China

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “You command them,” he ordered Guanji.

  “Yes, sir,” Guanji replied.

  * * *

  —

  As he led his men southward down the long street, Guanji assumed he was probably going to die. He imagined the Mongolian thought so, too. He felt no resentment. Genghis was doing his job.

  And to his own surprise he found that, at this moment, he had only one desire himself. To do the same. His job. As he focused on the present necessity, his childhood dreams of bringing honor to his clan with a great career faded into the background. I should like, he thought, to perform just one professional action before I die. That would be enough. One good performance.

  With this in mind, he led his men forward.

  There were only a few people in the streets. He questioned them as he passed. Any sign of Taiping? Not yet. Was he going to fight them? he was asked. And when he said yes, he was met with smiles and encouragement.

  After a quarter of a mile, the street veered left in front of a little temple, then resumed its path southward again. There were fewer people now. Then the street reached a small open square into which three other streets, all from the south, debouched. Guanji raised his hand for his troops to stop.

  The square was silent, empty. Except for one figure. On the opposite side, a rope was hanging from the wooden balcony of one of the houses. At the end of the rope was a dead militiaman. His body was slowly swaying in the wind. Were his executioners concealed in the houses in the square? Impossible to tell.

  He listened attentively. From a street at the far corner of the square he could hear sounds of shouting, then the beat of a drum, distant, but slowly getting closer. He turned to the sergeant.

  “Take a dozen men, break into the houses, and grab anything you can to make a barricade. And send a scout across the square to see who’s coming.”

  The position was excellent. If he placed his barricade across the end of the street here, his men would have a clear view of the whole square. He could also retreat up the street the way he came.

  The barricade was soon built. Tables, chairs, benches, chests, wooden screens—good cover for his men, tough for any assailant to climb over.

  “I found one old woman, sir,” the sergeant reported. “The Taiping were here. Killed a few people before they moved on. But they said they’d be occupying the place and told all the people to get out in the meantime. The old woman says she isn’t moving. And something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She wants her furniture back.”

  Moments later, their scout came running across the square. “Taiping. At least a hundred, maybe more. They’ll reach the square in a few minutes.”

  Guanji thought fast. “Divide the men, Sergeant. They must all be primed and ready to fire. Send ten back up the street behind us, a hundred paces. Form a line across the street. If we have to retreat, they’ll cover us and pick the enemy off as they climb the barricade. The other forty in four lines of ten across. The first line at the barricade. Three more lines to replace them. As soon as we’ve fired the first volley, the front line goes to the back and reloads. And so in turn, until I order the retreat.”

  The men were well drilled, and in moments all was ready. Guanji stationed himself at one end of the barricade where he had a good view of the street at the far corner of the square. He told the men to keep their heads down so they’d be invisible to the enemy until he gave the order.

  A minute passed. Another. Then he saw three men enter the square. Tough-looking fellows with ragged hair halfway down their backs. Taiping, certainly. They glanced around. One of them caught sight of the barricade, stared, and pointed it out to his fellows. Guanji kept very still. They had not seen him. With luck they’d think it was abandoned. They started forward, clearly intending to inspect it. Guanji silently cursed. He wanted more than three men to shoot. But they’d only gone a few paces when a crowd of Taiping issued from the street behind them. One carried a yellow Taiping banner. Then more, including two drummers, who obligingly made a rat-a-tat. The whole column was piling in behind them now. There must be fifty men, densely crowded, in the line of fire. A perfect target.

  “Now,” he told his men. “Fire!”

  There was a roar. The first three Taiping all went down. Another half dozen went down behind them. An easy target, but good shooting. He heard the sergeant behind him call out: “Back. Reload. Next line forward.”

  The Taiping, taken completely by surprise, had stopped in their tracks. Those who hadn’t seen the barricade would see the smoke, but could have no idea what size of force they were up against.

  “See the target?” he called out, and received several nods. “Fire!”

  Again, the volley did its work. There were screams of agony coming from across the square now. Thanks to the smoke, he could only see imperfectly. It looked as if, under such rapid and withering fire, the Taiping were trying to retreat from the square. But they couldn’t, because of the column of men still pushing forward from the street behind them.

  The third line of his riflemen were in place. He indicated where they should aim through the smoke. “Fire!”

  More screams. How many had they brought down so far? Twenty? Maybe more? He had two lines of riflemen left. The line covering them up the street at the rear, and the ten men taking their position at the barricade. He glanced back to see whether the first group had reloaded yet. Almost. “Hold your fire,” he ordered the men at the barricade. Let the smoke clear.

  But before he had a clear view across the square again, a group of a dozen Taiping came charging through the smoke towards the barricade. Whatever else they might be, these Taiping warriors were no cowards. They carried guns and long knives. With their hair streaming out, they looked like demons.

  “Mark your man and fire at will,” he cried as he drew his sword.

  A series of bangs. He saw five, six of the Taiping go down. The rest had reached the barricade. One was scrambling over right in front of him. He thrust, hard, caught the fellow in the neck, saw him fall back, his hand still gripped around the leg of a wooden chair. Two more were almost over, and he could see more figures running across the square.

  “Fall back!” he called to his men.

  But it was too late for one of them. A couple of Taiping were almost upon him. Guanji threw himself at them. He caught the first with a sword thrust from behind, into the kidney. As he did so, the second swung at him. He felt something in his left arm, nothing much. He slashed and saw a red line open into a gash on the fellow’s neck. The man staggered. Guanji didn’t wait, but grabbed his rifleman by the belt and jerked him up. “Come!” he cried as together they ran unevenly back up the street.

  He looked back. Any other men down? It didn’t look like it. But Taiping warriors were scrambling over the barrier. He heard his sergeant shout, “Go to the side,” and understood. Of course. His fifth line of men, ready to fire. He dragged the rifleman with him against the wall of a house. There was a crash as the fusillade was delivered. Screams came from the barricade. He didn’t even look back, but plunged forward. Moments later he passed the line of riflemen. “Go on, sir,” the sergeant cried. “Keep going.”

  Fifty yards ahead, the sergeant already had another line of men, ready to fire. Good work, he thought. He’d recommend the sergeant for that.

  By the time they all assembled behind the second line, it didn’t seem that the Taiping were going to follow them past the barricade. All the same, better to be safe. “Reload,” he called out. “Every man reload.”

  As soon as this was done, Guanji had the sergeant tell the men to fall in. “Have we lost anyone?” he asked.

  “Not one, sir.”

  “Anybody wounded?”

  “Only you, sir.”

  “Me?” He’d forgotten feeling something in his arm.

  “Often happens in the
heat of battle, sir. Man gets wounded, doesn’t feel it.” The sergeant smiled. “With permission, sir.” He drew out one of several lengths of white cotton cloth wrapped around his belt. “I always carry a few of these.” He took hold of Guanji’s arm, from which a quantity of blood was now flowing. “I’ll just bind that up,” he said cheerfully. “You’ll be wanting to march the men back, I should think, sir,” he suggested as soon as he was done.

  * * *

  —

  When they reached the brigade general, Guanji gave his report. Brief but precise, including a commendation of the sergeant for good order and initiative. “We inflicted casualties,” he concluded. “I’m pretty confident of twenty. None of us hurt, except for a few bruises and this nick on my arm.”

  “You didn’t hold your position.”

  “No, sir. I had no backup and every reason to believe there were large numbers of Taiping to come. I might have killed another twenty, but then lost all my men.”

  “Good. Correct decision.” A hint of a smile appeared on the Mongolian’s face. “Some of the other parties have taken quite a mauling.” He turned and called the sergeant over. “Twenty enemy casualties?” he asked.

  “Maybe more, sir. They were very nicely grouped. And we had a good position.”

  “How are the men?”

  “In very good heart, sir. They’ll always trust a good officer.”

  “I’ll see to his wound. Bring me a pail of water. And a warm knife.” He turned to Guanji and indicated a crate of ammunition. “Sit on that.”

  It was several minutes before the sergeant returned. Putting the pail of water on the ground, he unwrapped the bandage from Guanji’s arm. The Mongolian poured some of the water onto the wound, inspected it carefully, then poured some more.

  “It’s clean,” he said with a nod, and turned to the sergeant. “Knife?”

  It was a short dagger. Guanji glanced at it. The blade seemed to be glowing. He felt the sergeant’s arm go around his chest.

  “I’ll just hold you now, sir,” the sergeant said calmly.

  Guanji saw the brigade general dip the dagger into the water. It made a loud hiss. Then Guanji heard the Mongolian’s voice, very soft, just behind his ear.

  “I’m going to cauterize the wound. Grit your teeth, put your tongue on the roof of your mouth, and don’t let your mouth open. If you make any sound at all, I’ll send you back to Zhapu with a bad report.” Then he laid the dagger on Guanji’s arm.

  The pain was unlike anything he’d felt before. A blazing, searing shock that would have thrown his whole body upward if the sergeant’s arm had not held him in place, like a hoop of iron around his chest. He might have fainted, except that he was too afraid of annoying the Mongolian. And he did make a sound.

  It did not come from his mouth. It came from somewhere between his chest and his throat, so suddenly and so violently that there was nothing he could do about it.

  There was a silence.

  “Did you hear a sound, sergeant?” the Mongolian inquired.

  “Came from the town.”

  Genghis grunted. “That must’ve been it.”

  Suddenly Guanji found he was shivering.

  “I’ll give you some water, sir,” said the sergeant.

  The Taiping did not try to attack the Mongolian’s big barricade that afternoon. The prefect’s yamen remained untouched. At dusk, leaving a watch of forty men to guard the barricade, the rest of the Manchu troops went back inside the walls of the garrison. Guanji went with them.

  * * *

  —

  And there he remained. Days passed. The Zhapu riflemen continued to man the barricade, but they were not sent down into the city streets again. Instead, the Hangzhou command adopted a different policy, sending a stream of squads with gunpowder and ammunition to supply the Manchu partisans who were harassing the Taiping troops wherever they could. The Manchu women had shown a talent for making small bombs and delivered them effectively. Every hour, Guanji would hear the rattle of musketry or the sound of an explosion coming from somewhere in the town.

  But though they lost dozens of men, the Taiping continued to make progress, advancing several blocks a day, taking their revenge on each troublesome enclave as it came. After three days, they were nearly at the yamen. And by that time, the Hangzhou military council had already sent an urgent plea to the imperial forces besieging Nanjing, begging for reinforcements.

  Guanji was optimistic. “If they send us enough men,” he suggested to the Mongolian, “General Li could be trapped here. His Taiping troops could be wiped out.”

  “Perhaps,” Genghis replied.

  Meanwhile, a stalemate seemed to prevail.

  * * *

  —

  Each night, Guanji would go up on the wall. It was quiet up there, and he liked to be alone. Despite the campfires of the Taiping, he could see the great West Lake clearly and could make out the gentle curves of the hills around it in the moonlight.

  A few days before his sudden departure from Zhapu, his uncle had gone to visit an old friend, a scholar who lived in a house on one of the lakeside hills. Was his uncle there now? he wondered. Was he safe? He thought of his uncle’s printing press in the city and hoped the old man hadn’t gone there. Had the Taiping ransacked the place? There was no way of finding out at the moment. He’d try to go and inspect it himself as soon as this business was over.

  It was strange to think of these two worlds side by side—the quiet, poetic world of the scholars and the angry banners of the Taiping—both sharing the lakeside space in the moonlight. But the moon was waning. A few more days, and he wouldn’t be able to see the water at all, unless the stars were very bright.

  * * *

  —

  The Taiping struck suddenly, hours after Guanji had gone down from the wall, on the night of the waning crescent moon. A thousand men, moving silently and carrying knives, raced to the barricade in front of the yamen and overpowered the watch. Forty sleepy Manchu riflemen were slaughtered in the darkness in less than a minute, and their bodies tossed in a heap at the eastern side of the open space, for the garrison to collect if they chose. Then, before the dawn, they dismantled the barricade and re-erected it so that it ran from the yamen across the street to the garrison wall, sealing off the city gate. As though to proclaim their dominance, they ran their Taiping flags and banners up all around the walls of the areas they occupied, including the prefect’s yamen and the adjoining western gate, as if to say: “All this is our precinct, our fortress.” This left only the garrison and the northernmost part of the city in imperial hands.

  Their plan of action became clear, even before the dawn. It was signaled by the sound of picks and shovels striking the ground. Guanji and the brigade general looked down from the garrison wall. The rebels had erected a protective roof to cover them while they worked, but there could be no doubt about what they were doing. “They’re tunneling under the garrison wall, sir,” said Guanji. “What’ll they do then?”

  “Fill it with gunpowder and blow it up, most likely. That’ll make a breach they can get through.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Try a countermine. Dig underneath them and collapse the floor of their tunnel. That’s the usual procedure. Of course, they may dig a counter to our countermine, and so on.” Genghis nodded. “Tedious business.”

  By the next day, the Taiping were digging four mines, and it was hard to be sure where they were all going. And there was still the big Taiping force outside the garrison’s western gate to consider. Would the Taiping launch two attacks at the same time, one from the south and the other from outside the western gate? Guanji supposed so.

  There was talk that day of a big Manchu assault on the yamen, but there were so many well-armed Taiping in there that the Hangzhou command was nervous of losing too many men. “Let’s wait for the reinforcements
from Nanjing,” they agreed.

  So the Taiping continued their preparations; and the emperor’s men waited for help.

  * * *

  —

  Help came. The day of the new moon. A huge contingent from the emperor’s Southern Grand Battalion had broken off its siege of the Heavenly Kingdom to relieve Hangzhou. Thousands of troops were massed outside the city’s northern gates.

  Guanji was expecting them to enter at once, but the brigade general explained, “Not enough room in the city at the moment. They’ll camp outside tonight.” It seemed to make sense. Only later, when they were out of earshot of anyone else, did his commander tell him in a low voice: “They may be full of Taiping spies. We want to keep them out there until the moment we fight.”

  “Can I trust anyone, sir?” Guanji asked sadly.

  “No. Except me. D’you know why?”

  “You’re my commander.”

  “Because I’m Mongolian. We’re the only trustworthy people.” It seemed to amuse him, because he laughed. “Every Mongolian will tell you that.”

  * * *

  —

  Guanji didn’t go up on the wall that night. First thing in the morning, the brigade general went to a war council. Guanji made sure that all the Zhapu riflemen were ready for action and awaited his chief’s return eagerly. But hours passed and there was no sign of him.

  It was late morning when the sergeant brought the woman to him. She’d come to a small side gate of the garrison, asking to speak to an officer. One of the sentries knew her as a trustworthy Manchu and had summoned the sergeant.

  She was a tough, stout woman, about forty, he guessed. Her story was simple. The rebels had killed her husband a week ago. She hated them. The evening before, a lot of the Taiping in the southern part of the town had started moving towards the garrison. Word was, they were preparing a big assault. They were going to smash their way into the garrison soon. Very soon. So she’d made her way cautiously from the southern part of the town and come to warn them.