The Magnolia Sword Read online

  “Really?” marvels Tuxi. “At that speed, we could cover the length of the Wall in ten days.”

  “I don’t think that was ever true,” says the princeling. “But such horses haven’t been seen for a long time in the Central Plain. The bloodline brought back by Emperor Wu’s campaigns has thinned to complete uselessness. And later raids by the Han Dynasty captured good but not exceptional horses.”

  This gives me pause. The Records of the Grand Historian mentions those later raids, and I thought nothing of them. The Han Dynasty territories didn’t produce the best horses for war, so of course better horses had to be procured somehow.

  But now I wonder. Much has been made of nomadic raids on Han land, and I’ve always thought those tribes unreasonably aggressive. But were they any more aggressive than the supremely civilized Han Dynasty going out to steal horses?

  Kedan pats his chest, as if he’s looking for something inside his clothes. His eyes widen. The next moment, he sucks in a breath.

  The princeling glances at him. “What is it?”

  “I … ah …”

  “Looking for this?” I open my hand. On my palm is an object that resembles a miniature zongzi, a package of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves.

  Kedan stares at me. I waggle my brows. He should have taken it as a warning when I told him I observed the Rouran in the rear as the best fighter: My gaze is drawn to movement and my mind to the analysis of movement. I recognized Kedan’s parting slap on the Rouran leader’s chest as more than a friendly gesture, and I imitated it.

  It wasn’t difficult to lift the package from him, given all the dexterity exercises I’ve had to do to deploy and catch hidden weapons. But I haven’t had time to examine the object until now. I glance down. I know my bamboo leaves, and this thing is not wrapped in a bamboo leaf.

  “That’s a grape leaf!” exclaims Tuxi. Then to the princeling, “Isn’t it?”

  “It is.” The princeling’s gaze lands on Kedan. “You took this from the Rouran?”

  Kedan has the grace to look abashed. “He was an ass.”

  “For suspecting you of being a Xianbei spy?” murmurs the princeling. “How dare he.”

  I have to suppress a smile.

  “Well, what’s inside?” asks Tuxi.

  I open the grape leaf, which is the size of my hand with all fingers spread. At the center of the leaf is a small pile of golden raisins.

  “Taste one, Tuxi xiong,” instructs His Highness.

  Tuxi does. “Grown in the Turpan oasis, no doubt about it.”

  The Turpan oasis must be two thousand li west of where we are. And the grape leaf in my palm can’t have been separated from its vine more than seven days ago.

  A shiver darts down my spine. We look at one another in silence. Are the men we are chasing really scouts if they have come from that far away, in such a great haste?

  But if they aren’t scouts, then what are they?

  That night, we seek shelter with a band of nomads. I again play the part of the mute servant. Tuxi makes a gift to our hosts of a thumb-sized chunk of salt, which is received with much delight and gratitude.

  After dinner, despite the cold, I bundle up and take a walk with Tuxi, in the hope of unknotting muscles made stiff by yet another day in the saddle. During the walk I ask him to teach me some useful words in Rouran.

  Tuxi takes to the task with relish. He is a good teacher, patient and interested, and tells me that Rouran isn’t that different a language from Xianbei. But since I don’t know any Xianbei, that doesn’t help me.

  “Will I need to learn to read?” I ask after some time. The Records of the Grand Historian mentions that the nomads possessed a script, which has nothing in common with Chinese.

  He shakes his head. “That wouldn’t be terribly useful. Occasionally a written message might be sent, but by and large, in a nomadic life, there isn’t much use for text.”

  “I find it almost impossible to envision a society without reading and writing,” I muse.

  We walk in silence for some time before he says, “I think writing must have first arisen for record keeping. South of the Wall, with all the fertile land, the population has long been enormous. So many people living so closely together gave rise to a strong government, which required contributions from everyone to build roads, administer laws, and defend the borders. That in turn necessitated detailed accounts of lands, crop yields, births, and deaths.

  “But look around us …”

  In the deepening dusk, such an endless open expanse surrounds us that I almost cannot remember the unbroken swaths of cultivation and the teeming towns and cities south of the Wall.

  “The nomadic life results in a much lower population,” Tuxi continues. “Herds of sheep and horses require great areas to graze. The distances involved lead to leagues and confederations, rather than all-powerful kingships. From time to time, a strong leader emerges and the other tribes acknowledge him with gifts and answer his calls to arms. But I’m sure you can see why there has never been the same need for record keeping, or for a sophisticated written language.”

  The mythology around the invention of Han Chinese characters echoes what Tuxi has said about the demand for record keeping. But it never occurred to me that other peoples, living in other places, had no such demands to answer.

  “I too am boggled that my ancestors got by without the written word,” says Tuxi, “especially since I can’t remember not being able to read. Sometimes I tell myself that we Xianbei weren’t a literate people because there was no need for us to be. And other times I wonder, because I grew up south of the Wall, where literacy is so deeply venerated, and where Han Chinese literary traditions are often flaunted as a sign of superiority … I wonder whether it’s true: that we were an inferior people.”

  I hardly know where to look. I have held the exact same view of the Xianbei, a casual yet ingrained contempt that I never questioned until a few days ago. Until then I wasn’t even aware of my prejudice, let alone that it might be wrong.

  “You shouldn’t think like that,” I say weakly.

  “I don’t think like that very often.” Tuxi is silent for a few heartbeats. “But there is something regrettable about our lack of literary traditions: We haven’t written our own history. The nomads have been on this earth for as long as the Han Chinese, but the only records that exist of us are what the Han Chinese have chosen to put down, usually because we were at war.

  “Have you ever talked to two people who just had an argument? You come away with two completely different versions of events.” He sighs. “My ancestors’ voices have been lost to time; I will only ever know what their opponents thought of them.”

  Perhaps because of the precious gift of salt, our hosts vacate an entire yurt for us to sleep in. I lie down in the same thin bedroll and sheepskin cape, but this time around I have a carpet underneath me and blankets above. Still, I won’t be as warm as I was in the small hours of last night, sitting back to back with the princeling.

  “Don’t think we’ll need to worry about wolves tonight,” the princeling murmurs.

  Surprised that he has brought up the subject again, I open my eyes. It’s pitch-dark inside, yet I feel the weight of his gaze from across the yurt. I ought to say something, but what, I’m not sure.

  I clear my throat. “The smoke lit by the beacon towers—I’ve heard it called wolf smoke. People say it’s because it’s lit with wolf dung. How do you suppose they collect enough of it? There are hundreds if not thousands of beacon towers along the Wall. And to make a big column of smoke, each tower must keep a few dou, perhaps a whole shi, of wolf dung on hand.”

  Silence. Then raucous laughter, not only from the princeling, but also Tuxi and Kedan.

  “No, no,” says Kedan, gasping for breath. “They’re not burning wolf dung. There aren’t enough wolves for that! Or at least there aren’t enough guards to forage for it in such quantities, dropping by dropping.”

  Tuxi, through fits of giggles, a
dds, “They burn ordinary dung for the daytime smoke columns. You know, what they collect from the livestock they keep on hand.”

  “Then why—” I start.

  “Our nomadic brethren, especially the Xiongnu, carried wolf banners,” says the princeling. “At the sight of those banners, Han Dynasty soldiers rushed to light their beacons. That is a more likely reason the smoke columns are called wolf smoke.”

  Kedan is still cackling. “Oh, Hua xiong-di, you are such a Southerner.”

  “I was told this in the North,” I protest.

  Kedan does not miss a beat. “North or South, the truth gets lost everywhere.”

  Tuxi sighs softly. Is he thinking again of the long-lost history of the nomadic tribes?

  And how strange it is, now that I think about it, that books such as the Records of the Grand Historian are accepted as accurate for events spanning hundreds of years, involving dozens of major players and tens of millions of people—when two conflicting accounts exist for the death of the princeling’s mother at my father’s hands, which took place less than a generation ago.

  “We’re falling farther behind,” pronounces Kedan.

  It’s the next day and all four of us are on the ground, studying the tracks left behind by the Dayuan horses. Kedan deems that the tracks are older than the previous set we examined, which implies that the distance between us and our quarry has increased. I don’t see anything different in the tracks, but my well-trained ears pick up something.

  I set one ear squarely to the ground and listen. The princeling, seeing me, does the same. A moment later he leaps to his feet. “On your horses. Now.”

  We mount quickly but ride at only a moderate pace. The time of a stick of incense later, a party of riders sped past us, returning only curt nods to Kedan’s friendly waves.

  They are on Dayuan horses.

  We ride late into the evening, using makeshift torches to check the ground for tracks. When we stop for the night, I’m so tired that I fall asleep as soon as I crawl into my bedroll, and only realize the next morning how cold I am.

  Midmorning, I’ve warmed up only a little when Tuxi shouts excitedly, “Do you sense the change? The wind is coming from the south!”

  Even this far north, spring is arriving. I turn my face southward, half hoping to feel the sultry warmth of my ancestral home, thousands of li away.

  The princeling, however, does not seem pleased. Kedan’s expression is even darker. “It had better not rain.”

  Late in the afternoon, rain pours down for the time of a meal. We huddle under a piece of fur felt, Kedan muttering unhappily all the while. His words are lost in the din of rumbling thunder and hard rain striking our makeshift cover.

  By the time the sky clears, the tracks left by the Dayuan horses have washed away.

  “The first riders were already more than half a day ahead of us,” says Kedan, kicking the ground in frustration. “They could have turned in any direction during that time.”

  “They’ve been headed east for a while,” I say. “Let’s continue on the same course. We might come across their trails again before they make any significant turns.”

  “That’s the only thing we can do now,” the princeling concurs. “Let’s get on.”

  But we do not pick up their trails.

  The weather, after a half day of warmth, turns cold again. The next night we huddle silently around a smoky fire—what fuel we can gather is all damp. I cover my face to shield myself from the sooty air as the wind changes directions capriciously.

  Dinner revives our spirits somewhat: Kedan shot down a wild goose. The migratory birds are returning to their northern home, even though winter squats on in these lands, refusing to be fully evicted.

  “Should we split into two teams?” asks Tuxi when we have finished eating.

  It’s not the first time the question has been raised—we can cover more territory that way and be less likely to miss the Rouran trails. The problem is, once we separate, we are unlikely to reunite except by chance.

  “Not yet,” answers the princeling. “But ask me again tomorrow.”

  I move closer to Tuxi. “Better teach me some more Rouran.” It isn’t the group splitting into two that worries me, but that the duo I find myself in might need to split again. I can only get so far pretending to be dumb and mute.

  But learning a language, even a language that doesn’t require me to read, is no minor undertaking. The more time I spend at it, the bigger the task becomes. It complicates matters that we don’t know which phrases will be most useful for me to tackle. Tuxi decides that beyond basic greetings, I should know how to say, I’m looking for riders on western territory horses. But when it comes to the answers I might be given, again we face difficulties. Words for cardinal directions are easy to learn—the nomads might even simply point—but what if they have more information to share?

  The princeling doesn’t help when he says that instead of attempting to teach me enough to understand answers, it might be more useful that I be able to lie convincingly about who I am, should there be hostile questions.

  Tuxi clutches at his head. I rub my temples.

  “Have some.” Kedan passes us the raisins he stole. “You two have been working too hard. Rest your brains for a bit.”

  I eat glumly, barely appreciating the sweetness of the costly delicacy in my mouth. Tuxi and the princeling both look grim. Kedan is the only one who doesn’t seem overly affected—yet—by our fruitless search for the Rouran.

  I take another raisin from him. “How are you still cheerful?”

  “I’ve spent longer than this sniffing out lost tracks.”

  He grins and I find myself smiling back, glad for his stalwart heart, and secretly relieved that I didn’t choose to keep my distance when I first learned of his Xiongnu origins.

  Which reminds me … “By the way, Kedan xiong, how did your family go from Xiongnu to Xianbei?”

  He shakes his head a little. “I’m not sure, exactly. Even my grandfather wasn’t sure. But it has been passed down that our clan was forced to flee to this plateau, when the first emperor of Qin struck against the Xiongnu in the Ordos region.”

  The Ordos region is enclosed by a large rectangular loop in the Yellow River, the cradle of Han Chinese civilization. I am reminded that other peoples have always been here, living in lands we Han Chinese prefer to consider exclusively our own.

  “First emperor of Qin,” I muse. “Almost seven hundred years ago.” That predates the legendary enmity between the Xiongnu and the Han Dynasty, which came after the Qin Dynasty.

  Kedan nods. “Long enough for us to become Xianbei and then migrate sou—”

  The princeling and I lift our hands at the exact same moment to signal for silence. Distantly, so distantly I can’t be sure I’m not imagining it, there rises the howl of a wolf.

  My eyes dart to the princeling. Did he hear it? Will he freeze in terror?

  But he is in complete possession of himself, his face without even a shadow of fear. And both Tuxi and Kedan are looking at me, since I’m probably the one who seems more worried.

  Another howl rises. Not close, but noticeably nearer than the first.

  After several more howls back and forth, the princeling says, “They are not wolves.”

  I blink.

  “His Highness is correct,” confirms Kedan.

  I almost ask what the howling animals are, until I realize that they must be people imitating wolves. “Who are they?”

  But even as I pose the question, I already know the answer.

  They are those who fly the wolf banner.

  We ride all night, but at a pace that is almost doddering. The princeling is adamant that we not make the kind of ruckus that can be heard from twenty li away by an attentive ear on the ground.

  At some point during the day and a half since the rain washed away the trails, we must have shot past where the Rouran scouts changed course. We are headed west-southwest now, toward the hills that ring t
he plateau on its southern edge.

  Every so often, we dismount and listen. On one of those occasions, I happen to be next to the princeling. As we rise to our feet, I ask, “How did you know the wolves weren’t real?”

  To me the howls sounded just like the ones I heard that night at the beacon tower. Or were those not real either?

  He hesitates. “Because I wasn’t struck by fear.”

  Not a bad method of detection, as such things go.

  “Do you think they use wolf howls because the party that is on the move doesn’t know exactly where the other one is?”

  “Could be. Or it might be a way to gauge how much distance remains between them.”

  A little after dawn, Kedan locates fresh trails. They do not belong to either of the groups of Dayuan horses that we saw before, but Kedan decrees that the trails have been made during the night, when most nomads do not travel, and we should follow them.

  We heed his advice. As the sun rises, however, the princeling leads us into the hills. We find a place to sleep and set out again shortly after noon, keeping close to the hills so we can hide should we hear riders approaching. And we do hide, twice, first from a small group, and second from what Kedan estimates to be about five hundred riders.

  “We must be getting close to the Rouran muster,” says Tuxi after the regiment of riders passes.

  “There’ll be sentries soon,” replies the princeling. “We shouldn’t use the main route anymore. Let’s make our way in the hills.”

  Our plan calls for us to penetrate a li or so south into the hills before turning sharply west. We are looking for a large valley and a major encampment. Theoretically, that shouldn’t be difficult to find. But the hills stretch on endlessly, and they split into so many spurs and ridges that I become cross-eyed from all the ascents and descents.

  The landscape is stony, the greenery sparse. Paths are few and narrow. But by midafternoon I hear what we seek, the muffled sounds of many, many pairs of feet and almost as many hooves. Kedan goes ahead to scout a safe path for us.