Children of the Dragon

by Frank Robinson

  Jehan would wrangle for hours, only to leave these meetings in exhaustion and exasperation. His ministers preached strength, but they themselves were weak. All the good men—Kawaras, Yahu, Ontondra—all the strong men were gone. Yahu had been succeeded by his deputy, Avdoul Ktahrassa, but Ktahrassa himself was complaining that the regime was now comprised of second-raters. Except for Jehan, there was not a strong man at the Palace on whom responsibility could rest. And not even Jehan, with his health ebbing and his stamina broken, could cope with the ever-deepening morass.

  An infusion of new vigor was needed; even the weakest reeds of the regime could see this now. Some tough, fresh blood was needed, to replace the useless Kirdahi as Grand Chamberlain and impart a forceful new direction. It was, indeed, a new Jehan they wanted—but where could he be found?

  Before long, all fingers were pointing in the same direction. Ktahrassa and the other ministers were clamoring with one voice for an obvious candidate. He was a man who had known suffering and want, they said, who had risen from the peasantry, proved himself in combat, ascended through the ranks and had ably acquitted himself in high responsibility. Through all that, he was still a young and vigorous man.

  “Too young, perhaps,” Jehan objected.

  “He is past thirty.”

  “At any rate, he’s too headstrong and bloodthirsty. He hates the Tnemghadi almost beyond reason.”

  “But that’s precisely what we need now,” Ktahrassa answered. “A tough, no-nonsense man, untainted by corruption. And who among us loves the Tnemghadi?”

  Jehan resisted. But in his own mind, he was unsure. It was clear enough that a strong man was needed; was Jehan afraid that that man would be stronger than he? His own accelerating weakness was an infuriating thing for him to bear. And, in his weakness, he knew that he would ultimately yield. His ministers were right. There was no alternative.

  For more than two years, Gaffar Mussopo had been at the northern front, fighting the Akfakh.

  The war’s fortunes went back and forth, but the barbarians’ gains always kept ahead of their reverses. At one point, the ferocious tribesmen even succeeded in pushing the Bergharrans back to the border of Rashid Province. They were advancing upon the town of Kirithmedda, and there, Gaffar Mussopo vowed to stop them. Many of his troops were Tnemghadi, who were difficult to keep in line, but this time Gaffar devised a plan for surmounting that problem.

  Just outside of Kirithmedda, he built a sturdy wall of wooden posts. His officers derided this, believing that no wooden barrier would hold the wild tribesmen back. But Gaffar persisted in his strategy.

  Then, as the enemy neared, he ordered his men to dig in their defense-works—outside the wall. They protested and cursed their General, convinced he had gone mad, but Gaffar was unrelenting and he whipped them into line.

  He had thereby put his own army up against a wall. When the Akfakh struck, the trapped Bergharrans could not flee. Gaffar had built a barrier against cowardice, and with their backs against it, his troops fought for their lives.

  This time, the Akfakh were turned back; Kirithmedda was saved, and the barbarian advance was checked.

  It was through ingenious schemes like this that Gaffar Mussopo was able to stave off a rout. In another major battle, he had his own men chained together to prevent their running away. He armed them with peculiar long hooks of his own design, to hold the enemy warriors at bay while swatting them. He even created exploding bombs principled on fireworks, and armored wagons with archers concealed inside them.

  These innovations were often brilliant successes, but they could not effect miracles, and the Akfakh pushed slowly forward.

  And mightily as Gaffar Mussopo labored to defeat them, his mind was not exclusively fixed upon the battlefield. He received a constant stream of letters from his allies in the Palace at Ksiritsa, keeping him abreast of developments throughout the Empire. Gaffar was well aware of the corruption of Kozhbob, Yahu, and so many others, of the miring incompetence that was suffocating the capital, of the ravaging warlords in the South. He was acutely aware of the mass starvation that was becoming murderous even in the North.

  Now, suddenly, in the year 1193, all these problems were dumped into Gaffar Mussopo’s lap. He received a summons from the Emperor Jehan and the entire council of ministers, asking that he return to the capital—to become Grand Chamberlain of Bergharra.

  Leaving the further prosecution of the war in the hands of junior officers, Gaffar Mussopo hastily selected a group of his most trusted aides, and together with them, left at once for Ksiritsa.

  Immediately upon his arrival, still dusty from the road, he was ushered straight up to the Emperor’s private chambers in the Heaven Palace.

  “His Excellency, the Grand Chamberlain Gaffar Mussopo,” announced a costumed squire, stepping smartly aside to open the way into Jehan’s presence.

  Gaffar was stunned, the breath whipped out of him by what he saw.

  The Emperor was lying abed, propped up by a mound of pillows. Although swathed in robes and blankets, it was plain that Jehan’s body had shriveled into a shadow of its erstwhile burliness. It was a stringy neck that jutted out of the bedclothes, and the bones of Jehan’s face stood out, further altering his already mutilated features. His complexion was lifeless, and the whole image was one of debility.

  The young man bowed, keeping his face down to conceal his astonishment at Jehan’s condition.

  “I’ve had a little seizure or something,” the Emperor explained with a crooked smile. His voice, coming from one side of his mouth, was slightly slurred, and to compensate for that he was speaking with careful slowness. “My left side isn’t much good to me right now, but the doctors assure me it will improve. I should be back on my feet before long.”

  “I dearly hope so. I will pray for your health, and I’m sure that millions are praying for you too.”

  “Well, I didn’t call you back here to prattle about my old bones. Sit down, Gaffar.” Jehan pointed to a chair with his right hand, while the left remained motionless on the bed.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “As you know, it was the consensus of the ministers that you become Grand Chamberlain. Frankly, there’s no one else left who’s worth a falu.”

  Gaffar nodded. “I am honored by your trust and will do my best to be worthy of it.”

  “I am sure you will.”

  “Tell me, though, what about Kirdahi?”

  Jehan coughed and shook his head. “I offered to give him some other post, but I suppose he couldn’t stand the humiliation of being replaced. He’s gone. He was always a scared chicken, and must have decided to scat while he still had his head.”

  “Not surprising. Weakling.”

  “Unfortunately, Kirdahi took more than just his head with him. He made off with a goodly bit of gold. I’m afraid that raiding the Treasury has become a very popular sport.”

  “And we’ve got to crack down on it!”

  “Crack down? I’ve executed Kozhbob, Yahu, and scores of others. What more could be done?”

  “You were lenient. They should have been tortured.”

  “You toss that off so casually. But I suppose it’s to be expected from the Hero of Rayibab.”

  Gaffar’s face reddened. “Rayibab! Let me tell you something about Rayibab! What I did there strengthened your crown more than anything else in the last two years. Should I have let those rebels defy us with impunity? Our country is in desperate trouble, and desperate action is needed to save it.”

  “What ‘desperate actions’ do you propose, besides massacring women and children?”

  “Have I been called here to be Grand Chamberlain, or the butt of insults?”

  Jehan wiped his face with his one good hand. He seemed to shrink down into the pillows. “All right, Gaf- far,” he said hoarsely, “let us not quarrel. The country can’t afford it. Rayibab
won’t be mentioned again. So let’s get on with it; we have more pressing subjects to discuss.”

  “I agree completely, Your Majesty,” said Gaffar, as though subserviently. “I have given much thought to our predicament, too.

  “Number one: We need still more troops, and I propose a greatly expanded conscription. The penalty for refusing to serve will be death. Southerners will have to be drafted to fight the warlords down there and to strengthen our garrisons in the North; food has been getting scarcer there, and unrest has been on the upswing. Then, to bear the brunt of the war against Znarf we must draft more Tnemghadi soldiers, just go rounding them up from village to village and ship them to the front. The Akfakh will chew them up as fast as we can send them, but Tnemghadi are expendable.”

  “How many Urhemmedhins do you propose to draft?”

  “One million.”

  Jehan gagged. “One million? They won’t like that, dragging so many husbands and sons off into the army.”

  “I don’t care whether they like it or not. It’s got to be done. And another thing they may not like: The village council scheme must be abolished. It was perhaps a wellintentioned experiment, but the councils have proven themselves impotent.”

  “But Gaffar, they must be given a fair chance.”

  “We can’t take chances in times like these. At any rate, the truth is that the councils exist more on paper than in reality now. Even Ganda Saingam has succumbed. We must have strong local officials; and they must be appointed from Ksiritsa. Perhaps in better times we can give your scheme another try.”

  Jehan looked long and sadly at Gaffar. Then he said, “All right, what else?”

  “Then, of course, we have a terrific food shortage. I have a twofold plan. For the short run, it must be our firm policy that the Tnemghadi starve before our own people. Every shokh of produce raised in the North must be shipped south.

  “For the long run, it’s obvious that land redistribution is a failure. The old Decree of Ksavra must be rescinded. We must reverse our policy of giving land to the peasants, and promote once more the development of large estates—take the land away from the peasants if necessary. Only then can the land be worked sensibly, and our agriculture put back on its feet.”

  “You offer me some very bitter fare.”

  “Good medicine is often bitter.”

  “But Gaffar, think what you’re proposing! To steal land from the peasants! After so many of them have fought and died for that land!”

  “It must be done,” Gaffar said drily.

  Jehan’s eye closed, and his head sank deeper into the pillows. The muscles twitched around his neck and mouth. Finally, he spoke.

  “I will not do this thing,” he said.

  “Very well,” Gaffar answered, “then I will.”

  Jehan’s eyes jolted open in astonishment.

  “You heard what I said. If you won’t cooperate, I will get it done somehow myself. But it’s got to be done. It’s crucial to our future. Unless I can take the necessary steps to improve crops, it is pointless for me to be Grand Chamberlain.”

  Jehan shook his head slowly, but it was not a gesture of negation. It signified his weary resignation to the inevitable.

  “Do what you must,” he whispered.

  7

  ONCE ENSCONCED IN the Heaven Palace, Gaffar Mussopo quickly took control of the government into his one hand.

  He began with a housecleaning among its top officials. Many of them were summarily dismissed, replaced by the young officers whom Mussopo had brought back with him from the front. They in turn ousted dozens more subordinates. Meanwhile, the war upon corruption was prosecuted with ruthless vigor, and torture was reintroduced both for extracting information and for punishment. There were no complacent faces at the Palace now.

  Aiding Mussopo’s assumption of power was the Emperor’s condition. Jehan was not improving; he remained bedridden, partially paralyzed, and thus isolated. He was unable to attend the meetings of the council of ministers; and while he tried to keep abreast of things through frequent briefings by Mussopo, the new Grand Chamberlain had a relatively free hand. This was true not only of the day-to-day minutiae of government, but of the major policy reversals that Mussopo sponsored.

  Expanded conscription swelled the Urhemmedhin armies to enforce the new decrees, many of them unpalatable to Urhemmedhins as well as to Tnemghadi. Unrelenting, Gaffar Mussopo ignored the protests. Throughout the South, the land Jehan had given to the peasants was taken away from them by Mussopo. In many places it was the army officers who seized the land and became the new barons, building old-style sharecropper estates. Meanwhile the same army men displaced the village councils and took up arms against the warlords.

  This new ascendancy of the army was resisted widely by the peasants, many of them waving copies of the laws passed by the National Assembly, laws which supposedly guaranteed their rights. But the new Grand Chamberlain would not let laws stand in the way of his reshaping Urhemma. Where the laws conflicted with his program, Gaffar browbeat Jehan to abrogate them; and whenever the Emperor summoned up the energy to refuse, Gaffar responded by simply ignoring the inconvenient laws.

  His rule over the Tnemghadi tightened too, bolstered by the reinforcements he brought up from the South, and every month saw the promulgation of new strictures. A dozen different taxes were imposed. The Tnemghadi were even taxed to pay for the temples to Urhem. Most obnoxious to them, though, was the food policy: In every northern village, food stores were expropriated by force to feed the army or to be shipped south.

  Thus, the agony of starvation that had tormented the South now fell with all its fury on the North as well.

  Despite all of the dramatic changes wrought by the new regime, despite its bold vigor, this demon of starvation laughed in its face. Little or no progress was made in restoring prosperity, and a similar tale was told of the Akfakh war. Despite the ever-mounting numbers of troops thrown at them, the barbarians could not be stopped. By the end of Mussopo’s first year in office, the Akfakh had completed their conquest of Jammir and Agabatur provinces, most of Gharr, and the major part of Rashid. Kirithmedda, where Gaffar had once blocked their advance, was finally overrun.

  From the afflicted regions, a flood of refugees poured southward, crowding into Muraven, Kholandra, and Tnemurabad, the provinces thus far untouched by Akfakh depredations. By now, the people of the outlying regions had scant confidence in the regime’s ability to hold the Akfakh back; and as the tribesmen neared, the people would abandon their homes and flee. This constant stream of bedraggled refugees aggravated the severity of the food shortage, and many of those who escaped the Akfakh could not escape starvation.

  Then, in the month of Jhevla, 1194, at Sajnithaddhani, the provincial capital of Muraven, the Tnemghadi rose up in rebellion against Urhemmedhin rule.

  This was not the first such rising; there had in fact been many flare-ups of unrest throughout the North. All of them, like Rayibab’s, had been quickly and brutally suppressed. But the Sajnithaddhani revolt was different. This one was carefully planned, organized with military precision, and well financed. The rebels were primed with a sophisticated array of armaments. And, unready for such an astutely managed insurrection, the large Urhemmedhin garrison fell.

  Not only was Sajnithaddhani liberated, but the Tnemghadi citizen militia that sprang into being then routed a second Urhemmedhin force sent to recapture the city. The Urhemmedhins were expelled from the whole western half of Muraven.

  Sajnithaddhani was proclaimed the capital of a new Tnemghadi nation, that swore to reclaim all the lands overrun by the Urhemmedhin usurpers and restore freedom to the northern people. The guiding hand behind this rebellion was a man well versed in the ways of revolution, for he had spent more than a decade at it.

  His name was Jephos Kirdahi.

  “So now we are mired in three wars,” Jehan Henghmani said
with a surpassing weariness. “We are fighting the Akfakh; we are fighting the bandit warlords in the South; and now a war against the Tnemghadi rebels and our old friend Kirdahi.”

  “A fine old friend!” snapped Gaffar. “I never understood your keeping him around. He was one of your own torturers, murderer of your child. Now he’s stolen your gold and uses it to fight you. You should have gotten rid of him long ago.”

  Jehan shook his head against the pillows. “As long as we were in the South, I could have found no one more loyal; he was bound to me by fear.”

  “And well he should fear you now,” Gaffar said crisply, smacking his one hand on the chair arm. “We shall crush him.”

  “No, my friend.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said.” Jehan coughed from deep in his lungs and then resumed in a scratchy, low voice. “We shall not oppose Kirdahi.”

  “But for the sake of—”

  “Please hear me out, Gaffar. Lying helpless here in bed, all alone, I’ve had plenty of time to think. And I have reached a decision.

  “Sarbat Satanichadh tried to save this country. But he lacked the means as he was a weak, decadent ruler, beset by rebellion within as well as by invasion from without. No matter what he did, the Akfakh gained ground.

  “When Sarbat’s failure was clear, Bergharra turned to us, asked us to save her. We seemed stronger. But we too have been hounded by internal strife: the warlords in the South, Tnemghadi resistance in the North. Perhaps more important, we are doomed to failure simply because it’s not our land that we’re fighting for. It’s Tnemghadi land, and we are Urhemmedhins. So the Akfakh continue to gain.

  “Now, Gaffar, it is Jephos Kirdahi’s turn. He may not be a brilliant man, nor even a strong man. But the important thing is that he is a Tnemghadi, he is of this land. He’s neither decadent nor a despot, and so, the Tnemghadi will fight for him—certainly with more enthusiasm than they fight for us.