Ikhbayar
“Is there anywhere we ought to stop on the way to Guizhou?”
“Hmm… We still have a little breathing room before the rainy season starts, don’t we?”
Hui-yeom wore a look of brief contemplation, then smiled gently at Sama Yun.
“There’s no frantic schedule breathing down our necks for the moment, so why not take the scenic route and enjoy a few beautiful places while we head down?”
“What? Really?”
“Of course. We’ve been nonstop busy ever since the wedding and never found the time. Right now everything can wait a little, so the timing feels perfect.”
It was a lie.
Sama Yun, who had watched Hui-yeom more closely than anyone, could swear to it. He was the sort of man who, left alone with even a scrap of free time, would invent new workloads and pile more tasks onto his plate. He was absolutely not the kind of person who would ever think, We’ve got a nice stretch of spare time, so let’s go sightseeing.
Whether he was being considerate of her, or whether time spent with her truly mattered to him as well—however she chose to interpret it, a pleasant flutter rose from her chest, and Sama Yun grinned from ear to ear.
“Would a bit of a detour be all right?”
“Sure. I’m even thinking we might as well visit Suzhou and Hangzhou while we’re at it.”
“Hah—all the way there?”
Picture China laid out roughly like a stem with a crossbar: if Beijing sat at the northern tip of the stem, Guizhou would lie at the far western end of the bar, while Suzhou and Hangzhou rested at the far eastern end. In other words, Hui-yeom was casually proposing they head in the complete opposite direction.
A twinge of conscience made Sama Yun ask carefully,
“Um… would going that far out of our way really be all right?”
“Of course. And…”
“?”
“Never mind. As long as we have fun, that’s enough.”
Suzhou and Hangzhou are the most luxurious cities in Jiangnan. They’re the ideal markets for selling our family’s glassware and luxury goods—market research is essential.
Much to the disappointment of the eagerly anticipating Sama Yun… Hui-yeom was still just Hui-yeom.
The journey was not entirely smooth.
True, the Green Forest had become provisional allies, so mountain bandits no longer attacked carriages flying the Dang Family banner; they even offered overnight lodging at their strongholds. Traveling the waterways, there was no need to fear the Eighteen River Strongholds of the Yangtze either, so they could simply enjoy the scenery. All in all it was a peaceful trip…
Yet unexpected trouble arrived, as it always does.
Watching a band of horsemen thunder out of the horizon raising a cloud of dust, Hui-yeom tilted his head.
“Who are those people?”
Dang Su-jeong answered flatly.
“Look at their clothes, the way they ride—and above all, no identifying banner. Not regular troops. Horse bandits.”
“But horses are expensive. How did they get those?”
“That’s why horse bandits usually appear in hard times—when government troops or local strongmen turn rotten and become outlaws.”
“This isn’t exactly that kind of era, though.”
“Right? Strange, isn’t it? Well, who cares. We’ll just kill them all.”
Seeing the classic murim “exterminate every bandit” mode kick in, Hui-yeom reined her in.
“Let’s prepare to fire first, then try talking.”
At his order the Dokwadae members loaded their Dreyse needle guns and leveled them at the riders.
An unexpected reaction followed.
The horse bandits suddenly howled and wheeled about to flee.
“They’re monsters who use thunder spears!!!”
“Sichuan Tang Family!!”
“Huh? Isn’t that Mongolian?”
Strictly speaking it differed from true Mongolian. The script used by the Chagatai mixed Cyrillic with Mongolian, Turkic, and Russian elements. Yet people of this age simply assumed that any horse-riding folk speaking such a tongue were Mongols—which meant Chagatai. That was common sense.
Killing intent settled over Dang Su-jeong’s face.
“Chagatai remnants. Yeom-ah, we have to wipe these ones out completely.”
“No—how far is it from Yunnan and Qinghai to here? How did they drift all this way? What have the government troops been doing?”
Hui-yeom was speechless, but there was nothing to be done about it. The Central Plains were vast, there were no cameras, and administrative reach was always thin. Add the bureaucrats’ habitual laziness and the peculiar continental broad-mindedness that treated “a few” civilian deaths as “trivial,” and the result was that the army had never bothered to hunt these men down in earnest.
Exactly the attitude of “We’ll thrash them if we happen to notice them, but we won’t go looking, so please don’t make yourselves noticeable and become a nuisance.”
Hui-yeom felt his teeth grind.
The civil servants of this era really are too much.
Of course upright, hardworking officials existed even now, but the provinces generally ran like this. Hui-yeom was freshly reminded just how progressive and clean Sichuan’s bureaucracy had become under his reforms. A band of horse bandits roaming free in Sichuan was simply unimaginable.
—Tat-tat-tat-tang! Tang-tang!!
They could not capture men fleeing on horseback, and if left alone the survivors would simply run elsewhere and plunder innocent commoners. So the Dokwadae poured bullets into their backs without mercy.
Chagatai remnants struck from behind tumbled from their saddles; riderless horses scattered in every direction.
All those expensive horses running off… what a waste.
In modern terms a single horse was worth as much as a luxury foreign car; the regret came naturally to Hui-yeom.
Then—
“Young Master, some of them are surrendering.”
“Hmm?”
A few had dismounted, raised their hands to the sky, and given themselves up.
“They must have decided that on open flat ground they can’t outrun the guns’ range no matter how hard they ride.”
The guns’ effective range was not truly that long; a full-gallop escape might still have saved them, but…
“Hmm.”
As Hui-yeom seemed to deliberate, Dang Su-jeong’s brow furrowed.
“Yeom-ah, what is there to think about? Don’t you know these are the ones who killed our Dang Family warriors?”
“Of course I know. But if we spare them and can extract their horsemanship skills, the value would be enormous.”
Railways deserved to be called a revolution in land transport, yet their weakness was that tracks could never reach every last corner—and should not. The more complex the network, the slower the trains would run. Railways would serve the major hubs; from those hubs to every local nook, carts and horses still had to run. Until the automobile arrived, that was the best solution.
Seeing that Su-jeong could not accept it emotionally, Hui-yeom nodded.
“I will never forget the Dokkyo incident either, Aunt. I know exactly how you feel. But we have already taken in Noksan and Angang. Slaughtering these men here and now would be easy enough—yet the Dang Family would gain nothing but satisfaction.”
“….”
Hui-yeom did not attempt the soft-hearted watering-down of “they too were merely victims dragged into war.” He despised that sort of logic. So he spoke purely in terms of profit and loss, and the emotionless calculation actually helped Su-jeong recover her composure.
“…Do as you like. If it benefits the family, then that’s the right call.”
“Yes, Aunt. And one more thing—”
Hui-yeom whispered against her ear.
“If we win them over and put them at ease, they can help us gather the other remnants, can’t they? If they ever get out of line, we take our revenge then—and wipe out far more Chagatai in the process. Wouldn’t that be better?”
A long-forgotten chill ran down Dang Su-jeong’s spine.
Spare them, treat them like a subordinate merchant company, let them collect their surviving kinsmen, and if their behavior ever displeases us, slaughter the whole lot? Was that even a human way of thinking? Wouldn’t simply killing every one she laid eyes on be the more merciful path? She sighed.
“…I always think this, but I’m truly grateful you’re my nephew.”
“That’s a compliment, right?”
Hui-yeom smiled brightly.
Of roughly forty Chagatai, fifteen survived, and about ten horses remained. The animals that had not bolted even at the sound of gunfire—worried for their riders—were well-bonded and bold, excellent stock.
They bound the captives with rope, confiscated their weapons, and forced them to their knees. Hui-yeom addressed the men awaiting judgment.
“Is there anyone among you who speaks our language?”
One man opened his mouth.
“I can speak the Han tongue.”
“If you know a foreign language, you are no ordinary soldier. What was your unit and rank?”
“…Noyan of the Karakushi Ulus—the Black Bird Tribe. Ikhbayar.”
“Very well, Noyan Ikhbayar. You understand the meaning of surrender, I trust?”
“Of course. I ask only for merciful treatment.”
“Ha! The same merciless tribe that used to kill anyone taller than a cartwheel now has the gall to speak of mercy!”
Su-jeong could not hold back the sneer. Ikhbayar answered without the slightest change of expression.
“I find your side far more cruel—the ones who used that dreadful mist that melts people alive.”
“What did you say?”
Su-jeong, who had never personally seen a victim of mustard gas, bristled, but Hui-yeom cut in.
“Aunt.”
“…Haa. Fine. Handle it yourself.”
As if respecting the young master’s authority, Su-jeong raised both hands and fell silent.
Once she quieted, Hui-yeom spoke.
“I know there is deep, hard-to-wash resentment between your people and ours. Yet… depending on the circumstances, it may be possible to wash the past clean and build a more constructive relationship.”
“….”
“And the surest, clearest way to wash away such resentment is profit. Because it benefits both sides, we can set old grudges aside and join hands.”
“That is so.”
“If you look closely, aren’t the uluses of the Chagatai Khanate themselves a gathering of former enemies—clans that repeatedly warred, then merged and bound themselves together?”
“….”
Ikhbayar was silent for a moment, as if turning something over in his mind. Hui-yeom pressed more actively.
“Yet you people of the steppe, for the sake of survival and for the sake of conquest, wash away the past with those same enemies and call one another brothers. Isn’t that simply how the world works?”
“…You speak reasonably.”
Unexpectedly, this lower noble named Ikhbayar was someone with whom political conversation worked. Hui-yeom mentally raised the man’s score and asked,
“Can you serve us as you would a new khan? There will be more of your countrymen who have crossed the border. Can you gather them, draw them into our family, and take part in our family’s enterprises?”
“Enterprises?”
“A kind of armed escort and transport work. Quickly moving entrusted goods from origin to destination.”
Nomads who lived with horses and were used to a wandering life—on top of that, battle-hardened former soldiers—were, in other words, every last one of them ultra-premium courier candidates, weren’t they?
Ikhbayar seemed to grasp his own value at once.
“You want me to form and lead a caravan that hauls cargo for you?”
“Exactly.”
“And what will be given to me and my countrymen in return for our loyalty?”
“Freedom and happiness. And, if they wish, we will support repatriation to the homeland for those who have built up a certain number of years of service.”
“Repatriation aside—freedom and happiness?”
“I mean I will let you put down roots in the Central Plains as people of the Central Plains and live freely. At least on Sichuan soil I can ensure that no one discriminates against you for being of Chagatai origin.”
“Will the Emperor simply sit still for that?”
“Originally the disposition of prisoners of war is the general’s prerogative. Moreover we are not even at war right now, and you—mere horse bandits—have been captured by the Sichuan Dang Family.”
As if trying to peer into the sincerity behind Hui-yeom’s wink that said as long as we keep our mouths shut, Ikhbayar met his eyes for a long moment, then finally sighed.
“Untie us.”
Once freed, Ikhbayar dropped to one knee before Hui-yeom, bowed low, and declared,
“Ikhbayar, Noyan of the Karakushi Ulus, together with fourteen others, swears loyalty to the Young Master of the Sichuan Dang Family.”
And exactly twenty years later, Ikhbayar assessed that day’s oath as follows:
“Back then I only knelt to build up momentum! I should have lunged and taken him down right there… damn it…!”
He supposedly shed tears while crossing the entire West Asian continent all the way to Persia just to deliver a single letter—or so the story goes.
Thus, with an unexpected addition to their numbers, Hui-yeom’s party prepared to board a ship bound for Suzhou…
“We cannot take you.”
They ran into an unexpected problem.