Shike, page 34
Now she could really feel how Jebu must have felt, living among people to whom he looked strange.
She must not lie to herself. Even if this Mongol general should find her pleasing, what would she have gained? A man she did not care for would enter her body and use her. Like those first years with Horigawa. Disgusting. And she must feign delight. And this, just so she could eat and sleep and be allowed to live. She still did not want to kill herself, but how much shame was she willing to endure just to stay alive?
And sooner or later this great one of the Mongols would tire of her, just as Horigawa said, and would cast her off. What affection could there be between people of nations so different?
Sooner or later she would begin the slow descent through the ranks of the Mongols. It could only end one way. Horigawa would have his revenge.
She sat, looking at her fingertips peeping from beneath her sleeves. The maids were silent, she was silent. The bleak thoughts kept pursuing one another through her mind. She brooded back over the course of her life. She had never been permitted to decide on a course of action for herself and by herself. She had always been subject to the whims of one man or another.
She wanted to weep, but held back her tears. She dared not spoil her make-up, or the great Mongol would not want her. She must take her mind off these thoughts.
She knew only one way to distract herself. In her mind she said, "Homage to Amida Buddha," over and over again. She did not want to recite the invocation to the Lord of Boundless Light aloud. She did not want to be the object of the maids' idle curiosity. And besides, she might end up hoarse before Bourkina came for her.
After a time she found it easiest to let the mental recitation fall in with the rhythm of her breathing, and she repeated the invocation each time she breathed out, just as if she were saying it aloud. Whenever she found her mind wandering to her wretchedness, she gently drew it back to the invocation.
She began to see Amida Buddha seated in his paradise. His face was round and golden, like the sun. His expression, bearing the faintest of smiles, was one of infinite peace. Gradually she was able to see all of him, sitting in the clouds, his hands touching together in his lap, surrounded by circling flocks of angels and seated bodhisattvas.
A vast peace filled her. She forgot all her sorrows. She forgot the passage of time.
The face of Buddha was replaced by the deeply tanned face of Bourkina, peering into hers.
"I'm sorry you have had to wait so long. There is always so much happening here."
Taniko smiled. "It is quite all right."
Bourkina peered at her. "What has happened to you? Have you been using the Arabian drug?"
Still smiling, Taniko shook her head. "Drug? No. I simply have tried to take your advice. I'm not frightened any more."
Bourkina nodded; "I sensed you had possibilities. Good. Well, then, let us go."
In spite of what Taniko said, she did feel a faint twinge of fear as she rose smoothly to her feet. What would happen to her now?
Bourkina looked at her appraisingly. "We have only a short way to go. I hope you won't be too warm with all those robes you have on. You look very lovely, though strange. I've never seen a woman dressed as you are. But that's all to the good."
The two Chinese maids sat like statues as Bourkina and Taniko walked out into the warm night. At first Taniko was unable to see. She hesitated, and the big Mongol woman reached down and took her hand.
When Taniko's eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see the round tents on all sides. The fear was gone again. She had discovered that she carried the paradise of Amida Buddha within her and could enter it, without having to die, any time she wanted to. No longer could anyone harm her. She could always escape.
They were walking towards the large white pavilion in the centre of the camp where Horigawa had gone the day before. Though it was only a tent, it was as large as the house of a noble in the Sunrise Land. It covered the top of a low hill. Before it stood two standards, one the horns and tails of some great beast, the other a silk banner inscribed with the Chinese word Yuan, "a beginning."
There was a front entrance facing south, the most auspicious direction, protected by six warriors armed with lances. Bourkina went around to the side of the felt-covered tent, where there was another, smaller entrance guarded by only one huge man with a broad, curving sword in his belt. He bowed to Bourkina.
"Now you must know," Bourkina said, suddenly turning to Taniko. "I did not want to give you time to be frightened. You must not be afraid now. You are about to enter the presence of one of the greatest among us. If you please him, your future happiness is assured. Prepare now to meet the grandson of Genghis Khan, the brother of the Great Khan Mangu, the overlord of China, the commander of this army and the favoured of Eternal Heaven, Kublai Khan."
Then Bourkina took Taniko by the hand and led her through the entrance of the tent. Within, all was cloth of gold, and it seemed as if hundreds of hanging lamps were blazing. Taniko was momentarily blinded as she entered the dome-shaped chamber filled with dazzling light.
Chapter Twelve
The clouds that rolled across the night sky reflected red light. Missiles poured over Kweilin's walls, while bands of Mongols and their Kin Tartar and Turk auxiliaries pressed forward with siege towers and ladders. Eour war elephants smashed a stone-filled battering ram against the south gate, arrows glancing off their armour like raindrops off a sedge hat.
Jebu expected the city's defences to crumble at any moment, but he stood on the walls, smiling. There was beauty in war, the fire, the colour, the flow and ebb of human waves, the enormous power of the elephants and siege artillery.
"No wonder this people has conquered half the world," Jebu called to Yukio over the roar of battle.
"You admire them?"
"I simply find it remarkable what human beings can do."
He did not admire the Mongols for their conquests, but he was impressed by their ability to throw all their energies into action, by their discipline and by the carefree way they faced hardship and death. These qualities reminded him of the Zinja. Now that he saw Arghun among his people, no longer a mysterious assassin from an unknown world, he was able to understand him better.
Kweilin had held out much longer than it had any right to. The Mongols had arrived before the city in the Eourth Month of the Year of the Sheep. It was now the Seventh Month, and the city remained unconquered. Rarely, since Genghis Khan first led them out of the steppes, had the Mongols found a city so troublesome.
Rain had helped Kweilin's defenders. The timing of the siege was bad for the attackers. The monsoons began just about the time Arghun arrived to direct the siege. The rain slowed down the Mongol assaults, dampened their explosive powder, put out the fires they started, and provided the people of the city with plenty of fresh water.
Disease helped too. The Mongol camp quickly turned into a steaming swamp. Inured for generations to a chill northern climate, they were an easy prey to the fevers of this almost tropical country. By order of the governor, the human waste of the large population of Kweilin, which in peacetime would have fertilized the rice fields around the city, went into the moat and the Kwei Kiang River. Some of it, as Liu intended, poisoned the Mongol drinking water. Thousands of the nomads were felled by dysentery.
But the rain and the sickness had only slowed the Mongols down. It was the samurai who held them off. Eor the first time since they had emerged from the steppes, the Mongols were encountering warriors as tough, as energetic, as ferocious as themselves. Without help the samurai could not hold out much longer, but they had already wrecked the Mongol schedule for the conquest of the Sung empire.
Daily during those months Jebu looked into the heart of the Jewel of Life and Death. Taitaro, who had given him the Jewel, was somewhere in this land. They would never meet, though, because the city would fall at any moment, and soon after that he would be dead.
He found he could face the prospect with serenity.
But now a strange thing was happening. The noise that had been deafening Jebu for months was slowly dying down. A silence was spreading almost visibly like a blanket of snow. The boulders came hurtling over the walls less often. A single fire pot tore through the air like a shooting star. No more followed it. The hua pao were silent.
At the base of the wall where thousands of prisoners had died filling in the moat with stones and brushwood and human flesh, a detachment of Kin Tartar foot soldiers was rushing forward with a long ladder. A volley of samurai arrows fell among them. The ladder dropped to the ground. In response to a shouted command from across the moat, the surviving Tartars turned and ran back to the Mongol camp.
The sun had started to rise above the Kwei Kiang. In the pale light the elephants' handlers were unchaining the battering ram. It fell with a crash. Now the elephants turned and lumbered over the stone causeway the Mongols' prisoners had built across the junction of the two lakes. Elights of arrows followed them, leaving the armoured elephants unharmed but killing several of the men with them.
In the full light of morning the samurai and the Chinese watched, dumbfounded, as the Mongols broke down their camp and made preparations to withdraw.
"They expect us to throw open the gates as soon as they disappear over the horizon," said Yukio. "Then they'll come roaring back and catch us off guard."
"But they would have had the city today or tomorrow anyway," Jebu said. "And they could hardly take us by surprise if we sent scouts after them."
Governor Liu picked his way over the broken stone covering the top of the wall. "So, what I heard is true. They do seem to be leaving."
Jebu watched the Mongols mount some of their larger yurts on carts, while they stripped the felt covering away from the wooden poles of the smaller ones and packed them away on wagons. The Kin engineers were untying the ropes and knocking out the pegs that held the siege machines together. Others were digging out the bases of the hua pao.
Yukio remained convinced that the whole withdrawal was a deception. Liu suggested that there might be a Chinese relief army on the way, or perhaps this army had been called away to meet a Chinese counter-attack in one of the other war zones. Jebu thought that only some requirement of their own law could draw the Mongols away from an almost certain victory.
"It can only be something that affects them in the most profound way," he said.
The besiegers had stationed a protective screen of heavy cavalry across Lake Rong hu, not far from the pen where the thousands of prisoners who had survived the siege sat on the bare ground. The prisoners, Jebu thought, were probably rejoicing that they were still alive and might return home soon.
A high voice shouted a command to the riders on guard. They formed a long line and began to trot in a circle around the pen. Another shrill order and they were firing arrows into the prisoners. Jebu shut his eyes momentarily and clenched his fists as the screams and pleas for mercy stabbed his ears. The Chinese soldiers on the wall shouted curses at the enemy and prayers for the dying. They tried to shoot at the Mongols, but their arrows would not carry that far. Eor Jebu, the pain of seeing the killing of so many innocents was like a barbed arrow in his own chest.
Again and again the Mongols circled the slave corral, shooting at any movement.
"They will have their massacre, one way or the other," Yukio said. Jebu saw that Liu had turned his back on the slaughter and stood with tears trickling down his pale cheeks.
"I do not know which is worse," he whispered, "to see the severed head of my own son, or to see my helpless people slaughtered."
Now the Mongols had dismounted and were walking in a line through the pen. They had their sabres out and were inspecting the bodies, beheading or stabbing to death any who were still alive. Auxiliary troops moved behind them, retrieving arrows from the corpses.
Yukio also turned away. "There is no need for this. No need at all," he said hoarsely. "It is true that the Mongols are less than human."
And if they are, Jebu wondered, what am I? These are also my people. But I was not reared in their ways. I would sooner die than do what they are doing. To kill poor peasants is bad enough, but how can they kill women and children by the hundreds?
Genghis Khan, Arghun's master, had commanded the death of all Jamuga's seed, and Arghun had tried to kill Jebu when Jebu was a baby. That would not seem a task repugnant to a man who could shoot an arrow into a screaming child clinging to its mother's skirts.
Yukio, his face crimson with rage, said, "We have our prisoners, too. Let us show that we can be as merciless as these Mongols." In the months of the siege, the defenders had captured over a hundred Mongols and nearly three hundred auxiliaries.
"No," said Jebu. "I will not shame myself by killing those who cannot fight back."
"The Mongols always kill their prisoners," said Liu. "Perhaps, if we were to let our captured Mongols live, even return them to their people, it would show them there is another way. Our Master Confucius said, 'Do not do to others what you would not want others to do to you.' If we do not kill Mongols today, perhaps they will spare Chinese lives tomorrow."
"We always execute captured fighting men in our land," said Yukio. "To let men live so that they may attack you again is foolish."
"The few hundred Mongols and their auxiliaries that we captured are no great danger to us," said Jebu. "I will personally conduct them to Arghun."
"I'm sorry, Jebu-san," Yukio said, "but you must be completely mad."
"I will go as an envoy. The life of an ambassador is, sacred to them." Liu said, "You put too much temptation before Arghun."
"He has spent years of his life and made long and dangerous jour neys to try to kill me. His very fidelity to his law is my protection."
Yukio stared at Jebu, large-eyed. "I can forbid you to take those men back to Arghun. I can order you to execute them."
Jebu nodded. "Yes, Lord Yukio, you can."
Yukio turned away. "Go ahead. Do whatever foolish thing you like."
When Jebu entered the Mongol camp, he was able to address an officer in the barbarian language, presenting himself as an envoy from Kweilin and requesting a meeting with Arghun Baghadur. His language practise with the prisoners had served him well.
The tarkhan sat astride a barrel-chested grey steppe pony, one gauntleted fist resting on his hip. His eyes were the colour of a cloudy winter day.
"An envoy, are you? You are viler than a diseased dog to mock the laws of my people."
"I mean no mockery, tarkhan," said Jebu, looking back at him calmly. Arghun's reaction did not surprise him. He must hate me as much as I have been hating him, Jebu thought.
"So, you've learned a few more words in the language of your father," said Arghun with an ironic smile. "Perhaps you'd like to become one of us. Unfortunately, if you submitted yourself to our law, you'd die at once." His face darkened. "If you are an ambassador as you claim, approach me properly. Off your horse. Down on your face."
Jebu hesitated. But Arghun was within his rights to demand obeisance from an ambassador. And did not The Zinja Manual say, "Whatsoever role you play, manifest your inner perfection by acting it perfectly." Jebu climbed down from his horse. The muddy ground had been churned into a brown soup by thousands of hooves. He knelt and pressed his hands and forehead into the mud. He waited there.
At last Arghun said irritably, "Get up, that's not what I want from you."
Jebu stood up, wiping the mud from his forehead with the back of his hand. "Will nothing less than my death satisfy you, tarkhan?"
"Nothing less will satisfy the spirit of Genghis Khan. I cannot take your life today, but I will have it one day. Why did you come here?"
"Eirst, to propose, since you seem to be leaving us, a treaty of eternal peace between the Mongols and the City of Kweilin."
"That is an absurdity. We make peace only with those who surrender. What else?"
"Also, to return to you the men we captured. We do not consider it necessary to murder helpless prisoners."
Arghun shrugged. "Then you are fools." Arghun turned to an officer beside him. "Have those men taken away." The officer shouted orders, and guards led away the men brought by Jebu. The returned prisoners walked with pale faces and downcast eyes.
"It may interest you to know that they will be strangled with bowstrings before we leave here," said Arghun, smiling.
Jebu's heart sank. "They don't deserve punishment. They are brave men. They were all wounded or unconscious when we captured them."
"It is not a punishment. We must send a detachment of warriors to the next world to serve the Great Khan. It is an honour to be chosen. These men will be part of the Great Khan's spirit. We have our ways of mourning, monk, which you could not possibly understand."
Amazed, Jebu saw at once what was happening. "Your Great Khan is dead?"
"He is." Arghun's rough-hewn face was bleak. "Eor now, our war with Sung China is ended, by our own choosing. It is our unalterable law that when a Great Khan dies, all of us shall return to the homeland to bury him and to choose his successor. Tell the people of Kweilin to thank Eternal Heaven for granting them this respite. But let them remember that it is only a respite."
He fixed his strangely empty eyes on Jebu. "For you also, son of Jamuga, this is only a respite. Three times now I have tried to carry out the command of Genghis Khan that you die. Each time you have been saved, but never by your own power. A man who must rely on others or on chance events to protect him is a poor creature.. Destiny will bring you and me together again, and the next time I will surely kill you."
