Before the heaps of grain blazing beneath the black night sky, I held a torch and set fire to the rest of the provisions as well.
The grain that must have been safely stored in Karakoto’s granaries had been just about to see the light of day, only to be treated to the sight of a roaring fire as well. One could call it quite the spirited send-off.
“Commander of Ten Thousand…?”
A commander of ten and a commander of a hundred came running over, looking regretfully at the sacks of burning grain as they turned to ash, but I merely spoke firmly.
“Smash every jar filled with water as well. Make sure it all disappears into the sand.”
Even as I said that, I did not stop my little game of setting fire to the sacks packed with grain, and at last I turned toward the two men who were hesitating, as if wondering whether I had gone mad.
“Hurry. Before the rebels rush out of the fortress to attack us in hopes of salvaging even the remaining food and water—now!”
Only then did the two of them realize the urgency of my order, and beginning with them, all the soldiers started smashing the water jars and setting the sacks alight, burning everything.
“What—what in the world are you doing?!”
And by the time the Western Xia rebel general emerged and shouted in horror at our actions, all the grain had become ash, and only the shattered fragments of every water jar lay scattered across the desert.
----- -----
“You… what on earth are you—!”
“Mm, there are a few reasons… would you like to hear them?”
Ah, he was the one who had appeared earlier when we exchanged the prisoners for water and food. In that case, it was only natural he would come running in shock at the sight of us setting fire to the provisions.
“First, the truth is that we don’t really need water or food. We brought as much as we need, and if we run short, we can procure more from the surroundings. You people can’t, though.”
A group was approaching from afar. They were probably rebel soldiers rushing over to protect the general who had dashed out in surprise with only a small escort, or else soldiers coming to attack us.
“Second, with this, you now have more mouths to feed, but even less water and food to support them with, don’t you? And you can’t attack us again to seize it back, either.”
You’ve heard the saying that once a card is laid, there are no take-backs, haven’t you? This also prevents the hardliners within the Western Xia rebels from blaming the “weak choice” and acting on their own, rushing out to attack us while we struggled to carry away the water and food.
“And third, I thought that if I did something unexpected like this, one of you would come running in surprise.”
The group that had come running consisted of cavalry, soldiers heavily armed with bows and arrows. Just perfect for hunting down foolish people trudging away under heavy loads.
“…Is that all?”
“No? I still have something I want to tell you. And that is—”
The cavalry, flustered by our unexpected actions, began entering a standoff with us—not in the state of “leaving with loads of baggage, perfect for being ambushed,” but with us firmly on guard, prepared for an attack at any moment.
“Surrender. Just as we sent the prisoners back alive today, those who surrender will have their lives spared. That was why I called you all out here.”
As they looked at me tilting my head with a bright smile while I explained, the faces of the Western Xia rebel soldiers held nothing but bewilderment, as if they could not possibly understand.
He still had to live. Because he had to go back and deliver my words.
----- -----
“Then what are you saying we should do!”
“If we keep dithering like this, we’re all going to die. Rather than meet such an absurd death, it would be better to at least try fighting!”
“Easy for you to say. Can you go out there and win? Even General Yarigwang and fifteen hundred soldiers couldn’t withstand them and were defeated head-on! So how?!”
“Then are you going to offer your wife and daughter to those Mongol bastards?!”
The atmosphere among the command staff had turned into utter chaos. It was not merely because everything they had handed over when told the prisoners would be sent back alive in exchange for water and food had vanished into ash and desert sand.
“If you surrender, you will live.”
Perhaps it was because, said in reverse, the Mongol commander had innocently declared, “If you do not surrender, I will kill every last one of you.”
“Half our soldiers? That is not so. We have the soldiers who returned alive, do we not? They must have seen something inside the Mongol camp. If we draw out everything they know, there will be a path to victory!”
A general who had ardently followed General Yarigwang—the man who had first pursued the girl claiming to be the Khan’s granddaughter in order to kidnap her, then fallen for that girl’s provocation and lost his life in the middle of the desert—argued at the top of his lungs.
The prisoners had been held by the Mongol army for twenty days and three more. He believed that during that time, they must surely have learned something from the Mongol soldiers’ way of life, their weapons, and their conversations.
That was why, with desperate conviction, he cried out that they could win. To the point that the meeting dragged on by lantern light until the dead of night, when the waning moon gave no light and darkness covered every direction.
“Then what of the soldiers? If we drag all of them out to face that Mongol army, how will we defend Karakoto? And even if we win, once additional punitive forces arrive—”
Aaaagh!
The general who had been speaking just now closed his mouth. A piercing scream stabbed into the command post. It came from far away, but it was undoubtedly the sound of a person.
“—der! If you surren—, you can li—!”
A faint sound. But if one listened closely, it was not impossible to make out. Probably from near the fortress wall, the voice of a strong-throated man.
“If you surrender, you can live! If you surrender, you can live—!!!”
The sound of dozens of people moving about near the walls shouting, waking the residents who had been sleeping peacefully in the night, drawing closer to the gates as if acting on a signal.
“Send soldiers to the gates at once! I don’t know what in the world is happening, but—”
Waaaaaaaah!
At the thunderous roar and the sound of hoofbeats that followed immediately after, the general drew the sword at his side. It was a sound he had heard once before.
It was the same cry he had heard on the desert battlefield, on the day General Yarigwang died.
----- -----
Twenty-three days. The length of time the prisoners had been in our hands.
I believe I made very careful use of that time. After all, fire was rising from the fortress like that, and the gates were opening.
Prisoners left under the blazing sun. Strong men weakening beneath the beating rays.
Sweat poured down like rain, a burning thirst tormenting their throats, and while the Mongol army looked down at them, I approached.
“Isn’t it hot?”
A hand caressing a cheek. Skin roughened to the utmost by the dry desert wind was stained with drying sweat and withering away.
“Do you want to rest?”
Drying eyes. The eyes of a man who had once worn armor, taken up weapons, and fought against Mongolia as a rebel seeking to restore Western Xia had lost their light to shriveling dryness and burning thirst.
“Would you like to drink water?”
Two hollow eyes. His miserable brown pupils swept weakly over me, barely burning the last resistance left in his heart.
But the desert sun, and a noonday sun at that, would burn hotter than any flame that might have blazed within his heart.
“All you have to say is one word.”
A voice kept moist because it could drink water. A voice only one who could open the lid of a leather waterskin and moisten her throat whenever she was thirsty could produce.
The fair-skinned girl, who did not suffer the heat that felt as though the noonday sunlight were gouging into the skin with a knife, would have looked darker than anything else with the sun at her back.
“Didn’t you not want to fight? Aren’t you hot? Don’t you want to return alive to your family?”
The voice pressed close to his ear might have been so hateful that he wanted to seize her by the throat. He might have wanted to raise his hands to cover his head and eyes from the sun. He might have wanted to drink water to soothe his burning throat.
If only his hands and feet had not been bound. And so, quietly, quietly listening—
“All you have to do is say one word.”
He had no choice but to answer.
“Say that you surrender.”
“I… surrender….”
At last, the prisoner who said he surrendered was given water, shade to escape the heat, and even salt to replenish what he had lost through sweating. Even though, in this uncivilized medieval age, it was something so difficult to obtain.
This was a privilege enjoyed only by the few among those suffering as their blood dried beneath the blazing sun who were first to cry out that they surrendered—
“I surrender… I surrender!”
“Surrender! I will surrender!”
And for those who had been left in the desert for twenty days, kept alive only barely enough not to die, these must have been the things they longed for more desperately than anything.
----- -----
Once one broke, the rest was very easy.
When I stepped aside, a corpse already lay on top of a cart. A corpse dressed in the garments of a general, draped in yellow silk and lamellar armor.
He had once had a scar from a battle against the Mongol army covering half his head, but now, on the gaunt corpse shriveled like a living Buddha mummy, only traces of it remained.
“Throw stones. If you do, I can give you twice what you were eating.”
Of course I should. How hard must it have been for those who had lost their strength while drying out in the desert to throw stones on top of that? So wouldn’t it be only proper to give them twice the food?
“Spit on him and curse him. I’ll give you waterskins filled to the brim so you can wet your throats as much as you like.”
Plague-ridden bastard. Bastard who deserves to be torn limb from limb. Useless, idiotic bastard. We had to suffer this pain because of you!
“Oh dear, what should we do? It seems the people living in that fortress don’t want to bring you back alive!”
Despair flashed through the prisoners’ eyes. The general who had led them out of the fortress was dead, and since it had been a long time since they cursed him with their own mouths and struck him with stones, he had already been battered beyond recognition.
But the fortress was not like that. In one corner of the vision of those who wandered this desert wilderness, the walls of Karakoto had always been faintly visible, and I had always promised that if negotiations went well, I would send them back.
But what if, inside the fortress, the Western Xia rebels they had followed refused the negotiations?
Now, the prisoners’ eyes would begin to see the things they themselves had thrown away in order to survive. The days they had offered up for the revival of Western Xia, the general who had led them, their dignity, and even the hearts they had held for a greater cause.
Now that they had denied each and every one of those things in order to live, returning alive must have become their only hope and the only thread they could cling to.
“Get lost, Mongol bitch! We will have no conversation whatsoever with you!”
And quite conveniently, they refused to speak with us, making the prisoners feel that they had been abandoned as well.
“But don’t worry. I will make sure all of you return home. In exchange, promise me one thing.”
Once you enter the fortress, open the gates. You and your families will all be safe.
The signal is—
----- -----
When word came that the Mongol army had begun burning the food brought out from the fortress, those who had once been captured by the Mongols and released began gathering near the gates as if possessed by something.
Having quenched their thirst, filled their bellies, and taken up spears again, they were no longer the men they had once been. There were only men who had made a deal with the Mongol commander for the sake of filling their emptied hearts, and for the safety of their families and themselves.
On the day the negotiations ended. In the pitch-black night, as though the waning moon had abandoned the world without lighting it, the prisoners set fire to the fortress and opened the gates.
Because the Mongol commander of ten thousand always kept her promises.