He Saved a Sinner Like Me

A common soldier named Zhang, a man of Yanmen Commandery who had barely crawled home from last year's expedition against Tanshihuai, had lately taken to watching the Xiongnu.

Just what is this Tengri they put so much faith in?

The god they called the Xiongnu Sky God, Tangri, Tengri — was that being the whole of their world?

There was nothing in a Xiongnu life that Tengri had not soaked through. To wake in the morning and feel the sun on your face was Tengri's gift. To walk at night beneath the moon and not lose the road was Tengri's gift. That the herds multiplied; that husbands, fathers, and sons had come home from last year's campaign... all of it.

And yet it was not as if the Xiongnu served Tengri alone. They believed in the souls and spirits and lingering presences of the natural world as well. Only that the order of those things, too, was Tengri's to govern. So they asked Tengri's blessing when they received a guest, and they asked Tengri's will when they set out on a road.

Even the women of a Xiongnu camp, who were no shamans at all, would sometimes sweep bright scraps of cloth through the empty air and serve as mediums for their own households. At times it simply became another piece of the day's work — eating, sleeping, waving cloth for the spirits.

A life in which the shaman's art had dissolved into living itself. That was what had caught Zhang's interest.

Once he had seen Lü Bu's staggering feats with his own eyes, he could not help wondering who this Xiongnu Sky God truly was. And the words the Xiongnu prince — the Grand Shaman — had spread struck Zhang hard in the chest.

Though you die on this field and become meat for hawk and eagle, your soul shall ride the wings of the birds of the air, and dwell in the sky with Tengri... Was that how it went?

Xiongnu horsemen, when the fight had gone against them and there was nothing else to hold, had died clinging to even that much hope. Some had died believing it with their whole hearts. The families of the fallen took the same words for hope, and prayed for the day they would meet again in the sky as Tengri's children.

Already, among Zhang's own Han comrades, there were men who had said they would believe in Tengri and gone to live among the Xiongnu.

Father Tengri!

The words were strangely moving. As ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠if he himself had become a prodigal who had poured his years down the throat of wine and the mouth of a dice-cup — and even such a wastrel would be gathered into a father's warm arms, a hand stroking his back...

Father Tengri would look like that, wouldn't he?

Zhang let himself imagine it.

"Father!"

Perhaps it was because of his young son, who called him that.

"Where are we going now?"

"...We're going to find the camp of the Xiongnu Grand Shaman, Liao."

Stroking the boy's head, Zhang swallowed dryly.

It was a dangerous thing to do. Just as the Han never forgot a grudge inherited from their ancestors, the Xiongnu never forgot an old blood-debt. If anyone discovered that he was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠not a Zhang at all, but a Nie... he would not survive in Bing Province, crawling as it was with Xiongnu. He would not merely be driven from his home. He could die.

But Zhang had become a soldier because farming alone could never feed them. The taxes and tribute owed to Luoyang, and then the levies stripped away in the name of Bing Province's defense... a field could not bear it. No small number of Bing Province folk lived half as farmers and half as herders, because there was no other way.

This desperately dangerous journey toward the Xiongnu royal house was the same. A lost war had no spoils to share. Defeat had shoved every commoner of Bing Province deeper into the pit of poverty. People who could no longer hold even a scrap of farmland the size of a palm were making their way to the camp of the Grand Shaman, Luanti Bao.

He was said to be near Shuofang Commandery now, close to where his grandfather Qiangqu, the Wise King of the Right, was staying.

Zhang left Yanmen Commandery and headed west.

"Ah..."

In slightly awkward Xiongnu, Zhang asked the way.

"Where is the camp of the Grand Shaman, the son of the Right Guli King?"

The Xiongnu herdsman put on an ahh expression and pointed into the distance. His manner made it plain that Zhang was far from the first to ask.

Zhang walked with his son Liao toward the place the herdsman had shown them.

A single tent stood on a hill. That, it seemed, was Grand Shaman Luanti Bao's tent. Already a great many people had gathered around it, down to the foot of the slope.

"That man...!"

Standing on the hill made him look even larger, and anyone who had clawed their way out of that killing field could not fail to recognize the figure behind Luanti Bao. Looked at another way, this crowd might have gathered not for Luanti Bao at all, but to see the man at his back.

"Lü Fengxian!"

My martial master, Lü Bu, had been following my word quite readily ever since the campaign to put down Tanshihuai. No — more than following. If something might be of use to me, he stepped forward before I could even ask.

To say it was only because he now thought of me as a gifted shaman... that explanation stretched too far. He had no need to come all the way to Shuofang Commandery today just to help with my work. And yet Lü Bu was eager. I could not let the reason go unasked.

"Master."

"What is it."

"Don't you have other affairs to attend to, Master?"

"Already done. I'm using the time I've got left to help you."

"Because it is your disciple's work?"

"That too, but..."

Lü Bu frowned at me. Not because the question displeased him — more that he was turning over how to answer it.

"I saw Tengri's power in the last battle."

Had Tengri pulled at Lü Bu's heart as well?

"To be precise, I saw the power of the people who believe in Tengri — people who cling to even that much."

He was not talking about the god. He was talking about the people who believed.

"Of course it wasn't Tengri alone. We had a common enemy in the Xianbei, and we shared the hardship of running from them. I saw Han and Xiongnu become one out there."

Lü Bu looked away from me, toward the people crowded at the foot of the hill where I had pitched my tent.

"Morale, fighting strength... leave all that aside. I saw people take hope in Tengri's name. Under that name we weren't Xiongnu or Han. We were people of Bing Province."

Eating rank, gamey meat together that they normally could not have stomached. Trading words neither side understood — the sort of noise that on any other day would have had them plugging their ears — and still giggling by nothing but instinct. And when survival was finally certain, people clutching one another. I would never forget that sight either.

"I think what you're doing is a road that leads toward the Bing Province I imagine as ideal. That's why I'm helping you."

I could not find an answer for Lü Bu.

Work I had started because I did not want to fall into the hell the monkey demon had shown me. Work I had done thinking only of my own skin — and the unexpected feeling of giving people hope was... strange.

"Bao."

While I hesitated over a reply, Du Ying called from ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠behind.

"Everything's ready."

Du Ying had dressed as mystically as she could manage, but until a moment ago she had been making food for the hungry. The women of the Xiongnu camps, less from obeying my orders than from the generous heart of nomad women receiving guests, had cooked alongside her. For the people who had come all the way to Shuofang, clutching at "Grand Shaman Bao" as a single thread of hope in their despair.

I thanked them, and called the crowd a little closer.

I was not trying to deliver any particular revelation or doctrine. I was still far too lacking to build a systematic creed. That would only become possible after inventing a Xiongnu script of our own, and after gathering and arranging the songs and legends of the Xiongnu people. So today I would do what I could do.

"Here — the livestock you are to receive, including horses and sheep..."

The people gathered before me today were Han farmers utterly ruined by last year's failed expedition, infantry veterans especially. I began the work of distributing livestock to them and settling them in my father's or grandfather's camps, turning them into nomads.

"From here you will follow this route... build your tent with this..."

Nomadic society had set rules for how to pasture, so I explained those in detail and provided the gear for tent life.

How was any of this possible? The enormous financial backing of the Cao Song–Cao Cao household.

The letter Cao Cao had sent ran, more or less, like this.

Cao Cao had not sent money alone. Gold, silver, jade, and other precious metals and gems; silk of the first grade; fine oil for the hair — anything that could be turned into funds, he had sent. I asked Lü Bu and Yufuluo to put that fortune to work, buying livestock and carving out space where ruined Han commoners might begin again as nomads.

In short, the people who had come this far had not come simply because my preaching of Tengri's doctrine had moved them. They had come trying to live, even like this.

Leave them, and they would become refugees. Refugees would become bandits, or corpses scattered across the plains, killed by other bandits. Better the Xiongnu absorb them, I thought.

If they lived properly mixed among the Xiongnu, might the opposite of history's pattern take hold — not the Hu becoming Han, but Han people becoming Hu instead?

Well. That would take time to see.

It was not a matter of simply handing out property. I asked who they were, listened to them, and offered what light comfort I could. I was aiming for the effect of Tengri's name — the Xiongnu Sky God's name — soothing Han hearts.

I had expected the size of the crowd to take forever, but the work went faster than I thought. Most had come as families.

One household that caught my eye... at first there was nothing special about them. The head of the family was a Zhang, a man who had served in the last expedition. I offered him comfort as well, and told him which camp he would belong to, what rules he would live by as a nomad.

Just as the Zhangs were about to leave—

"Go on, Liao. You should say thank you as well."

"Wait!"

I shouted at the child named Liao — no, a boy clearly older than I was — to stop.

"Your name is Liao?"

Liao's face went frightened. If I had been just some passerby it would have been one thing, but a child-shaped something receiving thanks from adults would register as an uncanny creature.

"...Y-yes."

"Zhang Liao, is it?"

This time the father answered.

"That's so, but— is something the matter?"

"You are not Zhangs at all. You are Nies!"

The blood drained from Zhang's face. He dropped to his knees first, frantically gesturing for the whole family, including young Zhang Liao, to kneel with him.

"F-f-forgive us! I-I never meant to deceive you! My prince!"

Zhang Liao, Zhang Liao, Zhang Liao! To walk in here of his own accord!

A perfect opportunity. Did the Han not have that old tale? Emperor Gaozu, Liu Bang, and his meritorious minister Yong Chi.

Yong Chi had never gotten along with the emperor. He had even betrayed him and fled, then surrendered again and become a founding meritorious official of Han. After the founding, the other meritorious officials grew anxious about whether the emperor would reward them properly — and Gaozu used Yong Chi to settle that anxiety. He rewarded the man he hated first. Then the anxious officials thought, Even Yong Chi got a reward — of course I will too, and were reassured.

I would use that story.

"My house, the Luanti clan, and the Nie clan have carried a four-hundred-year grudge!"

The Zhang family, not knowing what to do, pressed their heads to the dirt and trembled.

"Today I shall wash that grudge away completely!"

I gestured to Du Ying. I happened to have the fine hair oil Cao Cao had sent. I poured it slowly, a little at a time, over the heads of the Zhang family.

Was this the right way to do it? I didn't know. What mattered was an act that could become a symbol.

When the fragrant, cold oil spilled over their heads, the Zhangs screamed and flinched. But when nothing else happened, they lifted their faces in bewilderment.

"Rise!"

I approached them as they got unsteadily to their feet, took young Zhang Liao's hand, and came back before the crowd.