Hope of Earth

by Piers Anthony

Toqtamish pondered. “I value your caution, Ned. Suppose we reverse it, and ask them to come out to visit us? Ostei can come to see me in my tent. That way I will not enter the city, and can not be cut off from my forces.”

  “That would be better,” Ned agreed. “But take care that they sneak no arms into your presence.”

  “Of course.” The khan smiled. “Then it is settled. We may soon be finished here.” Toqtamish glanced at him. “But stay in my sight, my valued friend, and keep your militant sister by your side, just in case. We can never be too careful.”

  Indeed, it seemed that they had worked it out. The Mongol camp waited while the officials of the city consulted. Then the gates were thrown open, and Commander Ostei emerged, with his retinue bearing rich presents. He was followed by priests bearing a large Christian cross. These were followed by the boyars, the nobles. Finally the common citizens of Moscow trooped out, wearing decorative colors. It was a fine procession. The Russians were so very glad to be relieved of the siege.

  Still, Ned worried. Where was the great treachery Wona had warned of? Should he have submitted to her passion, for the sake of the information she had? Yet if she had overheard it from her husband, Ormond, the treachery must be associated in some way with him, rather than the Russians. Unless he was a secret agent for the Russians.

  Ned looked around. He did not see Ormond or Wona in the throng around the khan. There were a good number of armed troops close by, abridging the normal proscription against arms near the khan, but that would be because of the concern about possible betrayal. So Toqtamish should be safe. But why was the adviser who had arranged this encounter not present? He should be claiming due honor. Instead Ned himself was here, when he had not been responsible for the settlement. That was odd.

  Treachery. Oddity. Something did not add up. Ned glanced at Jes, and saw that she was similarly concerned. Now he wished that he had made a deal with Wona. Could he have offered her anything other than his child? He wasn’t sure, but he should have tried. Now all he could do was wait and watch, hoping his instincts were mistaken.

  Ostei was escorted directly into the khan’s tent. He was smiling. “O great Khan,” he said, his words decipherable though they were in Russian. He bowed his head.

  Then Ormond appeared, carrying a sword. He stepped right up close to Ostei and swung the sword. Ned saw it as if the motions were slow. He could not believe it. Ormond was attacking the leader of the city, who was here under the flag of truce? There must be some mistake!

  The sword struck the man. Ostei fell, his blood spurting, amazement rather than pain on his face.

  Then Toqtamish gave a signal, arid mayhem erupted. The Mongol guards fell upon the citizens of Moscow, slaughtering them without mercy. Screams sounded as the victims discovered their fate.

  Now at last Ned understood the nature of the treachery. Not against the khan—by the khan. Wona had heard her husband planning the conspiracy, and knew that Ned would want to know it. But he had refused to deal on her terms, and paid the price.

  He felt a tugging on his arm. It was Jes. Numbly he followed her. How could Toqtamish have agreed to such an evil ploy? He should have had Ormond executed for even suggesting it. Yet it was plain that the khan had agreed to it.

  Jes hauled him along to where she had two horses. “Follow me,” she said, mounting.

  “But—” But she was already starting off. All he could do was mount and follow.

  They rode rapidly out of the camp. No one paid them any attention. The Mongols were too busy cutting down the Russians. Already troops were charging into the city, where more screaming sounded. The city was doomed.

  Only when they were well away from the action did Jes pause so that Ned’s horse could catch up with hers. “But we should not be fleeing the carnage,” he said. “We should be trying to abate it.”

  “You fool,” she said gently. “That woman took you—and what’s worse, deceived me too. We are done here.”

  “Wona? But she would have warned me, if I had only—”

  “Don’t you see, innocent brother: she was part of it. Her job was not to tell you, but to distract you, so that you would have no chance to learn of the treachery. She kept you away from the camp for a full day and night, while the thing was set up. She accomplished her mission.”

  He realized it was true. Wona had used her attempted seduction only as a means of distraction, so that he would not guess her true purpose. While her husband arranged the grand deception. They had known that Ned would never agree to it, so they had kept him well clear of it—until too late. Toqtamish had conspired too, making sure Ned had no suspicion, keeping him and his sister close by so they could not question anyone or spy anything going on. They had been deceived exactly like the two Russian princes. How cunningly it had been accomplished!

  “I can not serve Toqtamish any more,” he said, grim and heartbroken.

  “That’s why I got you out of there,” she said. “He would have had to have you killed. I think he thought you would see reason, by his definition, once the deed was done. But I knew better. He does not understand honor; he thinks it means merely that you will not betray him. Honor to an enemy is an alien concept for him.”

  She was right. “But what can we do now?” he asked plaintively.

  “We can gallop home and get our family to safety before the khan’s minions come for all of us,” she said.

  He realized it was true. The family’s years of affluence and favor with the Golden Horde were through. “We shall have to return to Timur,” he said. “He will protect us, and send us somewhere safe.”

  “We are, after all, Turks,” she said. “And it will not annoy him that you are now Moslem.”

  “Yes. Perhaps I can continue to help the family. All is not lost.”

  “All is not lost,” she agreed.

  So it was that Toqtamish, the lackluster Mongol pretender, became one of the two major figures of central Asia. In four years, 1378-82, he showed considerable savvy, so that he came to rival Timur himself in power and influence. How could he have so suddenly changed?

  He must have gotten a smart new adviser, who understood the politics of the day and knew what pitfalls to avoid, and he must have paid attention to that man. How such an adviser came to him, and precisely what he said, are unknown to history, but it could have been as presented here. The fact is that Toqtamish was surely neither as stupid in the early days nor as smart in the middle days as he seems. The prior khan of the White Horde pursued him relentlessly because he knew that Toqtamish was legitimate, competent, and ambitious; he gave the handsome young pretender no chance to get established. Only the generous and patient intercession of Timur enabled him to survive. But once he was established, Toqtamish knew how to use the reins of power, and did so with dispatch. The Golden Horde had been losing its control over Russia; he restored it for another century. Moscow was looted and burned, and after it the other Russian towns were destroyed. Dmitri never actually took the field against Toqtamish.

  But what happened after he lost his good adviser? Toqtamish surely thought he could do well enough without him. And he did, for a while. He sent a conciliatory letter to Prince Dmitri, proposing peace and reaffirming Dmitri’s position as Grand Prince of Muscovy, under Toqtamish. Dmitri, yielding to the reality of Mongol power, sent his son Vasili as a hostage. Vasili was well treated, and there was no more trouble on the Russian front. Meanwhile Toatamish consoliborder of Europe to the border of China.

  Then he went wrong. He did the one thing his Turkic adviser would never have countenanced: he cast eyes on the territory of his benefactor, Timur. In 1385, while Timur was busy in Persia, Toqtamish invaded Azerbaijan, the territory southwest of the Caspian Sea, with an army of 90,000. He sacked its chief city, and returned home before the winter intensified.

  Timur was annoyed. He wrapped up his business in Persia and moved to retake Azerbaijan in 1387. Toqtamish, despite a sensible reminder from some advisers: “Who knows whether, in some change of f
ortune, you might have to go again to Timur for help,” marched his own army to meet him. A Mongol party made a sneak attack on the Turks, only to be countered by a second force and defeated. Yet Timur sent his captives back with a gentle and deserved reproof. This enraged the khan, and the war continued for several years. Timur quelled rebellions and drove off the invaders, then invaded the Golden Horde. He defeated Toqtamish and drove him from power. The Mongols remained in control of Russia, but the faithless friend had paid the price of his foolishness. Too bad he didn’t stay with his good adviser.

  Chapter 16

  WALL

  The Mongols dominated Asia for centuries, slowly losing territory to the cultures of the west, south, and east The Chinese were especially hard hit by their depredations. The Mongols conquered China in 1280 and lost it in 1368 when the Ming dynasty was established. Thereafter the Mongols periodically raided China, as before, and at one point even took the emperor captive. The Chinese realized that there had to be some better way. Thus their efforts to build walls, to protect them from the invasions from the north.

  However, the three thousand mile long Great Wall of China, existing from the Chin Empire in 221 B.C. on, is a myth. Walls existed, but these were mainly local, made of earth packed around wooden supports, and they were not maintained well. They served more as boundary markers than as defense. Land within the walls was regulated and taxed; land beyond the walls was wilderness. Only when the walls were actively defended were they effective, and the money and manpower for this were usually lacking. The frontier was actually guarded by widely spaced forts. The invading nomads had no trouble going around, through, or over the walls. A single, unified, manned, stone wall defending China as a whole simply did not exist, despite cultivated mythology. Only after the Mongols were expelled did more impressive bulwarks develop, but even then there was no unified project. There was a series of smaller building projects, each designed to shore up a weakened section of the northern perimeter. Even these relatively modest efforts suffered from lack of planning, design, funds, and manpower.

  In 1470 an official named Yü Tzu-Chün surveyed and repaired the western defenses. He had 12,000 troops to defend an area more than 500 miles long, protected by twenty mud-brick forts. He convinced the emperor that this was hopeless, and was given 40,000 men and over a million silver pieces, and he built a wall about 550 miles long with some 800 watch towers and sentry posts. This was effective. But Yü knew that the barbarians would simply go around it, so he petitioned the emperor for funds and men to greatly expand the defensive perimeter. This could have been the first true Great Wall. But he annoyed the bureaucrats, who surely felt they had better uses for all that money, and was forced to retire. The barbarian raids continued.

  In the 1540s Altan Khan succeeded in unifying the Mongols of the region. He made several attempts to establish peaceful trade relations with the Ming, but was continually rebuffed, and often his messengers were killed. This has never been smart policy when dealing with Mongols. The Chinese emperor of the time was Chia-Ching, who reigned from 1522 to 1566, but was not much interested in the actual business of governing. He preferred to indulge his lifelong quest for the secret of immortality. Fortunately for China, his disinterest allowed more rational heads to handle the border fortifications. The far-west fortresses and walls were massively rebuilt, though this consisted mainly of bricking over the original earth walls. A network of signal towers was set up, so that messages could be sent quickly, by flame, smoke, or cannon-blast. This helped.

  But the main threat was farther to the east, where Altan Khan was ambitious. Yü’s original construction had been allowed to erode, but periodic repairs and new construction had maintained that portion of the border defense. But nearer the capital city of Peking was where the Mongols repeatedly raided. There were two lines of defense, enclosing two garrison cities, Ta-t’ung and Hsan-fu. They had once been formidable, but early in the sixteenth century had fallen into decline. The soil of that region was dry and unproductive, so the military supply farms suffered continual shortages and the local diet was poor. The troops consisted of hereditary soldiers and prisoners exiled to the frontier for life. Long winter hours manning the towers often led to frostbite or worse. Officers were cruel, and morale was terrible. There had been several mutinies, including a major revolt in 1524. Now the region faced its worst threat yet, in the form of the unified Mongols under Altan Khan.

  In 1544 Weng Wan-ta was named commander of this disaster area. It was his job to make sure that the formidable Mongol forces did not get through to ravage the rich countryside of the capital region. Weng was competent, but this was almost too much of a challenge.

  The time is 1549; the setting is the two garrison walled loop northwest of Peking.

  IT WAS NICE, RIDING WITH her brother, Jes thought, because then it wasn’t so deadly dull. She craved adventure, while Ned craved intellectual challenge. Theoretically they had both, here, because there was no more dangerous region than the one where the Mongols liked to attack, and there was plenty of architectural design and construction. But in practice, all they saw was walls and towers and bleak stretches of wilderness.

  She and Ned were on a routine scouting mission, making sure the defenses had not broken down or been breached. Sometimes a stone fell out of place, or a storm washed a gully under a support. She spotted such problems, and Ned considered them, and then designed superior replacements. But in the long stretches between such minor discoveries, there was nothing much to do but chat.

  “So did you give Wildflower a baby yet?” she inquired brightly.

  “I’m trying,” he said. “And she’s trying. But so far all the joy has been in the effort, not the success, as with marching.” She appreciated his grimace; they much preferred riding to marching, but the common soldiers had no such choice. “But what about you? You’ve been married longer than I have.”

  “I don’t want a baby. That would interfere with my free life.”

  “Odd how a sister thinks she can lie to a brother,” he remarked to the wind.

  “All right, I lied,” she said crossly. “I want a baby. We’ve certainly tried. But it doesn’t come. If you can tell, me what’s wrong—”

  “You’re lean,” he said. “Not much female flesh on you.”

  “Ittai doesn’t complain. He finds what he likes readily enough.”

  “Oh, you’ve got it,” he said quickly. “More than you used to. But not as generously as some.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be fat. Some of those cows—”

  “My point is that, in my limited observation, girls with some flesh on their bodies get babies faster. They don’t have to be fat, just reasonably female. I’m trying to get Wild-flower to eat more, but she’s young.”

  Jes ran the women she knew through her mind. Ned was right; the plump ones had the children. Could the secret be that simple?

  Meanwhile her eyes were constantly surveying the wall they paralleled, as were Ned’s. “Oops,” she murmured, reining in her horse.

  “Mongols!” he exclaimed, keeping his voice low. “They’ve broken through.”

  “That’s not hard to do, because we haven’t yet completed the extension of the wall,” she said. “I don’t see a break, but there’s no doubt they’re through.”

  “Cover me while I get an estimate,” he said, dismounting.

  She remained on her steed, keeping trees between it and the Mongol force, while Ned crept closer afoot. She unslung her bow and nocked an arrow. She would shoot any Mongol who came after Ned. But she hoped he would not be spied, because outrunning Mongols was chancy at best, even with a head start and familiarity with the terrain.

  Ned was soon back. “Too many to count,” he said. “They are here in force. Full-scale alert.”

  Jes nodded. They guided their horses quietly back the way they had come, until well enough clear to be able to risk the sound of galloping. Then they moved at full speed west, toward the nearest signal tower.

  “Fu
ll alert!” Jes called as they approached. “Mongols through the wall!”

  “How many?” the guard captain asked as his men blew up the signal fire.

  “We couldn’t count,” Ned said. “But by their organization, I’d guess at least 10,000. This is no skirmish squad.”

  The men threw damp leaves on the fire, and a big cloud of smoke went up. Unfortunately, the wind was wrong, and the cloud blew toward the Mongols. “This is mischief,” Jes muttered.

  “Our men will spy it,” the captain said.

  “But the Mongols will spy it first,” she said. “They’re not idiots. We’d better carry the message directly.”

  “Too late to call back the smoke,” Ned said. “In any event, the signal system will far outpace any riders.”

  “But General Weng will want more detailed information than the signals can transmit, and with the Mongols alerted, there won’t be much time to provide it.”

  “So we’d better hurry,” he agreed.

  They set out again, moving at the maximum sustainable pace for their horses. Probably the Mongols would not be in pursuit, because they would fear an ambush. But the Mongols would certainly be ready.

  As they rode, Jes thought about the Mongols. Ned’s wife was a Mongol princess, but she was loyal to Ned and the family. Ned had at one time worked for the Mongol prince, but that had ended badly. Their experience with Mongols helped them here. Indeed, General Weng had hoped to use Ned as an emissary to reestablish trade that would benefit both the Mongols and the empire, and defuse hostilities. But the eunuchs who ran the empire distrusted the Mongols, thinking they would only spy and cause trouble if allowed into the country, so that sensible option was closed. Thus the far more expensive and dangerous option of military defense was the only feasible alternative. But Weng’s massive and necessary wall extension project had been under-funded from the start, delaying and weakening it. It was too bad. Now they were about to suffer, again, the consequence of the empire’s multiple follies.