lived in the wild for years, much like the two of them back when they were peasant rebels.

In the matter of being wild men, they both had considerable experience.

This inexplicably amused Liu the Lion, seated in his armchair.

He thought to himself, this could be considered a historic meeting between a wild-man Tatar from the northeast and a wild-man Han from the northwest.

He said to the Feathered Forest riders, "Bring them each a rush cushion."

After speaking, Liu Chengzong rested his forearms on his thighs, leaned slightly forward, and asked Bai Wenxuan with keen interest, "What is he called?"

Seeing Liu Chengzong's posture, Bai Wenxuan thought to himself that Commander Yang truly understood the Grand Marshal — their Grand Marshal had no interest in common things like heads, but loved these novel items.

He quickly answered, "Reporting to the Marshal, I believe he's called Amba or Mafa. This humble officer doesn't understand their tongue either. It probably means tiger. In any case... the Marshal may call him whatever he wishes."

Bai Wenxuan pointed to the Khorchin soldier nearby and said, "His master said so."

Just as the two were speaking, the Feathered Forest riders brought over two rush cushions.

When Tiger heard the noble who had escorted him speak his name to the noble in the hall, his brow unconsciously furrowed into a deep frown.

The cloth-faced armor on his body, which was worse than wearing nothing at all, gave off a moldy stench that drilled straight into his nostrils, while the strange incense of the great hall swirled around him — all of it made him deeply uncomfortable.

It made him miss his homeland twice as much.

Tiger's homeland was in the northeast, beneath the Xing'an Mountains, along the banks of the Songhua River.

There were no soybeans or sorghum there yet, only great rivers and endless, forested mountains and marshes stretching beyond sight.

In the mountains there were bears and tigers, in the forests jackals and wolves, and in the marshes and waters, mosquitoes and horseflies swarmed in clouds.

There, spring meant thorny brush blocking the paths, summer meant poisonous insects massing in formation, autumn meant fierce beasts in packs, and of course the howling, brutal cold winds and the dry, endless winter when ice and snow cut off all roads.

There, their nation was called the Hezhen Nation, whose predecessors were known as the Heishui Tribe in the Sui and Tang eras, the Five Nations Tribe in the Liao and Jin eras, and the Dog-Using Tribe in the Ming era — or they were simply regarded as Wild Jurchens.

In truth, however, the various Hezhen tribes had long formed an extremely strong tribal identity. It was just that, like their neighbors the Deer-Using Tribe, also known as the Solon tribes, the harsh living conditions prevented them from developing a complete hierarchical system, from forming a political power, or from establishing a state.

They were widely distributed along both banks of the three rivers — the Heilong, Songhua, and Ussuri. Across that vast land, there were fewer than a hundred thousand of them, a population density far lower even than the Marshal's manor.

Because they settled along the rivers, the tribes possessed exquisite fish-skin tanning techniques, so people often wore clothing made of fish skin, and for this reason the Jianzhou people called them Fish-Skin Tatars.

Tiger's name originated from the day he was born, when his Ama encountered a fierce tiger while hunting in the mountains and, with a single wooden spear and five good hunting dogs, fought it to a draw.

That tiger's front leg was pierced through by the spear, and it also swatted and broke his Ama's leg with one paw.

In truth, his Ama was a formidable hunter — fierce-tempered, seasoned in skill, agile in body — it was just that he was already advanced in age when Tiger was born.

For fishing and hunting folk like them, living amid ice and snow, life dealt too many and too great hardships; they aged fast. Once past forty, the legs, feet, and arms all gave out.

Had he been young and met the tiger with his hunting dogs, even if he couldn't single-handedly fight the Mountain Lord to the death, he could at least have escaped unscathed.

Of course, this was just his own guess based on his strength after growing up.

When his Ama told him this story, the old man refused to admit his age, slapping his crippled leg and bragging, pointing at the forged-steel tiger spear on the wall: "If I'd had this back then, the tiger would never have gotten close. Too bad I only had a wooden spear tipped with antler — the shaft snapped, and the tiger got in close and ruined my leg."

That was pure boasting, because that forged-steel tiger spear was made by a blacksmith in Five Nations City — the head had iron antler prongs to hold the beast off, and the shaft was wrapped with a foot of steel wire. It really wouldn't get snapped by a tiger's paw.

But back then, their entire village didn't own a single iron spear.

A godforsaken place with five months of winter and one year, plus four months of mud everywhere when the snow melted, frozen soil all around — where were they supposed to get steel weapons?

That forged-steel tiger spear later hanging on their family wall —

that came the second year after the tiger was born. His Ama, dragging that crippled leg, took five dogs and went back into the mountains. He searched for two full months, laid snares everywhere, and finally took revenge on that fierce tiger.

The tiger skin, tiger bones, tiger penis — his eldest brother hauled them all to Five Nations City, three hundred li away, and sold them. That was how they traded for the forged-steel tiger spear.

But in truth, that was his Ama's last hunting trip into the mountains. He had gone meaning to take revenge on the fierce tiger, but he never expected to come out of those mountains alive.

Otherwise, he should have brought his brothers, sons, and nephews — formed a hunting party and gone in together. That would have been a sure thing.

His Ama had simply felt that winter was coming, and with his crippled leg he couldn't hunt anymore. He would become a burden to the family, even the whole tribe, wasting their limited food. Better to go into the mountains and stake it all against that old enemy — win or lose, he'd be a hero either way.

Even if he fed himself to the tiger, he wouldn't have lost face. His heart would be at peace.

He never, ever expected.

His Ama's broken leg had been hard to recover from, but with the family's help it healed up — just a bit lame, couldn't bear weight well, ran slow.

That beast's leg was broken too, but no one set the bone for it. In the forest, it could barely even chase down a roe deer, starving till its bones showed through its skin. It couldn't even struggle free from a snare set for roe deer!

If they'd gone any later, they wouldn't have needed to fight — the beast would have starved to death on its own.

In truth, life afterward wasn't as hopeless as his Ama had imagined. Though the lame leg made hunting difficult, the Black Zhen tribes' way of life wasn't only hunting.

They could also fish — though that wasn't exactly easy either.

In the depths of winter, at an ice hole on the great river, a man would sit out in the wilds for two hours at a stretch — chum salmon, carp, and taimen weighing thirty or fifty jin, whose skin made the best material for clothing.

No matter what, that hunt had left his Ama deeply shaken. He named him Tiger, hoping he would be as strong and powerful as a fierce tiger.

Later, his eldest brother used that tiger spear, together with his second brother, to hunt and kill another tiger, making their family renowned hunters far and wide along the Songhua River. Even in Five Nations City, three hundred li away, their name rang loud if you asked around.

Five Nations City — in what later became Yilan County in Harbin, near Jiamusi.

From Shenyang heading northeast, you'd still have to travel two thousand li.

They had their own language, culture, ways of production, and skills for making a living. And Tiger should have been the king of all beasts in the forest sea and snowy plains.

Until the Jianzhou people discovered that the Wild Jurchens were an excellent source of soldiers.

They were, of course, the best source of soldiers!

When Shenyang was just entering autumn, Five Nations City was already in winter.

The temperature difference between Five Nations City and Shenyang was as great as the difference between Shenyang and Beijing.

The ice and snow the Jianzhou people lived in, their cold endurance and battle prowess — compared to the Black Zhen people, it didn't amount to a fart.

The tribesmen living along the Songhua River and beneath the Xing'an Mountains — in body, archery, survival ability, and sheer luck — were simply stronger than common folk born in the Central Plains or even in Liaodong, and generally far stronger.

This had nothing to do with race. A person born in the Central Plains — what kind of life did they live from childhood?

When Tiger was little, listening to his Ama's stories, he knew that if you followed the Songhua River all the way west, to a place as distant as the edge of the sky, there was a group of people called the Black Coats.

Black Coats meant the Central Plains people — a phonetic translation of "Khitan" in the Black Zhen tongue.

Ama said the Black Coats were different from them. They wore clothes made of cotton — hey, and they could even write characters.

Tiger asked what cotton was. Ama said it was like clouds in the sky, like fish skin — you could weave it into clothes.

Tiger asked again what characters were.

Ama was very troubled then. He furrowed his brow and thought for a long time, and finally raised his hand and slapped Tiger: "You little bastard, you've got too damn many questions!"

Later, when Ama mentioned salt, he forgot all about that characters business. Salt was precious.

Ama said the salt their Black Zhen people bought from Five Nations City was all trafficked over by the Black Coats from the Jianzhou and Korea sides.

He also said the Black Coats studied books from childhood. Those from poor families would learn a few characters and then drop out — farming, herding sheep, running errands as apprentices. Those from well-off families would study with all their might.

This time Tiger had learned his lesson. He didn't dare ask what a book was — the back of his head still hurt.

He only remembered being in the dugout shelter they'd built for hunting, the cold wind howling through the little window, but his whole body was wrapped in a thick deerskin robe, and he didn't feel the sting on his face — because his face was already frozen numb.

Ama was the same, his eyebrows, beard, and eyelashes all hung with white frost. He said: "Sitting there for ten years reading — and they still call it 'bitter study by a cold window'!"

Tiger looked at the little window of the dugout, covered over with bream skin, and thought to himself: That really is bitter, and really is amazing.

No time to hunt, no way to fish — just sitting by that little window, for ten years, without freezing to death or starving to death.

The memories of Ama's stories from childhood had taken deep root in Tiger's mind. He always believed the Black Coats were immortals dressed in white clouds, facing the cold wind, sitting for ten years without production, without eating or drinking, unafraid of the cold.

But if you were born in the Xing'an Mountains, most people's lives were much simpler.

Here, the Old Man in the sky overhead was like a professional and diligent quality inspector, delivering salvation to all — he had to run his inspections several times a year.

Can't make it through spring? The wolves will drag you off. Can't make it through summer? A venomous bug will bite you and send you on your way.

Autumn no good? Let's freeze him to death first.

Winter's simple — starve to death.

Life, you know — easy as flipping your hand. Can't take it? Go step into a snow hollow. Can't get out for half a shichen? Half a year later when the snow melts, he'll still be lifelike.

In this era, the Northeast — aside from the densely populated Liaodong region — was no different from Siberia.

As for the later great granary of the Songnen Plain, at this time it was still frozen soil, tundra, and marshland. It would have to wait over three hundred years — for forty million people to brave the journey to Manchuria, for five hundred seventy thousand youths to spend decades opening up the Great Northern Wilderness.

The Xing'an Mountains, the Songhua River, the Heilong River, the Ussuri River — every adult man among the tribes living in this region was sifted out by the heavens this way.

Of course they were strong and powerful, enduring hardship and bitter cold, able to don sturdy armor and wield sharp blades, charging into battle and fighting to the death.

Why else would, in this era, a single Jianzhou have a larger population than all the people of the Northeast combined? Because Liaodong was the most suitable place for human survival in the entire Northeast.

Ever since Nurhaci, the Jianzhou Jurchens had wanted to force the Black Zhen tribes to pay tribute. The Black Zhen tribes consistently refused. Even though Nurhaci sent troops against them several times, the Black Zhen tribes still would not submit. You dare come, we dare fight.

They just hated this tribute business.

As far back as the reign of Emperor Shun of Yuan, the Black Zhen tribes had risen up twice — first the Wuzhe, then the Shui Dada — all because the officials were pressing them for gyrfalcons. The fighting went on and off for ten years before it was suppressed.

Heizhen people are straightforward and forthright, and they like straightforward and forthright people — but the Jianzhou people are cunning. When tribute demands failed, they simply sent troops to attack.

Tiger's eldest brother died in Nurhaci's final military campaign against the Hezhen tribe.

All because of that forged-steel tiger spear from the Five Nations City.

In truth, the Later Jin's wars against the various northeastern tribes were generally not very intense.

Not out of mercy, nor any reluctance to kill — simply because the tribes' productivity was so poor. Weapons and arrows made from antler and animal bone could not penetrate the iron armor worn by the Later Jin troops at all.

Conversely, the tribesmen, clad in thick, heavy hide robes and leather armor, were also hard to kill outright with blade cuts or arrow thrusts.

So much so that when facing the tribes' fishermen and hunters — people of extremely formidable physical strength — the Later Jin soldiers could leisurely surround and hunt them, taking captives with ease.

But the eldest brother, with that tiger spear in hand, was different. No matter what you wore, one thrust at close range meant one kill. He was seen as an enormous threat and died under specially-made plum-needle arrows.

By the time of the Later Jin's Hong Taiji era, with Jianzhou's population shortfalls and dwindling military manpower, the military pressure on the Heizhen tribes grew even heavier.

The year before last, Hong Taiji sent men to deliver a message to the Heizhen tribes: "Your forebears were originally people of the same nation as us. The records are abundantly clear. You have simply never known this, and so you willingly stand apart."

What utter bullshit. Whether we were one nation or not — we Heizhen people don't know, but you Jianzhou people do?

As for "the records are abundantly clear" — that's even bigger crap. Our Heizhen tribe, damn it, has only speech, no writing. Everything is passed down mouth to mouth.

What damn records do you have?

Besides, even if we were one nation in ancient times, all the more reason to deal as equals — where's the logic in paying you tribute!

We're all clearly friends — why should we Heizhen people pay a "good-friend fee" to the Jurchen?

When war comes, the situation escalates without cease — it is always unavoidable.

Tiger's two other elder brothers were captured by the Later Jin army. His Ama, in the war the year before last, slapped Tiger into the river with one palm, then took his bow and wooden spear to fight the pursuers to the death, and died on the riverbank.

Tiger swam across the Songhua River, but could not evade capture by the Later Jin troops. After being taken prisoner, he was assigned to the Later Jin army's Mongol Right Camp.

At this time, the Later Jin did not yet have the Mongol Eight Banners — only Mongol niru within the Eight Banners, meaning Mongol troops under the Eight Banners' command.

There were two camps in total: the Mongol Gūsa Left Camp led by Wunege, and the Mongol Gūsa Right Camp led by Eben Dui.

In the past, there had also been two Mongol Beile camps formed from surrendered nobles, but after Ligdan Khan fled west and the Southern Mongols no longer posed a threat to the Later Jin, Hong Taiji abolished their independent status and merged them into the Eight Banners' Mongol Left and Right Camps.

Which is to say, in this brief period of upheaval, the Later Jin Mongol Camp was in fact a powder keg — its cohesion extremely fragile, held together only by checks and balances from all sides.

Within it were men of Mongol origin who had submitted to the Later Jin as early as Nurhaci's reign and been incorporated into the Eight Banners as Manchus; old Mongol nobles who had lost their independent status; and Mongol soldiers who had neither independent status nor Manchu identity.

There was also a bunch like Tiger — "Fishskin Tatars" from the Dog-Using Tribe and "Solon Soldiers" from the Reindeer-Using Tribe — captured and thrown into iron armor as foreign prisoners of war to charge into the fray and fight to the death.

These foreign soldiers did not even count toward the official roster. In any case, with no common language and four or five thousand li from home, they had no way to conspire in revolt, nor any ability to desert the army. They could only wear iron armor and fight for the Later Jin.

Hong Taiji also promised them that if they could prove themselves on the battlefield, they would be incorporated into the Eight Banners and treated as Manchus. After that, when battles were won, they could share in the spoils just like the Eight Banners soldiers.

Of course, to Tiger, such promises were all goddamn crap.

Where the hell even is this place?