The Mandate of Heaven

  ‘Release Lieutenant Jin,’ he ordered, ‘there has been a mistake.’

  While two of his escort sawed at the prisoner’s bindings, Hsiung marched up the final section of path, emerging so suddenly the dozen soldiers posted on guard had no time to stop him. All had been drinking and were engrossed by a spectacle inside the cavern.

  The rebel chief had set up his throne on the cavern floor and laid out scores of ancient bronzes, silver platters, statuettes, heaps of cash coins from his treasury. A hundred lanterns made the cavern dance with shadow and light, an effect intensified by circling swallows alarmed from their roosts by the echoing, driving music. Frantic drums, twanging pi-pa and trilling flutes. More than just shadows danced. Hornets’ Nest’s officers and advisers, wild with drunken triumph, swayed and clapped. Even their chief had left the dignity of his lacquered throne and was capering beside two golden statuettes of leopards, dragging his slender concubine behind him, one hand clamped on her white wrist. Uproar and exultation dripped from every face.

  For ten years Hornets’ Nest and his closest followers had been prisoners in this cave. Ten years of living like rats the farmer hasn’t got round to poisoning. Ten years of noble dreams turning rancid; of mocking ideals and vows once held sacred. Hsiung almost pitied them as they jigged. Except that now they held the means to free not just themselves, but to equip an army capable of freeing the entire province.

  One by one the guards stopped clapping and hastily put down their cups. But Hsiung’s escort had already taken up position in the cavern.

  Finally Hornets’ Nest noticed his uninvited guests. His ungainly dance ceased. The drummer went still. Silence would have filled the cavern if the swallows had not twittered and beat their wings in alarm.

  Casting disdainful glances round him, Hsiung strode through the banquet, servants and fellow officers moving aside to let him pass. Sergeant P’ao attempted to follow but was ordered back by the younger man.

  Before the throne Hsiung bowed perfunctorily and executed a crisp salute with fist and palm across his chest. Hornets’ Nest, who carried no weapons, cast a wary glance at Hsiung’s armed escort and chuckled. ‘The hero of Dragon Whirl Gorge joins us! Why is he so late? Bring him wine!’

  A servant scurried forward with a loaded tray and Hsiung shook his head.

  ‘I will not feast until our brave men have eaten and drunk! They are thin as hares when there is enough silver here to feed Lingling County for a decade! How can this be right?’

  Hornets’ Nest chuckled again.

  ‘I see! You would like to take charge, eh? Then the entire world can dine at my expense.’ His confidence was daunting even to Hsiung; it emboldened his officers and closest supporters to jeer and laugh. ‘Or perhaps,’ added Hornets’ Nest, winking at them, ‘you’d like it all for yourself?’

  The wily old rebel smiled. He could tell from Hsiung’s confusion that the boy had no idea how to become master.

  ‘How can this be right?’ repeated the young man. ‘There are rumours you have sent agents to buy a pardon from the Great Khan! Deny it if you can.’

  Amusement instantly left Hornets’ Nest’s face. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Your concubine,’ replied Hsiung, at once regretting his indiscretion. The girl moaned with fear. Then he knew he could not walk away from this argument with Hornets’ Nest still ruler here: or the girl, Sergeant P’ao, Lieutenant Jin, all who had trusted him, would pay for his weakness with their lives. He knew what he must do – and soon. Yet still he was tormented by a desire to prove himself more regal than his chief.

  ‘Because you once saved my life,’ he said, ‘and once served the cause of Yueh Fei well, I will allow you to leave unharmed.’ He added contemptuously. ‘You may take as much wealth as a single man can carry.’

  A foolish, insane offer, he knew. An offer allowing Hornets’ Nest the little time he needed to arm himself and gather men. Already the rebel chief had relaxed, his glance passing from Hsiung’s supporters to his own, assessing strengths, calculating odds. No doubt he would have accepted this merciful offer if not for a cry from one of the guards.

  ‘Sire!’ shouted the man. ‘Look! Lights in the valley!’

  Instantly all quarrels were doused by a greater threat. Attention turned outwards. Hsiung hurried over to see. There were scores and scores of lights – red pinpricks of flaming torches in the darkness.

  ‘Where are our scouts?’ cried Hsiung, turning to the plump officer who had accompanied his chief to the prince’s tomb. ‘I asked you to arrange the usual scouts! We should have received warning of the enemy hours ago!’

  ‘I don’t take orders from a boy like you!’ replied the other, his voice slurring. ‘So I didn’t.’

  Hsiung resisted an urge to cast him face first over the cliff. Instead he gestured at the advancing lights.

  ‘That is why Jebe Khoja is our surprise guest,’ he said.

  Jebe Khoja’s unexpected arrival at the rebel camp so soon after his defeat at Dragon Whirl Gorge came at a price.

  The first cost was to his pride, for he had promised his uncle, Crown Prince Arslan, he would avenge the royal honour within a month. Prince Arslan had many virtues and vices, not least impatience. His Highness also abhorred mockery from his fellow princes at court; losing an entire county’s revenues had certainly inspired that.

  The next cost had been paid by humbler folk. In accordance with established methods, Jebe Khoja rounded up his local guides and accused them of leading him into a trap at Dragon Whirl Gorge. Furthermore, that if they failed to ensure his passage across the perilous Min floodwaters within two days, they and their extended families to the third generation would be executed. To prove his sincerity, he selected one of the guides at random and had him beheaded on the spot.

  But rivers are no respecters of threats. They existed before men and will outlast them. Though their guides struggled night and day to find a crossing place, it was only achieved after two days’ march in the opposite direction to Hornets’ Nest’s camp. Luckily for them, Jebe Khoja was a reasonable man. He saw they had done their best and only executed their leader, with the added mercy that the man’s family was spared. Flexibility of this kind confirmed Jebe Khoja’s reputation as a moderate lord. Others, envious of the Provincial Governor’s high standing with Prince Arslan, called it a lack of resolve.

  The next cost had been borne by his entire army. Determined to achieve three days’ progress in two, he commanded a brisk pace along the Min, arriving at the rebel camp a little after dusk, having observed no scouts or even watchmen. Naturally, Jebe Khoja assumed the apparent unpreparedness of the rebel camp proved its opposite and that Hornets’ Nest hoped to lure him into a trap. As a result, he ordered his flying column of fifteen hundred to rest on the dew-soaked, stony ground before an attack at dawn. Had he launched a probing night sortie, as some of his officers advised, he would have discovered that the rebels were in complete disarray and outnumbered almost three-to-one.

  Instead the Mongol nobleman climbed a tall rock and looked at the lights of the rebel camp in the distance. Memories of defeating Hornets’ Nest a decade earlier mingled with subtle mourning. Then he had been thoughtless with youth, eager for glory, ablaze with lusty enthusiasm. Now, awaiting a victory no one doubted – least of all himself – Jebe Khoja felt the weariness of one who has known only success. Even the setback at Dragon Whirl Gorge could not infiltrate his assurance.

  ‘Make sure that upstart Captain Hsiung is brought to me when the rebels surrender!’ he called down to his retinue.

  He resumed a brooding watch over Hornets’ Nest’s camp.

  Rays slanting from below the horizon merged into beams then fields of light. The upper silhouette of Mount Chang glowed. An hour would bring a clear dawn, a cloudless dawn, exactly the sort Hsiung dreaded. Last night he had even ordered sacrifices of precious sheep to various local deities, begging for rain. Torrents would slow the Mongols, make the thatched huts harder to burn. But the mountain gods an
d demons weren’t listening. Well then, they would do without divine assistance, though it had never been more needed.

  A bizarre rift among the Yueh Fei rebels had weakened their ability to resist the coming attack. P’ao, hoping to dispel Hsiung’s gloom with a joke, dubbed it a quarrel between ‘high’ and ‘low’. All one need do was look up at the cavern containing Hornets’ Nest’s house to catch his meaning.

  The rebel chief had spent the night seizing supplies of food and arrows from the camp below while Hsiung bullied the troops into three clearly defined units, appointing officers loyal to himself, signallers and message-runners. In short, a simple triangle of command.

  Meanwhile, Hornets’ Nest expelled scores of servants and prisoners unlikely to add to his personal safety, dispatching the latter to the same gaol where Teng still lay dreaming of bamboo strips bearing secret messages from the Immortals. Among the prisoners were females of every age and type.

  In the hour before sunrise, Hornets’ Nest gathered a force of fifty picked men to garrison the cavern in the precipitous cliff and his plan became obvious to everyone in the camp. Those in his unscalable eyrie – P’ao’s ‘high’ – could resist a siege indefinitely. Even if food ran low they would devour the birds roosting there each night. Just as importantly, there was rumoured to be a secret escape route at the back of the caves known only to Hornets’ Nest. Finally, to guard the privileges enjoyed by these ‘highs’, a sturdy barricade was placed on the pathway to the cavern. A few servants foolish enough to seek re-admittance were shot down with crossbows, their corpses left on the steep path as a warning to others.

  Conditions were less favourable among the ‘lows’. When Hsiung finally paraded the rebel forces he counted five hundred men. Dawn was almost established in the shadowy valley. Hsiung stood on an upward-thrusting boulder before this limp force. In his heart he paced nervously; yet no one, except perhaps old intimates like P’ao and Jin, would have noticed.

  He examined the ranks until some began to murmur. Above his head the first bats were returning and swallows flew from the cavern. At this sign he raised his clenched fist. ‘Today will be a great victory!’

  ‘For who!’ shouted a voice from the ranks.

  The murmuring became a quarrelsome clamour.

  After the doubter had been dragged out and beheaded by P’ao, who had been promoted to Lieutenant overnight, Hsiung resumed his tirade. ‘A great victory!’ he repeated. ‘First Port Yulan! Then Dragon Whirl Gorge! Soon we will control Lingling County! Obey your officers! Kill any who show their backs to the enemy! Remember, we are trapped and there is nowhere to escape but death! That is why we shall trap them!’

  At this many chanted the name of Yueh Fei, especially when Hsiung revealed all except the ‘bravest and best’ were to retreat as soon as the enemy attacked. Others, who listened more carefully, remembered how Captain Hsiung had instructed them to build walkways among the monkey paths on the cliffs encircling the camp. The more imaginative tacticians squinted up and glimpsed his intention, how one might trap an incautious enemy. Hope flared as they muttered to each other. Most were brothers and cousins, uncles and neighbours who had left their villages to fight the Mongols, and these bonds strengthened resolve.

  ‘Remember Fourth Hell’s Mouth!’ Hsiung called. ‘Today it will be our greatest weapon!’

  With this cryptic prediction, the three companies marched off to their designated positions. General Hsiung (he, too, had awarded himself a promotion) tried to raise morale by sharing out whatever food and wine Hornets’ Nest had overlooked.

  Too late for further preparation. Just time to inspect the three units of the Yueh Fei army. The largest he called the Ram’s Body. It numbered three hundred men led by Lieutenant P’ao and stood in formation at the rear of the camp, its back braced against the cliff walls. The other two units, each a hundred strong, he called the Left Horn and Right Horn. These were the ‘bravest and best’, whether with bow, halberd or discipline. With these two Horns he hoped to gore Jebe Khoja’s flanks while the Ram’s Body trampled them.

  Dawn advanced remorselessly; likewise the Mongol army moved towards the flimsy wooden palisade and ditch of the camp. Signal drums echoed round the precipices, filling the valley with startled birds. Though tired by marching and a rough night on hard ground, Jebe Khoja’s force made a bold show. Mongol and Uighar guardsmen in lamellar armour and plumed helmets formed the core, bearing pole axes, swords and bows strengthened with bone. The rest were Chinese mercenaries from the north, contemptuous of southern rebels and bearing a variety of weapons: leaf-shaped swords and crossbows; two-pronged spears; rocket-arrows; fire-lances; all the superior inventions once possessed by the previous dynasty and now serving the Great Khan. Well over a thousand Chinese led by Mongol officers, for Jebe Khoja insisted on separating the races in strict accordance with the law.

  A hundred paces from the palisade a swarm of arrows flew up, curling down on the advancing lines. An attack clearly anticipated, for disposable Chinese formed the front ranks; and though dozens fell, the rest of the army broke into a jog that became a dash as they neared the palisade and wooden gate. Here the Mongols paused, loosing arrows and crossbows of their own at the defenders on the walls. Fire-lances sent up spurts of flame. For a short time the exchange of missiles continued, then the rebels seemed to lose heart, vanishing behind their ramparts.

  A great cheer rose from the government troops. Jebe Khoja ordered his drummers to beat a special signal and a dozen guards rushed from the ranks to the gates, carrying a large wooden box. This they leaned against the gate. Lighting a fuse, they scurried back – and just in time, for the thunderclap bomb exploded early.

  Every living thing in the valley quaked at its roar. Even the plants appeared to shimmer. Waves of sound echoed back and forth across the cliffs and peaks. Splintered wood, dust, and stone rose in the air along with billowing grey smoke. So loud a noise in the limestone hills was greeted with watchful silence. Creatures froze in valley after valley – tigers, mountain goats, foxes.

  As for the rebel defences, a gash had been torn in the palisade. Once the smoke and dust cleared it became clear the camp’s defenders had abandoned their ramparts.

  A roar rose from the Mongol army, almost to rival their thunderclap bomb. Here was the kind of victory everyone liked! They had sacrificed nearly fifty men to seize the walls, but what was that?

  Boom. Boom. Boom. The signal drums ordered a final, decisive advance. Through the still smouldering gateway they poured, this time led by the guardsmen in shoulder-to-shoulder formation. More arrows and crossbow bolts met them, for the rebels had gathered in the gaps between the houses. Good! An enemy within cutting reach! The guards rushed forward to engage the village’s defenders.

  For the next half hour desperate fights flowed back and forth in the alleyways and narrow roads, the Mongol forces hampered by sheer numbers in so confined a space. Skirmish by skirmish those numbers inevitably forced back the rebels. Deeper and deeper into the streets, through pig sties and yards, thatched hovels and storehouses, the two sides fought.

  Finally, trumpets blared out from behind the camp, a long, beseeching, mournful sound, and the rebel soldiers broke off and retreated in close order, leaving the densely packed village to its new owners. Again, a cheer rose from the victors, though less confidently than before. Scores lay in the narrow places of the camp, corners well known to the rebels but a hostile maze to their conquerors.

  Again and again the trumpet sounded. When it fell silent it seemed the entire valley waited for the next voice to speak.

  Jebe Khoja cantered to the front of his troops, a large man in gleaming armour, the blue plume of his helmet nodding like a peacock’s tail. Furious at the losses he had suffered, he issued orders to take no prisoners – every last traitor to the Great Khan must suffer separation of head from neck.

  Once more the Mongols moved forward. They had begun to regard their opponents with more respect. At the fissure of Fourth Hell Mouth many t
ouched lucky amulets. Rumours had spread throughout the Mongol army concerning Hornets’ Nest’s personal entrance to the Underworld and his friendship with demons who came up to drink and enjoy virgins in his company.

  The village was ominously quiet. Armour jingling, they reached its outskirts.

  A limestone cliff covered with vines towered at the rear of the village; a steep hillside of broken boulders climbed to meet its base. Here the Red Turbans had gathered for a last, desperate defence. The Mongols stared up at them in surprise; they had not expected so many well-disciplined troops, at least five hundred, ready to defend their toe-hold with arrows and bristling halberds. Their backs were literally to the wall. Nothing left to lose, nowhere to go, what the ancient commentators called ‘dying ground’ where one either perishes or triumphs. Jebe Khoja examined the rebel formation and laughed.

  ‘The fools!’ he shouted to his officers. ‘We will clear them from Hou-ming Province forever! They have lined themselves up nicely! All we need do is wait.’

  This sentiment went down well. His officers hurried off to ready their men for a final assault, one Hsiung had not anticipated.

  With each flight of arrows from the village below Hsiung felt the resolve of his men weaken. The Mongols were fine archers, perhaps the finest, and soon the Yueh Fei lines were shedding corpses. He had trusted the enemy would rush up the slope in a fierce, reckless charge, so that his two Horns, Left and Right, might fall on their flanks and rout them. Instead they were bleeding away his strength.

  ‘Loose! Loose!’ he ordered, urging his crossbowmen and archers to respond in kind. But the Mongols were using houses and fences as cover: an unequal exchange of fire. Lieutenant P’ao rushed over.

  ‘Sir! I beg you to order a charge!’ he cried. ‘We cannot just stand here to be skewered.’