Lü Bu Discusses Stirrups (2)

Even in the age chronicled by the Records of the Three Kingdoms, men already spoke of armored cavalry, of shock cavalry, of iron cavalry.

None of those words meant what later centuries would call heavy cavalry — horse and rider both sheathed in iron, the true cataphract. Sometimes the mount went bare and the phrase simply meant a horseman who was not lightly equipped. Even when a horse was given armor, wrapping the chest was considered generous work.

That is why scholars still argue over whether “shock cavalry” ever meant riders who charged home at all, or only horsemen who struck without warning — raiders, not lancers. “Iron cavalry” was no more a synonym for cataphracts. The iron cavalry of King Dongcheon of Goguryeo is read as nothing more than elite horse.

Speaking as someone who lived through the campaign against ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Tanshihuai, I can say this much: a charge in this age is a wager of the horse’s life and the rider’s together. There are men like Lü Bu, who go in with a halberd in each fist, but most grip a spear with both hands and rush. The blow is rarely as terrible as it looks. Once the shock is spent, the fight slides almost at once into a melee in the saddle.

That is why the Xianbei and the Xiongnu alike have poured their genius into horse archery. What I wanted — whether I faced the armies of the Han or the hosts of the Xianbei — was to change that.

“You’re going to wrap Red Hare in armor too? Not just me?”

Lü Bu asked it with a face that wanted to know why anyone would bother.

“Yes. The horse wears a helm, the neck is covered, and the armor runs from the chest down to about the knees.”

“And what do you mean to do once you’ve done all that?”

To a man already certain that no enemy weapon would ever touch Red Hare, the whole notion must have sounded peculiar.

“You couch the spear like this… tucked under the arm, and you charge.”

Lü Bu’s arms were monstrous enough that swinging a halberd might serve him just as well. For any other rider, though, the method poured the horse’s entire momentum down the shaft. That was a far more terrible blow. Cutting or stabbing as you closed still depended on a man’s strength, not the horse’s — and a man’s strength always fell short.

Lü Bu was a warrior, but he was also a commander of armies. He understood what I was driving at.

“So one day you mean to raise heavily armored cavalry like that, and you want me to be the first to show them how it’s done. Bao. And to make a charge like that without coming off the horse, you’d need a rest for the feet.”

“If a hero of your stature does it, Master, won’t everyone rush to follow?”

Liu Bei, who had been listening, nodded as if the thought pleased him. Lü Bu only cocked his head again.

“What is it this time?” Liu Bei asked.

“Weight.”

Ah.

He was right. Cost would have to be reckoned too — but set that aside. Suppose we could forge the armor for man and horse, a saddle fitted tight to the back, stirrups strong enough to take the shock. Every ounce of it would still sit on the horse.

“You asked me to try it because Red Hare is the one mount that can bear it. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Red Hare carries the blood of the Western Regions. He’s big enough. I think he can take it.”

“Xuande.”

It was the first time Lü Bu had used Liu Bei’s courtesy name.

“When a horse is simply wandering as nature intended, you don’t need to do anything special for the hooves. Soft earth, grass underfoot — there’s nothing to go wrong.”

Liu Bei nodded.

“But if you force the animal into something unnatural — a long campaign, a heavy load — the hooves start to fail.”

“Call a horse a thousand-li steed and then actually run it a thousand li, and you’ll lame it so badly it can’t walk. One stone lodged wrong and pus wells up inside the hoof; the beast goes hobbling. We wrap the hooves in leather for that. But if man and horse are armed the way Bao has in mind, leather won’t last a day.”

So. Stirrups, saddle, barding — and now the horseshoe as well.

“A hoof is only a kind of nail, or a callus. What if we made an iron plate to sit under it, and fastened it on with nails?”

“Possible. Not easy. A mean-tempered horse is hard enough to get leather onto. Driving iron onto the foot would be dangerous work.”

Lü Bu was the finest horseman I knew, and he kept turning up problems I had never seen because I had been staring so hard at the stirrup alone.

“You said you’d couch the spear and charge. Do that and you can put the horse’s weight on the point as well as the rider’s. You wouldn’t just spear a man — you’d crush him under the rush. But…”

Then the spear itself would have to change, he added.

“The spears we use now won’t serve. You’ll need a weapon built for the new tactic. My halberd would be the wrong tool entirely, and the harder the charge hits, the stronger the shaft has to be or it snaps. Even then you’ll have men whose spears break, or lodge so deep they have to leave them in the body.”

He held up two fingers.

“The surest answer is to forge a new spear. If you can’t, then you’d better invent a way to put a fresh spear back in the hand of a rider who’s just lost his.”

“I’ll have to think on it.”

“And there’s this. If I’m the only one who takes the new harness, it won’t mean much. What you actually want is to raise this kind of cavalry in numbers.”

Liu Bei murmured as if turning something over.

“Cavalry you could train with ease… men who wouldn’t need to spend their childhoods learning every fine trick of the thigh and knee…”

“Xuande has a point. If I can turn Han absorbed into the Xiongnu — or Han who want to ride under me — into horsemen in a hurry, then I am with you.”

“I knew I was right to bring this to you, Master.”

“The way you work your master, I start to wonder which of us is the disciple. Or is this simply what a teacher of royalty has to endure? In any case I am not enough by myself, and I can hardly drag men into new gear and new tactics by the scruff of the—”

“I already told you. I was right to bring this to you.”

Only then did Lü Bu see where I was going.

“…Hnh.”

“If you give the order, three men will follow.”

Song Xian. Wei Xu. Hou Cheng. Wei Xu would grumble and do it anyway. Hou Cheng would obey without a word. Song Xian would come as soon as the principle of the stirrup was laid out for him.

“Four of us, then. To start.”

Liu Bei spoke as if something had just occurred to him.

“Ah — I learned this passing through Taiyuan Commandery. The country around there is rich in iron and timber, and the quality is excellent.”

“Taiyuan timber is good enough for palaces.”

Perfect for a saddle that had to hold, I said, and Lü Bu nodded.

Eastern Bing Province, around Taiyuan, yielded not only iron but coal. An Industrial Revolution was too much to hope for — but could it at least make the forges run hotter? A problem worth turning over.

Hunting horses through every western district of Bing Province would be slower than picking fine mounts from the animals already gathering at Taiyuan’s markets. Taiyuan was where horses bound for every corner of the empire were put through their acclimatization.

Lü Bu uncrossed his arms and crooked his fingers at me.

“Master?”

“Money.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Bao. Your master is a poor man. You, on the other hand, have the funds the Cao family put up. And you are royalty. Don’t tell me you expect a penniless teacher to pay for the whole development himself.”

Watching Lü Bu’s back as the man returned to his own work, Liu Bei leaned in and murmured.

“Putting real strength into raising cavalry is all well ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and good. So is making armor, and new weapons, all of it.”

“I hear the Xiongnu call their heir the Left Wise King?”

“The Left Wise King has not always succeeded the Grand Chanyu — but yes, that is the way of it.”

“Even so, the new Chanyu has been on the throne for some time, and your grandfather is still only Right Wise King?”

Hozheng had never raised one of his own sons to Left Wise King, and he had not given the seat to his brother Qiangqu either. Was the throne being left empty on purpose — to set the Huyan, the Xubu, even the house of the Right Wise King, at one another’s throats?

“I heard the Han emperor has left the heir’s seat vacant as well.”

“A trick to put the empress, the consorts, and every clan hanging off them into competition, until they all bow to the throne.”

I noted that Liu Bei’s arithmetic and mine came out roughly the same.

“One way or another, your grandfather has to become Left Wise King, and your father has to follow him… otherwise how do your own chances of becoming Chanyu get any larger?”

Khagan. However crushing a religious authority I built, I would still need secular power if I ever meant to call up the whole physical strength of the Xiongnu. I intended, in my own generation, to replace the title of Grand Chanyu with Khagan — but I would have to inherit the Chanyu’s seat first, or there would be nothing to rename.

“So what will you do?”

Liu Bei seemed genuinely curious to watch how I would go about the conquest of Mobei. That was why he had even handed over the Wuhuan prisoners who had been under him. He would study the way I was turning the Xiongnu into a new kind of state, and he would apply what he learned to his own fellowship of knights-errant.

His thoughts had already been of use to me. Everything I said and did would, in turn, become a lesson for him. That was simply how a world of living people worked. Human beings learn even from their enemies. If that was intolerable, the only honest course was to throw it all away and hide in the mountains — and I should never have taken Cao Cao’s money to begin with.

“I will wait for the chance Tengri sends me. A deed of war so complete that no Xiongnu could refuse to acknowledge it.”

I was talking like the very men Lü Bu despised — the ones who did business in war. And somehow, I thought I was beginning to understand their desperation.

The rumor of a Grand Shaman who spoke the words of Tengri did not reach Tanshihuai’s ear until there was no one left in the lands of the Southern Xiongnu who did not know the name Luanti Bao.

“…What does that shaman style himself?”

The story that he was taking the scattered tellings of a dozen tribes — the kind of tale that wore Heaven’s name only in passing — and weaving them into a single myth for the whole Southern Xiongnu was interesting. It was only interesting. Tanshihuai trusted his own strength and his own achievements more than he trusted the sky.

The greatness of a god depends, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in the end, on how well the sovereign who believes in him can fight.

A god who stood by while his people were beaten into the dirt would fade of his own accord. Win, and a man in mortal flesh could become a god of war whenever he pleased. That, to Tanshihuai, was the order of the world.

Besides, he did not rule only those who prayed to Tengri. Out on the western fringe, there were already men in his empire who served the god of light preached by a prophet called Zarathustra. From the southwest had come another faith, one that taught an endless turning of death and birth, and held that a man might escape the wheel through enlightenment. That was what it meant to govern a great empire. And so Luanti Bao’s new religion never quite rose, in Tanshihuai’s mind, above the level of a curiosity.

Until it did.

It had been stolen.

The moment he heard the word Khagan, that was what Tanshihuai felt. Someday he had meant to take a new title for a Xianbei sovereign — neither Great Lord nor dargha, the old name for Chanyu. And someone had used it first.

There is ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a man in the Southern Xiongnu who has laid plans as vast as my own.

“…And how old is this Grand Shaman?”

Anger flashed in Tanshihuai’s eyes. The Han advisor bent low at the waist.

“They say he is only eight.”

“Then he is a puppet of that Southern Xiongnu Chanyu. No. In seven years…”

The child would be fifteen. In seven years he himself would be… fifty-one.

How much longer could a man last in the raw country of the north?

After he had thrown back the Han and Xiongnu armies that had come at him from three directions, he had never once stopped the raiding of You Province, Bing Province, and Liang Province. It had not been enough. He had all but annihilated the Han infantry — and the Xiongnu horse had ridden home almost untouched.

This time he would burn the west of Bing Province outright, from Shuofang Commandery all the way to Shang Commandery.

Pacify Monan. Completely. Wipe the name of the Xiongnu from the earth.