The Sky-Blue Wolves

by S. M. Stirling

  The Mongol prince went on: “And what of the other magicians? They have many.”

  “If we kill the living nexus, it will cut off that part of them that is linked to the dark Power. That will wreck their minds, at the least—leave them like children, the children they were before they were corrupted, in the bodies of men. Some will die. Doing that won’t turn the subordinate military commanders into good men, but it will free them of the grip on their souls that keeps them loyal. They’ll become warlords and fight one another.”

  “Evil warlords who treat men as cattle,” Dzhambul said, clearly remembering his trip southward; he’d described it to her. “The grip of the kanghsinmu has lain long on this land, and corrupted everything it touched.”

  “Yes, but there are evil men everywhere. You Mongols can fight ordinary local warlords however wicked they are; and in any case those you fight won’t have enough unity of purpose to threaten Japan, not after a few raids from the sea teach them better.”

  She dropped into Japanese and repeated the exchange. Reiko nodded grimly, and beside her Egawa Noboru wore an expression that a deer might see on the very last wolf it ever met.

  “Japan does not wish to rule this land either,” she said. “We did rule here once, in the early part of the last century, but nothing good came of it, and we have better uses for our men now. We can even forego revenge . . . beyond what this war brings, and I suppose what a Mongol invasion does.”

  Órlaith repeated that to Dzhambul. He shrugged.

  “Well, we don’t actually want to live here ourselves,” he said. “Not enough grazing, for starters. And if there were no farmers, it would grow up in scrub and then forest. We do want a safe border here because it’s on the edge of our tributary provinces in Manchuria and our treaty-allies like the Ussuri Hetmanate. I know my father has considered settling other folk here afterwards—and we don’t want any of the Han successor-states meddling here either. There are those who speak Korean but whose ancestors fled and never submitted to the man-eaters, living in Manchuria under our rule; they’re just ordinary farmers. They might be best.”

  Órlaith nodded. It would be a hard problem; this place had people living in it, and cultivated fields, but underneath it wasn’t like a normal country of villages and peasants at all, more like a bad dream. Fortunately it wasn’t Montival’s hard problem.

  “Montival isn’t here to build an empire either,” she said.

  “We’re here to end a threat, not to establish bases or garrisons. Once that threat is gone, we’ll maintain our new alliance with Dai-Nippon, perhaps send a ship or two every year for a cruise with their navy, or help with pirate problems, and other cooperation as seems necessary. And there will be more trade in this part of the world without Korean piracy; with us, with Australia and the realms in between.”

  Which as far as trade with Japan is concerned, Reiko intends to regulate closely. And we will help them enforce those rules—nobody’s going to treat her country’s lost cities as a happy hunting ground, for example. That will benefit Montival too in the long run.

  Órlaith looked around the ring of commanders and sovereigns. “I think that covers our immediate problems? We’ll keep following the main enemy force as quickly as is prudent; presumably they’ll stand when we get to their ruler’s citadel. And we’ll consider further attempts to establish contact with the Mongol army to the north if the current ones don’t yield results within the next week. Dismissed for now, then.”

  Reiko, Dzhambul and Börte walked with her out of the tent, all of them donning hats with earflaps. The Tennō’s inevitable attendants were minimal, and followed at a distance. Órlaith glanced back at them with sympathy; Reiko was enjoying a respite from the cocoon of ceremony which encompassed her at home, compared to which this was absolute freedom.

  “I hope the officer you sent made it back to your army,” she said to Dzhambul, absently repeating herself in Japanese so Reiko could follow the conversation.

  “Gansükh? He is an excellent scout,” Dzhambul replied. “And we’re not nearly as far south as we were, and the enemy is disorganized by your advance and my people’s. It’s highly likely he will make it through. May the Ancestor aid him!”

  * * *

  • • •

  The command ger of the Mongol army was made in the same form as the home that Gansükh had grown up in, a cylinder of withes tied together and covered inside and out with a lashed-on lining and covering of felt, topped by a conical roof of more poles and the same exterior, with a smoke hole pierced by a sheet-metal chimney at its apex. A fire burned in a metal stove beneath it, leaking a little tang of woodsmoke into the air. He shivered as he hadn’t in the cold, simply from the contrast—there had been no campfires for him, not moving through the man-eater lines to get here.

  The difference between this and his ger at home was in the size—the command ger was fifteen meters across and four meters high at the lowest points around the edges—and a few little things like the clerks and the typists and the man working the adding machine, the stacked document-boxes that opened in front to turn into filing cabinets when they were brought in from the backs of packhorses, and the colorful appliqués that writhed with monsters and animal-shapes and scenes from legend across the white felt of the interior. The floor was polished hardwood planks, built to be knocked down into pack-loads too, and there were cushions and rugs on the floor for sitting.

  Toktamish was sitting cross-legged on one, hand clenched on the jeweled hilt of the fine Chinese-made saber across his lap; he wore a knee-length deel coat of dark blue silk with a padded lining, fastened high on the right shoulder and at the neck with a set of silver clasps, and bound with a broad black sash; his trousers were tucked into red-dyed pointed boots tooled in intricate designs. A woman Gansükh didn’t recognize—and who didn’t look like a Mongol, really, though she wore a Mongol woman’s long embroidered deel—was sitting not far from his left hand.

  Gansükh had tried to keep his report crisp and objective. Just listening to himself made him fear it was more like a lunatic’s babbling or some storyteller’s fancy, and the general’s face grew darker as he went on.

  “Silence!” Toktamish roared as he started to tell of the meeting with the Montivallan leaders. “Seize him!”

  Gansükh felt shock paralyze him, more than exhaustion or gnawing hunger. By the time his mind cleared, the iron hands of the commander’s personal guard were clamped on his arms.

  Toktamish’s square brown face was flushed, and Gansükh realized with another shock like a blow to the belly that this was a man in a killing rage. He hadn’t had much contact with the army’s supreme general before; when you were a hundred-commander in an army of three full tümen—thirty thousand men, counting only the Mongol cavalry and not the auxiliaries—you didn’t.

  “This liar and coward tries to cover up the death of the Kha-Khan’s children with this nonsense tale! Take him out and behead him. Beneath the horse tail banner, that the Tengri may see his shame and the Ancestor spit on him!”

  Gansükh surged against the hands that held him. “You break the Yasa, Noyon!” he shouted back frantically. “I am a free man, an officer and a Mongol of the Bayad clan; you cannot kill me without trial, like some Han peasant!”

  Toktamish bared his teeth like a wolf staring at a sheep through a fence, looked around to see dubious glances from his staff, then gathered himself and shook his head.

  “Bind him, then, and take him to await his fate. And gag him if he tries to speak!”

  The guards brought a fetter—an iron rod with circlets for the head and both wrists—and clamped it on him, taking his weapons. When he opened his mouth their officer raised his riding crop in threat, holding it so he would strike with the weighted handle, easily enough to break a man’s jaw and teeth.

  Gansükh glared as he was marched away. There was something very wrong here. He had half-expected dis
belief, but . . .

  No. He does believe me. He is afraid others will believe.

  He did hear a mutter from the general: “That whey-faced whore’s get will not take what is mine. Never!”

  * * *

  • • •

  The Montivallan camp was in what Dzhambul had told Órlaith was one of the few parts of this realm that wasn’t ugly and barren; the old maps called it the Demilitarized Zone, which she thought was suitably ironic now that the allied armies were here and the main enemy field force was hovering off to the north and west, preparing to block yet another narrow pass.

  The command tent was on a flat-topped hill, with the Guard regiments around it. As she left she stopped and watched the camp spread out below. The observation balloon was just being winched down, and cookfires were being lit; for once they had nearly enough firewood, and the scent of it and of baking and stewing added to the less comely but fortunately cold-suppressed smells of the mobile city that an army was. The canvas of the tents glowed in rows stretching almost to the edge of sight, amid vehicle-parks and rows of field-catapults and supply-wagons and horse-corrals. Whetted steel blinked where a patrol of Bearkiller lancers trotted by below the hill, back from making sure no substantial enemy force was close by.

  “What a show of power!” Reiko said from beside her. “I never dreamed that we could march into the enemy’s heartland; all my life and my father’s we were on the defensive, with no more than the odd raid to strike back.”

  Egawa grunted agreement behind her, his eyes glowing. Then he added, in the tone of a man forcing himself to be realistic.

  “Marching in is one thing, winning another, Majesty.”

  Órlaith nodded. “Your General is right. So many willing to die for us . . . it’s a heavy thing. I’m glad there is . . . may be, we’ll know soon . . . an alternative, even if it’s risky and dangerous.”

  “We must be ready to sacrifice others,” Reiko said. “For the greater good; it is our responsibility to make such decisions, the fate our birth gave us. But I would prefer to risk myself.”

  Órlaith nodded. “This is the price of power. We are the kings who die that their blood may safeguard their folk, the sacrifice that goes consenting, walking to their fate with open eyes.”

  Reiko gave one of her rare grins. “True. Though I would very much prefer to fight victoriously for my people, my friend,” she said, and Órlaith laughed agreement.

  “I have many plans that require my own presence,” Reiko said. “For my people, and myself. My sisters are young women of strong talents and excellent character and they will serve Dai-Nippon well, but I have experience they do not. Still . . . karma, neh?”

  She took a deep breath and made a sweeping gesture with her tessen war-fan, taking in the camp and the wide world beyond it.

  “The thought that every moment may be our last gives a keener savor to the ones we have, at least.”

  She paused, then spoke:

  “Natsukusa ya—”

  Egawa gave the next line:

  “Tsuwamonodomo ga—”

  And his liege completed the haiku:

  “Yume no ato.”

  The Sword of the Lady was not always a burden; one of the delights to Órlaith had been a command of Nihongo sufficient to appreciate Matuso Bashō’s work. The High Queen of Montival murmured in her own tongue:

  “Like grasses in summer

  The warriors’ dreams

  All that is left.”

  Egawa bowed his head. “So a warrior must think, Majesty,” he said.

  Órlaith made a gesture of agreement and nodded towards the vast encampment.

  “And if we succeed, so many who might have died will march . . . and sail . . . home again, to their hearths and loves and the fields that bore them. With a tale to tell on a summer’s afternoon, their grandchildren about their feet and the harvest in and the leaves turning to gold above their heads.”

  She grinned. “Though they may leave out the blisters on their feet, and digging slit trenches for the latrines.”

  They turned towards Órlaith’s own pavilion. The army had been perennially short of firewood, but she’d had the stand of oaks on the top left intact, and her pavilion pitched there, the blue-white-green stripes of Montival’s colors showing through the bare branches. It was only a gesture of respect to the Lord and Lady of the wildwood, but gestures mattered and sometimes they were all you could do.

  The tent was big but not enormous, but she’d discovered she genuinely needed it.

  Not physically, she thought.

  She’d gone on plenty of trips where she woke up in the morning to find snow inches-deep on the greased-leather exterior of her sleeping bag, and while she wasn’t one of those who thought that was more fun than blossoming meadows in spring it didn’t bother her. But she found she needed someplace quiet and private to sit and think and study maps and reports. And that was in essence her job.

  Not far from the tent, knights of the Protector’s guard were sparring. Heuradys and her brother Diomede d’Ath stepped up and an older knight spoke, one in the black armor with his visor raised and a white baton to mark his office in his hand.

  “This is a match for chivalry, the sake of skill at arms and to the credit of the honorable estate of knighthood,” he said. “It shall continue until one party concedes or I pronounce it ended. Fifth match of five, each party with two victories to their credit.”

  “Take stance . . . make ready!”

  The wand went up and then slashed down.

  “Fight!”

  John was sitting nearby on a log in a suit of plate complete, his helmet on his knee and his shield leaned beside him, still sweating heavily from his turns. Behind the fallen log Toa stood, unhappy in the cold despite being warmly bundled in a way that made him look more gigantic still, and leaning on his spear.

  Pip sat beside her husband, sipping at a cup of hot tea and looking comfortably elegant in her Association lady’s winter travel garb . . . which with a few differences of detail, happened to be exactly what Egawa Noboru was wearing, a few paces behind them. Órlaith and Reiko exchanged a glance and did not smile as they came to stand beside them.

  It wasn’t that contemporary Japan absolutely forbade the sexes to wear each other’s customary clothing, the way some places she’d seen did. Reiko was clad in the same combination of hakama with padded lining, leggings, low boots, and double kimono jacket with long-sleeved knit undershirt that Pip wore herself; that was fairly common in modern Japan if the woman in question was doing something in the nature of war or rough travel. It was the fact that in the PPA’s territory that was specifically women’s garb, which Associate men did not wear, that Nihonjin men like Egawa found profoundly annoying . . . not that it would affect his expression in the slightest.

  Reiko likes him greatly and trusts him wholly, but she enjoys teasing him a little, now and then . . . very subtly . . . sometimes, Órlaith thought. He was the stern and masterful teacher for a long time in her childhood, and very hard on her once her brother disappeared and she became the heir.

  The Tennō of Japan and her bannerman watched with keen professional interest as the two knights circled, four-foot shields up under the visor-slits of their helmets and swords held hilt-first above their heads. The weapons were round-tipped practice models with blunt edges, but you could swing them very hard indeed when you were sparring with someone armed cap-a-pie.

  “I have always been a little surprised that your knights”—Reiko pronounced the word carefully, because she had always used it as an example of why English spelling was an insane mess—“use shields at all. Didn’t shields fall out of use when this armor of plates was first made in Old Europe? There is little a sword can do against a suit of plate in any case; a naginata or a war-flail might, perhaps. Certainly not a cut from an ordinary sword in a one-handed grip.”

&n
bsp; “Oh, I think your sword could accomplish a good deal,” Órlaith observed dryly, and they both chuckled as the High Queen tapped her palm against the moon-crystal hilt by her side; Reiko’s was already on the yellow cords of the Grasscutter’s grip.

  And the Sword of the Lady can, Órlaith thought. You can’t keep a steel blade razor sharp, and you can’t slam it full-strength into plate armor many times either, not without damaging it to uselessness . . . but the Sword of the Lady is always sharper than a scalpel and nothing hurts it; you could put one edge on an anvil and beat the other with a sledge until the anvil was cut in half. I can parry edge-on-edge against an ordinary sword with this thing too, and just notch my opponent’s blade until it looks like a saw, or outright cut it in half.

  “And a hard thrust to the eye-slit or armpit or groin or the back of the knee will work, that’s why stiff blades with long narrow points came in, when my father was a child,” she went on aloud. “But I think you’re right—the shields were kept because they’re useful against arrows and crossbow-bolts. And I’d rather stop a hard-driven lance with a shield than my breastplate, too.” She smiled. “And the horseman’s version of that armor leaves most of your seat exposed.”

  Reiko snapped her fan open and used it to hide a smile. “Scarred buttocks! Most embarrassing! Hard to explain in the baths!”

  Egawa chuckled too.

  “The foot-combat version has different tassets and fauds.”

  There was a loud dull crack as the shields met out on the practice ground; with bodies and weapons and armor totaled together that was just under five hundred pounds slamming into each other. Heuradys backed three slow steps as their blades locked and he pushed at her . . . and then suddenly pivoted and went down on one knee, neat as a dancer and sliding the shield out of contact so swiftly that it was like a door bursting open while a man pushed with all his might.