The Xiongnu-Xianbei War (2)

Honestly, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't rattled.

The con I had been running on everyone in this world of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms — I hear the voice of Tengri — was nothing more than me putting my knowledge of that book to work. The other option would have been to draw on the original Xiongnu Liu Bao's memories... except this body was nine years old. That a nine-year-old had come this far at all was purely because I had worked myself half to death. The original Liu Bao, being nine, would have remembered these years as nothing more than a hazy childhood. He would never even have imagined standing in audience before two successive Grand Chanyus.

So. Here we were. From Granduncle Hozheng on down, every soul in the ordo was waiting for the Word of Tengri — which I now had to invent on the spot, and make it sound as if it had come down from the sky.

All right. Think.

Tanshihuai dies this year. The year 181. But why? Why launch an expedition like this? Did he actually fall in battle during some overreaching campaign? Not that I recalled. After annihilating the Han army in the last punitive war, he kept hammering the Han until 181, and then the records simply stop — he died. His successor, his son Helian, is recorded as having fallen in battle, and his grandsons left a trail of civil war behind them, so Tanshihuai was not killed by Han troops or by his own Xianbei. Illness, then. Or simply the end of his allotted years.

And yet a Tanshihuai already failing for one reason or another had assembled another invasion host? He put striking south ahead of recovering his own strength? That meant he had a desperate reason. And that desperate reason, in all likelihood, was something I had created. If I had not rewritten history, Tanshihuai would have raided the Han frontier at his leisure and died comfortably in his own ordo. So what had goaded him?

If I had to guess, there were several factors. The warrior named Lü Bu did not rise to prominence until five years after the Yellow Turban Rebellion — after Emperor Ling's death in 189. But I had connected Yufuluo with Lü Bu, become his disciple, offered this advice and that, and now Lü Bu was making his name as the north's premier warrior a full decade ahead of schedule. One source of desperation, then: the need to break Lü Bu before he became unstoppable.

The messy succession crisis that should have torn through the Southern Xiongnu never happened either — I had already killed the general who would have set it off. From Tanshihuai's seat, that also meant the loss of a vital man on the inside. And yet the Southern Xiongnu had succeeded in preserving their cavalry as a fighting force. Intelligence inside the Han had grown harder to come by, and he would need to smash the Southern Xiongnu before the Han could rebuild the armies they had lost. That may well have been his calculation. If he could pacify the Southern Xiongnu's Hetao Plateau before he died, his domain would look exactly like Modu's on the eve of forcing Han Gaozu Liu Bang to his knees at Baideng Mountain. If Tanshihuai dreamed of becoming a second Modu — and if he could feel his health slipping — this impatient expedition suddenly made a grim kind of sense.

So. Tanshihuai did not know the span of his own life. I did. That was an advantage. Now — how to wrap that in something plausible and deliver it to Chanyu Hozheng and the rest?

"Tengri has, of course,"

I fought the urge to swallow. That would have looked like a man inventing his lines. Better to let the drool run and pour the prophecy out with my eyes rolled back, drunk on my own oracle, than to look as if I were making it up. There was a reason the premodern world took madmen and epileptics for those who heard the voice of God. The mouth that speaks for a god must never stop.

"spoken of our victory. The victory of the Xiongnu."

A low murmur of awe rippled outward through the gathered crowd. Through the last war I had taken hold of more hearts than Lü Bu's alone — a great many among the Xiongnu besides. Performing the Chanyu's coronation would have been more than enough to kindle respect for me as well. Faith is a curious thing. If an ordinary nine-year-old ran his mouth like this, they would tell him to shut it. A nine-year-old who hears the voice of God proves Tengri with every breath he takes. The golden Yingzheng crown on Granduncle Hozheng's head only raised my standing the more it shone.

Xubu ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Chang and Hozheng, though, both narrowed their eyes at me. Xubu Chang had been slapped down once for getting clever with me while my great-grandfather still lived, and he kept his mouth shut now. Hozheng did not. From where he sat, the very idea that I mediated Tengri's divinity must have sat badly.

"Last time He did not grant us victory. Why ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠does He grant it now?"

"There is no use resenting Tengri. By letting us walk alive from a field we were meant to lose, He already bestowed a grace we could never repay."

"And that grace He now bestows on Tanshihuai as well? I do not understand it. I do not understand a Tengri who would reverse our fortunes with his."

A myth that already ran through not only the Xiongnu but the nomads of the whole north — to systematize that myth into a religion meant that I, as its priest, was monopolizing those stories. Of course I would run into questions like this. I would probably be running into them for decades.

It grated, of course. That Hozheng was still alive two years after he should have been dead was entirely my doing. I cut a glance at the faces of the sons standing around him — my father's cousins, uncles of a sort. They wore the same look as their father. They did not quite believe me either. I would have to break them, sooner or later. And to do that, I needed everyone else in this camp hanging on my every word.

"Tengri withheld victory from us in the last war because we rode with Han who did not believe in Him. Those Han who chose to believe, He spared, and scattered through every region as living proof of Tengri."

That was how I dressed up the business of absorbing Han refugees who would otherwise have become wanderers and folding them into the nomad fold.

"We struck the Xianbei — who are, like us, Tengri's people — at the Han Emperor's command. That Tengri pitied the Xianbei and denied us victory was only just. But Tengri loves us as well, and so He brought us off that field alive."

Once the logic was in place, once the bones of the story fit, people would accept it. They always did. As the faces around us tipped further toward belief, Hozheng seemed to falter.

"...So this time the Xianbei strike us, who are Tengri's people, and He will not grant Tanshihuai the victory?"

"These past years Tengri has given Tanshihuai every chance."

I caught my lower lip lightly between my teeth — half wondering whether I ought to say what came next, and half arranging my face into a look of genuine regret.

"Had Tanshihuai joined hands with us and turned on the Han, Tengri would have granted him a glory even Grand Chanyu Modu never tasted. The wealth of Luoyang and Chang'an would have been his. The goods of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Western Regions would have laid gold upon his ordo. He did not."

I drew a breath, enough to empty the rest of it in a single rush.

"That Tengri granted him victory in Jiuquan Commandery of Liangzhou is the proof. And yet he did not occupy Jiuquan. He stripped it of supplies and turned for home. Then he struck Bingzhou again and again, tormenting not only the Han but we Xiongnu as well. He plundered Youzhou, it is true — but he used his own kinsmen, the Wuhuan, and then he discarded them."

Three things, I meant to harvest from those words.

First: to seed, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, an ethic that Tengri's people must not torment one another. Preaching do not harm each other is nearly useless. Saying you harmed each other, and so a god's curse fell on you is effective beyond anything you would expect.

Second: to plant the suggestion that Tengri already has a design to bind all His people into a single state. Recovering the old homeland in Mobei would not be mere revenge upon the Xianbei. It would be one piece of something larger — the building of a nomad empire that unified Mobei and Monan — and I meant to drive that into their minds where they would not even know it had taken root.

Third: to slip in, as if in passing, a prophecy that Tengri has already prepared for that unified nomad empire the fate of seizing the Han capitals and drinking the wealth of the Western Regions. Let that seed grow. Let it become the groundwork for the day I took North China.

Someone else spoke up beside me.

"K-Khagan... that word you spoke. Is there proof Tengri has shown you?"

"Through Han hands He drew the Wuhuan out of Youzhou and sent them into the lands of the Xiongnu. He entrusted them with the rites of Tengri. That is Tengri making His will plain: that His people shall rule the Han, free the Wuhuan, and become one with the Xiongnu."

The Wuhuan who had come over to my side through Liu Bei — I would put them to work like this. Allegory, nothing more. Moses delivering his people as a shadow of the day God's son would deliver all mankind. The command that Abraham sacrifice his son as a shadow of the day God would sacrifice His own. I could manage that much of an imitation.

I looked at the man who had asked. He seemed to be of the Lushuihu, a lineage a little apart from our Southern Xiongnu. Men also called Yizonghu and Yuezhihu had gathered in the Grand Chanyu's ordo as well. I could see notables of the Xiuzhigehu among them. The last war had done more than a little to bind the Xiongnu into one. Hozheng's own labors after he became Chanyu deserved their honest due, of course. All the more reason, then, to put this gathered strength to use. Who could say when the Han's watch and pressure would slacken like this again — when all the Xiongnu would stand together under the Chanyu's name? The hour of the northern expedition was now. Today.

"Specifically,"

Hozheng had been silent. His voice, when it came, was rough.

"how did He say we would win?"

I smiled. This much I could swear to.

A wet, rending cough tore through the tent. Then another.

"Father!"

Helian understood, then, why his father had given that strange order — that no one was to stand near his tent — and why he had summoned Helian alone. A nomad's body might be bred to the climate of the north, but it was still a man's body. They could bear cold and heat better than the Han, yes. And still, sooner or later, the killing wind turned the lungs inside out.

Tanshihuai wiped the blood from his palm and shook his head.

"Quiet. And come closer."

When Helian stepped in, Tanshihuai seized ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠him by the collar and forced him roughly to his knees. His father's strength was still this terrible. So why—

Tears stood in Helian's eyes. His father's death drawing near was grief enough. But this — his father spending the last of his strength to leave a will — that was a grief of its own.

"I never took the name of Chanyu. I waited, calling myself a chieftain, for the hour to come. It seems my years will end before that hour does."

Tanshihuai shut his eyes as if to pin the cough down, then opened them again.

"The heads of the tribes who bowed to us are chieftains too. The Han invented something they call the laws of lineage, so that a father's inheritance must pass to the eldest son... but we Xianbei have no such thing. Even the Han who made those laws do not keep them. They murder their own kin. So you know what will happen when I am gone."

"...Yes."

The chieftains would not accept Helian's succession. Each would name himself a hero the equal of Tanshihuai, and each would reach for the headship of the Xianbei.

"I mean to die on this campaign. In camp. In war, every man obeys the one who holds supreme command. Life and death are his to decide. I will die in the field, and I will leave that authority to you. While all the chieftains are gathered in one place, you will use that power, and you will take my seat whole."

The next day, Tanshihuai mounted the altar with a bearing so erect, a stride so sure, that no man watching could have taken him for a dying one. And there he proclaimed a new title for the sovereign of the Xianbei.

Tanshihuai had become Khagan.