Dong Zhuo and Kumis (1)
The army newly appeared from the east cut a slanting path northward and began to hammer the right flank of the Xianbei force that was hastily pulling itself off the battlefield. The horsemen were of a kind no one present had seen before. They did not look especially fast beside the Xianbei cavalry—but their arrows were vicious.
"Qiang," Father Yufuluo said, coming up beside me.
"You knew at a glance."
"When I fought Tanshihuai alongside Lü Fengxian, after he drove into Beidi Commandery, I stood in battle with Qiang warriors."
To the human eye, every tiger looks like every other tiger, and every wolf like every other wolf. But to Xiongnu eyes, the Qiang were unmistakably different from us.
The difference, I supposed, sprang from this: we Xiongnu were nomads, and the Qiang were pastoralists.
They raised livestock, rode horses, and delighted in archery—on those points we might have seemed alike. But between nomads who moved their pastures with the seasons and pastoralists who more often kept their herds on fixed grazing grounds, there was a fundamental divide.
When the Xiongnu first lost Monan to the Han, it was not that we failed to resist. We lamented the loss of the land—and yet it was not as if the thought never crossed our minds: Well, we still have Mobei. The old Xiongnu habit of fleeing deep into Mobei to lure Han armies after them, used whenever war with the Han turned sour, was bound up with precisely this condition.
The same was true of the Xianbei. A man like Tanshihuai—who planted his royal court on Tanhan Mountain, pressed up against Youzhou, or came as far as the Yin Mountains to prepare for war—was, in the history of nomads, the unusual case.
And so our archery had developed, somewhere along the way, to be better suited to hunting. Archery honed in Mobei, harsher than Monan, for the sake of eating by the hunt. Archery for riding down and killing beasts that crawled low to the ground. Archery for taking animals that could not strike back with spear or bow. However fine a Xiongnu bow might be, if the art of archery itself had been cultivated in this fashion, it was a poor match for the spears and crossbows of a Han army. Even the archery Modu used when he "succeeded to the throne" from Touman had been, in the end, the archery of the hunt, had it not?
The Qiang, by contrast, had no land to fall back upon. Even if there were somewhere they might go, that kind of long-distance migration—nomadism—was not their way of life. And so the Qiang, or those called Rong or Western Rong, resisted the Han with a far more desperate ferocity.
From the Han point of view, Qiang and Xiongnu alike were barbarians who rebelled whenever they grew bored. But the nature of those rebellions was entirely different. To nomads like the Xiongnu or the Xianbei, any given stretch of land was a place you could abandon and leave behind if it meant saving your life. To pastoralist Qiang, it was a place you died if you abandoned it. That was why Han suppression of Qiang revolts took the form of utterly laying waste to their settlements. Against nomads who simply rode away, the very concept of scorched earth could not even be applied.
And so, when the Qiang did rise, they slaughtered Han people with hideous thoroughness. And in order to resist Han spears and crossbows, Qiang archery developed in a direction different from ours. They developed their archery toward killing men with certainty. More precisely: toward killing punitive armies.
In short, the difference between Qiang archery and Xiongnu archery was the difference between archery for war and archery for the hunt. That was why Emperor Wu of Han, when he fought the Xiongnu, levied the Qiang-Rong in great numbers, or selected generals from among them. At the very least he promoted men who had lived among the Rong and learned their ways, and turned the strength of the Rong against the Hu.
"Even if a Qiang and a Xiongnu swapped clothes, you could tell them apart the moment they loosed an arrow,"
Yufuluo said—and then cocked his head.
"But they aren't shooting or pursuing with any particular aggression."
He was right. Once the Qiang loosed, they struck the Xianbei in vital places without fail—but their hands were not moving especially fast. Even granting that they were holding back from chasing the Xianbei too deep, for fear of a counterattack.
"I don't know. Something about that 'Dong' banner bothers me."
A commander who employed the Qiang and bore the surname Dong. At this point in time, a general who satisfied those conditions could only be Dong Zhuo.
Why on earth had Dong Zhuo come here? Here, of all places—where Lü Bu was.
"Khahaha."
My guess had not been wrong. No—what had been unexpected was that, unlike the waddling pig he was so often depicted as in games, he was a massive warrior whose shoulder muscles were enormously developed.
Dong Zhuo came before the Grand Chanyu, bursting with a laugh that sat somewhere between noise and hearty good humor, and offered his respects.
"Dong Zhuo, courtesy name Zhongying. I hold the post of Grand Administrator of Hedong Commandery."
...Apart from the volume, his manner of speaking was actually courteous. That, too, I had not expected. Come to think of it, there were records that Dong Zhuo had won the hearts of the Qiang. Was he, unexpectedly, a decent man when dealing with other peoples?
"Looks like I arrived too late and let Tanshihuai slip away."
As Dong Zhuo said, Tanshihuai had not been in the main camp Lü Bu had driven into. A few wagons had gotten out, and we had assumed Han strategists had fled first—but Tanshihuai had likely been riding in one of them.
According to Xianbei prisoners, the heads Lü Bu had taken belonged to two of the Xianbei Western Great Chiefs, named Chijian Lakla and Yan Luyu. Helian, Tanshihuai's second son and heir, and Kuitou, the eldest grandson, were not among the dead. The Central Great Chiefs and Eastern Great Chiefs had not been found either. All of them, it seemed, had escaped safely.
Should I rejoice that we had beaten Tanshihuai, or regret that two of the three divisions of the Xianbei were still intact? More than that, I had wanted to use the collapse of the Xianbei west to expand our power in Mobei...
No. I could not afford to take my eyes off Dong Zhuo, standing right in front of me.
Among the officers visible behind him were two faces I already knew. Ding Yuan. Zhang Yang of Yunzhong Commandery. How had two men who ought to have belonged to the Inspector of Bing Province come along with the Grand Administrator of Hedong?
"I had the honor of meeting the previous Grand Chanyu when he was still Left Wise King. Whether the present Grand Chanyu will remember this Dong fellow, I cannot say."
In the visions I had seen, Dong Zhuo had once come to Bing Province as Zhang Huan's adjutant. Hozheng's face took on the look of a man searching his memory.
"...Grand Administrator Dong, did you once serve as Inspector of Bing Province?"
"I did, yes."
"Ah... in that case, might you also have come to Bing Province in the train of Zhang Yanming—Zhang Huan—when he was Zhonglangjiang Protecting the Xiongnu?"
Dong Zhuo smiled, broadly, in a way that really did not suit him.
"Yes, yes, I did! That you remember this wretch makes the journey worthwhile!"
Only then did Hozheng manage an awkward smile of his own.
"To meet again like this. It's been ten years... no, nearly twenty."
"I was only assisting the Zhonglangjiang back then, and after that I bounced around as Wuji Colonel of the Western Regions and what have you."
"Hedong Commandery lies in Sili. That's a long road to the Yin Mountains. You must have had a hard journey."
"When it is His Majesty the Emperor's command, how could I fail to obey? And in the work of defending the realm, what distinction is there between Xiongnu and Han?"
Emperor Ling. Liu Hong. You again. Last time you sent Cao Cao. He, too, seemed quietly interested in Bing Province. Though only, it appeared, insofar as he could use Bing Province and the Xiongnu for something.
"His Majesty must have sent Grand Administrator Dong here because you once served as Inspector of Bing Province."
"When I was Inspector I was occupied with affairs around Taiyuan, and left everything to the Zhonglangjiang Protecting the Xiongnu, so I never paid a visit to the Grand Chanyu's royal court. For that, I wish to apologize now."
Hozheng waved a hand.
"Think nothing of it. Gratitude for help received now outweighs old business. Don't trouble yourself."
At that, Dong Zhuo grinned.
"Then, since I've come among the Xiongnu after so long—and since we've just won a victory—might I look forward to the Xiongnu 'courtesy shown a guest'?"
Nomads were terrible to their enemies, and at the same time treated anyone who came as a guest with lavish hospitality of one kind or another. Dong Zhuo's words were aimed squarely at that tradition. The slightly shameless request finally drew a laugh from Hozheng.
"As much as you like! Do you know how to drink kumis?"
"Kumis or butter—give me either and I'll eat it gladly! Fine to drink, and fine dried and roasted over meat!"
A hearty man, and a humble one. Dong Zhuo. I could not get used to this.
I had expected Dong Zhuo to browbeat us, insisting that letting Tanshihuai escape was all the Xiongnu's fault. Because I was late, he said. He blamed neither Lü Bu, nor Ding Yuan, nor Zhang Yang—only himself.
"This war was not an expedition but a defense against Tanshihuai's invasion. I will report to Luoyang that we were able to hold the frontier thanks to Grand Administrator Dong. I'll tell Zhonglangjiang Wang—Wang You—the same."
"That Darkhan would cover for this Dong fellow—I can only be grateful."
A banquet was spread in the Chanyu's royal court raised on the site of Duman City, all remaining supplies practically stripped to furnish it. Han and Xiongnu alike, down to the lowest-ranking soldiers, mixed together drinking and tearing at meat.
The atmosphere was this good in part because it was the immediate aftermath of victory—but more than anything, it was thanks to Dong Zhuo's manner. Unlike Zhang Xiu and Zhang Min, the previous Zhonglangjiang Protecting the Xiongnu, Dong Zhuo used the Xiongnu word Darkhan for Hozheng, and never failed to put "Grand" before "Chanyu."
Was that performance nothing but a mask to win over a foreign people? Or was the Dong Zhuo of the year 181 the man he appeared to be?
"But how did Grand Administrator Dong manage to appear on the field at just the right moment?"
"Ah, that... well, I did push north the instant I received His Majesty's command, but—"
Dong Zhuo's hand pointed at Lü Bu.
"This Lü Fengxian here was champing at the bit to go aid the Grand Chanyu. Everything was already prepared, so I simply took over the units and brought them straight along."
"Lü Fengxian... this man is also my grandnephew's teacher. And now we receive his help like this."
Caught in both Hozheng's and Dong Zhuo's gazes at once, Lü Bu offered only a silent bow.
"Oh? The Grand Chanyu's grandnephew?"
"And, well, the Grand Shaman of us Xiongnu as well."
Dong Zhuo's eyes lit up and turned toward me. For the moment they were only the eyes of a man looking at a charming child.
I... simply smiled. Whether to make an enemy of Dong Zhuo or cultivate his friendship was not a decision to rush.
Hozheng asked Dong Zhuo again.
"So you combined Hedong Commandery's troops with Lü Fengxian's and brought them all?"
"Not only that. I brought along the units of Ding Jianyang—Ding Yuan—and Zhang Zishu—Zhang Yang—who were in the eastern part of Bing Province as well."
Hmm... For a banquet with such a fine atmosphere, there were exactly three people who looked uncomfortable. Ding Yuan was one of them. Considering what would happen between the two of them eight years from now, in 189 of the original history, it was understandable enough... but had that cursed connection already taken root?
Dong Zhuo continued his explanation.
"I left the infantry to Ding Jianyang and Zhang Zishu and had them go out through the Guanglu Frontier Wall. The cavalry under myself and Lü Fengxian took the road between Yanmen and Dingxiang, then cut north near Dai Commandery."
In other words, he had sent the infantry by the short route to the battlefield, and himself, with Lü Bu, had taken cavalry around the Yin Mountains.
"I'd heard that last time Tanshihuai deliberately left Tanhan Mountain empty as a ruse, so I judged there was no point in recovering the counties of Dai Commandery we'd lost. We ignored them all and just rode."