The wind that swept across the steppe fifty miles west of the new railway was clean and tasted of wild grasses and distance. It was a wind that knew nothing of emperors or empires, a timeless current that stirred the manes of the hardy Mongol horses and whispered against the felt walls of the yurts. In the center of the Borjigin clan's encampment, a young woman named Altan moved with a liquid grace that mirrored the wind itself. Her hands were firm but gentle on the reins of a wild-eyed stallion, her voice a low, steady murmur that seemed to calm the frantic energy in its blood. She was a master of her world, a world of open sky and living things.
Her grandfather, the clan leader Enebish, watched from the entrance of his yurt, his old eyes crinkling with pride. He was a man carved from the land itself, his face a roadmap of harsh winters and blistering summers. He had seen the Qing dynasty in its dotage and had scoffed at its weakness. This new Emperor, he believed, was no different.
"He sits in Japan, a thousand li away," Enebish grumbled to the man sharing his salty milk tea. The man was a Russian named Dmitri, though the clan knew him only as a trader of furs and silver trinkets. "He thinks he can rule the grasslands with iron roads and paper decrees. The steppe has broken emperors before. It will break him."
Dmitri smiled, a thin expression that didn't quite reach his pale blue eyes. "He is arrogant, old friend. Intoxicated by his victory over the Japanese dwarves. He sends his lapdogs to do his bidding, but arrogance is a weakness. The warrior Toghrul has proven that. A little dynamite, a little fire, and the dragon's great artery bleeds."
Having finally calmed the stallion, tying it to a post where it stood, trembling but subdued, Altan approached. She overheard the last part of their conversation, her brow furrowed with a thought.
"Toghrul is a fool, grandfather," she said, her voice clear and carrying none of the reverence the men had for the notorious raider. "He raids like a wolf, but he also thinks like a wolf, seeing only the throat of the nearest sheep. The Qing are not sheep. They are a nest of hornets. Kicking the nest only makes them swarm."
Enebish chuckled, a deep, rumbling sound. "My granddaughter has the mind of a Han scholar. Do not worry so, little bird. We are far from the railway. Their war is not our war. We pay our taxes, we keep the peace. They have no quarrel with us. We are ghosts to them."
His words, meant to be comforting, proved to be tragically wrong. The rhythmic beat of shod hooves interrupted them, a sound alien to the soft thud of their own unshod ponies. On the rise, a platoon of Qing cavalry appeared, their formation a perfect, rigid block of men and steel. They moved with a chilling discipline that was utterly foreign to the landscape. An officer, the Herald, trotted forward, stopping just at the edge of the camp, his demeanor radiating an impersonal authority. He unrolled a scroll without dismounting.
"By decree of the Northern Pacification Command, under the supreme authority of His Imperial Majesty, the Son of Heaven!" his voice boomed, sharp and devoid of emotion, translated into flawed but understandable Mongolian by a soldier beside him. "All tribes, all clans, all persons residing within the fifty-mile zone east and west of the Imperial Railway are hereby ordered to vacate these lands within thirty days! All property and livestock must be removed. After this period, this land is declared a Clear Zone. Any person, any livestock, any dwelling found within the zone will be considered hostile and subject to immediate military action without quarter!"
A wave of stunned, furious disbelief washed over the encampment. Men and women emerged from their yurts, their faces a mixture of confusion and anger. Khan Enebish rose to his full height, his pride wounded, his world upended. He strode forward, his hand resting on the hilt of the knife at his belt.
"This is our land!" he roared, his voice cracking with rage. "My father's father is buried on that hill! We have grazed these pastures for two hundred years under the eyes of your own ancestors! You have no right!"
The Herald did not even deign to look at him. His gaze was fixed on the horizon, as if the people before him were no more significant than the scrub brush. "This decree is final and not subject to appeal," his translator called out flatly. "It is given for the security and integrity of the Empire."
With that, he rolled up his scroll, wheeled his horse around with machinelike precision, and the entire platoon departed as clinically as it had arrived. They left behind a silence that was heavier and more suffocating than any sound.
Dmitri was the first to speak, his voice filled with theatrical outrage. "This is tyranny! An outrage against Heaven itself! The Tsar must hear of this! You must resist! Toghrul will fight with you! All the tribes will rise!"
But Altan's eyes were wide with a cold, clear fear, not anger. "Resist how?" she whispered, her words directed at her grandfather. "With what? Did you see his eyes? He wasn't negotiating. It was an order, like a man telling his dog to move. Grandfather, we should pack. We must move west, beyond their line."
Enebish slammed his fist onto the small table, rattling the tea bowls. "Never! I will not be driven from my home like a common dog by some Han officer in a new uniform! This is a bluff. A threat to scare the weak-willed. We stay. This is Borjigin land. It will remain Borjigin land until the sky falls!"
The narrative jumped forward thirty agonizing days. The clan remained, a small island of defiance in a sea of encroaching dread, clinging to the stubborn pride of their khan. The day of the deadline dawned cold and grey. The end did not come with a cavalry charge or a demand for surrender. It came as a distant, rhythmic thump… thump… thump…, a sound the steppe had never known.
Artillery.
The shells began to fall, not with the precision of a sniper, but with the overwhelming, indiscriminate fury of a hailstorm. They were not aiming for people; they were aiming for the entire grid square. Yurts, the product of generations of craftsmanship, vanished in blossoms of fire and black smoke. Horses, the soul of the Mongol people, screamed as they were torn apart by shrapnel. The very earth bucked and shuddered. Yuan Shikai's policy was being enacted not as a battle, but as a pest extermination.
Altan was thrown to the ground by a blast that turned her family's yurt into a crater of flaming debris. Through the ringing in her ears, she saw her grandfather, standing defiant for one last moment before a whining piece of hot metal cut him down. There was no glory, no final words, only a surprised grunt and a spray of crimson on the churned-up earth.
As the bombardment lifted, replaced by the thunder of hooves, Qing cavalry swept through the burning remnants of her world, their rifles firing at anything that still moved. Altan was on her knees, paralyzed by shock, when a hand grabbed her arm and yanked her violently. It was Dmitri. He dragged her onto his horse, kicking its flanks and fleeing into the wilderness. He had intended to save a potential asset, a link to a powerful clan. He had instead saved a vessel of pure, cold, undiluted hatred.
They rode for what felt like an eternity, the screams and the stench of burning felt and flesh fading behind them.
"The bastards!" Dmitri gasped, his face pale with a fear he tried to mask with anger. "The godless butchers!"
Altan said nothing. Her face was streaked with soot and her grandfather's blood, but her eyes, when she finally looked at him, were terrifyingly dry. They burned with an intensity that eclipsed grief. The clever, idealistic girl was gone, burned away in the artillery fire.
"My grandfather was a fool," she said, her voice a low, chilling monotone. "He fought their pride with his own pride. He thought honor was a shield. Toghrul is a fool. He fights their strength with his own strength. He stabs the beast." She paused, her gaze turning back toward the pillar of smoke that was once her home. "You cannot fight a forest fire with a sword. You must start a new fire, a smarter fire, behind it. One that burns away its fuel and chokes it of its air."
Dmitri stared at her, confused by her cold, strategic logic in the face of such trauma. "What are you saying? We will find Toghrul, we will gather the survivors…"
"No," Altan cut him off, her voice as sharp as obsidian. "The Qing have an artery—their railway. Toghrul attacks the artery directly. And so, the Emperor sends his wolf, Yuan Shikai, to build a wall of bodies to protect it. But the artery needs more than just track and soldiers. It needs water for its engines. It needs horses for its patrols. It needs food for its garrisons. It needs guides who know the land. All of which he gets from the land and the people he has not yet killed. He thinks he is poisoning the well by killing us. I will poison the water that feeds the well."
Dmitri looked at the young woman before him, at the terrible new intelligence that had been forged in the crucible of her loss. He realized with a jolt that he had found something far more valuable, and infinitely more dangerous, than a disgruntled clan leader or a hot-headed raider. He had found a mind that could truly understand how to inflict a thousand cuts.